A Death in Geneva (20 page)

Pitsch's talents had been forged in the furnace of twentieth-century political violence. He was the expert. His psychological and tactical grasp of hostage survival, from capture to captivity, negotiations with the abductors, and dealing with the traumas of post-release marked a professional skill unknown a generation before. Five feet eight inches, he was physically unexceptional in his white shirt, collar open, sleeves rolled above the elbows, brown wool slacks, and brown shoes. As with the machines of war parked beneath him, this was a deception. Pitsch was a warrior in time of peace, trained for a lethal, more demanding fight than required of any commando at war, trained for the decathlon of terrorism—light and heavy arms, explosives, storming buildings, aircraft, armed and fortified positions. He was adept in land, sea, and air actions; in the use of communications; in the timing and movement of men; in the precise application of force by hand, karate, knife, and fire power.

Through his violent missions, heroism, and successes, Pitsch had emerged as the recognized GSG-9 counterterrorist—no ribbons, no razor-sharp creases in a peacock's uniform. The spit and polish of the counterterrorist doctrine he shaped lay in his ability to translate the classic requirements of military leadership: to understand the enemy, to anticipate his actions, to exploit the terrain, and to lead his men under fire to suppress fanatical pockets of death-wreaking mayhem in a society at peace.

Pitsch had several hours' headstart over Bromberger and Sweetman in the investigation of the Burdette assassination. But, a week and a day after the killing, the three agents were searching together for the first opening in the wall, the first lead.

At the sound of a voice, the German returned in two strides to the cool shadows of the dining room. “Karl, our Mission has struck
out! We've got a regional security officer, Howard Weems, excellent reputation—”

“I've met him once, Pierce. It's clear he blew it, before, during and after—not properly prepared, caught by surprise, panicked. It could happen to the best.”

“From what he told me, he left the entire, on-scene investigation play to the Swiss, came home with his goddamned pockets inside out, not even a cartridge shell. No witness interviews—Swiss kept edging him away—unbelievable: I told him to take a couple of days, then we'd walk him through it again. The poor bastard is up to his ears in investigators. We must have four different levels of Washington in town, all mouthing one line—RAF!”

“RAF isn't Weems's problem,” Sweetman snapped, “more like RAB, real afraid for his own butt. He leaves it to the Swiss, but you listen to some of the detail he spouts and he had to be in the limo with Burdette at the time of the hit. He's not squaring with us, not yet that is—scared for that nice paycheck of his. We'll walk him through it again and uncover that butt of his, bet your mortgages on it, first clean, solid prediction of this game.”

Pitsch savored this without comment, then picked up the conversation with a change of gears. “Has his Highness, the minister of justice, granted you an audience?”

“This Friday. Lancaster had to hit him directly. Is he just ignorant, or is he deliberately such a son of a bitch?”

“You know,” Pitsch took two more nuts, “it is convenient to blame all bad weather on the bomb and all European bloodshed on the RAF” He extracted a large hunk of walnut flesh. “In the past, the Swiss have had to contend with six hijackings at Cointrin, Geneva, including that particularly bloody twelve hours with the Eagles of the Palestine Revolution. During the same period, Swiss banks have been hit by terrorists, mainly German and Italian, in need of expense monies. The Swiss have been pinched from the north and the south.

“Ten weeks ago, the authorities here moved in on three Bader-Meinhoff, as you are aware, in a Zurich flat—not my responsibility, but our people were cooperating. The bankers receive a steady flow of death threats, abduction attempts, linked to the terrorists' ransom demands, the demands for release of imprisoned killer colleagues—threats stretching from Tokyo to Belfast. In the past two years, there
have been four attempts, one successful, against Swiss Army munitions depots. The pace has continued to quicken for His Excellency, Minister Grabner. He is overworked, feeling raw, exposed, and—it is all because of these outsiders. His blood pressure dances high in the warning zone; his stomach is shot; and, as you are learning, he is not given to collaboration.”

“I don't see a single shred pointing to or from the RAF at this point, Karl. The killing itself was political in style, the weapons, the close-in moving operation. Hell, she hadn't been here long enough to be a target for Swiss crime. The escape was also the work of professionals. But, and here's where I shift gears, no telephone calls, aside from the lunatics, no messages, no contact with TV, radio, the press?”

“In other words, no exploitation, and that's not political.”

Bromberger prowled through the loose-leaf notebook before him, scanning the dossiers of terrorists with recent footprints in Switzerland, the names of the cells, factions, armies, movements; their avowed purposes, home bases, size, composition, leadership structure,
modus operandi,
record of actions. The file was thick: FRG, France, Iraq, Ireland, U.K., Italy, PLO, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay. “All these Latinos, the South Americans; there's nothing there, radicals in exile, just like the Corsican National Liberation Front, all scheming against the mother country—”

“The same is true for Spain,” Sweetman said. “Those poor bastards are dreaming of the easy days of La Pasionaria. ‘It is better to die on your feet than your knees' . . .”

Pitsch's head turned with the words. “La Pasionaria, yah, yah. A Madrid!”

“
Dolores a Madrid!
”

“
Dolores, si!
”

“
Si, si, si
. . . the old war cry.”

“It's rough there. The Basque Separatists are gunning from one flank; GRAPO's guns are mowing down the Army from the left.”

“This summary shows GRAPO in Switzerland this year, Karl.” Bromberger held up a smudged onionskin page.

“Money, not politics—robberies to fund the paternal feud. Grabner will have the details. They weren't after your ambassador. Tell me, Pierce, these are good dossiers, well constructed; why isn't there a U.S. section; are you that confident?”

