“Okay, ich verstehe!”
Jack waited until the man had backed out of sight, then headed for the SUV. He had no time left. If Möller was lying in wait, Jack would know soon enough. Jack picked his way through the trees to the SUV, which was lying on its left side. As he approached, Effrem’s hands rose through the moonroof and wagged. His wrists were secured by a zip-tie. “Jack, is that you?”
“Yeah. Can you climb up?”
“I think so.”
The odor of gas was almost overpowering now, stinging Jack’s nostrils. Behind him, a train rattled past, its lighted windows flashing through the trees.
Jack made his way to the SUV’s windshield and peeked through. The driver lay in a heap, half against the door, half on the dashboard. His head was pointing in the wrong direction; his neck was broken. Jack photographed the SUV’s VIN.
Effrem hopped to the ground beside Jack. He stumbled, then steadied himself against the car. “Whoa… dizzy.”
Jack asked, “No gun?”
“I was lying, hoping Möller would hear me.”
“What about your thirty-eight? We can’t leave it behind.”
“Oh… yeah. It’s in the Audi’s center console.”
Jack took out his penknife, sawed through the zip-ties around Effrem’s wrists, and pocketed them. Effrem asked, “Souvenir?”
“DNA.” Effrem’s prints might be all over the inside of the car, but Jack wasn’t about to leave behind such an obvious piece of trace evidence. “We need to go. Can you run?”
“A close imitation, at least,” Effrem replied.
Jack had no specific plan aside from putting distance between them and the scene of the crash. Their best option was to head east, he decided, and try to make their way back to where Jack had parked his car near Kultfabrik.
They were a quarter-mile from the crash site, following the rail line north toward the Ostbahnhof and using the trees alongside the ballast embankment as cover. Occasionally a train would rumble past, its brakes squealing as it slowed for the station.
The chase and subsequent crash had attracted a lot of attention, Jack could tell from the flashing glow of emergency lights above the trees. He saw no sign of police helicopters, but that wouldn’t last long. Jack was already assembling the worst-case scenario in his head:
After securing the crash site and letting the firefighters deal with the SUV’s gas leak, the police had likely set up a perimeter, then begun searching the surrounding area for the vehicles’ occupants. One man was dead and gunfire had been exchanged during a high-speed chase. If the first officers on the scene believed the lumberyard worker, one of Munich’s finest had inexplicably disappeared from the scene, possibly the victim of a kidnapping.
Around them, the trees began to thin. Jack saw the glow of streetlamps.
“Wait here,” he said, and kept walking until he reached the sidewalk.
A police car drove past, its spotlight skimming over the trees. Jack stepped back deeper into the shadows until the car was out of sight, then returned to where Effrem was leaning against a tree, massaging the side of his head.
Jack said, “We’re at Rosenheimer Strasse. Not far to Kultfabrik.”
“Let’s hail a taxi,” Effrem said.
“We can’t afford witnesses,” Jack replied.
If they hadn’t already, the police would soon be contacting taxi companies, asking if anyone had done just what Effrem was suggesting.
“My head hurts. Bastard thwacked me with a gun.”
“Möller?”
“Who else? Just because I tried to kick him in the head.”
Courtesy of Stephan Möller, Effrem’s head had taken a beating, first from a bullet graze, now from a pistol-whipping.
“I’m starting to not like the guy very much.”
Jack couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t blame you.”
“What now? Which way?”
Jack checked his watch: less than twenty minutes since the chase had started. It seemed much longer than that. He wondered if the police had managed to identify Kultfabrik as the point of origin yet. He doubted it. Right now, drunken complaints from Optimolwerke people were probably low on the list of priorities for the police. It would take time to assemble the puzzle pieces.
Jack took off his jacket, pulled it inside out, exposing the red lining, and handed it to Effrem. “Put the hood up, too. You look like shit.”
Effrem shrugged. “Thanks for coming after me, by the way.”
Lights flashing, another police car raced down Rosenheimer Strasse, followed closely by a matte-black panel truck containing what Jack guessed was Munich PD’s version of a SWAT team.
“How’re we going to explain this, Jack? They’ll find out the Audi’s under my name.”
Jack thought about it for a moment. “Go back to the hotel. The police will show up eventually. Your story is the car must have been stolen. You must have left the keys in it. Stick with that story and keep it simple. Just like you did with the Alexandria cops. Be curious but not too curious. Ask them for a report number so you can call your insurance company and the rental car agency—”
“Yeah, I get it,” Effrem said.
Jack’s cell phone chimed. He dug it out of his pocket and checked the screen. It was a text from Belinda Hahn — or at least from her cell phone. She wasn’t using the burner he’d given her. Jack, I think there are people outside.
Effrem was looking over his shoulder. “A trap, you think?”
Jack texted back to Belinda, Blue.
She replied with their agreed-upon confirmation code: Little Boy.
Effrem said, “Still not proof.”
“It’s as close as we’re going to get. We don’t really have a choice.”
“They could have gotten it out of her. Or she could be involved—”
Jack cut him off: “Effrem, we’re not ignoring this.” Even so, the timing of Belinda’s call for help wasn’t lost on Jack. Möller had three loose ends — Jack, Effrem, and Belinda Hahn — and the German had just tried to wrap up Jack and Effrem. Why not go for all three on the same night?
Jack texted her: Where are you?
Belinda replied with an address, then asked, What do I do?
Lock doors, windows. Hide, he answered. If anyone tries to force the door, call the police. Have pepper spray?
Yes. I’m scared, Belinda texted.
I’m on my way.
25
Jack turned off the highway and headed north. His headlights illuminated a sign that read MARZLING 3 KM. According to his dashboard clock, almost an hour had passed since Belinda had first texted him.
“Damn it.”
He checked his phone. It had been almost fifteen minutes since Belinda had responded to his last text. To his dismay, she had simply said, Please hurry.
The day before, when he’d advised her to find someplace else to stay, he should have been more specific, “someplace nearby.” According to Google Earth, the address she’d texted him from belonged to what looked like a farmhouse-turned-cabin twenty-five miles north of Munich, just outside the village of Marzling and on the banks of the Isar River.
It had taken him and Effrem a precious fifteen minutes to make their way back to Kultfabrik, and then another fifteen for Jack to drop Effrem at the hotel and reach the highway leading out of the city.
Following his phone’s navigation cues, Jack drove into Marzling proper, then turned south onto Isarstrasse, which took him past a mile of farm fields and homesteads to a bridge spanning the Isar. Once across this, he turned left onto a dirt road that followed the river’s meandering banks. During his drive north, rain clouds had thickened and the wind had picked up, rippling the river’s surface. Fat raindrops spattered against his windshield.