The Dolomite Solution (13 page)

“Clever boy,” she muttered. She copied a few other files, retrieved her disk, shut off the computer, and shoved her disk deep into her purse. Then she hurried back into bed, leaning against the headboard.

Less than a minute later Jake came in carrying a green bottle of Mosel Riesling, already opened, and two glasses. He smiled at Ute in the bed.

“I hope you haven't started without me,” Jake said. “I'd hate to miss out on anything.” He poured the two glasses, set them and the bottle on the table, and then threw his leather jacket across a chair and kicked off his shoes. Then he looked back at the chair for a moment, curiously.

He picked up the glasses and went to the bed, handing one to her. “This should do the trick.”

She smiled at him and downed half the glass before setting it onto a night stand. She reached over and slowly lowered his sweats.

Jake helped his sweats to the floor and then took a long drink of wine, finishing his.

She took him into her mouth, guiding him into bed.

Much later, when she had finished her drink he had spiked, she lay completely passed out. Jake went over to her purse, looked at her driver's license and other credentials, and found the computer disk. He had been right. He glanced around the room, thinking what to do. Of course. He turned on the computer, and after it had warmed up, put Ute's disk into the drive and checked the directory. Damn. She had taken most of his text files. He quickly reformatted the disk. Then he smiled as he downloaded a file to it and returned the disk to her purse.

Dr. Leonhard Aldo lived a block from the New University in a third-floor apartment, just a short walk to Innsbruck's old town. Toni Contardo and Professor Giovanni Scala had stopped on the outskirts of town at a little restaurant for dinner, sharing a few bottles of wine and conversation after that. She had come to like the man, and to understand how someone could dedicate his entire life discovering secrets to human afflictions that normal people simply took as a fact of life. Scala had been subdued, questioning her often on how someone could take the life of such a brilliant man. She could never find a good answer for that.

The two of them hesitated for a moment in the subdued light of the corridor that led to Aldo's place. The ends of each hall had a staircase with fine wood rails and marble floors, and the entire floor they stood on was a brilliant magenta marble that looked new, despite over a hundred years of treading.

She stepped forward cautiously, her right hand inside her purse gripping her gun. She stopped at Aldo's door and placed her hand against it, as if feeling for any danger within.

Professor Scala looked confused. “What's the matter?” he said aloud, his voice echoing down the corridor.

She shushed him with her finger and a nasty glare. Then she checked the door lever, slowly swinging it downward. It quietly clicked open. It wasn't locked. That was strange. She whispered for him to wait behind, as she swung the door in and entered the dark room.

Inside, the room was partially visible from the lights of the city streaming in through the windows that overlooked the old town. The room was cold. Almost like the outside air itself. She found a small lamp and clicked it on, exposing a room in shambles. Sofa cushions lay on the floor crudely dissected, the stuffing littered across the carpet like confetti. A forest of papers and magazines were scattered among crumpled clothes.

Toni pulled her gun and stepped through the room.

“My God,” the professor gasped behind her.

Toni turned. “I told you to stay outside,” she whispered loudly.

He thought about leaving, but seemed to be mesmerized by the destroyed room.

She made her way around the room. Even the dirt had been scooped from under the plants, which now drooped over as if searching for water.

“Close the door,” Toni demanded. When he did it, she continued toward a back room. She guessed it was the bedroom.

She swiftly put her shoulder to the door, flipped on the light and probed the room with her gun. Immediately, she saw the woman on the bed. She was naked, her legs spread apart and tied to the end posts. Her arms were also tied, her wrists bloodied from a struggle.

Toni moved closer, returning her gun to her purse. The woman's dark hair was matted and strewn across a face with prominent cheek bones. Tape was wrapped around her mouth.

“Oh, my God.” Scala had followed her into the bedroom.

“Do you know her?” Toni asked.

He was in shock. He hunched his shoulders and looked confused. “I don't know. I think it's Leonhard's maid. She came in twice a week, even when he wasn't here. To water the plants. But I only met her once.”

