Kromm did not move. He only looked up at Clark.
"I will kill you, right here, right now, if you do not do as I say."
Kromm slowly began to write, but then he looked up, past the gun barrel, as if he had something to say.
"Write or talk," Clark said, "but do it now or I put a bullet in one of those sore knees of yours."
The German pensioner said, "After they took me, I spent a day in the hospital. I told the doctor I was mugged. And then I came home, angry and determined to retaliate against the men. The leader, the man who asked the questions, he was not a local. I could tell this because he spoke no German. Only Estonian and Russian."
"Keep talking."
"I have a friend still in Moscow, he knows his way around."
"Around the Mafia, you mean?"
Kromm shrugged. "He is an entrepreneur. Anyway, I called him up and asked him for information on Obtshak. I did not tell him the real reason. I am certain he a.s.sumed I had business. I described the man who interrogated me. Fifty years old, but with hair dyed like he was a twenty-year-old singer in a punk-rock band."
"And your friend gave you a name?"
"He did."
"And what did you do?"
Kromm shrugged. He looked at the floor in humiliation. "What could I do? I was drunk when I thought I could get revenge. I sobered up."
"Give me the man"s name."
"If I do that, if I tell you about the man in Tallinn who came here and ordered the others to beat me, will you bypa.s.s the men here in Cologne? Maybe if you go directly to Tallinn they will not know that I informed."
"That suits me just fine, Manfred."
"Sehr gut," said Kromm, and he gave Clark a name as the last of the afternoon"s light left the sky outside.
Unlike the government agencies searching for international fugitive John Clark, Fabrice Bertrand-Morel Investigations billed by the man-hour, so they used a lot of men working a lot of hours.
And it was only this intense canva.s.sing of choke points across Europe that helped them locate their quarry. Bertrand-Morel had concentrated his hunt in Europe because Alden had, through Laska, pa.s.sed the Frenchman a copy of the dossier on the exCIA man. FBM decided Clark"s recent work in Europe with NATO"s Rainbow organization would mean he would have sympathetic contacts on the continent.
So a single FBM man had been placed in each of sixty-four train stations across Europe, working fourteen-hour shifts, pa.s.sing out fliers and showing photos of Clark to station employees. They had turned up nothing in days of waiting and watching. But finally a man working a pretzel stand at the Cologne Hauptbahnhof had caught a glimpse of a figure in a crowd pa.s.sing by. He looked at the photo on the small card he"d been handed three days earlier by a bald Frenchman, and then he quickly dialed the number on the back of the card.
The Frenchman had offered him a large reward, paid in cash.
Twenty minutes later the first FBM man arrived at the Cologne Hauptbahnhof to interview the pretzel salesman. The middle-aged man was clearheaded and convincing; he was certain John Clark had pa.s.sed him heading for the front entrance of the Hauptbahnhof.
Soon three more FBM men, the entire force within an hour"s drive, were in the station working on a plan of action. They had little to go on save for the report that their man had entered the city; they could not very well just spread out, sending four men out into the fourth-largest metropolis in Germany.
So they left a man at the station while the other three checked the nearby hotels and guesthouses.
It was the agent at the station who got the hit. Just after nine on the cold and rainy evening, forty-year-old Lyonnais private detective and employee of Fabrice Bertrand-Morel Investigations Luc Patin stood just at the entrance smoking a cigarette, his eyes occasionally drifting up to the incredible Cologne Cathedral just to the left of the train station, but his main focus remained on the foot traffic that streamed past him toward the tracks behind. There, in a large group of pedestrians, a man who bore a reasonable resemblance to his target shuffled by with the collar of his raincoat up high.
Luc Patin said softly, "Bonsoir, mon ami." He reached into his pocket and retrieved his mobile phone.
Domingo Chavez had set up a more low-tech monitoring operation for Rehan"s Dubai safe house than that of the two younger operators with their robot cameras and microphones. One of the three bedrooms in the bungalow looked out over the lagoon, into the waterway between the crescent-shaped breakwater upon which the Kempinski sat and the palm-frond-shaped peninsula where Rehan"s safe house was located. The distance between the two locations was easily four hundred meters, but that was not too far away for Chavez to employ a toy he"d brought along on the flight in from the States.
