"Ja, Herr Chief Inspector, "she replied, looking at Carter through new eyes.
"Here's a number where you can reach me any time, day or night."
Carter pocketed the card. "I'm at the Victoria." He started after the woman, then paused in the doorway. "One more thing you could help me with…"
"Christ, man, you don't want much."
"Nothing major. What do you have on Oskar Hessling?"
Vintner's eyes narrowed in concentration, then he shrugged. "Not too much. He plays footsie with the other side now and then, so we have a suspect file on him. Basically, he's a local police problem."
"Could you get me access to that file?"
"I think so. Call me back in a couple of hours. Hessling's a fixer. You think he had something to do with this?"
"If he did. I don't know anything about it," Carter replied. "This is D.C. business."
"Call me."
"I will."
Carter watched the film clear through four times. There were several fine points of it that could substantiate Lisa's snap judgment that Delaine Conway, and not her illustrious husband, was the actual target.
Carter made mental notes of each of them to pass along to Vintner later, then left SSD headquarters to head for the Golden Calf.
Roscher Strasse was still relatively quiet at seven o'clock in the evening. The Ku'Damm and the streets leading from it, like Roscher Strasse, didn't really start swinging until the cats began to howl at around midnight.
That was the street, outside. Inside the bars and strip joints was another story, including the Golden Calf.
Two steps inside the door, an explosion of noise hit Carter full in the face. It was a combination of hard rock music, the cacophony of drinkers' shouted conversation, and the constant clinking of glasses and bottles behind a busy bar.
There were six women to every man. Most of them — the ones that were fully clothed — were bosomy and spangled. The waitresses and the five or six girls dancing on small stages around the room wore only one spangle and nothing else except spike heels or the female version of storm troopers' boots.
Carter got a few hundred appraisals as he moved through the clothed ones toward a slightly quieter area.
He yawned. It was the universal sign that he wasn't in the market. Their eyes looked for better game, and the bodies parted for him.
A clone of Maria Magdalena Metzger appeared the moment he sat down. Only this one was younger. And she was naked.
"Ja?"
"Bier," he said, holding up two fingers. "I have a friend coming."
She waddled away and came back quickly with two steins of suds. Carter paid her and sipped while he eyed the line along the bar. It was a game to pick out the real girls from the young boys dressed as girls.
He found six, and decided they were the ten, twelve, and two o'clock shows advertised on a huge wall poster.
"How's the clock-and-dagger business?"
Carter swiveled back around in his chair, smiled, and accepted Jamil Erhanee's outstretched hand.
"Getting quieter every day."
"Untrue. You've aged. Thanks for the beer."
Jamil Erhanee was tall for an Indian, with wide shoulders, a thick chest, and no waist or hips. He could have been an athlete in his native Bombay if he hadn't decided that crime was a quicker road to riches.
It was tennis that got him to the United States and an education in international finance. As a sideline, he became a genius with a computer before the machines came into their own.
Soon after graduating from college, Erhanee drifted to England where he established strong underworld connections. From there it was onto Europe, where his genius was truly recognized. In no time he was laundering all kinds of funds all around the world. It was suspected that, at one time, Erhanee handled over three quarters of the funds being laundered and circulated internationally by the underworld.
But even that wasn't enough for the ambitious young Indian. He yearned for independence, so he became foolish. He saw the opportunity for the "big one." It was foolproof, he was sure. All he had to do was change a few wires here and there, make a telephone call or two to his own, privately installed computer modem, and he would beat the World Bank for a few million dollars.
He succeeded in pulling off the scam, but he got caught. They gave him twenty years. He had served five when Carter had him sprung to help on a mission. It was successful, and the Killmaster managed to get him a full parole.
"How goes it now, Jamil?"
"Boring," he said and shrugged, his sparkling white teeth bared in a gleaming smile. "But legitimate. I am in charge of security for World Bank computer systems. I make sure no one does what I did and gets away with it."
"That brings us down to business."
"Hessling?"
"Yeah, but something else first. Through your system, can you pipe into almost any bank, find out which way and where the cash is moving?"
"It's possible. Of course, in most cases, it is also very illegal."
"I know." Carter grinned. "That's why I'm asking you."
"Ah, Nick, you're a godsend!" Erhanee laughed.
"How so?"
"Because you make things happen. This will break the boredom! What do you want?"
"I want you to tap into Protec International Limited. I want to know about any big movement of cash in the last six months by the company and its president, Stephan Conway."
"That's the hotshot that almost bought it this afternoon," Erhanee replied, his face darkening beyond its already mahogany hue.
"That's right. Only his wife bought it instead. I want to know why, and you might give me the answer."
Carter could almost see the bells going off in the other man's agile brain.
"Sounds like hanky-panky. Hey, Nick, that's not your scene, dousing marital brush fires."
"It might be more than that. Conway had a high clearance with the Pentagon. He was making some very touchy, high-level electronics gear."
"Protec probably moves some pretty big bundles of cash around the world. What you need might be hard to pin down."
"I've got faith in you, Jamil. Also, can you go back to Day One on the wife. Delaine? Her maiden name was Berrington. Old Virginia money. I want to know what happened to it when she married Conway."
"That should be easy."
"More beer, mein Herr?"
Carter looked up to an arresting sight. "Uh…" He looked at Erhanee.
"Make mine schnapps. I get bloated on this stuff."
"Two schnapps, bitte."
"Ja."
Erhanee watched the young woman move away with appreciative eyes.
"You like 'em big?" Carter asked with a chuckle.
"Oh, yeah. Only trouble is, five years from now she'll look like a box and outweigh me by forty pounds."
The schnapps came and Carter paid her with a generous tip. As he dropped the money on her tray, he happened to glance around her. Near the bar he noticed an older woman conservatively dressed in a skirt and a cardigan sweater, which she held tightly together over the expanse of her bosom.
He would have thought nothing of it except for the fact that the woman was staring directly at them, and Carter could detect an almost morbid fear in both her manner and her eyes.
When their eyes met, the woman quickly turned and headed for the door that led to an adjoining hotel.
"Who is that woman?"
The waitress looked. "Fräulein Klammer. She is the manager. Why?"
"Must wondering why she was staring at us like that."
The girl laughed, making her bare breasts dance across the tray beneath them. "She probably thinks you're police," she said, and moved away.
"That'll be a cold day in hell," Erhanee said, laughing.
"What?"