Eden's Gate (12 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Eden's Gate
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“Wouldn't it be easier to open the box, and empty the diamonds into a dive bag?”
“No,” Speyer said a little too quickly. “Without bringing them back in the original sealed case we have no way of proving that these are the actual diamonds from the bunker. They could be any diamonds. This could be a confidence game.”
Lane couldn't help himself from laughing. “That's a good one,” he said.
Kalispell Chief of Police Carl Mattoon was just coming out of the Justice Building when a plain gray Chevy Caprice with federal plates pulled up. A tall, solidly built woman got out and came over, pulling an ID wallet from her purse. She flashed her badge.
“Chief Mattoon, my name is Linda Boulton. I'm the new SAC in the Helena FBI office. Could I have a couple minutes of your time, sir?”
“It's late and I haven't had my lunch yet. Why don't you come back tomorrow?”
“I understand, sir. This won't take but a minute.”
Mattoon did not trust women. He'd been married twice, and divorced twice, both times to women cops. There was something not quite right about a woman carrying a badge, in his estimation. He gave her a long, hard stare, but she did not back down.
“Sir?”
“Oh hell and damnation, if you insist.”
They walked back inside and Mattoon took her to his office. His deputies and clerks were surprised, but they said nothing, because he had the “look.”
The FBI agent waited until the door was closed, but she didn't give Mattoon a chance to sit down before she unloaded on him.
“Would you like to tell me what the fuck you people are doing down here? Because from where we sit it looks like you're all a bunch of incompetent bastards and screw-ups.”
That was another thing Chief Mattoon didn't like: women who used foul language. “Now if you want to sit down and clean up your act, sweetheart, I'll let you explain what you mean.”
“It's you who have the explaining to do.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Mattoon demanded.
“Murder.”
Mattoon took off his cap, tossed it on top of the file cabinet, and sat down behind his desk. He'd been warned that the FBI might come snooping around, and to hold them off for as long as possible without doing anything illegal. Until this moment, however, he wasn't sure that he wanted a confrontation with the Bureau.
“That's a local matter, we're working on it.”
“Well, that's real interesting, chief. But is it possible that I could interview your suspect, Mr. John Clark? The credit card that he used at the hotel comes up with a Washington, D.C., address. Makes it federal.”
“We haven't made an arrest yet, but as soon as we do I'll give you a call and you can come on down here to talk to him.”
“I'm not holding my breath. Mr. Clark has probably already left the state. Fleeing to avoid prosecution, now that's another federal offense.” Her face was a mask of indifference, and Mattoon couldn't read her. That made him uncomfortable.
“That it is,” he said.
“How about the victim then, Mr. Meyer Goldstein.”
“What about him?”
“I'd like to see the results of the autopsy, and then have a look at the body.” She rocked forward a little and gave him a smile.
“I'll surely see what I can do for you.”
“Funny thing about that, too, you know. There is no body at the hospital, and no one over there can explain what happened to it, or if an autopsy was ever performed. Don't you find that odd?”
“What the hell are you doing here, Agent Boulton? What do you want?”
“Mr. Goldstein was a foreign national, he worked for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Vienna, Austria.” She snapped her fingers. “Actually I should have said is a foreign national. I talked to him by telephone this morning. He's never been to Montana in his life, and he's never even heard of Kalispell.”
“Well, then, it's just a case of mistaken identity.”
“I've had about enough of your shit—” Agent Boulton said, but Mattoon interrupted her.
“No, it's me who's had enough of your shit, Special Agent Boulton. Until I formally ask for your help, this is my jurisdiction and my investigation. So why don't you just skedaddle on out of here like a good little lady, and drive the fuck back up to Helena and lay siege to some Posse Comitatus or something.”
She took an eight-by-ten photograph from a file folder and handed it to Mattoon. “Do you recognize this man?”
Mattoon looked at it and handed it back. “Herbert Sloan. He's a businessman, an investor of some kind. Owns a few hundred acres north of town.”
