terrorists everywhere.
Lang followed the Ausgehen signs, his assumption that they meant 'exit' buttressed by pictures of a bus and a cab. He stepped outside seconds before a line of police took up position just inside the glass doors. He turned a corner and, seeing no one, peeled off the coveralls, wadded them up, and looked for a place to dump them. He didn't have far to look; Germans, it seemed, loved public trash baskets, placing one every few meters rather than risk the horror of litter. He stuffed the clothes in, covered them with newspaper pages, and walked to a taxi stand.
He had always planned on returning to Frankfurt, but he had anticipated a more conventional arrival.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Frankfurt Am Main
Dusseldorf Am Hauptbahnhof Strasse
An hour and a half later
At mid-afternoon, the bierstube was -filled more with the smell of cooked sausages and sauerkraut than with people. The sole waiter was fussing with tablecloths and napkins. The only other customers were an elderly couple whose fragile appearance was belied by the meal they were finishing: roast pork, red cabbage, and dumplings. Lang was the only other person in the single room.
Gazing out of the plate-glass window to the building in which he had spent so much of his time with the Agency, he wondered how the square could be so clean and yet appear so grubby. After all, the Hauptbahnhof Platz had been subjected to extreme urban replanning by the U.S. Army and Royal Air Forces and totally rebuilt only sixty years ago. Yet the indelible smudges of coal-burning trains seemed to have been there for centuries. Frankfurt was a city of commerce, banking, and other financial services, not beauty, although the rebuilt Romerberg, the medieval center of town, had a certain charm.
He sipped at the dregs of a beer, still tasting the sharp brown mustard with which he had coated his bratwurst. He had just put down his glass when Gurt came through the door, wheeling her suitcase behind her.
She glanced around the room an instant longer than it took to see him before she sat across the table. Lang stood, leaned across, and kissed her cheek. 'I was beginning to worry.'
She rolled· her eyes. 'Worry? You? You downshut the airport. I had to wait an hour before the U-Bahn began to run again.'
Lang eased back into his chair. 'I did what?'
'Robbing a man at gunpoint, then hitting a policeman and taking his gun. You managed to wreck four police cars, too.'
Lang was uncertain if what he detected in her voice was admiration or the atavistic Teutonic horror of disorder. 'Me? What makes you think I had anything to do with it?'
A snort told him she did not consider the question worthy of an answer.'After waiting an hour, you can imagine how crowded the train from the airport was.'
As though imposing a penance, she drained the remainder of his beer.
''You could have taken a cab,' he suggested helpfully.
Another snort, this one of frustration, as she gave the empty glass a look of regret and set it down. 'The length, er, line, er, queue for cabs was forever. I have hunger. Can we eat rather than discuss the problems you caused?'
Gurt signaled to the waiter, who was already openly staring at her. In mere blue jeans and nondescript blouse and jacket, she could have stopped traffic. He appeared at their tableside with considerably more speed than Lang had seen him move before.
'Tageskart, menu?'
Lang knew there are few things, including War and Peace, thicker than the organized listing of daily specials for both lunch and dinner, as well the standard dishes, each arranged as to appetizers, soups, main courses, and desserts, that is a German Tageskart. He often wondered if the war would have turned out differently if the Germans had spent as much time fighting as they had reading menus.
Like most of her countrymen, Gurt perused the pages with the care of an investor checking the closing market reports before ordering exactly what Lang knew she would, the bratwurst.
They waited until the waiter disappeared behind the curtain that screened the kitchen from the dining area before Gurt repeated his question. 'How did I know it was you that turned the airport up downside? Maybe a lucky guess. More likely because you left your suitcase with your name tag on it.'
Lang winced at the breach of the protocol he knew so well. One does not put the standard name tag on baggage. Such markers decrease considerably the deniability of having been somewhere. Additionally, personal baggage of Agency personnel frequently contained items like a totally plastic, X-ray-proof pistol, component parts of bombs, and other things likely to be frowned upon by officialdom. Identifying the person possessing such things could lead to unnecessary difficulty. He had put the tag on for a brief trip on behalf of the foundation when the Gulfstream had been in the shop for its hundred-hour inspection.
Not only did the damned thing have his name, it had his address. The German cops were probably already in touch with American authorities.
Swell.
Gurt looked lovingly at the tall glass of beer the waiter sat before her. 'Of course, I reported the suitcase stolen.'
'Thanks. I didn't have time to.'
Gurt took a tentative sip from her glass, closed her eyes, and sighed in delight. 'That beer makes you happier than sex.' Lang chuckled. 'I do not have to depend on you for the beer,' she retorted. ''And you can enjoy it even when you have a headache.' She put the glass down. 'I never have those kind of headaches.'
True.
Lang became serious. 'Think they believed you?'
'About the beer or the sex?'
He shook his head. 'About the baggage being stolen.'
She shrugged. 'Who knows? I do think it might be wise to cross the Platz there and see if we could get a favor from some friends of mine, see what they might be able to do with the local police.'
Very little, in Lang's experience. Germans, like any other nationality, did not accept being an American agent as an excuse for creating bedlam on their soil.
'I suppose they could at least find out if they bought your story.'
Thirty minutes later, Gurt and Lang crossed Mosel Strasse to an unimposing four-story stone building. Wet with the continuing drizzle, the rock face seemed somehow ominous, like the facade of a prison. Both Gurt and Lang knew that, as they approached, they were appearing on a series of surveillance cameras concealed in the stone work and behind the small, tinted windows made of explosive-proof plastic, reinforced sufficiently to withstand any projectile smaller than an artillery shell. Well out of sight from below, the roof sprouted a forest of antennae. The venetian blinds on the windows were rubber-lined. When drawn, they prevented window-glass vibrations that, scanned by laser or other listening devices, could betray conversations inside.
The door onto the Platz, also reenforced and explosive-proof, opened onto a small foyer. On one wall was listed the American Trade Attache and a number of businesses, none of which ever had a customer visit because the companies did not exist. The foyer opened onto another room that housed a counterlike desk manned by a white-haired man in the uniform of a private security company. Had he looked behind the desk, Lang knew he would have seen a shotgun in a rack, a television monitor, and an alarm button on the floor. The wall behind the desk was mirrored with one-way glass, behind which were men in full combat gear.
The guard gave Gurt and Lang a smile that was perfunctory. only. 'Help you, sir, madam?'
From the lack of accent, he was American, not German.
'Good afternoon to you, too, Allie,' Gurt said, holding up a laminated card for him to see. 'Nice to have you back, Ms. Fuchs.' Gurt gave him a smile. 'Is Eddie Reavers in?' Lang remembered the name, if not the face.
