“Did you hear the news?” Shephard asked the room in general. “We nearly found the Veep.”
Schoettler looked up. It was the first sign of animation Caroline had glimpsed in him.
“Where?”
“Bratislava,” Wally broke in.
“The raid failed. We lost two embassy officers. Bullets in the head.”
“My deepest sympathies, Wally,” Schoettler said.
Caroline's mind was racing. Where had Eric called from last night? Not Bratislava. He had killed the child in Bratislava before leaving for somewhere else. Had he sung a lullaby to the embassy watchers before he shot them, too?
“They traced 30 April to an apartment complex,” Shephard explained, “and were trying to locate the actual place where Payne was held. But — ”
“But Krucevic moved first,” Wally concluded abruptly.
“So we're back where we started. With the bombing. Christian?”
There was a short silence. Then Schoettler's aide appeared in the door with a coffee cup, and the minister said, “Why don't you sit down, Tom?”
Shephard took the coffee and the last available chair.
Schoettler pulled a dark blue file across his desk and opened it.
“The Brandenburg bombing. One of the few cases in recent memory to be so quickly solved by the Berlin police.”
“Solved.” Shephard scowled and hunched forward.
“That's news to me.”
Schoettler tossed his file across the desk.
“Four Turkish suspects seized in a raid last evening have confessed to the murders of the television crew and the theft of the van. They have confessed to loading that van with a mix of fertilizer and gasoline and parking it did near the Brandenburg Gate. They have even confessed to detonating the bomb in the midst of Vice President Payne's speech. In a matter of hours, they will be charged with all three crimes.”
“But that's crap,” Shephard burst out. “The chemical residue found in the crater is from a batch of Semtex plastic explosive. We've isolated that much. You can't just — ”
“I'm afraid you must have isolated the wrong thing, Tom,” Schoettler interrupted coldly. “Whatever it is, it did not destroy the Brandenburg Gate. The suspects have confessed, you see.”
“Fuck the suspects!”
“Tom — ”
Wally Aronson half rose from his chair and laid a restraining arm on Shephard's shoulder. Caroline noticed that the station chiefs manner had altered subtly since Schoettler's speech. He was at once watchful and completely at ease, like a snake basking in the sun.
“Let's have a look at the file, shall we?”
He flipped it open and studied the Berlin police report.
“I see that all four Turks have previous records.”
“Yes.” Schoettler nodded. “Known anarchists.”
“But none of them has admitted to involvement in the Vice President's kidnapping.”
The Interior Minister shrugged.
“I understand another terrorist group has claimed responsibility for that.”
“And you think 30 April just seized the opportunity of the explosion,” Shephard interjected sarcastically, “to swoop down on the embassy and snatch our Veep?”
“You know quite well, Tom, that it is irrelevant what I think.” Schoettler's face hardened, and the quick brown eyes slid away. “We shall probably learn with time that the Turkish anarchists were in league with the kidnappers.”
“I'm sure we will,” Shephard retorted. “But you're better than this, Schoettler. How can you stand to eat this kind of shit every day?”
The Interior Minister rose. He extended his hand to Caroline.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Carmichael. I regret that you have come all this distance for nothing. Perhaps you can take the opportunity to see something of Berlin while you are here — ”
“That's it?” Shephard was on his feet now, squared off across the desk from Schoettler. His face was pale with fatigue, the eye sockets ghastly. “That's the meeting? You don't even want to hear what the Bureau techs have learned from the crater?”
“That reminds me, Tom.” Christian Schoettler touched his forefinger to his temple and frowned. “Now that the suspects have confessed, we no longer require the Bureau's assistance. The crater has been closed to your technicians as often o'clock this morning.”
“The hell it has!” Shephard retorted.
“Please accept our deepest thanks for your hard work, and the work of your Bureau colleagues.”
Shephard snatched the blue ministry file from Wally's hands and tossed it toward Schoettler's trash can.
“You can't do this, Christian. It's a violation of international law. American citizens died at the Brandenburg, and the Bureau is required to investigate crimes against Americans anywhere in the world. You can't bar us from the bomb site.”
“That is a point of law I am hardly qualified to address,” Schoettler said with one of his brief smiles. “But as we at the ministry understand it, the Bureau's jurisdiction is investigatory only. All responsibility for the collection of evidence rests with the host country.”
“Thank you for your time, Herr Bundesminister,” Wally said, and extended his hand. Schoettler shook it.
“It doesn't end here, Christian.” Tom Shephard's eyes blazed. “As soon as I walk out that door, I'm calling Washington.”
It took both Caroline and Wally to steer Tom Shephard out of the Interior Ministry and into the backseat of the station chief's waiting car. The LegAtt was no longer shouting by the time they reached the street, but from the venomous look on his face, Caroline knew Shephard was unreconciled.
“What exactly is the Bureau's jurisdiction?” she asked.
“It's exactly what the good man said,” Wally replied. “Investigatory only. We take what we can get in foreign crime scenes and hope for cooperation. Tom can threaten all he wants, but he's walking on thin ice.”
“I get the impression he does that a lot.”
“Like a Zamboni at full throttle.” Wally shot Tom a glance; the LegAtt wasn't biting.
“Believe it or not, Schoettler's one of the good guys. He's an SPD holdover from the Schroeder era. He's trying to work for Voekl without completely compromising his job.”
“Well, he just failed today,” Shephard snarled.
“Schoettler's back is to the wall,” Wally mused.
“I wonder what that means.”
“A truckful of fertilizer didn't blow the Gate,” Shephard fumed. “The device was strategic. It was targeted. It was plastic explosive with a battery and a timer, for God's sake, packaged in an acutely calibrated amount. Given a little time in the crater, we could have reassembled the device. Do you know what that could have told us?”
“Who made it,” Caroline answered, and thought of Mahmoud Sharif.
“So forget Schoettler,” Wally said briskly. “Forget the crater for a minute, and think. If Schoettler's stonewalling, then the Voekl government came down hard on the Ministry of Interior. Why would they do that?”
“They despise the Ministry of Interior,” Tom retorted. “Voekl works around it entirely, through the Volksturm guards. They're Hitler's Gestapo all over again.”
“That's why Schoettler has been permitted to stay.” Wally returned patiently to the point. “He's wallpaper. He makes Voekl look good. But this time, Voekl needed Schoettler's ministry to shut us down.”
“Which must mean,” Caroline said slowly, “that the chancellor is afraid of what the FBI will find in the crater.”
Tom Shephard pulled his eyes away from the window and stared at Caroline intently.
“We've already found evidence that contradicts their suspects. What else is there?”
