Day Of Wrath (24 page)

The Akershus was named after the historic fortress that guarded Oslo’s harbor. This was no tourist attraction, though.

The bar’s exterior was weathered, clearly not painted since the winter’s passing, and winters in Norway could be very hard.

Aside from the sign, a small anchor and a Viking longship painted on the front window were the only decorations. Still, it looked clean, and large enough to give them a good chance of finding the witnesses they needed.

Inside, a bar ran along one wall, down the full length of the room. It was surfaced with scarred dark wood. The room was paneled in matching wood, and ten or twelve tables filled the rest of the space.

Even this early in the evening, it was already half full. Some of the men were finishing meals, others were playing cards, and a few were already into their third beers, to judge from the empties.

Helen noticed that there were no women in the room at all.

This was clearly an all-male preserve. Only two men stood at the bar, talking soberly to each other and the barkeep, a large, blond, bearded man, who only needed a horned helmet to resemble one of his Viking ancestors.

Helen and Peter drew a few long looks from the patrons when they first entered. But once they’d ordered beers and taken a table in the corner, they were ignored.

Helen sipped her beer and studied the customers over her raised glass.

A few were young—in their twenties, perhaps. The others ranged up to sixty or so. Most were solidly middleaged.

And all of them were dressed in work clothes—dark-colored overalls, often stained, or ripped and mended. Their scuffed boots and the hard hats dangling from the chairs behind them hinted that these were exactly the sort of men the two Americans were looking for.

Finally, Helen nodded to Peter and got up, approaching a man in his mid-fifties. He sat alone at a table, nursing a beer. “Excuse me, do you speak English?”

“Nei.” Well, so much for him. She turned to a younger man at the next table, scruffy, but with an alert look. “Do you speak English?”’ she repeated.

“Ja, a little.”

Helen offered her hand and flashed a smile, trying to turn on the charm without making it too obvious. “I’m Susan Anderson, with the
ETS
News Service.” She handed him a business card, imprinted with the false name she was using, the name of the fictional news service, a phone number, and an Internet address.

She still felt somewhat awkward about operating under a phony identity.

But years as an
FBI
agent had taught her the annoying truth that witnesses who often clammed up when questioned by someone with a badge were only too happy to spill everything they knew to the first journalist who came strolling along—especially one who was an attractive woman. Besides, flashing her American
FBI
credentials in a Norwegian port city was far more likely to generate the kind of official interest they wanted to avoid.

The airport hotel they’d checked into immediately after arriving in Oslo catered largely to international businessmen. Its facilities included a fully equipped computer center—complete with
PCS
for rent, laser printers, and the latest software. So an hour’s work with some word processing and graphics programs had produced a small set of what appeared to be professionally printed business cards for each of them—Helen’s as a journalist and Peter’s as a photographer.

“You are a reporter?” The young Norwegian dockworker seemed curious, and a little interested, although she couldn’t tell if he was responding to her smile or her occupation.

“I’m doing a story on a tramp freighter that sailed from here to Russia a week ago. Have you heard of the Star of the White Sea? She was moored at Pier 91A.” Helen and Peter had spent the afternoon puzzling over back issues of the local newspaper’s Shipping News section to dig up that piece of information.

“So? What is so special, this ship?” The man was interested, but seemed cautious.

il!

Helen ignored his question and pressed on. Telling him that the entire crew had been murdered might make him clam up altogether.

“I just want to talk to men who might have seen her.”

She let the corners of three hundred-kronr notes show in her hand. At current exchange rates, that was worth about fifty dollars enough to loosen a few tongues without raising too many eyebrows, she judged.

He waved it back. “Knut and Fredrik, they work on the docks.

I am inside, in a warehouse.” He fired a string of Norwegian at a pair of men sitting three tables over. They perked up, obviously curious about the attractive foreigner, and answered.

The first man broke off the conversation after about three exchanges and turned back to Helen. “I am sorry. They do not know this ship.”

