Horst Vintner was a big man with a thick, round neck. The connection was so strong that head, shoulders, and body turned all at the same time, as if one section were immobile without the aid of the other two. The eyes, deep-set and slow-moving, digested all they saw, passing over nothing.
At that moment they were scrupulously scanning the windows and rooftops around the perimeter his men had set up for the rally. Not that he was overly worried. The dignitaries were minor, not really of any interest to what survived of the terrorist groups in West Berlin.
The assignment was actually very routine. Vintner and his SSD team were there to snap pictures and get names, if possible, of the demonstrators. There was no expectation of trouble.
Horst Vintner had been a policeman his entire life. He had chased thieves, con men, rapists, murderers, and terrorists. The job of heading an SSD team to guard visiting VIPs and to control possible demonstrations was merely something to keep him busy until retirement.
Vintner was sixty-two years old, and his retirement was six months away.
"They are arriving, sir."
"I see that, Bruchner. Pick out two men who look the most conspicuous and put them on each end of the steps."
"Yes, sir."
"And inform the uniformed officers to block off the rest of this side of the boulevard."
"Yes, sir."
Vintner's aide moved away through the gathering crowd, and he applied a match to the bowl of his pipe.
His superiors had told him that morning that there had been death threats to the American. Stephan Conway. Vintner had talked to Conway at his hotel shortly after that over the phone.
"It's probably a sort of personal vendetta more than anything else, Herr Vintner. I was the victim of an attempted blackmail quite some time ago in the States. I thought that when I had told them to go to hell, it would die away. But lately the threats have become more strange."
Vintner didn't inquire into the blackmail. At that point it wasn't part of his job. Keeping Herr Stephan Conway alive while he was on German soil was his job.
As Horst Vintner puffed his pipe and scanned the crowd, he wished he were back chasing murderers or retired, one or the other.
This in-between duty was hell.
As Dieter Klauswitz saw the first speaker step to the podium he went over the schedule of the rally that Hessling had given him.
There were to be four speakers in all. The American, Stephan Conway, would be the last. At the end of his speech, Conway's wife, and the three German speakers and their wives, would move to the front of the steps.
There they would stand at attention in a line, while the anthems of both countries would be played.
"That, Pilgrim, is when you fire. Not before."
He took another range-sighting through the Fl scope, from the man at the podium back down the line of the seated scheduled speakers. He found the erect figure of Stephan Conway dressed in a light tan summer suit. Beside him, in a vivid red dress, her eyes on her lap, was the American businessman's wife.
Oskar Hessling was never a cheap thief. He had started out his life of crime as a procurer of flesh for the brothels of Beirut and the rest of the Middle East. Young virgins from a poverty-stricken Germany were sent into white slavery in these brothels, and if they were especially attractive — blond and buxom — they were shoved on into the harems of desert sheiks.
It was a profitable business, and allowed Hessling to expand. In the years between 1960 and now, he had formed a criminal empire based on dope, prostitution, extortion, blackmail, pornography, and the sale of illegal arms.
It was known that he would buy and/or sell anything to or from the Eastern bloc of nations, including Mother Russia.
It wasn't surprising that Boris Simonov, as Peter Limpton, had set up a channel to do business with Hessling.
What was surprising was the fact that West German authorities knew much of Hessling's business, and yet had never been able to turn a single arrest into an indictment.
Carter, as he slipped the man's file into his briefcase, wondered what he could come up with if the entire security apparatus and police departments of the West German government had been unable to come up with anything.
"You don't sound happy," Lisa said from beside him. "You rarely sigh."
"Dead end," Carter replied, squeezing her hand. "I'll tell you about it later."
They were descending on their final approach to Tegel Airport. From the air. West Berlin looked like a solo piece of a jigsaw puzzle. It was bounded by one hundred miles of concrete wall and the fifty-yard-wide German Democratic Republic "death strip." The sand floor of the "death strip" was meticulously raked fine each morning. Even the mark of a crawling snake could be detected between the two concrete walls.
Carter narrowed his eyes and looked at the city without seeing the wall and the strip. It was huge and beautiful, with its fifty square miles of lakes, parks, and woodlands with deer and wild boar and forests. It was the largest green area of any city in the world and. Carter knew, one of the reasons West Berliners didn't go stir crazy in their isolation from the rest of West Germany.
The landing was smooth, and they were through customs in less than fifteen minutes.
Carter had cal led ahead to reserve two suites at the Victoria on the Kurfürsten Damm. It was a thirty-minute ride by taxi from Tegel into the center of the city, and they both were silent for most of the trip.
At the door of Lisa's suite. Carter brushed her cheek with his lips.
"You've been up all night. Get a quick nap before seeing your sister at three. I'll make a few phone calls and do some nosing around."
She nodded, gratitude in her eyes, and followed her porter into the suite. Carter moved to his own room down the hall and tipped the porter.
When the man was gone, he sat on the bed by the phone and lit a cigarette. From a narrow break between the leather walls of his wallet, he extracted a thin sheet of foolscap. On it, in Carter's own personal code, were fifty names and telephone numbers.
"Guten Tag, World Bank."
"Jamil Erhanee, bitte."
"Bitte."
He had to go through two more secretaries before he heard the familiar voice speaking German with a heavy Indian accent.
"Jamil, this is Nick Carter. How's it going?"
"Oh, Christ, the Russians are coming over the wall at last. How long do we have?"
Carter chuckled. "Not quite as bad as all that, my friend. In fact, I'm here more for social reasons than business."
"That's so much crap, but it is good to hear you're still alive."
"Thanks so much. I'd like to pick your brains, memories of your sordid youth."
"Where are you?"
"The Victoria, on the Ku'Damm."
"I'm in the middle of it until around six."
"That's all right. How about seven in the hotel bar?"
"Sounds good. Anything — or anyone — you're particularly interested in?"
"Yeah, a top dog named Oskar Hessling."
"Oh, my, let's make it the Golden Calf then. It's a transvestite club on Roscher Strasse, off the Ku'Damm."
"Suits me. Any particular reason?"
"Yeah. Hessling owns it. He drops in now and then. Who knows, you may see the fat pig in person."
"Seven it is. Ciao."
"Wiedersehen."
Carter punched out his cigarette and lay back on the bed. If anyone could tell him about or get him close to Oskar Hessling, it was Jamil Erhanee.
It was quite a few hours until seven, and nothing would be happening between now and then besides Lisa's meeting with her sister at three.