Desert Fire (23 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Desert Fire
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THE NIGHT HAD turned transparent. Here in the mountains the air was thin, hard to breathe. Leila's heart hammered.
Azziza, dressed in black, a high-powered rifle with a night scope held loosely in one hand, came out of the darkness.
“You took a big chance coming back,” he said. “Rilke could have shot you.”
“I'm not going to let you murder the old man.”
Azziza stood ten feet away, near enough for Leila to see his strong face. “Your love is misplaced, wouldn't you agree?”
“Don't be a fool. I returned to make sure that Lotti Roemer is brought back to Baghdad to be used as a hostage.”
“He wouldn't survive the trip.”
“If he died in transit, at least we would not have killed him.”
Rilke was surely dead. Azziza would not have exposed
himself unless he was sure. But there was still the house staff. Perhaps they had telephoned the Swiss police when the shooting began. Perhaps if she could only delay him long enough …
“I cut the telephone lines to the house,” Azziza said, “and Rilke sent the German staff away more than an hour ago, so don't be concerned about innocent people getting hurt.” He moved forward, and Leila's grip tightened on the automatic. “Long before you could get that little gun out of your pocket, I would shoot you. Don't make me do that.”
Leila was paralyzed. She had killed before, but she was not a seasoned, cold-blooded expert like Azziza. She operated with courage, brains and sometimes her good looks. This was new.
“Take the gun out and very slowly lay it on the ground, and then step away,” Azziza said.
She eased her grip on the Beretta and slowly withdrew her hand from her pocket, holding it well away from her side so that Azziza could see she was unarmed.
“The gun, Leila.”
“No.” She turned and walked up to the house. Behind her she heard the snick of the rifle bolt, and she expected the shot to come. But it did not.
A window to the left of the front door was open. Leila stepped up and looked inside. Sergeant Rilke's body was jammed up against a large chair. Most of his forehead was gone, and a large dark stain had spread from a hole in his chest.
She stepped back—into Azziza's arms.
“Not a pretty sight, is it?”
Leila spun around and raked his face with her fingernails, trying for his eyes. He reared back, hissing.
“Bitch!” Blood streamed down his cheek.
Leila came at him again, but this time he was expecting it. His fist caught her high in the stomach just below her breasts. Her lungs emptied, nausea rose and she fell
back on the step, her head banging against the door frame.
She fumbled in her coat pocket for her gun, but she couldn't make her fingers work. She bent over and vomited.
Azziza stepped around her, opened the door and went inside. She began to shake violently, tears filling her eyes. Al Kumait had never seemed so far away.
She had lost. Azziza had won. After tonight there would be nothing left for her. Trying to save a dying mass murderer, she had destroyed herself as surely as if she had put her gun to her own head.
As a true Palestinian, born in Jerusalem, she had nowhere to go. Her father would never understand; he had lost too much in the war and now was incapable of change. All the lost souls of relatives who had died in the PLO camps talked to him in the night.
Headlights flashed in the trees, and a small car screamed up the driveway, sliding sideways to a halt, spewing gravel.
Leila propped herself up as Walther Roemer leaped out, gun in hand, and raced toward her. “No,” she tried to cry out.
“You!”
Leila raised her right hand, as if to fend off a blow. Roemer dove to the ground, snapping off two shots toward a spot behind her.
Azziza's high-powered rifle cracked from inside the house, the bullet chinking a tree. Roemer fired again.
“I didn't kill your father,” Azziza shouted from inside.
Roemer was fifteen feet from Leila, his gun trained on the open doorway behind her.
“I tried to stop him,” Leila called too weakly for him to hear.
“I have no quarrel with you, Investigator. But I swear to you that your father was already dead. There was a pillow over his face. I think Rilke killed him rather than let him be taken.”
Roemer's eyes were wild. Leila wanted to tell him to back down and Azziza would leave. Otherwise, Azziza would almost certainly kill him.
“Come out of there, Azziza. Or I'll shoot your partner.”
The assassin laughed, his voice closer now. He was just within the doorway. “She came here to stop me. She's in love with you. Didn't you know it?”
Even from a distance Leila could see that Roemer was suddenly confused, uncertain—exactly what Azziza wanted.
She heard a soft scuffling inside; Azziza was going around to the open window for a clear shot at Roemer. She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out her gun, thumbed the safety off and lurched to her feet. Roemer shouted something, then fired a shot, the bullet smacking into the door frame.
She reached to the edge of the window, bringing the Beretta up as Azziza appeared. She pulled the trigger. The automatic bucked in her hand and surprise spread across Azziza's dark features. She fired a second time, the shot hitting the killer in the chest near the first shot, and he crashed backward on top of Rilke's body, the rifle clattering to the floor.
For several long seconds there was no sound. Azziza was looking at her, his lips parted in a grimace, or perhaps, a smile, his eyes wide. Then his head drooped forward on his chest.
Leila turned slowly. Roemer was on his feet. His gun was pointing at her.
She let her hand go slack at her side and the Beretta dropped to the ground.
“Why?” Roemer asked.
“I came to take your father to Baghdad. I'm not a murderer.”
Roemer winced. “But you called him.”
She shook her head. She still felt weak. “They had a bug on my telephone. They knew I was coming here.”
Roemer stared at her. He wanted to say something. He sighed deeply, then came up the walk, passing her without a word, and went into the house. She followed him.
In an upstairs bedroom, Lotti Roemer's frail, wasted body lay on a bed. His lips and face were blue, his eyes open and bulging. Leila stood by the door. Roemer looked down at his father's body.
