almost as stubborn as you are sometimes. And right now, neither one of them is willing to admit that they’re licked.”
“I admire guts and persistence,” Castilla said quietly. “But do Smith and Ms. Devin understand that if they are arrested, we’ll throw them to the wolves?” His face was deadly serious. “That we’ll deny any knowledge of them and wash our hands of any responsibility for their actions?”
“Yes, they do, Mr. President,” Klein said somberly. “That’s part of working for Covert-One and both of them knew the risks when they signed up. Should it prove necessary, I’m confident they will pay any price that is demanded of them.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ripped unwillingly from the bleary depths of a bad night’s sleep, Ulrich Kessler first tried to ignore the phone ringing by bis bed. Then he opened one eye a slit. The luminous numbers on his alarm clock told him it was just after six in the morning. Appalled, he groaned, rolled over, and tried to muffle the maddening, chirping noise the phone made by pulling his pillow over his head. Let the damned answering machine get it, he told himself drowsily.
There would be time enough at a more reasonable hour to handle whatever crisis needed his attention.
Crisis. His eyes opened again. Even thinking the word was enough to force him all the way back to full consciousness. His position inside the highest circles of the Ministry of the Interior depended on his being seen by his superiors as the hardworking, ever reliable, indispensable man ?the senior Bundeskriminalamt official they could trust with any predicament.
Groaning again with the effort, Kessler pushed himself up into a sitting position. He winced at the stabbing pain in his temples and the horrid taste in his mouth. He had drunk too much at the Chancellor’s reception the night before, and then made things worse by drinking cup after cup of thick Turk-ish coffee in a failed bid to fully sober up before he drove home. B the time his sour, heaving stomach had finally settled itself, it must have been well after three.
He fumbled blindly for the receiver. “]a? Kessler hier.”
“Good morning, Herr Kessler,” a woman said to him in crisp, clear German, sounding almost obscenely cheerful considering the early hour. “My name is Isabelle Stahn. I’m a special prosecutor for the Ministry of Justice, working in the public corruption division, and I’m calling to request an immediate appointment with you to discuss a special case ? “
Kessler’s headache flared up. He had been woken up before dawn by some overzealous underling from the Ministry of Justice? He gripped the receiver tighter in irritation. “Look, what the devil are you doing calling me at home like this? You know the normal procedures. If your ministry wants Bundeskriminalamt assistance on some investigation, first you need to apply through the proper channels! Fax whatever paperwork you have to our liaison office and the appropriate officer will get back to you in due time.”
“You misunderstand me, Herr Kessler,” the woman said, now with a hint of open amusement in her voice. “You see, you are the target of the official corruption case I’m calling about.”
“What?” Kessler snapped, suddenly wide awake.
“Some very troubling allegations have been made about your conduct, Herr Kessler,” the woman continued. “Allegations concerning the escape of Professor Wulf Renke sixteen years ago?”
“That’s utter nonsense!” Kessler blurted out angrily.
“Is it?” the woman asked. Her voice grew colder, taking on a tone filled with contempt. “Then I look forward to hearing your explanation for the following purchases of very expensive works of art?purchases made strictly in cash, it seems?which we have, with some difficulty, traced to you. First, in 1990, a painting by Kandinsky, bought from a gallery in Antwerp for the sum of 250,000 euros at today’s rates of exchange. Then, in 1991, a collage by Matisse ? “
Listening in mounting horror, Kessler broke out in a cold sweat while she ran through a painstakingly accurate list of the paintings so dear to him, paintings acquired with the money he had been paid for keeping Renke safe for so many years. He swallowed hard, trying desperately not to throw up. How could this investigator from the Ministry of Justice know so much? He had been so careful, always buying through a different agent and always using a different name and address. It should have been impossible for anyone to follow a paper trail from the various art dealers and galleries back to him.
His mind raced. Could he apply pressure to block this investigation? His own boss, the Minister of the Interior, owed him many favors. Instantly, he discarded the notion. The minister would never compromise himself by trying to conceal a scandal of this magnitude.
No, he realized desperately, he would have to flee, abandoning the possessions for which he had mortgaged his integrity and his honor. But to do so safely, he would need assistance from another source.
Inside a dark green Ford panel van parked several blocks away from Kessler’s villa, Randi Russell finished her call and hung up. “That ought to send a well-deserved chill down the bastard’s spine,” she said, with a satisfied grin. “Ten-to-one he screams for help right away.”
One of the two CIA audio-operations technicians sitting beside her in the van’s cramped equipment-filled interior shook his head. “I’m not taking that bet.” He nodded toward a display that showed the stress patterns they had recorded in Kessler’s voice during the call. “The guy was skating right on the edge of total panic as soon as you started talking about his paintings.”
“Stand by,” the second technician said suddenly, holding up a hand for quiet while listening carefully to the sounds coming through her earphones.
She flicked through a series of switches on the console in front of her, pausing just long enough to listen briefly to the signals transmitted by each of the listening devices Randi had planted in Kessler’s house during her breakin the day before. Then she looked up. “The subject is on the move. He’s left his bedroom. I think he’s heading for the study.”
“He’ll use the telephone in there,” Randi predicted. “The one in his bedroom is cordless and he won’t want to risk inadvertently broadcasting anything he’s about to say.”
Her companions both nodded. All cordless phones acted as small radio transmitters, allowing the easy interception of conversations made using them. No one in his or her right mind ever used a cordless phone to discuss anything confidential.
The first CIA tech entered a series of commands on the keyboard in front of him. “I’m linked into the Deutsche Telekom network,” he said calmly.
“Ready to initiate a trace.”
Still sweating, Kessler sat slowly down at the beautiful antique desk in his study. In silence, he contemplated the phone for a moment. Did he dare make contact? The number he had been given was for emergency use only.
Then he laughed harshly. An emergency! he thought bleakly. Well, what else was he facing?
With a shaking hand, he picked up the receiver and slowly and carefully-punched in the long international telephone code. Despite the early hour, the phone on the other end rang only three times before being answered.
“Yes?” a cold voice said brusquely. It was a voice from which he had taken occasional orders for nearly two decades.
The BKA official swallowed before speaking. “This is Kessler.”
“I am well aware of who is calling me, Ulrich,” Professor Wulf Renke replied. “Do not waste my time with pleasantries. What is it that you want?”
“I need immediate extraction and a new identity.”
“Explain.”
