The Death Trust

FOUR

Special Agent Masters drove. She ground her jaw, the small pencil-like muscles flexing. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t just disappear off on your own. I don’t know whether you realize this, Special Agent, but we are not fucking playacting around here. People like General von Koeppen have things to do. You see them when they’re ready, not when it fits into your schedule.”

I listened to this lecture and wondered whether I should bite. She was reminding me of my ex — not the words so much as the moral certainty that she was right and that I was a moron. “Stop the car.”

“What?”

“I said stop the goddamn car.” I reached across her and pulled on the hand brake. The Mercedes skidded sideways to a stop.

“Let’s get a couple of ground rules straight,” I said as the car rocked on its suspension. “I don’t know what organization you belong to, but I’m basically a cop. I don’t give a damn about rank or privilege when I’m on a case. Also, I don’t answer to you or the CO here. I promise you, my boss back home is a lot scarier than both of you combined.”

Masters folded her arms and shot a glance of pure poison at me.

“Before I saw von Koeppen,” I continued, “I wanted to know what kind of investigation I was running—”

“You’re running?”

“That’s what the SAC usually does.”

“Who said you were the special agent in charge here?”

Gruyere hadn’t brought Masters up to speed. What did the big cheese expect us to do? Duke it out over who was boss?

“You were sent to assist me,” she said.

“Whatever,” I said. If you need to tell people you’re running the show, then you probably aren’t. If Masters wanted the poison chalice of SAC, she could have it. I changed the subject. “Squadron Leader Roach’s findings are critical. Now we can go and see your CO and tell him what’s up.”

“What makes you think Ramstein OSI can’t handle this on our own?” she said, holding me with those eyes.

Oh, right. Insecurity. I said, “What I think is neither here nor there, Special Agent. It’s what Washington thinks.” As I said this, I wondered whether I should come clean and tell Masters exactly what Washington thought of me, but I didn’t want to spoil my little speech with reality and reinforce her already negative view.

“Are you that good an investigator, Cooper, that you can just waltz in here and show us yokels how to do it right?”

Perhaps Masters felt she had me on the run. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Special Agent. I don’t want to be here any more than you don’t want me to be here,” I informed her. “I was doing perfectly well back in Maryland, ending my marriage and screwing things up in my own life. Now I have to put all that on pause to hold your hand here — figuratively, of course.” My patience had pretty much run out. And my toothache was back. I was hungry. I also had absolutely no idea how a NATO command, let alone one as seriously big as Ramstein, worked. Masters was right. I was way out of my depth. And, on top of that, I stank. I really should have taken that shower when I could have.

The look on Masters’s face was the same one I had seen on Gruyere’s — the puzzle-with-the-missing-pieces one. “Are you usually so…?”

“Lovable?”

“Sarcastic, negative, contrary.”

“It’s the toothache talking. I’ll be much better when I have something to distract me from the pain. Like, if you could just shoot me in the leg or something.”

“Can we go now?” she said. “It’s nine ten. We’re late.”

I shrugged. She eased the Merc out from the curb.

The administration building was a long way from Roach’s hangar, so the drive was a good opportunity to take in the base.

Something from Masters’s direction landed in my lap. It was a bag of what looked like dried apple stems.

“What’re these?” I asked.

“Cloves,” said Masters. “I bought them back in K-town.”

“For me?”

I picked up the bag and took a closer look at the contents.

“My grandma’s recipe for toothache. Hold one against the tooth with your tongue and the clove will numb the nerve. They’re good for the breath, too. You should take half a dozen.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I think.” I suddenly felt bad about being so pushy.

Masters’s cell saved me from apologizing. It began playing an old KC and the Sunshine Band number, which transported me to my high-school prom, the backseat of my parents’ car, and a pro-wrestling bout with the catch on my date’s bra.

“Yes, sir,” she said, then “yes, sir,” followed by another, “yes, sir.” Masters managed to pull the fang out of the record groove and said, “We’re at the building now, sir.”

“Let me guess: Colonel Klink?” I asked.

“General von Koeppen,” she corrected as the front wheels of her Merc hit the driveway a little too fast and the oil pan clanged on the road.

