Eden's Gate (10 page)

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Eden's Gate

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“Not yet,” Lane said. “This isn't just about money, or at least not the diamonds. It's something bigger than that. I've got a feeling.”

“Well, be careful,” Frances said. “I want you back in one piece. In the meantime you're calling from a suite in the Grand Hyatt. What are you and the man's wife doing alone in a hotel?”

“Bridge,” Lane said. “She's a marvelous bridge player. Honestly, darling.”

“Peachy. We'll have to have the dear over one evening when this business is finished,” Frances said sarcastically.

“Sounds good. Ta-ta,” Lane replied and he broke the connection.

The first-class lounge was three-quarters full when Lane and Gloria showed up after picking up their tickets and checking their luggage. They got some champagne and walked over to where Speyer and Baumann were waiting at a window seat.

“Ah, I was wondering if you two were going to make it,” Speyer said.

Their 747 was pulled up to the jetway, surrounded by service trucks and luggage handlers. The pilot and first officer were doing a walk-around. All routine. All normal. Yet Lane was beginning to wonder just what it was that Speyer was getting himself into. There was something sinister to the business; something much more than a mere snatch of a cache of diamonds hidden in a Nazi bunker for more than a half-century.

“Did you just get to New York yourself?” Lane asked, sitting down.

Gloria gave her husband a peck on the cheek and sat next to him, an amused expression on her face.

“About an hour ago.”

“How about the Gulfstream?”

“We won't be needing it for now, so I sent it back to Kalispell,” Speyer said. “Is there anything else you'd like to know?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry. But I tend to get a bit hyper in the middle of an operation. I want to know what's going on around me, and I want all my ducks in a row. Especially when it's my life on the line.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” Speyer told him.

“Is the bunker very far from Frankfurt?”

“It's in what used to be East Germany, of course,” Speyer said.
“But first we're going to Hamburg to meet with someone. Then we'll continue on to Neubrandenburg, on the Tollense See. It's just a couple of hundred klicks, not far.”

“Then what?”

“Then we'll meet another old friend who'll put us up, and after that it's up to the Russians and to your diving skills.” Speyer held up a hand before Lane could ask another question. “That'll be all for now. You'll be told the rest as and when you need to know.”

“That's fine by me,” Lane said. “But I'll want to know what's coming my way in plenty of time to get ready for it. I don't jump into dark closets unless I have a flashlight.”

“We're in this together,” Speyer said. “I'm depending on you just as much as you're depending on me and Ernst.”

Gloria laughed softly, but then turned away as Speyer glared at her. The animosity between them was palpable, and Lane had a feeling that there would be trouble because of their problems.

OVER THE ATLANTIC

The overnight flight was smooth and the first-class accommodations comfortable. “I suppose that you're used to traveling like this all the time,” Baumann said to Lane.

They were seated together, Speyer and Gloria, who was already sleeping, across the aisle. Dinner was a very good Wiener schnitzel with a passable Piesporter Michelsberg, then coffee and Asbach-Urhalt cognac afterward. The movie had started but most of the first- and business-class passengers were either asleep or working on their laptops.

“I've always figured that if you can't travel first-class, why bother? Why not just stay at home?”

“You have expensive tastes,” Baumann said. “You must have to stay busy to keep up with them. And it has to be hell when you don't have the money to live that way. I know that it would bother me.”

“I suppose it would,” Lane said. “But personally I've never been in that position.” He glanced over at Speyer, who had also reclined his seat and looked as if he was asleep. “What about your boss?”

“What about him?” Baumann asked, his voice low.

“He must be getting short of funds, otherwise he wouldn't be taking such a chance.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Lane turned back to him. “Going back to Germany. I'm sure that a man of his background has to be wanted by the BKA. I'm sure that the German Federal Police would love to get their hands on him.”

“He's done nothing wrong in Germany to warrant his arrest.”

Lane laughed. “You have to be kidding. Ex-Stasi? They're still after all those guys with even more enthusiasm than they went after the old Nazis. You guys were in bed with the Russians.”

