on three, Phil,” he said.
“Tell ’em I didn’t get in yet.” The door closed, and Ostrow rolled his
eyes.
“Let me get this straight,” Anna said, addressing Ostrow. “You guys
passed intelligence on to some Mossad freelancers?”
“Someone did. That’s all I know. The rumor is that Ben Hartman served
as a go-between.”
“You got hard evidence?”
“Yossi’s come up with some suggestive details,” Ostrow said quietly. “He
described enough of the ‘watermarks,” the ‘sanitation’ procedures, the
interoffice markings, to tell me this came directly from CIA. I’m
talking about shit that can’t be made up, marks and glyphs that are
rotated daily.”
Anna could put two and two together: Yossi himself had to have been an
American penetration agent, a deep-cover asset, spying on Mossad for the
CIA. She considered asking about it directly, but decided it would be a
breach of professional etiquette. “Who at Langley?” she asked.
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?”
Yossi, a spectator at a bullfight, smiled for the first time. His smile
was dazzling.
“You don’t know me,” Ostrow said, “but anyone who does knows I’m an avid
enough bureaucratic game player to want to screw someone there I don’t
like. If I had the name, I’d hand it to you just to burn the guy.”
That she believed: that would be the natural response of an Agency
infighter. But she was determined not to let him see that she was
persuaded. “What’s the motivation here? Are you talking about fanatics
in the CIA?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone there who has strong
feelings about anything except vacation policy.”
“Then why? What possible motivation?”
“My guess? Let me tell you something.” Ostrow took off his glasses,
cleaned the lenses on his shirt. “You’ve got a list of crooks and
capitalists, small fry working for big fry. When it comes to CIA and
the Nazis, right after the war, that’s where some serious skeletons are
buried. My theory? Someone highly placed, and I do mean highly placed,
saw that some names from a long time ago were about to get out.”
“What does that mean?”
He put the glasses back on. “Names of old guys we used, paid off. Guys
who’d mostly disappeared into the mists of history, O.K.? Suddenly a
list comes out, and guess what? The names of some of the old-timers in
the Agency who aided and abetted this shit are gonna come out, too.
Maybe some financial shenanigans, some double-dipping into the old well.
The old geezers sure as hell are gonna squeal like pigs, rat out their
handlers. So who’ve you gonna call? Who else but some fanatical
Israelis. Neat and clean. Talk about ghosts left over from the Second
World War, do some hand-waving about inexplicable vengeance killings,
save Old Boy asses–everybody’s happy.”
Yeah, she thought grimly. Everybody’s happy.
“Listen to me. There’s a convergence of interests here. You’re trying
to figure out a string of homicides. We’re trying to figure out a
string of security breaches. But we can’t chase this thing down without
Ben Hart man. I’m not going to dump a load of supposition on you.
There’s a good chance that he’s being hunted by the same people he works
for. Mop-ups never end–that’s the problem with them.”
Mopping up: Was that what she herself was doing?
Ostrow seemed to respond to the hesitant look on her face. “We just
need to know what’s true and what isn’t.”
“You’ve got paperwork?” Anna asked.
Ostrow tapped a stapled document with a blunt finger. A capitalized
section heading stood out: custodial conveyance of an american citizen.
“Yes, I’ve got the paperwork. Now all I need’s the body. Jack Hampton
said you’d understand about these things.”
“What do you have in mind for the delivery?”
“Look, there are delicate issues of extra territoriality here …”
“Meaning you don’t want me to bring him here.”
“You got that right. We will make house calls, though. You can cuff
him, give us the signal, and we’ll show up with bells on. If you want
to keep your hands completely clean, that’s fine, too. Give us a time
and location, preferably someplace semi secluded and …”
“And we’ll handle the rest.” Yossi was somber once more.
“Christ, you guys really are cowboys, aren’t you?” Anna said.
“Cowboys who ride Aeron chairs, for the most part,” Ostrow replied
wryly. “But, sure, we can still manage an exfiltration when we have to.
