Nemesis: Innocence Sold (23 page)

Sandra threw her pillow at his head. Kaspar was eager to participate in the pillow fight, but Daniel grabbed his collar. “We should get out of here. She’s becoming violent.”

Sandra smiled and fell back onto the bed. She could get used to being awakened like this. Daniel was unbelievable. He had given her no chance to get embarrassed. How her brother was reacting to all this chaos remained to be seen, but she wasn’t going to find that out if she stayed in bed.

There were worse places than hospitals in which one might have to stand guard for hours on end, but at the moment Pat couldn’t think of any. Actually, he had little reason to complain; it wasn’t cold and wet, and hardly anyone appeared in or outside the room. But this was the problem. In the mountains of Afghanistan, the constant danger ensured that one didn’t relax one’s watchfulness for a second. In his current, presumably safe environment, it was, in contrast, more difficult not to reduce one’s concentration and watchfulness. Because Konstantin had asked him to do so, he had spent a large part of the time in the room rather than the hall. Since waking, Berger had had some questions that had left him no peace, so the attending physician, Dr. Konstantin von Blücher, a friend of Maria’s and by now also of Pat’s, had asked him to speak with the policeman. Pat had been able to answer most of the questions, and Konstantin had been enthused by the improvement in Berger’s condition.

When he wasn’t sleeping, the policeman had proved to be a pleasant conversationalist, with one exception: although they had been talking about movies, Berger returned to his favorite topic. “Delta Force? Like in Schwarzenegger’s
Commando
?” he asked.

“Was that Delta Force? No idea,” said Pat, hoping Berger would finally stop interrogating him. The policeman was astonishingly sharp and had presented him with a highly relevant chain of clues that in his view suggested Daniel and Pat must have a military background.

“Anyway, neither of us look very much like Schwarzenegger. We lack quite a few pounds of muscle mass.”

“That’s true,” Berger said. “But after all, it’s a movie. In the real world, the special forces’ absolute inconspicuousness is one of their advantages. Well, apart from your hair color, maybe.” He propped himself up and tried to get to his water glass. By now, Pat knew him too well to offer help. After taking a drink, Berger sank back, his face twisted with pain. “Shit.”

“Do you need more painkillers?”

“No. That’s the last thing I want. I hate the dopey condition. I’m all right. But I should avoid the sun for the next few weeks. That’s too bad—the children would have liked a vacation to the beach.”

Pat liked how Berger didn’t sink into self-pity but played down his injuries with unshakable humor. Other than a broken collarbone, he had primarily suffered burns on his legs. He had already recovered well from the shock of the explosion and the effects of the corrosive smoke that had entered his lungs; nevertheless, it would take days before he could get out of bed.

“You were lucky your jacket protected you, and your colleague got you out.”

“That’s true, actually; in the process, unfortunately, I’ve also lost my prime suspect. But I do prefer it this way. By the way, who do I have to bribe to get a shower? The smell of burnt hair is simply horrible.”

“True. But it’s not possible. I can ask Maria how that mobile hairdresser works; a little touch-up before your family arrives wouldn’t be a bad idea.” His eyebrows and hair had suffered from the heat, and his face looked irritated, partly reddened, partly blackened.

“You really know how to cheer someone up, O’Reilly,” Berger joked.

“Ever heard of the principle
You shall not lie
?”

“Sure. What about the Army Rangers? I know they cooperated with the State Protection Office in Hamburg. And think of your principle!”

Pat rolled his eyes, and though the reference to the Army special unit irritated him, he remained silent. “If you keep it up, I’m going to ask Konstantin for a sedative.”

When Berger was about to answer, Pat raised his hand. “Just a second.” A barely audible swishing noise outside the door had alarmed him. Berger’s room lay at the end of a corridor, directly next to a small storage closet for cleaning products that was used only twice a day and was otherwise locked. There was also a glass door that had been locked for months and turned the hall into a dead end. When extensive renovation work had been done, the hall would again allow passage to the lecture halls of the university medical center. Other than Konstantin and two trusted nurses, no one was allowed near the room.

The fact that he suddenly felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up suggested there wasn’t a harmless explanation. “I have a damned bad feeling right now.”

“I thought I was out of the woods now that Lüttgens has blown the whistle on Blumenthal.”

“Apparently not, and it raises an interesting question: What else might you know without being aware of it?” Pat pressed his opened pocketknife into Berger’s hand. “Better than nothing.”

Berger nodded. In his eyes Pat saw a mixture of healthy fear and rage at his helplessness.

They were trapped. Doing nothing and waiting for help wasn’t an option. Nevertheless, Pat handed him his cell phone after pushing a button. “Explain to Dirk what’s going on.”