She moved closer to the woman, put on a leather glove from her purse, and gently touched the body in a few places. “Someone broke her neck. See the bruises along the sides?”

“We must call the polizei,” the professor said, starting toward the outer room.

“No,” Toni yelled softly. She started toward Scala when she noticed something under a table next to a chair in the corner of the room. She knelt down and picked up a photo. It was a picture of a tall man entering the woman, who at the time was still alive. She looked back toward the woman, stooped down slightly, and then stood and turned toward the professor. Without saying a word, she grabbed his arm and escorted him out, shutting off the lights along the way.

When they were outside and settled into Toni's car, she finally let him speak.

“Why did we leave?” he asked, exasperated.

She didn't answer. She simply drove off slowly and continued driving until they entered the onramp to the autobahn heading east. She shifted the gears quickly, reaching a reasonable cruising speed. Not knowing where she was going didn't bother her. But Professor Scala was getting nervous, she could tell.

“This is worse than I thought,” she said. “Did you have a maid come into your place in Milano as well?”

He swiveled his head. “No. I don't keep plants. And I'm usually not there long enough to make much of a mess.”

She drove on, not wondering where she was going, but not really caring either. Anyplace was better than where she had been. She had seen far worse in her years with the old Agency, the new CIA now, yet it didn't soften the blow any. She needed to get Professor Scala to a safe location. Someone wanted what he had, and would stop at nothing to get it. That was certain. Bringing the day's events into focus, her mind clicked as to the sequence of what happened first. The maid in the Innsbruck apartment had been dead for more than a day, considering how stiff the body was. So the maid was killed yesterday. The killers find nothing there, so they go to the Dolomites to find Leonhard Aldo, where they run him off the road. They don't find what they need there, so they go directly to Milano to kidnap Professor Scala. If that's true, then she and the professor have seen the killers. That wasn't a comforting thought, but it gave her something to look for. She could at least recognize them coming.

She drove away from the city and into the darkness of countryside.

In the hills west of Mainz was a stone estate that looked down on the city and the Rhine River. The place had been in Andreas Kraft's family for over three hundred years. There was a vineyard spread out down the hills to the north, a stable, unused now, to the south, and for the last ten years, an enclosed swimming pool and spa off the backside of the house, which looked out of place against the dark gray stone of the main structure. To those driving by on Autobahn 60 a few kilometers north of the expansive estate, the house, if seen at all through the thick oaks, looked like a castle.

It was midnight, and since Andreas Kraft owned Richten Pharmaceuticals, he wasn't worried about having to go to work in the morning. Besides, on Fridays he liked to stroll in around ten. He reasoned that his employees had to see some advantage to his stature, or they would have no incentive to advance.

Kraft had just finished swimming laps and then took a long hot tub, before slipping into a sweat suit and walking across the lawn to look out over the city. He was on his second bottle of wine, one of his best Rieslings from his private stock.

He was of average height, and in his youth was on the verge of making the German Olympic Team, until a hamstring injury slowed him down. Now he was content with swimming to stay in shape, for his vices kept piling on.

He lit a cigarette and leaned against a brick wall, where the terrain sloped down sharply in a tangle of thick bushes that were barely visible in the dark. Further down the hill was a plum orchard owned by Kraft's neighbor. The lights from the car wound up the paved drive slowly, were out of sight for a moment as it rounded the cliff, and then appeared in a few seconds in the drive across the yard.

Nikolaus Hahn, Kraft's operations officer at Richten, was right on time, as usual. He had called earlier in the evening, saying he had something important to discuss, and set up the meeting at midnight. Hahn walked gingerly across the dewy grass toward his boss. He was wearing dark slacks and a v-neck sweater. His expression of incertitude belied his normal assertive look.

“Would you like some wine, Nick?” Kraft asked, holding out the bottle.

