And ducked as safety glass sprayed through the air from the shattered windshield of a parked car. The third German in Steinhof’s ambush party—the one flanking them from across the street-had his pistol out and was shooting.
Bent low, Peter raced up to her. “Let’s move! Move!”
Still breathless, Helen scrambled up and took off down the street the way they’d come-crouching to keep the row of cars between her and the gunman. She could hear more shouts behind her. The rest of Steinhof’s team must have finally tumbled to the fact that their plan had gone sour. She also saw the little old lady standing rigid with shock, spilled groceries jumbled at her feet. The woman was pointing straight at them—screaming something in high-pitched, frantic German.
Another pistol round tore past her head—showering brick dust and fragments across the pavement.
They rounded a corner and kept running, faster now. There were no more shots.
Two more corners brought them out onto a major street—Bismarckstrasse.
Mercedes, Flats, Audis, and Volkswagens roared past in both directions.
After snapping a quick look back in the direction they’d come, Peter flagged down a passing cab and bundled Helen inside.
He rapped on the partition separating them from the driver.
“The Bahnhofi Schnell, bitte!” Then he swung around to face her. “You okay?” Still breathing hard, Helen nodded.
“You’re sure?” Peter persisted. Truth be told, her left leg hurt like hell. The sudden explosion of violent hand-to-hand combat had strained her old injury. But she was alive.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “What about you? Who the hell was that guy Steinhof?”
He grimaced. “Definitely pro.”
“You think we should leave Wilhelmshaven …” Helen let her voice trail off.
He nodded again, still grim-faced. “Yeah. Don’t you?”
Helen ran over the events of the last few minutes in her mind.
They’d left two men lying dead in the street. Plus, they’d left a witness—the elderly German woman—whose testimony was bound to indicate that she and Peter had made the first hostile moves in the brief, bloody confrontation. She frowned. “You don’t trust the German police?”
“Not much. Not under the circumstances.” Peter looked out at the brightly lit buildings flashing past. “It might take days to clear up exactly what happened. And I don’t think we have many days left. Even if the embassy managed to spring us sooner, home we’d go, under airtight security this time—looking like fools.”
“Plus, we know there are still at least three of those bastards alive out there—alive and looking for us,” Helen said slowly.
“And they’ll be waiting for us out at the docks.”
The cab stopped in front of the busy, bustling train station, and they hurried inside to retrieve their bags from the lockers.
The next train for Berlin wasn’t due to leave for another few hours—far too long to loiter inconspicuously, even on the crowded station concourse. Instead they hopped the first train out—one headed for Hannover.
By the time the Wilhelmshaven police started interviewing witnesses, they were rolling south at eighty kilometers per hour.
JUNE
12
Pension Wentzler, Lichtenberg Borough, Berlin
Helen Gray gingerly peeled down her jeans and dispassionately studied the varicolored bruises running down the length of her left thigh. She shrugged after a moment. Painful, yes, but she hadn’t suffered any serious injury. Nothing that some aspirin, cold washcloths, and a few hours’ rest couldn’t handle.
Rest would be welcome in any case. She and Peter Thorn had been on the move almost constantly for nearly seventy-two hours now, and they were running a little ragged. They’d each managed to grab a couple of hours of fitful sleep on the early morning train from Hannover to Berlin, but that wasn’t really enough to fully recharge their batteries.
She rebuttoned the jeans, turned to face the tiny bathroom’s little mirror, and brushed her hair back into place. Satisfied with her appearance for the time being, she stepped quietly out into the equally tiny bedroom and closed the door behind her.
Peter Thorn looked up from the documents he’d been studying for what must be the twentieth time. “Feeling better?”
“Yeah.”
Peter scooted over to make room for her on the narrow bed.
The bed, a single, straight-backed metal chair, and a used, battered wooden wardrobe were the only pieces of furniture in their room.
