Terminal Rage (26 page)

“Like you used to fight before. You hated Mom and that
’
s why you left us, right?”

Milo screeched at his sister. “You
’
re such an idiot! I already explained it, you dimwit.”

Blackwell hadn
’
t realized how fast these kids had grown up.

“Now, now, Milo. What did you tell her?”

Milo glanced at the open water away from Blackwell
’
s eyes and muttered in a low voice, “It doesn
’
t matter...”

Blackwell spread his arms to hug his son. A tiny teardrop was taking its time to run down his soft cheek.

“It matters to me, Milo. What did you tell her?”

Milo released a deep sigh and finally peeped at him. “I told her you and Mom won
’
t fight again
’
cause
she’s
in love with that other guy from her office with the black Porsche. She doesn
’
t care about you anymore.”

Blackwell ignored the burning in his chest ignited by Milo
’
s revelation. He tightened his hug on his son and pulled him closer to kiss him on the temple.

“Listen carefully to me, both of you. Mom and I will
always
love each other, even if we
’
re not together as husband and wife. She gave me the best things in my life. You guys. And I know for certain she feels
exactly
the same way.”

Calista put her hand on his face and with her stabbing innocence once again aimed straight for his heart.

“Why can
’
t you get back together then, if you love her and she loves you?”

“We
are
back together. As your parents.” He took a deep breath, put his root beer down, and held both their hands.

“I know I did and said terrible things to your mom in the past, which I never should have. And I know exactly how much that hurt you. You see, I could get down on my knees right now and beg for your forgiveness for eternity, but it
’
ll probably not be enough. But what I can do is promise you with all my heart it
’
ll
never
happen again. I
’
ll never walk out on you again. I am back for good. And remember, no matter who your mom and I are seeing in our personal lives, these people will always come second after the two of you, there
’
s no question about that.”

Milo exploded in tears and he too dug his face in Blackwell
’
s chest. “I don
’
t
want
Mom to have sex with other men! I want her to be married to
you
!” He sniffled as his preteen pride worked hard to retract his tears. He stopped crying eventually and a long, painful silence followed.

“Dad?”

Blackwell looked at Calista, now terrified of the pain this child could invoke just by asking questions that poured salt on their family wounds.

“If Mom ever said she wanted to be married to you again, would you say yes?”

He looked into her brilliant brown eyes. The gentle lapping waves of the river were reflecting in them. All he could see was Melanie in her. He missed her. He thought hard about the question because he wanted to give his daughter an honest answer. Nothing canned, nothing cheesy. Just the truth.

“I would, Calista. With all my heart.” And he meant it.

Milo and Calista did a touch-down dance and shouted, “Yes!” The glimmer of hope there was a chance—no matter how slim—he and Melanie could get back together had instantly restored their mood.

Blackwell was certain the crab pot was empty, but with Milo and Calista behind him reveling in the anticipation, he knew better than to ruin the suspense.

“I
’
ll take your bets, ladies and gentlemen. I say three big blue crabs. You guys?”

Milo held up his fingers to the sky. “Four, Dad!”

Calista bit her lips and thought about her wager. “I say…ummm…seven! Yes, seven, Dad—lock it in.”

Zero, Blackwell thought.

But they were all wrong. Two baby blue crabs were in the cage. Both too small to keep, and shell-shocked at their predicament.

Calista cooed as she kneeled to get a better look. “Aw, they
’
re so cute!”

“That they are—but cute saves them from being lunch. These little guys have to go back in.”

Milo had a different future planned for them. He asked, even though he knew the answer would be an emphatic no.

“Can we keep them?”

“Afraid not, Son.” Before Milo could object, Blackwell threw a diversion at him.

“Lunch back home, or shall we go to Gay
’
s Seafood?

“Gay
’
s Seafood!” Milo started giggling under his breath but Calista drew a blank. “What
’
s Gay
’
s Seafood?”

“Ooooh! I
’
ve never taken you guys there, of course. It
’
s this awesome place just half a mile upstream in Papermill Pond.”

Milo stopped giggling about the double entendre and now seemed preoccupied with something else.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Do they have popcorn shrimp?”

“I
’
m sure they do. And if they don
’
t, we
’
ll show
’
em how to make it.”

Despite the twelve bedrooms scattered around the house, Milo and Calista had chosen to sleep in the same room with twin beds. Blackwell kissed them goodnight before he switched off the light and walked out.

