It was Peter. Her husband.
'Get up here, just come up here,' Muscle joined in over her shoulder.
Peter waved, arrogant and mischievous, enjoying her discomfort.
'You said you'd wait,' she continued shrilly. 'That you wouldn't leave me high and dry. You lying shit.'
The process server climbed into the passenger seat as Peter switched on the engine.
'I'll fight you for every cent. You promised me a fair share. Every fucking cent I can get.' Her words were lost as he waved a final indolent farewell and drove out of the car park.
She swung round, wild fury still in her eyes. Then she saw Adam, saw that he had seen her at her weakest moment.
'What're you staring at?' she hissed at him.
'Nothing,' he replied warily. Now was not the time to get involved in a domestic squabble. Over her shoulder, Muscle challenged him, dared him to respond. He saw the car pull into the front out of the corner of his eye. 'I think Tucker's back.'
She turned and saw the Granada pull into the lot. Tucker got out, waved at the group on the balcony, unaware of the drama that had just taken place, and entered the condominium.
'Let him in, Gary,' she told Muscle who left to open the front door. 'Don't laugh at me, mister,' she warned Adam.
'I'm not laughing,' he replied. 'We all have our problems.'
'And I don't need your bullshit.'
'You're not getting it,' he said as he got up from the chair. 'If Tucker wants me, I'll be in my room.'
'Hey.' Her tone suddenly changed. 'Don't go,' she appealed to him. 'I'm sorry. I just don't like…people seeing me with my guard down. Hell, I never expected that from him.'
'How about if I made you a coffee?'
She laughed. 'No. this is still my place. Why don't I make it?'
'Why don't we both make it?'
'Deal.'
He held out his hand and she took it, shaking it in mock welcome.
'Good to see you both on the same side for once,' said Tucker, walking onto the balcony.
'Where's Gary?' Billie said, pulling her hand away from Adam.
'Said he was going to the gym. I told him we had business to discuss.' Tucker pulled up a chair and sat down, Billie joining him at the table. 'Dammed if I can get used to this heat at Christmas. Seems wrong somehow.' He took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. Then he looked up at Adam, who now leant against the balustrade. 'You have caused big problems,' he stated flatly.
Adam said nothing, just waited for Tucker to continue.
'Even so, we have a task to finish,' Tucker went on. 'Important enough for us to stay together on this thing as a team. I have to say this…because I've been told to…that you're to take it easy on the gunplay.'
'There wasn't any,' replied Adam.
'You know what I mean. Hell, I've done nothing but sort out police and agency people since you pulled that little stunt. Not to mention calming down two hundred wedding guests, the bride and groom, and the whole damn Sheraton management. Shit, there's only the Rabbi and the State of Israel left.' Tucker laughed at his own joke as he saw Adam smile. 'Look, you're on foreign territory, on official business. Just take it easy in future. Okay?'
'The situation was always under control.'
'All right. It was under control. You can even have the last word. This time. But just take it easier next time.'
'I thought I was going to have the last word.'
'Touché,' said Billie.
'Hey. Don't gang up on me, you two.' Tucker shook his head. 'Anyway, we're still on the case, as they say.'
'What next?'
'New Orleans.'
'New Orleans?'
'Louisiana. Trimmler's off to a big convention with Russian and other Eastern scientists.'
'When?'
'Tomorrow.'
'I can't go.'
'Orders.'
'Something's come up. I've got to deal with it.' Billie looked at Adam as she spoke and he knew she referred to the divorce writ that had been served before Tucker arrived.
'It'll have to wait. Job comes first.'
She stood up angrily. 'You'll have to carry on without me for now. I've got calls to make.' She stamped off the balcony, the papers in her hand.
'What was all that about?' asked Tucker.
'Divorce.'
'You're kidding.'
'No. I'd leave her alone for a while. You know what they say. Never come between man and wife.'
'This isn't what I expected. Field operations. Damn it. It's like amateur night out, kindergarten stuff. Some fucking operation. I need to use the phone when she's finished. Ring Jean and tell her what's happening.' Tucker dreaded the call, knew his wife was going to bitch about his trip to New Orleans and his extended stay away from home. Especially with the New Year holiday looming the next day.
From the sitting room they heard Billie switch off the television news programme and go on the phone to her lawyer. It wasn't a news item they were concerned with. It was about Berlin and the riots that had erupted and were now tearing that city apart.
An unimportant matter in the great scheme of world events.
Ch. 24
Grob Mitzer wasn't used to being kept waiting, particularly on New Year's Day.
He was on the second floor, in the sitting area of Suite 217, of the Belleview Hotel on the Kopckesttrasse which runs along the banks of the River Elbe.
Dresden. City of smashed dreams, the recipient of Churchill's last blow at Hitler's Third Reich in 1945 when British bombers virtually razed the city to the ground and wiped out 35,000 civilians in one night. That terrible night became known as Churchill's Revenge.
Dresden. Since the end of the Second World War, the centre of National Socialist activity in the oppressive new world of Russian invasion. The movement built secretly and slowly, a covert political doctrine that was carried through the early days of defeat and occupation, through the new order of communism and the GDR, and into the final freedom of a reunified Germany. It was a word of mouth movement, a repressed dream shared between those who remembered what the Third Reich could have achieved, and they now passed that dream down through the generations of occupied Germany. The dream had been easy to perpetuate and nurture under the Russians. For many, the dream, as submerged as it was, was the gateway to the future.
And when communism was defeated by the simple removal of a concrete wall, National Socialism remained a dirty word, a memory of baby killers and mass murderers. It may have been that to the rest of the world, but to the dreamers it was the path back to greatness, to what Germany should have become. So they kept their brutal secrets, but in their darkness they became organised. They turned on the Poles and Turks and other foreigners who worked in the east, smashed them with their lead pipes and baseball bats, and sent them back where they had come from.
Germany, the Fatherland, for the Germans.
It became a familiar and popular chant during this time of unemployment and listless wandering for an identity. There were many factions, all competing for power. The Deutsche Alternative, led by Frank Hubner, was one of the faces of modern extremism, designer Nazis with well cut clothes and impeccable manners whose slogan was 'racial mixing will be the death of the German people.'
In Hamburg, the National List was headed by another young model German, Christian Worch, who brandishes his copy of Mein Kampf during his rallies and had served four years in jail for terrorist attacks and anti-semitism.
These are just some of leaders who set out to imitate Hitler, not ashamed to hide their beliefs from the public eye at a time when Germany is seen to be faltering.
But there are also those who campaign secretly for a similar future. Businessmen and lawyers and community leaders who are not yet prepared to show their true selves to the world. They are the dreamers who came together when word of mouth was supplanted by fax messages, meetings, big business financial support and a realisation of destiny. All they had to do now was wait for the chaos that would surely come, the very chaos out of which they would one day lead Germany. Just as Adolf Hitler had done before in the 1930's.