Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

Paul found a heavy wooden white deck chair and carried it over to the sailors. He didn’t need to carry it in one hand, would’ve been easier in two, but he liked seeing Manielli’s blink when he hefted the furniture and swung it over without a grunt. Paul sat down.

“Here’s the wire,” the lieutenant whispered. “The commander’s not so worried about this Heinsler guy. The Allocchio Bacchini’s a small wireless; it’s made for fieldwork and airplanes, short range. And even if he got a message off, Berlin probably wouldn’t pay it much attention. The bund’s an embarrassment to them. But Gordon said it’s up to you. If you want out, that’s okay.”

“But no get-out-of-jail card,” Paul said.

“No card,” Avery said.

“This deal just keeps getting sweeter and sweeter.” The button man gave a sour laugh.

“You’re still in?”

“I’m in, yeah.” A nod toward the deck below. “What’ll happen to the body?”

“After everybody disembarks, some marines from the Hamburg consulate’ll come on board and take care of it.” Then Avery leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen about your mission, Paul. After we dock, you get off and Vince and I’ll take care of the situation with Heinsler. Then we’re going on to Amsterdam. You stay with the team. There’ll be a brief ceremony in Hamburg and then everybody takes the train to Berlin. The athletes’ll have another ceremony tonight but you go straight to the Olympic Village and stay out of sight. Tomorrow morning take a bus to the Tiergarten – that’s the Central Park of Berlin.” He handed the briefcase to Paul. “Take this with you.”

“What is it?”

“It’s part of your cover. Press pass. Paper, pencils. A lot of background about the Games and the city. A guide to the Olympic Village. Articles, clippings, sports statistics. The sort of stuff a writer’d have. You don’t need to look at it now.”

But Paul opened the case and spent some minutes looking carefully, going through the contents. The pass, Avery assured him, was authentic and he could spot nothing suspicious about the other materials.

“You don’t trust anybody, do you?” Manielli asked.

Thinking it’d be fun to sock the punk once, really hard, Paul clicked the briefcase closed and looked up. “What about my other passport, the Russian one?”

“Our man’ll give that to you there. He’s got a forger who’s an expert with European documents. Now, tomorrow, make sure you have the satchel with you. It’s how he’ll recognize you.” He unfurled a colorful map of Berlin and traced a route. “Get off here and go this way. Make your way to a café called the Bierhaus.”

Avery looked at Paul, who was staring at the map. “You can take it with you. You don’t have to memorize it.”

But Paul shook his head. “Maps tell people where you’ve been or where you’re going. And looking at one on the street draws everybody’s attention to you. If you’re lost, better just to ask directions. That way only one person knows you’re a stranger, not a whole crowd.”

Avery lifted an eyebrow, and even Manielli couldn’t find anything to razz him about on this point.

“Near the café there’s an alley. Dresden Alley.”

“It’ll have a name?”

“In Germany the alleys have names. Some of them do. It’s a shortcut. Doesn’t matter where to. At noon walk into it and stop, like you’re lost. Our man’ll come up to you. He’s the guy the Senator was telling you about. Reginald Morgan. Reggie.”

“Describe him.”

“Short. Mustache. Darkish hair. He’ll be speaking German. He’ll strike up a conversation. At some point you ask, ‘What’s the best tram to take to get to Alexanderplatz?’ And he’ll say, ‘The number one thirty-eight tram.’ Then he’ll pause and correct himself and say, ‘No, the two fifty-four is better.’ You’ll know it’s him because those aren’t real tram numbers.”

“You look like this’s funny,” Manielli added.

“It’s right out of Dashiell Hammett. The Continental Op. ”

“This ain’t a game.”

No, it wasn’t, and he didn’t think the passwords were funny. But it was unsettling, all this intrigue stuff. And he knew why: because it meant he was relying on other people. Paul Schumann hated to do that.

“All right. Alexanderplatz. Trams one thirty-eight, two fifty-four. What if he flubs the tram story? It’s not him?”

“I’m getting to that. If something seems fishy, what you do is you don’t hit him, you don’t make a scene. Just smile and walk away as casually as you can and go to this address.”

Avery gave him a slip of paper with a street name and number on it. Paul memorized it and handed the paper back. The lieutenant gave him a key, which he pocketed. “There’s an old palace just south of Brandenburg Gate. It was going to be the new U.S. embassy but there was a bad fire about five years ago and they’re still repairing it; the diplomats haven’t moved in. So the French, Germans and British don’t bother to snoop around the place. But we’ve got a couple of rooms there we use from time to time. There’s a wireless in the storeroom next to the kitchen. You can radio us in Amsterdam and we’ll place a call to Commander Gordon. He and the Senator’ll decide what to do next. But if everything’s silk, Morgan’ll take care of you. Get you into the boardinghouse, find you a weapon and get all the information you need on the… the man you’re going to visit.”

We people say touch-off…

“And remember,” Manielli was pleased to announce, “you don’t show up in Dresden Alley tomorrow or you give Morgan the slip later, he calls us and we make sure the police come down on you like a ton of bricks.”

Paul said nothing and let the boy have his bluster. He could tell Manielli was embarrassed about his reaction to Heinsler’s suicide and he needed to jerk some leash. But in fact there was no possibility that Paul was going to lam off. Bull Gordon was right; button men never got a second chance like he was being given – and a pile of dough that would let him make the most of it.

Then the men fell silent. There was nothing more to say. Sounds filled the damp, pungent air around them: the wind, the shusssh of the waves, the baritone grind of the Manhattan ’s engines – a blend of tones that he found oddly comforting, despite Heinsler’s suicide and the arduous mission that lay ahead. Finally the sailors went below.

Paul rose, lit another cigarette and leaned against the railing once more as the huge ship eased into the harbor in Hamburg, his thoughts wholly focused on Colonel Reinhard Ernst, a man whose ultimate importance, to Paul Schumann, had little to do with his potential threat to peace in Europe and to so many innocent lives but could be found in the fact that he was the last person that the button man would ever kill.

Several hours after the Manhattan docked and the athletes and their entourage had disembarked, a young crewman from the ship exited German passport control and began wandering through the streets of Hamburg.

He wouldn’t have much time ashore – being so junior, he had a leave of only six hours – but he’d spent all his life on American soil and was bound and determined to enjoy his first visit to a foreign country.

The scrubbed, rosy-cheeked assistant kitchen mate supposed there were probably some swell museums in town. Maybe some all-right churches too. He had his Kodak with him and was planning to ask locals to take some snapshots of him in front of them for his ma and pa. ( “Bitte, das Foto?” he’d been rehearsing.) Not to mention beer halls and taverns… and who knew what else he might find for diversion in an exotic port city?