Collision of Evil (41 page)

The device that the protective-suited specialists found in the hotel lobby was the same design described by Kaltenberg in his diary. It had been placed within a beer mug cardboard carton for concealment, something else that had not been anticipated.
Damn it
, Waldbaer thought,
the terrorists are ahead of the game and we’re reacting.

Waldbaer made contact with Hirter and the other two CIA officers near the main entrance, briefing them on the hotel attack.

“It could have been worse from the way it sounds, Kommissar,” was Hirter’s reply. “Now at least we know exactly what to look for. The other three are almost certainly using the same modus operandi.”

Chalmers spoke. “The bad news is that we now know the nerve agent is viable and lethal. We also know that the dispersion device is functional. If there had been more people in the lobby when the device was activated, we’d have mass casualties already. If the remaining terrorists get inside the tents, it’s hard to see how we can prevent a catastrophe a magnitude greater than what we already have.”

“We can’t waste time standing around,” Waldbaer said. “Let’s get moving.” With that, they pushed into the swirling, eddying mass of people heading toward the large tents, the closest of which was the Augustiner.

“Plastic souvenir bags,” Waldbaer rushed to explain to the undercover officers posted at the Augustiner entrance. “I know there are lots of those around, but that’s what they’re using. They probably have tossed touristy items inside for additional cover. Inside the plastic bag there will be a cardboard container for a souvenir beer stein. Instead of a beer stein, the container will house a metal cylinder. That’s the Sarin device. It will look like a thermos bottle.”

“Shit,” said the tall, short-haired officer on Waldbaer’s right. Waldbaer felt his stomach churn. “What is it,” he snapped.

“There was a guy I let in a few minutes ago. He was carrying a souvenir bag, and I had him open it. There were chocolate bars inside and a cardboard beer stein container. I popped the container and saw what looked like a thermos inside. I thought it was just another souvenir. Hell, they sell everything here nowadays. Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“No time for that,” Waldbaer replied. “What did he look like?”

“Young, no beard, red hair. Now that I think about it, his complexion didn’t match the hair; maybe he dyed it. He didn’t look like one of our targets.”

“He is,” Waldbaer spat. “If he’s already inside, we might be too late. Let’s hope the hell not. You can recognize him?”

“I can recognize him,” the tall officer said.

“Good. Let me call out an update to our comrades at the other tents. Then I’ll explain what we do,” Waldbaer said, pushing inside the tent with his phalanx of German officers and Americans.

Taamir had found it was difficult to find a place at one of the beer tables. The tent was rapidly filling to raucous capacity. It had taken several minutes of wandering the beer-slicked, wooden-planked aisles until he spotted a narrow sitting space on the edge of a group
of Italian tourists. He smiled at them, and some of their glassy-eyed number nodded happily in return before returning to their loud conversation. He placed the plastic bag on the bench between his legs, concealed from onlookers by the tabletop.

A harried-looking, overweight waitress squeezed into a too-tight dirndl appeared before him.
“Ein bier?”
she shouted above the brass music.

He nodded and she disappeared into the maelstrom of the crowd. He would have no need to feign drinking a beer. It would be at least ten minutes before she returned, and that was time enough to activate the device.

Glancing about, he noticed that there were children in the tent, brought along by their parents. He refused to let himself be troubled by this. He was acting as a jihadi, and his actions had been sanctioned beforehand. His conscience was clear. He closed his eyes for a second and offered a brief prayer for his relatives. No need to wait, he concluded, and opened the bag wide, revealing the cardboard container within which the canister was secreted.

Another partygoer shoved into the remaining narrow bench space next to him with a muttered, “excuse me.” Taamir didn’t object. One more victim to the toll he would exact. He pulled open the cardboard lid of the cargo secured between his knees and saw the metal vessel and its activation button.

