Cutler thought it was like being back on the ship with the captain. Although eager to help, the story was more or less the same, possible suicide or accident, no plausible evidence for any other conclusion.
The phone rang and Wayne’s eyebrows had lifted before he replaced the receiver. Before he could say anything, the phone rang again, and this time his face did show some concern.
“I have some bad news, Agent Cutler,” the police commissioner said.
“Have they found Elisa’s body?” Cutler interjected quickly.
“No. Sometimes when shit happens, well, it has a way of luring you into a sense that nothing else can go wrong. Well, bad news is not like that; it keeps on a coming. Sorry, Cutler; the air ambulance carrying your parents has gone down in rough seas, just off the coastline of Seattle. It disintegrated, and I’m afraid no one got out alive.”
Cutler looked dumbfounded.
Chapter Eleven
Werner survived. It was touch and go for a while whether he would succumb to his injuries. He had been as strong as a bull, but now was as weak as a kitten after several operations to repair the bullet wound to his throat. He knew he would almost certainly have died had not the tall American agent tied a shirt around his neck to stem the flow of life-giving fluid that had oozed from his wound.
Werner was not grateful to Cutler, for that was an emotion that he had long since lost the ability to feel. He was not angry with Cutler, either; he had been doing his job, just as Werner was doing his. He was, however, enraged by the bloody fool of a bodyguard, Vlad. Trying to shoot his way out of the trap was stupid. It had led to Werner’s woes. It was a good thing Vlad was no longer in the land of the living, as he would have been exposed to pain as he had never suffered before.
Werner knew the name of the American agent, Max Cutler. Werner had been warned that he was under investigation, but he thought he had it under control. After all, information was power, and he had many sources of data. The problem was, Cutler knew who was on the payroll and who was not, and he had controlled who knew what and when. It was and had been on a need-to-know and just-in-time basis. It had been a success, as Werner had been completely surprised that he had been targeted by the German and American authorities without him knowing.
After Werner had been shot and struggled for life, the German commander had the stricken counterfeiter transferred to the hospital. The ambulance and armed police cars took him to the beautiful spa town of Bad Reichenhall, some five miles away. The town was in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps and had the primness of a German town, with the stunning backdrop of the hills of green and explosion of spring flowers.
The German commander had posted two heavily armed guards outside the hospital theater; two in the reception area of the hospital, and a further two were posted in the Bad Reichenhall train station situated some three hundred yards along the road.
Following the assessment of risk by the German commander, he set up a perimeter around the town. Within the vicinity, there were three white and green BMW patrol cars. One monitored the access and egress to the town from the autobahn. The second was situated in the parking lot of the last Gasthaus on Thumsee Strasse in Karlstein, noted for the mural on its side of a twenty-metre-high bakery scene.
Karlstein was a micro-town, which mainly consisted of houses, a bakery and the odd guesthouse, a town you would normally see through the car window. The fact that all traffic going up to Schneizlreuth or returning had to pass through this small town made it a choke point for anything coming down from or arriving in through the alpine passes from Austria. Thus, they had all the main routes covered, such was the concern arising from housing a notorious ex-Stasi gangster in their midst.
The medical procedure went as well as could be hoped. It was damage limitation rather than renewal. After several days, the morphine that had kept the pain at bay was reduced to a level which brought the reality of the situation clearer to Werner.
Werner thought he knew pain; thought he had conquered the fear of pain. He had tortured numerous prisoners as part of his Stasi job description, watching them scream in terror and in agony, for that was his duty, and often, his pleasure.
He had been injured once before; he had dislocated his shoulder while beating up on a prisoner whose crime was using graffiti as a tool against the puppet East German government. Werner was enraged; he could accept the pain. What he could not accept and what angered him immensely was that this prisoner had seen him wince and had grinned at Werner’s discomfort.
It was fortuitous that evolution had given the human form two sides of the body, as Werner used the working right shoulder to raise his arm that held the stool that was placed nearby. He deliberately smashed the stool against the wall.
“You think this is funny? You think my arm hanging down from its socket is hilarious?” Werner had inquired sinisterly.
The activist watched through bloodied eyes as the stool broke into several pieces, and then as Werner kicked one of the larger remnants around the room in pure rage. Werner slowly knelt, and with his good arm, retrieved what was once the leg of the
