The Berlin Target

Five

There was nearly an hour and a half between flights. Carter guessed that Lisa's layover would be about the same.

His first guess as to where she would spend the time was right on the button: the cocktail lounge in the Pan Am concourse of Frankfurt-am-Main Airport.

The way she had sounded on the phone the previous evening. Carter guessed she could use several Bloody Marys.

When he entered the lounge he recognized her immediately even behind the dark glasses and the new, shorter hair style. She was wearing an ice-blue dress that accented high breasts, a slender waist, and softly rounded hips.

Somehow she sensed his approach and spun to face him on the armed stool. Her eyes were even with his, and he wondered what they were doing behind those dark shades.

She didn't smile. Carter hadn't expected she would. He wondered if she were remembering — as he was — that night: the ambush in the hotel room, the chaos of gunfire, the smell of cordite, and the wild ride to the hospital that they had barely reached in time.

"Hello, Lisa."

"Hi. Want to compare scars?"

Now she smiled and the ice broke. He planted his lips gently but firmly on hers, and slid up onto the adjacent stool.

"Thank you for coming."

"I'm on vacation," he shrugged, and nodded to the bartender. "One of those, not too hot."

"This may be just Delaine, you realize. We may be sisters, but we're quite different. She has a tendency to get a little frantic."

Carter sipped the Bloody Mary and smiled. "I'll do what I can, but I really came to see you."

"Let's hope Berlin is just fun."

"Yeah, let's hope."

His antennae were vibrating. It was the sixth sense that every good agent acquired over the years, if he stayed alive.

As Lisa continued to speak, Carter listened with one ear and let his eyes travel around the small lounge; an old woman with a young blond-haired boy; a couple of coed types with hair so long they were sitting on it; a short, gray-haired man reading the morning paper; an older couple in the midst of a quiet argument.

Carter moved his gaze back to the gray-haired man. The eyes behind half glasses came up from behind the pages to meet Carter's.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, and then the man folded his paper. He checked his tab, placed a bill on the table, and left.

The bill was carefully folded and refolded until it resembled a star.

"Lisa…"

"Yes?"

"Excuse me for a second, will you? Nature calls."

"Of course."

A waitress was trying to unfold the bill without tearing it as Carter passed. He heard her grumble something about big tip or no big tip, she wished customers wouldn't try to be so cute.

The man was washing his hands as Carter pushed through the door. He saw legs under one of the stall doors, and moved to the door two down.

Their eyes met in the mirror, and both heads barely nodded.

It took almost five minutes before the man emerged from the stall, washed his hands, and left.

"How was your flight from Paris?"

"Fine."

"You are on Pan Am Nine-two-two, I believe."

"Yes, to Berlin."

"Very convenient. Peter Limpton received a call very early this morning in London from one of his West German contacts."

"A buyer or seller?" Carter asked.

"It would appear a seller." He pulled a thin manila envelope from his inside jacket pocket and set it on the mirror tray in front of Carter. "His name is Oskar Hessling. All we have on him is in there."

"What did Limpton have to say?"

"Hessling was putting the squeeze on a big American electronics manufacturer. He had told Limpton earlier that the goods would be pure gold. In fact, worth more than gold to Limpton's people. Evidently, the squeeze didn't work. Hessling called him a couple of weeks ago and said that the deal was off."

"And last night it was back on?"

The man nodded and began to dry his hands. "He directed Limpton to give him a call Tuesday in Berlin. Alma wants you to do a little digging before then."

"Will do."

"Have a nice flight."

Carter returned to the lounge and answered Lisa's quizzical stare with the truth. "Business."

"So you're not on vacation."

"It would seem that I'm not," he replied. "But it's just routine. I'll still look into your problem."

Right 922 was called for boarding. When they had passed through security, Lisa folded her arm through Carter's and leaned close to his ear.

"Do you travel without your friends now?"

"Oh, no. False bottom in the suitcase I checked."

The «friends» she was referring to were Carter's 9mm Luger, which he affectionately called Wilhelmina, a deadly little stiletto named Hugo, and a walnut-sized gas bomb dubbed Pierre.