He set up the variable-power Zeiss Victory FL spotting scope on its tripod, and he placed the tripod on a desk in the bedroom in front of the window. From his chair at the desk he could see the very back of Rehan"s walled-in compound, and several second-floor windows. The blinds had remained closed as had the back gate, but he hoped that the property might open up a little bit when it was actually being lived in by Rehan and an entourage from Islamabad.
When he realized that he had a fair line of sight on the compound, he also got another idea. If Rehan was truly as dangerous as their investigations were leading them to believe, might The Campus not decide, sooner rather than later, to take him out? And if they did make the call for the operators to a.s.sa.s.sinate the general, would it not be much easier to do it right here, with a long-range rifle and good optics, as opposed to having to find some other opportunity to get close to the man, either here in Dubai or, G.o.d forbid, in Islamabad?
Chavez determined he could make the shot on General Rehan if the man stepped out onto his second-floor balcony or even appeared in an upper-floor window of the safe house, and he ran his thoughts by Ryan and Caruso. Both men supported the idea of being ready for a termination order from Hendley and Granger, so Chavez called Sam Granger and asked to have some equipment flown in so that he would be ready, in the event something during their surveillance led to the green light to drop Rehan.
The Gulfstream would be flying in the equipment in two days" time, which meant Ding would have a gun ready to make the shot well before he expected his potential target to arrive in the city.
Clark saw the watcher just after nine p.m. He had just finished his second dry-cleaning run of the evening before returning to the station; he hadn"t seen anyone following him at any point in his visit to Cologne, but when he stood in line at a kiosk to buy a couchette ticket to Berlin, a gentle sweep of his head in all directions revealed a single man watching him from thirty-five yards away. A second glance several seconds later confirmed it.
He"d been spotted.
John stepped out of the line at the kiosk. This would be conspicuous but a h.e.l.l of a lot better than waiting around for the watcher"s backup to arrive. He strolled through the station toward the northern exit, and seconds later he realized that two new men had joined the hunt.
They were on him before he was out of the station and he knew it, because he"d been spotting tails since before these three goons were born. Two men with short beards and dark hair, the same approximate age, the same build, the same general style of raincoats. They were entering the station as he was exiting two minutes earlier, and now they were walking thirty yards behind and slightly to the right as John turned in front of the cathedral.
A wet sleet fell on them all as Clark headed south.
John did not get overly excited by having acquired a tail. He was not going to let a little surveillance shake him up. He could lose these men in the darkness and foot traffic of the city and then be on his way again in no time. He turned left at the southern edge of the cathedral and headed for the western bank of the Rhine River. After pa.s.sing a section of road with worn stones laid by the Romans, he tried to catch a glimpse of the men behind him in the gla.s.s of the Dorint Hotel. The two men were there, together, not more than twenty-five yards back. He wondered if the third man was trying to get ahead of him now.
Clark turned south, walked along Mauthga.s.se, full of restaurants with tables spilling away from building facades toward the river"s edge, and with diners laughing and mingling with one another under heated canopies. He was as concerned about his status as an internationally sought criminal as he was afraid of the men tailing him. The locals and tourists were a definite danger. He a.s.sumed his face had been on the news in Europe as well as the States, though he himself had not watched any television in the past week. With an abundance of caution and a desire to avoid running into a do-gooding waiter with a black belt, he adjusted his watch cap lower on his forehead and made a turn up a quiet street.
John walked down the middle of the cobblestoned alleyway as it rose and turned to the left. His tail followed, still twenty-five yards back and on his right. He found himself in the Heumarkt, another open area full of people walking under umbrellas and electric lights, and he turned back to the north. All along he scanned reflections, judging the disposition of the men behind him whenever he could get a glimpse of them. He was beginning to think that maybe these guys were not waiting on backup before arresting him, though they had made no move to close their distance just yet.
