The Blood Lance (18 page)

By now Malloy was over a year into his 'favour' and he had nothing to show for it but missing pieces of a puzzle that were still too plentiful to count. He kept circling back to the financial angle. It was the only thing that made sense. What he did not understand he was sure Jack Farrell could explain - if he could only arrange to have a quiet talk with the gentleman - but of course that had blown up like every other lead, and he found himself suddenly in Hamburg trying to clean up a situation he had not been able to anticipate. With Helena Chernoff in the middle of it.

His instincts screamed for him to retreat, that he was walking into a trap, but falling back at this point might not be good enough. Given Chernoff's presence in all of this, there
might be no way out but to grit his teeth and push through to the finish.

Malloy thought about looking at a few more files but decided to get some sleep. He caught a few hours and got downstairs to breakfast just before they closed the service. It was typical German breakfast fare: coffee, juice, bread, jam, cereal, a couple pieces of fruit, a smorgasbord of lunch meats, and cheeses. He found himself missing Gwen - breakfast being one of the things they always did together - and he wanted to call her, but of course it was the middle of the night in New York.

He used a pay phone at the Bahnhof to call the Royal Meridien and leave a message for Josh Sutter. He said he could not make the meeting with Hans that morning - he had overslept - but he wanted to meet both agents at the hotel bar at eight that evening -
very important.

After that he headed for the docks at the Aussenalster. The canal tour sailed at noon.

Altstadt, Hamburg.

David Carlisle got a call from Helena Chernoff Saturday morning. Malloy and the two FBI agents, she reported, had gone out to dinner as planned. Inside the SUV Malloy had played the tour guide. They had walked along the dock looking at the sights and then went to the Reeperbahn and entered a restaurant. At dinner Agent Sutter had made two calls to his police contact and then received a call back from the same phone.

'What did he want?' Carlisle asked.

'We couldn't tell at the time, but Sutter and Randal were talking on the drive back to their hotel, and it turns out Malloy wanted the pay phone I used to call the police.'

Carlisle smiled. 'Then he is taking the bait.'

'He's at least looking in the right direction. Let's just hope he is thorough.'

Carlisle walked to the window and looked down at the quiet
neighbourhood where he had ensconced himself since following Malloy from the airport.

'After the third call,' Chernoff said, 'Malloy left the restaurant and disappeared a few minutes later in the crowd. The only thing I know for sure, he didn't go back to the hotel.'

'He was probably meeting his contact in Hamburg.'

'Or the Brands,' Chernoff answered.

Carlisle looked at his watch. 'He's still not back at the hotel?'

'No sign of him.'

'What are Agents Sutter and Randal saying about our man?' Carlisle asked.

'They're disillusioned. They were supposed to have a meeting with Malloy this morning and he stood them up.'

'Okay, call me when he turns up again.'

'You'll know about it when I do. Are you all right? Can I send anything over?'

'I'm a little stir crazy.'

'I can send a woman over if you want.'

Carlisle gave the matter some thought. 'Why don't you come over?'

Chernoff didn't answer right away. Finally, she said, 'Do you think that's a good idea?'

'Actually, I can't think of a better one.'

The Aussenalster, Hamburg.

The day was overcast and blustery, perfectly awful for a cruise. That was good. Even on a Saturday, when the ships were usually packed, it served to keep the crowds away. Malloy boarded early, got a cup of coffee and a croissant and made his way to the sparsely populated upper deck. As the crew was starting to pull the gang plank away a young couple dashed breathlessly across the open plaza and onto the ship. Malloy watched them until the young man noticed him. He then retreated to a bench and waited.

The couple appeared a few minutes later. They were dressed casually for their outing, wearing stocking caps, sunglasses, bulky knit scarves and heavy jackets. They sat across the aisle from Malloy without acknowledging his presence and watched the receding shoreline as the ship left dock.