With his gun in his hand, Pat opened the door a crack and peered into the hall. Empty. He stepped out and immediately closed the door behind him. The massive beam that had blocked the glass door was gone, but no one was in the corridor behind it. His hand went to the knob of the storage closet. Locked as usual. Irritated, he remained motionless and waited for a sound, some sign that might alarm his subconscious but that had escaped him until now. He had been able to rely on his instincts—even after endless hours without sleep. As a test, he pushed the flat of his hand against the glass door, which he was able to open effortlessly, though it scraped across the floor with a nerve-racking sound. Exactly the sound he had heard earlier, though much more muted. Then he realized what had happened. He whirled around. Too late. From the storage closet, a shadow raced toward him, and a blackjack struck him above the elbow. A stabbing pain shot through him to his shoulder; he couldn’t keep from losing his grip on his pistol, and it fell to the floor. He could forget about using his arm, but he hadn’t been beaten yet.

Three men had lured him out and squeezed into the small closet to lie in wait for him. They attacked him together. Kicking one of his attackers in the stomach earned him some room and respect. He ducked under a blow aimed at his face and sent one man down by kicking him in the knee. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the third, a white-haired man, had a pistol in his hand. Before he could react, the barrel struck him in the neck. His knees gave way; instinctively, he tried to break his fall with his injured arm. Mistake. The stabbing pain took his breath away.

“Not bad, but not good enough,” the man kneeling on his upper body told him in a strong accent.

“Quite a feat, given the superior numbers,” Pat said, gasping, and tried to free his uninjured hand or at least land another kick. But two of the men held him down effortlessly, no matter how he fought or what trick he tried.

“Someone should have taught you when to give up. Knock him out.”

Pat had no chance to avoid the blow. The fist struck him on the chin. The last words he heard were “I want to know who he is. Make him talk.”
Good, that will give the others some time,
he thought; then blackness surrounded him.

CHAPTER 23

The pungent smell of ammonia jerked Pat out of his unconsciousness. He thought about how much time might have passed and received a fairly harmless blow to the face. “Wake up, redhead. We have a few questions, and then it’ll be behind you.” That didn’t sound good, and that was the understatement of the year.

Pat blinked. His first look was at the clock on the wall. Eleven thirty. It was nearly impossible to survive thirty minutes under these conditions. It looked as though their only hope was that Dirk or Daniel would appear, but it wasn’t in Pat’s nature to rely on that. His gaze wandered to Berger, who lay motionless in bed. His eyes were closed, his breathing irregular and strained. Neither the cell phone nor the knife was visible. Either the policeman had been subjected to serious violence or he was acting to fool the three men. Pat preferred the latter.

Pat slowly sat up and began to take stock of the situation. His right arm hurt badly, but he could move his fingers. His neck felt sticky; the material of his sweatshirt was unpleasantly stiff. The blood spot next to his head betrayed the reason. There was a hammering in his skull, but he could live with that.

Pat was next to Berger’s bed, so close that his shoulder was touching the bed frame. That might turn out to be an advantage. His hands were bound behind his back with zip ties or something similar, but he could freely move his legs. They hadn’t lost yet. The silent staring was supposed to frighten him, soften him up with fear of what awaited him, but on this point, too, they had miscalculated. Berger’s hand moved slightly; with his eyes open a tiny crack, he gave the
OK
sign. Pat heaved a sigh of relief; now they needed to find the right timing.

Pat calmly returned the impatient gaze of the white-haired man. His hair color was misleading; he was in his midthirties at most, in good shape, and apparently in charge. The other two stayed in the background. The wordless communication among the three appealed to Pat as little as their professional behavior.

“I’m sure you can understand that we’re in a hurry, and you wouldn’t want us to work over one of the doctors, I assume? Imagine what would happen if your little girlfriend showed up here unexpectedly. It’s really a shame we didn’t get to her. Her screams would surely have convinced you to tell us what we want to know. We’ll just go ahead and start. What’s your name? Who are you working for?”

It was an aspect of the SEALs’ tactics to ignore questions in such situations, but in this case it was difficult for Pat to handle his fear on Maria’s behalf. It was clear they had had help from inside the hospital, and it horrified him that they knew about him and Maria.

He inconspicuously pushed himself forward a few inches and hoped Berger understood what he was planning.

“I didn’t know we were such good friends. Be that as it may, I’ve had nice conversations with some nurses, and the little blonde doesn’t seem averse to a meeting, but I have no idea which doctor you mean. It’s bad news when one gets sent off with false information. Are you sure you’re in the right room?”

“Let us worry about that.” Nevertheless, Pat’s words had an effect. With his head half-turned to one of his companions, the white-haired man let loose with a stream of words in a Slavic language Pat didn’t know. But Berger used the moment of distraction perfectly. Something scraped across Pat’s back; then he had the pocketknife in his hand. It was easy to cut the zip ties. Now he had the element of surprise on his side, and if he wasn’t mistaken, his arm was functional again.

