Authors: Chuck Driskell
He credited the
Germans for their exhaustive efforts to recognize the brutalities that had taken
place during the Holocaust.
He thought
about those in the government and military—the good people—wondering how they
could have participated—even unwillingly—in such barbaric and subhuman groupthink—and
then followed through with it for a number of years.
The Nazis were the modern example of practiced
genocide, but history proved they were not alone.
It scared Gage to consider what human beings
were capable of and, unbeknownst to him, he would receive firsthand experience
of such brutality in the coming days.
Wearing his oft-used
hard hat and reflective vest, Gage hopped the fence on the side street.
He landed in the garden and stripped the vest
and hat, dropping them under a bush with the reflective side of the vest
down.
From his pocket, he pulled on a pair
of disposable rubber gloves and, after negotiating the pea gravel path in
relative silence, Gage chose the basement entrance for its seclusion. He
stepped down the mossy stairs and checked the knob, only to find a locked bar
securing the heavy door.
Gage reached
into his bag, removing a black sheet designed to bleed no light, draping it
over himself.
Using a small flashlight, he
started by going to work on the familiar 2” x 2” U.S. military standard
lock.
He clamped the graduated cutters
onto the lock’s bolt, pumping four times before it let go with a pop.
With the lock gone, he lifted the bar, laying
it aside and picking the door lock—an old and simple design—in less than ten
seconds with a torque device and a pointy steel probe.
Although the temperature hovered near
freezing outside, Gage wiped sweat from his brow as he stepped inside the musty
building and swept the flashlight over the space.
The basement was vast,
interrupted only by vertical columns spaced every fifteen feet.
Ears perked, he listened for a full
minute.
Nothing.
He found the stairwell, switching the
flashlight off as he climbed four flights of stairs to the third level.
Sitting by a window, Gage added a disc of
adhesive film to the lens of the flashlight, switching it on to see the deep
purple radiance that would give him just enough light to work by.
Anyone glancing at the windows from the
outside would not be able to make out the faint glow.
After guzzling a
bottle of water from his pack, Gage set to work.
The slip of paper he had burned earlier detailed
exactly which offices to bug.
The task
was considerably more difficult here than in a standard building—there were no
furniture or lamps in which to plant the devices.
Jean had directed him not to use light
fixtures, or anything that could potentially be replaced by the incoming
tenants.
Thankfully, the German
architect who had designed the building had some measure of flair, and each
room had enough angles and wainscoting that Gage felt he could make it work.
After finishing
all of the offices but one, Gage moved into the large room at the end of the
hallway.
It had an adjoining anteroom
and a full-sized washroom at the back.
The door displayed the number 39, the board room.
He would have to bug this one in all four
corners.
After two hours of work and,
using a tiny battery-operated drill for one crafty placement Gage was
particularly proud of, he went to work on the northeast corner of the building.
Unlike many buildings
in Germany that use radiators for their heat, the
Keisler
building was built with an enormous coal furnace in its basement.
The furnace had long ago been replaced with
the electric type, but the system still remained exactly as it had for the previous
one hundred and twenty years.
Gage was
well-versed on the sophistication of the Nikkei “mean-wife” bug and its frequency-cancelling
properties.
Because of these unique
features, the furnace ducts made ideal locations for placement.
With a pocket flathead
screwdriver, Gage turned the paint-crusted screws of the floor vent, having to
pry it from its base from the many coats of various colors of paint.
He adhered the bug to the side of the grate,
satisfied that once he screwed it back into place, the millimeter-thick gap
would be sufficient enough not to damage the device.
As he was about to replace the grate, Gage
noticed the flashing on the interior edge of the duct was rippled and contained
several extra screws, their heads canted upward.
They were sheet metal screws, clearly unlike
the others.
A shoddy installation.
He used his hand
to pull at the flashing, seeing where it had been warped in the past.
Gage was tired.
Hungry.
But the extra screws, like many things in life, aroused his curiosity.
He unscrewed the top two.
The sheet metal popped outward, revealing the
top of a shallow cavity underneath the floor.
Gage pried the flashing out as far as it would move, using the light to
illuminate the cavity.
He couldn’t see
much.
He removed the
remaining screws, pulling the flashing all the way out.
It had been cut to shape, held in place by
the screws.
Gage placed the covering down
and tilted the light to display what looked like a dusty bundle stretching
underneath the floor.
He reached in,
hoping he didn’t come back with a rat bite, pulling out a large rectangular
object.
It was bulky, swathed in a frail
muslin cloth.
Gage sat back on the
floor, placing the bundle on the floor between his legs.
A slight tug on the surrounding twine snapped
it, probably brittle from years of exposure to the heat of the furnace.
