Desert Fire Read online

  “No, sir, Major Whalpol will be here momentarily for the briefing. I just spoke with him by mobile telephone. He was on his way.”

  Was this a crime involving the military, then? Was Major Whalpol some army prosecutor here to establish a liaison with the Federal Bureau of Criminal Investigation, with Schaller as the conduit? Perhaps Sharazad Razmarah had worked on military secrets. Then what was Roemer needed for?

  “Yes, sir, I promise I will let you know as soon as,” Schaller said. “Yes, sir,” he said again, and he hung up. For a moment he stood still; then he turned around.

  He had just received another scare. Roemer could see it written on his face.

  “Do you mind telling me what’s going on, sir?” Roemer asked quietly.

  “In due time,” Schaller said. “Before this night is over, you’ll be privy to all the grubby little secrets. This isn’t fun and games, you know. There is real concern here from on high. On high, I’m telling you. Christ!”

  Yes, Christ, Roemer thought. Christ in heaven. He remembered when Gretchen took him to the baroque Jesu Church—for months afterward he’d been concerned that he hadn’t had any reverence while facing the altar with its hand-carved statue of Christ on the cross. In such a world as this, religion meant very little to him.

  “You’re going to have to understand from the outset that this is a very difficult, very delicate matter.”

  “Who was this girl?”

  “An engineer, Roemer. A very good nuclear engineer, from what I’m told. But none of this should have happened. It’s just awful. The repercussions could be …” He seemed to search for the word. “ … could be simply shattering. One minute she is alive, and in the next she is a shattered lump of lifeless flesh and bone. It makes no sense.”

  “You knew her, sir?”

  Schaller gaped at him. “You think that I’m some cold fish here, dealing merely in numbers. In case histories. No personalities. Well, Investigator, that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  Roemer had a hard time accepting the man’s sincerity. Cynicism will kill us all. His father’s line. It was painful, but he couldn’t accept the statement from his father any more than he could from Schaller. What was missing? Was life passing him by? Or was it that he didn’t care? Or cared too much? The two Germanies were reunited. Be careful what you wish for, the adage went. You might get it. Not many in Germany were happy.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No need to be.” The Chief District Prosecutor pushed away from his desk. At the sideboard he poured a drink, knocked it back, then set the glass down. “I know about you, Roemer. You’re a good German. You, among all people, are like us. You understand.”

  A chill passed through Roemer. “Sir?”

  Schaller spun around. “Don’t make this more difficult than it already is. You cannot believe …”

  Headlights flashed on the study windows and moved toward the front of the house.

  “You selected me because I am discreet,” Roemer suggested.

  “Your past is bound with Germany’s.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Schaller nodded hesitantly. “You understand nationalism? Loyalty?”

  “That, sir, as well as truth.”

  Schaller flinched. “Truth, tempered with wisdom. Truth, tempered with an understanding of the real world.”

  “Murder is its own truth,” Roemer said. “If it is not war, then it is murder.”

  “Your definition of war and mine may be different.”

  “I think not. Especially not in the final analysis.”

  The heavy brass knocker sounded loud and hollow. For the moment Schaller seemed like a cornered animal. Clearly he wanted something settled here, and yet his tension indicated his uncertainty.

  For the first time this morning, Roemer was of no mind to help. He looked down at his large, powerful hands. In Gymnasium he had played soccer. He’d been told that his speed, combined with his rugged frame, made him an awesome force on the playing field. There had been talk at the time of his going professional. He had opted instead for the Police Academy at Westphalia. Among her other complaints, his ex-wife always said he was too serious. “Have more fun in life,” she told him.

  Schaller hurried out of the room, his impasse unresolved, leaving Roemer to sink back into his own thoughts, made more morose by Schaller’s implication that one’s national loyalty took precedence over murder. And he wondered: If it came down to hurting his father, would he do it? Presumably no one knew that the old man was finally dying, and would soon be out of reach of the zealots. Did it matter any longer?

  He heard them out in the stairhall, talking in low voices. Then the front door closed with a heavy thump, and moments later Schaller appeared with his other guest, a tall, very thin man, dressed in a dark, old-fashioned southern suit.

  Roemer put his brandy snifter down and got to his feet as Schaller and the other man came in.

  “Walther Roemer, Ludwig Whalpol,” Schaller said breathlessly.

  Roemer shook the man’s limp, damp hand. “Herr Major,” he said.

  Whalpol’s left eyebrow rose, but he smiled. “Let me tell you, Investigator, that I’ve heard a lot of good things about you. Believe me, really tremendous things. It’s good to have you with us.”

  “He’s already been out to the apartment,” Schaller said.

  Whalpol shook his head. “A terrible business. We never thought … never dreamed it could come to something like this. We’re all shocked.”

  Whalpol was not military. He was a bureaucrat. It showed in his bearing, so obviously that Roemer made the only other connection possible.

  “I wasn’t aware that the BND had an interest in this case,” he said. “It certainly would be much easier for you to liaise directly with Lieutenant Manning rather than have me in the middle.”

