She started at the beginning. Within an hour she’d read everything known about all of the dead men. It was truly an international affair, from the Hungarian and Bulgarian Jake killed two months ago to the Iranian he last had contact with in France. That man had been somewhat interesting, with his degree from the University of Michigan. Nothing was jumping out and leading her in any significant direction, though. Could it have simply been hired guns from all these various countries on purpose to drive the Agency and Jake in different directions? A ruse to confuse? That’s what she’d have to find out.
But by now her stomach was starting to rumble. She took out the DVD, put on her leather coat, and slid the disc into an inside pocket. Time for a little dinner and drinks.
18
Much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Since Gustav had instructed his associate to try to connect the dots with the bodies found in Berlin to possible missing persons and those to murders elsewhere, Andreas had possibly come up with something important. A man had been shot in Prague three weeks ago, and a week later a body had shown up in the Spree. The medical examiner had estimated the time of death to be five or six days prior to the find, which would have been a couple of days after the Prague killing. It wasn’t much to go on, Gustav knew, but it was a direction. Especially with the possibility that the Turk had tried to kill Jake Adams in Innsbruck and then could have tried to cash in on the hit in Berlin just after that. The clincher? The man who was killed in Prague was a former spy with UZSI, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Czech Republic. Which is why Andreas and Gustav hadn’t been able to get much information on the death of the man. The authorities there had simply called it a street crime. A robbery gone bad. But Gustav wasn’t buying that explanation.
Now, just after ten p.m., Gustav sat in the main terminal at the Hauptbahnhof watching the big board click off arrivals and departures. When he finally saw the train he wanted coming into Berlin from Warsaw, Poland, he spoke softly into his mic to send his officers into action. Then he got up and with a casual gate went to the platform to wait. He saw Andreas on the far end of the track platform, making sure nobody would escape down that way. His other officers formed a barricade, their MP5s intimidating and ensuring everyone would stop and hand over their passports.
They’d gotten only a number on the passengers. No names. With over 150 onboard, it might take a while to check on all of them. But their men had a hand scanner, which would not only verify the identity of each passenger, it would also run the data into a computer inside the terminal and run a quick background check for any outstanding Interpol notices or even local warrants by law enforcement in their home countries. The process worked better than planned. Quick and efficient. However, they only found a few with traffic violations and one man wanted for rape in Warsaw, who his men took into custody. When each passenger was cleared, a sticker was slapped onto their passport.
Once all the passengers ran through their gauntlet, Andreas met Gustav on the platform.
“I was so sure we would find something,” Andreas said.
“We might have,” Gustav said, his eyes shifting toward the passengers who were now dispersing in all directions through the terminal.
“True. The RFID sticker in the passport was brilliant.”
“Well, that only works after the fact,” Gustav assured his partner. “It’s not like we can track all of them.”
“Why do you think the killer would be on this train tonight?”
While tracking mysterious murders in Europe, Andreas had come across the shooting death of an older man in Warsaw a day ago. That man had also been part of the old spy community, having worked for the Polish Foreign Intelligence Service. A check with German Intelligence confirmed that the Pole had also worked for quite some time in Berlin during the height of the Cold War.
Gustav wasn’t entirely sure of his answer, but he had a big hunch. “The timing seems right, Andreas. But we don’t know anything for sure. We’re flying blind here.”
“You’re right, boss. And we don’t know if the shooter just passed through here. We might assume the Warsaw killer would have a clean record.”
“Absolutely. It would help, though, if we could break into the website. Any word on how long that will take?”
Andreas shoved his hands into his pockets and said, “No, sir. We’re not even sure of the city where it’s hosted. They’re trying. I have a couple programmers working all night to break it.”
“Good.”
“Now what?”
Gustav thought about the rest of his evening and smiled ever so slightly.
“You have plans with a lady friend,” Andreas stated.
“Maybe. There’s nothing else we can do until morning when the next train from Warsaw comes in. You should go home to your wife.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll check on our computer friends before I go to bed and call you if they’ve found anything.”
Gustav checked his watch. “Give me a few hours of privacy.”
Andreas nodded and then left.
Shaking his head with wonder, Gustav wandered off to his car. It took him thirty minutes to drive from the main train terminal to his apartment on the west side of Berlin, a few blocks from the old Olympic stadium and just a block from the Spree River. He locked his car and walked with a spring in his step toward his row house apartment. He lived on the second story of the three story brick building, his apartment with a view of the Spree and a large park.
When he got to his door, he hesitated a moment, digging in his pocket for the keys. Something wasn’t right about this whole case, he thought. The deaths were quickly drifting to a realm that was not his.
Suddenly the door opened and the young woman stood before him in the silk robe he’d bought her for her birthday last month. Her blonde hair shot straight down over her shoulders. Her cheek bones became more pronounced when she smiled without showing him her imperfect teeth, which bothered her. Regardless, she was a stunning beauty. Her perfect body made up for any superficial imperfections, and might make a gay man question his decision to swing that way.
She opened her robe and exposed that nude, wondrous body to him. “I was hoping you would come soon.”
Gustav moved past her and closed and locked the door behind them. “Oh, I will.” Seeing her like that had brought a great rise to his evening.
They hurried to the bedroom and he got out of his clothes like they were on fire. The first time he’d met Ilka six months ago, she was working for a high-end call service out of a high-rise posh hotel near Tempelhof. Her “client” had died from an aortic aneurysm and Gustav was there to verify there was no foul play. Seeing Ilka, he guessed immediately that she could have induced a heart attack in a marathon runner. She’d taken to Gustav after that for unknown reasons to him, and he’d taken to her for two reasons — one was the obvious physical attraction, and the other out of some guilty Catholic pattern of possible redemption. He’d done the same thing with Kora in Munich, and she was now out of the business and owned a dress shop in Berchtesgaden. One success out of a million crashed and failed attempts.
They made quick and fast love the first time, both knowing they’d slow down and do it right the second time. After, they lay together in bed, the quiet overwhelmingly chaotic for Gustav. He couldn’t get his mind off the case. Couldn’t understand the significance of the murders in other parts of Europe, or how those might relate to his dead men in the Spree River.
“Where are you?” Ilka asked in German with a Russian accent. “If you think of dead corpses all the time, I’m amazed you can become hard at all.”