He called Melanie from his room and gave her a roundup of the day, leaving out the details of what the kids had told him. There was every risk she would think he was using them to blackmail her emotionally. In fact, up until the subject came up in the boat, he wasn
’
t even aware that getting back to Melanie was something he needed. He had worked so hard to accept that he didn
’
t deserve her.

Blackwell
’
s parents had designed the basement as a gym and recreational area when they built the house. But the original exercise machines in there were prehistoric by today
’
s standards, so he had donated them to a women
’
s shelter in DC and purchased a commercial-grade elliptical and treadmill.

He switched on
Bloomberg News
and started running at six miles an hour. A piece on the Eurozone crisis reported that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had travelled to Rome the previous Wednesday. She
’
d met with Italian Prime Minister Monti to declare a united front before jetting back to Frankfurt.

Frankfurt.

Blackwell jammed hard on the stop button and jumped off the treadmill. He ran up to the ground floor and grabbed the FedEx package that had arrived in the morning and took it to his father
’
s old study. He sat on the antique nineteenth-century Provençal oak desk and switched on the green reading lamp to peel the package open.

Inside was a manila envelope with no marks or addresses.
Oh
shit. Anthrax
. He rushed to the medicine cabinet in the kitchen and pulled out latex gloves and a paper mask, then dashed back to the study better prepared. He peeled open the manila envelope with the utmost caution.

There was no suspicious white powder. Just a printed document written in German and resembling a standard agreement between a company called Mein Platz and himself, Alexander Blackwell. He knew enough German to figure out the contract was for the rental of a private storage space. It was a seventy-square-meter room in the Frankfurt location of the company, on 371 Ludwig Landmann. He did a quick mental calculation and converted it to about seven hundred and fifty square feet.
What the hell is this about?

The storage space was rented on February 18, and prepaid for in advance for a year. He typed the address of the location on Google Maps on his MacBook Pro and within a few seconds was staring at the street view of the entrance of the facility.

There were more things inside the envelope. A small card with a six-digit security access number to get through the main entrance of the facility—from six a.m. until ten p.m., seven days a week. A smaller white envelope had two copies of what appeared to be padlock keys.

And one final thing—a business-class ticket in his name on Lufthansa from Dulles to Frankfurt at five ten p.m. on April 16. Just nine days from now.

TWENTY-TWO

Monday, April 16, 2012—9:18 a.m.
Bad Homburg, Germany

T
he Frankfurt facility of Mein Platz
Self Storage in Bockenheim was twenty minutes north of the airport. But Blackwell asked the taxi driver to take him further up to the wealthy spa town of Bad Homburg. He was meeting an old friend at the Café Klatsch on Louisenstrasse, a quaint pedestrian street speckled with elegant boutiques, chic cafés, and award-winning restaurants.

Kristof Strauss, a successful, well-connected German security contractor, was at a table sipping an espresso and nibbling on a slice of chocolate cake when Blackwell walked in. Strauss was a former Bundeskriminalamt agent who had quit the service seven years ago. Blackwell had never asked why he left but assumed it was for the money.

They first crossed paths in the late nineties on a joint US–German operation against an American neo-Nazi group in Springfield, Missouri. The founder of the group had roots in the former East Germany and suspected ties to the criminal underworld. They nailed him and sent him away for a very long time.

Blackwell became friends with the tall, blue-eyed German and they remained in touch even after Strauss quit the service to start his own shingle. Over the years, they had called on each other when they needed prickly favors in their respective jurisdictions. This was one such occasion.

When Blackwell had received the anonymous package that prodded him to travel to Frankfurt, Strauss was the only person he could think of in Germany to call for assistance. Blackwell had mulled it over and decided not to tip the FBI, which also meant he couldn
’
t involve German authorities. But to go inside the storage facility guerilla without protection or backup wasn
’
t an option for him—it would
’
ve been plain stupid, especially if this was some sort of trap.

They patted each other on the back, then did that awkward man-hug thing. The private sector hadn
’
t softened the German. He was still tough-bodied with hyper-alert eyes. Strauss must have been getting close to fifty by now but his face hadn
’
t been etched by time, and his deep brown hair remained youthful and shiny. And still there.

He motioned for Blackwell to sit down. “You
’
re hard to keep track of these days, Alex.” Blackwell didn
’
t want to talk about Hermosa Beach and his four years in the wasteland. Strauss had surely heard all about it through the grapevine of the fraternity of international federal agents.

