The Eagle's Covenant (5 page)

“Then perhaps I should tell you that we stand little chance of finding the criminals, and our only hope for a quick end to this is that they send a ransom demand which you will pay for your grandson’s return, and all that will be left for us to do is to catch the killers as quickly as possible.”

Kistler stood up suddenly like a towering volcano. His dark eyes levelled at Hoffman like the barrels of a shotgun. “There is little to be gained by that kind of defeatist language, Oberkommissar Hoffman. Your duty is clear; you will find these murderers and return Herr Schiller’s grandson unharmed. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly, Doctor Kistler,” Hoffman agreed. He turned his attention to Schiller. “I will need to interview all members of your staff, sir, including yourself and Frau Schiller.”

Schiller waved his hand at the detective. “Get on with it then, but remember this: if any harm befalls my grandson, someone’s head will roll. I trust you understand that?”

Hoffman new exactly what that meant; with Kistler eating out of Schiller’s hand like a pet dog, there was little hope of natural justice for him if this kidnap ended in disaster.

*

They had watched the news reports on television for most of the afternoon. None of them had felt much like playing cards or talking. All they wanted was their money and then they could leave. As far as the media were concerned it was the new “Baader Meinhoff” gang. Some had even resurrected the Red Army Faction. They were all at it. For all Conor Lenihan cared it could have been Osama Bin Laden who had organised the whole thing. He was simply a mercenary doing a job of work. Now he just wanted to get back to his flat in Cologne and look around for more work. Maybe the Middle East, he thought.

The sound of the van outside told them that Schneider was back. Breggie had been upstairs with the baby while he had been away. She came down within a few minutes of hearing the car. Conor thought she looked agitated and that familiar gut feeling returned.

As Schneider walked in, Breggie glanced at him quickly. Conor saw the questioning lift of her eyebrows and the alarm bells started ringing. He wondered if he was becoming paranoid about the woman. He had met psychopaths before, served with them in the SAS, and this woman certainly fitted the frame. Signals flashed from her like semaphores when she spoke. She concealed her power behind a mask of overt sensuality, but the latent, psychopathic tendencies were never completely hidden from men of Conor’s intuitive reasoning, and he could read the signals clearly. He was not afraid of her but he knew, instinctively, that to tangle with her unprepared would be like tackling a Black Widow spider.

Schneider placed a small, leather holdall on the table. “Your money’s in there. Better count it.”

Trucco took the bag and drew the zip back. He turned the bag over and several bundles of cash spilled out on to the table top. They all reached forward and drew their due towards them. Conor flicked through the bundles that were marked with his name. As he had requested, one bundle contained Euros, the rest American dollars. He had no need to count it; the code, ironically, was honour among thieves. He picked up his jacket from the back of chair where it had been most of the afternoon and stuffed the bundles into his pockets. Despite the code of honour, he slipped the jacket on.

“You will not see us again,” Breggie said suddenly. “But I have been instructed to thank you for your part in securing Germany’s future.” It was all very wooden, as though she was reading from a script. “When Joseph and I have left, you may go whenever you like. Please do not leave any trace of your presence here.” She glanced over her shoulder towards the window. “It is almost dark now, so it will be reasonable for you to wait about thirty minutes. There is a car at the bottom of the hill. The keys are in the glove box. There is a road map in the car. Good luck. Don’t get caught.”

“We might say the same to you, Breggie,” Trucco told her. It was Schneider who responded though.

“We won’t get caught,” he said, a confident smirk on his face. “I can guarantee it.” He picked up a small case that Breggie had placed on the floor and winked at them. “
Auf wiedersehen
.”

Breggie was already at the door, the baby tightly wrapped and clutched to her bosom. Conor thought she and Joseph looked just like any young married couple. Nobody would take any notice of them, unlike five men walking through the night to a car that had been parked nearby.

As the door closed on Breggie and Joseph, Conor became troubled by the thought of getting into a parked car and turning on the ignition.

He stood up, restless, thoughts of car bombs trickling through his mind and walked to the window. The vertical blinds had been closed all afternoon. He eased one aside and watched the van disappear from view beyond the end of the driveway. Rain spotted the pane of glass and he let the blind fall back into place.

His colleagues had counted their money and were looking quite happy with themselves. No thoughts of car bombs on their minds, Conor mused. He wondered if he should tell them of his fears; that Breggie and Joseph were not to be trusted. The rain spattered against the glass, pushed by a strengthening wind. He pulled a cigarette from a packet, holding it in his mouth for a while; thinking. Perhaps he would just tell them he had decided to make his own way; leave them to their own fate. Perhaps he was just scaremongering.

