With the trickle of poise that remained to her, Jody fell to the floor. Facing the back of the bathroom, seeing the toilet and sink from the sides of her foggy eyes, she pleaded for her life.
But instead of shooting her, the woman ordered another man, an older man, to remove the uniforms. Then she closed the bathroom door. The girl waited, surprised, half-expecting gunfire to tear through the door. She stood sideways, on the toilet, to make as small and removed a target as possible.
But instead of gunfire, all she heard was a scraping sound followed by a loud whump.
Something had been pushed against the door.
She isn’t going to kill me, Jody thought. She’s only going to lock me in here.
Perspiration soaked her clothes as she waited. The three hijackers finished quickly in the trailer, and then were gone. She listened. Nothing.
Then one of the hijackers was outside the window. Jody leaned her ear to the wall, and listened. Something metal was turning, followed by clanking, and then the sound of metal being punctured once, twice, and then a third time.
Then she heard fabric being ripped and she smelled gas.
The fuel tank, she thought with horror. They’ve opened it.
“No!” Jody screamed as she leapt off the toilet. She threw herself against the door. “You said you don’t like killing women! Please!” A moment later Jody smelled smoke, heard footsteps running from the van, and saw the orange of the flame reflected against the frosted glass of the window. They were going to burn the trailer with her in it.
The woman isn’t killing me, Jody realized then. She’s just letting me die.
The girl threw herself against the door. It wouldn’t budge. And as the orange grew brighter she stood in the middle of the small room screaming with fear and despair.
CHAPTER TEN Thursday, 5:47 A.M., Washington, D.C.
Liz Gordon had just finished grinding up coffee beans and was lighting her first cigarette of the day when the phone rang.
“I wonder who that can be?” the thirty-two-year-old said to herself as she took a long pull on her cigarette.
Ashes fell on her Mike Danger nightshirt and she brushed them off. Then she absently scratched her head through her curly brown hair as she listened to see where she’d left the cordless phone.
Since rising at five, Liz had been going over some of the things she might say when she visited the Striker team later this morning. At their third group session two days before, the elite but very young soldiers were still in shock as they mourned the loss of Charlie Squires. Rookie Sondra DeVonne was taking his death especially hard, sad for Charlie’s family and also for herself. Through tears, the Private had said that she’d hoped to learn so much from him. Now all that wisdom and experience was gone. Not passed on.
Dead.
“Where is the freakin’ phone?” Liz snarled as she kicked aside the newspapers by the kitchen table.
Not that she was afraid the caller would hang up. At this hour it could only be Monica calling from Italy. And her roommate and best friend would not go away until she got her messages. After all, she’d been gone nearly an entire day.
And if Sinatra calls, thought Op-Center’s Staff Psychologist, you want to be able to get right back to him.
For the three years they’d been living together, Liz’s workaholic freelance musician friend had done all the nightclubs and weddings and Bar Mitzvahs she could get.
She’d been working so hard, in fact, that Liz had not only ordered her to take a vacation, but had kicked in half the money to make sure she could go.
Liz finally found the phone sitting on one of the kitchen chairs. Before picking it up, Liz took a moment to change worlds. The dynamics between Liz and each of her patients were such that she created separate worlds in her mind for each of them, and inhabited those worlds fully in order to treat them. Otherwise, there would be spillover, lack of focus, distractions. Though Monica was her best friend, not a patient, it was difficult sometimes to make a clear distinction between the two.
As Liz slipped into her Monica world, she checked the message list from under the Chopin magnet on the refrigerator door. The only ones who had called were Monica’s drummer, Angelo “Tim” Panni, and her mother, both of whom wanted to make sure she got to Rome okay.
“Pronto, Ms. Sheard!” she said as she clicked on the phone. A telephone hello was one of the two Italian words she knew.
The decidedly masculine voice on the other end said, “Sorry, Liz, it isn’t Monica. It’s Bob Herbert.” “Bob!” Liz said. “This is a surprise. What’s happening in the land of Freud?” “I thought Freud was Austrian,” Herbert said.