“The German government thinks that his real name is Helmut Speyer, a former officer in the East German secret police.”
“I wouldn't know about that. Why don't you go out there and talk to him?”
“That's the problem, you see. He's not out there. In fact he left two days ago, the morning after the murder.” She put the photograph back in the file folder. “It's even possible that Mr. Sloan, or Herr Speyer, whoever he really is, along with his wife and another man, were in the bar at the time of the shooting.”
“I don't know anything about that.”
“Oh, but I think that you do, chief. And that's why I came down here to talk to you. A murderer missing. A victim's body missing. Witnesses missing.” She smiled harshly. “I don't think that you're going to get lunch today. In fact I even wonder if you're going to get supper, considering all that we have to talk about.”
 
Konrad Aden got back to his room in the Grand Hotel in time to order a drink from room service and take a shower before dinner. Sitting at the open window, sipping his martini, and looking down at Main Street, he used his cell phone to call Thomas Mann in Georgetown.
“Good afternoon, Konrad. Are you making progress?”
“I'm afraid that there may be some complications of a somewhat disturbing and puzzling nature. The FBI is here looking into the shooting.”
“Will there be trouble for us?”
“That's the hell of it, General, I don't know. But my gut reaction is telling me to tread very carefully. There's something going on out here that just doesn't add up.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“For starts, the body of the old Jew that Browne shot to death is missing. No one knows where it is, nor does anyone know anything about an autopsy. It's almost as if there never was a shooting in the first place.”
“Helmut and Ernst were there and saw it.”
“Well, the body is gone now. And it looks as if Helmut and his wife and Sergeant Baumann may have been placed at the scene. The FBI has been out to the ranch asking questions.”
“Were they satisfied with the answers?”
“The FBI agent in charge of the Helena office is here talking to the chief of police.”
“Who you have assured me knows nothing about Helmut's actual identity.”
“That's not the problem yet,” Aden said. “But we do have one loose end that I believe must be taken care of immediately.”
“Go on.”
“The only other witness is the bartender, William Hardt. Do I have authorization?”
“Do you feel that it is necessary?”
“Jawohl, Herr General.”
“Then you have the authorization. I assume that you will use your usual discretion.”
“Of course.”
 
The Grand Hotel bar closed at ten this evening, but Willy wasn't finished shutting down and ready to go home until after 10:30. It had been a bitch of a week, and he didn't think that he was out of the woods yet. Someone was going to be coming around to ask more questions that he wasn't going to be able to answer. He just knew it. And no matter what he said or didn't say, he was going to be in some deep shit.
He flipped off the last of the lights behind the bar, and walked back through the kitchen where the only light was over the back door.
“Hello, Willy,” Aden said from the shadows near the old walk-in freezer.
Willy stopped short, his heart in his throat, as a man with a very large pistol stepped into view. “What the hell do you want?”
“Nothing terrible. You just need to be put out of circulation for the rest of tonight. By morning everything will be settled. It's for Mr. Sloan. Do you understand?”
“Okay, that's cool,” Willy said, relieved it wasn't a robbery or something. “But you don't have to point a gun at me. I'll do whatever you guys want me to do.”
Aden opened the freezer door. “The compressor is turned off, so you can stay in here. By the time the morning kitchen crew comes in and finds out that something's wrong with the freezer, they'll let you out. You can tell them that you got locked in by mistake.”
Willy was about to tell the man that the freezer could be opened from the inside with the safety latch, but he shrugged instead. “Fine by me. But you know that I wasn't going to open my mouth to the FBI.”
“We understand.”
Willy shuffled across the kitchen and into the freezer. Even as the heavy, soundproof door was closing, he realized that the compressor had not been turned off, and in fact it had probably been turned down to maximum cool, and the push rod for the safety latch was missing. When the light went out he understood that he was in some very big trouble.