She smiled again. “That’s all right. But do you know anyone else we can ask? It would be a real help to my story. We could even take his picture for the article,” she added, gesturing to her photographer.

Peter fiddled with the Canon’s lens, trying to look professional.

The Norwegian looked around, then asked another older man, and then another group of three. All replied, “Nei.”

He shrugged and smiled at Helen. “I am sorry.”

Helen smiled back, grateful for his efforts. “Never mind.

Thank you anyway.”

Peter had already gotten up. She turned toward the door, then changed her mind and went over to the bar. The Viking bartender took the bill she offered, and evidently understood her instructions to get her translator another beer and make it the best he had. No point in leaving sour feelings behind them.

Once outside on the street again, they turned toward the harbor.

Helen shook her head. “Well, that was a bust.”

“Isn’t this what you law enforcement types call legwork?” Peter asked.

He shrugged. “Hell, we knew this wasn’t going to be fast, Helen.

This place must see dozens of ships come and go in the space of a week.

Finding some of the guys who unloaded the Star, and who remember doing it, could take some time.”

She drew a deep breath. “Yeah, I know. I just think of how easy it would have been to go straight to the port authorities, flash my badge, and ask to see the Star of the White Sea’s cargo manifests.”

“We can still do that. You’re still an
FBI
agent,” Peter reminded her.

Helen grimaced. “Jesus, I get bad vibes at the thought. The last time we went barreling into a harbormaster’s office, we got shot at.”

They went on to another tavern, misnamed the Grand Cafe Smaller than the Akershus, its clientele was similar. Workingmen gathered around tables to play cards and drink. This time, Helen was immediately successful in finding someone who spoke English.

Arne Haukelid was a college student, studying literature, who’d taken a job at the docks to earn money between semesters.

He also watched the news, and was well versed on current affairs.

“You want to know if any of us saw the Star of the White Sea, Miss Anderson? The one where they killed everyone and they found the drugs?”

His voice carried in the quiet room, and Helen winced inwardly, then remembered Haukelid was still speaking English.

The young Norwegian let her buy him a beer, then circulated around the room, asking here and there. She couldn’t follow the conversations, but headshakes and “Nei” were easy to understand.

Another bust.

Peter and Helen left the Grand Cafe and headed for another bar, Ole Bull, and after that a place called Sjoboden. By this time it was almost ten at night, and she was getting worried that anyone with a day job would be heading home.

Sjoboden was another pub with nautical decorations scattered around.

It looked a little rougher than the other places they’d been in, but it was also the most crowded, nearly filled with strong-looking men.

The buzz of conversation did not change when Peter and Helen entered, and a few of the dockworkers, sizing Helen up, even greeted her with “Goddag” and a smile. It looked to her like they’d had more than a few beers, but they still had an eye for a pretty woman.

One of them spoke English, but to Helen’s consternation he’d heard all about the Star of the White Sea, and the fate of her crew.

To her relief, though, her informant knew someone who actually helped unload her.

He pointed to a pair of men who willingly made room at their table for Helen and Peter when they came over. She let the conversation run on for a while, hoping to steer the talk in a useful direction.

The oldest, Olaf Syverstad, had the most to say. “This is a bad business. We haven’t had too much drugs here. But soon these criminals and smugglers will be squeezing us.”

In his sixties, Olaf was concerned more for his son, Karl, who still worked at the docks.

Karl Syverstad had been translating for his father, and was delighted to have a chance to practice his English. Blond like his father, Karl’s back and shoulders were as broad as a house. He’d been a longshoreman for five years.

“Ja, I worry now. Now that I know what is going on. Then, I liked working on the Star. They paid us overtime to stand by, and unload her as soon as she came.”

“What did she carry?” asked Helen.

“Mostly scrap metal and fish,” the younger Syverstad answered.

“And they were in a hurry to unload that?” Helen didn’t have to act puzzled.

“Not all of it,” the big Norwegian said. “There were five metal crates that came off first. They went straight across the pier to another ship, and that ship left right away—less than an hour, I think.”