Blackwell cracked a rueful smile. “Not if you
’
re a terrorist or a criminal. Apparently these guys know exactly where to find me.”

Strauss caught the waiter
’
s attention to come for Blackwell
’
s order.

“Melanie and the children okay?”

“The kids are fine. Melanie and I are—no longer together.” Blackwell knew better than to reciprocate the question. Strauss had never been the type to share, and Blackwell was never the type to pry.
He didn
’
t know if his German friend was straight or bi or gay or none of the above. Married, single, or divorced. Their initial greetings were always to the point, and that seemed to suit both of them just fine.

“You take it black, right?” He ordered for him in German. “Anything to eat?”

Blackwell shook his head. They
’
d stuffed him quite a bit on the plane.

Strauss scanned the room for spying eyes and listening ears, as if he had electronic sweeping devices implanted in his body. Two older women at the table next to them were flipping through photo albums of babies. Perhaps their grandchildren. On the other side, an attractive Asian girl with razor-straight hair, probably in her twenties, hugged a hot cup of tea and stared at wistful nothingness.

Strauss lowered his head and spoke in a more discreet voice. “We got the security footage from the facility—there
’
s nothing, Alex. Whoever did this knew how to avoid the cameras.” His eyes narrowed, and he shot a few glances at the hot Asian girl. Blackwell wasn
’
t sure if it was out of suspicion or admiration. Or both.

A waiter deposited a cup of coffee in front of Blackwell and checked again if he wanted anything to eat. The cup was more like a soup bowl with rich, black nectar, topped with creamy foam. The smell enticed him to order a slice of Sachertorte to complement the coffee.

“How many times was the storage space accessed since they rented it?”

“Just once. Late evening on April second for about forty-seven minutes, of which we have the footage. Unfortunately, we only see a brief image of a person with a cap pulled low and sunglasses,
then nothing. There
’
s just one camera in the corridor. Whoever it was, they placed a piece of cardboard or something over it, so there
’
s nothing to see until they come back to remove it. We have no idea what happened during those forty-seven minutes.”

Blackwell dropped a brown sugar crystal into his coffee and it made a loud plop, which caught the attention of one of the grandmothers at the table next to them. She glanced at him with narrowed, stern eyes and a tight face. But something about the way Strauss fired his own dirty look at her must have imparted he wasn
’
t the sort of man you wanted to piss off in public. Or anywhere. Her eyes scurried back to the photo album.

“
How
’d
they use my name to sign up?”

“Easy. Cash, and probably fake IDs. Do you have any idea who it could be, Alex?”

“I have some theories—nothing conclusive. This kind of thing is a little unnerving though, Kristof. But I keep telling myself if they wanted me dead, why fly me here? Cheaper to take me out in Easton, right? Why go through the trouble of renting a space?”

Strauss just smiled and let it go. He was discreet like that—the sort of friend who was happy to help without the need to satisfy his own curiosity. Whatever dark secrets Blackwell could have been harboring about this whole affair
weren’t
going to undermine Strauss
’
s commitment to help him.

Blackwell had decided to go into the storage facility commando. And he needed Strauss to arrange security and backup. But he didn
’
t want to take it for granted his German friend would accompany him inside. He would have been happy with any advance intel, a borrowed gun, and some sort of backup at the scene, just in case it all went belly up.

“When can I go in?”

“We
’
re going in with you, Alex. Tonight, at nine p.m. Minimal risk of running into anyone at that time. We
’
ve been staking the facility for the last week.”

“I appreciate it.”

“I
’
ve taken care of everything. I have a team in place. We
’
re all set. Need a warm bed until then?”

“I
’
ve booked a room at the Steigenberger.”

“Then I
’
ll pick you up at eight.”

Blackwell left Strauss at the
Café Klatsch and
walked to the Kurpark, a large area designed as a traditional English landscape park, with extensive lawns, dense bushes, and a lake with a spring. He wanted to stretch his legs from the long flight, get some fresh air to beat the jet lag, and think of what lay ahead.

The park was almost empty except for a few elegant mothers behind stylish prams. And the Asian girl who had sat next to them at the Café Klatsch had camped herself under a tree with a book. He analyzed her and decided it had to be a coincidence.

He made his way to the springs and meandered for a while before he walked back to the hotel, where he took a hot shower and collapsed in bed.