Taamir was suddenly aware that his left side felt oddly warm. At first he thought it was the press of people occupying the bench. The sensation rapidly escalated to pain, and he turned to the source of it and the newly arrived man next to him. He was puzzled to see that the man was regarding him clinically, the way one looked at an exotic animal in a zoo. Taamir felt a sharp burst of pain course through his side and opened his mouth in incomprehension.

The undercover officer twisted the blade of his service knife in the man’s side. He felt corporeal resistance as the metal sliced through muscle and tissue. He withdrew the viscous blade and plunged it with force low to the abdomen, aware that he had already
inflicted major damage. Amid the music and singing, no one noticed. A thick ebb of blood was pouring from the red-haired man’s side onto the bench and floor. The point of discharge was low and not visible to others at the table, whose attention was entirely focused on the band.

Taamir could not make his fingers respond to his will. His arms twitched slightly as his eyes began to lose focus. The hard features of the man who was attacking him began to blur. He understood in a detached way that he was dying, which he had expected, but he had not achieved his goal, which was unanticipated. He could not understand why events had developed in this manner.

The officer twisted the blade again in his target’s abdomen. He saw that the man’s wide brown eyes were now glazed. Glancing down the crowded aisle, he found Waldbaer and nodded.

Waldbaer nodded back and beckoned with a move of his chin. The police officer withdrew the blade from the man next to him and dropped the slickened knife into a deep pocket of his leather jacket. With a quick, casual movement, the officer removed the jacket and placed it around the bleeding man’s form, concealing the wounds. He secured a strong arm around his victim and lifted him to a standing position. One of the Italians glanced up.

The officer smiled disarmingly and shrugged. “Already drunk,” he said, shaking his head. The Italian laughed knowingly and returned his attention to the Bavarian band. Unremarked, the undercover policeman half-dragged his open-mouthed victim into the aisle, toward Waldbaer.

“He’s still alive,” the officer advised the kommissar.

“Not for long from the looks of him,” Waldbaer replied, hitching his own arm around the limp terrorist and helping his subordinate pull the man toward the tent entrance where Hirter and other undercover men waited. Other than an occasional, half-curious glance, their progress elicited no attention, not even the deep and spreading stain on Taamir’s jeans.

Outside, they were quickly concealed by a group of undercover
men and the CIA officers. A van had been brought up and Taamir, eyes rolled back in his head, was placed inside. “He’s dead,” a voice said matter-of-factly from within the vehicle.

Waldbaer nodded in acknowledgment and turned to the officer who had been in the tent. “You have the device?”

The officer lifted up the plastic bag. “In here. He never got to the canister. I cut him just as he got his hand inside the bag.”

The officer looked away, taking in the Oktoberfest scene. He spoke to the kommissar in a lower voice. “I never killed anyone before.”

Waldbaer clapped the officer lightly on the shoulder. “Remember this, you saved hundreds—maybe thousands—of people just now. You hear that singing and laughing back in that beer tent? That’s going on because of you. If you hadn’t gotten to that intending mass murderer in time, all we’d be hearing right now is screaming. Never forget that. I understand how you feel, but this guy lying in the van forfeited his right to life when he agreed to carry that canister.”

Chalmers appeared by the police officer’s side, asked for, and received the Sarin device. He removed it gingerly from the bag and cardboard container and examined it. “This is the design Kaltenberg perfected in nineteen forty-four. The device is simple, really, and built to be robust. The container is double-walled, and the button at the top activates the dispenser. The Sarin plays out until the container is empty. Kommissar, we need to put this thing inside a sealed metal container and transport it—carefully—to a controlled space for destruction.”

“I’ll arrange it,” the detective said.

Hirter spoke up. “Kommissar, two more of these damned things are somewhere on the
Wies’n.
I hope our luck holds out, and your men spot the remaining attackers.”