Carter actually thought, that sunny morning walking down the airport concourse with the beautiful and appealing woman on his arm, that he wouldn't need his «friends» on this trip to Berlin.

Every day at noon, the Freiheitsglocke in the American Memorial Library building boomed out the hour. It sounded each noon to remind Berlin and the world that all men derive the right to freedom equally from God.

Dieter Klauswitz cared nothing about symbols or God. About his freedom, he had an undying passion to keep it. He removed the five pieces of his means to keep his freedom from the leather case and began assembling them.

From his sunny, 260-foot-tall perch above Berlin, he had a commanding view of the boulevard in front of the library. On the steps, workmen were putting the finishing touches to the podium and seats with bunting for the rally.

On the sidewalks and in one lane of the partially blocked-off boulevard, the curious, the demonstrators, and the enthusiasts had already begun to gather.

Berlin police manned the barricades, their spotless uniforms and white helmets gleaming. Uniformed and plainclothes SSD, men and officers of the special security department, stood about grim-faced in the heat.

They looked uncomfortable.

Klauswitz himself was slightly uncomfortable. His muscles ached from lying on the ground all night. But not enough to jeopardize his performance. With the added clothing beneath the leather, he was perspiring, but not enough to impair his determination.

When the F1 was completely assembled and checked, he scooted around on his belly until he found the perfect piece of hard, flat ground for the bipod. When this was done, he fit the stock to his shoulder and his eye to the scope.

The line from the open end of the scope down the twenty-eight-inch barrel, over the front sight and the silencer, was clean and pure all the way to the library steps.

An electrician in blue coveralls stood at the podium, connecting and adjusting a bank of microphones.

Klauswitz moved the cross hairs of the scope against the sight until a button on the man's left breast pocket was sighted in. He adjusted the range, then rolled the magnifier to full.

The button seemed to explode in size in the scope.

"Bang," Klauswitz said, "you're dead."

He popped the box magazine and, one by one, loaded it with the cyanide-treated shells. When the magazine was reset, he made one more sighting calculation.

Perfect.

He scooted over to the wicker basket, withdrew the thermos and sandwiches, and like so many of the workmen below him, proceeded to have his lunch.

The honeyed shade of her dark blond hair, the slant of her eyebrows, and the intense blue eyes were the only physical evidence to the fact that Delaine Berrington Conway was Lisa's sister.

Where Lisa's figure was full and roundly feminine, Delaine's was angular, with small breasts and almost boyishly slim hips.

Even her face, with its sharp bones and planes, lacked the soft character of Lisa's.

At this moment she was dressed in a plain white bra and white panties. She sat at her vanity, idly rolling an eyeliner pencil back and forth between her fingers.

"Jesus Christ, aren't you dressed yet? We have to leave in ten minutes!"

Delaine looked up to see her distinguished-looking husband, her champion of industry, scowling at her from the doorway.

"I really don't feel like going, Stephan."

"Bullshit. You're going, and that's all there is to it!"

Delaine stared at him in the mirror. It wasn't hard to see why she had fallen in love with this man, married him, and endured him for the last four years.

"You have to go, Delaine," he said, his face darkening with menace.

It was a chiseled, leathery face, but not a coarse one. The long nose had been accidentally broken once, but it retained an aquiline grace. And the long, horizontal dimple in his left cheek never lost its appeal, even when he clenched his jaw tightly, as he was doing now. His eyes, normally a warm and moody gray, were now hidden beneath his heavily frowning brow.

"Who was she, Stephan?"

"What?"

"Last night's conquest. Do you have a mistress on your staff over here, or did you bring her with us in the entourage from the States?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's not like you to pick up a cheap tart off the streets, Stephan. Besides, the perfume I smelled on you last night when you got into bed was too expensive for a tart."

"Delaine, please, do we have to go into this…"

"I guess I would rather have it be a tart, though. That means you would forget her the next morning. But you haven't been forgetting this one. And that perfume has become familiar. You should stick to women who use my brand of perfume, Stephan."

