Fred vaulted into the van's passenger seat, cursing, and screamed at Paul to follow the Benz.
They lost a few seconds. That was a good thing, actually, because Fred calmed down and Paul was prevented from dashing out after the gray Mercedes like the inexperienced and overeager first-tour officer he was.
Fred speed-dialed a number on his cell phone.
“Wally, we're following the subject. In case he decides to make a few calls on the road.”
“Where's he headed?” Wally asked.
Fred studied the car in front of him.
“West,” he said. “On Elbinger Strasse.”
“Think he'll pick up the highway?”
“Don't know.”
“Keep me posted.”
The Mercedes abandoned Elbinger Strasse for Osloerstrasse, found Highway 100 and then Highway 110, and appeared, for all the world, to be heading for Tegel Airport. But just as Fred had decided that Mahmoud was taking off for a little R and R in that terrorist playground of choice, the island of Malta, the steel gray car shot past the airport exit. It headed north.
He led them straight to the forest in the middle of Reinickendorf. Here the Schloss Tegel rose like a neoclassical dream above the turgid waters of its lake. It had once belonged to the brothers Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, one the founder of Berlin University, the other a scientist and explorer. Not the usual haunt of a Hizballah bomb maker.
“What the hell do I do now?” Paul asked desperately. He had come to a standstill, the van well back from the castle's parking lot. They were screened from their quarry's view by a well-trimmed hedge. But Sharif's black hair and leather jacket were just visible.
At this hour and this season, the castle was deserted: no schoolchildren skipping stones at the swans; no swans, for that matter. Only the avenue of lindens, a deserted gravel walk. The car park was virtually empty. Sharif let the Mercedes idle near the single other car — a long black Daimler sedan with a uniformed driver — and got out.
Fred patched in the station.
“Wally? You there?”
Silence.
“Wally!”
“Yeah,” said Aronson.
“We're at Schloss Tegel. God knows why. Sharif must have picked us up.”
“Can you get close to him?”
“He's standing thirty yards away. There's one other car, a limo. Sharif's tapping on the window.”
“Think it's a date?”
From this distance, Fred could make out nothing of the car's interior. The Daimler might hold an entire chorus of dancing girls. Then again, it might be empty. He studied the chauffeur. The man was probably in his sixties, a loyal old retainer; he looked at Mahmoud Sharif as one might assess an underbred dog.
“Shouldn't we go someplace less obvious?” Paul whispered urgently at his elbow.
As if echoing his thought, Wally's voice came over the line.
“You can't hang out in the parking lot. Find a side street on Sharif's route home. Pick him up when he goes past. Okay?”
“Shit.”
“You lost this one, buddy.”
“Wait,” Fred said urgently.
“The driver's opening the limo's trunk. He's pulling something out. Sharif's helping. Jesus, it looks like… a body...”
The chauffeur carried the reclining woman to Sharif's Mercedes. She was too large to fit in the trunk; Sharif wedged her across the backseat instead.
“Shit! A piece of fucking sculpture,” Fred burst out in disgust.
“Now I've seen everything.”
“Pack it up and come home,” Wally ordered him. There was the faintest hint of amusement in his voice. “I guess the guy really has gone straight.”
But as the limo driver turned his Daimler and drove away, past the idling plumber's van and the sighing lindens, Mahmoud Sharif pulled out his cell phone.
When Caroline dialed his secure line, Cuddy let it ring five times before he picked up. He was probably absorbed in reading Intelligence traffic, she thought, his mind deep in the clandestine maze.
“Your money or your wife.”
“Mad Dog! What's happening?”
“Nothing good. I blew it, Cud. Berlin station is bugging Mahmoud Sharif.”
“Carrie, I told you to drop it. Do you realize what happens if Wally picks up Eric's voice?”
“I know. I'm sorry. Maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe they've had a falling-out.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“I thought Dare should have a heads-up.” Caroline forced herself to sound calm.
“So she can contain the problem if it goes public.”
“Right,” he said with a brittle laugh. “And I get to tell her.”
Caroline was silent.
“Anything else?” he demanded harshly.
“Voekl's closed the crater.”
“I know. It was on CNN.”
“We think he's running scared. That he's deep-sixing evidence because it incriminates him.”
“Maybe we should start a rumor in the Washington Post. 'Intelligence sources suggest...'”
“That should keep Dare occupied. Cuddy — ”
“Yeah?”
“What do you know about Hungary?”
“They're dead broke. And there'll be hell to pay.”
“So the news is out.”
“I got it in a cable from Buda thirty minutes ago.”
“Think it's possible Lajta was murdered?”
He considered this an instant.
“One of a series of events in Central Europe?”
She smiled involuntarily at the phone. In Cuddy's world, the reconquest of the Third Reich was completely plausible. He knew, unlike Shephard, that she wasn't crazy.
“I'll start watching the corporate accounts,” he told her.
Which meant the VaccuGen accounts. Cuddy had been tracing them for months now, through all the blinds and front companies and usual sleights of hand. He had a map of clandestine flows of cash, an electronic trail that branched like a monstrous bloodstream through DESIST's memory boards. Cuddy had pieces of operations he could grasp, micro bytes of proof. If a hundred million dollars suddenly appeared on Cuddy's screen, the Hungarian treasury was as good as found.
The movement of Krucevic's money sketched a tantalizing tale. It was VaccuGen, Cuddy suspected, that broke the peace in Belfast; VaccuGen that nurtured militia camps in Montana and Khmer Rouge bases in Laos.
Wherever a nationalist cause could thrive, there went Krucevic's money. Cuddy could map the flow of funds, but he lacked names for the networks and hard proof of what Krucevic bought.
“You work on the Sharif problem,” he told Caroline now. “Keep the lid on Eric's existence any way you can. I'll fire up the database.”
The database. Where all the dirty secrets lived.
