Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 14

If Baseyev was using Lufthansa as cover to move from country to country, the Russians had to have had someone inside. Harvath had charged Nicholas with figuring out who that someone was.

The biggest obstacle Nicholas faced was wrapping his head around how Lufthansa booked its passengers and scheduled its crews. Once that began to crystalize for him, his search picked up speed.

As someone who dealt with data, Nicholas was obsessed with patterns. Even when there was no pattern, that was a pattern, he would say. And the more he studied Baseyev’s travel, the more he began to figure the man out. He definitely had someone on the inside. It was someone very good at covering his tracks. Very good, but not perfect.

Now that they had his employee identification number, they could track all of Baseyev’s Lufthansa travel as Peter Roth. That included not only his work trips but also trips where he was traveling for free as an airline employee or “dead-heading” to another destination in order to work a specific flight. There were even instances where he showed up in a foreign city somewhere and hopped onto a Lufthansa flight without any indication as to how he got there.

Throughout it all, Nicholas kept looking for a constant, something that repeated itself — something that would point them to whomever the Russians had inside. Finally, he found it.

Jörg Strobl was a senior IT specialist who worked in Lufthansa’s crew management division. He oversaw one of the many teams that handled crew scheduling. Though he had done an intricate job hiding his involvement, he was the one behind all of Baseyev’s flights.

But that wasn’t all. Strobl’s wife, Anna, was Bundespolizei — a uniformed federal police officer stationed at Frankfurt airport. It looked like the Russians might have gotten two for one with the Strobls.

The town they lived in was known as being a hub for tourism and IT companies. Per his file, Jörg Strobl had worked out of the Lufthansa Aviation Center at the airport until four years ago, when he began telecommuting from home.

Anna’s Bundespolizei file wasn’t particularly impressive. She had graduated in the middle of her class and had spent several years protecting federal buildings, before being transferred to airport duty.

What was impressive about her, though, was her service photo. She was an extremely attractive woman, with straight brown hair, high cheekbones, and an enviable body that even her boxy government uniform couldn’t keep hidden.

She and the handsome, blond Jörg Strobl seemed made for each other. From everything Nicholas could gather, they appeared to have met at the airport. And as far as he could tell, they didn’t have any children.

The Strobls lived on the outskirts of Oberursel, not far from the A 661 motorway. Their home was easy enough to find.

The neighborhood of single-family homes was quiet. Privacy hedges separated the yards. Some houses had garages. Others had carports.

Under the Strobls’ carport was a new Mercedes van. The spot next to it was empty.

The van seemed an odd choice until Harvath saw a ramp next to the stairs. He wondered if they were caring for an aging parent.

That might explain why Jörg had begun working from home. What it wouldn’t explain, though, was why he was working for the Russians.

Crouching below the window line, he crept around the side of the house toward the back.

There wasn’t much going on. All he could see was the faint glow through one of the ground floor windows of what looked to be a television set.

At the rear of the house was a small brick patio with three stone steps leading up to a door. Climbing the stairs, he peeked through a window into the kitchen. Suddenly, movement caught his eye and he pulled back into the darkness.

He was still able to see into the kitchen and watched as a figure in a motorized wheelchair came into view. He was ready to have his assumption about an aging parent proven correct when he realized that it was Strobl himself.

There had been nothing in the file to suggest he was disabled. Why is he in a wheelchair? And where is his wife?

Harvath waited until the man had left the kitchen and then went to work on the back door.

Once he had the lock picked, he opened it slowly. The house wasn’t that big and Strobl was probably in the other room, where he had seen the TV glowing.

He stepped inside and gently closed the door behind him. There was half a bottle of wine on the counter. Beside it were the remnants of packaging for a microwavable meal. From the next room, he could hear music. It was a very old recording. It took him a minute to recognize the singer. Sarah Vaughan.

He took out his Glock and moved slowly, quietly toward it.

At the edge of the kitchen he could see the glow from the other room. Three steps more and he realized that it wasn’t coming from a TV. It was coming from three, long, flat-screen computer monitors arrayed in a semi-arc on a long table in the den.

Sitting in front of them was a man who looked nothing like the file photo Harvath had seen. Jörg Strobl was thin and frail, a shadow of his former self. In his left hand was a glass of red wine. His eyes were closed as he listened to Vaughan singing “Don’t Blame Me.”

“Interesting choice,” Harvath said, scaring the hell out of the man.

Strobl dropped his glass of wine and it shattered on the floor.

He spun his wheelchair to face him. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Harvath raised his index finger to his lips. “Where’s Anna?”

“What do you want with Anna?”

“Where is she?” he repeated.

“I don’t know.”

Harvath didn’t believe him. “Last chance,” he said, leveling the pistol at his chest.

“She’s at work.”

“When will she be home?”

The man shrugged. “She should have been home an hour ago. Sometimes she goes out with her colleagues.”

“She doesn’t call you?”

Strobl used the joystick to move his wheelchair toward his intruder.

“That’s close enough,” Harvath warned him.

“Who are you and what do you want with Anna?” the man asked again.

“I didn’t come for Anna. I came for you, Herr Strobl.”

“For me? Why for me?”

“You have been handling travel arrangements for a very dangerous man.”

“A very dangerous man,” Strobl replied with a laugh. “You obviously have made a mistake.”

“I don’t make mistakes,” Harvath said. “You’re the man I’m looking for and you know exactly why I’m here.”

“I wish I could help you, but I cannot.”

“You can help me and you will.”

“I am calling the police,” Strobl stated, turning his chair and moving back toward his desk.

Harvath grabbed a handful of the wheelchair’s electrical cable and tore it out. The machine came to an immediate halt.

“You’re making me angry, Jörg.”

“And you have the wrong man!” he insisted, raising his voice. “I want you to go. Now!”

“Not until you tell me everything I want to know.”

“I know nothing,” the man said, averting his gaze.

“Jörg, the more you lie to me, the worse this is going to get. Believe me. Your condition will not win you any special treatment. You have been aiding and abetting a killer. I want the details. All of them.”

Strobl was preparing to speak, but was interrupted.

“I want the details too,” said another voice.

Looking up, Harvath saw Anna Strobl standing in the doorway. She had a pistol and it was pointed right at him.