He walked into the kitchen and lit the cigarette. At the end of the kitchen a door led into a small utility room giving access to the garage. He had planned to smoke outside but because of the wind and rain he decided to use the garage. It was quite large and it would give him the solitude he needed to think a lot clearer without being distracted by the others. He checked the time. In twenty five minutes they would all be walking out of there, either to their own kind of freedom or death.

Melodramatic, that’s what it was, he thought; I’m being melodramatic. He closed the internal garage door behind him and leaned against a bench running the length of one wall. He stayed like that, smoking his cigarette until at last, he made his decision: he would go back in there and tell the others what he suspected and let them make up their own minds. He would leave on his own.

He dropped the stub of his cigarette to the floor and lifted his heel to grind it out when the bomb exploded.

It had been placed beside a wall unit about one metre from the table around which the gang had been sitting. The blast wave shattered everything inside the confines of that room. The four men did not stand a chance as the pressure wave dismembered them piecemeal. The ceiling lifted and shot up through the upper floor as the blast hit the roof trusses and shattered the roof. All the windows disappeared as the force of the blast went through them like a cannon firing shrapnel, and furniture, ornaments, burning bedding and debris shot out in a pyrotechnic display of raining fire.

Conor heard and felt the blast, but in that single moment the percussive effect rendered him unconscious as he flew across the empty garage and crashed into the opposite wall. The bench against which he had been leaning was sliced in two as the internal wall caved in under the force of the bomb. Huge chunks of brickwork spun aimlessly and the ceiling of the garage collapsed as the internal support disappeared and the weight of some of the shattered roof trusses bore down on it.

In amongst this terrifying maelstrom a fierce heat burned everything in its path as it seared through the building. Fanned by the pressure wave it scorched everything on the outer edges of the blast, blackening all it touched. A long tongue of flame filled the remains of the utility room and punched its way into the garage where it ignited the traces of oil that had seeped into the concrete floor over several years. Half empty tins of paint, domestic and industrial cleaning agents, methylated spirits, petroleum based products all started to explode in the small confines of the garage.

The outer, steel door of the garage had been blown open but was still attached to the roller guides. The bottom corner of the door was bent out like a dog-eared page of a book and the whole thing hung limp and useless as palls of thick, black smoke funnelled out from beneath it. As the effects of the blast subsided, the flames took hold until they were roaring skywards and pulling in air beneath them, feeding oxygen into the centre of the fire. Within minutes the entire house was a raging inferno.

The lights from Levi Eshkol’s Mercedes cut through the quickening darkness of the Teutoburger Wald as black clouds rolled in behind the hills. The wind whipped up little flurries of debris and the rain pushed hard against the windscreen. The wiper moved back and forth, clearing the rain in a steady stroke.

Eshkol drove without the radio on. He wanted silence, time to think. Beside him on the passenger seat was his briefcase in which he had placed the copy of
the Bild Zeitung
newspaper which had caused him such consternation. Why had Schiller’s grandson been kidnapped? The question had burned itself into his brain and he could only come up with one answer; it had to be the Covenant. It
had
to be the target. The question of
who
? would be dealt with at the meeting he was about to attend, although Eshkol was quite sure he knew who was behind it.

He drove carefully through the town of Bad Iburg, a charming Spa resort that always attracted a multitude of tourists. But in the gathering gloom and darkness, not to mention his own state of mind, Eshkol had no time to think of the picturesque lake surrounded by beautifully tended gardens and the lush, green swathes of the lakeside, now colourless in the evening storm.

He turned left, negotiating the bend that would take him west towards his destination. The trees lined each side of the road and he was careful to keep his speed down for fear of missing the turning he was looking for. When the small junction came he nodded to himself in satisfaction and pulled the Mercedes into a sweeping turn. The road narrowed and took him up the side of the hill until he came to the gateway of a splendid, Bavarian-style lodge.

He swung in, the lights from the car picking out the house momentarily. A flicker of lightning raced across the dark sky and Eshkol immediately wished he was back in his beloved Israel.

He parked the car and got out, taking his briefcase with him. He used the remote control to lock the car, leaving his small, overnight bag on the back seat. Then he walked up to the front door of the house and rang the bell. Within moments he was ushered in and shown into a room in which four men were sitting. They all rose as he entered and he greeted them politely.