  Whalpol grinned. “I told you that this one was sharp as a tack, Ernst. I knew it the moment you suggested him. With this one we cannot pull the wool.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Herr Major,” Roemer said sharply. “It is late, I am tired, and there is a young woman lying dead and raped in Bad Godesberg. What exactly is my part in this investigation?”

  Whalpol shot back, “You are to find Sarah’s murderer. As simple as that.”

  “Sharazad Razmarah.”

  “We called her Sarah. It’s the name she preferred.”

  “What about Manning and the Bonn Kriminalpolizei?”

  “They will satisfy the news media,” Whalpol said.

  “I am to be given privileged information. I’m to find her murderer and turn him—or her—over to you. No trial. No justice?”

  “That is correct, Investigator.”

  “Why?”

  Whalpol nodded. “I like you. You are a direct man. It means that I can speak directly with you.”

  Roemer said nothing. He was angry. He didn’t know the facts, and yet he was ready to judge.

  “There is a lot at stake here, let me tell you.”

  Sarah was an engineer at KwU, one of the largest exporters of German high technology. “Money?”

  “Perhaps more than eight billion marks. A prodigious sum. But beyond that, it is possible that Sarah was murdered by an Arab. By an Iraqi.”

  A connection was made in Roemer’s head, and it sickened him. A light turned on, illuminating a vast cavern filled with tens upon tens of thousands of people all looking at him. He understood, or thought he did, why he had been called this night; why they were going to allow the Kriminalpolizei to publicly continue with the case while he would be given all the help he required. But like a hound that plays with a bone even though he’s not sure he wants it, Roemer refused to make the final link in his conscious mind. He knew that if he did he might not be able to control himself. Instead he focused on the other aspect of this business that bothered him.

  Sarah Razmarah had been an engineer for KwU. She was an American, but exactly why had she come to Germany? Whalpol had the answers.

/>   “You are giving me carte blanche?”

  “Within reason,” Schaller replied.

  Roemer nodded to Whalpol, but addressed his remarks to the Chief Prosecutor. “What about his crowd, why don’t they simply take over? National security. It’s within their province.”

  “For reasons that will become quite clear before we’re finished this morning,” Whalpol said.

  “We simply want you to listen,” Schaller said in an obvious attempt to mollify him.

  “Then I have a choice?”

  Schaller flinched.

  “Why don’t we just sit down here,” the BND major said. “Why don’t we just have a little chat. Let’s see if we can put our heads together and figure out what is best for Germany.”

  10

  THEY WERE AN odd, dangerous trio, Roemer thought. Schaller, the political animal. Whalpol, the agent provocateur. And Roemer, the investigator.

  “I’ll just start off here,” Schaller said. “And then Major Whalpol can bring up the details for you.”

  “It’s important that you understand everything, Investigator. Absolutely everything.”

  “You don’t have a charter to work within Germany, Herr Major,” Roemer said.

  “That is correct,” Whalpol said.

  “Has the American Consulate been informed?”

  “No.”

  “Why was I selected for this case?”

  “Because,” Whalpol. said crisply, “I believe you are a man with his head firmly planted on his shoulders, and his feet firmly planted on German soil.”

  “Is it because of my father’s past that you think you can control me?” Roemer asked.

  “I won’t even dignify that remark with an answer.” Whalpol leaned forward. “What the hell do you think we are here, Roemer? We’re more eager to find Sarah’s murderer than you are. But there is much more going on here than murder.”

  “We want you to find the fiend, you have to believe that. And it cannot go public,” Schaller said. “The media must never find out what has gone on.”

  “Then let Lieutenant Manning find her murderer.”

  “Manning may find a suspect, but he will never have the proof to make an arrest. Sarah’s body will be quietly flown back to America, where it will be buried.”

  “I will find her murderer.”

  “Yes, Investigator, you will bring this madman to justice. You will avenge poor Sarah’s death, and you will do it with no publicity, no medals, no notice.”

  “Are your hands clean?” Roemer asked them.

  “You weren’t called up for this,” Schaller said sharply.

  Roemer held his silence while he listened to the crackling fire in the grate. He felt an odd awareness of his own mortality. His father was dying in a Swiss sanatorium, and he had viewed the body of a murdered young woman. A snatch of something from Dryden crossed his mind from his school days: None would live past years again / Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain / And from the dregs of life think to receive / What the first sprightly running could not give.

  “In 1982, early spring,” Schaller said, “in the middle of the Iraq-Iran war, our government was approached by the Iraqi government. This was on high, above the ministerial level, you understand. One power to another, one state to another. I want you to grasp the historical perspective here, Investigator. Germany was in trouble. There was unemployment, unrest, strife. No one knew which way the wind was going to blow.

  “Germany had nuclear technology for export. The government of Iraq wanted this technology, and we agreed to sell it, subject of course to limitations.”

  “The Kraftwerk Union is in the business of designing and constructing nuclear-powered electrical generating systems,” Whalpol said. “The State of Iraq has been in the market for just such a system ever since the Israelis destroyed their Osiraq reactor in 1981, and especially since the post–Gulf War dismantling of their nuclear energy program. Our government has agreed that the KwU would be granted the license for such a sale provided certain conditions were met, among them Iraq agreeing to an aggressive inspection program. An ongoing inspection program.”

