CHAPTER 29
SHAW WAS STANDING INSIDE Heidelberg Castle in front of the largest wooden barrel in the world ever to hold wine. He’d flown into Frankfurt from Edinburgh the night before and driven to Heidelberg that morning. His assignment this time was relatively easy, passing some papers to another man to be carried up the line.
After the task was completed he was supposed to drive to see Anna’s parents at their bookshop in the little town of Wisbach. Should he still go? Frank had made it clear that Shaw’s enslavement was not going to end anytime soon. In fact, it might only terminate when his life did. So what was the reason to go to Wisbach? He could not marry Anna and continue to work for Frank. He never should have asked her to marry him. Now that he had, he should just get the hell out of her life so someone else could give her what he couldn’t.
That would be the noble, unselfish thing to do, and yet Shaw felt neither noble nor unselfish. He did not want to lose Anna. He could not lose Anna. He would drive to Wisbach and perhaps on the way he would miraculously think of some way out of this nightmare.
The papers were passed a half hour later with nary a glitch to a young man who looked like an American college student right down to the Red Sox ball cap, grungy jeans, and Nike tennis shoes. Shaw continued his role as tourist by taking pictures of the castle and its grounds and learning about the history of one of Germany’s most famous castles and its seven-meter-thick walls. When it was safe to leave, he nearly sprinted back down the hill to his rental car and drove off for Wisbach.
He passed through the edge of Karlsruhe on his way to Wisbach. As Anna had said, the bookshop was easy to locate, being on the main road of the quaint village.
Natascha Fischer met him at the door. There was much of her daughter’s height and good looks in the mother. However, where Anna was talkative and outgoing, her mother was reserved and did not meet his eye as he introduced himself.
The bookshop was small but the shelves had good bones of aged pine and dark walnut. There was a rolling ladder perched against one wall of old volumes, and against another was a large desk littered with papers. Here sat a man even larger than Shaw. Wolfgang Fischer rose and extended his hand. Anna had told them he was coming. Natascha put a “Closed” sign on the door and locked it. She then followed her husband and Shaw through a door into the adjoining flat where the Fischers lived.
Like the bookshop it was neat and nicely decorated with many photos of Anna from infant to grown woman. While Natascha put on a pot of coffee, Wolfgang pulled out a small bottle of cognac from a cupboard.
“An event like this calls for something stronger than coffee, eh?” Wolfgang said in English, but with a heavy German accent that Shaw had a little difficulty following. Wolfgang poured out the drinks, sat down, and stared expectantly up at Shaw, who leaned nervously against a rough-hewn wooden mantel.
“Anna has told us much about you,” Wolfgang began in a helpful tone.
Natascha came back in with the coffee and some cakes on a tray. She looked disapprovingly at the glass of cognac in her husband’s hand.
“It is not yet four o’clock,” she said in a scolding tone.
Her husband grinned. “Shaw here was just about to say something.”
Natascha sat and poured out the coffee, but she shot anxious glances at their visitor.
Shaw felt the perspiration staining his armpits. He almost never broke a sweat from nerves, even when people were shooting at him. He felt like a schoolboy on his first date. His mouth was dry; his legs seemed unable to support his weight.
“I came here to ask you something,” he finally said, sitting down opposite them.
I might as well just say it. He looked directly at Dad. “Would you have a problem with me marrying your daughter?”
Wolfgang glanced at his wife, his lips curling into a smile. Natascha dabbed her eyes with a tea napkin.
Wolfgang lurched up, pulled Shaw to his feet, and gave him a bear hug that made Shaw’s ribs ache. Laughing, he boomed, “Does that answer your question?”
Natascha nimbly got to her feet, took Shaw’s hand in a firm grip, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and said in a quiet voice, “You have made Anna so happy. Never has she talked of anyone as she does you. Never. Has she, Wolfie?”
He shook his head. “And she makes you happy, yes, I am sure?”
“Happier than I’ve ever been.”
“When will the wedding be?” asked Natascha. “It will be here, of course, where her family is?”
Wolfgang looked at her crossly. “Well, what of Shaw’s family? Maybe they do not like to come to a small village like this.” He slapped Shaw on the arm, unfortunately on the spot where he’d been winged by the bullet in Scotland. It was all Shaw could do not to cry out in pain.
“Here will be fine,” he said. “I, uh, I have no family.” The Fischers looked at him curiously. “I was an orphan.”
Natascha’s bottom lip trembled. “Anna did not tell us this. I am sorry.”
Wolfgang said, “But now you have family. Lots of family. In Wisbach alone there are ten Fischers. If you include Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, it is many more. In Germany, thousands, is that not right, Tasha?”
“But not all will be coming to the wedding,” Natascha said hastily.
“Grandchildren,” Wolfgang said, staring at Shaw, a broad smile on his face. “Finally, I will have grandchildren. You and Anna will have a big family of course.”
