Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

It was then that he smelled the cordite and his eyes began to water.

He came to the study.

“Oh, God,” he said as he rushed into the room.

A man sat slumped over his desk. His mouth hung open, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. Blitz? He assumed so. There was an entry wound at the temple, a neat hole ringed by gunpowder. Was it a suicide? Jonathan stepped back, searching for a pistol, but he didn’t see one anywhere. He recalled the shadow flitting at the far corner of the living room. Not suicide. Murder.

Jonathan glanced toward the door, wondering if the killer might still be in the house, and if he himself might be in danger. He dismissed the thought and began talking to Blitz, telling him his name and that he was Emma’s husband. He instructed him to hang on, and stated that he was going to do everything he could to keep him alive.

As gently as possible, he lifted Blitz off of the desk and laid him on the floor, taking care to keep his air passage open and unobstructed. He turned Blitz’s head and studied the exit wound. He’d seen too many like it before. Large caliber. Hollow point. He was not optimistic about Blitz’s chances. Still, at that moment, the man was alive. Nothing else mattered.

Running into the living room, he snatched the phone and dialed 144 for Emergency Services. When the operator asked what had happened, he said, “Life-threatening head injury with a large loss of blood.” When he realized that he was speaking English, he repeated the words in Italian.

“Jon, what is it? What happened?” Simone stood at the entry to the living room, concern etched across her forehead. “You have blood on your hands.”

“There’s a bathroom down the hall. Soak some towels in hot water and bring them to me.”

“Towels? What happened? Why-”

“Do it!”

Jonathan returned to the study and knelt down beside Blitz. There was little he could do until the paramedics arrived except make sure that the man’s heart continued beating. Blitz’s pupils were dilated and his respiration was shallow. Jonathan took the man’s wrist, but was unable to find a pulse. He commenced CPR. Three plunges, then two breaths. Simone barreled into the room. Seeing Blitz, she let out a cry and dropped the towels onto the floor.

“I called EMT,” he said. “They should be here any minute. Put the towels beside his head.”

“But why?” Reluctantly, she picked up the towels and deposited them on the floor next to Jonathan. She stood quickly, teetering as she viewed the blood spreading across the carpet. “He’s dead.”

“Not yet, he’s not. If I can keep his heart beating until the paramedics arrive, he’ll have a chance.”

“He’s been shot in the head. Just leave him.”

Jonathan put his head to Blitz’s chest. There was no heartbeat. Respiration had ceased. He looked up at Simone and shook his head.

“Who did this?” she asked.

“I thought I saw something…a shadow…I heard a door slam. He must have run away.”

“The police will be here any minute. We have to go.”

Jonathan stood. Suddenly, the light seemed to be exceedingly bright and he had to blink. He took a breath, waiting for the remorse that inevitably accompanied death. But it didn’t come. If anything he felt fresh, almost happy, and much too energetic for someone who hadn’t slept a wink the night before. He ran a hand through his hair. His fingertips bristled at the touch. All his senses were enhanced. Sight. Touch. Sound. His mouth, though, was dry and pasty. He checked his image in the mirror hanging on the wall. His eyes stared back, wild and accusing, the pupils almost fully dilated.

The buzz was coming on stronger now, and he recognized what it was: high-octane, clean-burning amphetamine, with a little something special thrown in to heighten the senses.

He dug the package of mints from his pocket. How many had he consumed in the last hour? Two? Three?

“Come, Jonathan. Right now.” Simone grabbed his arm and tried to guide him toward the door, but Jonathan shook himself free. “Give me a minute,” he said, taking stock of the situation. “I’m not leaving until I find out something about this guy.”

“But, Jonathan…”

“Did you hear me?” he snapped. “Do you think we’re supposed to just keep running?” He took a breath, calming himself, fighting the manic voice in his head. “Blitz knew Emma,” he said. “They were working together. This is our one chance to discover what it was.”

A laptop sat opened on the desk, the screen a blizzard of warring pixels. He hit a few keys, but the image failed to clear up. He turned his attention to the desk and its contents. He opened the top drawer and came eye to eye with a semiautomatic pistol. He was well enough acquainted with handguns to recognize it as a SIG-Sauer, the sidearm favored by military officers across the Third World. The rest of the drawer held a mess of papers, pens, and pencils. He spilled the contents on the desktop and rummaged through it. Notes with names and telephone numbers. Assorted bills. Matchbooks.

The filing drawer was locked. He snapped a letter opener in two trying to pry it open, before giving up. He turned his attention to the “in” and “out” trays on the credenza behind the desk. He flipped through the papers. “ZIAG” read the header on an office memorandum, and beneath it the company’s full name: Zug Industriewerk AG. It was from a Hannes Hoffmann to Eva Kruger, and cc’d to Gottfried Blitz. Subject: Project Thor.

Eva Kruger.

There it was: his proof in black and white. As if the corpse with a bullet in his brain wasn’t enough.

The memo read, “Completion is foreseen for late first quarter 200-. Final shipment to client will be made on 10.2. Disassembly of all manufacturing apparatus to be completed by 13.2.”

“I hear a siren,” pleaded Simone. “Please, Jonathan. Let’s get out of here.”

“In a second.”

Several buff envelopes lay beneath the memo. Inside the first, he found three passport-sized photographs of Emma, similar to the one on the fake driver’s license. A second envelope held more photographs, this time of a wan blond man more or less Jonathan’s age. “Hoffmann” was printed on the back in the same masculine block letters used to address the letter to Emma. He stared at the photograph. Hannes Hoffmann. Issuer of the memo to Eva Kruger.

“Cover,” Jonathan murmured, remembering a word he’d picked up from one of the spy novels he’d devoured as a teenager. Everything is cover. Emma who isn’t Emma. Amphetamines made to look like breath mints. To everything and everyone, a disguise. He looked at the body sprawled on the floor. And Blitz? Who was he when he wasn’t Blitz?

Jonathan shuddered as the scale of the deception grew clearer. This was no one-time subterfuge. Emma was not bribing African health ministers or buying pharmaceuticals on the gray market. This was something bigger. Something on an entirely different scale. This was the world of “Go” pills and false identities and perfectly doctored driver’s licenses.

“Jonathan, please!” Simone clutched the chair back, as if to keep herself from running away.

Sirens. At least two of them. He lifted his head, and in that second, he could tell that they were getting closer, not farther away, and that they were approaching at warp speed. Sweeping his arm across the desk, he gathered all the papers and stuffed them into a leather briefcase next to the credenza. “Go,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”

“Hurry!”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, pushing her out of the room. “Go out the back!”

Simone ran from the room.

Jonathan stood in the doorway. The sirens were just outside. Agitated voices punched through the relentless patter of rain. Instead of leaving, he ran to Blitz’s desk and opened the top drawer. He stared at the pistol, then picked it up and slipped it into his waistband.