Command Authority

75

After venturing out in the rain from his Berlin hotel, CIA analyst Jack Ryan found a small restaurant still open at eleven p.m., and he bought a meal consisting of bratwurst and french fries along with a large glass of pilsner. He sat at the front window and enjoyed his meal while looking out at the dreary weather. After a few minutes, he opened his map to orient himself, and he realized he was only a few blocks away from where the shootout took place on Sprengelstrasse very early that morning.

Though it was after eleven-thirty in the evening when he left the restaurant, he decided to walk the five blocks just to pass by the RAF flat.

It took him less than ten minutes to find the corner, and he was immediately surprised by how dead the area seemed now. The evening before, he had assumed the police cordon was keeping any traffic clear of the intersection, but tonight, with no police cordon whatsoever, the activity level in the neighborhood was virtually the same. Other than the occasional slow-moving taxi and one or two pensioners under umbrellas taking their dogs for late-night strolls, Ryan did not see anyone out on Sprengelstrasse.

The cold rain picked up as he neared the intersection, and he noticed a police car parked in front of the building, facing in the opposite direction. He couldn’t see anyone inside the vehicle, but the engine was running, so he suspected the police had posted a guard to keep any curious people away from the crime scene.

Jack stepped back into a darkened doorway on the northeastern corner of Sprengelstrasse and Tegeler Strasse, and from here he could take in the entire scene.

The bay doors of the auto repair shop were closed, which came as no surprise to Jack. There was no light coming from the big brick building at all, and the windows on the higher floors that had been shot out during the gunfight nearly twenty-four hours earlier were now covered with a shiny black material.

As he stood there, it occurred to him that he’d love to get another look inside that flat. Even though he was certain the BfV would have pulled anything of obvious intelligence value, Jack wondered if there was some way they might have missed some small thing, some tiny item that could possibly connect Marta Scheuring, the girl who died in Switzerland, with the Russians.

Ryan wondered what that might be. He wasn’t a cop like his dad, crime scene investigation was not his forte, so he recognized the fact he’d need to find something as obvious as a photo of Marta on Red Square to know he had the smoking gun he was looking for.

No chance of that, he told himself.

While Jack stood there, another police car pulled up close to the one parked in the street. Both drivers rolled down their windows and started talking. From a hundred feet away, Jack could hear muffled voices, and he saw the flash and glow as one of the cops lit a cigarette.

Jack stepped out of the doorway and crossed Tegeler Strasse, and began walking along the side of the building. Here he was surprised to see that the fire escape ladder he had climbed the evening before had not been reset all the way. He realized that if he were so inclined, he would be able to reach it and pull it down with the hook of his umbrella.

He was certain the patrol cars around the corner could not see him where he was, and he also knew the cops were distracted by their conversation, so, with no advance plan whatsoever, Jack decided to climb the fire escape and slip inside the building. He knew the police might wander around the corner here at some point, but he seriously doubted that they would be getting out of their warm and dry patrol cars anytime in the next few seconds.

Still, Jack did not reach for the ladder immediately; instead, he kept walking along, his umbrella and his waterproof coat keeping him dry, although he began to sweat as he thought about the prospect of getting another look inside the third-floor flat used as a safe house by the Red Army Faction. Twice he talked himself out of going ahead with his idea, but twice more he reasoned that, in the unlikely event the policemen caught him in the act, he wouldn’t be in any serious trouble. He could drop a few names of BfV officers he’d met in the past day, and he’d likely receive an uncomfortable tongue-lashing from the Germans, but the prospect of this paled in comparison with the possibility of having his curiosity satisfied by another look at the flat.

While considering his next move, he’d walked half a block up the street. He stopped, turned, headed back to the fire escape, and looked around at all the buildings, searching for anyone who might be watching what he was doing.

There was no one.

As Ryan arrived again at the fire escape, he used his umbrella to pull down the ladder slowly and relatively quietly, then tossed his umbrella between a couple of nearly bare bushes alongside the building and began climbing.

The window on the first floor had been shattered the night before; this was where Ryan had fired at the sniper two blocks east of here on Sprengelstrasse. Now cardboard wrapped in a black plastic tarp had been fitted in place of the window. Ryan had no trouble pushing in the cardboard and climbing inside the building. He looked back out onto the rain-swept empty street, then pushed the cardboard and plastic back into place.

Just like that, he was in. It was quiet, as he expected, and though this hallway had been dark last night, it had been nothing like this. Now there was not a single source of light.

Fear of the dark is a natural fear, and Jack had no reason to be afraid here, as he was certain the building was both empty and covered by the police, but his heart pounded against his chest as he felt his way to the stairway to the second floor.