“Wolfgang,” Natascha said sternly, “that is none of our business. And Anna is not that young anymore. She has a career, a very important career. And it is in the hands of God. We wanted many children but only had Anna.”
“Well, not a huge family then,” Wolfgang amended. “No more than four or five.”
“We’ll do the best we can,” Shaw replied uneasily.
“Anna said you were a consultant,” Wolfgang continued. “What is it that you consult in?”
Shaw wondered if the daughter had suggested this line of questioning to force him to tell her parents what he’d already confided in her.
“International relations,” he answered.
“Is there much work in this international relations?” Wolfgang asked.
“More than you can possibly imagine.” Then he added, “Well, actually it’s a bit more than that.” As they looked on expectantly, he leaned against the wall. The stout wood seemed to stiffen his resolve. “I work with an agency that helps make the world safer.”
They exchanged glances. Wolfgang said, “You are like a policeman? A policeman of the world?”
“Something like that. But I’m planning on retiring when Anna and I get married.”
Gratefully, they only asked a few more questions about his job, perhaps sensing it might entail classified information.
If they only knew.
Shaw stayed with the Fischers for over an hour. As soon as he’d passed out of sight a man walked up to their front door and knocked. When Natascha opened the door, the man said, “Mrs. Fischer, I need to talk to you about the man you just met with.”
He swept past her without waiting for an invitation. As Wolfgang joined her the fellow said, “I think both of you should sit down.”
CHAPTER 30
RUSSIA AGAIN DID SOMETHING utterly foreseeable, much to Nicolas Creel’s delight. Isolated and pushed to the edge, it flexed its muscles by dropping from a Tu-160 aircraft the granddaddy of all non-nuclear bombs. Its thermobaric explosive yield was equal to 120,000 pounds of TNT, or over five times that of a similar bomb the United States had previously dropped, leaving a crater with radius of fifteen hundred feet and painting the sky with a terrifying but fortunately nonradioactive mushroom cloud. The detonation was termed part of a routine readiness drill by President Gorshkov, who immediately thereafter put the Russian military on the highest alert. He also declared in the strongest possible terms that when Russia found out who was behind this smear campaign, it would be considered an act of war.
“I pity the country or organiz
ation behind it, whoever they are and however powerful they might be,” Gorshkov added ominously, verbally lifting a middle finger to the United States, which had strenuously denied any connection to the anti-Russia campaign. However, in diplomatic circles this was considered almost an admission of guilt, for who else had enough money or motive to do such a thing other than the Americans? they reasoned.
Nicolas Creel laughed as he read this latest report. He was in the conference room of his Boeing jet thirty-nine thousand feet over the Atlantic. Caesar sat across from him. Creel spun the paper around so Caesar could see the headline about Russia dropping the bomb and Gorshkov’s threats.
Creel scoffed. “An act of war? To fight a war you need an army, and the Russians don’t have one. They’re sitting on a mountain of oil revenue but by presidential decree, the idiocy of which strains credulity, they can’t spend more than three and a half percent of their GNP on the military. That comes out to twenty-two billion U.S. a year, and only eight billion of that is earmarked for arms purchases. You can’t build major weapons systems for that kind of chump change. Look at the Americans. Including supplemental budgets they spend over seven hundred billion a year on defense, over twenty percent of the federal budget. The Yanks outspend every other country in the world combined on weapons. And that’s the way it should be. Superpower status doesn’t come cheap, but it sure as hell is worth it. Because when you want to kick ass, you can kick ass, my friend.”
Creel pointed to a statistical graph on the paper detailing Russian troop strength.
“The Russians may have five army divisions combat ready, five, if they’re lucky. They used to build a third of the world’s naval ships. Now they can’t even construct an aircraft carrier because the idiots don’t have a single shipyard dock in the country large enough to do the work. Some planning that was, comrade. And since their own government won’t use their money to buy anything, the Russian arms manufacturers have to export their junk out to India and China and any other suckers looking to buy cheap and not sweat the specs too hard. The Yanks, Brits, Germans, and French wouldn’t think of putting a single penny down for the Russians’ crap. And the reformed communists haven’t added any new aircraft to their frontline defenses in fifteen years. They’ve got over three thousand planes but they’re nowhere near the standard of the West and half their military bases don’t even have fuel for them. Their latest-generation combat fighter never even got funded. They’ve still got nukes, but they can’t use them. If they fire one off, the Yanks will send ten back in retaliation.
“Their vaunted navy consists of twenty creaky ships, including one decades-old carrier, but not counting the subs that tend to find their way to the bottom of the ocean with regularity and stay there. The Americans have three hundred ships including ten nuke-powered Nimitzclass carriers. And that doesn’t even take into account the dozen or so Ohioclass ballistic subs. Each one of those suckers can take out an entire country. I should know because one of my subsidiaries built them. Hell, the Yanks could wipe out the Red Menace in a week without breaking a sweat.” Creel chucked again. “But still I’m a happy man.”
