Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

“I’m trying to find a man. One who came from Dortmund long ago. He may still be here, or in Germany, or dead, or abroad. I don’t know.”

“Well, there are agencies, specialists. Of course, I can engage…”

Quinn realized that Moritz thought he needed money to engage private investigators.

“Or you could ask through the Einwohnermeldeant.”

Quinn shook his head.

“I doubt if they would know. He almost certainly does not willingly cooperate with the authorities. But I believe the police might keep surveillance on him.”

Technically speaking, German citizens who move to a new home within the country are required by law to notify the Inhabitants Registration Office of changes of address, both where from and where to the move took place. Like most bureaucratic systems, this works better in theory than in practice. The ones the police and/or the income tax authorities would like to contact are often those who decline to oblige.

Quinn sketched in the background of the man Werner Bernhardt.

“If he is still in Germany, he would be of an age to be in employment,” said Quinn. “Unless he has changed his name, that will mean he has a social security card, pays income tax-or someone pays it for him. Because of his background he might have been in trouble with the law.”

Moritz thought it over.

“If he is a law-abiding citizen-and even a former mercenary might never have committed an offense inside Germany-he would not have a police record,” he said. “As for the income tax and social security people, they would regard this as privileged information, not to be divulged to an inquiry from you, or even me.”

“They would respond to a police inquiry,” said Quinn. “I thought you might perhaps have a friend or two in the city or state police.”

“Ah,” said Moritz. Only he would ever know just how much he had donated to the police charities of the city of Dortmund and the state of Westphalia. As in any country in the world, money is power and both buy information. “Give me twenty-four hours. I’ll phone you.”

He was true to his word, but his tone when he called the Roemischer Kaiser the following morning after breakfast was distant, as if someone had given him a warning along with the information.

“Werner Richard Bernhardt,”he said as if reading from notes, “aged forty-eight, former Congo mercenary. Yes, he’s alive, here in Germany. He works on the personal staff of Horst Lenzlinger, the arms dealer.”

“Thank you. Where would I find Herr Lenzlinger?”

“Not easily. He has an office in Bremen but lives outside Oldenburg, in Ammerland County. Like me, a very private man. There the resemblance ends. Be careful of Lenzlinger, Herr Quinn. My sources tell me that despite the respectable veneer he is still a gangster.”

He gave Quinn both addresses.

“Thank you,” said Quinn as he noted them. There was an embarrassed pause on the line.

“One last thing. I am sorry. A message from the Dortmund police. Please leave Dortmund. Do not come back. That is all.”

The word of Quinn’s role in what had happened on the side of a Buckinghamshire road was spreading. Soon doors would start to close in many places.

“Feel like driving?” he asked Sam when they were packed and checked out.

“Sure. Where to?”

“Bremen.” She studied the map.

“Good God, it’s halfway back to Hamburg.”

“Two thirds, actually. Take the E.37 for Osnabrück and follow the signs. You’ll love it.”

That evening Colonel Robert Easterhouse flew out of Jiddah for London, changed planes, and flew on directly to Houston. On the flight across the Atlantic he had access to the whole range of American newspapers and magazines.

Three of them carried articles on the same theme, and the reasoning of all the writers was remarkably similar. The presidential election of November 1992 was now just twelve months away. In the normal course of events the Republican party choice would be no choice at all. President Cormack would secure the nomination unopposed for a second term of office.

But the course of events these past six weeks had not been normal, the scribes told their readers-as if they needed to be told. They went on to describe the effect on President Cormack of the loss of his son as traumatic and disabling.

All three writers listed a chronicle of lapses of concentration, canceled speaking engagements, and abandoned public appearances in the previous fortnight since the funeral on Nantucket island. “The Invisible Man,” one of them called the Chief Executive.

The summary of each was also similar. Would it not be better, they wrote, if the President stepped down in favor of Vice President Odell, giving Odell a clear twelve months in office to prepare for reelection in November ’92?

After all, reasoned Time , the main plank of Cormack’s foreign, defense, and economic policy, the shaving of $100 billion off the defense budget with a matching reduction by the U.S.S.R., was already dead in the water.

“Belly up” was how Newsweek described the chances of the treaty’s ratification by the Senate after the Christmas recess.

Easterhouse landed at Houston close to midnight, after twelve hours in the air and two in London. The headlines on the newsstands in the Houston airport were more overt: Michael Odell was a Texan and would be the first Texan President since Lyndon Johnson if he stepped into Cormack’s shoes.

The conference with the Alamo Group was scheduled in two days’ time in the Pan-Global Building. A company limousine took Easterhouse to the Remington, where a suite had been reserved for him. Before turning in, he caught a late news summary. Again, the question was being asked.

The colonel had not been informed of Plan Travis. He did not need to know. But he did know that a change of Chief Executive would remove the last stumbling block to the fruition of all his endeavors-the securing of Riyadh and the Hasa oil fields by an American Rapid Deployment Force sent in by a President prepared to do it.

Fortuitous, he thought as he drifted into sleep. Very fortuitous.

The small brass plaque on the wall of the converted warehouse beside the paneled teak door said simply: THOR SPEDITION AG. Lenzlinger apparently hid the true nature of his business behind the façade of a trucking company, though there were no rigs to be seen and the smell of diesel had never penetrated the carpeted privacy of the fourth-floor suite of offices to which Quinn mounted.

There was an intercom to seek admittance from street level, and another with closed-circuit TV camera at the end of the corridor on the fourth floor. The conversion of the warehouse in a side street off the old docks-where the river Weser pauses on its way to the North Sea to provide the reason for old Bremen’s existence-had not been cheap.

The secretary, when he met her in the outer office, seemed typecast. Had Lenzlinger had any trucks, she could easily have kick-started them.

“ Ja, bitte ?”she asked, though her gaze made plain it was he, not she, who was the supplicant.

“I would like the opportunity of speaking with Herr Lenzlinger,” said Quinn.

She took his name and vanished into the private sanctum, closing the door behind her. Quinn had the impression that the mirror set into the partition wall was one-way. She returned after thirty seconds.

“And your business, please, Herr Quinn.”

“I would like the chance to meet an employee of Herr Lenzlinger, a certain Werner Bernhardt,”he said.

She went backstage again. This time she was gone more than a minute. When she returned she closed the door firmly on whoever sat within.

“I regret, Herr Lenzlinger is not available to speak with you,” she said. It sounded final.