Helmut Dalitz was a wealthy international businessman. Once a banker, he now made his money by buying distressed properties across the world, fixing them or otherwise making them viable, and then selling them. He did this most often with apartment buildings, though he also did it on occasion with commercial properties.
It was one of the commercial properties that had brought Wolf here. For Helmut Dalitz, through a company that he owned, had bought a large, nondescript building in Rome, Italy, the previous year. The building, on Via Nazionale not far from the Termini train station, was a nondescript twelve story structure badly in need of maintenance.
There were many ways that maintenance could be done; since there were a number of vacant stores and offices, workers could have started with the vacant spaces, then gradually moved on, shuffling the existing tenants in and out of the different units like a game of musical chairs. Doing things piecemeal like that was common in Italy, where work tended to progress at a very leisurely pace, and disrupting old traditions for the sake of some new paint and a few daubs of plaster was antithetical to the national psyche.
But Helmut Dalitz was not Italian. More importantly, he disliked disorder, and the idea of slowly renovating his building did not sit well with him. It smacked of chaos and conflicted with his timetable for turning a profit. And so he had the building closed entirely, kicking out all of the existing tenants, something he was allowed to do by the terms of the sale and the tenants’ leases, even if these terms conflicted with the spirit by which most of the tenants had held their property.
Among the tenants he had kicked out was Giuseppe DeFrancisco, an eighty-year-old man who ran a small tobacco shop on the side street. The shop had not turned a profit in several years, and in fact the rent was paid now entirely by the man’s grandson. Unfortunately, the grandson had been concentrating on his business affairs in southern Italy when the first notice of the pending eviction came. By the time he realized his grandfather was going to be kicked out, it was too late to stop it — not that Helmut Dalitz or his minions would have listened to reason.
The thugs his minions hired were deaf as well. They hadn’t listened to the old man’s pleas, who begged them right up to the moment they placed him on the curb. They didn’t listen to his complaints, or even to his cry for help a few moments later, when he began suffering from a heart attack. A passerby called an ambulance when he found the old man on the ground a few minutes later; by the time the ambulance fought its way through the morning traffic, Giuseppe DeFrancisco was dead.
The men who had put him out wouldn’t be listening to anyone now. Wolf had taken care of them two weeks before on a trip to Rome. Now it was their employer’s turn.
Wolf cared little for the justifications of the murder, though they had been important to the old man’s grandson. While he could have used his own organization to extract revenge, the grandson considered this a matter of the heart rather than business, and deemed it wiser to keep the two separate. And besides, the Wolf and his employers were said to be even more efficient than the mafia.
Helmut Dalitz was sitting in the third box on the right of the stage. He was seated very close to the rail, listening intently to the music. Behind him sat two bodyguards, dressed as impeccably as he was; they were a sharp contrast to his daughter, who though not slovenly, could easily have afforded something more stylish than the plain black polyester pants and print silk shirt she wore.
She was alone. The Black Wolf had expected her boyfriend to be with her. This was not necessarily a problem for him — one less potential obstruction, perhaps — but he noted it nonetheless.
The night’s performance was grouped into three sections. As the first came to an end, Helmut Dalitz rose with the rest of the audience and applauded. And then, being a man of habit, he kissed his daughter on the cheek and told her he was going home.
Even with his superior hearing, the Black Wolf couldn’t hear the conversation. But he saw the girl shaking her head, and guessed what her father was saying. Helmut Dalitz habitually left the concert hall before the last intermission, and obviously he had decided to leave now.
Habits were a bad thing, especially when someone was aiming to kill you.
The girl would be pleading with him not to leave her alone. And he would suggest that she come with him.
She was torn. What would she decide?
To stay. She turned away abruptly.
Easier for him.
The Black Wolf waited to make sure that Helmut Dalitz was actually leaving, then turned and walked swiftly to the exit. He slipped easily between the people making their way down to the restroom and the large hall at the front of the orchestra house to stretch their legs. He moved quickly, almost lithely, despite the bulk of his legs and shoulders. His body had the fluidity of a much lighter and, it had to be admitted, younger man. While Wolf thought of himself as barely into his early twenties, he was in fact over fifty.
Not that anyone seeing him would have guessed that. On the contrary, he looked exactly as if he were in his twenties, just reaching his physical peak, with a bright future yet to come.
The Black Wolf reached the marble hallway at the front of the building, pausing near one of the elaborate columns. Helmut Dalitz would approach from the right, accompanied by his bodyguards; a third man would be waiting just outside, alerted by radio.
Taking him in the concert hall was tempting — there were so many people present that he could sidle right up to Dalitz and shoot him with the silenced gun. But getting away would be problematic. He wasn’t so much worried about witnesses as simply being able to slip quickly through the crowd. Outside would be easier.
A surge of people blocked his vision, and he lost Dalitz momentarily. The Black Wolf took a step in the direction he knew Dalitz would take, then stopped. He scanned the faces, looking.
One of the bodyguards was walking at the far end of the hall. Wolfe realized Dalitz must be in front of the man, though he couldn’t see him.
Why was he that far away? Had he changed his mind — was he going back to his daughter?
No. His escorts were simply trying to avoid the worst of the crowd.
It was too late to cut him off. Wolf took a step back, sliding toward the door on his left.
The worst thing to do was to rush. He had to move slowly and deliberately. If he did not kill Helmut Dalitz now, he would kill him later, or tomorrow, or the next day. Success was the only thing that mattered in this assignment, not timing.
The crisp Berlin air invigorated Wolf as he came through the doors. The square in front of the theater was yellow, lit by clusters of old-fashioned lamps at each of the corners. He paused, getting his bearings. Dalitz turned right, toward the Gendarmenmarkt. If he followed his usual practice — and being a man of habit, he surely would — he would walk up Markgrafenstrausse toward Französische.
Wolf started down the steps. The light in the square was dim, but he could see as well in the dark as most people could see during the day. He quickened his pace, turning parallel to his quarry.
Dalitz’s two bodyguards moved closer. Did they sense the danger?
No. They were just doing their job, closing up ranks, anxious to get to the next waypoint.
The Black Wolf put his hand into the pocket of his overcoat, gripping his pistol. The gun and its bullets were made completely of carbon composites. They wouldn’t trip the most finicky metal detector, yet the bullets were as fatal as Magnums at a hundred yards. The long, boxy barrel had a noise suppresser; the bullet sounded like a metal slug dropping through a vending machine, and was only a little louder.