The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (27 page)

The headlights drew closer, lighting up the trees and shrubs on the verge outside the gates. It was the same town car I’d seen before. Just as big. Just as menacing. It was approaching at a cautious speed, stones popping and snapping under its tires.

The gates were open, but not wide enough for the car to fit through cleanly. My plan had been to make the driver step out so that I could check my guests were the ones I was expecting. But the driver had other ideas. He eased the front end of the car against the gates and accelerated in a burst, jarring them open. The car surged through and stopped abruptly, its exhaust fumes dyed red by the brake lights.

I shifted my stance and tightened my grip on the hand grenade. It was beginning to dawn on me that I hadn’t thought things through all that well. I was standing out in the open, facing up to a large, snarling black town car. They could knock me down if they chose to. They could squash me like a bug.

They blinded me instead. The driver flipped his headlights on full beam and blasted me in the face. I twisted sideways and covered my eyes with my arm, peering out from beneath my elbow. No good. I still couldn’t see. I gave some thought to fighting back with my penlight, but somehow I didn’t think it would have quite the same impact.

A car door opened and shoes hit the ground.

“Do you have the package?” a lone voice asked.

The voice was firm. It was American. It was female.

“Yes,” I shouted back.

“Bring it to me.”

Her words seemed to race on the breeze, coiling around me and chattering in my ears.

“Not yet. I want to see Victoria first.”

“Once we see the package.”

“No.” I took a step backward. “I need to know that she’s safe. And stop blinding me, will you? I’m here to cooperate. The least you can do is be civil.”

I squinted into the dazzling light, tears pooling in my eyes. I listened hard. Five seconds. Ten. Then the lights finally dipped and I lowered my arm. My sight was still compromised by a lurid spectrum of floating, transparent shapes. But I could see Nancy Symons standing amid them.

She was alongside the open front passenger door of the town car, wearing a long black tailored coat. Her hands were in her pockets. I was pleased to see it. She wasn’t pointing a weapon at me, and I very much doubted that she had a grenade at her disposal.

Then the driver’s door swung outward and Duane emerged. He was wearing a dark suit over a gray shirt and black tie. He had his wraparound sunglasses on despite the dusky light. He looked like a bouncer with ideas above his station.

Duane tilted his glasses and peered over the dark lenses at me, as if he couldn’t quite trust his eyes. I kept my composure as best I could and waited him out, then watched him stroll to the rear of the car.

He popped the trunk and heaved the lid upward. It blocked him entirely from view. For just a moment, I entertained the notion that he was about to up the stakes by pulling a bazooka from the trunk. But he removed something way more explosive instead.

A little of the tension eked out of me, then ramped back up again when I saw the vicious look Victoria was giving me. All the mental images of her imagined distress and imprisonment flooded over me again. I hated to think of the despair and punishment she must have endured, and I was afraid to ask myself how long it might take her to recover.

Duane was carrying Victoria in his arms. She thrashed her legs and pummeled Duane’s chest with her fists. He endured it for a few moments, then grew irritated and plonked her down on her feet. She tried to bolt toward me but Duane reached out and yanked her hair, and she howled and dropped onto her knees.

She was wearing a cotton tracksuit and brilliant white trainers. The tracksuit was dark blue in color, with red and white flashes along the seams. It had a familiar swoosh logo on the left breast and a matching one just above the hip pocket.

“Unbelievable,” I shouted. “You Yanks even have corporate sponsorship for your hostages now?”

Nobody found me funny. Nobody bothered to respond.

The icy breeze pawed at my neck and face. I hunched my shoulders. Gave the grenade a quick squeeze.

“Let her go,” I said.

“The package first,” Nancy replied, her voice as cool as her attitude.

“I’m not handing it over until you release Victoria.”

“The package,” she repeated.

Impasse. I didn’t know what to do.

“For Christ’s sake, Charlie,” Victoria yelled, grimacing from the way Duane was now tugging at her earlobe. “Give her what she wants.”

“Are you okay?” I called.

“Oh, just tickety-damn-boo. Now give her the sodding package.”

Yup, this is what I’d been missing. Clear-eyed analysis. Concise instructions.

