Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

“You’re going to find the Volkswagen van that Gassan used to take delivery of the plastic explosives in Leipzig. My money says that it’s being used to transport the drone as well. Find the van and we find our men.”

It was a brief instruction masking a gargantuan task. Hardenberg cleared his throat and nodded. Without another word, he stood and left the room. No one believed for a second that he was going home. Every rental car company, automobile sales lot, and government agency was closed for the night, but Hardenberg would be at his desk until morning figuring the best way to begin his attack when they opened for business tomorrow.

Last, but not least, came Max Seiler. His mandate was twofold. First, using Lammers’s passports as a starting point, he was to note all entry and exit stamps found inside and reconstruct Lammers’s frequent trips. At the same time, they would ask all major airlines to run a passenger flight manifest check for Lammers, Blitz, and Ransom, and all known aliases of the above, during the last year. Seiler’s discoveries might not help find the drone, but they would go a long way toward establishing a case against the paymasters behind the planned attack.

Von Daniken pushed his chair back from the table. “Time to get to work.”

Goppenstein, altitude fifteen hundred meters, population three thousand, sat nestled in the craw of the Lötsch Valley. The town had no historic or scenic claims. If it was known at all, it was as the southern terminus of a 12.5-kilometer railway tunnel that passed through the Lötschberg and linked the canton of Bern and, as such, northern Switzerland, with the canton of Valais to the south.

Built in 1911, the tunnel was a relic. Only one train at a time could traverse its length. There was no escape or “carcass” tunnel, as was customary in modern construction. Only at either end did it widen enough to accommodate two sets of tracks, and that for just a thousand meters. But it was a crucial relic. Each day the train ferried more than two thousand cars, trucks, and motorcycles through the mountain.

After paying the fare of twenty-six francs, the Ghost guided his automobile into the holding area. Lane markers had been painted onto the asphalt and numbered one through six. The first two lanes were full, a mix of cars and eighteen-wheel international transports. A man in a fluorescent orange vest motioned for him to pull into lane three.

The train lay beyond the parking lot. Instead of passenger cars, there were flatbeds with a spindly steel awning providing protection against the elements. An endless succession stretched past the station and into the darkness beyond. It reminded him of a snake poking its head out of a cave. A great, rusty, reticulated snake.

He checked the clock. Nine minutes remained until the train was due to depart.

The Ghost watched in his rearview mirror as Ransom pulled into the lane three cars behind him. He tapped the steering wheel with his palm. Everything was in order.

He opened the glove compartment, took out his pistol, attached a silencer and muzzle suppressor, then set it on the seat beside him. From around his neck, he freed the vial. He recited the prayer slowly and with passion, hearing the sound of far-off drums beating in the rain forest. One after another, he anointed the bullets in the poison. Certain that the soul of his victim could not follow him into this world, the Ghost finished loading his gun.

He waited.

A green light flashed. Engines turned over. Brake lights blinked. A procession of vehicles began loading onto the train. The lanes to his right cleared. The car directly ahead jerked forward. Jonathan drove up a brief grade, then onto the flatbed. He advanced down the narrow platform, passing from one car to the next farther toward the head of the train. A low barrier was erected on either side of the carriage, and above it a railing flagged with signs instructing drivers to employ the emergency brake and stating that it was forbidden to leave the automobile. Headlights illuminated a confined space, and he had the impression of plunging through a rifle barrel.

He brought the Mercedes to a halt at the head of his carriage, five or six feet behind the car ahead of him. Up and down the train, drivers killed their engines. Minutes passed. Finally the train lurched and began to move, shuddering to life like a sleepy animal. The rhythmic stamping of the ties increased in tempo. The mountains drew closer, hemming in the tracks. He heard the hush of the approaching tunnel. His ears popped from the change in air pressure. The train seemed to rush forward as it entered the pitch darkness.

Jonathan’s eyes were open, but he couldn’t see a thing. He rode this way for a while, and in the dark he saw Emma’s face. She was looking at him over her shoulder. “Follow me,” she said, and her voice echoed inside him. His chin bounced off his chest and he woke with a start. He looked at the analog clock. The tritium hands showed that he’d dozed for five minutes. He snapped to attention and flipped on the overhead light.

He removed the documentation about Zug Industriewerk from the briefcase. First, he reread the memo from Hoffmann to Eva Kruger about Thor. “…final shipment to client will be made on 10.2.” Something about the date bothered him. The tenth was in three days. Then it hit him. Emma had been due to go to Copenhagen for two days for a regional DWB meeting. For the first time, he was forced to evaluate her actions through a warped lens. Had she really planned on going to Denmark? Or did she have something else in mind? Something arranged by Blitz or Hoffmann or some other unknown character from her double life.

He turned his attention to the glossy company brochure. A photograph inside the front cover depicted a prim three-story headquarters building and a sprawling factory attached to it. He flipped past photos of impressive silver machines and colleagues engaged in oppressively earnest conversation.

“Zug Industriewerk was founded in 1911 by Werner Stutz as a manufacturer of precision gun barrels,” read a brief history of the firm. “By the early 1930s, Mr. Stutz had expanded the firm’s product line to include light and heavy armament, as well as the first mass-produced steel aircraft wings.” Good timing, commented Jonathan. Half the world was about to need as many gun barrels as they could get their hands on. It was a success story that had been repeated countless times during the bloody twentieth century. So far, things were on track for a repeat performance in the twenty-first.

He turned to the back of the brochure and perused the accounts. Revenues: 55 million. Profit: 6 million. Employees: 478. The numbers had a weight to them that the words couldn’t match. Money was real. It was substantial. Money did not lie.

The more Jonathan read, the angrier he became. There was no doubting that ZIAG was a legitimate firm. So how was it that a woman who did not exist had come to be an employee?

It was then that he heard the tapping on his window. Something hard.

He jumped in his seat and turned toward the noise.

All he needed was a towel. The Ghost hadn’t counted on the darkness being so complete. The flames from a silencer would be visible ten cars back. He dug around in his overnight bag and came up with a black T-shirt. He tore off a strip of fabric and wrapped it around the silencer. His last act before leaving the car was to attach the twill bag that would catch his spent shells.

The Ghost opened the door with care, leaving it ajar for his return. Precious little space separated the car and the safety railing. Keeping low, he slid alongside the chassis. The air inside the tunnel was clammy and frigid. The pocked stone wall rushed past, barely an arm’s length away. He spotted Ransom’s car, three back. The interior lights of the vehicles in between were extinguished, the drivers most probably resting. Ransom’s dome light, however, was illuminated. He sat reading some papers, lit as if he were on a stage.