“What ship was that?” Helen forced herself not to sound too eager.

Her story was supposed to be about the murders on the Star.

“Baltic Venturer. She was bound for Wilhelmshaven. In Germany.”’ “How do you know that?” Helen asked.

“It was her home port. Painted on her stern. And I heard the crew talking.”

Helen looked over at Peter, who was listening intently, but seemed content to let her do the talking. She continued. “So you only saw them unloading scrap metal, fish, and these crates?” She held out her hands, as if to describe the size of a box.

The younger Syverstad nodded. “Ja, pretty much. But those crates were big things, big enough for an auto maybe.”

Bingo, Helen thought. His description matched the rough sizes of the Su-24 engines Serov had showed them. She leaned forward. “And what did the Star carry back to Russia?”

The Norwegian shook his head. “Nothing, she went back empty. I was on her for two days unloading. I saw nothing.”

His father tapped the table for emphasis. “And a good thing, too, boy.

Or you might have wound up dead—just like those poor Russian sods.”

Helen let them talk for a while longer, about drugs, other ships to Russia, crime in Bergen, but finally found a graceful pause in the conversation and made their goodbyes.

It was chilly outside, the midsummer twilight holding only a little warmth and a sea breeze from the west stripping even that away. Helen shivered slightly, but then glanced at Peter. “Well, what do you think?”

“I think we head for Wilhelmshaven, don’t you?” he replied quietly.

“Yep.” She couldn’t hide the satisfaction in her voice. The trail left by the people who’d ambushed them and murdered Alexei Koniev hadn’t grown completely cold after all. They’d found another link in the chain.

“What do you think about passing this information back to the Bureau?”

Peter asked.

Helen thought about that a moment. She doubted they had enough hard data to penetrate the FBI’s bureaucratic inertia yet, but that shouldn’t stop them from trying to prod Washington into taking official notice that something very strange was going on with whatever material Serov and his officers had smuggled out of Kandalaksha. At a minimum, it wouldn’t hurt to leave a paper trail of their findings—just in case they ran into trouble somewhere along the line.

She looked back at Peter and nodded. “Fine. But I’d rather not give the Bureau a chance to zero in on us just yet.”

He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Not to worry, Special Agent Gray. We’ll be the very soul of discretion.”

Leiter, a trim, telegenic man in his early forties, read the document intently.

From: Special Agent Helen Gray To: Deputy Assistant Director Lawrence Mcdowell,
FBI
International Relations Branch via fax: (202) 5559987

Jet engines described by
SEROV
as possible contraband were transferred in
BERGEN
,
NORWAY
, from freighter
STAR
OF
THE
WHITE
SEA
to freighter
BALTIC
VENTURER
, which immediately left for home port of
WILHELMSHAVEN
,
GERMANY
. Strongly recommend you investigate re: ultimate destination of engines, precise contents of crates,
etc.
Gray

JUNE
11

Office of the
FBI
Director, Washington, D.C.

Lawrence Mcdowell handed the fax he’d received only an hour before to the Director, careful to hide his resentment from the other man. David Leiter had been a hotshot prosecutor before he’d been picked by the President to head the
FBI
, but he’d never served a day as a field agent. Mcdowell was prepared to kowtow to anyone above him, but it irked him to realize how far down the FBI’s totem pole he still was—despite all his years of service and ass-kissing.

“That’s it?” demanded Leiter.

Mcdowell felt his palms starting to get damp. The Director had a reputation for backing his subordinates to the hilt—as long as they were producing. But he had zero tolerance for inefficiency.

Mcdowell knew if he didn’t give Leiter the right answers, he could be on his way to Billings, Montana, as a junior G-man before the day was out.

He cleared his throat. “The cover sheet was from a commercial fax service in Berlin, sir. It was sent earlier today, which places Special Agent Gray and Colonel Thorn in Germany some fortyeight hours after they missed the meeting with their Army escort.”