Strauss’s BMW 750 was parked on Rossittener Street, parallel to the Mein Platz self-storage facility. He packed a Beretta Cheetah and had given Blackwell a nine-millimeter Colt. A white Audi Q7 with five of Strauss’s men was parked about a hundred feet ahead of them. The plan was for two of the men to join Blackwell and Strauss in the facility, while the other three provided cover on the outside.

At the entrance of the facility, Blackwell punched in the security access code he had received in the FedEx package. They waited a few seconds before the door unlocked with a series of electronic beeps.
He poked his head in then tiptoed inside. Strauss and his two guys trailed close behind. The corridors of the facility were lit with neon and had numbers along the walls to indicate the location of the storage spaces. They followed the signs until they reached Blackwell
’
s unit, number 4389. The door was massive and had a sturdy lock on it.

Strauss reached out and stopped him before he attempted to unlock the door. “Wait—” he said, then turned to one of his men. “
Reinhard, prüfe ob es irgendeine Spur von Sprengstoff gibt.
”

Reinhard was a cool customer with hardly a sign of trepidation in his eyes. He pulled out a small handheld device Blackwell recognized as a portable explosives detector. With the same cockiness, he punched a button, turned a few dials, waved the device around briefly then nodded. “
Alle rein. Es gibt hier nichts.
”

Strauss
’
s tense body relaxed a little and he inhaled deeply.

“All clear. You can open the door now, Alex,” he whispered.

Blackwell saw it fitting the he would step into the pitch-darkness first, then shut the door swiftly when the other guys trickled in behind him. Running into someone in the corridor would have been nothing short of a nuisance. There was a switch with a night light around it, but Strauss was quick to warn that no one was to flick it. He pulled out a flashlight instead.

The corrugated aluminum walls made the room feel even colder than it probably was. Reinhard and Strauss
’
s other guy switched on their own flashlights for Blackwell to scan the space. There was nothing remarkable about this vast empty room. Except for a familiar electric hum coming from the back
.

Strauss tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “Do you see that?” He pointed to the back of the room. Blackwell had no clue what he was supposed to be noticing. Sensing that, Strauss wiggled his flashlight and pointed it to where he wanted Blackwell to focus his attention. “Right there, Alex.”

Then he saw them. Three upright freezers lined up, their stainless steel doors camouflaged by the aluminum walls of the room.

His heart yanked around in his torso. The hair on his nape lifted and the temperature in the room dropped to sub-zero. The freezers were calling him, he knew that, but his feet were nailed to the floor. He scanned around for Strauss and his men, who had now attached their flashlights to their heads and pulled out guns, which they aimed in front of them.

Srauss
’
s second guy took out gas masks from his backpack and passed them around. For a few short seconds this distracted Blackwell from the unknown contents of the freezers, but his heart hadn
’
t slowed down one bit and he was gushing sweat now.

“Reinhard
’
s device checks for explosives across a wide perimeter. But we must account for chemicals and biological agents as well. Put this on, Alex.” Strauss handed Blackwell a mask.

Blackwell hesitated for a beat then complied. The mask felt immediately oppressive. He took a few steps toward the three metallic chests, then looked back at the Germans. With a deep breath, he approached the freezers and pulled open the door of the one closest to him. The light of the internal cabinet was blocked by whatever was stored inside. It created a halo of light that merely suggested the horrific content of the freezer.

Strauss pointed his flashlight inside to expose a better view of the carnage.

Blackwell began to hyperventilate. The mask was suffocating him so he ripped it off his face. Strauss lashed his hand out to stop him, but it was too late. Blackwell shook his head.

“It
’
s okay, Kristof.”

The smell of frozen flesh and blood was unmistakable. An emaciated, naked man frozen like a slab of meat was facing him with closed eyes.

Blackwell
’
s toes curled up and his stomach heaved, ready to expel the sandwich he had shared with Strauss and his men just an hour earlier. There was a foul taste on his tongue so he swallowed hard to get rid of it, but it just made his throat burn.
Maybe I should have kept that damn mask on.

This had been the worst part of his job. He never got used to it, or developed thick skin like some of the other agents. Standing before a murdered body was not something Blackwell ever came to terms with. And it was worse now after being away for so long.

He talked himself into getting closer and took a better look. The victim had been executed with one clean shot to the forehead. There was hardly any decomposition, so he must have been frozen immediately after he was killed. Although the dead man
’
s eyes were closed, Blackwell couldn
’
t stare at this image for too long.