CHAPTER 19
BEER AND
HOMICIDE
THE FLIGHT into Munich was silky smooth. German customs were formal but efficient, and a Mercedes-Benz cab took them to the Hotel Bayerischer.
Their current subject was somebody named Anas Ali Atef, reportedly an Egyptian by nationality, and a civil engineer by education, if not by profession. Five feet nine inches or so, 145 pounds, clean-shaven. Black hair and dark brown eyes, supposed to be skilled at unarmed combat and a good man with a gun, if he had one. He was thought to be a courier for the opposition, and also worked to recruit talent—one of whom, for certain, had been shot dead in Des Moines, Iowa. They had an address and a photo on their laptops. He drove an Audi TT sports car, painted battleship gray. They even had the tag number. Problem: He was living with a German national named Trudl Heinz, and was supposedly in love with her. There was a photo of her, too. Not exactly a Victoria’s Secret model, but not a skank, either—brown hair and blue eyes, five feet three inches, 120 pounds. Cute smile. Too bad, Dominic thought, that she had questionable taste in men, but that was not his problem.
Anas worshipped regularly at one of the few mosques in Munich, which was conveniently located a block from his apartment building. After checking in and changing their clothes, Dominic and Brian caught a cab to that location and found a very nice Gasthaus—a bar and grill—with outside tables from which to observe the area.
“Do all Europeans like to sit on the sidewalk and eat?” Brian wondered.
“Probably easier than going to the zoo,” Dominic said.
The apartment house was four stories, proportioned like a cement block, painted white with a flat but strangely barnlike roof. There was a remarkably clean aspect to it, as though it was normal in Germany for everything to be as pristine as a Mayo Clinic operating room, but that was hardly cause for criticism. Even the cars here were not as dirty as they tended to be in America.
“Was darf es sein?” the waiter asked, appearing at the table.
“Zwei Dunkelbieren, bitte,” Dominic replied, using about a third of his remaining high-school German. Most of the rest was about finding the Herrnzimmer, always a useful word to know, in any language.
“American, yes?” the waiter went on.
“Is my accent that bad?” Dominic asked, with a limp smile.
“Your speech is not Bavarian, and your clothes look American,” the waiter observed matter-of-factly, as though to say the sky was blue.
“Okay, then two glasses of dark beer, if you please, sir.”
“Two Kulmbachers, sofort,” the man responded and hurried back inside.
“I think we just learned a little lesson, Enzo,” Brian observed.
“Buy some local clothes, first chance we get. Everybody’s got eyes,” Dominic agreed. “Hungry?”
“I could eat something.”
“We’ll see if they have a menu in English.”
“That must be the mosque our friend uses, down the road a block, see?” Brian pointed discreetly.
“So, figure he’ll probably walk this way . . . ?”
“Seems likely, bro.”
“And there’s no clock on this, is there?”
“They don’t tell us ‘how,’ they just tell us ‘what,’ the man said,” Brian reminded his brother.
“Good,” Enzo observed as the beer arrived. The waiter looked to be about as efficient as a reasonable man could ask. “Danke sehr. Do you have a menu in English?”
“Certainly, sir.” And he produced one from an apron pocket as though by magic.
“Very good, and thank you, sir.”
“He must have gone to Waiter University,” Brian said as the man walked away again. “But wait till you see Italy. Those guys are artists. That time I went to Florence, I thought the bastard was reading my mind. Probably has a doctorate in waitering.”
“No inside parking at that building. Probably around back,” Dominic said, coming back to business.
“Is the Audi TT any good, Enzo?”
“It’s a German car. They make decent machines over here, man. The Audi isn’t a Mercedes, but it ain’t no Yugo, either. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one outside of Motor Trend. But I know what they look like, kinda curvy, slick, like it goes fast. Probably does, with the autobahns they have here. Driving in Germany can be like running the Indy 500, or so they say. I don’t really see a German driving a slow car.”
“Makes sense.” Brian scanned the menu. The names of the dishes were in German, of course, but with English subtitles. It looked as though the commentary was for Brits rather than Americans. They still had NATO bases here, maybe to guard against the French rather than the Russians, Dominic thought with a chuckle. Though, historically, the Germans didn’t need much help from that direction.
“What do you wish to have, mein Herrn?” the waiter asked, reappearing as though transported down by Scottie himself.
“First, what is your name?” Dominic asked.
“Emil. Ich heisse Emil.”
“Thank you. I’ll have the sauerbraten and potato salad.”
