The Red Syndrome (4 page)

"Smart girl," I said, and she looked at me to see if there would be any
reward other than the drinks.

"I need to go, but I promise I'll be back," I added, slipping a twenty into
her cleavage. I never dreamed of coming back for her. My mother's
warning rang in my ears: Don't pick that up, you don't know where it's been!

I walked to the courthouse a block and a half away and found Oksana's
address. Back outside, I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me on
a short tour. Although I didn't think anyone would be interested in what
I was doing, old Mossad habits died hard - I needed to be sure.

Stuttgart itself is beautifully located in the Swabian Mountains, at the
edge of the Black Forest. Both Porsche and Mercedes have plants there,
so the city is home to predominantly working-class neighborhoods.

"Do you want to see the Daimler-Benz Automobile Museum? Perhaps
the Mercedes-Benz factory? It is in Sindelfingen, very close to us," asked
my cabbie. He was dark with a huge mustache, but his German sounded
perfect. A green crescent on the dashboard gave away his country of
origin: Turkey.

"No, thanks." I looked at my guidebook. "Why don't you pass through
the Black Forest. I'd like to take a short walk."

A few minutes later he drove me to a wide-open picnic area in the
forest. It was empty of people. I looked at the sign in German and below
it, its English translation, and burst into laughter.

I wished I had a camera. I took a short walk, getting some fresh air -
and making sure I had no company.

Next, the cabdriver drove me to the glockenspiel at the Rathaus so I
could listen to Swabian music. We continued past the Alte Staatsgalerie,
then Killesberg Park, the Schlossgarten, the Ludwigsburg Palace, and the
botanical gardens. An hour later, according to what I could make out in
the passenger's-side mirror, I was convinced that my paranoia was
unfounded.

Finally we arrived at Oksana's address. It was a shabby-looking twostory apartment building in a side street of a working-class neighborhood. Although it was only 4:10 P.M., it was already getting dark; other
than passing cars, the street was quiet. It was getting colder and soon
snow would cover the broken pavement, giving this place a well-deserved,
albeit temporary, face-lift.

There were three mailboxes attached to the wall next to the building's
main entrance. Oksana's name was clearly marked on the bottom box. A
closer look gave me heart palpitations. Below her name was written IGOR
RAZOV, although an effort to scratch it off the nameplate was visible.

So she wasn't just an interpreter. Was she a roommate, a partner, a
supervisor, or all these penalties combined? I rang her doorbell and
waited a few minutes, but there was no answer. I looked inside the letterbox. Empty. It was time for some action. I went to the back of the
house. A small concrete structure housed the garbage cans. I looked
around. Nobody was there. It was already pitch dark. Snow started to fall,
muffling even the street noises. I opened one trash can, and two cats
jumped from the other, petrifying me for five long seconds. I put my right
hand deep into the can. I couldn't see much, and the smell wasn't helping.
The can contained just two dripping plastic bags with household trash. I
dropped them and wiped off my hands with a piece of newspaper. I
couldn't tell if they were Oksana's trash bags, but given the freezing temperature and the dripping liquids, the bags had only recently been
deposited.

I lifted the lid off the other can. Inside were two plastic trash bags of
frozen garbage and one bag of papers for recycling. I untied the latter bag.
Russian newspapers were on top. I was getting close, unless there were
other Russian speakers in the building. Below these lay a few envelopes, but all with windows - no addressee name. I stuck my hand in again,
this time fishing out invoices and handwritten letters in Russian. I emptied the newspapers into the trash can and took the bag with the
remaining papers. I hoped that the city of Stuttgart would forgive me for
mixing garbage. I hid the trash bag under my coat and hastily walked to
the street. I walked up a block, but saw nothing unusual or suspicious. I
got on a city bus, getting off a few stops later next to a cab station, where
I hailed a cab to my hotel. I must have smelled, because the receptionist
gave me a funny look. In my narrow room, I opened the bag and spread
its contents on the carpet. I realized I'd hit the jackpot as soon as I started
rummaging through.