Daylight lingered at this time of the year, although a low overcast hung over the lake and a chill wind blew from the north. Lane, dressed in a soft leather Gucci jacket, cashmere turtleneck, tan slacks, and half boots, went outside after dinner to have a smoke and take another look at the equipment in the garage. He had done some thinking about the dive that he was supposed to make tomorrow. He didn't have the experience that he said Browne had. But he did have some mixed gas training with the U.S. Navy about eight years ago during a project in the Azores. He'd actually made one dive to four hundred eighty feet, but it had been in the open sea, not into a dangerous bunker, and his total bottom time had only been about three minutes.
Inspecting the heavy closed-circuit diving mask and regulator, he decided that a lot of knowledge could be forgotten in eight years, and if he was going to survive the dive he had to first make sure that he completely understood his equipment.
He heard someone at the door, put down the mask, and turned around. Baumann came in.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Checking out the equipment before I put my life on the line tomorrow,” Lane said. “Is that okay with you?”
“I don't care. If it was up to me I wouldn't go down there for all the money in the world. It wouldn't do me any good if I was dead.”
“What are
you
doing out here?”
“Helmut asked me to check on you. See if you needed any help.
He figured that you were out here looking over things. This close to a mission he gets a little nervous, that's all.”
“From where I stand I'm the only one who has anything serious to be worried about.”
Baumann picked up the bulky mask and inspected it. He looked up at Lane. “Do you really know how to use this shit?”
“I've never used this specific equipment before, but it's all about the same. Same principles and all that.”
Baumann put the mask down. “The Russians won't be here until midnight, so you have all the time you want. I'm going back inside.”
“Tell Helmut that I might want to take another look at the memorial.”
“Tonight?”
“Probably. I'll let you know.”
Baumann nodded. “Whatever you want,” he said, and he left the garage, walked across to the chalet and went inside.
Lane, watching from the deeper shadows just inside the doorway, saw a movement in the woods fifty yards behind the house. He stepped back a little farther into the garage, then went to a window. Five minutes later he saw a movement again, and this time he picked out a figure holding up what might have been a pair of binoculars. Someone was watching the house, and he had a pretty good idea who it was.
He went back to the doorway where he could watch the back of the chalet and the woods at the same time, but not be seen himself. He didn't want anyone sneaking up on him. He took out his cell phone and hit the speed dial number for the service provider here in Germany that would automatically transfer his call to his office in Washington. It took less than ten seconds for the connection to be made. Frances answered immediately.
“Yes.”
“It's me, and I'm all right. I'm near a town called Neubrandenburg in what used to be East Germany.”
Tom Hughes came on the line. “Are you in a secure location, William?”
“For the moment.”
“There's nothing in the records about a Reichsamt Seventeen, and nothing on a need for diamonds for any sort of human guinea pig research. Speyer is either lying through his pearly whites, or he knows something that we don't. And the way the BKA is carrying on, I'd say that the latter is the most likely.”
“What about the Russian Washington
rezident
?”
“Lukashin? He's in a fair amount of financial trouble even for a modern Russian. From what I can gather he's in to the Russian Mafia for something approaching a half-million dollars. And those folks don't accept excuses. So the man is well-motivated. But Mironov, his number two, is a rather nasty character with Russian Mafia ties up in Brighton Beach. He's got a vendetta for some reason against a South African by the name of John Browne.”
“Don't worry about it—” Lane said, but Hughes cut him off.
“He's on his way to Germany, William, even as we speak. He flew over this noon. Should be arriving in Frankfurt am Main around midnight your time.”
“Okay, I'll watch for him. But we have another problem. I spotted what looks like a surveillance operation behind the house that we're staying at. It's on the Tollense See. My guess would be BKA.”
“They probably followed you from Frankfurt. Maybe it's for the best.” Hughes, who was sometimes a Dutch uncle to Lane, was concerned.
“Tell them to back off. I still don't know what the hell Speyer is up to, and I don't think the Germans do either. But they're worried.”