He strolled through the Alter Markt, still heading north and parallel to the Rhine a few blocks away on his right. A quick glance in a traffic mirror on a blind street corner showed him that one of his followers had dropped out of the hunt, but the other had closed even more. This man was not fifteen yards behind him now. Picking his way through the pedestrians, John began to worry. There were two men who could right now be moving into position ahead of him, ready to try to snag him at the very next corner. He liked his chances in any one-on-one encounter, but the proximity of civilians and cops could easily allow any situation to grow unmanageable.
Clark picked up his pace, found himself pa.s.sing a beer museum and a covered courtyard full of singing Germans, and he turned again to the right, moving now along the bank of the river. He thought about stopping, turning, and confronting the man who had closed to within thirty feet, there was no way this guy was going to take Clark in on his own, but any altercation in front of a crowd would just about ensure that someone would notice him, recognize him, and call for the police. The man behind him was threatening suddenly with his overt proximity, his unknown intentions, and his power to draw unwanted attention to the American fugitive.
John turned right again at Fischmarkt, away from the crowds and into a dimly lit alley.
There was a quick left in front of it. Also dark and quiet. The sign said "Auf dem Rothenberg" and John picked up the pace as he made the turn.
The second man, the one who had dropped off surveillance, stood in front of him in the dark. A pistol was low in his right hand. "Monsieur Clark, please come quietly so that you do not get hurt."
John stopped, twenty feet from the man with the gun. He heard the man behind him stop in the alley, as well.
The American nodded, took one step forward, then spun on his shoes and ran through the back door of a pizza parlor, leaving his pursuers in the alleyway.
John was not fast. Speed, he knew, was a young man"s game. But he leveraged his years in the field with each and every footfall, looking to make a quick turn here, to duck into a shadow there. He moved straight through the kitchen of the Croatian-run pizza restaurant, knocking pans and cans and cooks into the path of the men who were entering the back door behind him. He darted into the narrow dining room, pushed past the customers lined up to order their pies, knocking several of them down to the floor in order to slow the men in pursuit.
In the street in front of the pizza shop he did not turn either left or right. Instead he crossed the street in a sprint and ran into the open door of a postWorld War Two apartment building. He was not sure if the chasers had seen him enter, but he ran up the stairs in the entryway, taking the steps three at a time, wheezing and grunting with the effort.
The building was four stories tall, and it was connected to other buildings on either side. Clark thought about going all the way to the roof and trying to put s.p.a.ce between himself and those chasing him by moving along the tops of the other buildings, just like he and his mates had done in Paris. But when he got to the third floor, he heard noise above, a large group in the stairwell on the fourth floor, heading his way. They sounded like they may have been just a group of young people on their way to a night on the town or a party; by their high voices and laughter they did not sound like a s.n.a.t.c.h team from the FBI. But Clark was alone now, and he did not want to rush into a group of people who could ID him or tell the men on his tail which way he was heading.
Clark left the stairwell, ran up a hallway, and saw a window at the far end. Outside, under dim electric lights, he could see a fire escape. He charged to the window, half exhausted and nearly out of breath, and pulled it open.
In seconds he was back out in the rain. The fire escape rattled and creaked with his movements, but it seemed like it would hold for his descent of the flights to the alleyway. He had just turned away from the window, grabbed the railing to head to the first set of rickety stairs down, when a man appeared coming up. Clark hadn"t heard him climbing with all the noise Clark himself had made coming out of the window onto the fire escape.
"No!" John exclaimed as the man, the same man he had seen watching him in the train station at the ticket kiosk, drew a silver automatic pistol and tried to level it at his prey. But the men were too close to each other on the steep and wet iron steps, and Clark kicked the gun out of the lower man"s hand. The weapon flew over the side of the fire escape and the man slipped back, down two steps to the landing just a few feet below Clark.
The two men stared at each other silently for a second. John had his gun on his hip, but he did not go for it. He was not going to shoot an FBI agent or a French detective or a CIA officer or a German cop. Whoever this man was, Clark had no plans to kill him.
But when the man reached inside his raincoat, Clark launched down toward him. He had to close the distance before another weapon came out.