The few people on the upper deck lasted only a few minutes before the cold wind drove them inside. When only Malloy and the young couple remained Malloy asked in English, 'Any record of the two of you coming into the country?'

'We're good,' Kate answered.

'Sorry for the short notice, but we are going to have to find Jack Farrell before the German police arrest him.'

'Whatever we can do to help,' Ethan said.

'I thought we might start by kidnapping Hugo Ohlendorf.'

Ethan's eye came into sharp focus. Ohlendorf's contact with Xeno was a detail Malloy had mined from his research, but Hugo Ohlendorf was Ethan's find. Ohlendorf represented the interests of four elderly individuals who sat on the board of directors of the humanitarian organisation calling itself The Order of the Knights of the Holy Lance. At the time of Robert Kenyon's murder the board, which called itself the Council of Paladins, had included Ohlendorf, Jack Farrell, Farrell's father, Luca Bartoli, Giancarlo Bartoli, and Robert Kenyon. Since Kenyon's death, David Carlisle and Christine Foulkes had replaced Kenyon and Jack Farrell's father. Having the vote of four paladins Hugo Ohlendorf was apparently a considerable force - though clearly a minority block as long as Kenyon was alive.

The Knights of the Holy Lance had been formed in the immediate aftermath of the erection of the Berlin Wall in the summer of 1961. At that time the Order's sole purpose was to raise consciousness in the West about the desperate plight of West Berlin. As the immediate peril had receded, the Knights of the Holy Lance had worked first for fewer restrictions against travel into East Germany and ultimately for a united Germany. Along the way, if not from the very beginning, the paladins had also worked covertly with various intelligence agencies in the West to destabilise various regimes behind the Iron Curtain.

After the Wall came down the Order had redirected its focus to the support of humanitarian causes in war torn countries, beginning with the various Balkan Conflicts in the early and mid-1990s. Ethan and Malloy both believed it was likely that the humanitarian efforts of the paladins might have provided an excellent cover for continued covert activity. They had certainly the networks in place in the old East Bloc to make themselves useful, but exactly what they were doing and on whose behalf remained unclear.

Because all the players involved in Lord Kenyon's bankruptcy were also paladins, Ethan had long held that Kenyon's murder was politically motivated - a coup of sorts. On the face of it, the theory made sense. Assuming some kind of schism, the Farrell-Bartoli faction might have moved against Kenyon. What did not make sense was Kenyon's failure to notice a problem. If he had been at odds with his former allies, why risk his entire fortune on a business venture with them?

At Malloy's matter of fact statement concerning Hugo Ohlendorf, Kate smiled cheerfully. 'You want to kidnap the local prosecutor?'

'Former
local prosecutor,' he told her.

'Do you think he can tell us anything about Farrell?'

'That's what I need to find out. He's connected to the Hamburg underground, so he could be the link between Jack Farrell and Helena Chernoff, but I don't have any evidence to support the theory, so I just don't know.'

'If we talk to Ohlendorf, maybe we can forget Jack Farrell,' Ethan offered. 'I mean the point is to find out what happened to Kenyon.'

'We can ask him,' Malloy said, 'but at this point the situation has changed. I'm going to have to find Farrell before the Germans do. So the first order of business is to find out if Ohlendorf can tell us how Farrell hooked up with Chernoff.'

'How do you want to do it?' Kate asked.

'As soon as we know Ohlendorf is home for the night, we'll move in on his house and take him. I'll leave it to you two to figure out the best way to handle it. I've got a place ready in the St. Pauli district where we can interrogate him for as long as we need, but the hard part is getting him there.'

Ethan pulled out a handheld GPS navigational system and asked if Malloy could give him the addresses on Ohlendorf and the safe house. Malloy gave him the information. Whilst he was at it, Malloy gave them his Neustadt hotel and the room number, then handed Kate a key.

'How are we going to deal with the wife and kids?' Ethan asked. He kept his eyes on the screen as he spoke. He looked like he was shaken by the notion of kidnapping someone like Ohlendorf, Malloy thought, but was trying not to show it.