I fingered the page of code. There were perhaps twenty paces separating me from the town car. I took ten and came to a halt. I pulled the scrap of paper from my pocket and considered it for a moment. The wind almost tore it from my grasp. It flapped and rustled and crinkled.

I hopped on one leg and removed my left baseball shoe. Then I set it down on the wind-scoured asphalt and tore the paper carefully in two, right through the middle of the coded message. I stuffed one half into the warm opening where my toes had been and closed my fist around the remains.

I hobbled a few steps backward, stones biting into my heel through my sock. The ground was frosty beneath my foot.

“Come and get it,” I said. “Satisfy yourself that I’m on the level. Then you can let Victoria go and you’ll get the other half.”

Nancy considered me with an air of detachment that wasn’t altogether convincing. She shrugged her shoulders and walked carefully toward my shoe. Her steps were slow and measured. Her heels beat against the concrete like controlled gunfire.

She hunched down, holding her hair back from her eyes with one hand, and plucked the paper from my shoe. She checked my position, then carried the note back to the car. She angled the page into the beam of the headlights and read over what was written there.

She glanced at Duane. “Take her halfway,” she said.

Duane let go of Victoria’s ear and seized her by the arm, hustling her forward. Nancy joined them at her leisure, then bent down again and gathered up my shoe, wrinkling her nose at the aroma that escaped from it.

“So I guess we can trade,” she said. “Bring me the rest of the code.”

I could feel the pistol digging into the small of my back and the wind molding my coat around it. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to reach for the gun. I was tempted, too. I could feel a twitch in my fingers. But if this was going to end without the kind of escalation I might regret, I was going to have to trust them at some point.

I left the gun where it was. Left my arms at my sides. I took a deep breath, then cursed myself for having been hasty enough to chuck my cigarette away, and stepped up to them.

I met Nancy’s gaze. I held it for a short time. Then I broke off and tried a smile on Victoria. She didn’t smile back. Her face was gaunt. Her eyes were puffy and heavily pouched. She looked like she’d just stepped off a long-haul flight with severe turbulence and a terrible landing.

“Hey,” I said. “Did they treat you okay?”

“Oh, sure, they had me in a smashing hotel. Wonderful room service. My only complaint is they wouldn’t allow me to leave.”

“The code,” Nancy prompted.

“You know, you didn’t need to snatch Victoria,” I told her. “That was rude.”

“You’re here now, aren’t you? Now, give me the code.”

I held the remaining half-page out to her. She reached for it but I snatched my hand away. Childish, I know, but I wanted my shoe back first. I claimed it, then slapped the half-page of handwriting into her palm.

“This everything?” she asked.

“It’s all I have. All I could find.”

“Then I guess it’ll have to do.”

She nodded to Duane and he released Victoria. She circled around behind me, rubbing her arm.

I was feeling a little stupid tilted over to one side, with my sock getting all scummy, but I didn’t want to balance on one leg to slip my shoe on just yet. It would give Duane the perfect opening to strike me, and it wouldn’t leave my hands free for the gun or the grenade. So I stood there holding my shoe in my hands, as if I’d been gifted a new and curious object that had baffled me completely.

I cleared my throat. “So,” I began, and tapped my shoe with my finger, “I guess we’re almost done here. Apart, of course, from the small matter of my fee.”

Nancy broke into a crooked smile. “Your fee?”

“Uh-huh. You offered me double what Freddy had agreed to pay me to bring you the secret object, and now I’ve done exactly that.”

“Wow.” She whistled. “You’re really something else. Guess you think you’re pretty slick?”

“One tries.”

“Yeah, well try this. You won’t be receiving your
fee.
You’ll take your friend and you’ll be glad to have her. And if you take my advice, the two of you will get the hell out of Berlin.”

“We have a choice?”

“Hey, it’s a free world.”

Victoria squeezed my shoulder. She was ready to go. I wasn’t there quite yet.

“You think your Russian competitors will agree with that sentiment?” I asked Nancy.

She tilted her head and said, “You know, I wouldn’t rely on it.”

She turned on her heel and started to pace away.

“Hey,” I yelled, but she wasn’t slowing down. “You offered me a period of protection, remember? Twenty-four hours.”

