Jack got out and paused to get his bearings. Dust swirled in the beams of the Audi’s headlights. The sudden halt to the chase left him momentarily dizzy.
Which way?
He raised the HK and started jogging toward what he guessed was the tree line.
From the darkness, a lone gunshot.
A round in Effrem’s head? he wondered.
He slowed down, hunched over, and tried to localize the sound, then eased left. Somewhere in the distance a train whistle echoed, then went silent. Abruptly the dust thinned and he found himself in the trees. A branch smacked into his forehead. He landed on his butt, got back up. To his right one of the SUV’s turn signals blinked yellow in the darkness. He headed that way.
“Jack, he’s out there!” Effrem’s voice.
Jack froze, crouched, sidestepped behind a tree trunk. He assumed Effrem was referring to Möller. “Just him?” he called.
“The driver’s not moving.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got one of their guns.”
Jack didn’t know if this was true, but it was a smart move on Effrem’s part.
“Sit tight!” Faintly Jack heard the warble of sirens. “Police are on the way.”
This was as much a problem for them as it was for Möller, but Jack hoped the German would flee before he had time to think that through. Then again, Möller was just unflappable enough to do the opposite.
“No, I gotta get out!” Effrem shouted. “This thing’s leaking gas.”
Jack could smell it now.
From the direction of the railroad tracks came the clank of steel wheels. A train was coming.
Jack realized his NVGs were still hanging around his neck. Using his free hand, he settled them over his eyes. The left lens was shattered, leaving him only a grayish monocular view of his surroundings. With each beat of his heart the view vibrated. He took a calming breath, then looked around, starting behind himself and moving slowly toward the crashed SUV.
He stopped.
Movement.
He panned back and focused on a bush. Something there, he thought, a straight line in the curved branches. Too much bulk in the foliage. He took aim on the shape and fired once. Nothing moved.
A branch snapped. Jack spun right. Twenty feet away, a figure was moving through the trees toward him. Jack raised the HK, laid the front sight on the figure’s center of mass.
“Hallo, ist da jemand?” a male voice called. Hello, is anyone there?
Jack kept the HK trained on the man. Was it Möller?
“Wer is da?” Jack called.
“. . . Holzlager,” came the answer. Lumberyard.
“Polizei! Gas!” Luckily the word was the same in both languages. With any luck, the man would relay this message to the first police on scene. It might slow them down a bit.
“Okay, ich verstehe!”
Jack waited until the man had backed out of sight, then headed for the SUV. He had no time left. If Möller was lying in wait, Jack would know soon enough. Jack picked his way through the trees to the SUV, which was lying on its left side. As he approached, Effrem’s hands rose through the moonroof and wagged. His wrists were secured by a zip-tie. “Jack, is that you?”
“Yeah. Can you climb up?”
“I think so.”
The odor of gas was almost overpowering now, stinging Jack’s nostrils. Behind him, a train rattled past, its lighted windows flashing through the trees.
Jack made his way to the SUV’s windshield and peeked through. The driver lay in a heap, half against the door, half on the dashboard. His head was pointing in the wrong direction; his neck was broken. Jack photographed the SUV’s VIN.
Effrem hopped to the ground beside Jack. He stumbled, then steadied himself against the car. “Whoa . . . dizzy.”
Jack asked, “No gun?”
“I was lying, hoping Möller would hear me.”
“What about your thirty-eight? We can’t leave it behind.”
“Oh . . . yeah. It’s in the Audi’s center console.”
Jack took out his penknife, sawed through the zip-ties around Effrem’s wrists, and pocketed them. Effrem asked, “Souvenir?”
“DNA.” Effrem’s prints might be all over the inside of the car, but Jack wasn’t about to leave behind such an obvious piece of trace evidence. “We need to go. Can you run?”
“A close imitation, at least,” Effrem replied.
Jack had no specific plan aside from putting distance between them and the scene of the crash. Their best option was to head east, he decided, and try to make their way back to where Jack had parked his car near Kultfabrik.
—
They were a quarter-mile from the crash site, following the rail line north toward the Ostbahnhof and using the trees alongside the ballast embankment as cover. Occasionally a train would rumble past, its brakes squealing as it slowed for the station.
The chase and subsequent crash had attracted a lot of attention, Jack could tell from the flashing glow of emergency lights above the trees. He saw no sign of police helicopters, but that wouldn’t last long. Jack was already assembling the worst-case scenario in his head:
After securing the crash site and letting the firefighters deal with the SUV’s gas leak, the police had likely set up a perimeter, then begun searching the surrounding area for the vehicles’ occupants. One man was dead and gunfire had been exchanged during a high-speed chase. If the first officers on the scene believed the lumberyard worker, one of Munich’s finest had inexplicably disappeared from the scene, possibly the victim of a kidnapping.
Around them, the trees began to thin. Jack saw the glow of streetlamps.
“Wait here,” he said, and kept walking until he reached the sidewalk.
A police car drove past, its spotlight skimming over the trees. Jack stepped back deeper into the shadows until the car was out of sight, then returned to where Effrem was leaning against a tree, massaging the side of his head.
