The Diaries - 01 (10 page)

Did Jean hear something on the Nikkei
bugs?
 
Something that roused his
curiosity?

Gage waited.
 
Ten seconds.
 
Twenty.
 
This was a critical
moment, with Gage knowing that if Jean intended to reacquire him, he would have
had some sort of well-concealed surveillance waiting at the—

There!

A man had been
about to come down the stairs.
 
He saw
Gage awaiting him, making his eyes widen in surprise.
 
Wearing a black leather jacket, hands in his
pockets, the man froze for a second before glancing at his watch.
 
Then, as if he’d forgotten to do something,
he turned and hurried away.
 
It was an
amateur move, indeed, but one of the toughest to avoid.
 
Tailing someone to find them turn and stare
at you, especially around a blind corner (or down a flight of stairs), and not
reacting at all is one of the toughest moves in the business.
 
Gage’s tail had just failed miserably.

He quickly assessed
the long station.
 
There were twenty or
so people awaiting the next train.
 
One
track led away from the city, the other to the
Hauptbahnhof
.
 
Gage stood at the stairs, waiting for the man
to reappear.
 
The only other people to
come down the stairs before Gage boarded the train were a young father and his
son.
 
They never glanced at Gage and
waited on the subway leading to the northwest.

He boarded.

As the quiet
German train buzzed to the next station, Gage ripped the envelope open looking
for a small, hair-like transmitter—a tracking bug.
 
There was none.
 
After several stops, Gage exited the subway
and ran up the escalator into the
Hauptbahnhof
for
the second time that day.
 
As it remained
nearly twenty-four hours a day, the
Bahnhof
was a collision
of humanity.
 
Trains departed every few
minutes for such exotic destinations as Paris, Rome, Moscow and London.
 
People of all sizes, all colors, and all
economic classes scurried about like ants on their own specific mission.
 
It was the perfect place to lose a tail.

Rushing through
the crowd, doubling back twice, Gage ducked into the Starbucks near the east
entrance, taking a table in the back and watching the crowd coming and going.

He saw nothing of
interest.

A man at the
adjacent table spoke to Gage, an American, working on his laptop, asking him in
horrific German if he knew where he could buy a flash drive.
 
Gage answered him quickly, telling him of an
electronics store two subway stops to the north.
 
The man thanked him, packing his bag and exiting
the coffee shop.

Gage turned back
to the entrance, narrowing his eyes.
 
It
had to have been Jean’s man at the Opera.
 
As he suspected, Jean knew Gage had found
something
.
 
But could he have
known what?
 
Did he have a camera at his
disposal in the building?
 
Doubtful, but
he could’ve used one from outside.
 
He
would have seen Gage carrying the overloaded pack away.
 
Doing it twice.

He nodded.
 
That’s what happened.

Gage moved back
into the train station, negotiating the main walkway at the head of the
platforms.
 
It was doubtful Jean would
have called all his dogs on Gage.
 
Probably just a grunt giving cursory surveillance, seeing what Gage was
up to.
 
Jean probably knew he could reacquire
Gage back at his flat.

His flat
.
 

Shit.

Gage couldn’t go
back there.
 
Not now.

Added to his
inability to go to his home, Gage had a fleeting worry about the diaries.
 
But Jean wouldn’t know about the urban
storage space Gage kept, would he?
 
It
was located in an old neighborhood, well-hidden underneath an apartment
building, under heavy lock and key.
 
Gage
barely had enough money to keep the damned thing, but his entire emergency
contingency was in that storage unit and, if something ever went bad, it would
be his only ticket out.

The American
ex-pat burst from the train station’s north exit, jumping into a Mercedes taxi
at the head of the line.
 
“
Hauptwache
,” he sputtered.
 
The driver looked annoyed at such a short fare, but put the car in drive
and headed east.
 

After paying the
driver ten euro, double the fare, he stepped from the cab and crossed the
street.
 
He’d watched out the rear window
of the taxi the entire way, seeing no one.
 
Following twenty minutes of standing in a blustery alley, watching the
remaining gray light slip from the sky, Gage emerged, satisfied that the tail
was successfully lost.

A restaurant
across the street, Italian, looked warm and inviting.
 
Gage’s stomach rumbled and he realized he
hadn’t eaten in nearly six hours, and nothing of substance in days.
 
He opened his cell phone and gave Monika instructions
on how to get there.
 
She was fifteen
minutes away.

The maître d’
welcomed him, showing him to a darkened corner table.
 
Gage shed his sunglasses and, as a final
precaution, turned off his cellphone and removed the battery, depositing both
into his jacket pocket.
 
Finally able to
relax, he settled back into his chair with an ice water.
 
He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths as
his mind dueled over thoughts of Monika and the diaries.

***

“He knew he was
being tailed.
 
Bastard grabbed the money,
ran, then stood there waiting on me down at the platform,” said the man on the
other end of the line.

Jean leaned back
on his sofa, swirling the
Latour
in the Bordeaux
glass, ruefully shaking his head.
 
Without even having seen what happened, he could picture it perfectly.
 
“Did you just fall off the ass end of the Idiot
Truck?
 
You’re telling me you got burned
by the oldest damn trick in the book?”
 
He chuckled loudly without a trace of true good humor.
 
“Had you kept your eyes down and just entered
the station, you’d be watching him right now.”