I meticulously went through every piece of paper, setting aside both
empty envelopes without the sender's address and Oksana's utility bills. If
I needed proof that I was digging in Oksana's trash and not that of a
neighbor, I need go no farther. I dumped the useless junk back into the
trash bag - let it rest in peace. Next, I picked up six handwritten letters
in Russian script in their original envelopes. They carried a Belarusian
stamp and the sender's address. I couldn't tell who the senders were, given
my limited knowledge of Cyrillic script, especially handwritten. But the
addressee's name appeared Latin letters, probably to help the German
letter carrier identify the addressee: Igor Razov.

From my prior Department of Justice cases, I knew that Belarus had a
long tradition of using Lacinka, the Belarusian Latin script writing. Until
the 192os Lacinka had been more popular than the Cyrillic alphabet. As
the Soviets moved in with their Russification policies, however, Lacinka
almost entirely disappeared.

Next were thin, carbon-copy receipts. My heart started racing again.
There were banking receipts from Germany, Panama, Venezuela, Saint
Kitts and Nevis, and one from a bank in the Seychelles. Most of the
papers were second or third carbon copies. Some were slightly torn;
others had coffee and other unidentifiable stains. All smelled bad. I
opened my room's window. Cool fresh air entered. I breathed in deeply,
hoping the smell would go away. Then a sudden wind burst sent the
papers on the carpet flying, and I immediately shut the window. Reviewing these documents had to take precedence over recoiling from
the stench. I reorganized the papers and continued.

Next came deposit slips - some of them blank - used-up checkbooks,
a three-page handwritten document covered with numbers and Cyrillic
script, and two black-and-white family photos. I had no idea whose family.

I sat next to the desk and tried to read the bank receipts. The Justice
Department's lab would need to take a better look at them, but from what
I could already make out, the numbers were big: At least sixty million
dollars was reflected in these documents. On four deposit slips I could
clearly identify Igor Razov's name. The other receipts were smudged. My
suspicious mind kicked in again. The fact that Razov left behind such
compromising evidence looked amateurish. Maybe he'd never thought
the German police would arrest him. But once in prison, wouldn't
Oksana at least shred the documents? Why did she wait until now to
dump these papers? Or maybe Oksana was smarter than that, and was
deliberately constructing a false trail for me to follow? I had no answer.
Not yet.

I worked for three hours, until my eyes grew sore. I took another look
at all the documents I had found, made a list, and put them in a big
manila envelope. I returned the trash I had no use for to the original
plastic trash bag.

I thought of Alex, my Mossad Academy principal instructor. We teach
you to see in everyday events things that others don't. Underneath anything you
hear or see, there are hidden undercurrents. These undercurrents, the minutiae,
the details, can direct a careful observer toward evidence or conclusions that the
average, unobservant observer would miss. A trail could begin with something
mundane and unpleasant. Remember, every finding is only a lead to the next
discovery.

Obviously, today's findings bore out this wisdom.

I leaned back. Was today cleanup day for Oksana? The used envelopes
carried postal stamps dated two and three months ago. Of all days, she'd
decided to throw out Igor's stuff today? Hardly a coincidence. Given the fact
that I'd left the prison five or six hours ago, the only possible explanation was
that she'd returned to her apartment not long before my arrival and had removed all papers connecting her to Razov. But why? Igor had been in
prison for over a month now, and the German police had never bothered to
search his home. Had Oksana guessed that my next move would be a
request to the German authorities for a warrant to search Igor's apartment?
How could she know?

I'd never mentioned getting a search warrant to anyone but David, and
that had been from a pay phone in the street. Had it been bugged?
Unlikely. I'd chosen it at random. The only remaining conclusion was that
Iwas bugged, or that whatever enemies I'd just discovered had planted a
mole in David's office.

The latter option was simply not possible. I was up against a criminal
organization, not a superpower. The phrase Never say never didn't seem
relevant here.