Jack said, “We’re at Rosenheimer Strasse. Not far to Kultfabrik.”
“Let’s hail a taxi,” Effrem said.
“We can’t afford witnesses,” Jack replied.
If they hadn’t already, the police would soon be contacting taxi companies, asking if anyone had done just what Effrem was suggesting.
“My head hurts. Bastard thwacked me with a gun.”
“Möller?”
“Who else? Just because I tried to kick him in the head.”
Courtesy of Stephan Möller, Effrem’s head had taken a beating, first from a bullet graze, now from a pistol-whipping.
“I’m starting to not like the guy very much.”
Jack couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t blame you.”
“What now? Which way?”
Jack checked his watch: less than twenty minutes since the chase had started. It seemed much longer than that. He wondered if the police had managed to identify Kultfabrik as the point of origin yet. He doubted it. Right now, drunken complaints from Optimolwerke people were probably low on the list of priorities for the police. It would take time to assemble the puzzle pieces.
Jack took off his jacket, pulled it inside out, exposing the red lining, and handed it to Effrem. “Put the hood up, too. You look like shit.”
Effrem shrugged. “Thanks for coming after me, by the way.”
Lights flashing, another police car raced down Rosenheimer Strasse, followed closely by a matte-black panel truck containing what Jack guessed was Munich PD’s version of a SWAT team.
“How’re we going to explain this, Jack? They’ll find out the Audi’s under my name.”
Jack thought about it for a moment. “Go back to the hotel. The police will show up eventually. Your story is the car must have been stolen. You must have left the keys in it. Stick with that st
ory and keep it simple. Just like you did with the Alexandria cops. Be curious but not too curious. Ask them for a report number so you can call your insurance company and the rental car agency—”
“Yeah, I get it,” Effrem said.
Jack’s cell phone chimed. He dug it out of his pocket and checked the screen. It was a text from Belinda Hahn—or at least from her cell phone. She wasn’t using the burner he’d given her. Jack, I think there are people outside.
Effrem was looking over his shoulder. “A trap, you think?”
Jack texted back to Belinda, Blue.
She replied with their agreed-upon confirmation code: Little Boy.
Effrem said, “Still not proof.”
“It’s as close as we’re going to get. We don’t really have a choice.”
“They could have gotten it out of her. Or she could be involved—”
Jack cut him off: “Effrem, we’re not ignoring this.” Even so, the timing of Belinda’s call for help wasn’t lost on Jack. Möller had three loose ends—Jack, Effrem, and Belinda Hahn—and the German had just tried to wrap up Jack and Effrem. Why not go for all three on the same night?
Jack texted her: Where are you?
Belinda replied with an address, then asked, What do I do?
Lock doors, windows. Hide, he answered. If anyone tries to force the door, call the police. Have pepper spray?
Yes. I’m scared, Belinda texted.
I’m on my way.
NORTH OF MUNICH, GERMANY
Jack turned off the highway and headed north. His headlights illuminated a sign that read MARZLING 3 KM. According to his dashboard clock, almost an hour had passed since Belinda had first texted him.
“Damn it.”
He checked his phone. It had been almost fifteen minutes since Belinda had responded to his last text. To his dismay, she had simply said, Please hurry.
The day before, when he’d advised her to find someplace else to stay, he should have been more specific, “someplace nearby.” According to Google Earth, the address she’d texted him from belonged to what looked like a farmhouse-turned-cabin twenty-five miles north of Munich, just outside the village of Marzling and on the banks of the Isar River.
It had taken him and Effrem a precious fifteen minutes to make their way back to Kultfabrik, and then another fifteen for Jack to drop Effrem at the hotel and reach the highway leading out of the city.
Following his phone’s navigation cues, Jack drove into Marzling proper, then turned south onto Isarstrasse, which took him past a mile of farm fields and homesteads to a bridge spanning the Isar. Once across this, he turned left onto a dirt road that followed the river’s meandering banks. During his drive north, rain clouds had thickened and the wind had picked up, rippling the river’s surface. Fat raindrops spattered against his windshield.
When he was a half-mile from the cabin, he reached a fork in the road. To the right was Blaue Forelle Strasse, the cabin’s de facto driveway. He drove fifty feet past it and pulled over.
Part of him wanted to hurry, to find out why Belinda had gone silent, but he resisted the impulse. At Kultfabrik he’d rushed his clearing of the building’s third floor and had almost paid for it. If Belinda was already dead or had been taken, a headlong charge at the cabin would do nothing to change that.
He texted her again: What’s happening?
After nearly a minute of silence, the phone chimed with her response: They had been in the house.
Red, Jack texted.
Baron, came Belinda’s reply.
Gone now?
I think so, she replied.
How long ago?
Twenty, thirty minutes, Belinda texted.
How many men? asked Jack.
Don’t know! Afraid to move! Hiding in closet.
There were two possibilities, Jack decided, both plausible, and one perhaps the product of overthinking on his part: He’d gotten Belinda’s text within ten minutes of the crash at the lumberyard. If Möller’s men had been sitting on Belinda’s cabin, Möller might have ordered them to spook her, in hopes that she would send out a call for help, and then to hunker down and wait for Jack’s arrival. They had nothing to lose but time on a fruitless ambush. The second possibility was more straightforward: Having failed to kill Jack and Effrem, Möller had decided to minimize his exposure and ordered his men to withdraw. As for Effrem’s suggestion that Belinda was in league with Möller, Jack’s gut said no.
