Authors: David Hagberg

Eden's Gate (3 page)

BOOK: Eden's Gate

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“I'm sorry, no,” the clerk said. He was a married man with three children, but he was so captivated by her looks and by her English accent that he didn't see the old man enter the lounge.

“Could you just check to make absolutely certain, ducky?”

“Certainly.”

The old man walked into the barroom. He looked so harmless that Sergeant Baumann took a moment to react. Jew, he thought, but it was already too late because the old man had pulled a gun out of his pocket and pointed it directly at Speyer's head from a distance of only a few inches.

Speyer turned around and grinned, a hard, flat, expressionless look in his dead gray eyes. “Well, it's the Fourth of July and a patriot is here to celebrate. Care for a drink, old-timer?”

The old man cocked the hammer on the military Colt .45 which had to be as old as he was, and Baumann, who had started forward, stopped short. “I know who you are,
Schweinhund
.”

“Then you have me at the disadvantage,” Speyer replied calmly. “I don't think I've ever seen you before, but I've met so many people.” He turned to his wife, who sat with her mouth half-open in a smile. “Do you recall this gentleman from your Hollywood days, my dear?”

“He looks like a Jew,” she said, and she turned back to reach for her drink, slopping a little of it on the bar.

“There you are,” Speyer said. “But you must forgive my wife's rudeness. Do you have a name?”

Baumann edged closer, and the old man caught sight of him in the mirror behind the bar. All of a sudden he thrust the muzzle of the .45 forward so that it touched Speyer's left cheek just below the eye. His hand began to shake. “You son of a bitch, before I kill you, you're going to remember.” He raised the gun barrel and slashed it across Speyer's face, opening a small gash which instantly started to bleed.

The bartender had eased to the end of the bar where he picked up a phone.

“Put the telephone down, young man, or I'll shoot this man first, and then you,” the old man called out. His accent was German. The bartender did as he was told and spread his hands out.

“Whatever the problem is, mister, we can work it out,” he said.

“Two or three hundred grams of pressure on this trigger should do the trick nicely, I think,” the old man said. “One month before the Wall came down. Me, my wife, my son, and my daughter could wait no longer, so we decided to escape. With all that was happening, Hoennecker on the way out, Gorbachev turning his back on us, I thought it was time. The guards were lax. So many were going over to the west. Nobody cared any longer, but nobody knew when another crackdown would come.”

“Is that what this is, a case of mistaken identity?” Speyer asked. Blood ran down his cheek but he made no move to try to stanch the flow. “You think that I was a German border guard?”

“I never said that,” the old man said calmly.

Speyer pursed his lips, realizing his stupid mistake. “I thought I heardâ”

“KapitÃ¤n
Helmut Speyer. The East German Secret Police, Stasi. Just happening by that night.” The old man shook his head, the memory obviously painful. “You shot and killed my son and wife while I was atop the wall trying to help them over. Then you took my fourteen-year-old Lisa and offered to trade her life for mine.”

“You took yours, obviously, though I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I took mine because the West German police were right there and pulled me the rest of the way over. I had no choice. And by the time I could get to a place where I could see, you and she were gone.”

Speyer shook his head. “I was never thereâ”

“I saw the records,” the old man shouted. “You raped her first, and then you gave her to the guards who raped her until she was dead.”

“No,” Speyer said.

“Oh, yes,” the old man said. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Bill Lane fired two shots, the first catching the old man in the left armpit, spinning him around, and the second catching him in the heart. His hand went to the fatal wound which erupted in a spray of blood as he fell to the floor, dead.

The sudden silence in the barroom was deafening. The bartender's mouth dropped open. “Holy shit, man, you shot him.”

“I didn't like the odds,” Lane said. “Besides, I know the crazy old bastard. He tried to come after me in Washington a couple of months ago.” He slipped off the bar stool, and cocked an ear to listen. So far there were no sirens. “So what's the story, folks? Self-defense?”

“Who are you?” Speyer demanded.

“Let's just say that I'm a friend,” Lane said. “And as of this moment I'm a murderer, unless you can help.”

Speyer helped his wife down. “Get the car and bring it around back,
Liebchen
. And hurry, would you please?”

Gloria gave Lane a worried look, then gathered her purse and left.

“What happened here, Willy?” Speyer asked the bartender, but keeping an eye on Lane. “Was it an accident?”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Sloan.”

“Okay, we have about two minutes, maybe less,” Speyer said. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

“Like I saidâ” Lane had begun when the muzzle of Sergeant Baumann's pistol touched his temple.

“Mr. Sloan asked you a question.”

“Do you trust the bartender?” Lane asked casually.

“That doesn't matter. You just have to trust that I'm not going to pull the trigger if you piss me off,” Baumann said.

“John Clark. Until a few years ago I worked for South African Intelligence. I'm a freelance now.”

“What are you doing here?” Baumann asked.

“Looking for a job.”

“Working for me?” Speyer said, surprised.

“I'm good at what I do.”

“Killing old men?” Speyer asked.

“Shit,” Lane said, flinching. It was enough to throw Baumann's concentration off. Lane grabbed the sergeant's pistol, twisted it out of his hand, and stepped aside as he brought his own gun to the man's face. “Actually I do pretty good disarming stupid people, too.”

