“Turn right in two hundred meters,” commanded the baritone voice belonging to the onboard navigation system, and Kahn flinched.
Flipping open his glove compartment, he removed a nine-millimeter pistol. His officer’s side arm had last seen action in the Sinai in 1967. Come to think of it, he hadn’t fired it then. He’d been too busy mustering his men, directing a counterattack against Egyptian tanks that had cracked the Israeli line. Kahn considered his options. If he could get around the intersection, he could easily outrun the hijackers’ two vehicles. And then? He had a feeling the men would phone ahead. There would be another roadblock, maybe one manned by the Pale constables themselves. A man in a gold BMW was easy to find. He’d underestimated the region’s poverty.
He asked the navigation system for an alternate route.
None.
Well, then, he mused, stealing the pistol into his lap and chambering a round.
Two men were climbing out of the truck ahead, waving their arms across their faces, signaling for him to stop. Kahn braked. Using a turn signal, he brought the car to the side of the road, coming to a halt a hundred meters from the junction. He waited for the Mercedes to pull up behind him, his eyes trained on the rearview mirror. He was shivering and had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.
The Mercedes’s doors opened lazily.
Kahn slipped the gear into reverse.
Feet swung onto the ground. Combat boots. But, of course.
His heel rammed the accelerator. Tires squealed. The BMW rocketed backward. Metal crumpled as the car shuddered violently.
The two men rolled on the side of the road, having thrown themselves clear of the BMW.
Scared out of his wits, but acting with a bloodied soldier’s calm, Mordecai Kahn stepped from the car, raised the pistol, and shot one of the men in the chest, pulling the trigger twice in rapid succession. Walking toward the jackknifed trunk, he spotted the second man struggling with his assault rifle, banging the clip into the stock, clumsily knocking the fire control with his fist. He was swearing, his dark eyes flitting desperately between the weapon and Kahn.
Kahn fired twice, and the Slav twisted about his waist as if his feet were nailed to the blacktop.
A single barbaric act.
The words played over and over again in his mind, a violent and cacophonous symphony, as he climbed back into his BMW and accelerated toward the pickup truck. Kahn would show them a barbaric act.
Directly ahead, one of the men was frantically rummaging for something in the front seat of the truck. The second man was shooting at Kahn, but either he was a poor shot or he had a weak pistol, because none of the bullets were finding their mark.
The speedometer read thirty kilometers an hour.
A hail of iron rained on the car. For a second, he made out the driver firing from his hip with a machine gun, but then the front and rear windshield disappeared in a downpour of glass and he couldn’t see anything.
The needle hit fifty. Kahn struck the rifleman, crushing him, and plowed into the truck. The momentum sent the vehicle tumbling off the road and rolling down a berm into the field. The BMW’s front axle thumped once as the car ran over the second man, then lumbered to a halt, its airbag inflated.
Kahn knocked away the air bag and opened the door. Steam hissed from the engine. The hood was a mess. He opened the back door and retrieved an overnight bag. He had no need to check its contents. The package would be in perfect working order. It had been engineered and constructed to withstand radical impacts and violent changes in velocity up to three thousand g’s.
Sliding into the front seat of the Mercedes, he checked his watch.
He had twenty-four hours to get to Paris.
He would travel to Belgrade and purchase a new car. From there, it was ten hours to Frankfurt, and five more to the French capital. It would be tight.
Chapter 32
The fields of France passed beneath them, a patchwork quilt of golds and greens. They were flying east. The sun hovered overhead. The shadow of the MD-80 aircraft defined a bullet piercing rivers and valleys and plains of summer wheat. They had a row to themselves. Chapel took the window, Sarah the aisle. Since takeoff, they’d been huddled over the center seat, whispering like thieves in fear of their lives.
“He knew I’d be there,” said Chapel. “He was waiting.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“He slugged me in the shoulder, Sarah. He knew where I was burned. How much more sure do I need to be? Think about it. They had me pegged to be at the hospital at ten o’clock. They knew the time of the appointment. They knew I was going to see Dr. Bac. Christ, Sarah, they even knew what I looked like. He’d seen a picture of me. Where in the hell did he get that? It’s not like I’m on the cover of People.”
But Sarah persisted in her stubbornness. “Why did he run, then? Why didn’t he kill Dr. Bac? If he’d waited another minute, he’d have had you all to himself.”
“I don’t know. Maybe something spooked him. He was young. Twenty or twenty-one. I could smell the fear on him. Maybe he just couldn’t do it. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter why.”
Sarah took a moment to answer. The determined furrows that cradled her eyes relaxed. “I suppose not.”
“They’re inside, Sarah. Hijira’s penetrated Blood Money.”
“Who?” she asked angrily, frustrated by their predicament. “Give me a name.
But neither of them was willing to hazard a guess.
An honor guard awaited them at Berlin Tegel Airport.
A covey of the local Bundespolizei, smart in their short-sleeved summer uniforms and wan green caps, lined the gate area. In its midst stood a chubby American who introduced himself as Lane, the FBI’s legal attaché to Berlin. He presented the formal writ requesting Germany to turn over all information pertaining to Deutsche International Bank account 222.818E to Adam Chapel, designated representative of the U.S. Treasury Department, then escorted the pair through passport control, past baggage claim, to a waiting black Mercedes 600. A blond driver nodded courteously as he slammed the door after them. Lane climbed in the front seat. “The courthouse is in the new Federal Square near the Potsdamerplatz,” he explained. “Hermann here is with the local cop shop. He informs me that he’ll have us there in seventeen minutes.”
The Mercedes left the curb like the shuttle from the launchpad. Sinking into the seat, Chapel hoped the German government’s accommodation might extend past prompt limousine service.
The German capital was a city of the living, a vibrant metropolis on an unending construction binge. Cranes chopped the skyline into hundreds of vertical slabs. Any building that hadn’t been newly constructed in the last two years had at least been renovated, repainted, sandblasted, or steam-cleaned.
Abruptly, the cityscape ended. A sparse forest combed with trails and dotted with ice-cream vendors pressed in on them. The Tiergarten was Berlin’s answer to Central Park, or to be historically correct, its antecedent by three hundred years. The car barreled down the Avenue of Third of June. The Siegesaule passed in a blur, Apollo’s chariot perched high on the victory column. Ahead stood the Brandenburg Gate. They slowed as they passed around it. Chapel glimpsed the Hotel Adlon, stomping ground of the Third Reich’s rich and famous, restored to its five-star glory. Another burst of acceleration delivered them onto the Unter den Linden, once Berlin’s most fashionable walking street, where Goebbels had ordered its famed oaks chopped down to make way for winged swastikas perched on stone columns.
The federal courthouse stared out over the Alexanderplatz. It was a large government building, one of Schinkel’s neoclassical masterpieces, complete with the imposing Doric columns, the monumental plinth, and the esplanade copied from the Parthenon. Lane led them inside. An elevator took them to the second floor. The floor was radiantly polished, hewn from Italian Carrara marble. The snap of their heels sounded every ambitious attorney’s charge. Lane opened an unmarked door and held it for Chapel and Sarah to pass by.