I decided to go with the more logical explanation. I turned on the TV
and closed the curtains. I completely undressed and went through all my
pockets, the jacket lapels, my shirt and tie. Nothing but fabric. I inspected
my shoes and socks. Nothing. I sent my fingers through my hair. Just hair
and some dandruff.

I unscrewed the telephone handset to see if it had a harmonica bug -
those transistorized transmitters that are inserted into the mouthpiece,
making it a hot mike. Nothing. I opened my briefcase and emptied its
contents on the bed. It all looked benign. I pulled out my radio frequency
detector. Today's wireless transmitters are so small that they can be
hidden in many common objects, including neckties, eyeglasses, and
pens. Thus visual inspection of objects can be insufficient. My detector
scanned radio frequency ranges from 30 megahertz to 2.4 gigahertz,
which are the ones used by most wireless video and audio devices.

I spread my clothes and shoes on the carpet and scanned them slowly.
An amber light on the detector went on, telling me that a device emitting a radio signal was close. I scanned again, but the amber color
remained steady. I turned to my briefcase: nothing. So where was it? I
threw my coat over the chair and scanned it. The light changed to red. I
had a bug in my coat. I kept scanning, carefully - and then I saw it. A
pinhead-sized device had been inserted behind the lapel. Oksana had stuck it into my coat when I'd left the prison cell to talk to Dr. Bermann.
She'd known who I was and that I was coming to interview Igor.

I washed my hands thoroughly and got dressed. I pulled the tiny transmitter out of my coat and placed it next to the television, blaring at full
volume.

Enjoy the music, comrades, I thought, and walked out to have dinner. The
smell of garbage was still in the air, but the sweet scent of success was
already taking over. I took the elevator to the hotel basement and dropped
the trash bag into a giant trash receptacle. I went to the reception desk
and deposited my newfound treasures in the hotel's safe. The fact that
somebody had gone to the trouble of hiding a microphone on my coat
lapel indicated I wasn't alone; someone was watching me. As a precaution, I thought about changing my plans to go out and instead have
dinner at the hotel restaurant. But then I reconsidered. It was in my
nature to be defiant, to ignore doubts, to dispense with routine safety
measures. This rebellious streak sometimes got me into trouble but also
led me to victories. My ratio of trouble to success wasn't bad.

I walked into the nearly empty snow-covered street, looking for a good
German restaurant. As I crossed the road to a corner restaurant, I felt the
first blow to my head. Because I'd just turned, the slug lost some impact,
although it was still too strong to ignore. I completed the turn and saw two
guys built like linebackers, intent on finishing the job. The first guy aimed
at my solar plexus. My Mossad martial arts instructor had told us drily: ,4
blow to the gut could kill. This is one of the best ways to knock out your enemy.
And if you doubt me, think of the great magician Harry Houdini. He died from
an unexpected blow to his gut. I instinctively shifted to the side, redirecting
the blow to my obliques - the muscles around my ribs. It was painful, but
I could tell I'd avoid damage to internal organs. The second guy punched
my head directly, hitting my right ear. Against my instincts, but in keeping
with my Mossad training, I moved forward. Recoiling backward would
actually have resulted in my head taking the punch at full force.

It was time to go on the offensive.

I made a full-body swing and kicked the shorter guy hard in his groin;
as he bent forward I kicked him again. My shoe hit his lower abdomen and my knee smashed into his face. That did it. He fell on the sidewalk
vomiting. He'd be quiet for a while until his dinner completed its journey
onto his clothes and the sidewalk. The other guy shot a quick look at his
friend on the ground and realized that fists weren't enough. He pulled out
a knife. I had no weapons other than my hands and my experience.
Because I was much taller than he, and had longer arms, I jabbed the fingernails of my right hand directly into his eyes; with my left I punched
his kidneys so hard I was afraid I'd broken my wrist. He groaned in pain,
dropped the knife to the pavement, and tried to push my hand out of his
eyes. I let him cover his eyes with his hands as I swiftly picked up the
knife and hurried back to my hotel.