His associate shook his head. “You might need that after we talk.” Hahn came up alongside the stone wall and watched the cars zip by on the autobahn. Each time he came there, he couldn't understand how his boss tolerated the constant drone of the cars.

Kraft finished his cigarette and stamped it into the grass. “What's so important that we have to meet out here in the dark? I think my hair, what little is left of it, has frozen.” He smiled and his perfect white teeth seemed to glow in the darkness.

Hahn turned toward his boss. “Murdock is dead.”

“What?”

“He's dead.” He hesitated to let it sink in. “He was shot last night in Innsbruck.”

“Was he robbed?”

Hahn shook his head. “I don't think so. I got a call from the polizei there. He was murdered, but they're not sure who did it. The information was sketchy. He was found in an alley early this morning with most of his chest blown away. It's a crazy world we live in.”

Kraft poured himself another glass of wine. “Are you sure you don't want some of this?”

“You have anything stronger?”

Kraft smiled and withdrew a metal flask from his pocket and handed it to his friend.

After a quick swig of schnapps, Hahn leaned against the wall. “What will we do now? Murdock was supposed to secure the deal with Tirol Genetics. You don't think someone's trying to move in on our deal?”

“I don't know. What do you think? But would someone kill for it?” Kraft lit another cigarette. “I'll call Bergen in the morning to make sure everything is going as scheduled. But I'll need you to go to Innsbruck for me. Make sure we're covered. I'm not going to leave anything to chance. Not now. Our American partners are counting on us to bring the deal to market in Europe as soon as possible. I've already greased the proper authorities in Berlin, so we're ready there. I won't allow someone else to work their way into the picture. You might need a little protection in Austria, so I'll arrange a few escorts to go along with you. Go home. Get a few hours sleep. I'll have a man pick you up at four.”

“We have a contract,” Hahn reminded him. “Are you sure you don't want one of our lawyers to come along for the ride?”

Kraft laughed. “I don't think the law is what we need right now.”

●

The jazz band had played a full hour set and had just taken its first break in the tiny club in downtown Kaiserslautern, a short distance from Ramstein Air Base, the U.S. Air Force's headquarters in Europe.

Sergeant Deshia Lyons was sitting alone, sipping a glass of wine when the older black man came up to her table. His hair was short, barely above the scalp, with specks of silver that shimmered in the narrow beam of light shining down on the table. A thick bank of smoke hung in the air like a nuclear cloud.

“Could I buy you a drink?” the man asked.

Deshia Lyons smiled. “What's the OSI doing out so late? Don't you guys need your beauty sleep?”

“Shhhh...” The man sunk into a chair next to her. “I'm undercover.”

She laughed. “Baby, you got some work to do. You sure as hell don't wear Dockers and cardigan to a jazz club. You're liable to get killed. And those glasses. Strictly birth control. We're talkin' no perpetuation of the spook species here.”

“Very funny, Deshia.” He leaned back in his chair, checking out people at other tables nearby. “When you gonna come to work for me?”

“You mean so I can get to wear funky clothes like you instead of my uniform?”

“That's right.” He laughed and then took a sip of his beer. “What are you doing in a place like this alone? You trying to get lucky?”

“With a woman, there's no luck involved.”

“True.” He looked around the room again, which seemed to be getting more crowded. “I need to ask you a few questions.”

“You mean this isn't a social call?”

“You know I'm married.” He shriveled back into his chair with that revelation. Married, yes, but his wife had gone back to the States over a year and a half ago, after only four months in Germany. And he knew Sergeant Lyons knew this, since she had processed some paperwork on his behalf.

She drank a little wine as she studied him. She had first met Major Stan Jordan when she processed him into the base two years ago. Jordan, special agent in charge of the Ramstein Office of Special Investigations detachment, had been an aircraft maintenance officer before retraining. Over the past two years she had been his trusted agent when he needed information from the personnel department. In his position he could have chosen anyone, but for some reason they had hit it off immediately. They had a friendly relationship. Now, she saw something in his expression that she hadn't seen before. He seemed nervous.