“He was,” Liz said, “but the Germans had him for a year. The Anschluss was in 1938. Freud died in 1939.” “That’s almost not funny,” Bob said. “It looks like the Fatherland may be flexing its muscles for a new era of empire-building.” She reached for her cigarette. “What do you mean?” “Have you watched the news this morning?” Herbert asked.
“It doesn’t come on till six,” she said. “Bob, what the hell happened?” “A bunch of neo-Nazis attacked a movie set,” Herbert said. “They killed some of the crew, stole a trailer filled with Nazi memorabilia, and drove off. Although no one’s heard from them, they appear to have taken an American girl hostage.” “Jesus,” Liz said. She took several short puffs.
“It appears as if the group was led by a woman named Karin Doring. Heard of her?” “The name is familiar,” Liz said. She took the phone from the kitchen and began walking toward the study. “Give me a second and I’ll see what we’ve got.” She switched on the computer, sat down, and accessed the database in her office at Op-Center. In less than ten seconds, the file on Doring had been downloaded.
“Karin Doring,” she said, “the Ghost from Halle.” “The Ghost from where?” Herbert asked.
“Halle,” Liz said. She scanned the report. “That’s her hometown in East Germany. They call her the Ghost because she’s usually gone from the scene before anyone can catch her. She doesn’t go in for ski masks and disguises, wants people to know who’s behind things. And get this. In an interview last year with a newspaper called Our Struggle, she describes herself as a Nazi Robin Hood, striking a blow for the oppressed majority of Germany.” “Sounds like a psycho,” Herbert said.
“Actually, she doesn’t,” Liz said. “That’s the problem with people like this.” Liz coughed, continued to draw on her cigarette, and spoke as she scanned the file. “In high school, in the late 1970s, she was briefly a member of the Communist Party.” “Spying on the enemy?” “Probably not,” Liz said.
“Okay,” Herbert said, “why don’t I just shut up?” “No, what you just said would be a logical assumption, though it’s probably a wrong one. She was obviously looking for herself, ideologically speaking. The Communist left and the neo-Nazi right are very much alike in their rigidity of thought. All radicals are. These people can’t sublimate their frustrations so they externalize them. They convince themselves, usually subconsciously, that others are causing their miseries— ‘others’ meaning anyone who’s different from them. In Hitler’s Germany, they blamed unemployment on the Jews. Jews held a disproportionately high number of positions in banks, universities, medicine. They were visible, obviously prosperous, and very clearly different. They had different traditions, different sabbaths, different holidays.
They were an easy target. The same was true of Jews in Communist Russia.” “Gotcha,” Herbert said. “Have you got anything on this woman’s contacts, hideouts, habits?” Liz scanned the document. It was broken into sections labeled “vital statistics,” “biography,” and “modus operandi.” “She’s a loner,” Liz said, “which in terrorist terms means she always works with a small group. Three or four people, tops. And she never sends anyone on a mission she wouldn’t undertake.” “That’s a match with today’s attack,” Herbert said. “Any known hits?” Liz said, “They never claim credit—” “Also a match with today.” “—but witnesses have tied them to the firebombing of an Arab-owned shopping mall in Bonn and the delivery of a grenade-rigged liquor carton to the South African Embassy in Berlin, both last year.” “Ruthless too,” Herbert said.
“Yes,” Liz said. “That’s part of her appeal to the hardcore neo-Nazis. Though it’s strange. The store she attacked was a men’s shop, and the liquor was delivered to a bachelor party.” “Why is that strange? Maybe she hates men.” “That doesn’t fit in with Nazi ideology,” Liz said.
“True,” Herbert agreed. “In war and genocide, they were equal-opportunity killers. This may be good news for the American kid, if she is a hostage. Maybe they won’t kill her.” “I wouldn’t bet the ranch on that,” Liz said. “Sparing women isn’t likely to be a commandment, just courtesy. It also says here that two of those witnesses who tried to I.D.