Desert Fire Read online

  “My father never mentioned you,” Sarah said over their coffee.

  Whalpol shrugged. “Those were difficult days. The Shah’s regime was coming apart, and your father, bless his heart, went through a difficult period with the Colonel.”

  Colonel Massedegh worked for SAVAK, the feared Iranian secret police. He was the bogeyman in her house, and as a little girl she’d been very respectful of the name because whenever it was mentioned she could see fear in her father’s eyes.

  “It was I who interceded on your father’s behalf to get him and your mother safely out.”

  “You’re not Iranian.”

  “I’m German. I’ve been sent here to ask you to come to Bonn. We’d like you to take an engineering position with Kraftwerk Union. You would be a project supervising engineer.”

  Sarah was startled. Kraftwerk Union was Germany’s largest manufacturer of nuclear-powered electrical generating systems. The company was at the forefront of international concern and debate. Some years ago the huge firm had built a nuclear generating plant in Brazil, despite world opinion that Brazil almost certainly would use the technology to construct nuclear weapons. She wondered what the company was involved with now.

  Whalpol beamed. “I can see that you are definitely interested.”

  “There must be dozens … hundreds of engineers better than me who are currently available. Why have you come here?”

  “You would be the dark horse. The unknown.”

  “What?”

  “Your job, Fräulein, would be two-pronged, in a manner of speaking. On the one hand, you would work directly for me.”

  “You?”

  Whalpol reached into his jacket pocket for a thin leather wallet, which he opened and passed across the table. It contained an official identification card. The German eagle, its wings spread, was embossed on the card. For a moment she was afraid to reach out for it. She had a visceral feeling as to what it would be. Whalpol had helped her father and mother with SAVAK, and now he’d come to America to see that the debt was repaid.

  The card identified the bearer, by photograph, as Ludwig Herbert Whalpol, Bonn, a major in the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the BND, the German Secret Service. She dropped the wallet.

  He smiled as he stuffed it back in his pocket. “We would ask that you keep an eye on certain foreigners on the KwU engineering team.”

  “I am to spy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why me, Major? Why not a fellow German? I’m an American.”

  “You’re an Iranian, Sarah. A nuclear engineer. And a woman. A rare combination.”

  “Are you building a reactor for Iran?”

  “No.”

  “Then for who … Iraq?”

  Whalpol nodded.

  “You people are insane. The UN has finally cleared out the last of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear research facilities … and my God, how long has that taken? … Now you bastards want to start it all over again?”

  “Iraq cannot remain in the Dark Ages, Sarah. A strong, modern Iraq will be a stabilizing force in the region. Iran is poised to strike. You must know that.”

  “Hussein will build bombs.”

  “That’s what you and I will prevent.”

  She laughed out loud, and Whalpol caught her meaning.

  “Not just us, Sarah; there are many others, of course. But you are in a unique position to help us.”

  “I could tell my government.”

  Again the German major smiled. “They would not believe you. Please, Sarah, your life is nothing here. Make something of it. Do some good in the world. Your father would understand this, Sarah. Do you?”

  Had she known what it would be like, she reflected now, morosely, she still would have taken the assignment. There had been moments with Ahmed when she had felt alive, happy, finally in love.

  “I thought you would be with him tonight,” Whalpol said, pulling her away from her thoughts. “Nothing has gone wrong, has it, between you two?”

  “No,” she said softly. “He’s worked very late all this week, and he’s tired, that’s all.”

  “The two of you should go away for the weekend. I have a place on the Wied River you could use.”

  “Wired for sound, no doubt,” Sarah said.

  Whalpol shrugged.

  “You’re a dirty voyeur, Ludwig. I suppose you get a big kick out of this. Your little arrangements.”

  “The bloom is off the rose,” Whalpol mumbled. “It’s time, I think, to give you a new assignment.”

  A bolt of fear shot through her. “What?”

  “You are burned out, Sarah. You are no longer being completely honest with me. Or yourself, for that matter. In fact, I think you have fallen in love with poor Ahmed Pavli. Is that it, Sarah?”

  “I’ll handle it,” she said miserably.

  “It’s my job, I can handle it for you.”

  “He’s a good man,” she cried. “Leave him alone. Leave them all alone!”

  “No.”

  “Let me tell him.”

  “Tell him what, Sarah? That you have slept with him on orders from the German government to find out if Iraq is stealing even more nuclear technology than we are already selling them?”

  “I’ll tell him that I no longer love him.”

  “You aren’t capable of that type of lie. Not that.”

  “Let me tell him that!” she shrieked. “He deserves that much. I deserve it. I’ve earned it.”

  Even as she was saying it, she wondered if she meant it, or if, as Whalpol suggested, she was incapable of such a lie. She did love Ahmed, but their relationship could not go any further without the truth between them. A truth she could not share with him.

  “Easy,” Whalpol was saying.

  “Let me deal with it,” she said, calmer now, taking a deep breath. “I don’t want him hurt, Ludwig.”

  “Neither do I,” Whalpol answered gently. “Let me think about it, and tomorrow we’ll talk, just you and I. We’ll work something out. Despite what you think, I’m not an ogre.”

