THE MESSAGES CAME in tandem. Updates. Portier unfolded them, studied them, and burned them. His patience was strung as taut as piano wire. He had his two best agents on it: one whom he trusted, one whom he did not.
Wincing, he endured the needle-stick of morphine as his nurse injected him. He’d fought the use of it as long as he could, but some days it was too much. Between the pain and the exhausting, eternal urge to urinate, he was in hell, and the only antidote, this.
Now he embraced the surge in his veins. The sweet relief. Elusive no more.
“Mr. Sadler, sir,” his secretary said as she watched the nurse depart. “On line four.”
Portier picked up the phone. They spoke in abstracts, but the meaning was clear.
“The client is getting anxious. I’d like to give them encouraging news,” Sadler said.
Portier’s normal annoyance was now chilled by the blessings of the poppy. “Tell them to be patient. They, of all people, know we must do this right.”
“Of course. But they are concerned by the lack of information.”
“Information? They dare ask for information?” Portier smiled, the first time in a while. “Tell them I’ve got information for them: Russia has 1600 missiles capable of reaching DC. Shall we please the client? Or shall we fuck this up and topple empires?”
“I understand. I’ll do what I can to appease them.”
“You do that,” said Portier, slamming down the phone.
With his heart rate up, the morphine blossomed. And it was pleasant, really, these thoughts of his: One colossally stupid, paying client; one target; one domino; one Armageddon. And it was all under his control. Once the bomb was found, he could do as he wished. And let the world be as damned as he was.
“See? It’s there. Can you see now?” Mac Killburn stabbed his stone-battered finger in the direction below them.
Stag, Jake, and Mac were parked at an overlook, where the mountain seemed to fall away just beyond the car rail straight into the clear waters of the Königssee.
Mac continued, “Right there on the ledge with the scrawny evergreen in front of it—”
Stag took a sharp intake of breath. He suddenly made out the shape of the truck that blended into the stone face. It was unnaturally hunkered down, like a bird settled in a nest, an outline of rust and flaking paint. It had suffered a terrific fall from the road. Anyone inside would have been killed on impact.
“You sure you want to go down there?” Mac asked, eyeing the harnesses and ropes still slung around his shoulders. “I mean, with your leg and all …”
“I want to go.” Stag turned to Jake. “You fine up here?”
Jake looked a bit unsure. “You know, maybe I’m not so old, after all. Perhaps, you should let me give it a try instead. I could—”
“I’m going,” Stag said, not letting him finish.
Mac encouraged. “I’ll belay. It’s really not a bad climb, just looks—”
“Bad,” Stag finished, slinging his metal-scarred leg over the car rail and fastening himself into the harness.
“Just take it slow. You’ve got time. I do this with kids all the time.” Mac gave him a smile.
Stag looked down at the cliff, then back at Jake’s grim face. Then he planted his ass in the harness and began the descent.
Interpol was quiet when Troost arrived. The few agents still there on a late Sunday evening were absorbed in work in their cubicles, eager to get their paperwork filed and be gone.
He closed the door to his office and settled down at his desk, the flashing screen on his laptop signaling new email. But he had nothing to give right now.
Where was Angelika Aradi, and why was she so hard to find? He had one job. And for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what her next move would be.
The frustration built inside him. Scanning messages, scanning email, he wanted to put his fist through the computer screen.
And no Maguire. He was on his own again, roaming around, doing God-knows what for God-knows who, and he’d lost track of him in Bali. Now Aradi was back in Berlin, and just as he’d begun his tracking, she’d disappeared, as if in a puff of smoke.
It was all getting on his nerves.
He looked up at the cheap tropical isle poster and thought of everything he wanted to do, instead of sitting in the beige little world of public service. And failing his last assignment was not the way to go about it, he fumed, picking up the phone.
“Troost here. Interpol,” he said into the phone. “I need to step up the information on Maguire. Have you gotten the latest report from the US?”
He listened.
“So they did get the FISA warrant on Aradi?” He suddenly relaxed. Now it was going to get a little easier. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allowed the US to monitor agents of foreign powers if the court deemed them worthy of a warrant. Should US citizens be tangentially caught up in conversations with monitored foreigners, it was permissable to surveille them, too. Now they could get everything on Aradi. And perhaps on Maguire.
“Send me everything you have? Great. Thank you. Thank you,” he repeated, almost unwilling to hang up. He wanted to savor the news.
Stag was gritting his teeth by the time his feet were on level ground again. His leg, torqued and twisted from balancing on the rock-face, throbbed like an SOB. Just above him, Mac was lowering himself on a solo device. Up top, Jake peered down, his white hair blending into the gray, overcast sky.
“You did fine!” Mac exclaimed, unclipping his carabineer.
“Yeah. Except going up’s the hard part.” Stag released his harness from the ropes. Then he walked to the end of the ledge where the truck had humped down after falling from the road decades ago.
“It’s an old one, all right. Before ’44 is what they say.” Mac followed him. “Not all here. The bumpers and the passenger door were taken for scrap. After the war, I imagine. Nobody would bother unless they were desperate.” He nodded to the climb back to the road.
“Have you ever heard what it was carrying?” Stag asked, touching the rusty side, then staring at his hand and wishing they’d thought to bring a Geiger counter.
“Naw. No stories I’ve ever heard. It did have a gun up top at one time though. It’s long gone.”
Stag stared through the rear doors, cracked open on wonky, rusted hinges. The truck bed was busted out as if eaten from underneath.
“Must’ve had something there at one time,” he said.
“Yeah. Never seen a gas tank like that.”
“Gas tank?” Stag asked.
“The kids were fooling around on the truck, and with the bed rusted out so bad, the tank fell out right beneath them.”
Stag felt a strange electric current begin to hum through him. “What happened to it? It must’ve been a helluva tank, judging from the hole in the bed.”
“Shit yeah. A big one. Went right over the edge there.” Mac pointed to the edge of the cliff next to the truck.
Stag went to the edge, unsteady and reluctant. He didn’t know what he would find, but instincts raged.
“Yep, went right over the edge. I figured it’d bounce right down into the lake, but it jammed itself into a crevice. See it? Right down there.”
Both men peered over the steep edge.
There it was. A great big aluminum “tank,” powdered with white rust, nestled in the crevice like a fallen chick from the nest.
A perfect ampoule of horror.