Compared with the pitch black of the hall and the stairwell, the second floor was relatively well lit by the large windows on all sides. Several of these windows had been shot out and they, too, had been replaced with the same cardboard and plastic sheeting, but several more were intact, and Jack had no problem finding his way forward through the art collective, toward the stairs up to the third-floor flat.

Jack took a chance in the RAF flat. As in the hallway two floors below him, he could barely see his hands in front of his face. Fortunately, he remembered from the evening before that all the windows in the flat had been destroyed by gunfire or concussion grenades. He presumed that whoever had covered the windows downstairs would have done the same here, so he felt around until he found a small desk lamp on a side table. He pulled the cord and was not surprised to find the lamp was inoperable.

It took several more seconds to find a second cord; this one led to a lamp with a bulb that had not been damaged in the chaotic melee of the evening before.

He took a blanket off a chair against the wall and partially covered the lamp, leaving just enough light for him to take in his surroundings.

The living room felt smaller now that he stood alone in it. A dozen detectives and commandos and British agents had added a sense of expanse to the space, but now it was just a fifteen-foot-by-fifteen-foot room with too much cheap furniture that was mostly shot up and smashed, and walls pockmarked with holes. There was an outline on the floor in the shape of a body lying on its side, with the arms out in one direction and the lower legs in the other, making an S-shape. This was the woman who’d been killed in the front room; Jack had read her name in the report this afternoon. Ulrike something. He remembered seeing her bullet-riddled body the evening before and an automatic weapon lying next to it.

The girl and the gun were gone now, but her outline and a four-foot-wide bloodstain remained.

He stood still in the room for a moment, thinking about the scene last night. He was sure he could still smell the smoke, and he thought he could detect the scent of death.

After a minute, he flipped off the lamp and felt his way forward to the hallway, and then he headed back toward the bedrooms.

Marta Scheuring’s little room seemed even darker than the hallway. He felt around on the wall for a moment, hunting for a light switch, but when he found nothing, he dropped to his knees and reached out in all directions. He put his hand on a wire and followed it to some sort of a lamp lying on its side on the floor, and he flipped a switch on it. It was a blue lava lamp; apparently it had been sitting on a folding TV tray that Marta had used as an end table. The tray lay on its side on the floor next to the lamp.

Jack picked up the lamp and used it as a very poor flashlight. He looked around at the smashed furniture and the holes in the wall. He looked at the clothing in the closet and the shattered mirror on a tiny dresser.

It was quiet, the only sound the tinkle of precipitation on the plastic and cardboard covering the windows.

Jack took in his pale blue surroundings. No one had died in this room; there was no blood on the floor or the walls. But it felt like death, because the young woman who lived in this tiny space had been killed two nights earlier several hundred miles south in Switzerland. Her few personal effects were all that remained of her. There was laundry in a hamper in the corner. A threadbare towel, a pair of blue jeans. A black sweater, and a plain tan bra-and-panty set piled on top.

Suddenly it felt wrong to Jack to be here.

Intellectually, he knew the BfV would have searched everything, but Jack had wanted to poke around on his own. But now he did not want to touch her clothing, to look through her drawers or closet.

He realized he’d made a mistake. He’d been at the end of the road in his investigation, and logic had taken a backseat to emotion.

Jack sighed loudly. His mind switched gears, and he started thinking about how his unauthorized late-night visit to this crime scene would look to his peers. Should he even mention his skulking around here tonight to either Sir Basil or Jim Greer? Probably not, he told himself. It might make him look impetuous, undisciplined.

He couldn’t tell Cathy, either, but that was probably best for everyone. He told himself he’d just leave now and never mention a word of this to—

Jack heard a noise, the creaking of a floorboard somewhere far away. He leaned out into the hall. The sound continued, and after a moment he realized he was hearing the footsteps of someone coming up the wooden staircase that led up to the flat.

He quickly flipped off the lava lamp, put it down on the floor, and backed into the closet, pressing himself into the clothes hanging from the rack.

Damn it, Jack, he said to himself. He was certain it was the police. He knew he hadn’t been seen coming up, and he also knew he hadn’t made any noise. He figured the damn lights he had turned on had shone through some bullet hole in the wall and tipped off the cops.

The footfalls approached slowly, moving down the hall now. The closet door was open. Jack did not want to pull it shut, fearing the hinges might squeak, so he very slowly pushed himself backward even deeper into the dresses and coats Marta had left hanging in her closet. He thought he had a chance to remain unseen if the cops just passed by the room and waved their flashlight in, since the closet could not be seen without stepping into the room.