"Christ, Delaine, we'll talk about this tonight…"

"I want to talk about it now!"

"Well, I don't!" he shouted, and stomped to the closet. With an angry growl, he threw the doors open and bunched the clothing in his big arms.

Then, hangers and all, he walked them to her and dropped them on the floor. He lifted her like a feather from the vanity stool and set her on her feet in the middle of the clothing.

He fumbled in the randomly thrown pile of clothing until he withdrew a dress.

"Put this on and pull yourself together. We'll deal with your paranoia later."

Delaine grimaced in distaste at the garish red dress he thrust into her hands.

"Must I?"

"You must."

"And if I don't?"

"If you don't, little girl, I'll really give you something to divorce me over! I need you on that stand today. It would be a slap in the face of the others if you weren't there, standing by my side."

"Would you hit me again, Stephan? You're very good at doing that so it doesn't show."

Without warning, he slammed his balled fist into her stomach. She gasped and crumpled into a fetal ball in the middle of the pile of clothing.

"That answer your question?" he hissed.

She gagged.

"Ten minutes. Be ready."

He stomped from the bedroom, and Delaine pulled herself to her feet. Still fighting nausea from the pain, she reached for the red dress. She hated it; it wasn't her style at all, a red, scoop-necked, sheath-skirted design that she considered too bright and cheap-looking for her taste. But Stephan had been adamant when he bought it for the trip.

Until now she had refused to wear it.

"Oh, God," she whispered, sliding the slinky garment over her head. "Hurry, Lisa, hurry! Come and take me away from this madman!"

Horst Vintner was a big man with a thick, round neck. The connection was so strong that head, shoulders, and body turned all at the same time, as if one section were immobile without the aid of the other two. The eyes, deep-set and slow-moving, digested all they saw, passing over nothing.

At that moment they were scrupulously scanning the windows and rooftops around the perimeter his men had set up for the rally. Not that he was overly worried. The dignitaries were minor, not really of any interest to what survived of the terrorist groups in West Berlin.

The assignment was actually very routine. Vintner and his SSD team were there to snap pictures and get names, if possible, of the demonstrators. There was no expectation of trouble.

Horst Vintner had been a policeman his entire life. He had chased thieves, con men, rapists, murderers, and terrorists. The job of heading an SSD team to guard visiting VIPs and to control possible demonstrations was merely something to keep him busy until retirement.

Vintner was sixty-two years old, and his retirement was six months away.

"They are arriving, sir."

"I see that, Bruchner. Pick out two men who look the most conspicuous and put them on each end of the steps."

"Yes, sir."

"And inform the uniformed officers to block off the rest of this side of the boulevard."

"Yes, sir."

Vintner's aide moved away through the gathering crowd, and he applied a match to the bowl of his pipe.

His superiors had told him that morning that there had been death threats to the American. Stephan Conway. Vintner had talked to Conway at his hotel shortly after that over the phone.

"It's probably a sort of personal vendetta more than anything else, Herr Vintner. I was the victim of an attempted blackmail quite some time ago in the States. I thought that when I had told them to go to hell, it would die away. But lately the threats have become more strange."

Vintner didn't inquire into the blackmail. At that point it wasn't part of his job. Keeping Herr Stephan Conway alive while he was on German soil was his job.

As Horst Vintner puffed his pipe and scanned the crowd, he wished he were back chasing murderers or retired, one or the other.

This in-between duty was hell.

As Dieter Klauswitz saw the first speaker step to the podium he went over the schedule of the rally that Hessling had given him.

There were to be four speakers in all. The American, Stephan Conway, would be the last. At the end of his speech, Conway's wife, and the three German speakers and their wives, would move to the front of the steps.

There they would stand at attention in a line, while the anthems of both countries would be played.

"That, Pilgrim, is when you fire. Not before."

He took another range-sighting through the Fl scope, from the man at the podium back down the line of the seated scheduled speakers. He found the erect figure of Stephan Conway dressed in a light tan summer suit. Beside him, in a vivid red dress, her eyes on her lap, was the American businessman's wife.