Waldbaer considered for a moment. “Did you notice anything unusual with the assailant? He dyed his hair. Not a bad way to alter a profile. I expect that his comrades have also dyed their hair to look more Western and have shaved their beards. Also note, this guy was
in the Augustiner tent. More than likely the two remaining assailants are targeting other beer tents. We check the remaining tents one by one. That means Löwenbräu, Hippodrom, Bräurosl, Hacker, Paulaner, and Hofbräu. We’ve reduced the threat, but that’s not good enough. Let’s go.”

They left the van with its cooling, open-eyed corpse behind and forced their way into the milling crowd.

Jawad stared up at the twenty-foot-tall mechanical lion by the tent entrance. Its features surrounded by a proud mane, the beast rubbed its stomach with a clawed paw, waved its tail, and opened a sharp-toothed maw to exclaim “Löwenbräu” in a stentorian roar before lifting a mug of beer to slake its thirst.

Jawad watched the performance and laughed heartily.

“You are no match, my friend, for the lions of the Prophet.” No one took notice of him amidst the din, and Jawad, hair an improbable yellow, moved toward the entrance. A plastic souvenir bag swung casually by his side.

Waldbaer and his phalanx pushed past flower-bedecked beer wagons, loitering throngs of partygoers, and tourists with minicams. The Paulaner tent, surmounted by a tower emblazoned with the brewery emblem, loomed ahead of them.

Waldbaer shouted into his police mobile phone, attempting to drown out the background roar of the crowd. “Listen up. Here’s your new profile: subjects have probably dyed their hair to appear more European. They aren’t wearing beards. There are two subjects left and they’ll be traveling solo. Remember—look for souvenir bags. Inspect anyone trying to enter a tent with a souvenir bag. Check for a cardboard container holding what appears to be a metal thermos or mug. If you find that, you’ve found our targets. That’s all.”

Alfred Holzer pressed the receiver close to his ear, straining to make out Waldbaer’s words over the noise. He glanced at his burly partner Jakob Spockmeyer, a few feet distant. Spockmeyer raised a thumb in the air indicating that he had copied the information as well. Both officers checked the flow of individuals passing into the Löwenbräu tent with renewed intensity. Holzer felt nervous and swept a hand over his bristling mustache. A trio of giggling teenage girls moved past him into the tent, and he suddenly found himself staring at a short, plump man in a denim shirt. The man had an olive complexion surmounted by an odd shade of blond hair. The man was nearly past him when Holzer detected the bright plastic bag.

“You there, stop,” Holzer shouted at the man, who was just beyond arm’s reach.

Jawad turned toward the voice and encountered an earnest, mustached Bavarian face. Security, he concluded instantly, then he slammed into the young girls in front of him, knocking one to the ground amid shocked shouts. He moved like a bipedal battering ram toward the interior of the tent, the towering policeman just behind him.

Things moved quickly, as if time had accelerated. Holzer was joined by his partner, and both men drew pistols from their jackets, muzzles aimed in the air.

“Stop!” Holzer roared one more time, but the plump shape continued to bull through the crowd.

“I can’t get a clean shot; too many people,” Holzer yelled.

“Christ,” Spockmeyer shouted. “we’ve got to stop him, he’s our target for sure.”

In frustration both officers saw the plump man pull away and cross the threshold into the tent.

Holzer fired a round into the air and felt the recoil of the pistol push at his wrist. The report of the firearm unleashed a chorus of screams from the crowd.

“Make way,” Holzer yelled hoarsely.

Concentrating on the small man with the bag, the police officer grabbed a middle-aged man in front of him by the shoulder and threw him aside, trying for a line of fire.

Jawad could sense that his pursuers were close and knew that he could not evade them for long, even in the protective press of the crowd. Although still near the entrance, he reasoned that he was at least inside the tent. He jammed his hand into the depths of the plastic bag and felt the cardboard within. He fumbled with the lid for a moment before tearing it off. He blindly located the activator button and slammed it down with his thumb. All the time he moved forward, deeper into the tent. Stripping away the bag, Jawad held the cylinder to his chest, continuing his plunge through the crowd, content that his every step spread invisible death a bit farther.