"What's this? Who's that?" Ding asked, pointing at the computer.
"A new toy we're using. Got it from the FBI. It ages the subject photos. This one is Petra Dortmund. We only have two photos of her, both almost fifteen years old. So, I'm aging her by fifteen years, playing with hair color, too. Nice thing about women no beards," Bennett observed with a chuckle. "And they're usually too vain to pork up, like our pal Carlos did. This one, check out the eyes."
"Not a girl I'd try to pick up in a bar," Chavez observed.
"Probably a bad lay anyway, Domingo," Clark said from behind. "That's impressive stuff, Sam."
"Yes, sir. Just set it up this morning. Noonan got it for me from Headquarters Division Technical Services. They invented it to help ID kidnap victims years after they disappeared. It's been pretty useful for that. Then somebody figured that if it worked on children growing up, why not try it on grown-up hoods. Helped 'em find a top-ten bank robber earlier this year. Anyhow, here's what Fraulein Dortmund probably looks like now."
"What's the name of her significant other?"
"Huns Furchtner." Bennett played with his computer mouse to bring up that photo. "Christ, this must be his high-school yearbook pictorial." Then he scanned the words accompanying the photo. "Okay, likes to drink beer… so, let's give him another fifteen pounds." In seconds, the photo changed. "Mustache… beard…" And then there were four photos for this one.
"These two must get along just great," Chavez noted, remembering his file on the pair. "Assuming they're still together." That started a thought moving, and Chavez walked over to Dr. Bellow's office.
"Hey, doc."
Bellow looked up from his computer. "Good morning, Ding. What can I do for you?"
"We were just looking at photos of two bad guys, Petra von Dortmund and Hans Fiirchtner. I got a question for you."
"Shoot," Bellow replied.
"How likely are people like that to stay together?" Bellow blinked a little, then leaned back in his chair. "Not a bad question at all. Those two… I did the evaluation for their active files… They're probably still together. Their political ideology is probably a unifying factor, an important part of their commitment to each other. Their belief system is what brought them together in the first place, and in a psychological sense they took their wedding vows when they acted out on it-their terrorist jobs. As I recall, they are suspected to have kidnapped and killed a soldier, among other things, and activity like that creates a strong interpersonal bond."
"But most of the people, you say, are sociopaths," Ding objected. "And sociopaths don't-"
"Been reading my books?" Bellow asked with a smile. Ever hear the one about how when two people marry they become as one?"
"Yeah. So?"
"So in a case like this, it's real. They are sociopaths, but ideology gives their deviance an ethos-and that makes it important. Because of that, sharing the ideology makes them one, and their sociopathic tendencies merge. For those two, I would suspect a fairly stable married relationship. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they were formally married, in fact, but probably not in a church," he added with a smile.
"Stable marriage… kids?"
Bellow nodded. "Possible. Abortion is illegal in Germany - the Western part, I think, still. Would they choose to have kids?… That's a good question. I need to think about that."
"I need to learn more about these people. How they think, how they see the world, that sort of thing."
Bellow smiled again, rose from his chair, and walked to his bookcase. He took one of his own books and tossed it to Chavez. "Try that for starters. It's a text at the FBI academy, and it got me over here a few years ago to lecture to the SAS. I guess it got me into this business."
"Thanks, doc." Chavez hefted the book for weight and leaded out the door. The Enraged Outlook: Inside the Terrorist Mind was the title. It wouldn't hurt to understand them a little better, though he figured the best thing about the inside of a terrorist's mind was a 185-grain 10-mm hollowpoint bullet entering at high speed. Popov could not give them a phone number to call. It would have been grossly unprofessional. Even a cellular phone whose ownership had been carefully concealed would give police agencies a paper-even deadlier today, an electronic-trail that they could run down, much to his potential embarrassment. And so he called them every few days at their number. They didn't know how that was handled, though there were ways to step a long-distance call through multiple instruments.
"I have the money. Are you prepared?"
"Hans is there now, checking things out," Petra replied. "I expect we can be ready in forty-eight hours. What of your end?"
"All is in readiness. I will call you in two days," he said, breaking the connection. He walked out of the phone booth at Charles De Gaulle International Airport and headed toward the taxi stand, carrying his attach+й case, which was largely full of hundred D-mark banknotes. He found himself impatient for the currency change in Europe. The equivalent amount of euros would be much easier to obtain than the multiple currencies of Europe.
CHAPTER 7
It was unusual for a. European to work out of his home, but Ostermann did. It was large, a former baronial schloss (translated as "castle," though in this case "palace" would have been more accurate) thirty kilometers outside Vienna. Erwin Ostermann liked the schloss; it was totally in keeping with his stature in the financial community. It was a dwelling of six thousand square meters divided into three floors, on a thousand hectares of land, most of which was the side of a mountain steep enough to afford his own skiing slopes. In the summer, he allowed local farmers to graze their sheep and goats there. -.. not unlike what the peasants once indentured to the schloss had done for the Herr, to keep the grass down to a reasonable height. Well, it was far more democratic now, wasn't it? It even gave him a break on the complex taxes put in place by the leftwing government of his country, and more to the point, it looked good.
His personal car was a Mercedes stretch-two of them, in fact-and a Porsche when he felt adventurous enough to drive himself to the nearby village for drinks and dinner in the outstanding Gasthaus there. 'He was a tall man, one meter eighty-six centimeters, with regal gray hair and a trim, fit figure that looked good on the back of one of his Arabian horses-you couldn't live in a home such as this one without horses, of course. Or when holding a business conference in a suit made in Italy or on London's Savile Row. His office, on the second floor had been the spacious library of the original owner and eight of his descendants, but it was now aglow with computer displays linked to the world's financial markets and arrayed on the credenza behind a desk.
After a light breakfast, he headed upstairs to his office, where three employees, two female and one male, kept him supplied with coffee, breakfast pastry, and information. The room was large and suitable for entertaining a group of twenty or so. The walnut-paneled walls were covered with bookshelves filled with books that had been conveyed with the schloss, and whose titles Ostermann had never troubled himself to. examine. He read the financial papers rather than literature, and in his spare time caught movies in a private screening room in the basement-a former wine cellar converted to the purpose. All in all, he was a man who lived a comfortable and private life in the most comfortable and private of surroundings. On his desk when he sat down was a list of people to visit him today. Three bankers and two traders like himself, the former to discuss loans for a new business he was underwriting, and the latter to seek his counsel on market trends. It fed Ostermann's already sizable ego to be consulted on such things, and he welcomed all manner of guests.
Popov stepped off his airliner and walked onto the concourse alone, like any other businessman, carrying his attache case with its combination lock, and not a single piece of metal inside, lest some magnetometer operator ask him to open it and so reveal the paper currency inside terrorists had really ruined air travel for everyone, the former KGB officer thought to himself. Were someone to make the baggage-scanners more sophisticated, enough to count money inside carry-on baggage, for example, it would further put a dent in the business affairs of many people, including himself. Traveling by train was so boring.