Helen took in their surroundings and shook her head in amusement. This hotel wasn’t exactly the Ritz. On the other hand, they did have a private bath—an uncommon luxury among small, family-run pensions. And the Pension Wentzler had several other things going for it from their perspective—it was relatively inexpensive, inconspicuous, and so small that days might pass before its owners delivered their guest registers to the police as required by German law. The pension was also in what had once been East Berlin—far enough away from the glitz and glitter of the West Berlin shopping districts to be fairly quiet.
Of course, there was some irony implicit in their choice of sanctuary, she knew. The hotel was just a few blocks away from the once-feared headquarters of East Germany’s disbanded Ministry of State Security—the Stasi.
“You still think we should phone home?” Peter’s question brought her out of her reverie.
Helen nodded. “Yes, I do.” She ticked off her reasons. “First, we’ve followed the trail as far as we can on our own. And whatever’s hidden inside those smuggled jet engines could be arriving in Texas in the next day or so. If we’re chasing a stolen Russian nuke, that’s a risk we can’t run, We have to push the Bureau’s wheels into motion—now, not later.”
“All true,” Peter admitted. “But I still hate the thought of relying on Mcdowell for anything …”
“So do I,” Helen said. “Like it or not, though, he’s my boss. If we want to send our data up the chain of command, he’s the guy we have to start with. And, as much as I hate it, the weasel has the kind of clout we need to get out of Germany without being asked too many inconvenient questions.”
Peter nodded reluctantly.
Helen knew he was remembering their earlier assessments of the situation they were in. After the carnage they’d left on that quiet Wilhelmshaven residential street, Germany’s highly efficient law enforcement agencies were undoubtedly looking for them. Not by name.
Not yet. But the police were sure to have obtained fairly accurate descriptions of the two Americans last seen in Herr Steinhof’s company.
With those in hand, putting real names to their faces was only a matter of time.
The longer she and Peter stayed out on their own, the higher the odds they’d be arrested and charged with manslaughter—or its equivalent in German law. They’d achieved a lot operating on their own—without a legal safety net-but it was time to come in from the cold.
Helen checked her watch, mentally subtracting six hours to arrive at the local time in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. Deputy Assistant Director Lawrence Mcdowell tossed his briefcase to one side and plopped himself down in the plush chair behind his desk. He scanned quickly through the overnight reports from the FBI’s overseas offices, looking for anything particularly urgent or interesting. Nothing struck his eye.
With that out of the way, he turned to the one-page memo on top of his internal action pile. It was a draft of his latest press release—listing the most recent accomplishments of his outfit, the FBI’s International Relations Branch. Grist for the media mill, it would be shotgunned out to more than a hundred newspapers, radio stations, television networks, wire services, and interest groups.
With luck, the release would catch some editor’s eye somewhere and become part of tomorrow’s news. If it did, the circle would be completed—because a clipping of that story would land on the Director’s desk.
Mcdowell ran his finger through the draft, scowled, reached for a marker, and then scrawled “Redo!” across the top in large red letters.
His name appeared only once in the release and that was in the last paragraph. He drew a red circle around that section and then a line pointing to the front. He also crafted several sentences ascribing the field office successes to the personal leadership of both Mcdowell and the Director himself.
Any complaints from his underlings would be met with his usual reminder that “RHIP”—rank hath its privileges—followed by an insincere invitation to lunch or dinner the next time they were in D.C. Satisfied now, Mcdowell buzzed for Miss Marklin, his secretary.
The tall, good-looking blonde came in quickly, almost at a run. She’d learned early on not to keep him waiting.
He handed her the draft press release. “Give this back to Thompson and tell him I want the final version on my desk before lunch.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mcdowell turned back to the rest of his morning paperwork, looking up in irritation when his secure phone line buzzed. He grabbed it.
“Mcdowell.”
“This is Gray.”
The sound of Helen Gray’s voice struck him like a thunderbolt.
“Where the hell are you?”
“Berlin, sir,” she said coolly, using the calm, utterly unimpressed tone of voice that never failed to get under his skin.
“Then I suggest you stop screwing around and report to the embassy there, pronto!” Mcdowell snapped. His hand reached for the button that would initiate a phone trace, hovered for an instant, and then withdrew. Tracing an international call was a major endeavor, and besides, from all the traffic noise he could hear in the background, she was using a pay phone.