The room was filled with photographs and old certificates in gilded frames, mementos of Lotti Roemer's career in the SS. Photographs of Hitler and Himmler and other Nazi leaders, of Dachau and its administrators, of some nightclub where, in his uniform, he sat at a booth with his arms around two women. Finally it was over. She could return to Baghdad. At least it was home. They could do whatever they wanted with her. Maybe the Jews would thank her. Who could know?
Tears streamed down Roemer's cheeks, but he looked as if a tremendous burden had been lifted from his shoulders.
THE LONG BLACK limousine glided up the Bonnerstrasse and turned into the driveway of the Klauber estate. It was dark. Whalpol watched he big car through the infrared spotter scope his technicians had brought up earlier in the day.
The images in the lens were clear, but ethereal, washed of color.
He was alone in the house with Robert Neuenfeld, his communications specialist. An hour ago, four of Sherif's uniformed troops had gone with the three vanloads of IBM-marked crates. Thalberg and Adler, two BND fieldmen from Munich, had followed them out to the KwU facility while Whalpol's other men took up their positions below the driveway so that they could watch the approach roads. Sherif's staff had off-loaded the crates into the main research and development building. Whalpol had expected them to return here, but they had not; they had so far remained in the R&D building. A half hour ago the plant's day shift had been released, and
Whalpol's men reported that the gigantic facility seemed nearly deserted.
The limousine pulled up at the front door of the main house. The chauffeur jumped out and opened the rear door for a tall, gray-haired man in a dark overcoat. Whalpol immediately recognized him as the Iraqi Ambassador.
“Get me Chancellor Kohl's office,” Whalpol told his communications man without looking away from the scope.
The Iraqi Ambassador came up the walk as the front door opened. General Sherif stepped outside. Amazingly, he was dressed like his troops, in camouflage battle fatigues, a sidearm strapped at his hip. He and the Ambassador shook hands and disappeared into the house.
Whalpol straightened up. Sherif was expecting trouble. But did he believe he was going to have to run some sort of military operation to save his skin?
“I have Herr Lessing on the telephone,” Neuenfeld said.
Whalpol took the telephone. “The Ambassador just arrived.”
“Good. We were expecting it. From what we understand, he is going to ask the general to stand down and return with him tonight to Baghdad. Under the circumstances we feel it is for the best. The government of Iraq has given us assurances that the man will undergo immediate psychiatric evaluation.”
Whalpol agreed. He was glad that Roemer wasn't here to cause trouble with his inflexibility.
“They're bringing in an Iraqi Air Force jet transport to fetch him back. Should be showing up in an hour or so.”
“What about his troops?”
The aide hesitated. “That may be a problem, Major. We're sending you some people. But it may take an hour for them to arrive.”
“People? What people?”
“Military. From Wiesbaden.”
Whalpol went cold. “What are you telling me now?”
“Sherif's staff are heavily armed and combat-trained.”
“I know that. We've seen their Kalashnikovs.”
“You and our people must stay out of sight if at all possible. We don't want to start anything. Sherif's people all are demolitions experts. They've brought a large quantity of high explosives.”
“God in heaven,” Whalpol breathed. “The R&D facility at KwU. Four of Sherif's troops are there now. They took along a lot of heavy crates.”
“Do you know what that building contains?”
“Not in any detail.”
“A fuel rod reprocessing facility. If Sherif's people should detonate a charge, they'd spread radioactive material over half of Bonn.”
Everything fell into place for Whalpol. “Divert the soldiers to the plant.”
“It'll probably be too late.”
“For now, General Sherif doesn't matter. He's only got four of his people at the facility. I'm taking most of my men with me. We'll see what we can do.”
“They have to be stopped.”
Whalpol slammed down the telephone and jumped up. If Sherif wanted to force the issue, he would have no problem fighting his way from here to the KwU plant if he did it before the army unit showed up. The general had evidently planned for this, even before he came to Germany. Whalpol didn't think the Ambassador was going to do much good.
Sherif's daughter, however, could be the key if the situation got out of hand. He turned to Neuenfeld.
“It is essential that we get the general's daughter up here as soon as possible. She is somewhere in Switzerland. Call Investigator Roemer. He'll know where she might be. Or talk to Rudi Gehrman. He'll know. Get a chopper out of Pullach to fetch her once she's located.”
“Yes, sir.” Neuenfeld was young but he knew his
business. “What if the general and his troops head out?”
“Radio me immediately. I don't want him sneaking through my back door with all that firepower.” Whalpol headed for the door. “Listen, kid, there is a good chance we've been spotted. If any of General Sherif's men head up here, get the hell out.”
Whalpol hurried out to his car and headed down to the Bonnerstrasse.
He stopped and quickly explained the situation to his lookouts parked at the bottom of the hill, and they followed him down to the Köln-Bonn Autobahn.
The sonofabitch Roemer had started the entire mess by shoving his way into Sherif's study and snatching the cuff links. Whalpol growled in frustration. He figured there wasn't much of a chance of stopping them. The four had been in the R&D facility for about an hour now. Within the first ten or fifteen minutes they had probably rigged their explosive charges.
They'd be waiting for their general and the others to show up, though. They did not have enough people to cover the entire facility. They were as vulnerable now as they'd ever be. It was possible to get in and disarm them.
Whalpol had a fair idea why Sherif was doing this, but was he going to hold the entire city for ransom? What could he possibly want?
 
From two miles away, Whalpol spotted the flames in the KwU parking lot, and he pushed his car even harder, a cold weight pressing his chest. Several cars had pulled over onto the side of the road, the drivers getting out to look.
He raced up the hill to the main parking lot to see a car furiously burning a hundred yards behind the back gate to the R&D facility. He hoped his two people had gotten out.

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