“So am I,” Hughes said.
“That makes three of us,” Frances broke in. “What now, love?”
“I'm going to take another look at the bunker entrance; a little later tonight we're meeting with the Russians, and in the morning I'm going for a swim.”
“Dammit, William—” Frances protested.
“Take it easy, kiddo, I'll be okay,” Lane said, and he rang off before they could give him more of an argument. He stood in the relative darkness for a long time staring at the woods, wondering just what the hell was down in the bunker that had Speyer so willing to face the risk of returning to Germany, and for the German Federal Police to take such an interest that they asked for American help. He also wondered why he was pushing this operation so far, but he wasn't quite willing yet to examine his motivations too deeply. It was Satchel Paige who once said don't look over your shoulder, something might be gaining on you. Lane figured that he knew exactly what the man was talking about.
Hughes hadn't been home in the week since Lane had gone off on assignment. His wife Moira and the girls understood perfectly. Lane
was Uncle Bill to them, a part of the family. If Lane was in any danger it was only natural that Tom remain at his post to do whatever was necessary. What surprised him, however, was how badly Frances was taking this.
Their offices were near the vice preisdent's residence in what had once been the chief astronomer's quarters on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Normally there were a half-dozen staffers on duty, mostly communications specialists and analysts, but this afternoon it was just him and Frances.
He went down the hall to her office, and found her standing by the window, looking toward the observatory. There were a lot of tourists today, but she didn't seem to be watching them. He walked over and took her into his arms. He was a very large man, and she was slight of figure, almost boyish. She looked up and gave him a smile.
“If you've come to cheer me up, I can use it,” she said brightly, though he could see that her eyes were troubled.
“On the contrary, we're finally alone and I'm a lecher.”
“Good, I need that, too.” Her lower lip quivered.
“He's a rather remarkable man, you know. He'll be okay.”
She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. Her face was round and pretty. Her eyes were wide and startlingly green; clear, honest, warm. “I didn't think it would be this way when I agreed to sign on.”
“Fiddle faddle. You're a full commander in Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, you knew exactly what this was all about.” Hughes gave her a large smile, one that couldn't be resisted. “The fact of the matter is you're jealous. He's out having all the fun, while you're sitting home knitting booties.”
Something flashed in her eyes, but then was gone. She grinned. “You
are
a masher, and at the first opportunity I plan on telling Moira.”
“She already knows,” Hughes said. “But you're safe for the moment because I have to make a call to the Germans.”
It was beyond his dinnertime and Chief Inspector Dieter Schey was about to leave for home when he took the call from Tom Hughes in Washington. When they had asked for help from the Americans he hadn't counted on this, and the dark brows on his narrow, pinched face knitted in anger.
“Of course it is your jurisdiction, but William has simply asked for a little elbow room,” Hughes said.
“We've given your man enough latitude as it is,” Schey replied tightly. He considered himself to be a reasonable man, but there was an unusual amount of pressure from above to get this case settled quickly and as quietly as possible.
“In for a penny, in for a pound. But I suppose I can understand your position, Chief Inspector. I'll get word to him to break off.”
“
Verdammt
,” Schey swore softly. “We came to you for help, so if it's room he wants, it's room we'll give him. But I'll have to clear it with my superior. We had hoped to keep a reasonably tight rein on what's happening up there.”
“And I don't blame you,” Hughes commiserated. “Of course it would be a great help if you could tell us exactly what he's going to run into down in that bunker—if it gets to that point.”
“I sincerely hope it doesn't. All we want is Speyer and Baumann behind bars, and their organization, the Friends, closed down permanently. They're all a bunch of murderers and thieves, just like the old Odessa. And they have an agenda.”
“Which includes Reichsamt Seventeen, on which I can find no information whatsoever.”
“The bunker is of secondary importance. They're probably after gold. What we're interested in is what he's going to do with his money.”