“New papers, you should know about things like that.”

“Now you're working with the Russians again. Must be like old times.”

“You're working for us,” Baumann observed. “It means that you too are working with the Russians. And that after they killed your wife and child.”

“Don't go any further, Ernst,” Lane warned easily.

Baumann shrugged. “Necessity makes strange bed fellows, that's all I'm saying. We were good and loyal Germans working for our government. We followed orders.”

It was the same stupid argument Nazi sympathizers had used after the war, and nobody bought it then. Didn't these guys read history? Maybe it was something in the German spirit, Lane thought.

“All I'm saying is don't look back. Just do your job and get on with it,” Baumann said earnestly. “Life is too short otherwise.”

“You're right,” Lane said, working hard to keep a straight face. But it took nearly everything in his power not to reach over and break the bastard's neck.

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, GERMANY

It was eight-thirty in the morning, local, when they touched down at Frankfurt's Rhein Main Airport in a light rain from a solidly overcast sky. They went through passport control without a hitch, and in customs their bags were X-rayed but not opened.

If Speyer was suspicious because of their ease of entry into a country where he was wanted by the police, he didn't say anything. They took a cab over to the Hauptbanhof and forty-five minutes later boarded an InterCity Express train to Hamburg.

The first-class car was only half-full. They got facing seats, a low cocktail table between them, at the back of the car away from most of the other passengers. Ten minutes after they started out of the city the conductor came by to check their tickets, and then an attendant
came with a drink cart. Gloria, who was hung over, ordered a glass of champagne, while the rest of them got coffee.

“It's good to be back like this,” Speyer said heartily. “If those fools in Berlin can keep their heads above water while they pay the bills for rebuilding the east zone, it'll end up like the old days.”

“Don't forget about the skinheads,” Lane said.

Speyer chuckled. “They're just kids having some fun, you know. Blowing off steam.”

“Killing people.”

Speyer shrugged. “Yes, but they're mostly Turks, and some Greeks.”

“It won't be like the old days, though,” Baumann said with genuine nostalgia.

“Nothing ever is, actually,” Speyer admitted. “But once you get used to the good life, Ernst, you won't miss the old very much.”

“Even three hundred million doesn't go all that far,” Lane said. “That's providing you can get the full dollar amount. In all likelihood you'll only get ten percent of that.”

Speyer and Baumann exchanged a knowing look. “I think we'll manage to get by,” Speyer assured him.

“What?” Lane asked.

Speyer put his coffee down and glanced out the window at the passing countryside. They were out of the city now and traveling at least two hundred kilometers per hour. Everything was precise and neat; the Germans were almost as bad as the Swiss on that score.
Alles in ordnung
. Everything in order.

“You might as well know the next part now that we've come this far. After all, it's going to be your life on the line down there.”

“If you're going to talk business all the way up to Hamburg, I'm going to find the bar car,” Gloria said. She got up and made her way unsteadily forward.

“Please forgive my wife, she's been under a lot of strain lately,” Speyer said, with a smirk. “I don't think that she ever completely adjusted to Montana.”

“I understand.”

“Well on with it, then,” Speyer said. “Ernst and I didn't stay in Washington as I told you. In fact we got up to New York just an hour after you did.”

“You met someone and you didn't want me to know about it. Is that it?” Lane said.

“That's right. And to be honest I won't trust you completely until this entire mission has developed.”

“If I were in your shoes I wouldn't either. Who did you meet?”

“A representative of the Cuban government. When we're finished here, we're going to Havana.”

“Eden?” Lane asked.

“That's been the code name.”

“The Cuban government is guaranteeing you a safe haven for a specific sum of money. Is that it?”

“A very specific sum of money,” Speyer said. “But they're going to earn it, because they're going to guarantee that I get the entire three hundred million, or maybe even a little more, for the diamonds, no questions asked.”

“I'm listening.”

“The Nazis were doing human research in that bunker, as I told you they were. And it was so horrible that no one, especially not the present German government, wants anything about the place to see the light of day. The Germans, like the Swiss, are having enough trouble as it is giving back the gold that they took from the Jews. Nobody wants to open
this
can of worms.”

