The Blood Lance (34 page)
As he was dressing for dinner at the Bachman's townhouse that Saturday evening Rahn thought briefly about sending his regrets. It was not too late to come down with a headache, was it? A carefully worded note along with the flowers he had intended to take to them ought to be sufficient. He had no direct business with Bachman after all. Assuming he kept matters cordial between them there should be no problem from missing a dinner engagement!
But of course being cordial was all that was required of their evening together. He had simply to be polite and face the consequences. Why not take things head-on for an evening and be done with it? He was quite sure his first visit would be his last. Let them be the ones to end it. Besides, he could not keep from wondering if Elise had really changed. . .
Weimar, Germany
The distance between Dresden and Erfurt was easily handled in just over an hour by car. That allowed Helena Chernoff to park in a public lot close to the train station and then get a taxi back to Weimar, where she bought a ticket and waited for the City Night Line. Between Erfurt and Weimar she would have eighteen minutes - enough time to locate Malloy's compartment, make the kill, and then exit the train. By the time anyone noticed a problem she intended to be crossing the Czech border.
Wearing a hat to cover her face and carrying a hastily emptied suitcase for cover, Chernoff waited in the shadows until the train had stopped and then entered the train some six cars away from Malloy. She kept the hat but lost the luggage as soon as she was inside the train. Moving toward Malloy's carriage, she watched faces but saw nothing that alerted her to danger. Once in the first class carriage she found a narrow, empty aisle. The carriage offered a series of stairs leading to three separate compartments, two on the lower level, one at the top. The doors were numbered, but there were no names. Worse still, each door provided a peephole that would allow Malloy to look out and see who was at his door.
Chernoff walked to the end of the carriage and found a steward in a small cabin behind a glass wall. He said to her with some slight concern, 'May I help you?'
Chernoff pulled a Hamburg police badge and told him, 'Yes, I need to find someone travelling with you this evening - but very discreetly, if you will.'
His manner changed. 'Certainly, Officer!'
'A man travelling alone?'
'I have four this evening. Do you have a name?'
'Yes, but he is probably using an alias.'
The steward thought about this and then said, 'I have the identity cards of everyone in this wagon, if that will help. Would you care to have a look?'
Helena had a look and after a moment picked up the card of a Frenchman. This is the man.'
'Monsieur Dupin! But the American Embassy in Berlin made his arrangements! What has he done?'
'We think he might have instigated the trouble in Hamburg last night.'
The man was excited by this news, and bent over the table, reaching for a plan of the carriage. Consulting it, he pointed to compartment 106. Chernoff dropped back a step. The steward was a small individual, no larger than she, and she had no trouble lifting his chin with a quick, delicate move. Before he understood what was happening, she cut his neck open and pulled him to the floor. Whilst the man's feet still moved, Chernoff studied the strange designs of the blood splatter, and then touched the bloodied walls so there would be no doubt who had done this. Finally, she bent down to clean her knife blade and fingers on the man's coat.
Turning off the light she walked, back into the aisle and found 106 at the top of a small set of stairs. She put her badge over the peephole, and tapped the door with the heel of her gun. Malloy called out sleepily in German with just a touch of a French accent. 'Who is it, please?'
She knocked again.
'Just a minute!'
At the click of the lock she began discharging her silenced weapon through the thin partition. She fired five evenly space shots. She heard a cry of pain on the third and then the heavy thump of a falling body. In the next instant, Chernoff pushed the door open, resolved to finish it.
The steward had come by at nine-fifteen, shortly after the train left the station. He had checked Malloy's ticket and taken his identity card - the Dupin alias Malloy carried but had not used in years. Promising to return the card with breakfast, he left a complimentary bottle of wine.
After that Malloy secured his room and settled down for the night. He had tried to spend the time thinking about Hamburg but, after a few minutes, realised he was too tired and too close to the events to make much sense of it. Soon the gentle rocking of the train put him to sleep. He came awake briefly at one of the stations and checked his watch. It was still early. He was sitting on the floor. He thought he ought to try to stay awake, but the rocking of the train soon had its effect and he drifted back to sleep. At eleven-fifteen the train stopped at Weimar. He got up to have a look at the platform but saw only the shadowy outlines of the town against the night sky.
The moment the train started out of the station, he settled back on the floor, beginning to doubt his instincts. Then came the knock at his door and suddenly he was wide awake. He called out as he leaned down tightly against the floor. 'Who is it?'
A second knock.
He had balanced his suitcase on the table and kept a cord next to him so he could pull it and send the suitcase first into a chair and then down to the floor - a sound that he hoped might approximate a body falling in close quarters. His Taser gripped tightly in his right hand, Malloy called out, 'Just a minute!'
He reached up toward the lock and felt a moment of sudden panic. She was either coming through fast or she would simply start shooting at once. He turned the flimsy lock and saw his door splintered with bullet holes. He gave a cry that was supposed to approximate getting hit, but was in fact an eruption of fear and surprise. He remembered to jerk the suitcase from the table but did not even hear the thump and clatter of it falling. Five shots nearly crumbled the folding door.
Malloy watched the gun and silencer extend through the open door. He waited until he saw Chernoff's leg. The Taser's effect was immediate. Chernoff dropped her gun and fell down the steps. Whilst she was still trying to sit up, Malloy came after her, clipping her jaw with his knuckles. He saw the Hamburg detective's badge, her hat, and a couple of the shell casings next to her. He snatched the badge and began pulling her to her feet. Suddenly a door opened and a man in pyjamas looked out at him from the compartment directly below his. 'What is going on?' he shouted in German.
