attention was on a twin-engine Cessna 340 as it dropped down through broken clouds, then flew at treetop level until it neared the far end of a private airstrip. Seconds later its landing gear touched the tarmac and it roared past them, giving them a glimpse of its fuselage registration, D-VKRD. The aircraft slowed as it reached the end of the runway, then turned and came back toward them.
“Piston engine. It’s the best I could do, all things considered.” Erlanger crushed a cigarette butt under his heel, then picked it up and put in his pocket. “It will get you wherever you’re going within the parameters you gave me. Maybe not as fast as you would like, but you’ll get there just the same.”
“It’s fine, Hartmann, thank you,” Anne said.
He looked at her the way he had in his study earlier, and she smiled and put a hand to his cheek. Plainly there was a history between them, one they didn’t seem to mind sharing, to a degree at least, with Marten. How profound it was, or if Erlanger’s wife was aware of it, there was no way to know.
The roar of the Cessna’s engines deafened as it neared and came to a stop. Then the pilot shut them down, and for a moment the silence was almost as profound. Almost immediately the chirp of birds and the buzz of insects filtered back. All around was deep forest. The only cuts through it were the airstrip itself and the gravel road they had come in on. Not once had Erlanger brought up the subject of whose property it was, but clearly he had access to it.
The pilot’s door opened, and a woman in a flight suit climbed down. She was blond, maybe thirty-five, and attractive in a matronly sort of way.
“Her name is Brigitte,” Erlanger said. “Tell her where you want to go and she’ll get you there. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Neither of you saw me. None of this took place.” Abruptly he turned to Anne, the warmth and tenderness of moments before suddenly gone, replaced instead by a cold professionalism. “Stay away from the old contacts,” he warned. “You got away with it once. For your sake, don’t try it again.” He stared at her for a moment longer, then glanced at Marten and turned and walked to the van. Seconds later he got in and closed the door, then started the engine and drove off.
Never once did he look back.
6:50 P.M.
BERLIN POLICE HEADQUARTERS. 7:05 P.M.
Hauptkommissar Franck took the call on his private cell phone and immediately left the room. Detectives Bohlen and Prosser and the dozen other top investigators with them stopped what they were doing as he went out, watching in silence as the door closed behind him. They’d spent the last eight hours shoulder to shoulder with the Hauptkommissar in the dark of this high-tech situation room deep inside the building surrounded by rows of computers with floor-to-ceiling monitors sorting through mountains of information provided by officers tracking reports coming in from the field.
Franck had called them there just after ten thirty in the morning when the all but certain capture of Nicholas Marten and Anne Tidrow in the neighborhood near the Friedrichstrasse/Weidendamm Bridge had failed. The Hauptkommissar had faced them angrily and forcefully, dressing them down and citing their failure and his own, clearly and harshly.
“I was put in charge of this operation,” he’d said. “I am responsible for the decisions that failed. The suspects are still at large. Failure a second time is not acceptable. To me, to you, or the people of Berlin and Germany. I hope that is quite clear.”
The effect had been powerful and shaming and embarrassing, putting everyone on edge and spreading through the entire department within minutes. It was why, when he answered his personal cell phone and so abruptly left the room, the people there held their collective breath. Perhaps it was a major breakthrough, a tip from one of the untold number of informants only the Hauptkommissar knew. Perhaps in short order he, and then they, would learn where the suspects were and as quickly mobilize and within the hour bring the entire ordeal to a close.
7:12 P.M.
“I don’t like so many people involved,” Franck stood on the sidewalk outside the building on Platz der Luftbrucke talking on his cell phone, his back to passersby. “It will be a billiard game, you know that, one playing off two, two playing off three, who knows where it stops. Unpredictable, volatile at best, dangerous all around.”
“Yes. Alright. I understand,” he said finally. “Yes. Yes. Of course.” With that he clicked off.
Hauptkommissar Emil Franck’s persona had been established early in his career as that of a man who was most successful when he worked alone. Between the ages of twenty-four and twenty- seven he had single-handedly ended the vocations of nineteen public enemies. Ten were in prison, the rest dead. The media, even his colleagues, both then and now referred to him as Berlin’s “Cowboy,” its “Dirty Harry,” and it was that role he would play to Detectives Bohlen and Prosser and the others in the situation room when he returned. Something had come up, he would tell them. Something he would take care of himself. Their instructions would be to continue on the course he had laid out for them that morning, an intense continuation of the massive and very public manhunt for the killer of Theo Haas. There would be no announcement that he had left. The media would be told only that he was coordinating the effort from his headquarters office and was unavailable for comment. No other details would be given. It was that simple.
50
RITZ-CARLTON BERLIN, SUITE 1422. 8:08 P.M.
Sy Wirth clicked off one of the two BlackBerrys he’d carried with him since he left Houston and picked up a freshly sharpened number 2 Ticonderoga 1388 pencil. He made a brief note on the last of the half-dozen yellow legal pads on the writing table in front of him, on which he had scribbled twenty-odd memos, the result of several hours’ worth of business calls. Done, he looked at his watch, then picked up the BlackBerry he’d just used, the one he called his everyday phone and utilized for business and personal calls. He was about to punch in a number when there was a knock at the door.
“Yes,” he said impatiently.
“Room service, Mr. Wirth.”
Wirth got up and opened the door. A uniformed waiter pushed a rolling table with a covered platter, a carafe of coffee, and a bottle of mineral water into the room. He was starting to set it up when Wirth intervened.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said brusquely and gave him a twenty-euro bill.
“Thank you, Mr. Wirth. Guten abend.” The man nodded and left, closing the door behind him.
Wirth lifted the silver cover from the platter, glanced at the club sandwich beneath it. Ignoring it, he went back to the desk, picked up the everyday BlackBerry, punched in a number, and waited for it to ring through.
“Well?”
“How long are you going to keep me waiting around? What’s the status of our project?”