“That's what we mean to help you discover if you'll give William the room.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
“Grüss Gött,”
Hughes said, and rang off.
Schey sat back for a moment, not at all happy that he had been maneuvered so easily, but then got up and went down the hall to the office of the director of BKA Special Operations, General Bruno Schaeffer. The general's secretary passed him straight in.
Schaeffer was a bull of a man, with a one meter, sixty centimeter chest, a farmer's square face and broad eyes. But he was smart, and it was said that most of the time he knew what you were thinking even before you knew it yourself.
Schey came to attention. “I've just spoken with the Americans. They want us to discontinue our surveillance operation at Tollense See.”
“As a condition for their continued assistance?” the general asked mildly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then give them what they want,” General Schaeffer said. Four lines on the telephone console were blinking. He ignored them, giving Schey his undivided attention. “Or at least make it appear as if you have given them what they want. Evidently your men up there got careless. Tell them to withdraw, and then return without being so obvious.”
Schey allowed a smile. “I understand, Herr General. But it would be helpful if I had more information. For instance—”
The general picked up his phone and answered one of his calls as if Schey wasn't in the room. After a brief moment Schey turned on his heel and left. Supper would be late tonight. Very late.
Lane got a glass of beer from Schaub in the kitchen then went into the great room to sit by the fire. The evening was raw and he'd gotten chilled in the garage, made all the more worse by thinking about tomorrow's dive. Gloria, a crocheted afghan over her shoulders, sat with her feet tucked up under her at the end of the long couch. She was drinking champagne. The bottle was on the floor at her hand.
“Maybe you should think about laying off the booze for a while,” he said. “Give your liver a rest.”
“Screw yourself,” she said mildly. She took a drink, looking at him over the rim of the glass. “I haven't noticed that men much give a damn whether a woman is drunk or not. In fact most of you bastards would prefer it that way.”
“That depends on the class of men you're trying to seduce,” Lane said. He went over and took the bottle from her. “You've had enough.”
There wasn't much left in the bottle. What there was he poured into the edge of the fire, a champagne steam rising up into the chimney with a hiss. Standing by the massive hearth, with the tall windows at the end of the room looking out across the lake, boars' heads and deer racks hanging on the log walls, they could have been in another time, the thirties in Nazi Germany, for all the rustic malevolence here.
“What do you give a damn for?” Gloria asked.
“I don't like to see people destroying themselves,” Lane told her. “Or being destroyed. It's a stupid waste of time.”
“Like your wife and child?”
Lane drank his beer. Someone had put some new logs on the fire and they were going good, the changing pattern of flames mesmerizing.
“I'm a movie buff, and I saw the one picture that you were in,” he said.
“I didn't think anyone had seen it, but I'd hoped that those who did would have had the decency never to say so.”
It was a practiced line, dripping with contempt, and yet there was a sad expression on her face, as if she was grateful that at least one person had seen her film and wasn't laughing at her.
“You weren't God's gift to acting, but you photographed well. I think you could have probably made a decent career for yourself. What happened?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “That,” she said.
“That what?”
She knocked back the rest of her champagne, and casually threw the glass into the fireplace. She hunched deeper into the couch. “That's a very long story.”
“I wouldn't think that it would be a short one,” Lane said. “What happened?”
“I was a woman of principles, if you can believe that.” She laughed bleakly. “When sleeping around could have done me some good. I behaved myself. But by the time it was too late and no one gave a damn, I said the hell with it and let myself go.” She appealed to Lane. “Kinda dumb, don't you think?”
“Kinda dumb,” Lane agreed. “But drinking yourself to death won't solve anything.”
She laughed again. “Did I mention that I was offered a role in a porn film last year?” She shook her head. “I turned them down, of course. But a couple of months ago I said what the hell. But when I called the producer, he turned me down. I've got a bad sense of timing.”
Speyer came from upstairs. “Regaling John with your Hollywood exploits?” he asked.