Lane had to admire the plan, and he grinned. “That's really very clever,” he said. “You're going to sell the diamonds back to the German government in exchange for your silence.”

Speyer nodded with a smug smile.

“But you need the Cuban government to broker the deal for you, otherwise the Germans would just make their own deal with Washington and have you arrested, maybe even shot and killed on the way to jail.”

“Cuba is our insurance policy, it's our safe haven, and with the casinos and hotels I plan on building, it'll be a cash cow that will last us for the rest of our lives.” He nodded in satisfaction. “In short, it's Eden.”

HAMBURG

It was raining in Hamburg, too. A stiff, cold breeze came off the Elbe River; there weren't many tourists visiting the harbor. Dozens of ships were tied up, busy loading or unloading cargo from around the world in Germany's busiest port. They'd rented a Mercedes at the train station, and Baumann parked it at the east end of the
container terminal just across the quay from the 17,500-ton motor vessel
Maria
, registered in Athens, Greece. He stayed in the car with Gloria. Speyer and Lane got out.

“Is this how we're getting to Havana?” Lane asked.

“This is it. They'll hide us until we clear customs. It'll take almost two weeks to cross the Atlantic, but if there's any dust to be settled from the operation it'll be over by the time we arrive. No surprises. That's how I like things, and that's how this operation will proceed.”

“We'll also be sitting ducks if the crew decide they don't like our looks.” Lane glanced back at Gloria seated in the back of the Mercedes. “Or like the looks of some of us just a little too much.”

Speyer seemed unconcerned. “Anything's possible. But since they won't get the second half of their money until we dock in Havana it's not too likely.”

They went up the boarding ladder, entered the superstructure, and took the stairs up five decks to the captain's quartersâjust aft of the bridge. The ship was reasonably clean, though the interior spaces smelled like a faint combination of diesel oil and disinfectant. She was about six hundred feet long with a beam at the center of eighty-two feet.

“How many crew are there?” Lane asked.

“Seventeen including the officers, but she can accommodate twenty-two, so there's plenty of room for us.”

Captain Horst Zimmer turned out to be a ruggedly handsome man with a short gray beard and well-trimmed hair. He wore a thick fisherman's sweater which made him look like a German version of Ernest Hemingway.

“Helmut, you old bastard. I wondered when you were going to show up,” he shouted. He and Speyer shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulders like old friends.

Speyer handed him a thick manila envelope. “These are your bills of lading and clearances for us once we reach Havana.” He stepped aside. “This is my new colleague, John Browne from South Africa.”

Captain Zimmer sized up Lane and they shook hands. “Any friend of Helmut's is a friend of mine,” he said with gusto. Lane thought that he was caught up in the middle of a B movie, but the captain was dead serious. He wasn't playing a role.

“Good to meet you, Captain,” Lane said.

“John will be doing the diving for us,” Speyer said.

Zimmer looked at Lane with new respect. “You've got balls, I'll
say that much for you, my man.” He shook his head in puzzlement. “I wouldn't go down there under a hundred meters of black water for
all
the gold in Fort Knox. If there was any gold still stored there.” He laughed at his own joke.

“We're going up to Neubrandenburg this morning. What's your schedule?”

“It's getting tight,” Zimmer said. “I can give you seventy-two hours, no more. By then the gear box will be back together and I'll have no further excuses to stay in this berth. We'll have to sail.”

“That gives us plenty of time. I wouldn't want to stay here much longer than that in any event.”

“It's settled then,” Zimmer said. He looked past Speyer to the corridor. “Where's that beautiful wife of yours?”

“Waiting in the car.”

“You brought her after all?”

Speyer nodded. “She insisted,” he said, and Zimmer's expression darkened.

“Well, it can't be helped, I suppose.”

“No,” Speyer agreed. “We'll be back within three days.”

“I can't wait any longer than that.”

“I understand,” Speyer said.

“Good luck, then, Helmut.”