Nobody gets hurt. It’s a clean snatch-and grab–surgical.”
“Surgery hurts.”
“Don’t over think it. It’s the right thing to do. And it means we all
get our jobs done.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Anna said, grimacing.
“Then take this under advisement, too.” Ostrow took out a sheet of
paper with departure times of nonstop flights from Vienna to Dulles
International Airport in Washington, and to Kennedy Airport in New York.
“Time is of the essence.”
In a dark second-floor office on Wallnerstrasse, the portly
Berufsdetektiv Hans Hoffman slammed down the telephone and cursed aloud.
It was ten in the morning and he had already called the American four
times at his hotel, with no luck. The message he’d left the night
before had gone unanswered, too. The hotel had no other telephone
number for Hartman and would not divulge whether or not he’d even spent
the night at the hotel.
The private investigator needed to reach Hartman at once.
It was urgent. He had steered the American wrong, given him a dangerous
lead, and whatever else people might say about Hans Hoffman, no one
denied that he was a scrupulous man. It was vitally important that he
reach Hartman before he went to see Jorgen Lenz.
For what the detective had discovered late yesterday afternoon was
nothing less than sensational. The routine inquiries he had put out
concerning Jorgen Lenz had come back with the most unexpected, the most
astonishing answers.
Hofrman knew that Dr. Lenz no longer practiced medicine, but he wanted
to know why. To that end he had requested a copy of Lenz’s medical
license from the Arztekammer, the archives where the licenses of all
doctors in Austria are kept.
There was no medical license for a Jorgen Lenz.
There had never been one.
Hoffman had wondered: How can this possibly be? Was Lenz lying? Had he
never practiced medicine?
Lenz’s official biography, freely handed out at the Lenz Foundation
offices, had him graduating from medical school at Innsbruck, so Hoffman
checked there.
Jtirgen Lenz had never gone to medical school at Innsbruck.
Driven now by an insatiable curiosity, Hoffman had gone to the
Universitat Wien, where the records of medical licensing examinations
for all physicians in Austria are kept.
Nothing.
Hans Hoffman had furnished his client with the name and address of a man
whose biography was faked. Something was very, very wrong.
Hoffman had pored over his notes, stored in his laptop computer, trying
to make sense of it, attempting to assemble the facts in some other way.
Now he stared at the screen again, scrolling down the list of records he
had checked, trying to think of some omission that might explain this
strange situation.
A loud flat buzz jolted him. Someone was calling up to his office from
the street. He got up and went over to the intercom mounted on the
wall.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Hoffman.”
“Yes?”
“My name is Leitner. I don’t have an appointment, but I have some
important business to discuss.”
“What sort of business?” Hoffman asked. Not a salesman, he hoped.
“Some confidential work. I need his help.”
“Come on up. Second floor.” Hoffman pressed the button that
electronically unlocked the building’s front door.
He saved the Lenz file, shut off his laptop, and opened his office door.
A man in a black leather jacket, with steel-gray hair, a goatee, and a
stud earring in his left ear, said, “Mr. Hoffman?”
“Yes?” Hoffman sized him up, as he did all potential clients,
attempting to assess how much money the fellow might have to spend. The
man’s face was smooth, unlined, almost tight around his high cheekbones.
Despite the steel-gray hair, he was probably no older than forty.
Physically an impressive specimen, but the features were unremarkable,
undistinguishable, except for the dead gray eyes. A serious man.
“Come on in,” Hoffman said cordially. “Tell me, what can I do for you?”
It was only nine in the morning when Anna returned to the hotel.
As she inserted the electronic key-card into the slot above the
doorknob, she could hear the sound of water running. She entered
swiftly, hanging up her coat in the closet by the door, and made her way
into the bedroom. An important decision lay ahead of her: she would
have to rely upon her intuitions, she knew.
Presently, there was the sound of the shower being turned off, and Ben
appeared in the doorway of the bathroom, evidently unaware that she had