Desert Fire (16 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Desert Fire
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ROEMER SPENT THE remainder of the morning pulling together the files on Sarah Razmarah, Major Whalpol and Joan Waldmann. He wrote a brief synopsis of what he'd done to date, including his initial conversation with Schaller and Whalpol.
Lieutenant Manning telephoned for lunch, and they met at a small, crowded
Bierstube
around the corner from the town hall.
Roemer passed on the autopsy information.
“Both O positive from the sperm samples,” Manning said, drinking his beer. “So what? We knew it was the same killer.”
“Whalpol's is O positive. He was at the television station last night.”
“Christ.”
Quickly Roemer told him what he had learned from Bruckner, the station manager.
Manning thumped his beer glass down on the table.
“The bastard followed her home and killed her. Just like that.”
“What about the phone tap?” Roemer asked.
“Tonight. My people will be over there around midnight. Will you be there?”
“I wouldn't miss it for the world.”
TWO FINAL NAGGING doubts lingered at the back of Roemer's mind. The first was Stanos Lotz's observation at Joan Waldmann's apartment this morning. Both women had been young, dark, pretty and black-eyed.
The second was that the evidence was circumstantial, and had come too easily. Whatever demons lived inside Whalpol's head, he was a highly trained German Secret Service operative. Would he have made such obvious mistakes? Could it be put down simply to arrogance, and insanity?
Roemer drove back to his apartment in the Oberkassel in time to bump into Gretchen. The apartment door stood wide open. She had a load of clothes on hangers in her arms, and was evidently on her way down to her car.
“Moving out?” Roemer didn't think he cared. The business with his father and Leila Kahled had him off balance.
“Yes,” Gretchen said defiantly.
“Can't we talk about it?”
“I've tried, Walther. But you're so pigheaded … so goddamned …”
“German?”
“
Verdammt
. What are you doing at home at this hour anyway?”
“I thought I'd get some sleep. It's been a long weekend.”
“Well, why don't you come back later?”
Roemer glanced toward the open apartment door, suddenly understanding that she had brought along Kai Bauer, her new lover, to help her move out.
“Don't start a scene,” Gretchen said.
He went into the apartment. Things lay in disarray everywhere. The furniture had been shoved aside and the carpeting, which belonged to Gretchen, had been rolled up ready to go.
“We were coming back this afternoon to straighten the place out, Walther. We wouldn't leave it like this for you.”
Roemer went to the bedroom door in time to see Kai Bauer, a trim man with thick blond hair, look up from Roemer's family photo album.
“Scheiss,”
the man said.
Roemer was across the room in three long strides, and he hit the man in the jaw, sending him crashing against the wall.
“You bastard!” Gretchen screamed in the doorway.
“I'll be back in a few hours. See that this place is clean.”
THE GOVERNMENT OF Iraq had established liaisons with the government of Germany on many levels. Through trade agreements, exchange students, technical services and Interpol, information was passed back and forth between Bonn and Baghdad, with a stop at the Iraqi Embassy. And it was with these records that Leila began her investigation of Walther Roemer, searching for his flaw, the weakness that could be exploited to find his father.
She spent the morning with the records in the basement of the embassy.
She learned that Roemer's salary was something over forty thousand marks per year, around twenty-seven thousand U.S. dollars. Old newspaper clippings showed that in college at Westphalia he had been an outstanding soccer player. He had been married (no children), and his former wife, Kata Zimmer, lived in Munich. And twice in the past two years he had turned down promotions that would have involved substantial raises but
would have stuck him behind a desk. Roemer was definitely a man of action. A field man.
Roemer knew Iraqi homicide detective Jacob Wadud. They had worked together on two different occasions: the first when Wadud had come to Germany chasing a man and a woman suspected of strangling an eighty-year-old woman in Diyala, and the second when a German gang smuggling hashish to Iraq had had a falling-out and killed one another on the docks in Bremerhaven.
It was likely that Roemer and Wadud had spent more time together one year ago, in Paris, during an Interpol-sponsored gathering of police detectives from three dozen countries.