Lane looked up. “Actually we were talking about the weather. Doesn't it ever get to be summer here?”
“The Baltic is only sixty kilometers north of here,” Speyer said. He took a cigarette and a light from Lane. “Seems as if the FBI is interested in your handiwork in Kalispell.”
“Did they find out anything?”
Speyer shook his head.
Gloria threw off the afghan, got up and stepped into her shoes. She was wearing tight jeans and a thick turtleneck. “I'm going upstairs to take a bath.”
“You might want to hear the rest, my dear,” Speyer told her, and she gave him a worried look. “The FBI came poking around at the ranch, but of course there was nothing for them to find.”
“What about my car and the ordnance I brought with me?” Lane asked.
“It's well hidden, trust me,” Speyer assured him. “They were asking questions around town, too, but they didn't find out anything there either. Nor will they.”
Gloria stood quietly, as if she knew that she was going to hear some bad news.
Speyer glanced at her, but then turned back to Lane. “You see, the only weak link was Willy Hardt, the bartender. Besides the three of us and Ernst, Willy was the only other witness to the shooting. And he's been taken out of the picture. Permanently.”
“You bastard,” Gloria said softly. She brushed past him and went upstairs.
“That was a little extreme,” Lane suggested. He should have thought of that. They could have arranged to take Hardt into custody on something unrelated.
“On the contrary, as I said, he was a weak link,” Speyer replied. Gloria had stopped at the head of the stairs and was listening. Speyer ignored her. “Besides, I tend to take exception to men sleeping with my wife.”
“I see.”
“Ernst tells me that you'd like to take another look at the memorial tonight,” Speyer said. “It's a good idea. I was going to suggest it myself. Why not right now?”
 
Schaub took them to the memorial in his old Mercedes 300TD station wagon, figuring that the familiar car on these roads at night would attract less attention than a fancy new car from out of the area. There was a padlocked chain across the driveway to the parking lot.
“Don't stop. Just drive by,” Lane told him from the back seat.
Schaub did as he was told, and as they passed they saw a momentary flash of light as if someone had opened a door or a window curtain and then immediately closed it.
“There's a caretaker on duty overnight,” Schaub explained.
“Is that something new?” Speyer asked.
“No, it's always been this way.”
“What about at other war memorials?” Lane asked. “Are they guarded around the clock, too?”
“Some are and some aren't. It depends.”
“On what?”
Schaub glanced at Lane's reflection in the rearview mirror. “It depends on how important the memorial is. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Berlin, places like that. And it also depends on whether there's been any vandalism. There's been a lot of that over the past few years because of the skinheads.”
“Boys having fun,” Speyer said dismissively.
“Which is it here?” Lane asked. “The importance or the vandalism?”
“Well, there's been no vandalism, I can tell you that much.”
 
A Mercedes panel truck turned off the lake road and bumped up the gravel roadway to the rear of the chalet a few minutes after midnight. The legend DF 1, GERMAN TELEVISION ONE, was painted on the side. Two men got out.
“I thought there were supposed to be four of them,” Lane said softly in the darkness of the back entry.
“There were,” Speyer replied. “Maybe the others are still in the truck, or maybe they felt that there was no need for all of them to meet with us tonight.”
“Or maybe something has gone wrong.” Lane signaled to Baumann, who was waiting across the driveway in the garage.
Baumann moved forward slightly just out of the darkness so that Lane could see him. Like Lane, he was armed. There was no telling how the Russians were going to act tonight. They were in Germany under deep cover that was now possibly blown, and they did not want to go back to Russia. Life was a lot better here than it was in Moscow. They might simply shoot and run once they received the first half of their payment. It was a possibility that Lane had suggested, and Speyer had reluctantly agreed. Thus the precaution.
“Let me handle this,” Speyer said. “I want you and Ernst to remain in the background unless something goes wrong.”
“If I'm going to do the dive, I'm going to have to ask some questions.”
