The Rendition (23 page)

I stepped out of my shoes, slipped off my jacket, and removed my jeans. Sylvia saw what I was doing and nodded. Slipping off her sweater, she used it to make a package out of my blood-soaked clothes, then tossed the package into the trunk. It was a small precaution, but in the event anyone thought to go over our car, there wouldn't be any trace of Quemal's blood on the upholstery.

When Sylvia asked if I could drive, I said I could. With the car on the road, I found the necessity to concentrate on driving prevented me from thinking about what had just happened.

After a second, Sylvia said, “Let me tell you something, Alex. Nobody gives a damn about a dead whore. And something else. In this business, no good deed goes unpunished. Ever.” When I only shrugged, she said, “You're too goddamned soft-hearted. I don't see how you've survived this long.”

I could have said that was maybe the reason I decided to retire. Instead, I said, “Dumb luck, Sylvia. Pure dumb luck.”

“Well, I sure as hell hope your dumb luck holds. For my sake as well as yours.”

And that was all either of us said for the remainder of the trip back to the safe house.

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I dabbed antiseptic onto the gash on the side of my neck, then covered it with gauze and a large bandage. I was adding another small permanent souvenir to my already extensive collection of scars and gashes that I've collected over the years. Thank you, Quemal, for giving me something to remember you by.

I remember Buck once saying that it was the emotional scars guys collected in this business, not the physical ones, that did them in. Thinking back on the events of the evening, I could see the wisdom of that remark. The gash on the side of my neck would heal and be forgotten. Likewise with the bruise on my face. But my visit to the K Klub would provide the raw material for any number of nightmares.

I heard the sound of the shower running in the other bathroom. Like me, Sylvia seemed to feel a need to wash things away. I stayed in my own shower a long time, scrubbing myself with soap, letting the water run over me, and trying my best to keep my mind on other things. Twenty minutes later, wearing a shirt, a pair of slacks, and no shoes, I entered the living room where Sylvia was seated in the big armchair.

Pointing to the bandage, I said, “It's going to leave a scar. I hope it doesn't affect my sex appeal.”

“I'm not in the mood for your dumb remarks.”

Although she had a slightly vacant look in her eyes and looked pale, Sylvia seemed calm. All she had on was a chemise. On the coffee table in front of her was a bottle of Jim Beam and a glass. After taking a long swallow from the glass in her hand, she nodded at the bottle. “Would you like one?”

“More than one, probably.”

“I'm on my second.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Not yet. Soon.”

The apartment somehow seemed much cozier than it had previously. I'd packed away my blood-spattered clothes in a plastic bag. I'd toss them in some distant, untraceable garbage bin the next day. The jeans and flannel shirt would be easy to replace, but I'd miss the green golf jacket, which I'd brought over from the States and that I'd always worn when I felt I needed luck. Well, if it had done its job on this occasion, it had been for the final time.

Sylvia fixed me with a stare. “Are you all right? You don't look so great.”

“I'll be fine.” I took a long swallow of bourbon. I felt strange, kind of empty.

After a brief pause, she said. “Tell me about Quemal. What do we know?”

“I figure he murdered two people—the Vogt woman and this Albanian who showed up and accused him of betrayal, of breaking the
besa
. There might be some others we don't know about.”

Sylvia nodded. “There probably are. They used him as their hit man. When they wanted someone out of the way, they sent Quemal the Assassin.”

“He did a good job of framing Brinkman for the Vogt woman's murder.”

“Yes, but he had help.” When I frowned, Sylvia said, “From the German cops.”

That was news to me—but I clearly remembered Max's cautious reaction when I first asked him about Brinkman. That was on my first day in-country, and I wasn't yet picking up the small signals. Max knew something but hadn't let on.

Staring off into the distance, Sylvia said, “We may never find Nadaj now.”

My involvement with all this had begun with our ill-fated Nadaj rendition.

“Why are we so anxious to get our hands on Nadaj?”

