The Blood Lance (23 page)

Ohlendorf lifted his chin to escape the knife. 'No! She tells me to set up a meeting and I take care of it.' He tried to look back to see how Kate was handling his information.

'How does she contact you?'

'The Hamburg
Zeitung
- in the personal ads. If she wants to make contact there is a number I should call. The number changes, but you can always find it under Men Seeking Women. She runs three identical ads and always uses the same key words:
full-figured, vigorous
, and
discreet.
The last two digits of the number are reversed to avoid unwanted calls.'

Malloy stood up. He checked his watch. He was running out of time. 'So you call this number and then what happens?' he asked.

'She tells me what she needs.'

'Cut his nose off!'

'I'm telling you the truth!'

Malloy lifted his hand, asking Kate to wait. Ohlendorf's breathing was fast and shallow. His eyes were bulging, his head thrashing back and forth. Kate's knife was poised before his face. Her body braced the back of Ohlendorf's head so he could not pull away from her. 'Last chance,' Malloy told him. 'If you want your daughter to see you after we're done hacking away your nose, just lie to me one more time.'

'I'm not lying!'

'Did Jack Farrell ask you to contact Chernoff?'

'No! I don't know what he's doing!'

'So you
do
know him.'

'I have met him several times. I would not say I
know
him.'

'When was the last time Chernoff needed your services?'

'End of last year. I don't know. . . late December, I think it was.'

'Tell me about it.'

'I need a drink of water.'

He was blinking, stalling, thinking.

'Do you know a decent plastic surgeon?'

Ohlendorf's eyes dropped and cut. Malloy signalled Kate to step back and slapped the back of Ohlendorf's head as he walked behind him. He took Kate's knife and locked the man's head against his torso, bracing the knife under his nose. 'I'll do it myself if I don't get something!'

'She was arranging a multiple assassination. She needed talent! I contacted certain people with the protocols.'

'Multiple
? Who were the intended victims?'

'I wasn't told. I arrange for the kind of people she wants on a given job. I'm not involved in the rest of it!'

Malloy let his head go and walked around to face him. 'I don't believe you.'

'I cannot help that. It is the truth!'

'Do you know the Langer alias?'

The lawyer was surprised at this and took his time answering. 'She wires money to me through that alias sometimes.'

'You don't pay her, she pays you?'

'I make arrangements for her. She pays me for that!'

'What bank does she use?'

'Sardis and Thurgau. In Zürich.'

'What was Xeno's relationship to Chernoff?'

'He worked for me. He supplied her with people when she wanted them, managed some of her safe houses, provided equipment, weapons. . . phones.'

'Were they lovers?'

Ohlendorf laughed. 'She runs in better circles than that!'

'Does she run in your circles, Hugo?'

When he did not answer, Malloy pressed the point of the knife close to Ohlendorf's crotch. 'Sometimes! Once in a while!'

Malloy slapped his face lightly to keep him focused. 'How many people did Chernoff need in December?'

'I don't know. It depends on the job. . .'
'How many for the December job, Hugo!'

'Eight. Nine! Eight in the city. Plus the. . . the one.'

'The one?'

'One specialist, the rest. . . street level talent.'

Malloy walked behind him, handing Kate her knife back. 'You arrange passports for her?'

This surprised him. 'No. That's. . . I don't do that.'

'Who does?'

'I don't know.'

Malloy came around to face him. 'You're lying!'

'She has contacts in Spain. I don't touch identity cards or passports! I run. . . I contact people who get her what she needs.'

'What were you paid for the December assassinations?'

'I haven't been paid.'

'Why not?'

'The contract is open. Look, I have given you what you wanted to know. You said if I told you what I know about Chernoff you were going to let me go.'

'You haven't given me what you know. You're keeping things from me, Hugo! You're lying more than you're telling the truth!'

'No! I've told you everything!'

Malloy left the room to search through the bags and dug out Kate's dart gun and an extra dart. When he came back into the room Ohlendorf's eyes brightened in fear. 'What are you doing?' he asked. 'I told you - no, wait, please! Wait!'

His body recoiled when the dart hit. He tried to speak, trembled, and then his eyelids fluttered. A few seconds later his head slumped.

'Put some kind of a hood on him,' Malloy said, 'and get the gear out to the Toyota. I'll be on the street at the front of the bar when you're ready.'

'What have you got, T. K.?' Josh Sutter asked when Malloy walked into the bar.

'Possible location for Jack Farrell.'

'You're kidding me!'

'I'm quite serious, actually. Come on, let's move.'

They found Randal double parked outside the bar. A prostitute was standing at his door trying to make a deal. Malloy gave her fifty Euros and told her to get lost. Fifty was the right price. She disappeared into the crowd.

'I thought you only liked the cheerleaders,' Malloy said. He was standing by the driver's side window.

Randal smiled and let one shoulder kick up. 'What can I say? I'm sitting here one minute, next thing I know I'm getting the midnight special.'

'We think Chernoff is keeping Jack Farrell at an apartment house not far from here.' The Toyota came out of the alley and turned into their street, pulling up beside Malloy. 'We're staging in ten minutes. Try to keep up!'

Malloy settled into the backseat of the Toyota and hit the speed dial as Kate accelerated. Dale Perry picked up on the second ring. 'Yeah.'

