Black Ops

“Looks like they expect you, Ace,” Edgar Delchamps said. “Welcome home!”

Then the headlights picked up the form of a heavyset man standing in the middle of the road. He was swinging a heavy-duty flashlight back and forth as a signal to stop. The man was wearing a heavy Loden cloth cape, the drape of which was distorted by what Castillo professionally guessed to be a submachine gun, probably a Heckler & Koch MP7A1.

He approached the car. Castillo put the window down.

“Wie gehts, Karlchen?” the man said, offering Castillo his hand.

From the backseat, Max moved so that his front paws were on the console between the front seats. He showed his teeth and growled deep in his chest.

“Oh, shut up, Max,” the man said. “You know me.”

Max sat down.

“Guten Abend, Siggie,” Castillo said, chuckling.

“It is good to see you again, Karlchen.”

“It’s good to see you.”

“You have Max. Are Herr Gorner and Herr Kocian close behind you?”

“I have Max and family. His wife, so to speak, and four of their pups are in a van coming right behind me. Otto and Uncle Billy went to Wetzlar; they should be along shortly.”

“Frau Gorner will be overjoyed. You know how she loves dogs.”

Castillo grinned broadly. “Wait until she learns one of the pups is for Willi and Hermann.”

The man returned the grin. “It will make her Christmas complete, Karlchen.”

The man noticed movement coming up behind the Jaguar. It was the van. He then stepped back and waved both vehicles down the road.

The House in the Woods appeared in the headlights five minutes later. It sat against a hill, near the top, and did in fact look more like a collection of factory buildings than a residence.

As the Jaguar and the van stopped on a cobblestoned area, floodlights came on. Castillo got out, motioned for the people in the van to follow him, then walked across a shallow flagstone verandah to a large double door, opened the right side without knocking, and stepped inside.

Frau Helena Gorner was standing just inside the vestibule. With her were two young boys, the housekeeper, and a maid. No one seemed surprised at his presence.

As Castillo approached, he decided that Siggie—“Siggie the Game Warden,” he’d explained to all in the car, “stops everyone who gets past the skull-and-bones signs and announces that he’s making sure they’re not poachers before turning them away”—had either a cellular telephone or a radio, and then changed his mind: Siggie has a cellular and a radio, and called ahead with one or both.

“It’s always good to see you, Karl,” Helena said, offering him both her hand and her cheek, both of which were nearly as cold as her smile.

“You’re looking as lovely as always, Helena.” He turned to those following him. “Gentlemen, may I present our hostess, Frau Helena Gorner? And my god-sons, Willi and Hermann?”

Max towed Jack Davidson to the boys, who were obviously as glad to see the dog as Max was to see them.

Helena was not touched by the sight. She offered a strained smile, extended her hand to Edgar Delchamps, and said, “Welcome to our home. We have dinner waiting for you. I’m sure you must be . . .” She looked past the visitors toward the van. “What the hell is that they’re carrying in?”

It was hard to know what tested Frau Helena Gorner’s good manners more in the next couple of minutes: her learning that she had gone to the trouble of having dinner prepared for her guests only to be told they had already eaten in Marburg; her learning that not only was Max going to spend the night—or the next few days—in her home but that he had his family with him; or her learning that one of the pups—which would certainly grow as enormous as his parents—was going to stay forever.

But Helena prided herself on being a lady, and the only expletive she uttered was the mild one that she had used when inquiring about the travel kennel being carried to the house, and five minutes after the visitors had walked into the vestibule, they now were all in the big room of the House in the Woods and having a little something liquid to cut the chill.

The big room was on the top—third—floor of the house, and was reached by both an enormous wide set of stairs and an elevator. It served as a combined reception and dining room for guests. The Gorner family had their own dining and living rooms on the floors below.

One entire wall of the big room was curtained; the heavy curtains were now drawn. When uncovered, plateglass windows offered a view of the fields in the valley below. The housekeeper and a maid began to reset the dining table for breakfast.

The pups had been freed from the kennel and were playing with the boys in front of the fireplace. Max, lying next to Castillo, was whining because the moment he moved, Madchen’s teeth told him that he was not welcome to join in the fun.

There was the clunking sound of the elevator car rising, then its doors opening.

“Are they likely to soil the carpet?” Helena inquired of Castillo.

“Unless you get some newspapers on it, they certainly will,” Eric Kocian announced as he walked from the elevator toward the dogs.

Otto Gorner and Sandor Tor followed him off the elevator.

“Otto, darling,” Helena greeted him, her tone somewhat less than warm. “I was thinking I’d make a place for the dogs in the stable.”

“That won’t work, Helena,” Kocian said. “It’d be too cold for the pups in the stable. Madchen and the pups will be in my room. For the time being, I suggest newspaper—appropriately, considering Karlchen’s recent plagiaristic writings therein.”

He squatted beside Madchen and scratched her ears.

“Sandor,” Kocian called. “Be a good fellow and get me a little Slivovitz from the bar, will you, please?”

He held his hand over his head, his thumb and index fingers at least three inches apart to indicate his idea of a little sip of the 120-proof Hungarian plum brandy.

Then he stood and turned to Castillo. “I am after the numbing effect, not the taste.”

“It was bad in Wetzlar?” Castillo asked.

“That qualifies as an understatement, Karlchen,” Kocian said. He exhaled audibly, then went on, measuring his words, “As does this: I want to get the Gottverdammt sonsofbitches—”

“Eric, the children!” Helena protested.

Kocian flashed her an icy look, then went on: “... who did this to Gunther Friedler and his family. And the Tages Zeitung newspapers will do whatever we can toward that objective. Starting with doubling that reward to a hundred thousand euros.” He took a sip of Slivovitz, then added, “And—if I have to say this—by providing our Karlchen-the-intelligence-officer and his friends with whatever we have in the files that might help them to find these bastards.”

“Eric, the children shouldn’t hear this!” Helena said, moving toward the boys, presumably to usher them out of earshot.

“They can read; they’ve seen the newspapers,” Kocian said. “And so far as Helena’s concern with my language, I remember you, Otto, and Willi teaching Karlchen all the dirty words when he was a lot younger than your two boys.”

Sandor Tor handed Kocian a water glass three-quarters full with a clear liquid. He raised it to his lips and drank half.

He looked at Helena.

“I was led to believe there would be something to eat when we got here.”

She flushed and then walked quickly out of the room.

Otto looked uncomfortable.

And so did everybody else in the room. Including Willi and Hermann.