Caesar finished reading the article. “Why? The Russians obviously won’t be buying what you’re selling.”
Creel took a moment to light up a cigar. “Last year, President Gorshkov, in a rare moment of sanity, implemented a new eight-year state armaments program worth nearly five trillion rubles, that’s $186 billion U.S. That’s over and above the current defense budget.”
“Okay, I see your interest.”
“That’s what I thought when I had my people over there get the plan pushed through. But sorry, that doesn’t get me excited. It was only a start.”
“Excuse me saying so, but I just don’t get you, Mr. Creel.”
The billionaire smiled. “Join the rest of civilization. So let me explain. The bulk of those dollars are going to Russian outfits. But if the Russians would match the U.S. in defense spending as a ratio of GNP, that would mean an extra seventy billion per year on top of what they’re spending now plus the new armaments program. There is no way the homegrown war machine over there can do that amount of work. And the buildup they need would take about ten years. That means they have to look to the West, to me actually, to get it done. In inflation-adjusted dollars that’s nearly a trillion dollars U.S. Let’s say Ares gets seventy percent of that work. That’s seven hundred billion dollars U.S. Now, that gets my blood pressure going.”
“But why would they do that, match the U.S?”
“They would if they feel they have to.”
“Konstantin? This publicity campaign you’ve put together? Think that’ll force them to become like the old Soviet Union and fill your coffers?”
“Not that simple. The Red Menace campaign has isolated them from the rest of the world, sure. And right now you could claim that Gorshkov eats babies for breakfast and half the world would believe it. But for my plan to work I’ve got to raise the stakes. The Russians are not fools. If they’re going to pay for the best, they need a damn good reason.”
“So how do you raise the stakes?”
“That’s where you come in. I need a dozen men all Russian, or at least Russian-looking.”
“No problem. Unemployment’s high over there, so I’ve got Russians coming out of my ass. They’ll kill with guns, knives, or their bare hands, it doesn’t matter to them.”
“I didn’t think it would. I also need some of them to be computer whizzes.”
“Again, not a problem. Russia leads the planet in world-class hackers.”
Creel leaned forward and drew out a file. “Good, now here’s the boots on the ground.”
CHAPTER 31
ANNA FISCHER WAS JUST ABOUT to open the door of her flat in London when the man walked up behind her. Sensing someone’s presence, and always on guard after her mugging in Berlin, she whirled around, her fingers clasping the pepper spray that was attached to her key ring.
The man already had his badge out.
“Ms. Fischer? I’m Frank Wells. I’d like to talk with you about Shaw.”
She stared at his badge and then up at him.
“I do not recognize that agency,” she said.
“Most people wouldn’t. Can we go inside?”
“I don’t have strange men to my flat. You say you know Shaw. You could be lying.”
“Should’ve known. A lady with all your degrees isn’t stupid.”
“All my degrees? How do you know that?”
“I have a two-inch file on Anastasia Brigitte Sabena Fischer. Your parents, Wolfgang and Natascha, live in Wisbach, Germany, where they run a bookshop. You’re an only child. A champion swimmer. Advanced degrees from, among others, Cambridge. A stint at the UN and now employed at The Phoenix Group here in London.” He eyed the ring on her finger. “And currently engaged to Shaw.” He looked away from her astonished face and glanced at the front door. “Now can we go up to your flat? It’s important.”
They sat in her small front room overlooking the street. Frank looked around her apartment.
“Nice place.”
“Why have you come here?”
“Like I said, to talk to you about Shaw. Just like my men have done with your parents.”
“My parents! No, you’re wrong. They would’ve called…”
“We told them not to, so I’d have a chance to see you first.” He eyed her keenly. “He proposed to you in Dublin, didn’t he?”
“I can’t see why that’s any business of yours.”
Frank ignored this. “And he told you he was retiring from his job.”
Anna found herself nodding in spite of herself.
“Let me tell you the truth. Would you like that?”
Tears gathered in Anna’s eyes. She whisked them away with her hand and composed herself.
“If you have something to tell me, say it. But I will determine for myself if it’s true.”
Frank chuckled, then nodded. “Fair enough.” He leaned forward an
d cocked his head so she could see the sunken hole in his scalp. “See that little divot? That was courtesy of a round Shaw fired into my brain when I was trying to arrest him.”
Anna eyed him coldly. “Arrest him? For what?”
“That’s classified. But it wasn’t for not paying a parking ticket, I can tell you that. After I recovered and we caught up to him again, he started working for us.”
“Working for you? After he almost killed you? You said you wanted to arrest him. If he’s a criminal and you say he shot you, why isn’t he in jail?”
Frank held up a cigar. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Yes.”
He put the cigar away. “My world doesn’t strictly involve good and bad, right and wrong. Shaw would be in prison right now, but for one thing.”
“What’s that?” she said fiercely.
“Your fiancé possesses some pretty incredible skills. No one I’ve