“Then you’d be dead and the animals would have dealt with the Colombian themselves and devised another way to come up with the rest of Lubeck’s trail.”
Locke thought briefly. “But Alvaradejo must have been part of something bigger too. The men who chased me spoke Spanish as well, shouted the same phrases and accusations he did.”
Burgess fingered his scar. “Then they must be organized. The bit with the taxi driver was not an easy stunt to pull off.”
“So we’re dealing with two forces here.”
“At least, lad, but the animals are our prime concern. These others — Alvaradejo’s people — are dangerous yet not nearly as professional; professionals do not shout in the streets.”
“And what about Brian?” Locke asked with a lump in his throat.
The Englishman’s stare went rigid. “Between your desperate phone call and meeting in the park, he went searching for answers. Apparently the answers found him first.”
They‘re everywhere, everything….
“He said they were everywhere, that the world would be theirs unless they were stopped,” Locke muttered. “Christ, they could have killed me at any time.”
“But instead they chose to use you, lad. Your friend Lubeck uncovered a trail that died with him. But it can still do the animals great harm if someone else uncovers it. Alvaradejo was the first step, Liechtenstein the second. By following you, they cover their tracks.”
“Then who was waiting for me in the hotel?”
“More of the Colombian’s friends probably. It was the animals that killed Charney, though, because he got too close to them.”
Locke drained a hefty gulp of his coffee. The caffeine was recharging him, but as Burgess dug deeper into his story, his fear deepened along with his sense of helplessness.
“So by going to Liechtenstein,” he concluded, “I’ll be aiding the cause of those Brian said had to be destroyed.”
Burgess shook his head. “Before, maybe.” He tapped his still-massive chest with an index finger. “But now you have me. I’ll show you what you need to know to stay one step ahead. They will keep you alive so long as you fill a need. We must use that to our advantage, lad. Also they have no idea now where you’re headed next. Time is on our side and we must take advantage of that too.” Burgess leaned back and crossed his arms. “You said something about Brian drawing a connection between the events.”
“It wasn’t much.” Locke sighed. “He felt the key was food.”
“Food?”
“Lubeck was investigating the World Hunger Conference when Alvaradejo met with him. And Lube died in Colombia because he saw something in the fields. His last words dealt with it.”
“Words he never had a chance to finish,” Burgess completed. “Now tell me what Brian said about Liechtenstein.”
“Only that I was supposed to go there and find a man named Felderberg.”
“Felderberg!” the Englishman bellowed in obvious surprise.
“You know him?”
“Everyone in our line of work does, knows of him anyway. Let me tell you something, lad, don’t believe everything you hear about Switzerland being the financial capital of the world. People might still keep their money in Swiss numbered accounts because they represent the ultimate in privacy. But when they want to move that money around, they go to Liechtenstein. Deals are arranged there, funds large enough to boggle the mind are transferred there. And all of it carried out with the utmost discretion, kept secret from governments … and tax services. Claus Felderberg is the leading middleman of them all, a power broker who controls the flow of money when certain parties don’t want anyone to know its true origin. He consolidates funds or spreads them out. Discretion is maintained above everything else.”
“And Lubeck saw him,” Locke said, almost in a whisper. “The next link in the chain …”
“Leading us where, I wonder, lad. What does an international power broker have to do with the massacre of a Colombian town?”
“Only Lubeck could tell us that.”
“Then we’ll have to find out for ourselves, won’t we? You came to the right place. I owe Brian Charney this much and more.”
Burgess finally asked Chris if he was hungry and proceeded to put together a giant breakfast of steak and eggs, toast, sausages, and more coffee. As they ate, the burly Englishman told his own story and Locke found himself fascinated.
He had enlisted at the very start of World War II at the age of eighteen, ending up at the German front where he was three times decorated for bravery. Twice he was wounded and twice he returned to battle, refusing to be sent home. He hated the Germans with everything he knew, wanted to kill as many of them as the army would give him bullets for. Though exact counts were never kept, it was more than possible that Colin Burgess killed more Nazis than any other single infantryman in all of England’s vast regiments.
It was the third wound that got him sent home. Burgess couldn’t argue; he was in no position to. A German grenade had torn a measure of his stomach away and sunk so deeply into his leg that some of the fragments were impossible to reach.
“Thought I’d be shitting into a bag for the rest of my life, lad,” Burgess recalled.
His recovery was miraculous but his days at the front were finished. The shrapnel had left him with a slight limp and most sudden motions were impossible. So the British command found something else for him, a task far more important and even more satisfying than his work at the front. Burgess was assigned to the OSS detail responsible for ferreting out German spies in England. Burgess loved the role because it allowed him to deal with the men he hated most face to face, not from across a battlefield.
After the war he took his sharply honed skills to MI-6, the British counterpart of the soon-to-be-formed CIA. He spent thirty years in the field, meeting up with Brian Charney on one of his final assignments, which took them to East Berlin. Things did not go well. They walked into a trap and Burgess took two bullets in the side. Charney killed his assailants and then half-dragged, half-carried Burgess three miles to a rendezvous point at the Wall with KGB agents in hot pursuit. Charney and Burgess never lost contact with each other after that night, the older man becoming a father figure to the boy-wonder of the American intelligence community, teaching him all the tricks the classroom had neglected. When Burgess retired from the field, Charney still consulted with him often and referred to the big Brit as his true mentor.
“He was like family to me, lad,” Burgess said bitterly. “I’ll get the bastards who killed him all right.”
Locke felt something sink in his stomach. “What about my family?” he said rapidly. “We’ve got to reach them and secure them from danger!”
Burgess thought for a moment. “Leave that to me, lad.”
“But Charney said there was no one I — we — could trust.”
“In his government, not mine. I’ll call some people I know in the British intelligence community, free-lancers mostly. Everything will be unofficial, a few favors called in. Within eight hours I’ll have your family under watch and guard. You’ll have nothing to worry about from that end.”
Locke shook his head slowly. He stared across the table as though in a daze. “I don’t know if I’m up to this, Colin, I just don’t know….”
Burgess’s expression became tight and sure. “I do, lad. You see, Brian Charney was not a man to leave things to chance. He contacted me this afternoon and said there was a possibility I’d be hearing from you and if so it would mean he was dead. He read me a portion of your file he knew would be of … interest to me. That portion convinced me that you had it in you to complete the mission for him, that you could uncover the implications of what’s already happened and prevent what might be about to. You see, it’s in your blood.”