“That might be … difficult, sir,” she said. “We’ve run into a snag while tracking this shipment of smuggled jet engines …”
“Outside your jurisdiction and without Bureau sanction,” Mcdowell reminded her, his anger barely under control. Her little escapade had him in hot water with both the Director and that ex-Stasi son of a bitch, Heinrich Wolf.
“Yes, sir. Nevertheless, Colonel Thorn and I have obtained information you need to hear.”
Mcdowell reined in his temper. Gray was right—though for more reasons than she knew. “I’m listening.”
He took notes while she ran through the sequence of their lone-eagle investigation and brought him up to date on their latest finding. He drew a sharp line under “Galveston.”
“You’re sure this shipment is headed for Texas ?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine. I’ll pass the word on to the local
DEA
office,” Mcdowell lied.
“Now, Agent Gray, I suggest you get yourself on the first available flight to D.C. I understand the Director wants to personally chew you out—”
“This isn’t about heroin trafficking, sir,” Helen Gray interrupted.
“Colonel Thorn and I believe the Caraco Savannah may be carrying a stolen Russian tactical nuclear weapon.”
Mcdowell felt his blood run cold for a moment.
A stolen nuke? Was that what Wolf’s game was? Mcdowell could turn a blind eye to a little drug running. Tons of heroin and cocaine washed up on American shores every day—no matter what he did or didn’t do.
And there was always the chance he could muscle in for a cut of their action. But nukes were a whole different ball game. If Wolf and his cronies really were smuggling a nuclear weapon into the U.S and anybody ever found out he’d helped them … Mcdowell gripped the phone tighter, feeling his palms sweating profusely. He cleared his throat. “Just what hard evidence do you have to back up that rather extraordinary claim, Special Agent Gray?”
Mcdowell listened intently while she ran through their chain of suppositions, feeling himself relaxing as it became clearer and clearer that she and Thorn were simply grasping at straws. His anger came roaring back at the same time. The bitch had scared the hell out of him over a simple doodle in some dead O.S.I.A inspector’s logbook.
The corners of his mouth turned down. Trust a borderline case like Helen Gray to go off half cocked over the worst-case scenario, especially when it required ignoring every bit of real evidence they’d acquired.
But it wouldn’t do to let her know that he thought her wild-eyed theory was completely full of crap. If she thought he wasn’t taking her seriously, she and this Thorn character were likely to try an end run around him—and that would blow his only chance to keep a lid on this whole can of worms.
“All right, Agent Gray,” Mcdowell said after she’d finished.
“I’ll run your theory past the Director, pronto. In the meantime, I want you and Thorn out of Germany.”
“As I said earlier, sir, that may present a problem,” she countered.
What now? Mcdowell wondered. He drummed his fingers on the desk impatiently. “Go on.”
“We were ambushed again near the Wilhelmshaven docks.
Five hostiles were waiting for us. They knew exactly what we were looking for.”
Wolf’s men, Mcdowell suddenly realized—using the information and photos he’d passed on the day before. Too bad the Stasi bastards had failed. It would have made his life so much simpler.
“And?”
Helen Gray’s voice dropped an octave. “We killed two of them while making our break. I suspect the German police are looking for us now.”
It was getting worse and worse. Mcdowell grimaced. He needed time to sort through this mess—and to reach Wolf.
That bastard would never forgive him if he allowed Thorn and Gray to slip through his fingers after they’d made direct contact.
He sighed. “All right, then. I’ll try to see what I can work out.
In the meantime, just sit tight and stay off the streets.” He let his tone grow rougher. “And God help you if you screw up and get arrested before I’ve had a chance to smooth things over! Call me back in six hours. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
This time Mcdowell could hear the anger in her voice. But that anger was combined with a reluctant acceptance. Much as she must hate it, she clearly knew how dependent she was on his help.
Good, he thought. That would make whatever action he took that much easier.
Shafter-Minter Field, Kern County, California (D
MINUS
9)