“Easier said than
done, Jean.
 
You and I both know it’s
startling as hell when you’re trying to catch up to a man, only to find him
turn and put the evil eye on you.”

“So says the
loser,
Fredi
.
 
So says the loser.
 
I knew a boxer
once…he was terrible.
 
And after every
loss he would always be upbeat, looking for a scrap of sunshine, saying he
could’ve easily won had he not gotten caught by the right hook…or the
uppercut…or the left cross.”
 
Jean rubbed
the long bare leg next to him.
 
He held a
finger to his mouth as she began to say something.

“Do you want me to
call out a grid search on him?
 
Maybe get
commerce on it?
 
We could grab him using
his cell phone or a credit card?”

Jean shook his
head.
 
“Did you not hear me earlier,
Fredi
?
 
This is my own
op.
 
It’s
personal
.
 
Just go to his
flat and don’t be seen.
 
He’ll
resurface.
 
Gage Hartline can’t afford
not to.”
 
He clicked off the phone,
dropped it onto the couch and buried his head between the woman’s ample breasts,
making a motorboat sound into her flesh.

On the other end
of the line,
Fredi
Hutier
displayed
his middle finger into the phone before he started the Opel and made his way
toward Hartline’s flat.
 
The flurries had
changed to full-on snow.

***

The restaurant seemed
warmer and cozier due to the large flakes falling outside of the honey colored
glass.
 
There were only a few patrons,
and the server kept his distance, discreetly making sure they had full glasses
but taking care not to bother the couple.

Gage pushed his
lasagna away, placing the remainder of the bread into the oval-shaped
dish.
 
The conversation had been sparse; Monika
measured him, giving him a look loaded with uncertainty.

“What is it?” he
asked.

“You’re very
tense,” she answered without hesitation.
 
“What’s going on?
 
Work okay?”

“I was just
hungry,” he replied with a smile.
 
“I get
quiet when I get hungry.”
 

She seemed to
accept the answer, matching his grin.
 
God
if she wasn’t beautiful.
 
Monika Brink
had shoulder length black hair, olive skin and chocolate eyes.
 
She lived in
Saarbrücken
,
on the French border, tracing her family’s heritage to the Moors and southern
France.
 
A product of a working-class
German family, she hadn’t had the money to attend university out of
school.
 
A hard worker, she underwent a
brief apprenticeship and was now a popular hairstylist with a solid book of
clients.
 
Determined to get her degree, Monika
attended school at night and was only one semester from finishing with a degree
in human resources.
 
She often mentioned
to Gage that she probably made more money now than she would ever make in the
professional world (unless she climbed to the highest of human resources
positions); it was simply the accomplishment of finishing she wanted to attain.

Gage had not been
in a relationship with anyone, not even a one-night fling, since before the
business at Crete.
 
He had met Monika in
a Frankfurt book store.
 
It was one of the
Barnes & Noble types that had spread to Europe from the U.S.
 
She had been there visiting relatives, happy
to escape for an afternoon of quiet study.
 
Gage first laid eyes on Monika when she was on her way to a comfortable
seat, her arms laden with heavy books.
 
She
stumbled on someone’s feet, spilling her frothy latte on Gage’s legs and shoes.
 
He politely waved her off, grabbing some
napkins from the café and mopping up the mess.
 
Monika had tried to engage him in conversation but, as he did with most
everyone, he politely deflected her.
 

They both read for
a bit.
 
The seat next to him opened up.
 
She crossed the sitting area, plopping down,
touching his arm.
 
“I’m sorry I spilled
my latte on you.”

“It was nothing,”
he’d answered, only cutting his eyes up for a moment.

Monika had cocked
her head, studying him for a moment.
 
“You
have very kind eyes,” she’d said in her native German.
 
“But there is something else in them.
 
Something you don’t let other people know
about.”

That made him look
up.
 

“I’m not trying to
be rude,” Monika had said.
 

“I can tell,” he
replied, putting a finger in his book and closing it.

“I don’t feel like
studying today.”
 
She’d turned in her
seat, tucking one foot underneath her body.
 
“Tell me all about your favorite book.”

“My favorite
book?”

“Well, I assume you
read,” she laughed, gesturing to the small pile in front of him.
 
They were military history books.
 
Her laugh made him display a rare smile.
 
They began to talk, the chat morphing into a
three hour talk across the street in a bar.
 
She drank beer; he had water.
 
When
darkness fell, they said their goodbyes with Monika scrawling her mobile number
for him.
 
Since that time, beginning
gradually, they would meet to go to a movie or a football match.
 
The relationship, while platonic, had
deepened.
 
Gage suspected she dated men
in
Saarbrücken
and, while he felt sharp pangs of
jealousy, he hadn’t said anything about it.
 
And what could he say? More recently, though, Monika’s
feelings (and actions) toward him had been more overt.
 
She would hold his hand, pat his knee, hand
lingering; she looked at him differently, sometimes adjusting his hair,
scratching the back of his head with her nails.
 
Even still, when they spent nights together,
Gage would sleep on his couch, Monika in the bed.
 
It’s just how things had progressed.
 
But two weeks before, the last time he had
seen her, she had kissed him, full on the lips as she left his flat after a lazy
weekend of reading books, watching mindless American movies and eating good
food.