Then it was Brian’s turn. “And I’ll have the bratwurst. Mind if I ask a question?”
“Of course,” Emil responded.
“Is that a mosque down the street?” Brian asked, pointing.
“Yes, it is.”
“Isn’t that unusual?” Brian pushed the issue.
“We have many Turkish guest workers in Germany, and they are also Mohammedans. They will not eat the sauerbraten or drink the beer. They do not get on well with us Germans, but what can one do about it?” The waiter shrugged, with only a hint of distaste.
“Thank you, Emil,” Brian said, and Emil hurried back inside.
“What does that mean?” Dominic wondered.
“They don’t like ’em very much, but they don’t know what to do about it, and they’re a democracy, just like we are, so they have to be polite to ’em. The average Fritz in the street isn’t all that keen on their ‘guest workers,’ but there’s not much real trouble about it, just scuffles and like that. Mainly bar fights, so I’m told. So, I guess the Turks have learned to drink the beer.”
“How’d you learn that?” Dominic was surprised.
“There’s a German contingent in Afghanistan. We were neighbors—our camps, like—and I talked some with the officers there.”
“Any good?”
“They’re Germans, bro, and this bunch was professionals, not draftees. Yeah, they’re pretty good,” Aldo assured him. “It was a reconnaissance group. Their physical routine is tough as ours, they know mountains pretty good, and they are well drilled at the fundamentals. The noncoms got along like thieves, swapped hats and badges a lot. They also brought beer along with their TO and E, so they were kinda popular with my people. You know, this beer is pretty damned good.”
“Like in England. Beer is a kind of religion in Europe, and everybody goes to church.”
Then Emil appeared with lunch—Mittagessen—and that, they both learned, was also okay. But both kept watching the apartment house.
“This potato salad is dynamite, Aldo,” Dominic observed between bites. “I never had anything like it. Lots of vinegar and sugar, kinda crispy on the palate.”
“Good food isn’t all Italian.”
“When we get home, gotta try to find a German restaurant.”
“Roger that. Lookie, lookie, Enzo.”
It wasn’t their subject, but it was his squeeze, Trudl Heinz. Just like the photo on their computers, walking out of the apartment house. Pretty enough to turn a man’s head briefly, but not a movie star. Her hair had been blond once, but that had changed in her midteens, by the look of her. Nice legs, better-than-average figure. A pity she’d linked up with a terrorist. Maybe he’d latched onto her as part of his cover, and so much the better for him that it had side benefits. Unless they were living platonically, which didn’t seem likely. Both Americans wondered how he treated her, but you couldn’t tell something like that from watching her walk. She went up the other side of the street, but passed the mosque. So, she wasn’t heading there at the moment.
“I’m thinking . . . if he goes to church, we can poke him coming out. Lots of anonymous people around, y’know?” Brian thought aloud. “Not a bad concept. We’ll see how faithful this guy is this afternoon, and what the crowd’s like.”
“Call that a definite maybe,” Dominic replied. “First, let’s finish up here and then get some clothes that’ll fit us in better.”
“Roger that,” Brian said. He checked the time: 14:00. Eight in the morning at home. Only one hour of jet lag from London, easily written off.
JACK CAME in earlier than usual, his interest piqued by what he took to be an ongoing operation in Europe, and wondering what today’s message traffic would show.
It turned out to be fairly routine, with some additional traffic on Sali’s death. Sure enough, MI5 had reported his death to Langley as having been the apparent result of a heart attack, probably caused by the onset of fatal arrhythmia. That’s what the official autopsy read, and his body had been released to a solicitors’ firm representing the family. Arrangements were being made to fly him home to Saudi Arabia. His apartment had been looked at by the London version of a black-bag team, which had not, however, turned up anything of particular interest. That included his office computer, whose hard drive had been copied and the data carted off. It was being examined bit by bit by their electronic weenies, details to follow. That could take a lot of time, Jack knew. Stuff hidden on a computer was technically discoverable, but, theoretically, you could also take the pyramids of Giza apart stone by stone to see what was hidden under them. If Sali had been really clever about burying things into slots only he knew about, or in a code to which only he knew the key . . . well, it would be tough. Had he been that clever? Probably not, Jack thought, but you could only tell by looking, and that was why people always looked. It’d take at least a week, to be sure. A month, if the little bastard was good with keys and codes. But just finding hidden stuff would tell them that he’d been a real player and not just a stringer, and the varsity at GCHQ would be assigned to it. Though none of them would be able to discover what he’d taken away to death with him inside his head.