“The movement toward independence in Kosovo is strong. It's being spearheaded by the KLA, and it's going to happen. That's why the President visited Albania in June—to talk about Kosovo. The province is going to declare its independence from Serbia.”

“When?”

“Soon, very soon. The United States is going to recognize Kosovo's declaration of independence. So will the other countries of the EU.”

“The KLA are a bunch of terrorists. They're supported by drug trafficking—and by places like the Kalashni Klub. Max says the Albanian Mafia has a stranglehold on—”

“On human trafficking. I know that, Alex, but all this is political. Russia is allied with Serbia. We're allied with Albania—and with Kosovo. Our government isn't enthusiastic about the KLA, but we don't have much choice in the matter.”

“If we're supporting the KLA and Nadaj is an officer, why are we—”

“Why do we want him?” She paused to take a sip of bourbon.

“You keep saying he did something.” As I poured a second whiskey, I remembered what Tania had said. “What was the betrayal?”

Sylvia looked surprised when I mentioned “betrayal.” Maybe I knew more than she wanted me to know.

Seated in the large chair with her legs extended onto a small foot-stool and her thighs completely exposed, Sylvia studied me. “You ask a lot of questions.”

I couldn't keep from ogling her legs, but she didn't seem to care.

“I have to admit that I was awfully surprised when the Vogt woman was murdered. I hadn't expected that. None of us did.” When she said “us,” I assumed she was talking about people back in D.C. like Jerry Shenlee, perhaps even the members of the National Security Council, perhaps even the secretary of defense and his staff. “They wanted Ursula Vogt out of the picture. She'd become dangerous.”

“Who's ‘they'?”

Sylvia seemed to be thinking out loud, and I let her talk. “Quemal

knew what had happened in Afghanistan.” She paused. “You understand what the
besa
is.”

“It's a kind of pledge. I know the soldiers enlisting in the KLA give their
besa
.”

Sylvia nodded. “In the mind of Kosovars the
besa
is something spiritual. If it's a pledge, it's a pledge not just to the living but also to one's ancestors, a pledge to live up to their ideals, to fulfill their hopes and dreams for the future. It's an assurance to them that they did not live their lives in vain. I don't think that we have an equivalent term in our culture.”

“Hopes and dreams for what?”

“For their homeland, for Kosovo.” Sylvia paused. “I don't think such pledges fit very well into our modern societies or have a place in our way of thinking. We make commitments, but we permit ourselves a certain amount of wiggle room. Certainly we don't have the same kind of political loyalties that people from the older societies feel.”

“It sounds medieval.”

“It has a strong medieval component. As you say, the soldiers give their
besa
when they enlist in the Kosovo Liberation Army. To violate the
besa
in the minds of these people is absolutely the worst thing you can do.”

“Muzaci, the soldier who was in Afghanistan, said Nadaj had broken the
besa
.”

“And he was killed for saying it. To save Nadaj's reputation.” When I didn't comment, Sylvia said, “Ursula Vogt was in Afghanistan. She dug up the facts, most of them. You saw the pictures. She got to know people in the Taliban. They put her on to it, obviously. The whole thing had been carefully planned, but they would have had to find the right individual to go along with it. That, of course, was Nadaj.” She paused. “When Kosovo declares independence, he could eventually become their first defense minister.”

“What was Nadaj going along with?”

“Right after nine-eleven, he traveled into Pakistan, where he made contact with Bin Laden and his people. But sometime in late
2005 or early 2006, he brought a company of soldiers from the Kosovo Liberation Army to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban. They were up in the mountains, moving through the caves, making it tough for our people to do very much.”

Sylvia looked at me. Her face was drawn. I saw lines that I hadn't seen before. I wondered if she'd ever killed anyone. There was no doubt she would have killed Tania without a qualm, in cold blood.

It's not exactly news that the female of the species is deadlier than the male.