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t think so, but we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said, but she was drifting again, watching the lights of the oncoming traffic as they neared town, and wondering where her life was going.

  5

  THE THREE-STORY APARTMENT building was thick, brooding, in the chill, wind-driven rain. The windshield wipers of Whalpol’s car provided a rhythm to Sarah’s efforts at keeping herself together.

  “Would you like me to come up with you?” Whalpol asked her.

  “No, I’ll be all right.” She got out of the car, crossed the sidewalk and let herself into the building without looking back. Inside, she leaned against the door. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She half expected Whalpol to come after her, but she heard the car pull away. She was soaked and cold. When she reached the third floor she was winded and shivering. Finally she found her keys at the bottom of her purse, and unlocked her door.

  She closed the door behind her and snapped the locks, fearful of making any noise. You dare not disturb the sleeping ghosts lest they awake and devour you. It was a line from something, but she couldn’t remember what.

  Her apartment was long and narrow, well furnished. The living room was in front, a bathroom and the bedroom in the middle, and the kitchen in the rear overlooking a courtyard.

  In the bathroom she pulled off her sodden raincoat and laid it over the drying rack at the foot of the tub. She kicked off her shoes as she unbuttoned her blouse, peeled it off and dropped it over the edge of the tub. She felt like a robot, like one of the remote handling machines for nuclear materials at the research facility.

  Wrapping a towel around her wet hair, she went into the bedroom, where she pulled off the rest of her wet clothes, letting them lie where she dropped them.

  She put on a thick terry-cloth robe and padded barefoot into the kitchen. She poured a stiff measure of cognac and drank it down straight, shuddering as
it hit her stomach, but enjoying the afterglow.

  One year she’d given herself to finish the KwU project and her dirty little job of spying for Whalpol, and then she would strike out on her own again. Her father would have been proud of her if he had been alive. He had served as a construction engineer in the Shah’s army, but he lost an arm so the best he could do was clerk in a small hotel in Tehran until the opportunity came to manage the Four Seasons Hotel in Beirut.

  Those were difficult times for everybody. The PLO was gaining strength, although nearly everybody in Iran thought Arafat was nothing but a joke. And Israel was putting a lot of pressure on the Lebanese, so her father had returned to Tehran, where he believed his family would be safer. He had not counted on SAVAK, which had become mistrustful of him. How was it that a one-armed clerk could be selected to manage such a prestigious hotel in Beirut? Whom had he paid off? Whom did he work for? What secrets had he sold to get such a position? Questions upon questions.

  It was because of him that Sarah had gone to the United States for her engineering degree. But now he was gone, and at this moment she wished more than ever that she had siblings. A sister, perhaps to telephone and tell her troubles to. A brother, who would put his arm around her and tell her that it was all right, Sis. She was lonely.

  The telephone in the living room rang, startling her out of her thoughts. At this hour, it had to be either Whalpol checking up on her, or Ahmed Pavli because she had avoided him all day. She didn’t want to talk to either of them.

  She put down her glass and went into the living room and took it on the fourth ring.

  “Yes?” she said softly.

  “It’s me,” Pavli said. His voice was deep and rich, his German precise.

  She gripped the telephone hard but couldn’t speak.

  “Sarah? Is everything all right? Are you ill? Shall I come over?”

  “Not tonight, Ahmed,” she said, the words choking at the back of her throat.

  “I missed you at work.”

  “In the morning, we’ll talk.”

  “I could come to you now. I’m only a few minutes away.”

  “No.” But she wanted to beg him to come and hold her in his arms, to put everything right.

  “Is it to do with work?” he asked. “Has something happened that you can’t talk to me?”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow, Ahmed, I promise you. Insha’ Allah.” Tears welled up in her eyes again. She felt as if someone had kicked her in the gut.

  “We’ll have lunch together,” he said. It was the Western thing to do. Nearly everyone on the Iraqi team had adopted the custom.

  “All right.”

  When she hung up, her heart was beating rapidly, and it took effort to breathe.

  She went back into the kitchen, where she put the teakettle on to boil. Then in the bathroom she started the water in the tub.

  Someone knocked at her door. Ahmed already, she thought, as she turned off the water and went into the living room. It was like him. He’d heard the strangeness in her voice and had come to help.

  She unlocked the door and opened it. The killer was much taller than she, and bulky. He wore dark slacks and a dark windbreaker, slick from the rain. A Greek fisherman’s cap was pulled low over his eyes, and she noticed in the split second that he wore thick-soled, heavy shoes—brogans—and black leather gloves. She’d never seen him dressed that way before. The effect was ominous.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  The killer smiled cruelly. “You,” he whispered.

  Before Sarah could react, his right fist smashed into her face, snapping her head back and driving her into the apartment.

  She tried to scream, but nothing came, and it seemed as if she were falling forever, tumbling over the arm of the couch to the floor.

  She could see the killer as he stepped into the apartment and locked the door behind him.

  He unzipped his jacket and moved behind her.

  She had trouble breathing, and realized that her mouth was filled with blood and bits of something hard. Her teeth, he had broken some of her teeth. She coughed.