“Yeah, that’s what I said — Colonel Klink. Can you ring him back and tell him I know nuh-sink, nuh-sink…”

Masters and I stood at attention. Wolfgang von Koeppen looked nothing like the buffoon in Hogan’s Heroes, which was disappointing. Instead, he was tall, lean, and tanned, with blond hair and blue eyes. He wouldn’t have been out of place in a Ralph Lauren ad, standing behind the spoked wheel of an old sloop, sweater tied around his shoulders, a pretty young thing behind him laughing in the breeze. Or perhaps sitting in the backseat of a black Mercedes wearing the uniform of the Gestapo Reichsführer, directing a somber queue of women and children toward a railway car.

“That will be all, Anna,” he said to Masters in an accent that was vaguely English. Something in the way she turned and walked out told me that Masters didn’t appreciate being dismissed. We were, after all, conducting this investigation together. I was at a loss as to why she didn’t stand her ground. She would have been within her rights to do so. “At ease, Major,” he said, giving me the once-over.

“Special Agent,” I said, getting up the German’s nose from the starting gate.

“Yes, of course. Special Agent.”

Ordinarily, I’d have been in civilian clothes while on the job: a suit, or maybe pants and a blazer for that relaxed, hard-ass look. It’s easier to interview an officer, especially one higher up the ladder than you, when he or she has no idea what your rank is. Back at Brandywine, when Arlen had grouped “your passport” and “Ramstein” in the same sentence, I’d decided to put on an ACU. If I was headed to an air base in Germany, wearing a standard Army Combat Uniform would make moving around the place a lot easier. In a suit, I’d be stopped every other minute and asked to show ID. But I was now experiencing the downside of that decision. General von Koeppen looked me up and down and I could tell he didn’t like what he was seeing: an officer of inferior rank, and a rumpled one at that. Maybe Masters was right about the whole neatness thing. At least the feeling between Himmler and me was mutual from the get-go.

The general motioned for me to sit. He said, “The circumstances that have brought you to Ramstein are indeed unfortunate—” At that moment, one of his phones rang. He apologized and picked up the handset. “Ja,” he began. The call immediately consumed his attention. He swiveled in his seat and looked out the window at the C-5s and C-130s parked on the apron below. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, given that ja was the sum total of my grasp of the language. With his back to me, I used the opportunity to scope out his office. The place smelled powerfully of pine and vanilla — an air-freshener, I guessed — and the room was spotless. I wondered if he would have the chair I was sitting in disinfected after I left.

Occupying one complete wall was a bookshelf with glass doors, presumably to keep out the nonexistent dust, which housed a number of rows of red and green leather-bound tomes. Against another wall was a glass cabinet containing a pilot’s flight helmet, complete with oxygen mask, as well as a beautifully finished scale model of a Jaguar, a fighter, the German air force’s equivalent of our F-15 Eagle. Above this cabinet, a number of framed photos, some black-and-white but most in color, were symmetrically arrayed. A few showed the general with his squadron buddies, presumably, at various postings throughout Europe. Others had him riding at show-jumping events or standing beside assorted nags with ribbons around their necks. I recognized a face in one of these photos: Prince Charles, the future King of England. Other faces began to look familiar. One photo featured the general and a former U.S. president laughing together. Others showed him trackside at Formula One motor races with drivers and/or Hollywood stars. This guy was a player.

I turned my attention to the general’s desk. It was a vast gray granite number. There was the ubiquitous laptop, another smaller model of the Jaguar, and a couple of phones. No in-trays or paper of any kind. I wondered how “hands-on” he was. Roach had commented that Scott was a known workaholic, and I found myself wondering how much of the big picture Scott allowed his German comrade to handle. Zip, most likely. Thanks to the briefing notes provided Stateside, I knew the number-two position at Ramstein had to be filled by a German officer of the rank of lieutenant general. The chief of staff was a British air marshal. The French had their finger in the pie, too, along with the Belgians, the Czechs, the Poles, and more than half a dozen other nations. Being a North Atlantic Treaty Organization facility, the makeup of the combined HQ here had been set up to reflect NATO’s diversity. How the hell they got anything organized was beyond me.

“It’s a good plane, ja?”

“Certainly looks the business,” I said, caught out. While my eyes had been snooping around, von Koeppen had finished his call.

“Do you fly?”

“As little as possible. I’ve developed issues with it over time.”

“A great shame. Well, an air force needs all types of talents to function properly, doesn’t it? And yours must be exceptional for your Pentagon to have sent you all the way to investigate an accident, albeit a tragic one.”

He was trying hard, working it.

“A murder investigation, actually. The crash investigation team has concluded that General Scott’s plane was sabotaged.”

“Sabotage!” he said, jumping up as if his butt had suddenly located a nail in the seat of his leather chair.