Then she was talking again. “You heard the conversations between Ursula Vogt and Doug Brinkman. She was asking leading questions, leading him along. Getting him to say things that she could use.”

“Yes, I heard the conversations, but I don't think I'm following your reasoning. What was she trying to get him to say?”

“At first Ursula Vogt believed we were responsible for what happened in one of the caves. She was murdered because she began to realize what really happened wasn't the way she'd originally thought. They murdered her because they realized the damage she could do if she ever went public.”

As far as I was concerned, Sylvia was talking in riddles, but I decided to let her talk. Maybe at some point I'd be able to make some sense from the bits and pieces of information.

She fixed me with a stern expression. “Alex, let me tell you what the danger is now.” When I said I was listening, Sylvia said, “It's Brinkman. He's the next person they want to silence.” Before I could respond, she said, “We can't let him go to trial. He'll be dead by then.”

“You have to be kidding. We're supposed to get him out of jail?”

Again Sylvia glared at me. “What do you think we got you over here for? To play games? The government's paying you good money and—”

“And now I'm supposed to earn it?”

Sylvia nodded, a vacant expression in her eyes. She'd said more than she wanted to say, and I supposed I now knew things no one outside the National Security Council and the office of the secretary of defense knew. I needed something to settle my stomach. My head felt
like it was splitting apart. I stood up, went into the kitchen, found some aspirin. Before going to bed, I asked if she was all right. She didn't say anything, just nodded.

As I lay awake, I thought about what Sylvia had said about Ursula Vogt—that she'd been working on some kind of story from Afghanistan for her magazine, but then had ceased to believe that the story she had reported really had happened.

I continued to wonder what it was that had or had not happened in the mountains of Afghanistan before finally drifting off into a troubled sleep.

At nine a.m., two days after our visit to the K Klub, we were drinking coffee in the dining nook next to the kitchen. Neither of us had felt like breakfast. We were both still tense, almost as if we expected to hear the police start pounding on the door.

Sylvia said, “You never should have mentioned Quemal to the detectives. I still can't see why you volunteered that information.”

I could have said I only volunteered it because Max and I had picked up the information from Ursula Vogt's neighbor—and that the detective who asked me was Irmie. Instead, I said, “I never thought I'd end up shooting the guy.”

The fact I'd known Irmie years before was going to remain my little secret.

“There's something else you shouldn't have done.”

Sylvia was referring to the fact that I had let Tania escape. She would have killed Tania without a second thought.

“Tania will say only what her bosses tell her to say. Since she's almost certainly without a residence permit, they won't let her talk to the police.”

“That's what you hope, Alex. You fucked up. We should have killed her. No one would care about a dead whore.” After a moment, Sylvia said, “What we'll do is we'll ride it out, see what happens. Maybe we'll be lucky.”

“Maybe.” I took a sip of coffee, but didn't say anything more. One of the things I didn't want to mention to Sylvia was that the Munich
homicide cops have a 95 percent success rate in clearing cases. In other words, your chances of committing murder in this city and getting away with it were almost nil. We'd have to be really lucky to beat the odds.

Late that afternoon, while we were sorting through Ursula Vogt's stash, Sylvia slid three photographs across the table—and waited for a reaction.

She got one. After nearly choking on tea I was drinking, I said, “Where did you get these?”

“They were on one of the discs you brought back from Ursula Vogt's place. You're a gifted break-in artist.”

Then, pointing at the disc, she said, “You said you just scooped this stuff up without looking at what you were taking. This is all new, Alex. But these pictures answer a lot of questions.”

The pictures were of Kurt Mehling, the gentleman we'd seen on television, except now he wasn't in a television studio. Instead of a custom-tailored suit, he was wearing bloused fatigues, combat boots, a peaked cap, and wraparound sunglasses. In one of the pictures he was shaking hands with another smiling gentleman, Osama bin Laden. They were surrounded by half a dozen mujahedeen bodyguards, all of whom were armed and none of whom were smiling. In the background was a stone building of some kind.