The Rendition (14 page)

“The front gate's locked,” another policeman said. “How would anyone get in?”

“He'd maybe go in through the back,” Thiemann explained. A minute later, he was leading the police into the garden and showing them the fence. I was squatting twenty feet away, shielded only by a large hedge.

“Hell, yes. You're right.” One of the cops shined his flashlight into the other yard. “Someone went over this fence. It's bent. And it looks like a footprint there in the flower bed.”

“There's no other way out,” Thiemann said. “There's barbed wire in the hedges. Whoever it is, he's probably still in the house.”

Out in front I could see a flashing blue light, which meant more cops. The fence at the rear of the neighbor's property loomed up twenty feet, much too high to climb. It was only a matter of time before a cop thought to shine a flashlight back in this direction.

“Hey,” one of the policemen shouted, “we're back here.” When they turned their attention to the arriving cops, I remembered something Thiemann had said when Max and I were talking with him—his wife was away.

I had maybe five seconds to decide, no longer. Doing something, no matter how dumb it is, always beats doing nothing.

That's one of the unforgettable insights I acquired while attending Leadership School.

Still carrying the bag, I scooted silently across the garden, up the steps of the porch, and quietly pushed open the door into the Thiemann kitchen. After scraping dirt off my shoes on an already muddy mat, I made my way through the house. There wasn't anywhere to hide in the living room. And nowhere in the dining room. On the far side of the dining room was a short corridor at the end of which was a utility room—furnace, washing machine, dryer, some shelves with boxes of detergent and a few tools. The door was ajar.

After slipping inside, I had no choice but to leave the door ajar, which meant anyone in the corridor had a view of most of the room. In order to keep from being seen, I had to squeeze myself down into a corner behind the electric dryer, a space so narrow I couldn't move anything except my hands. The plastic bag I jammed behind the door.

I probably would have been better off staying in the garden. I was a sitting duck here.

Outside, I heard cops talking and an occasional radio squawk. Through the small window, I could see bright lights. They told the dispatcher they had the house surrounded and were beginning a search. There was a lot of activity. Someone said they'd found rope looped around the chimney and the veranda doors wide open. It sounded like at least a dozen cops out there.

This was not good. My hands became sweaty and my heart began pounding so loud I thought someone might hear it.

My watch said 12:45. There was no way out. I was stuck—all a cop had to do was stick his head through the door, and I'd be on my way into a German jail. This was a really lousy way to have to end this operation, by getting busted on my second day in-country. It was also a lousy way to end my illustrious career as an intelligence officer. I thought back on all the black bag stuff I'd done—all of which went off without a hitch. Maybe I was rusty. When I told Shenlee I was retired, I should have stuck to my guns—and stayed retired. It took the cops outside twenty minutes to determine the Vogt house was empty and another half hour to determine the guy they were now calling a
raffinierter Einbreche
r—“break-in artist”—wasn't anywhere on the property. But it seemed they were still searching very diligently.

Just outside the utility room window I could hear two policemen talking. “How the hell did he make it out anyway?” one asked.

“These characters are full of tricks. I doubt we'll nab him now.”

Thanks for the compliment, guys. I definitely hope you're right.

Twenty minutes later, Thiemann and what sounded like three policemen came clumping into the house. One went clumping upstairs. The other two I could hear moving around, going from the kitchen into the dining room, opening closets. Just as one of the cops was about to glance into the utility room, his radio emitted a loud squawk. I wiped away the beads of sweat that had formed on my forehead—and waited for the axe to fall.

“Hey, Hans!” someone shouted.

“I'm here,” the cop said. From the sound of his voice he was ten feet from where I was squashed. I couldn't believe he hadn't seen me—or heard the beating of my heart.

After announcing into his radio that they hadn't found anyone in the house, Hans clicked the utility room door shut. The other cop asked Thiemann where his bathroom was. After a few more minutes clumping around the house, they left.

Later, two more cops came in to use the bathroom. They were so close I could overhear their conversations. One of them said he'd just
met a really hot-looking chick at a night spot in Schwabing and was looking forward to getting laid on the weekend. The other cop said he wished he was single again.