'We're rolling.'

'Three blocks due north of the target,' Dale said, 'there's a BP station that's closed for the night.'

Malloy gave Ethan the location and then checked the back window to make sure Sutter and Randal were still with them. The streets were cluttered with pedestrians and cars, but that thinned out as they left the fringes of the sex district.

'What do you think about Ohlendorf?' Kate asked.

'I think right now he is still picking and choosing what he wants to tell us.'

'You think she's really got nine people working for her?'

'She needs people to run errands, stand lookout, maybe a couple of bodyguards. You figure twenty-fours a day. . . that could be pretty close to nine. What I'm worried about is the specialist. What's his job?'

'I kind of wondered about that too,' Ethan answered.

Ethan was watching the GPS and told Kate to turn.

'What's a guy like Ohlendorf doing mixed up with assassinations?' Kate asked.

'It sounds to me like he runs a talent agency.'

'You think he's working for someone?' Ethan asked.

'Maybe. . . or maybe what we're looking at is a mutual assistance league. Ohlendorf provides Chernoff with freelance talent for a price. If they need passports they go to their friend in Spain. . .'

'Luca?' Ethan said.

'We know Luca deals in passports. We know Giancarlo and Jack Farrell launder money. If Ohlendorf manages talent. . .'

'This is all about the paladins, T. K.,' Ethan answered. 'It's the only thing that makes any sense.'

'I think you're right, but I still have a lot of questions I want to ask Farrell and Ohlendorf.'

'I'm guessing Robert Kenyon didn't like the direction things were going and the others decided there was too much money to be made to let him walk away.'

'What I'm having trouble with,' Malloy answered, 'is the seventy-five million dollar swindle. If they were having troubles, why would Kenyon put everything he had into a dubious investment?'

Ethan had no answer for this. 'I'm curious about that myself.'

'Tell us about the people we're going to be working with,' Kate said. They were close to the staging area. 'I mean. . . do they know what they're doing?'

'The man who found Chernoff for us is Company issue. He's been in Hamburg for something like twenty years. We won't have any problems from his end; just make sure if he asks you any questions about yourselves that you don't tell him the truth.'

'And the guys behind us?'

'Those are the two FBI Missing Persons agents tracking Jack Farrell. They're in a little bit over their heads, but they're trained cops, so I figure they know how to stand lookout.'

'They have any idea how many laws we're breaking?' Ethan asked.

'I didn't happen to mention that we were kidnapping a local politician if that's what you mean.'

Ussat-les-Bains, France

Summer 1932.

The hotel got more than its share of visitors that summer, including a steady flow of German tourists, all of whom stayed at reduced rates at
Des Marronniers
and went about the countryside in search of the Holy Grail and Cathar gold. Bachman, as majority shareholder, took the best room in the hotel without paying for it. He spent a great deal of time with the other Germans. Rahn went with them sometimes to show them various caves or ruins in the vicinity but, more often than not, he stayed close to the hotel and supervised the hotel staff.

Elise would see him frequently, but there was no cordiality between them. They were like school children who had promised themselves to each other in springtime only to discover the summer had turned them into strangers.

'How is your book going?' she asked him once when it seemed they had no choice but to speak.

'It's fine. Some problems, of course, but nothing I can't work out.'

Usually when they saw each other they were as likely to look elsewhere as to greet one another. There were no letters under her door, even when Bachman was travelling. There were no walks together, though he saw her leave the hotel alone many times. Nor were there any late night conversations that might have fixed the wound between them. Only chance meetings, and these all uniformly awkward.

Bachman would ask her about Rahn whenever she had encountered him, so Elise knew Bachman had spies watching her. She began to dread seeing Rahn because she knew she would hear about it from her husband later. One evening she went down to the bar and found Rahn talking to the North African bartender about a trip he had taken to Spain some years earlier. Bachman was away on another of his overnight excursions. Elise perched at the other end of the bar and ordered a brandy when the bartender sauntered down to see what she would like. Whilst she sat with her drink before her, Rahn finished his whiskey soda in a gulp and left the bar without so much as a nod of recognition.

No one else had been in the bar, but Bachman asked her about that night as well.

'Things are not good in Berlin,' Bachman muttered one morning after returning from a walk with yet another of the newly arrived German guests.

'More riots?'

He shook his head. 'Hitler has been passed over. He is not going to be the new Chancellor. He is not even going to be
relevant!'

Elise felt nothing at this news. What did it matter who was Chancellor? She was sick to death of politics.

'I need to fly to Berchtesgaden,' Bachman announced two nights later. 'I have talked to Otto, and he assures me he will take care of you.'

'I can take care of myself!'

'You know what I mean! The men see a woman like you alone.. .'

'A woman
like
me? Tell me, Dieter, what kind of woman am I?'

'I only meant a woman alone invites attention!'

'And you imagine I am incapable of resisting it?'

'I did not mean that. Look, it is only for a few weeks.'

'Weeks?'

'Hindenburg has. . . well, there has been another setback. Some of us are meeting in Berchtesgaden to talk it through.'
'I want to go back to Berlin. I am tired of France, Dieter! Take me with you.'

'When things are settled and I know how we plan to proceed, I'll take you home. I promise. Until then it's not safe.'

'Are you planning another putsch?'

'I don't know what we are going to do.'