After a few pulls of the ancient fabric, Gage
waved his hand to clear the air of the millions of dust particles, focusing on
the object.
A book.
His breathing
picked up a bit.
“Why would that be
hidden here?” Gage whispered to himself, touching it.
Nearly square, the book was made of heavy
paper and leather-bound, not unlike a quality scrapbook.
From his pack he
removed the opaque sheet, draping it over the closest window sill, frustrated
that the most recent American occupants had even removed the damned blinds on
their way out.
He’d have to risk
it.
Flashlight off, Gage removed the
purple lens film, crumpling it and shoving it in his pocket.
He had more.
Sitting back down, he cupped the light between his hands so it wouldn’t
throw off too much illumination; then he hit the switch.
The book had a
number on the front.
1938.
He used his finger
to flip the book open, seeing the flowing script of German cursive writing,
dotted by occasional umlauts and the uniquely Germanic
scharfes
-S
symbols.
Gage read the first entry, a somewhat
clichéd passage about the author trying to disentangle herself from what must
have been her lover.
He flipped through
the diary, reading snippets here and there.
After a few minutes, Gage touched the
Indiglo
feature on his Timex, checking the time.
He sucked in a sharp breath.
It
was time to get going.
After stuffing
the diary back into the muslin, he shoved the rumpled package back into the
cavity.
He allowed his mind to wander
over the diary for a moment, finally deciding it must have been hidden there by
an office worker in the building.
Perhaps she had been married and had taken an illicit lover.
Blue lights
flashed in through the far windows as a European-style siren filled the air
with sound.
The polizei.
He turned off the flashlight and froze.
The siren wailed, growing in light and volume
before passing quickly.
Gage let out a
long breath before he replaced the sheet metal, screwing the flashing in hand-tight.
He placed the grate back onto the square
notch and, as his screwdriver touched the paint-encrusted screws, he froze, his
mind hearkening back only a few hours.
The
Stolpersteine
—the
stumble-stone—out front had displayed the family as having been taken from
their home (this building!) in 1938.
The diary was penned
in 1938.
It had been a
possession of one of the home’s residents.
The snippets he’d
just read flashed through his mind.
Cannot keep up my horrific ruse…
Shiver every time he touches me…
Disturbed by his demands of
penitence for both of us…well aware of the outcome for others who have allowed
him to have his way with them.
Gage didn’t move
for a full minute.
Finally he blinked,
his eyes moving downward.
Hands
trembling slightly, he removed the grate.
He pulled the diary back out.
Lying prone on the dusty floor, he reached his arm deep into the cavity,
feeling more bundles.
He removed them
all, six more, their bulk nearly as large as a box of copy paper.
He swept them with his light, seeing the
different years, ’35, ’33, ’37, each jam-packed with the writer’s deepest
thoughts.
Rather than waste
more time reading, he stuffed his pack with the diaries, frustrated when he
could only fit three of them into the compact rucksack along with the equipment
he’d brought.
Chewing his lip, pondering
what to do, Gage quickly decided to make two trips.
It was certainly possible to carry the other
three out under his arm, but sneaking around a building at night was bad
enough.
He certainly didn’t want to do
it with his arms loaded with a fresh find.
Leaving the
Keisler
Building the way he’d
entered, Gage hurried away.
He stored
the diaries and equipment, hurried back, and left again.
At his storage
space, Gage decided to keep one diary for his own reading.
He tucked it in his pack, securing the
remainder in his safe.
He locked the
space and hurried home, taking a taxi after darting several blocks through back
alleys.
It was nearly 3
a.m. when he returned to his flat.
His
adrenaline still pumping, riveted by the reading, he read the 1938 diary until
nearly 5 a.m.
Going against his
disciplines, he took one of the sleeping pills he kept in the medicine cabinet for
very special occasions.
Because without
it, after what he had just read, sleep would have been an impossibility.
Chapter 3
Sunday, November 1
Jean
Jenois
threw the door open to the DGSE’s outpost on Frankfurt’s
Giessener
Strasse
, located in the rear warehouse of a French
bottled water company.
Jean was disgusted
that he had been called so early on a Sunday morning.
He wore last night’s expensive jeans and cashmere
sweater, both partially hidden under a black Versace overcoat hanging from his
thin build.
His hair was plastered up
one side of his head, his skin gray and pallid.
Dangling from his mouth was a cigarette with an impossibly long
ash.
Before he went into the server
room, Jean walked to the coffee maker, cursing when he discovered the pot only
contained a hardened, baked-in crust throwing off an acrid odor.
“
Merde
!”
He burst into the
server room, still cursing, grabbing an ashtray from the table, unsurprised to find
he had lost the long ash somewhere in the building.