Luc Patin spooked when Clark knocked his weapon away. He reached for a knife he kept in a scabbard on a neck chain under his shirt. He tore the blade free and slashed through the air at the American.
John saw the motion, brought his arm up and knocked away the blow, but took a slashing cut to the back of his hand. He cried out in pain, then he fired out his right hand, palm up and out, and he connected under the chin of the French private detective.
Luc Patin"s head snapped back with the punch to the jaw, and he reeled backward and then slipped, his hips. .h.i.tting the low railing behind him hard, and he tumbled backward off the fire escape. His feet flew into the air as he fell. Clark leapt forward to catch his attacker by his coat, but the rain shower and the slick blood on his left hand caused him to lose hold as soon as he grabbed it, and the Frenchman fell three stories down to the cobblestones.
His head hit with a sound like a baseball bat striking a melon.
f.u.c.k, thought Clark, he had not meant to kill him, but he would have to worry about that later. Now he stumbled off the fire escape at the second floor by forcing open a thick wooden door to a kitchen apartment. He found a roll of paper towels, wrapped his hand in them as he stepped back into the hallway, and then raced downstairs and back out onto the street.
Three minutes later, he walked past the entrance to a subway, and then he hurried back to it. As he headed down the stairs he chanced a glance behind. He saw two pursuers, men in raincoats running together through the rain across an intersection twenty-five meters behind. A Peugeot swerved and honked in their wake. It did not appear to Clark that the men had spotted him, but it did appear that they"d gotten word that their colleague was dead.
John bought a ticket and rushed to the platform of the next train. He held his breath to keep from hyperventilating. Play cool, stay calm. He stood near the edge by the track, waiting with a dozen others for the next train.
John could not believe his luck. Somehow he had managed to make it down the steps without being seen by his pursuers, and as he struggled to fill his aching lungs with oxygen, he checked again to make sure he had not been followed. No. He could get on a train to anywhere and then make his way to safety.
Well, relative safety.
He felt the cool breeze from the tunnel on his left indicating the impending arrival of the train. He stepped to the edge of the platform so he could be the first one through the doors. A final check to the stairs on his left. Clear. He absentmindedly looked over his right shoulder as the train came out of the tunnel on his left.
They were there. Two men. New guys, but definitely from the same crew. They approached him with hard faces.
He knew he had made it easy for them. On the edge of the track, they needed only a little shove and he would be gone. If they weren"t planning on killing him before, he had little doubt that the death of their colleague would change their mission, no matter their original orders.
He turned away from them and faced the tracks. The train was fifty feet away and closing fast, from his left to his right. John leapt off the edge of the platform, down the four feet to the tracks.
The others on the platform screamed in shock.
John crossed the rails right in front of the speeding U-Bahn. A black chain-link fence separated the eastbound line from the westbound, and he had to get over this before the train pa.s.sed. He leapt onto the fence, pulled himself up with a b.l.o.o.d.y hand and an arm still aching from a month-old gunshot wound, then he kicked his legs over the fence as the train behind him screeched and wailed. The first car struck his right foot and his heel felt like it had been smacked with a ball bat, and Clark spun off the top of the fence, falling to his hands and knees next to the other track. Like a deer in the headlights, he looked up to face another train, farther away but barreling down on him from the west. He could hear screams from the platform next to him. He rose and leapt forward, posting on his injured ankle to do so, and made it to the edge of the platform without touching any of the track"s rails. He tried to heave himself up on the concrete before the train came, but the muscles in his arms faltered. He dropped back down, his body spent.
Clark turned and looked at the train that would kill him.
Achtung!"
Two young men in soccer jerseys came to his rescue. They knelt at the edge of the platform and scrambled to grab his collar and yank him up and over the edge. They were big and young and a h.e.l.l of a lot stronger than Clark; his worn-out arms tried to help, but they just hung by his sides.
Three seconds later, the train filled the s.p.a.ce his body had just vacated.
John lay on his back on the cold concrete, both hands holding his aching ankle.
The men shouted and slapped him roughly on his shoulder. John picked up the word for "old man." One of them laughed, and he helped Clark up, patted him again on the shoulder.
