Locked On

Clark checked over the rest of the tiny apartment. It did not take long. It could not have been four hundred square feet, including the bathroom and the kitchen. He found a door to a fire escape in the kitchen, but nothing whatsoever as far as luxuries. “What, thirty-five years in the Stasi, and this is all you get?”

Now the German in the chair smiled a little. “From the comments of your government regarding you, Herr Clark, it does not look like your organization has rewarded your efforts much more than my organization has rewarded mine.”

Clark cracked a sour grin himself as he used his legs to push a small table flush against the front door. It might slow someone coming in from the hall for a moment, but not much more than that. Clark stood next to the door, kept the SIG trained on the burly man sitting uncomfortably on the recliner.

“You have been telling tales.”

“I have said nothing.”

“I don’t believe you. And thaten telli is a problem.” Clark kept his weapon trained as he moved sideways along the front wall of the room into the corner. On the adjoining wall sat a tall antique china cabinet. He pushed it toward the open doorway to the tiny kitchen, in order to block the entrance to the flat from the rear fire escape. Inside, dishes rocked and a few tipped over as the big wooden piece came to rest, covering the doorway. Now the only entrance to the room was the bedroom behind Manfred.

“Tell me what you told them. Everything.”

“Mr. Clark, I have no idea what you—”

“Thirty years ago, three people went into the Geister-bahnhof. Two of those people came out alive. You were working for the Stasi, as was your partner, but you two fellows were not playing by Stasi rules, which means you extorted that money for yourself. I was ordered to let you two walk away, but your partner, Lukas Schuman, tried to kill me after you got the money.

“I killed Lukas Schuman, and you got away, and I know you did not run back to Markus Wolf and tell him about how your illegal moonlighting job turned ugly. You would have kept your mouth shut to everyone so you didn’t have to turn over the cash.”

Kromm did not speak, but only squeezed his hands into his knees as if he were kneading fat Brotchen before putting them in the oven.

Clark said, “And I was under orders to keep the affair out of the official record of my agency. The only person, other than you, me, and poor dead Lukas Schuman, who knew about what happened in the ghost station that night was my superior, and he died fifteen years ago without breathing a word of it to anyone.”

“I don’t have the money anymore. I spent it,” Kromm said.

Clark sighed as if disappointed with the German’s comment. “Right, Manfred, I came back thirty years later to retrieve a messenger bag full of worthless deutschmarks.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want to know who you talked to.”

Kromm nodded. He said, “I think this is an American movie cliche, but it is the truth. If I tell you, they will kill me.”

“Who, Manfred?”

“I did not go to them. They came to me. I had no interest in digging up the buried bones of our mutual past.”

Clark lifted the pistol and looked down its tritium sights.

“Who, Manfred? Who did you tell about ’eighty-one?”

“Obtshak!” Manfred blurted it out in panic.

Clark’s head cocked to the side. He lowered the weapon. “Who is Obtshak?”

“Obtshak is not a who! It’s a what! It’s an Estonian criminal organization. A foreign office of the Russian mob, so to speak.”

John did not hide his confusion. “And they asked you about me? By name?”

“Nein, they weren’t asking in the regular sense. They hit me. They broke a bottle of beer, put the broken bottle up to my throat, and then they asked me.”

“And you told them about Berlin.”

“Naturlich!” Of course. “Kill me for it if you must, but why should I protect you?”

Something occurred to Clark. “How did y'>

Kromm shrugged. “They were Estonian. They spoke Estonian. If someone is a thug and they are Estonian, then I presume them to be in Obtshak.”

“And they came here?”

“To my house? Nein. They had me meet them at a warehouse in Deutz. They told me there was money for me. Security work.”

“Security work? Don’t bullshit me, Kromm. No one is going to hire you to do security work.”

The German’s hands rose quickly as he began to argue, but the barrel of Clark’s SIG was trained again on Kromm’s chest in the space of a heartbeat. Kromm lowered his hands.

“I have done some… some work for members of the Eastern European immigrant community in the past.”

“What? Like forgery?”

Kromm shook his head. He was too proud to keep quiet. “Locks. Lock picking.”

“Cars?”

Now the old German smiled. “Cars? No. Car lots. Dealerships. It helps to add to my tiny pension. Anyway, I knew some Estonians. I knew the man who asked me to go to the warehouse, otherwise I would never have agreed to go.”

Clark reached into the pocket of his raincoat, pulled out a notepad and a pen, and tossed it to the old man. “I want his name, his address, any other names you know, Estonians working in Obtshak.”

Kromm deflated in his chair. “They will kill me.”

“Leave. Leave right now. Trust me, whoever questioned you about me is long gone. That’s who I’m after. The men who set it up are just the local thugs. Get out of Cologne and they won’t pester you.”

Kromm did not move. He only looked up at Clark.

“I will kill you, right here, right now, if you do not do as I say.”

Kromm slowly began to write, but then he looked up, past the gun barrel, as if he had something to say.

“Write or talk,” Clark said, “but do it now or I put a bullet in one of those sore knees of yours.”

The German pensioner said, “After they took me, I spent a day in the hospital. I told the doctor I was mugged. And then I came home, angry and determined to retaliate against the men. The leader, the man who asked the questions, he was not a local. I could tell this because he spoke no German. Only Estonian and Russian.”

“Keep talking.”

“I have a friend still in Moscow, he knows his way around.”

“Around the Mafia, you mean?”

Kromm shrugged. “He is an entrepreneur. Anyway, I called him up and asked him for information on Obtshak. I did not tell him the real reason. I am certain he assumed I had business. I described the man who interrogated me. Fifty years old, but with hair dyed like he was a twenty-year-old singer in a punk-rock band.”

“And your friend gave you a name?”

“He did.”

“And what did you do?”

Kromm shrugged. He looked at the floor in humiliation. “What could I do? I was drunk when I thought I could get revenge. I sobered up.”

“Give me thoor ie man’s name.”

“If I do that, if I tell you about the man in Tallinn who came here and ordered the others to beat me, will you bypass the men here in Cologne? Maybe if you go directly to Tallinn they will not know that I informed.”

“That suits me just fine, Manfred.”

“Sehr gut,” said Kromm, and he gave Clark a name as the last of the afternoon’s