“Damn it, Henri, this had better be good,”
Jean growled, massaging the bridge of his nose.
“Last night was a total strikeout.
I drank too much.
I spent too
much.
My head hurts.
I have an emergency room-worthy case of blue
balls.
And more than anything I need a
blasted cup of good coffee.”
He stopped rubbing
his nose, clapping his hands together and wincing from the sound.
“Now, Henri, what the hell is so important
that you interrupt my hangover sleep?
Did Hartline not come through?”
Henri
Bautiste
sat at the control desk, his chair turned to face
Jean.
An obese man, he would have been
handsome if he had followed the doctor’s advice and lost seventy-five kilos.
Typically wearing the mien of a superior yet
bored computer geek, Henri’s eyes were alight with something different on this
day.
He seemed to suppress a grin as he
paused dramatically, eyebrows arched.
“Agent
Jenois
, the American, Monsieur Hartline, came through
just fine.
Just fine indeed.
All devices appear to be in normal working
order.
He activated each one after it
was in place and, although we have almost no voices to judge them by, his
shuffling and moving could clearly be heard before he left the building.”
“Okay,” Jean
answered softly, increasing his volume dramatically for the effect.
“So what the
hell
am I doing here?”
Henri pursed his
lips, appearing unsurprised at the outburst.
“Several things occurred that made me suspicious.
Being a thorough man, I did a little more
checking that I think might arouse your curiosity as well.
You know I wouldn’t have disturbed you
otherwise.”
“Dispense, please,”
Jean moaned, pressing on his eyes with both thumbs; he needed coffee badly.
Henri spun the
chair and clicked play on the sophisticated digital video system.
Jean squinted to see any movement in the
grainy picture of a street.
It was
obviously taken at night.
Just as Jean
was about to ask for an explanation Henri pointed a sausage finger to the
screen, showing a man hustling from a shadow and up the street, from the bottom
to the top of the screen.
“Who is that?”
asked Jean.
“Gage Hartline.”
“Leaving?
Okay, so he left the building.
That was part of the plan, wasn’t it?”
Henri gestured to
the top right of the large screen.
“See
the counter-clock in the corner? It skips nearly twenty minutes, and now watch…”
Jean’s eyebrows
lowered as he saw what looked like the same figure return, slipping into the
shadow at the lower left of the screen.
“He came back?”
“He most certainly
did.
He showed up, placed his bugs,
left…then came back before leaving again.”
“What?”
“Two times he came
and went.”
“Where was the
video from?”
“I hacked it from
traffic control.”
“Well, won’t they
see it?”
“Why would
they?
It resets itself every few hours
and only trips if someone speeds or runs a signal.
I grabbed it as I began to hear what I
perceived as abnormalities on the listening devices.”
Jean squinted his
eyes, looking into the distance.
“Abnormalities?”
Henri closed the
video player, opening an audio program easily suitable for the studios at Abbey
Road.
He turned to face Jean.
“Each of the bugs took about ten minutes to
install…except for the one in the northeast corner of the board room.”
Henri paused.
“It took
two
hours.”
Jean was
interested now, moving from the table to the chair next to Henri.
“Two hours?
Seems a bit long, doesn’t it?
It’s been years since I installed one, but once you have your spot, you
typically just stick and go.” He shook two cigarettes from his pack, offering
one to Henri, something he had never done before.
The gesture wasn’t
lost on Henri, a man who didn’t typically smoke.
He accepted, puffing away before stifling a
cough.
“And the other bugs in the board
room—
cough
—picked up something he
said, presumably—
cough
—to himself.”
“What was it?”
Jean asked, thoroughly engrossed.
He’d
even forgotten his want of coffee.
Henri clicked the
mouse.
There was a whisper of shuffling
before Gage Hartline’s voice, low but clear.
“Why would that be hidden here?”
Jean leaned close,
not breathing.
He pushed the sliding
button upward to increase the volume.
“Do
it again.”
Gage Hartline’s
voice, hard and clear.
“Why would that be hidden here?”
Deep breaths afterward.
Jean
Jenois
, like most field agents, was an expert in psychology
with many years of classroom and field experience.
The voice and tone on the recording was clearly
that of a man trying to calm himself.
He locked eyes
with Henri, his expression clearly puzzled.
“Something was hidden?”
Henri closed his
eyes, lacing his hands on his considerable belly.
“That’s what I heard.”
“Anything else on
the bugs?”
“During the delay
there was some thudding and shuffling of feet.
I thought I heard paper riffling, but couldn’t
be sure.”
Jean chewed on his
finger as Henri opened the video player again.
“One thing I want you to see, Jean.”