“Hell, no. Washington is also working the case as a possible domestic homicide. But, if it were a U.S. political action, we are fairly confident we would have heard from the killers. Down through the years, a lot of bombings by the Puetro Rican independence types, Washington, New York, attacks against our people in Puerto Rico, Even then, publicity has consistently been part of their game.”

Pitsch sat back, a finger through the front of his shirt, scratching his hairless chest. “That is grand; an approach you cultivate only in the New World. You must export some of your confidence, Pierce, a private consignment to S-9. We run low from time to time.”

“Confidence comes with keeping the specimen under the glass at all times—better links, better cooperation between people who know what the hell they're doing. The computers are OK, but only if you understand what they're feeding you. The more we know, the narrower the field. The surveillance printout is not worth a damn after the bomb has blown.”

Pitsch laughed. “Yah—there are limits. By the way, the other day, one of my colleagues alerted me to one of your private U.S. firms—I forget the name—a company specializing in the newly prioritized trade of security for executives, a company apparently making less than discreet inquires about a deal to handle the protection of one of
our
largest houses! A few checks around—we found these same swashbucklers were offering their services not only to Germany but to Israeli Aircraft Industries, with letters to the president, the executive vice president and the corporate vice presidents!” He laughed harder. “And separately were dangling another proposal before the untempted eyes of Aermacchi, yes Italy, to look after its president and managing directors. You will do us all a great favor if you pass the word to these new security commandos that if they ever should land such a contract here they would be in so deep that there is every prospect they would stay there permanently, at least six feet deep in the earth.”

Sweetman swatted a hand in the air, batting away the idea. “Takes solid brass, the bastards have no place over here. But Karl, you don't seem too worried. You know, getting back to the U.S., we've got a good track record against all prime suspects. We don't have your problem! The action's over here, and you know it. You! You're seeing some damned good results, ought to be wearing the Iron Cross, or whatever the fatherland awards these days. The sweeps!—the new multinationals, how many did you bag in Bordeaux?”

“Twenty-six, completely off-guard. A formal headquarters, gentlemen, eleven
million
marks in four currencies, passport facility, two crates of grenade throwers, five hundred kilos of ammunition, pistols, submachine guns, nine of the latest Italian Anti-Terrorist rifles, snipers with infrared scopes, six Czech rifles—more. Quite a group, RAF, Red Brigade, and two Iraqi strays—the first time that we had coordinated a strike step by step with the British, French, and Italians.”

“What weight do you give to those pious assurances of your buddies the PIRA, Pierce? How about you, Karl?”

“They're all over Europe, with two principal missions, buying arms and assassinating the British. Switzerland is off their beaten path; and there's still only one focus, the Brits.”

“It may be somewhat more complicated, wouldn't you think, Pierce, given their decision to establish liaison with the PLO training operations in Syria?”

“More elaborate, not more complicated. Their objective hasn't changed.”

“This circling of the quarry has had its value, if only for its process—moving in from the periphery of the continent—of elimination.” Pitsch drew a circle on a yellow, lined pad as he spoke, then, with quick strokes, turning the page with each new mark of the pencil, added a succession of arrows shooting in from the circumference to the center. He circled the circle with a larger circle and slapped the pencil down. “Similarly, there is nothing we are aware of that would implicate, in terms of hard evidence, any of the Middle East madmen.” His hands leafed through the file again. “The Shiite Military Army, the Arab Revolutionary Army, the Palestinian Commando, the Eagles, the PLO, even though they are spreading people through Europe faster than a measles rash.”

“The Libyans?”

Sweetman pushed his file away. “The Swiss can smell a Libyan on the far side of the Alps.”

“Yah, tight surveillance. They have been very successful there in picking up the right wavelengths. The Libyans prefer Italy, anywhere in Italy; they prefer Paris, anywhere over Herr Grabner's hospitality.”

“What about a Soviet crossweave; I don't see it.”

“The only eyewitness reports that the Swiss have shared refer to banana-shaped magazines on at least some of the killers' weapons.”

“Kalashnikov—AK-47s.”

“Probably, but not a certainty. If so, that would hardly be a finger toward the Soviets, the AK-47 is a very available weapon. It is manufactured in what, half-a-dozen countries? It is everyone's favorite—cheap, easy to strip, no neat holes, kills more than it wounds.”

“Naw, that's a blind alley.”

“We don't have governments running against governments here. The stakes are too high with an ambassador; scare the hell out of themselves, risk a goddamned war. The big bear isn't going to do that.”

“There's another slant here, the thousand-to-one chance that we're dealing with some free-lancers, killers you wouldn't find in these files.” Bromberger rifled through a few pages as he spoke. “My unsavory friend Lynch hit on this the other day, a new dimension of murders for other than political purposes carried out so as to leave the footprint of the terrorist, and confuse the scent.”

“Of course, of course it's a possibility,” Pitsch replied. “We have records of such murders in France and in England. No, you cannot discount murderers. She had her enemies. You can't discount madmen. You cannot discount the killer seeking thrills—but there is no pattern for such activity in Switzerland, not Geneva.”

“The enemies, the enemies' angle needs a hard, fast look, hard and fast,” Sweetman said. “We've played it against the computers in Washington. From what I know, the Yard has also. Nothing. How about your megabyte monster in Wiesbaden, Karl? Let's feed it everything we've got and play it off every stray dog and hatchet man this side of the Atlantic.” He walked over to the trio of telephones, started the process of a secure call to Fisker. “I'll start the feed from our end now and get the U.K.'s flowing as soon as I reach London.”

“No, no need. I agree it's worthwhile. I'll also handle that from here. Leave it to me.”

The calls completed, Bromberger resketched the morning's findings. “Even choosing the free-lance option,” he said, “the facts are there, and the facts say that there has been no pattern of threats of violence against any other American installation or diplomat during this period?”