The man’s answer seemed to calm the white-haired man. He stepped close to Pat and held the muzzle of his Makarov to his forehead. “Fast or slow. You choose. You’ll talk anyway.”

“About what? The weather? Pretty changeable,” Pat said, hoping to provoke the white-haired man. He wasn’t disappointed; the man drew back to strike him. Pat’s good hand shot forward and blocked the blow. He spun around and threw a kick that struck in the middle of the white-haired man’s solar plexus with full force, and he collapsed, unconscious. The pistol landed on the floor only inches away from Pat, who didn’t let the opportunity slip away. While the two men were still struggling with their surprise at the unexpected resistance, Pat fired. The first man fell to the floor. The second decided against fighting Pat and didn’t give him a chance to take a shot. The man ran past him, held his hands in front of his face, and jumped through the window. Pat rose and looked out the window. He wasn’t in the right condition to pursue him, and shooting a fleeing man in the back was out of the question.

Supporting himself on the window frame, he turned around and surveyed the chaos.

A shrill whistle drowned out the groaning of the injured. He wasn’t able to produce the corresponding answer. When the door to the room was opened, he lowered the Russian pistol. In classic police fashion, Dirk and Sven stormed into the room. With two steps Dirk reached him. “You missed the best part,” Pat said. Then he gasped and started to collapse but was caught by his friend.

“I didn’t want to spoil your fun,” Dirk said. “Where’d you get hit?”

“I’m all right. It’s just . . . Help me up before Maria finds out. They had inside information. Knew everything about the building and about me and Maria. The guy even knew that the windows only had a single pane of glass in them here in the old part of the building. He would have gotten more than a bloody nose from those new double panes. They had no idea who I am but wanted to find that out. You have to get Berger out of here. It’s not safe.”

“We’ll do all that, Pat. But don’t get up for the time being. Take it easy. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, and what’s wrong with your arm?”

Despite the injuries and loud protests in a foreign language, Sven had secured both men’s hands and feet with plastic bonds. He walked over to Pat, holding a wet towel. “Press that against your neck. You’ve lost some blood, so don’t overdo it.”

“Are you a doctor now? I’m all right.” Nevertheless, he accepted the towel. “That looks worse than it is; a laceration.” He moved his arm to test it. “Works. So just keep the quacks away from me.”

From behind, Pat heard a voice he knew all too well. “I hope you don’t mean me by that, O’Reilly.” He moaned, but Daniel was already kneeling next to him with one hand in his medical equipment bag. “You’ll need stitches in your neck, and your arm’s going to be X-rayed. You’d be well advised not to mess with me. I almost went insane the last few miles. Despite our flashing lights, we got stuck at that damned roundabout. Finally, I went up onto the sidewalk and almost scared some grandma to death.”

Whenever he needed to distract patients from a painful examination or treatment, Doc talked his head off or argued with them.

Although Pat would never admit it, he was grateful for the distraction. The disinfectant burned like hell and even made him forget the pain in his arm. “I’m really sorry about that, but don’t complain to me,” Pat said through clenched teeth.

“I’m not. Damned good work managing this.”

False modesty had never been Pat’s style. “I’d say so, too. But Berger helped me. So be nice to him. Can I finally get some sleep?”

“Sure. As soon as I’ve evaluated the X-ray and know whether we can forgo a splint, I’ll prescribe twenty-four hours of rest for you and Maria.”

“Maria?” Pat’s head came up.

Cursing, Doc interrupted. “Hold still, you idiot. Do you want me to decorate your neck with this? Do you really think she hasn’t known for a long time? We ran down the hall like lunatics, and our vehicles are blocking the entrance. Despite its size, this place is a rumor mill, and you know yourself that agitation is not good for her. So be good.”

Daniel was right. Pat peered past their team and could already see two figures in white coats coming into the room. For a moment, Konstantin von Blücher’s otherwise elegant manner deserted him. He stopped in the middle of the room. “Oh, shit.” Without addressing anyone in particular, he added, “Sorry.”

Daniel didn’t turn around. “Maria? Your pigheaded Irishman’s all right. A harmless laceration. I’d just like to take a closer look at his arm. Fingers and joints movable, probably just a bad bruise or crimped nerve.”

“Damn it, don’t talk about me as if I weren’t here,” Pat said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Don’t you want to use your connections among the doctors? How would it be if you put in a good word for Berger with Henrik and let him die here?”

With a broad grin, Daniel turned to face Maria. “His head’s working fine. Give him a kiss by way of thanks from me when he’s presentable again.” Daniel looked at the Irishman, considering. “Unless you want me to . . .”

With his good arm, Pat swung at Daniel. “You wouldn’t survive that.”

Daniel stood up and held out a hand to him. “Come on. We’ll find an X-ray machine and a water faucet you can hold your head under.”