Henri had moved to a first-name basis that quickly.
“Look at the small backpack when he entered,
and look at it each time he leaves.”
They studied the video.
Each time
Gage arrived, the pack was small.
When
he left, it was bulging, easily double its original size, stretched to its
limit.
Jean crushed out
his cigarette and stood.
He rubbed his
already mussed hair, pacing the room.
“So he was carrying something each time.
Something large.
And he made two
trips?”
Henri didn’t
answer, wisely choosing to let Jean work things out in his own mind.
Jean leveled a
bony finger at Henri.
“Who else have you
told?”
Henri made an
insulted face, pulling his head back.
“Jean, what do you take me for?”
Jean leaned close,
his voice a whisper even though they were alone.
“Not a word, Henri.
Not a damned word to
anyone
.
Save those files and
lock them away somewhere.”
He gripped
the back of Henri’s swivel chair.
“Play the
video one more time.”
Jean leaned
forward and watched the grainy film through slit eyes, speaking in a whisper to
the screen.
“Gage Hartline, old friend—
what
on earth did you find?”
***
Gage awoke with a
start, his heart thudding in his chest, his sheets damp.
As often happened after a critical mission,
his mind had raced as he had slept.
It
was just before ten on Sunday; he had pharmacologically slumbered almost five
hours.
After making a pot of thick coffee
and devouring a plain bagel, Gage shaved his heavy stubble and took a quick
shower.
He fingered the diary for a
moment, studying the cover before sticking it into his pack along with a pad
and pencil, afterward dressing warmly for the frosty first day of November.
The S-
bahn
train was nearly empty.
At the Frankfurt
Bahnhof
he purchased a bottled water and a banana for the twenty-minute trip north to
Friedberg on the regional train.
It
certainly wasn’t necessary for Gage to go out of his way like this, but it was
a Sunday, he had nothing else to do and, if he knew Jean like he thought he
knew Jean, and if his own delayed actions in the
Keisler
Building had aroused his suspicions, the Frenchman and his supporting DGSE would
leave no stones unturned in their quest to find what Gage had been up to.
And that included culling through his phone’s
Internet searches and the searches from IP addresses near Gage’s home.
After exiting the
train, Gage performed three maneuvers to make sure he had not been
followed.
They were all as old as field-craft
itself, but each equally effective.
The
first involved Gage casually seeking out an angled store window and looking for
the reflection of a tail.
There was no
tail to be seen, no human beings at all.
Just empty streets.
He then used
a double-back at a blind corner, again finding no one.
Gage felt confident he was alone but had been
taught to always check at least three times, using three different
methods.
His last maneuver was to climb onto
a city bus and watch the activity as the bus drove away.
There was nothing at all to be seen.
He rode the bus through two stops, satisfied
by this time he wasn’t being followed.
From the bus stop
on
Achstrasse
he reversed direction through an alleyway
and headed up the rise into the center of town.
Friedberg is a small city north of Frankfurt, most recently known for
being the hometown of Elvis Presley during his time in the Army.
All that remained as evidence of his tour was
a chow hall named in his honor, and several hundred German women—now in their
late sixties and early seventies—who still got misty at the mention of his name.
Long before Elvis ever gyrated to the delight
of American and German girls everywhere, Friedberg was an important waypoint in
the farthest northern reaches of the Holy Roman Empire. But Gage wasn’t headed
toward the Elvis Presley Dining Facility or any of the numerous Roman
ruins.
His destination was far less prominent,
one of thousands just like it in Germany.
He shuffled to a stop, glancing through a plate glass window littered
with hand painted letters, advertising cheap Internet access in German and
Arabic.
He entered the
long, narrow Internet café and quickly shed his coat.
It was too warm inside, possibly made more
intense because Gage was nearly frozen from the two kilometer walk in the stiff
wind.
He paid two euro in advance and
walked around a bit, warming himself and casually looking at the three other
computer users.
On the train, Gage
decided, concretely, to treat this as if Jean suspected something.
As he had stared at the rolling hills of the
middle state of Hessen from the 2
nd
-class car, Gage thought about the
long delay in the board room and the noises he would have made during his two
trips; his actions would most certainly arouse some sort of suspicion if the
DGSE had been listening.
And why wouldn’t
they be listening?
Gage pulled his
cell phone from his pocket—it was silenced.
Jean had yet to call him.
But Monika
had.
He sat at the
rearmost computer station and called her.
She slept late.
Saturday had been
a full day of customers, and then she had studied until after three in the
morning.
“So around six?”
she asked, now fully awake and her tone playful.
“Yes, but I’ll
call you with someplace to meet.”
Monika
paused.
“Everything okay?”