All of these men were known to Eshkol although he had barely met them a dozen or so times in the past. This was the first meeting they would have together. The first man he greeted was Alfred Weitzman, former Security Adviser to the President of the United States of America, now retired and a leading figure among American Zionists. The second man was Avi Binbaum, former head of Shin Bet, the internal counter intelligence agency in Israel, now retired. The third man was Louis Goldman, like Eshkol a native of Israel, and an influential South African businessman. The connection between these three men and Eshkol was that they were all experts in international and industrial law.

The fourth man was Alfred Hess. Unlike the others he was not a lawyer and was relatively young at thirty five years of age. He was a German banker and member of the German Bundesbank.

The greetings over, Eshkol helped himself to a coffee from a Cona jug and returned to the table around which the others were sitting. He opened his briefcase and pulled out the
Bild Zeitung
. He really didn’t have to say anything to the others; he was quite sure they had drawn similar conclusions, but nevertheless, he unfolded the paper and held it up for them all to see.

“Gentlemen, we have to assume the inevitable has happened; they have learned of the Covenant.”

Weitzman nodded his agreement. “We knew the risks, Levi. Security was damn tight, but if you share a secret....” He made a dismissive motion with his hand. “I had my team screwed down so damn hard they probably didn’t even know what the others were up to.”

“Very commendable, Alfred,” Levi told him dispassionately. “I’m sure we all believed our security was watertight, but somehow it leaked.”

None of the men in that room would have dreamed of casting doubt on the fidelity of their teams, and it wasn’t in their nature to look for a scapegoat. They were pragmatists, all of them, and their only course of action now was damage limitation and a speedy conclusion to their business.

“We discussed this before you came, Levi.” This was Hess, the German banker. “Why Schiller’s grandson was kidnapped and by whom. It has to be the Volkspartei and they want to stop Schiller signing the Covenant.” The others showed their agreement. Hess went on. “Now we have to protect it. And ourselves,” he added ominously.

In referring to the Volkspartei, or the People’s Party, Hess knew they were pointing the finger at one man, the leader himself: Franz Molke. Molke was a political animal, a politician to his well-manicured fingernails. Enigmatic, charismatic, he had carried the German people on a wave of popular support by declaring himself an opponent of the very things that antagonised them. He persuaded the people they were being oppressed by mindless bureaucracy, interfering European Courts, continuing harassment from member governments of the European Union, not to mention the flow of migrants from Eastern Europe. His asides and skilled rhetoric were often aimed at ethnic groups and included blacks, Jews, homosexuals, illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and any other pinko liberal who did not measure up to his idea of Aryan purity. In short he was the antithesis of the modern, fence-sitting politician and was never afraid to voice his Hitler-like opinions at any given opportunity. 

The five men in that room were only too aware that Germany was on the brink of achieving everything it had failed to achieve in the previous century: domination of Europe. With the introduction of the single currency in member states of the Union, tacit control would eventually be handed to the Bundesbank, which was to be known as the Central European Bank. Three hundred million souls would be at the fiscal mercy of the bank’s masters. Added to that was the certainty that all the European Governments would one day ratify the European Constitution. To control that mechanism would offer unprecedented power to its head. To have that power in a political environment where there was no potent opposition would effectively elevate a strong Chancellor of Germany to a position of supreme power over the new, super state. And the master of that super state would be at the zenith of a power that could equal the might of the United States.

Molke’s timetable was perfect. His political ascendancy started with the reunification of East and West Germany. By forming coalitions with whichever party he could deal with, his own party eventually carried almost a third of the seats in the Bundestag, the lower house and main legislative organ in the Federal Republic. By the year 2000 the Bundestag had completed its move to the new Reichstag in Berlin, the traditional heart of German Government.

Molke’s party was on course to win enough support at the next general election to form a Government. It was the belief of Eshkol, his colleagues and Manfred Schiller himself, that Molke would be the head of a new Nazi party. With control of the Bundesbank and domination of weak minded member States Molke knew they would all fall into line behind his totalitarian diktat. Molke would find it easy to engineer himself into the seat of power as President of Europe, not for the paltry six months allotted to each member state, but permanently.

As it had been so eloquently put: once you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

Molke was also a psycho. Running parallel to his party was an organisation of thugs, criminals and other psychos. He used these people to eliminate opposition — sometimes permanently, where he believed it would be most helpful. He used all means in the book; intimidation, blackmail, and physical violence; whatever method would achieve results. The man was power crazy, intimidating and very, very clever. None of the crimes committed on his behalf could ever be traced back to him or his lieutenants.

Eshkol reflected for a moment on Hess’s remarks, knowing the threat they were under. Now the Covenant had been put together they would all have to take extreme care.

“We have to hope that Herr Schiller will not be frightened off by these thugs.” he shrugged. “However, we must careful. Now, if I could have your contributions, gentlemen.”