He walked around his office a couple of times with one hand on his waist and the other a balled fist against his chin. “General Scott…murdered?” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it. God!”

I let von Koeppen have a moment uninterrupted with the brutal reality.

“That poor woman,” he said. “Mrs. Scott will be devastated. Have you informed her yet?”

“No, sir.”

“When will you do that?”

“After I leave here.”

Von Koeppen went to his window and watched a couple of those Turkish F-4s take off. “I don’t believe it,” he said again, shaking his head.

“If you don’t mind, I have to ask you some questions.”

“Of course.”

“Do you know anyone who may have wanted to kill the general?” Just about every murder investigation has that question asked at some stage. You always hope the answer’s yes.

“No,” he said, sticking to the usual pattern.

“No enemies?”

“No.”

“Did he gamble? Have any bad habits that might have brought him into contact with the wrong crowd?”

“No. General Scott was exactly what he seemed. He was at the top of his game, a fine pilot and an able administrator. He was also my friend. How was it done?”

“A vital part of his glider was tampered with.”

“What? How?”

“We don’t know yet, sir.”

“Who would have wanted him dead?” he asked, directing the question at the mirror shine of his black leather shoes.

And why? I added mentally.

“You will break the news gently to his widow…?”

No, I’ll bash her over the head with it. “Of course, General.”

“Anything you need to solve this crime, just ask,” he said. “It’s a terrible business…”

“Maybe one thing, sir.”

“Yes?”

Despite what I’d said to Gruyere about hearing the news of Scott’s death on CNN, I was reasonably sure that the story had not yet been made public. “I think it would be a good idea to release selective details to the press before they start printing unsubstantiated rumors. I would suggest also that we attribute General Scott’s death to accidental causes. At least for the time being.”

“Of course. Good idea.”

The phone rang again.

Von Koeppen excused himself and grabbed the handset with annoyance. “Ja,” he said. His tone instantly changed to one of deep concern. “Ja, of course, of course. Ja, I’ll tell him.”

Whoever was on the other end of the line was upset and giving von Koeppen both barrels. It sounded like a woman. He hung up, his face a mixture of embarrassment and anger. “Did you give orders for the police to seize General Scott’s files?”

What?

Before I could answer, he said, “That was Mrs. Harmony Scott. She is very distressed. I order you to release her husband’s effects back to her.”

I assumed this was Masters’s doing. If so, General von Koeppen placed me in a pickle. Masters and I weren’t much of a team, but she was the only team I had. She hadn’t warned me about going straight to Scott’s widow’s home, which could have been tit for tat with von Koeppen for his offhand dismissal of her. But I hoped it was for some other more substantial reason, because my reply to the acting commander of Ramstein Air Base was, “No, sir. I won’t do that.”

“I’m giving you a direct order, Major,” he said, stressing my rank to remind me who was boss. We were back to that superiority shit again.

I stood and faced him. “I’m sorry, General, but I cannot obey that order.” I was amazed at how quickly the dynamics in the room had changed. Masters must have left von Koeppen’s office, driven like Michael Schumacher over to Scott’s house, and sealed the victim’s records, ignoring as she did so the widow’s attack of apoplexia. I wondered if this was the reason why Masters so readily left von Koeppen’s office. Whatever, the woman had balls.

The door opened and a tall blonde with an unbelievably ample chest, wearing the uniform of a sergeant in the USAF, entered the room. She had to be von Koeppen’s PA — handpicked, I had no doubt, because of her efficiency. The sergeant informed her boss that some famous person was on the line and gave the name. The name she dropped was familiar and then it clicked — the President of Germany had called for a chat. Von Koeppen’s face had flushed a bright red and his eyes were locked with mine. He was a man unused to having his orders ignored. But he knew, and I knew, and I knew he knew, that I answered to a higher authority — namely the big cheese back at Andrews. The general blinked first. A call from the German president himself could not be ignored. “Dismissed, Special Agent,” he said with an imperious wave for the benefit of his PA.

The sergeant held the door open for me. I heard von Koeppen pick up the handset and start talking in a jocular fashion, switching from shitty to happy camper on a dime. The performance reminded me that generals are as much politicians as soldiers. As I passed the noncom, I happened to catch her name tag, and not because it was clinging to possibly the most spectacular hills this side of the Himalayas. It was because I caught the smile, a faint one, one that implied she appreciated seeing von Koeppen with a bug fisted up his colon. Maybe the general wasn’t well regarded, and I was suddenly interested to know why.