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“Not about the lads in Belfast, then?” said O’Keefe.
“Can’t use the same plot twice,” said Rowse. “The publishers wouldn’t have it. This one’s about America.”
They talked through the night. And drank. Rowse had a rock-hard head for whiskey, which was just as well. O’Keefe let him go at dawn. He walked back to his hotel to blow away the whiskey fumes.
The others worked on Kleist in the abandoned warehouse to which they had taken him after Rowse left the club. The big doorman held him down, and another Palestinian used the instruments.
Uli Kleist was very tough, but the Palestinians had learned about pain in South Beirut. Kleist took all he could, but he talked before dawn. They let him die as the sun rose. It was a welcome release.
The big Irishman from the men’s room watched and listened, occasionally dabbing his bleeding mouth. His orders from O’Keefe were to find out what the German knew about Rowse’s presence in Hamburg. When it was over, he reported what he had learned. The IRA station head nodded.
“I thought there was more to it than a novel,” he said. Later, he sent a cable to a man in Vienna. It was carefully worded.
When Rowse left O’Keefe’s flat and walked back through the waking city to the railway station hotel, one of his minders moved quietly in behind him. The other kept watch on the abandoned warehouse but did not interfere.
In the lunch hour, Rowse ate a large bratwürst, heavily laced with sweet German mustard. He bought it from a Schnellimbiss, one of those stands on streetcorners that prepare the delicious sausages as snacks for those in a hurry. As he ate, he talked out of the side of his mouth to the man beside him.
“Do you think O’Keefe believed you?” asked McCready.
“He may have done. It’s a plausible enough explanation. Thriller writers, after all, have to research some odd things in some strange places. But he may have had doubts. He’s no fool.”
“Do you think Kleist believed you?”
Rowse laughed. “No, not Uli. He’s convinced I’m some sort of renegade turned mercenary, looking for arms on behalf of a client. He was too polite to say so, but the novel-research story didn’t fool him.”
“Ah,” said McCready. “Well, perhaps last night was an added bonus. You’re certainly getting yourself noticed. Let’s see if Vienna gets you farther down the trail. By the way, you booked yourself on a flight tomorrow morning. Pay cash at the airport.”
The Vienna flight was via Frankfurt and took off on time. Rowse was in business class. After takeoff, the stewardess distributed newspapers. As it was an internal flight, there were no English ones. Rowse could speak halting German and decipher headlines. The one covering much of the lower half of the front page of the Morgenpost did not need deciphering.
The face in the picture had its eyes closed and was surrounded by garbage. The headline read, SLAYER OF DRUG BARONS FOUND DEAD. The text below said two garbage collectors had found the body near a rubbish bin close to the docks. The police were treating the case as a gangland revenge killing.
Rowse, however, knew better. He suspected that an intervention by his SAS minders could have saved his German friend. He rose and walked through the curtains down the aisle to the economy-class toilets. Near the rear of the plane, he dropped the newspaper into the lap of a rumpled-looking man reading the in-flight magazine.
“You bastard,” he hissed.
Somewhat to Rowse’s surprise, Major Kariagin took his call at the Soviet Embassy at his first attempt. Rowse spoke in Russian.
SAS soldiers—most especially the officers—have to be multitalented creatures. As the basic SAS fighting unit has only four men, a wide spectrum of proficiencies is necessary. Within the four-man group, all will have advanced medical training, and all will be able to handle a radio. They will have several languages among them, apart from their varied fighting skills. As the SAS has operated in Malaya, Indonesia, Oman, and Central and South America, apart from its NATO role, the favored languages have always been Malay, Arabic, and Spanish. For the NATO role, the preferred proficiencies have been Russian (of course) and one or two Allied languages. Rowse spoke French, Russian, and Irish Gaelic.
For a complete stranger to telephone Major Kariagin at the embassy was not so odd, bearing in mind the major’s secondary task of keeping an eye on the stream of applications made to the Czech arms outlet, Omnipol.
Intergovernmental applications were made to the Husak government in Prague. They did not concern him. Others, from more dubious sources, came to the external office of Omnipol, based in neutral Vienna. Kariagin saw them all. Some he approved, some he referred to Moscow for a decision, others he vetoed out of hand. What he did not tell Moscow was that his judgment could be influenced by a generous tip. He agreed to meet Rowse that evening at Sacher’s.
Kariagin did not look like a caricature Russian. He was smooth, groomed, barbered, and well tailored. He was known at the famous restaurant. The headwaiter showed him to a corner table away from the orchestra and the babble of the voices of the other diners. The two men sat and ordered Schnitzel with a dry, light Austrian red wine.
Rowse explained his need for information for his next novel.
Kariagin listened politely. “These American t
errorists ...” he said when Rowse had finished.
“Fictional terrorists,” said Rowse.
“Of course. These fictional American terrorists—what would they be looking for?”
Rowse passed over a typed sheet that he took from his breast pocket. The Russian read the list, raised an eyebrow, and passed it back.
“Impossible,” he said. “You are talking to the wrong man. Why did you come to see me?”