He called up Google Earth and zoomed in on the property. Sitting as it did in the river’s valley, the cabin was surrounded by trees in full bloom, fed by the Isar’s spring melt. While the terrain ruled out ambush-at-a-distance with long guns, the thickness of the foliage offered plenty of places for bad guys to hide and wait for Jack’s approach.
Nothing’s perfect, he reminded himself. No plan survives first contact with the enemy. He’d deal with whatever came.
Jack texted Belinda, I’m just passing Eching. Be there asap.
If this got passed on to Möller’s men, it might give Jack an advantage.
—
Jack spent the next thirty minutes picking his way through the forest until his legs were numb from crouching, his elbows and knees were raw from crawling, and the batteries in his off-brand NVGs were so weak that it was like staring into a static-filled television. The rain clouds had so far failed to open up, but rather spit droplets that struck the ground like hurled pebbles. Jack could feel a bone-deep cold settling into his limbs.
When the rear wall of the cabin finally came into view he forced himself to lie still in the undergrowth and watch for another five minutes. The cabin had indeed once been a Bavarian-style three-story farmhouse, with a cedar mansard roof, whitewashed exterior, and dark green shutters. It wasn’t far from what Jack’s younger self would have imagined a gingerbread house to be like.
Nothing was moving and he saw no lights.
Jack crawled ahead and wormed his way underneath the wraparound porch, then got out his phone and texted, Almost there. Turning onto Blaue Forelle.
This was the road leading directly to the cabin. Now to see if his impending approach got a reaction.
Belinda didn’t respond.
Another five minutes passed. Either he was alone or Möller’s men were too damned good for him to spot. Next, the house.
—
Before he even reached the front door he could smell the stink of gas. Jack holstered his gun; its muzzle blast would be more than enough to ignite the gas. He pulled the collar of his T-shirt up over his nose and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. He pushed through, then sidestepped left, clear of the backlit doorway.
Belinda had said she was in a closet. Where, though? He texted the question to Belinda and again he got no response. Depending on how long this gas had been flowing, she could already be dead.
Led by his penlight, Jack moved through the cabin as quickly and quietly as possible, opening windows and stopping at every door that might be a closet until he’d cleared the first floor. He climbed the stairs and repeated his search. At the end of the hall, in a bathroom linen closet, he found Belinda curled into a ball. Clutched loosely in her hand was a cell phone, not the burner he’d given her. He checked her pulse. She was alive. He shook her. “Belinda!” No response. He rubbed his knuckles hard against her sternum and she let out a moan.
Downstairs, a door slammed.
Jack froze. Listened.
He crept to the bathroom window and looked out. The pane beside his head exploded. He ducked, dropped to his belly, crawled back to Belinda. He grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the hallway.
Think, Jack. Get shot dead or burned alive?
Belinda’s cell phone beeped. Jack grabbed it, checked the screen. It was a text.
Come out. You come with us, she goes free.
Beyond the obvious—that
someone preferred him alive for the time being—this text message told Jack something: If they planned to blow the house, the ignition source was probably already in place and remotely controlled.
How and where?
Buy some time, Jack. He texted back: She’s almost dead. Can’t move her until she’s awake.
Come out now. She will be tended to.
This was a lie, of course.
When I know she’s okay, I’ll come out. Need fresh air. Breaking window. Don’t shoot.
No response.
Jack crawled back into the bathroom to the window and used the butt of his HK to shatter the remaining panes.
The phone beeped: No more windows. Five minutes. Be smart.
Was the cabin close enough to Marzling to be on city gas? Jack wondered. Maybe not. Propane, then. He hadn’t seen a tank outside, so where was it? The most likely place was the basement.
He pulled Belinda close to him, scooped her onto his shoulder, then crouch-walked back down the stairs to the kitchen. He found the basement door set into the wall behind the dining table. As quietly as he could, he slid this aside and opened the door, revealing a set of stairs leading down into darkness. The stench of propane washed over Jack, almost doubling him over. He coughed and bile filled his mouth; he swallowed it. His vision was sparkling. Though all the windows on the first floor were open, propane tended to settle, so he was likely standing waist-deep in the gas.
Go out the front, Jack. Surrender, take your chances, play for time. That might work for him, but not for Belinda, he knew. They would kill her regardless. The other option, to go out shooting, was also a nonstarter. In Hollywood blockbusters this desperate gambit was glorious to behold and almost always successful, but it rarely worked in the real world. He and Belinda wouldn’t make it off the porch before being cut down.
Root cellar. Unbidden, the words popped into Jack’s head. Maybe.
Another text: Three minutes.
Jack replied, She may be dying. Not coming out until she’s awake. You want me, you have to wait.
No, came the reply.
Send someone in here to help me.
There was no response, which was no surprise. For all he knew, his capture was a secondary priority. If he pushed too far they might simply blow the house.