After they left, things became quiet. Thiemann bustled around the kitchen for a while, then got on the telephone.

“Hello, sweetheart. I know it's late, but I thought you'd be interested. Someone broke into the Vogt place. I saw a flashlight, moving around in there, I called the police. Lots of excitement. The place was crawling with police. I don't know how the creep could have gotten away.”

Well, I haven't gotten away yet. And I don't like being called a “creep.”

“It was like maybe two minutes from the time I saw the light until I made the call. The cops were here within minutes. They've got a car out on the street now, just in case he's still in the neighborhood. Sure, I'm safe. The house is locked up tight. Right. I miss you too. How's your mother? Okay, let's see. I'll leave here at seven, so I should be up there just after noon. Okay. Love you. Tschüss.”

After that, he bustled around a little more, humming something that sounded strangely like a German version of “On the Street Where You Live,” then headed upstairs. I gave him time to undress, relax, and fall asleep. Hoping he slept soundly, I called Sylvia at a few minutes before four a.m.

“Alex! My God! I thought—”

Keeping my voice low, I told Sylvia where I was and said I wasn't anywhere near out of the woods yet. From experience, I knew the German police to be very thorough and I wasn't surprised that they'd still have some people out on the street. I told Sylvia what she should do.

Thiemann was awake at six and I could hear him moving around in the kitchen, which was so close to where I was huddled in the utility room I could smell the coffee. My biggest worry was that he'd come in here for some reason. Five minutes went by, ten, fifteen. I thought I heard him humming to himself, a song about “roses in the mountains.” And then the sound of the dishwasher. Finally, at around seven a.m. I
heard a door slam, and a few minutes later a car engine turned over. The cops, of course, would observe him leaving, and that complicated things a little more. As he backed out of his garage and onto the street, the engine sound grew faint—and then faded altogether.

With Thiemann gone and the house quiet, I climbed out from behind the dryer, stood and stretched, doing my best to get some circulation into my arms and legs. I walked through the kitchen and dining area to the front room to peer out the front window. I was able to make out the police patrol car, which was still parked diagonally across the street, only about twenty yards from Thiemann's front gate.

Not good. With the police this close, I couldn't take a chance. My black sweater and dark slacks would be a giveaway for any reasonably alert cop. Until now, Thiemann had been helpful, and I decided to give him a chance to help out a little more.

Upstairs, I picked out a freshly laundered white shirt from my host's drawer, and in his closet I found a pair of shoes a size too big. I found a checkered gray jacket that matched my dark pants. I grabbed a dark blue tie off his rack. On the dresser was a small stack of business cards people had given him, one of which read: “Lorenz Schmidt, Lloyd Shipping.” Lying on the bed was a trim official-looking briefcase with decals of the initials LST—Ludwig Thiemann's initials—prominently in gold over the lock. Using my all-purpose Leatherman, I gently pried off the T, leaving the other two letters. I emptied out the papers, laid them neatly on the bed.

Decked out in the uniform of a briefcase-carrying businessman on his way to the office, I again called Sylvia. I retrieved the black plastic bag from the utility room, stepped out of the front door and waited. Across the street, I saw the patrol car, parked inconspicuously between two trees. It was just becoming light when Sylvia arrived, halting in front of the house and leaving her motor running. There were two cops in the patrol car.

After taking a deep breath, I exited the house, slamming the door shut behind me.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk and brazenly deposited the plastic
bag in the garbage can standing in front of the house, then nodded to Sylvia. One of the policemen got out of the squad car and, as he stifled a yawn, gave me the once-over. He was plump, in his mid-twenties, and wasn't wearing his tunic. With a questioning look on his face, he walked toward me. I waved, crossed the street to meet him, said a cheerful “Good morning.”

When he only nodded, I said, “You fellows have had a long night. Any sign of him?”

“Who are you and where are you going?” the cop asked.