Pat let himself be helped up and immediately embraced Maria. “It really looks worse than it is. Please don’t worry.”

“It’s too late for that. I thought . . .”

When she pressed a hand to her stomach, a fear grew in Pat that overshadowed everything he had experienced in the last minutes. “Maria?”

“Nothing. Your daughter just tested her close-combat skills, and they’re considerable, given who her father is.”

“Nevertheless, you’re going to stay home for the next twenty-four hours,” Konstantin said, repeating Daniel’s instruction. “And it’d be best not to argue. There are three of us, Maria. What should I do with the two patients Pat’s given us?”

“Prison hospital,” Sven said. “I’ll take care of it. Now get out of here so we can talk to Berger in peace. Should we wait for you, Doc?”

“Start. It’s enough if Sandra’s here.”

Pat ignored Daniel’s threatening look and stepped over to Berger’s bed. He praised the policeman. “Perfect timing.”

“Could have been a movie. Thanks,” said Berger. “When this is all over, I’d like to express my thanks appropriately. Without making any further attempts to find out who you are. The result is enough for me.”

“That sounds good. I’ll see you. Go ahead and get better first.”

Dirk joined Daniel and Pat. “I caught Pat’s stroke of genius. You take care of his arm; I’ll call Henrik. He’s hardly going to refuse his accountant a small favor—then I’ll talk to Konstantin.”

Once uniformed officers had taken away the white-haired man and—following first aid—the man with the thigh wound, peace returned to the hospital room. An unreal contrast to the hectic, organized action that had taken place just a few minutes earlier. Sandra had the feeling of being back in the Mercedes, driving to Lübeck. For a fraction of a second, she hadn’t recognized Daniel after Dirk’s call. Fear for Pat, which he had kept under iron control but which had nevertheless been noticeable, had dominated him, but he had nevertheless steered the car through the stop-and-go traffic with concentration and only reacted to the blood outside the door to the room with a sharp inhale. She was still struggling with the transformation from the casual, humorous partner at her side to the controlled Navy officer. It wasn’t until he had treated Pat’s injuries that she recognized the man she still wanted to spend many more nights and days with.

She jerked when Sven nudged her. “You look miles away. Everything all right?”

She recognized the honest interest, and despite his own injuries Berger, too, looked at her with a mixture of understanding and concern. It would be stupid not to accept the implied offer of help, so she decided to answer honestly. “In the last years, I’ve drawn my weapon perhaps twice but never even fired it, and now this. This is insanity. Also, I’m losing any overview of how all this could fit together, and . . .” She barely managed to suppress a comment about Daniel.

Sven pushed a second chair over to Berger’s bed and grimaced when he discovered Pat’s blood on the floor. “You’ve chosen yourself a damned difficult and demanding job and are starting out with a case that’s taking all of us to our limits. After this, there will also be calmer times. That you have simultaneously chosen a partner with a somewhat unusual job makes it even more complicated, of course. But with that you have someone at your side who understands you and your job. However, that needs to be the case the other way around as well.”

Sandra thought about how naturally Daniel had touched her arm before he had towed Pat in the direction of the radiology department with a firm grip, intended to support him inconspicuously, and was already ashamed of her earlier thoughts.

With determination, she pulled herself together and managed a smile. “Well, I wasn’t really planning to discuss my relationship with Daniel here.”

Sven put a hand through his hair, once again destroying any vestige of a proper hairstyle, and now mussed blond strands were sticking out. He grinned at her. “Sure. But I thought it would be good for you to clear your head before our discussion here. I hate to admit it, but I could use your help; you’re more familiar with this environment. But this is really the wrong time for me to share my overly rich experience with this particular type of human being with you.”

First the reluctant admission that he could use her help, then the pathos on top of it. Sandra laughed. The sample of Sven’s much-praised empathy in combination with his dry sense of humor had helped. She could no longer understand what it was that had bothered her about Daniel’s professional manner.

Berger had laboriously raised the head of his bed and brought himself into a sitting position. Although his forehead was beaded with sweat from the effort, he managed a strained smile. “Please keep going. I find all this very interesting.”

Berger looked at her, while Sven signaled to her to keep going. “It’s very simple. These guys are after me, too—and I don’t know why. However, a car bomb’s a different caliber. Why go to all the effort?”

“I don’t know,” Berger said, but he avoided Sandra’s gaze.

Irritated, Sven put a hand through his hair once again. “That’s too bad. I thought we had gotten a step closer. Do I have to remind you that it’s only thanks to our help that you’re still alive? Pat risked his life for you. Don’t you think you owe us a bit more than evasion? What are you waiting for? To get better and continue poking around in the fog without success as you’ve done up to now? Or do you seriously think your partner’s going to solve the case? He’s got no chance by himself.”