Oskar Hessling was never a cheap thief. He had started out his life of crime as a procurer of flesh for the brothels of Beirut and the rest of the Middle East. Young virgins from a poverty-stricken Germany were sent into white slavery in these brothels, and if they were especially attractive — blond and buxom — they were shoved on into the harems of desert sheiks.

It was a profitable business, and allowed Hessling to expand. In the years between 1960 and now, he had formed a criminal empire based on dope, prostitution, extortion, blackmail, pornography, and the sale of illegal arms.

It was known that he would buy and/or sell anything to or from the Eastern bloc of nations, including Mother Russia.

It wasn't surprising that Boris Simonov, as Peter Limpton, had set up a channel to do business with Hessling.

What was surprising was the fact that West German authorities knew much of Hessling's business, and yet had never been able to turn a single arrest into an indictment.

Carter, as he slipped the man's file into his briefcase, wondered what he could come up with if the entire security apparatus and police departments of the West German government had been unable to come up with anything.

"You don't sound happy," Lisa said from beside him. "You rarely sigh."

"Dead end," Carter replied, squeezing her hand. "I'll tell you about it later."

They were descending on their final approach to Tegel Airport. From the air. West Berlin looked like a solo piece of a jigsaw puzzle. It was bounded by one hundred miles of concrete wall and the fifty-yard-wide German Democratic Republic "death strip." The sand floor of the "death strip" was meticulously raked fine each morning. Even the mark of a crawling snake could be detected between the two concrete walls.

Carter narrowed his eyes and looked at the city without seeing the wall and the strip. It was huge and beautiful, with its fifty square miles of lakes, parks, and woodlands with deer and wild boar and forests. It was the largest green area of any city in the world and. Carter knew, one of the reasons West Berliners didn't go stir crazy in their isolation from the rest of West Germany.

The landing was smooth, and they were through customs in less than fifteen minutes.

Carter had cal led ahead to reserve two suites at the Victoria on the Kurfürsten Damm. It was a thirty-minute ride by taxi from Tegel into the center of the city, and they both were silent for most of the trip.

At the door of Lisa's suite. Carter brushed her cheek with his lips.

"You've been up all night. Get a quick nap before seeing your sister at three. I'll make a few phone calls and do some nosing around."

She nodded, gratitude in her eyes, and followed her porter into the suite. Carter moved to his own room down the hall and tipped the porter.

When the man was gone, he sat on the bed by the phone and lit a cigarette. From a narrow break between the leather walls of his wallet, he extracted a thin sheet of foolscap. On it, in Carter's own personal code, were fifty names and telephone numbers.

"Guten Tag, World Bank."

"Jamil Erhanee, bitte."

"Bitte."

He had to go through two more secretaries before he heard the familiar voice speaking German with a heavy Indian accent.

"Jamil, this is Nick Carter. How's it going?"

"Oh, Christ, the Russians are coming over the wall at last. How long do we have?"

Carter chuckled. "Not quite as bad as all that, my friend. In fact, I'm here more for social reasons than business."

"That's so much crap, but it is good to hear you're still alive."

"Thanks so much. I'd like to pick your brains, memories of your sordid youth."

"Where are you?"

"The Victoria, on the Ku'Damm."

"I'm in the middle of it until around six."

"That's all right. How about seven in the hotel bar?"

"Sounds good. Anything — or anyone — you're particularly interested in?"

"Yeah, a top dog named Oskar Hessling."

"Oh, my, let's make it the Golden Calf then. It's a transvestite club on Roscher Strasse, off the Ku'Damm."

"Suits me. Any particular reason?"

"Yeah. Hessling owns it. He drops in now and then. Who knows, you may see the fat pig in person."

"Seven it is. Ciao."

"Wiedersehen."

Carter punched out his cigarette and lay back on the bed. If anyone could tell him about or get him close to Oskar Hessling, it was Jamil Erhanee.

It was quite a few hours until seven, and nothing would be happening between now and then besides Lisa's meeting with her sister at three.

Carter closed his eyes. He could use a nap himself.