I was holding the briefcase so he could hardly keep from noticing the initials “LS.” “My name is Lorenz Schmidt. I occupy the basement apartment.” I handed him the business card I'd found in Thiemann's bedroom.

“Who was the guy who just left?”

I figured the cops knew who had just left. “That's Mr. Thiemann. He owns the house. I'm his tenant. I'm on my way into work.” I tapped the briefcase.

“Where's that?”

“The transportation office at Lloyd.”

“That's the ship company? In the Landsbergerstrasse?”

“Right. The place with all the warehouses. I have to get in early. This is our busy season and we've got more orders than we—”

Pointing at the car, the cop frowned. “Who's this?”

“Sylvia's a colleague.” When he continued to stare, I said, “I figure the two of us can get the bills of lading out of the way. Then we'll do the invoices. After that we should—”

Tuning me out, he stepped toward the car, gave it a quick once-over. When Sylvia smiled, he smiled back. Then he took another look at the card, stuck it in his pocket.

“You can call me at the office if you want and—”

“You can go,” he said.

“Have a good day, guys,” I said pulling open the passenger-side door.

Visibly more relaxed, he said, “Yeah, buddy, you too.” After rubbing some sleep from his eyes, he ambled back toward the patrol car.

As Sylvia and I drove slowly up the street, I hoped neither of the cops would have the presence of mind to write down our plate number. I also hoped there wouldn't be a garbage pickup before noon, which was when I figured it would be safe to retrieve the plastic bag. It would be a shame to think that we'd gone to all that trouble for nothing.

Looking across at Sylvia, who was dressed in a loose-fitting white blouse with short sleeves and a tight pair of jeans, I said, “Ursula Vogt was an attractive woman.”

It was early afternoon, and Sylvia and I were seated at the big round dining room table. Sylvia, a pair of reading glasses perched on her thin nose, looked up as I tossed a photograph across the table in her direction.

The picture showed Ursula Vogt naked. She was facing the camera with a comb in her hand. Her hair was a wild tangle, and she wasn't smiling.

After retrieving the plastic bag full of CDs and paper, we'd divided up the contents and begun the tedious job of looking for anything that might give some indication why Ursula Vogt had been killed and who might have done it. On the table in front of us was a pile of paper, some manila folders, envelopes, computer discs—all the stuff I'd found in her place and tossed into the bag. I'd been looking through a small box of photographs, mostly pictures of Ursula Vogt herself taken informally, in a variety of places, with a variety of people—and in a variety of poses.

Some of the poses were extremely revealing, and they were interesting to look at—and I could readily see why she would have wanted to keep them under lock and key. They gave an insight into some of the methods she might have used to gather information.

Along with being attractive, she was sexy—tall, with curly blonde
hair, and delicate features. She had long legs and nicely shaped breasts, conclusions for which I had plenty of evidence. A number of the photos showed her either half dressed or totally undressed. In one of them, she was seated on a cot, wearing only a pair of jeans and eating from a paper plate. In another, she had her arm around a loopy looking individual with a dark beard who was dressed like a mujahedeen soldier. In another, a half-dressed man was on top of a nearly naked woman who was lying on a cot in a barren-looking room. Although the woman's head was half buried in a pillow, she had curly blonde hair and I assumed she was Ursula Vogt. I wondered who took that picture. Two or three other photos were equally revealing. Naturally, I went through them all.

I didn't want to jump to conclusions, but I was reminded of stories I'd heard concerning some successful female war correspondents—and the methods they sometimes used to get stories that their male counterparts couldn't get. One woman, a reporter for one of the wire services, was widely known for having dispensed favors generously, particularly because she detailed them in her autobiography. Like the wire service correspondent, Ursula Vogt seemed to be good at combining business and pleasure.

A couple of photos showed her putting on a gas mask. Another photo showed her standing in front of a small building with a gas mask in her hand and wearing what looked like a chemical-warfare uniform. I wondered what that was all about. Other photos showed people in chemical-warfare uniforms looking at a pile of dead bodies. I had an idea one of the group was Ursula Vogt.