  “Sarah was an engineer for KwU,” Roemer said. “Was she working on the Iraqi project?”

  “She was much more than that,” Whalpol said.

  “She worked for you as well?” Roemer asked, an angry edge in his voice.

  Schaller stepped between them again. “Understand, Roemer, that such a project does not happen overnight. There are years of research and design, at not only the technical level but the political level as well. There have been more than one hundred Iraqi citizens living and working here for the past year. Scientists, technicians, engineers, as well as lawyers and economists and bureaucrats. The project is vast. You have no conception.”

  “It’s been kept very quiet, I’ll give you that much.”

  “The Americans, not to mention our own EC neighbors, would crucify us,” Schaller cried.

  Roemer smiled at Whalpol. “The Germans selling Saddam Hussein nuclear technology. The ramifications are endless.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Investigator. Hussein already has his arsenal of nuclear technology, which he’s managed to keep hidden from the UN inspection teams. We’re giving him nothing more than an electrical generating plant. But that’s not what we’ve been talking about here.”

  “What then?”

  “Murder.”

  The telephone rang and Schaller picked it up. “Yes?” he said. “Yes, sir, they’re both here.”

  Whalpol wore a hawkish, feral look. The stage was set, Roemer thought. It would be the BND major’s turn next.

  11

  SCHALLER FINISHED ON the telephone. There was a slight sheen of sweat on his brow. He seemed distracted. “In heaven’s name, I cannot understand what they expect of us,” he mumbled.

  “Anything from the other camp yet?” Whalpol asked quietly.

  Schaller shook his head. “Not a thing. But they are expecting results already. Pull the rabbit out of the hat. I believe they are petrified up there in Berlin. Simply quaking in their boots. It’s dangerous.”

  Roemer was surprised at the Prosecutor’s irreverence. But then there had been a lot of surprises already this night.

  Whalpol held out his glass, and Schaller poured him another brandy. Roemer declined. His stomach was acting up.

  “I was called into this business in February, when the final negotiations had just gotten under way,” Whalpol said. “I was to head up a watchdog committee. Try to make sure no one went astray, and the like.”

  “Why not the BfV?” Roemer asked. “All this happened on German soil.”

  “Division of labor, as simple as that,” the BND major replied. “We didn’t want to be stumbling over each other’s boots. We were involved in a very touchy situation. One in which there was the possibility of a major international incident, and one in which there was a distinct possibility that the Iraqis were playing us for fools.” Whalpol smiled. “You should have been witness to the absolute chaos when the old boy himself showed up here.”

  “The ‘old boy’?”

  “Saddam Hussein, of course. Keeping it straight and secret was no easy chore. There are certain technical aspects that would indicate that the Iraqis were indeed planning to use our technology to create nuclear-weapons-grade material. It was our job to watch for such signals.”

  Of the two federal agencies involved with security matters, Whalpol’s BND normally dealt with threats from outside the country, and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (the BfV) dealt with threats from within. It had been decided at high levels, Whalpol explained, that the BND would take charge of the overall project, leaving the local security matters to the District Prosecutor’s office. One federal security agency and one federal police agency. Clean and simple.

  “I was to take care of security and intelligence, and Ernst, through his good offices, was to pick up the odd bits: the traffic ticket, the stray drunk-and-disorderly. All of these people
, remember, are here in secret and with full diplomatic immunity.”

  “The murder.”

  “When that occurred, I came to Ernst and asked for his recommendation: Who simply is the very best investigator in the land? He mentioned your name, and I agreed wholeheartedly.”

  “Were you watching her?”

  “There was no need.”

  “How did you find out so quickly that she had been murdered?”

  “I discovered her body.”

  “You were the anonymous telephone caller?” Roemer asked in wonder.

  Whalpol nodded. “She was having car troubles, so I drove her home around ten. After I left her off I began to worry about her. Her mental state. So I went back. But I was too late.”

  “What was wrong with her mental state?”

  “Please, Roemer,” Schaller said. “There will be time for all of those questions.”

  “We’re not trying to hide anything here, Investigator. Before we’re done this morning, you will know everything. I promise.”

  Roemer held his silence. Was it axiomatic, he mused, that the higher one went the dirtier the jobs became?

  “This all began on a need-to-know basis, and the list is still quite small. The Iraqis are here working out the technology and engineering for the construction of a twelve-hundred-megawatt neutron source reactor and isotope separator. Naturally we are extremely interested in just what their intentions are. Honorable or dishonorable.”

  “Can there be any doubt, Major?” Roemer asked.

  “That’s politics, my dear Investigator. Whereas I deal with security.”

  “So you sent spies after them to find out if they were developing weapons technology out of what we were selling them?”

  “It’s more complicated than that, actually, but in essence that was one of our charters for which the supervisory staff at KwU was admirably suited. But a lot of work toward that end can be done in such a fashion that it simply cannot be detected by normal workaday methods. From what I understand, certain mathematical techniques necessary for plutonium-refining methods can be worked out under apparently innocent guises. One scientist talks with another. Friendly competition, if you will. Fireside chats.”