But then it occurred to him. There was no flashlight. Jack would have been able to see any residual light of someone coming up the hall, but he saw nothing at all except complete darkness.

The fact that there was no beam was disconcerting. He had no idea who was in the flat with him now, but he suspected this other person had as little right to be here as he did himself.

The hardwood flooring in the hallway creaked with each step. The drops of pelting rain on the plastic sheeting continued unabated as the steps moved closer.

They stopped in the doorway to Marta Scheuring’s room. Jack was six feet away from the other visitor, only partially hidden in the closet.

A figure entered the room in front of him. He could feel the presence more than see anything in the dark. He thought about leaping out, taking the other figure by surprise; his mind raced, and he wondered if this could have been the person who had fired on him and the GSG 9 men twenty-four hours earlier.

He had no weapon at all; his only hope was to stay hidden. He did not move. He held his breath now, and forced his eyes open even wider to take in any ambient light that might give him an advantage.

There was a shuffling sound; Jack recognized the sound of the lava lamp scuffing the floor.

Shit. He poised himself to leap forward as soon as the light came on.

Suddenly the room was awash in dim blue light. A figure in a big black hooded coat knelt on the floor, and then the figure rose back up, facing away. Ryan balled his right fist, he needed to take only two quick steps to be in striking distance, but he quickly realized the figure was moving away from him, toward the bed.

The person knelt down and reached under the bed now. Jack heard the sound of the floorboards moving, and he knew what was going on.

After a few seconds of feeling around, the figure stopped moving, as if giving up, and dropped his head on the bed. Whoever this was, he had obviously been looking for the briefcase, and he’d obviously realized the police had found it.

Jack knew he had to take the initiative now, while the stranger was on his knees with his head down and facing away.

Jack stepped out of the closet and started across the little room. He’d made it only halfway when the floorboards under his feet gave him away.

The stranger launched up and spun around. In the blue light, Jack saw a hand reach into a coat pocket, and then reemerge quickly, wrapped around something small and black. Jack didn’t know if it was a gun or a knife, but it didn’t matter. He had the momentum, and continued rushing forward with his eyes on the weapon, then balled his fist and reached back.

He saw the pointed steel at the same time he heard the click of the switchblade. The stranger slashed with the knife as Ryan fired out a right jab. His fist slammed into the man’s jaw, connecting near perfectly, and the head snapped back.

The knife flew through the air as the body fell backward on the bed and lay there, unconscious.

Jack felt a pain in his forearm, and he realized he’d been cut by the switchblade; he couldn’t see how bad it was in the poor light, but he felt through the tear in his jacket, then pulled his hand back and rubbed the wet blood with his fingertips. He didn’t think it was too severe, but it stung like hell.

“Son of a bitch!” he shouted, as he pulled off his scarf and wrapped it around the wound.

It took a moment to tie it off, and while he did this he kept his eyes on the figure on the bed in front of him. He couldn’t see the face, so he stepped forward, leaning over the unconscious form. He leaned closer still, reaching down and pushing the hood of the coat back, then moving wet hair out of the way so he could see the face.

He stood up quickly, stunned.

This was a woman.

He looked down at his own fist; his knuckles throbbed after the vicious blow he’d delivered to her face. “Oh, Christ.”

It took the woman five minutes to come around. In that time Jack tied her hands behind her back with the bra from the laundry basket in the corner and placed her on the floor, sitting her up against the bed. He’d also searched her thoroughly. She had no more weapons, and she carried no identification, only a key chain with a few keys on it and two small wads of currency. Ryan thought it was interesting she was in possession of both West German deutschmarks and East German ostmarks, but this was hardly the most interesting thing about her.

As he sat on the floor in front of her, the lava lamp between the two of them, he studied her face. The lighting was bad, her blond bangs hung low over her eyes with her head slumped forward, and there was a red-and-purple bruise on her jaw from Ryan’s fist, so it was difficult to get a great look at her, but he started to suspect he knew who she was.

And when she woke, when her eyes opened and she slowly began looking around the room, Jack was certain.

He said, “I can gag you. If you scream, I will do just that. Do you understand me?”

He could hear her breath quicken. She looked at him, and her eyes widened in fear and tears dripped down her face.

“You speak English, don’t you?”

After a moment, she asked, “Who are you?” Her German accent was strong, but Ryan had no trouble understanding her.

In the soft blue lighting, he looked into her eyes. He saw the terror, but he could also see exhaustion. Her wet hair hung on her forehead.

He said, “You can call me John. And how about I call you Marta? Marta Scheuring.”