  She was able to move her head an inch or two so that she could see him. The killer stood with his back to her, looking into the kitchen, his gloved hands gripping the sides of the door frame.

  The telephone. If she could get to the telephone before he turned around she could call for help. He had not come here to rape her, he had come to murder her. And she knew why.

  She managed to roll over and gather her legs beneath her and push herself up to her hands and knees. Blood and bits of broken teeth dribbled out of her mouth. For several agonizing seconds she could do no more than remain where she was, one hip against the side of the couch, her arms shaking, her stomach heaving.

  He was behind her. He grabbed the back of her thick robe and lifted her onto her feet and turned her to him. For a second her eyes were locked with the killer’s—like a desert scorpion’s.

  “Why?” she whimpered.

  The killer shook her like a rag doll, as if he wanted her to come out of her daze, wanted her to scream for help, to fight back. But she could not.

  He pulled her away from the couch, past the low coffee table, dragging her effortlessly with one hand.

  She could not make her feet work, and the robe cut into her armpits as he hauled her down the corridor to the kitchen. He slammed her against the counter, the sharp edge catching the small of her back, driving the air out of her lungs. Spots filled her eyes.

  He faced her, pressed his body against her. She could feel his erection against her belly, and she thought that perhaps he would only rape her after all, and not kill her.

  He pulled the robe open and looked down at her breasts and the curves of her belly and hips.

  Rape. If that’s all he wanted, she would give it to him. She spread her legs a little, and thrust her hips forward.

  The action enraged him. He grabbed her pubis, and pain stabbed her. A gloved finger was inside her, and he lifted her off her feet by her vagina, the pain shooting through her body like nothing she had ever felt before.

  “Whore,” he whispered roughly. “Strumpet. Slut.”

  He jerked his hand away from her crotch and as she slumped to the floor he slammed his fist into her right breast. Even more pain burst in her. The air was driven out of her lungs in a spray of blood, and she felt another blow, then another, until mercifully she faded, drifting, her mind disconnected from her body, the floor coming up to meet her face.

  6

  PAIN COURSED THROUGH Sarah’s body like molten lead. Her eyes fluttered open. She lay on her back on the kitchen floor. Her legs were spread and the killer knelt over her, hitting her with his fists: her breasts, her belly, her pubis.

  He clamped his fingers around her throat, slowly tightening his grip and cutting off her air.

  She felt as if her head would explode; this could not be happening to her.

  She flailed her arms feebly to ward him off. He smiled, as if glad that she was fighting him.

  Something was in her left hand. Something small and hard. It cut her palm. Something metal. Something of the killer’s. She grasped it with her last strength.

  The killer said something, but there was roaring in her ears. The teakettle was whistling above her on the stove, and the lights grew dim.

  She was falling into a black bottomless pit, into nothingness, and finally she eased into a painless peace.

  7

  IT WAS A few minutes after midnight. The sky was still overcast but the rain had finally stopped. The temperature had plunged and a thick, icy fog covered the river valley, harking back to the Romanesque days of dark river fortresses.

  A well-built man, good-looking in a thick, Germanic way, stood on the balcony of his Oberkassel apartment looking out across the slumbering city of Bonn. Heedless of the cold, he wore only trousers and a light pullover as he smoked a cigarette. His thoughts flitted across ten dozen childhood memories, few of them pleasant.
r />   Only of his father, now dying in a sanatorium near Bern, were his memories fond. Now it was nearly over for the old man, and he found himself wishing that the waiting would be over, the end would come, the pain would end. And he felt guilty for it.

  Look to the future, our only salvation, his father was fond of saying, forced into such a dreamer’s philosophy as the only logical alternative to the insanity of the forties.

  But the future was here. The Germanies had reunited. And Roemer did not feel saved.

  The telephone in the apartment rang and Gretchen answered it. She came to the balcony door.

  “Walther?”

  “I’m not in,” he said softly.

  Behind him, he could smell her fresh lilac scent.

  “It is the Chief District Prosecutor. He says it is very important he speak with you. Walther?”

  Roemer would forever remember that exact moment, for it was the watershed of his life.

  8

  “WE WERE TOLD to wait, so we’ve waited,” Bonn Criminal Police Lieutenant Rolf Manning said. “But no one has told us what interest the Bureau has in this case. Can you tell me?”

  It was chilly in the third-floor corridor. Police had been coming and going for several hours, the downstairs door left open most of the time, the apartment building’s heating system stingy against the cold weather. Roemer looked down the stairwell. Bonn Kriminalpolizei Laboratory men were dusting the banister for fingerprints. Somewhere in the building a television or radio was playing, even so late. And from within the apartment came the muted hum of cop talk.

  Manning was much shorter than Roemer. An ever-present Marlboro dangled from the corner of his mouth, making him look like a cop in an old American detective film. There was an angry glint in his wide Westphalian eyes. Although Roemer had never worked with him, he knew of Manning’s reputation as tough, territorial and steady, with a long list of accomplishments under his belt. Manning had not been picked for elevation to the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation, because presumably he lacked imagination … whatever that was.

  Blood was tracked on several of the steps leading down from the third floor. The footprints had been outlined in white chalk and covered with clear plastic.