In her office, she directed the embassy operator to place a call to Wadud in Baghdad.
While she was waiting, the embassy Mukhabarat station chief, Bassam abu Zwaiter, came in. He was a short, intense little man, brilliant and easygoing. He and Leila got along well.
“Sounds as if you have your hands full,” he said, perching on the seat above the radiator by the window.
“Did you talk to Uncle Bashir?”
Zwaiter nodded. “Is it true that Lotti Roemer is still alive somewhere in Switzerland?”
“Apparently.”
“But you'd just as soon not get yourself involved with Dr. Azziza,” Zwaiter said.
“I don't have a choice, Bassam. But what about Joan Waldmann?”
“It was on the morning wire. I guess your friend Walther Roemer was there at the scene.”
Leila sighed. Uncle Bashir had evidently told him the entire story. But it rankled. Everyone knew her business. “He's not a friend. But I'm going to have to use him in order to get to his father.”
“And that bothers you as well?”
“Yes it does.”
The telephone rang. Jacob Wadud was on the line from Baghdad. “What can I do for you, Ilehnisa Kahled?” The detective's voice was raspy.
“I understand you know a German homicide investigator in Bonn. Walther Roemer.”
“A good man. We've worked on a couple of cases. And last year, just to show there were no hard feelings over the Gulf War, we spent a week raising hell in Paris.”
“He's an infidel,” Leila said sharply.
“I'm sorry, Ilehnisa Kahled, I wasn't aware that you had those feelings about nonbelievers. Is there something I can tell you about Roemer?”
“I'm trying to find his father.”
“For what reason?”
“The man is wanted by the German government for war crimes.”
“Do you think Walther is a Nazi?” Wadud laughed. “What do you want with his father?”
“Investigator Roemer and I are working on a delicate case. It's my belief that his government will use its knowledge of his father to … influence what he shares with us.”
“So you're looking for the old man. What will you do when you find him? Bring him here out of harm's way?”
“It's possible,” she lied.
“What would you do, Ilehnisa Kahled, if it were your father?”
Leila started to answer, but Wadud went on.
“I'll be happy to supply information. But you're going to have to go through channels. Happy hunting, and I sincerely mean it.” Wadud hung up.
For a long moment Leila held the telephone to her ear. Wadud's attitude was curious. Her father would have him fired if he became aware of it.
“Jacob Wadud is a good man, Leila,” Zwaiter said. “I hope you don't intend to make trouble for him.”
“I'm not going to make trouble for him.” Leila felt
terrible. “He said Walther Roemer was a peach of a fellow.”
Zwaiter smiled. He looked out the window. The air was cold and clear. “It's only been a few years, and yet here we are on the outside again. A lot of Westerners still think we're trying to blow up the world.”
“What are we doing here, Bassam? Where's the rationale?”
“Someone has to hold the Zionists in check.” He shrugged. “And the president is on a
jihad
. All we can do is follow him.” He got to his feet. “What do I need to know about this KwU business?”
“The Germans are paranoid. Major Whalpol is running the show for the BND. He's a tough one, but when this is over I'm going home. I've had it here.”
“What about your father?”
He has Colonel Habash, she wanted to say. “He'll be all right, Bassam, better off with me out of his hair.”
Zwaiter went to the door. “If you need any help, Leila, or perhaps just a shoulder to lean on, give me a call.”
“I might just take you up on it.”
Leila was glad to be rid of the project, and yet another part of her balked at walking away from something not finished. She'd never done that before.
She returned to the problem of Walther Roemer and his father. After their confrontation, two burly sanatorium aides had escorted her out to her car. They had followed her for twenty miles.
She should have returned. There was a great probability that Roemer had been moving his father out that very night. They would have been vulnerable. It would have been relatively simple to kidnap the old man, whisk him out of the country and get him back to Baghdad out of the German government's reach.
But she had not. There had been something in Roemer's eyes, in the anguish in his voice, that had stayed her.
IT WAS AFTER four in the afternoon when she placed a call to the Simon Wiesenthal Institute in Vienna.