Each of them had brought the paperwork, bound in ring binders that had been their team’s responsibility. Each binder represented over a year’s work. Accompanying the binders were computer discs on which they had copied their work. No human value could be placed on each binder or those discs, but the fiscal value of just one binder or disc would make a third world country go weak at the knees.

They handed them over and Eshkol began the task of reading each one.

*

Breggie de Kok whooped with delight when she saw the house explode. They had driven away and motored out of the limits of the small hamlet, bringing the van to a spot overlooking the house. It had taken them about three or four minutes. Schneider had kept the engine running while Breggie lowered the window. Taking a small transmitter from the glove compartment she had switched it on, then pulled the small antenna out from its recess in the unit. She held it out at arm’s length and pointed it towards the house.

At that moment Breggie felt the adrenalin coursing through her veins like a drug and the familiar wetness returned to her loins as she pushed the transmit button. As the house exploded, it changed night into day for several seconds. Schneider gave her no more than ten seconds to indulge her self-serving pleasure. Then he released the handbrake and drove the van away into the night.

*

Conor tried to open his eyes. One eye felt as though the eyelids were glued together. The other opened to what seemed like an impenetrable blackness. He could hear a roaring sound and was aware of an uncomfortable heat. There was also an acrid smell of burning solvent and paint. At first he did not know what had happened, but as consciousness returned, so too did his memory. He had been standing in the garage smoking a cigarette. There had been an explosion, but not because he had been smoking.

He twisted his body round and tried to sit up, but something was pressing against him. He put his hand up and touched its rough surface. It was like a brick wall and it felt hot. Behind him was another wall but that was cool. He realised then that he was up against the outside wall of the garage. The other brickwork, although he was still not aware of it, was part of the internal garage wall that had been blown across the garage by the explosion. It had come to rest at an angle against the outer wall and part of the bench that had shattered with the force of the blast.

Conor felt anger rising inside him but chose not to dwell on it. If he was to escape the predicament he was in, he needed to concentrate his efforts on finding a way out. There was little doubt in his mind that Breggie and Joseph had bombed the house, but his immediate priority was to get out.

He could feel a strong movement of air flowing across his body. The air was quite cool and he reasoned that this was being drawn in from outside. He twisted his body round so that his head was in the cool air stream. With his one good eye he peered into the gloom. He couldn’t see anything clearly but he could now feel heat bearing down on him from the wreck of the internal wall. He knew he would die if he didn’t get out soon.

He inched his way towards the source of the cool air until he came to the damaged garage door. The air was rushing in through the twisted corner where the metal had been bent outwards by the explosion. Conor was able to squeeze his frame beneath the damaged section until he had dragged his feet clear. His next move was not to stand and stare at the wrecked house in astonishment but to get as far away from it and as quickly as possible.

He turned away from the front driveway as people from neighbouring houses were beginning to arrive, and limped to the rear of the house. There was plenty of cover there because of the trees, but the whole area was flooded in light by the flames from the house. He was desperate not to be seen so he dropped to his belly and crawled beneath the shrubs and ornamental conifers.

Until that moment, Conor had not been aware of any pain apart from the pain in his head. But now he could feel pain from his rib cage and wondered if he had cracked a rib or two. There was also a smell of scorching close to his face. At best he knew would have been severely bruised and possibly suffering from surface burns.

He gritted his teeth and dragged himself clear of the rear of the house until he was finally in enough cover to stand and make for the trees beyond the rear garden. Once he was there, he dropped to the ground and leaned back against the bole of a tree. He could hear the sound of a siren somewhere in the distance and began cursing Breggie and Joseph for the bastards they were.

*

“Can you think of any reason, other than money, why anyone should want to kidnap your grandson?”

Hoffman was in Schiller’s beautifully designed summer room overlooking the pine covered slopes of the Mosel valley. The light was fading earlier than usual because of the dark clouds coming up from the south west. The lower slopes were still caught in the sunlight, but their colours soon dulled beneath the stormy shadows. The fading light matched the mood of the household in response to the apocalyptic nightmare that had been visited upon them all.

Kistler had left earlier, promising to move heaven and earth in his department’s efforts in the search for the kidnappers. Hoffman had been more pragmatic: he had set up an incident room back at his headquarters in Bonn. Jansch was there running it for him at that moment. He had called in a team of officers from department KK11 of the ZKD. This department dealt with serious crimes. He had also drafted officers in from KK13, the organised crime specialists. Other units would be drafted in to help with the investigation but not until it became clear which elements of this crime needed the particular skills of certain police departments.