Malloy called to him in German, holding up the badge, 'Police business! Get back inside!' Another door opened, this in the suite adjoining his. A man wrapping himself in a robe came down the stairs, staring at Malloy and the unconscious woman in his arms.
'Back inside, please!' Malloy told him. He swung the badge toward the second man. 'Police business!'
Whilst both men retreated, Malloy twisted Chernoff's arm behind her back and half pushed, half carried her into his compartment. Once inside, he cuffed her and then began searching her for weapons. He found a switchblade, the handle tacky with the remnant of fresh blood. Tossing the woman into his bed, he bound her feet at her ankles with the rope he had tied to his suitcase. Before she was conscious enough to let out a scream he used her knife to cut his sheets apart and then gagged her.
He returned to the corridor and saw another interested onlooker. He held the badge up and commanded the woman back inside. Next he walked to the steward's cabin. The area was dark, but when he opened the door and switched on the light, he saw the steward stretched out on the floor. He snapped the light off and headed back toward his compartment. Outside, he saw lights in the distance. He hoped they were coming to a station within the next few minutes but could not remember the schedule in detail.
He saw spent shell casings and the hat she had worn on the floor in front of his compartment, but he left them as they lay. Another door opened, and he walked forward confidently with the badge held toward the man. 'Back inside, please! Back inside!'
He knew cell phones would be ringing police. He looked out the window again and saw lights in the distance. Inside his compartment, he saw Chernoff watching him with her dark, solemn eyes. Even in handcuffs she scared him, and he thought that maybe he should kill her. He checked his watch and then the schedule. There should be a stop in four minutes. He pulled out his cell phone.
'Yes?' He heard Jane's voice and the sound of people dining around her, even the odd sound of laughter in the background.
'I want you to call the Germans. Tell them Helena Chernoff is on the City Night Line bound from Dresden to Zürich. At the moment she is handcuffed and relatively secure in compartment 106 of the first class wagon, but if they don't move fast some Good Samaritan will probably help her escape.'
'Where are you?'
'We're coming into Erfurt.'
'There's no way you can get her to Frankfurt?' Jane asked.
'Frankfurt is four hours away. I'll be lucky to get out at Erfurt. Besides, we can use the goodwill with the Germans.'
'Are you at the station now?'
'Pulling into it in a couple of minutes.'
'Do you know what this lady can tell us, T. K.?'
'My guess is by the time we break her, what she knows won't get us very much.'
'Still, I'd like to try. . .'
'Make the call Jane. If we don't get the Germans moving on this, we'll lose her.'
New York City
David Carlisle had chartered a private jet out of Hamburg at six o'clock in the morning. Having been up the entire night, he slept through most of the flight and arrived at JFK a few minutes past ten in the morning, U.S. Eastern Time.
On the limo ride from the airport he checked his phone and found Helena Chernoff had tried to call. He had quite a bit to do in a short amount of time and did not get back to her call until after he had finished lunch and was walking into Grand Central station. When she had told him the ambush at
Das Sternenlicht
had failed, his first reaction was quite naturally irritation. Then he had begun thinking about the consequences of that failure.
When Chernoff had told him about tracking Malloy as far as Dresden he had felt he had no choice but to agree to her terms. She was right about the vote. He could negotiate an agreement with Luca by giving him a cash payout. As long as his network remained unexposed, he would not be hurt too badly. What he did not like seeing was Helena Chernoff assuming the kind of power Ohlendorf's network would give her. Ohlendorf had always been easy to control. His respectability made him vulnerable to pressure. Once Chernoff got hold of it she was going to turn a ragged confederation of street level criminals into something he and Luca together might not be able to control. Still, he had no choice. The alternative was to give Malloy time to regroup.
After his call to Chernoff, he proceeded to rendezvous with a long-time informant who just happened to be a senior agent in the FBI. They passed one another like strangers, Carlisle taking a key from the man and proceeding to a locker. Inside it he found a marked route from JFK to the city, a set of motorcycle keys, a Port Authority patrol uniform, and a loaded service weapon. The address where he could pick up his ride was written at the top of the route map.
Erfurt, Germany
Malloy found a BMW close to the Erfurt station. He smashed the window and hotwired the starter. At the first main road he encountered, he headed southwest, in the direction of Frankfurt, calling Jane once he was on the highway. 'I'm going to need to change cars in Frankfurt - just to be on the safe side.'
They went back and forth about the details and then she told
him she would get back to him. Twenty minutes later she called to tell him he could pick something up at the Frankfurt Bahnhof.
'Anything yet on Chernoff?' he asked.
'As I understand it they intend to board the train in force at Eisenach. That's. . . five minutes from now.'
'I've been thinking about how she handled this, Jane.'
'It's not really our problem anymore, and I'm not inclined to pass our intel on her to the Germans.'
'That's the thing. I think Chernoff wanted to limit her exposure. That would put her on the train at Weimar and exiting at Erfurt - that's something like fifteen-to-eighteen minutes. If she had a partner, she had a ride waiting, and he's long gone, but if she was solo on this thing, then she left a car either at Weimar or Erfurt, and I'm guessing Erfurt.'
'The Germans will figure it out, T. K.'
'Right now, they don't know where this woman came from or what she was doing. And she's going to spend most of tonight trying to prove they have the wrong woman. That gives us maybe a twelve hour lead before they start looking for her car - checking a lot of different stations. She lost a lot of people Saturday night, Jane. And she had to have a computer with her if she was tracking my cell phone signal.'