“We're very excited here, Fräulein Kahled, about Lotti Roemer and the possibility of his arrest,” a young man told her. “There has been a lot of uncertainty about your interest in helping us, but we're grateful.”
“What about his wife and children?”
“Unimportant,” the aide replied. “His wife died some years after the war. There was a son, Walther, who is, as a matter of fact, a German federal investigator right there in Bonn.”
“I know,” Leila said. “The son was never followed? Never watched?”
“For a time, naturally. But the son had suffered the most from his father.”
It sounded slipshod to Leila, knowing what she knew now. Roemer had apparently been aware of his father's whereabouts all along. But then not every relative of
every Nazi whom the Wiesenthal people were hunting could be watched twenty-four hours a day. It was simply impossible. Choices were made. Some of them wrong.
She could hear the shuffling of papers at the other end. Then the aide was back on the line.
“As a matter of fact, from what I'm reading, the son is a friend of Iraq. He has cooperated on a number of occasions with Detective Jacob Wadud. Perhaps if you telephoned him. But I'm curious, Fräulein Kahled. Do you suspect there is a connection now between the father and son?”
“I don't know,” Leila said and wondered why she lied. “I'm exploring all possibilities here.”
“I see,” the aide said. “Well, we are wishing you the very best. There are a lot of people who would like to see the man put on trial finally.”
“I'll keep you informed.”
“Please do.”
Without dwelling on what she had learned so far (she was somewhat fearful of the directions her thoughts were already taking her), she gave the embassy operator Kata Zimmer's name and asked that a number be found and a call put through. It took the embassy operator nearly a half hour to find the woman in Munich, where she worked as a classifications aide at the Bavarian National Museum. Leila had given a lot of thought to the way she would approach Roemer's ex-wife.
When the woman came on the line, Leila turned away from the phone. “I have her on the line now,” she said as if she were talking to someone else. Then, “Frau Zimmer?”
“Yes?”
“I'm so sorry to bother you, but we are trying to locate Investigator Roemer. He left the city over the weekend and has not returned.”
“Who is this?” Kata Zimmer demanded.
“I am sorry, this is his office calling. Bonn.”
“Why have you called me? I have no idea where he
might be. Try his girlfriend, Gretchen Krause. She may be at work, at the Federal Parliament. I believe she is a translator.”
“Thank you, Frau Zimmer. Apparently Investigator Roemer is out of the country. You would not know where he would be?”
“No,” Kata Zimmer said curtly, and hung up.
The operator had Gretchen Krause on the line within two minutes.
“Fräulein Krause, this is Investigator Roemer's office calling.”
“What do you want?” Gretchen snapped.
“We are trying to locate him. Apparently he's gone out of town.”
“He's here in Bonn, all right. I just saw the bastard.”
“Fräulein?”
“I've moved out, you hear? We'll probably file assault charges. The sonofabitch is never home. He's never there when you want him. He's off chasing some murder mystery somewhere or he's running off to Bern.”
“We understand he was in Bern over the weekend. Could you possibly give us a name there where we could reach him?”
“There or Interlaken …” Gretchen said, but she cut herself off. “Who is this?”
“His office.”
“Let me talk to Rudi.”
Rudi who? Leila wondered. “I am sorry, Fräulein Krause, but Rudi is not here at the moment.”
“Who are you?”
“Perhaps we could meet …” The line went dead.
Interlaken. Another sanatorium, perhaps?
It was late when Leila finally left the embassy. She drove across the river to the house she and her father occupied, but at the last moment, before entering through the gate, she turned around and went back to the Oberkassel.
Roemer's car was parked in front of his apartment building. She parked behind it, shut off the headlights and lit a cigarette.
For half an hour she sat there, smoking, listening to the radio and staring up at his apartment, all the while wondering just what she was doing here. Her opinion of him had undergone a curious change, one over which she had no control.
What would she say to him if she went up?
You're all right, but I want your father so that you can be insulated.
Finally she turned on the headlights and drove off. The confrontation between them would come, but not just yet. In the meantime, at the back of her mind was the thought of Dr. Azziza lying in wait in Switzerland. What in the name of Allah could she do?

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