“Only when the time is right. Until then let me do all the talking.” Speyer was grim-faced. “These guys aren't going to screw around. Their lives are on the line.”
Lane nodded. “And they know it.” His Beretta was holstered under his sweater at the small of his back, the silencer already screwed on the end of the barrel. He had a spare magazine of ammunition in his pocket.
Schaub was waiting with a silenced Heckler & Koch 9mm pistol in the shadows at the head of the stairs overlooking the great room. He would act as their final backup should things go really wrong. Gloria had agreed to remain in the master suite at the rear of the house until the meeting was over. In fact, she was no problem because she had gone to bed around ten and had passed out shortly thereafter.
All their ducks were in a row, and yet Lane still felt a deep sense of uneasiness. There was something else going on that was just beyond his ken. He couldn't shake the sensation of forboding.
 
Speyer stepped outside to the veranda as the two Russians walked over from their truck. They stopped in mid-stride when they saw him.
“Where are the other two men who were supposed to come with you?” Speyer demanded.
“Your information is old,” the taller, huskier of the two said. They both wore dark trousers and matching jackets, of the kind worn by workmen and truck drivers. “Doronkin and Ranow are no longer in Germany.”
“Where are they?”
“Dead.”
“Do you have the equipment and the documents?” Speyer asked. “Did you bring them with you?”
The taller one nodded toward the other man, who held up a battered leather briefcase. “May we come in and get started?”
The Mercedes panel truck was okay where it was for now. Speyer stepped aside and motioned them forward.
 
Lane took up a position beside the fireplace where he could keep an eye on the two Russians. They introduced themselves as Vladimir Golanov and Danil Cherny, formerly KGB field officers. They were a scruffy-looking pair, and could have been gangsters out of a thirties American movie with slicked back hair. They sat on the
couch. Cherny started to open the briefcase, but Golanov held him off.
“We have the film equipment in the truck, and the engineering diagrams here,” he told Speyer. He glanced at Lane, but he didn't appear to be nervous, just cautious. “First I would like to see the money.”
“Half tonight, the remainder tomorrow after we recover what we've come for,” Speyer said.
“That's acceptable.”
Speyer picked up a nylon gym bag sitting on the floor beside the chair, and tossed it to Golanov. The Russian opened it.
“Two hundred thousand marks,” Speyer said. “Count it if you want. You'll get the rest when we're done.”
Golanov and Cherny exchanged a look of relief, but they were hiding something. “Okay, we have a deal. So let's get down to business.”
 
Cherny opened the briefcase and spread out two dozen faded and crumbling engineering diagrams, along with eight twenty-by-twenty-five centimeter grainy black-and-white photographs that looked equally old. While their attention was diverted Lane happened to look up and spotted Baumann in the doorway from the kitchen.
“I'm the one who'll be doing the dive in the morning,” Lane said, turning back.
“In that case you'd better pay attention, because there's going to be a lot of shit down there that's not on these drawings,” Cherny said. He talked and acted like an engineer.
“There was an explosion which probably collapsed a lot of the ceilings and walls, right?”
Cherny nodded. “They set their charges against a granite wall separating the bunker from the lake. When the wall went, the water came rushing through the hole and vented up the elevator shaft with a considerable amount of hydrostatic force.” Cherny wore glasses. He pushed them back up on the bridge of his nose. “I've read the report of a tank commander who happened to be there when it happened. He said that fish rained out of the sky.”
“It probably scoured out the inside of the entire complex.”
“Well, it certainly rearranged the furniture,” Cherny agreed. “But not everything came out of the hole. A lot of what was down there either got jammed up in the rooms and the labs, or was so firmly
attached to the floor or walls that it survived. The point is there's no telling what you'll find down there now—there's been sixty years of rot, too—so you damned well better memorize the layout according to the plans. It's the only way that you'll have any chance of finding what you're looking for.” Cherny looked up from the drawings. “And getting back out of there alive.”

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