“Son of a bitch,” Baumann swore.

“Actually my mother was a saint, and I'll thank you to remember that in the future, or I'll take you apart bit by bit,
verstehen
?” Lane said. He handed Baumann back his gun. “Are you going to help me?” he asked Speyer.

“Are you wanted by the police?”

Lane hesitated. “Not in the United States.”

A siren sounded outside. This time it was continuous and headed their way, not a test blast for the parade like earlier.

“The old man came in with a gun, and this gentleman shot him in self-defense. Have you got that, Willy?”

“Yes, sir,” the bartender stammered.

“We were never here.”

“No, sir.”

“There'll be a coroner's hearing. When you're released, come look me up and we'll talk,” Speyer told Lane.

He turned, stepped over the old man's body, and headed to the back door. Baumann followed him, and at the end of the bar he turned and gave Lane a look that was anything but friendly.

“Don't try to follow me, or I'll kill you,” Lane told the bartender when Speyer and Baumann were gone. “I'm not going to be arrested here.”

“No, sir.”

Lane safetied his gun, stuffed it back in his waistband, and walked out into the lobby. The clerk was gone, and Frannie was crouched down in front of the front desk. She blew him a kiss. Lane reached the front door, but the cop car was stuck in the crowd a half block up Main Street. No one outside had heard the gunshots, which meant that the call to the police had probably come from the desk clerk. And there had already been so many sirens this morning that this one was being mostly ignored. It was better this way, he thought. Less chance of an innocent bystander getting in the middle of things, something they had worried about. Or some trigger-happy cowboy jumping up and taking potshots. That would have been great.

He worked his way through the crowd in the opposite direction from the cop car and turned right on First Street. The primary scenario was for him to show up at Speyer's ranch outside of Crazy Horse on the Flathead River northeast of town sometime tonight. The local police would have issued an all-points bulletin for his arrest by then; armed and dangerous. And they would have called the state police for help. The manhunt would hit all the radio stations and television feeds, and it would be on all the police frequencies, something they were pretty sure Speyer's people regularly monitored. John Clark would be legitimized.

When he reached the dark blue Range Rover that had been left
for him this morning three blocks from the hotel, there were more sirens behind him converging on the murder scene. A big Lincoln Navigator SUV with dark tinted windows came around the corner. Lane unlocked his car and opened the door as the Lincoln pulled up. The back door opened and Speyer beckoned to him. “Come with us.”

Gloria was in the backseat with him. Baumann was driving. “I'm not going to leave my stuff behind,” Lane said.

“Don't be a fool,” Speyer said. “The police know your name, and they'll be looking for this car.”

“It can't be connected to me.”

“Where the hell do you think you're going?”

“I was going to find out where you live and come out to see you tonight.”

“You'd be dead before you got within a mile of me,” Speyer said with mounting frustration. He said something to Baumann who was watching the rearview mirror. His bodyguard nodded. “I'm sending Ernst with you.”

“Whatever you say.” Lane got behind the wheel and closed the door. He took out his phone and, keeping it below the level of the windows, hit the speed dial button. Baumann and Speyer got out of the Lincoln and said something else to each other.

“Yes?” Frannie asked, breathless. She wasn't expecting his call so soon.

“Change of plans. Baumann is coming with me.”

Speyer climbed into the Lincoln's driver's seat and Baumann shut the door.

“Are you in the Rover?” Frannie asked.

“Right,” Lane said. He broke the connection and slipped the phone in his jacket pocket. Baumann came over and got in the passenger seat as Speyer took off.

“What do we do now?”

“We're going back up to Center Street where we can pick up Highway Two. That'll take us out of town, and give us some time to figure out what you're up to.”

“What about the cops?”

Baumann pressed his earpiece a little closer. “They're still busy at the hotel.” He was receiving police frequencies in the earpiece.

Lane started the car and pulled out. By the time they reached the highway a half-dozen blocks west of town the Lincoln was nowhere
to be seen. Traffic was very light. The sirens behind them had finally stopped.

“You were told to stay at the hotel. Why didn't you?”

“I didn't want to get arrested.”

“Why not? You said you didn't have a record, and Willy would have backed up your self-defense story. In a few days you'd have been in the clear.”

“The gun I'm carrying isn't registered, and it doesn't have a serial number, for starts.”

“Let's see it,” Baumann demanded.

“Not a chance in hell,” Lane told him. “At least not until I'm someplace that I consider safe.”

The highway went east past the fairgrounds back into town, crossing Main Street a few blocks noth of the hotel. The crowds were thick downtown, but there were no signs of the police.

“You said that you worked for South African Intelligence?”

“That's right, until about five years ago.”

“Who was your boss?”

“Roger deKlerk, and he was a dumb son of a bitch.”

Baumann's lips pursed. “What brought you to the States?”

“I had a job in Vienna, and when it was over I had a choice of going to South America or coming here. I chose here.”

“Why?”

“Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.” He took out a cigarette and lit it without offering one to Baumann. “I don't like being crowded.” He laughed. “And this is virgin territory, isn't it? Ripe with opportunities and all that?”

“Who was the old man?” Baumann asked.

“That one will wait until I can talk to your boss. I think he'll be interested in making a deal.”

BOOK: Eden's Gate

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