“Gee, I don’t know what to tell you,” she called back. “Guess my memory must be bad.”

“So that’s it? You’re feeding us to the wolves?”

She loitered beside the open door of the town car, then motioned Duane over to her with a heft of her chin.

“You’re being overly dramatic,” she said, lowering herself half into the car. “Get out of Berlin and you’ll be fine. But I wouldn’t leave it too long. You Brits have a habit of outstaying your welcome. And I really wouldn’t like to see you make another mistake.”

THIRTY-FOUR

The moment the Americans had left, I gave Victoria a hug. In truth, it was a pretty one-sided clinch. She was rigid and lifeless in my arms.

“Angry?” I mumbled, into her shoulder.

“Try livid.”

“I’m sorry.”

Victoria didn’t reply. I guessed she blamed me entirely for her abduction. I didn’t think that was altogether fair. After all, she’d been present when I’d accepted the assignment from Freddy. She’d been aware that there could be risks involved.

“I truly am sorry,” I said. “I would never have left you on your own if I’d thought for one minute that anything would happen to you.”

Silence. I rested my hands on Victoria’s shoulders and looked her square in the eyes.

But her eyes weren’t focused on me. They were cast off to one side, widening in alarm.

“Charlie, there’s someone here,” she hissed. “Look.”

I swiveled to see Gert backing out of the old fairground stall. He’d lowered one leg but he was having trouble with the second. The cuff of his corduroy trousers had snagged on a nail. He yanked hard and left a fabric sample from his ill-fitting suit hanging in the breeze.

“Oh,
him,
” I said. “Don’t worry about Gert. He’s harmless enough.”

“Are you sure? He seems a little …
strange
.”

I laughed. “Wait until you see where he lives. That’ll really freak you out.”

*   *   *

I wasn’t wrong. Victoria didn’t like the look or the feel of Gert’s secret den. And from the way she wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips, I got the impression she wasn’t a big fan of its particular scent, either.

“This place gives me the creeps.” Victoria shivered and rolled back the left sleeve of her tracksuit to rub her wrist. There was an angry red welt on her skin. A handcuff imprint, possibly, though my guess was that it was something else.

“I found your watch,” I said.

“You did?” She brightened. “Do you have it?’

“It’s in my apartment,” I told her. “But don’t worry, I promise I’ll get it back for you.”

Victoria smiled glumly, not at all convinced. She was sitting on Gert’s foldout camp bed. Come to think of it, “perched” might be a better way of putting it. I couldn’t really blame her. Gert had a lot of junk around the place but I hadn’t seen any sign of a washing machine, and I dreaded to think when his bedding had last been laundered.

I’d already treated Victoria to a quick tour of Gert’s domain, not to mention his extensive stash of memorabilia and collectibles, and from the way he’d blushed whenever I caught him sneaking glances at her as she followed me around, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she was the first female who’d ever set eyes on his secret world. He certainly wasn’t at ease in her company. From the moment we’d entered the tunnel and he’d powered up the fairy lights, he’d mumbled a few words of greeting, then settled himself behind his desk, plonked his earphones over his head and plugged himself into his listening network.

“And last but not least, this is Buster,” I told Victoria, setting Buster’s cage down on the bed alongside her. “Believe it or not, he’s what everyone was looking for. Buster’s the hush-hush package. My very own Maltese falcon.”

Victoria clasped her hand to her forehead. “But I thought everyone was looking for the code.” The question seemed to jolt her to some new awareness and she stared at me in horror. “Oh, God, did you just trick the Americans? Charlie, I’m not sure that was such a good idea.”

“No tricks,” I told her. “All they wanted was that final page of code and I gave it to them. They just didn’t know it used to be inside Buster’s cage. And Buster is the ambassador’s pet. Right, buddy?”

“Buster likes crackers.”

Victoria gasped again, this time with delight. She clapped her hands and smiled in amazement. I was glad to see it. She was getting some color back in her cheeks, at last. Some animation in her face.

“Or rather,” I said, “he’s the not-so-hush-hush package. And trust me, you might be impressed right now, but it really won’t last.”

“Buster likes crackers.”