'You tell me,' Malloy answered. 'Here's what I know, there is a wife and daughter at the house. If we're really unlucky, the twenty-something son in Berlin could be visiting for the weekend. And there could be live-in help.'

'Not good,' Ethan told him, his eyes cutting to Kate to see how she was handling this. 'That's too many variables to handle. We don't even know his routines.'

'We're going to have to deal with whatever we encounter,' Kate said.

Ethan nodded, but he was not happy.

After a couple of stops the boat left the lake and followed a canal into Hamburg's wealthiest enclaves. Here mansions of various sizes and styles lined the waterway. Most of the homes had some kind of dock on the canal. Some of these sported boats that were suitable for the relatively shallow Aussenalster, but most were speedboats that would run on the deeper Elba. Not long after they had entered the canals, Malloy nodded toward a white palace tucked neatly into a Spanish- style garden. The property was surrounded by a high, heavy wrought iron fence. A thirty-four foot Bayliner yacht was tethered to the canal dock. 'Ohlendorf's place,' he said.

Neither Kate nor Ethan responded. They simply stared at the property as the ship motored slowly by. Afterwards, Malloy asked what they thought.

'He's got a dog or maybe two,' Kate answered, 'a camera at the dock, probably another at the front gate. Otherwise, basic security. The safest way to break in, given the time we have to organise this, is to ignore the alarm and just get in and out before the police can respond.'

'With a house that size,' Ethan said, 'you've got a good chance there's a live-in maid. If it's a couple, the man could take care of the property and maybe double as security.'

'The one thing we can't afford is to spend time inside the house securing the place,' Kate added. 'We could have a real problem if the son is there or if Ohlendorf keeps someone at the house who's trained to deal with home incursions.'

'What about a panic room?' Malloy asked.

'Once we cross the property line there's going to be a warning from the alarm. If we don't enter a code within a few seconds the alarm is going to go off,' Kate told him. 'Let's say we're looking at an alpha male ex-prosecutor and a bodyguard who doesn't care to look cowardly before his employer. I'm guessing if they've got a panic room, the wife and kid go there and the boys go for their guns.'

'Probably the same situation if Ohlendorf is by himself,' Ethan said. 'From what I've put together on him, he's a gun nut - belongs to a couple different shooting ranges. He's also something of a police groupie, so he's not going to let his buddies pull him out of a panic room.

'This far out,' Ethan added, 'the cops aren't going to be that quick to respond.' His eyes focused on the virtual map in his navigator. 'Rough estimate, you've got eight-to-fifteen minutes between the alarm and when they start showing up.'

'That's not much time to neutralise a man with a gun in his own house,' Malloy answered.

That's not going to be the problem,' Kate said. The problem is getting away.'

Ethan nodded. The roads aren't good,' he said. His eyes were still on his virtual map. 'You can go a long way but eventually you get trapped with bridges and canals. There are only a few breakout points, and the cops are going to know about them. I mean, these are the people they're paid to protect.'

'Can we take him out by water?' Malloy asked.

'We'll be looking at police boats coming across the lake,' Kate answered. 'If they see us - and we'll probably be the only ones on the lake - that could be worse than the roads.'

'You've got at most six minutes from the house to the first dock,' Ethan told her, his eyes never leaving his handheld. 'Say . . .four minutes inside the house. . . we might be off the lake before they ever hear about it.'

'If we leave by water, I don't want the first dock,' Kate said. 'I want to get closer to downtown, with a car waiting - so we can get lost in traffic. And we need it to be on the west side of the lake so we don't have to deal with any bridges. St. Pauli district, you said?'

Malloy nodded.

Ethan tapped the screen. 'Here, the dock at the Alte Rabenstrasse.'

Kate looked at the screen. 'Should be a good area at night,' she said, 'but we could still be looking at a police boat coming in fast. If that happens, we're looking at every cop in Hamburg hearing about our position.'