An old woman pointed her umbrella angrily at his face as she chastised him.
Someone else called him an Arschloch. a.s.shole.
John struggled to put weight on his injured foot, then nodded with a smile at the men who had saved him, and he tottered into the train that had almost crushed him. Inside, he collapsed on a bench. No one else on the platform followed. The train moved, and he looked through the window toward the eastbound platform. His two pursuers were still there.
Watching him escape from their grasp.
The White House press corps a.s.sembled in the briefing room quickly. An announcement was made that the President would be making a short statement.
Within five minutes, a blink of an eye for those accustomed to waiting on Kealty, the President stepped into the briefing room and up to the microphone. "I have just spoken with officials of both the State Department and the Justice Department. I am told that, well, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that the fugitive John Clark has been implicated in the murder last night at around ten p.m. local time in Cologne, Germany, of a French businessman. I don"t have all the details on this just yet; I am sure Attorney General Brannigan"s office will have more on this as it develops. This event underscores how important it is that we get this individual into custody. I took a bit of heat from many of my political opponents, many in the Ryan camp, who accused me of only going after Mr. Clark because of the Ryan pardons and his relationship with Jack Ryan.
"Well . . . now you see that this is not politics at all. This is life and death. I am sorry that my vindication for the decision I made concerning John Clark has come at such a high cost.
"Mr. Clark has fled the United States, but I want to a.s.sure everyone, including our friends in Germany and all over the world, that we will not rest until Mr. Clark is back in U.S. custody. We will continue to work with our able partners in Germany, in Europe, wherever he goes, and we will find him, no matter what rock he chooses to hide under."
A reporter from MSNBC shouted over his colleagues, "Mr. President, are you at all worried that there is a time limit on this manhunt? In other words, that if you do not win next week and you fail to catch Clark before your term ends, President Ryan will end the manhunt?"
Kealty had begun stepping away from the microphone, but he returned to it now. "Megan, I am going to win the election on Tuesday. That said, whatever support Jack Ryan has, he has not been entrusted by the American people to determine the guilt or innocence of individuals. He tried that before when he gave this murderer a pardon, and . . . well . . . look where we are now. That is a job for our Department of Justice, our courts. Mr. Clark is a killer, a murderer. I can only imagine what there is still to learn about Clark"s history. His crimes." Kealty"s face reddened slightly. "So to you all in the media, I would like to say that if Jack Ryan tries to sweep this man"s past and present crimes under the rug . . . well, you are the fourth estate. You have a responsibility to keep that from happening."
Kealty turned away from the press and left the briefing room without taking another question.
One hour later, Jack Ryan Sr. made his own statement in the driveway of his home in Baltimore. His wife, Cathy, stood by his side. "I don"t have any of the details of the specifics of the charges against John Clark. I don"t know what happened in Cologne, and I certainly do not know if Mr. Clark was involved, but I have known John Clark long enough to know that if he did, in fact, kill Mr. Patin, then Mr. Patin posed a real threat to John Clark."
A reporter for CNN asked, "Are you saying Luc Patin deserved to die?"
"I am saying John Clark does not make mistakes. Now, if President Kealty wants to go after a Medal of Honor winner, put him on the FBI"s Ten Most Wanted list, well, I can"t stop him from doing that. But I can promise everyone that John deserves more than this country could ever give him as repayment for his services. And he certainly does not deserve the treatment he"s getting from this president."
The CNN reporter interjected, "It sounds like you are saying your friend is above the law."
"No, I"m not saying that. He is not above the law. But he is above this political theater disguised as law. This is disgusting. My wife has quite correctly admonished me in the past for getting a look on my face like I"ve just bitten a lemon when Ed Kealty is mentioned. I"ve tried to hide it as best I can. But right now, I want everyone to see how repulsed I am by what is going on relative to John Clark."
As soon as Ryan reentered the house through the kitchen, Arnie van Damm turned to face him. "Jesus, Jack!"
"What I said was true, Arnie."
"I believe you. I do. But how is that going to play?"