The Death Trust Read online

  “What makes you think Ramstein OSI can’t handle this on our own?” she said, holding me with those eyes.

  Oh, right. Insecurity. I said, “What I think is neither here nor there, Special Agent. It’s what Washington thinks.” As I said this, I wondered whether I should come clean and tell Masters exactly what Washington thought of me, but I didn’t want to spoil my little speech with reality and reinforce her already negative view.

  “Are you that good an investigator, Cooper, that you can just waltz in here and show us yokels how to do it right?”

  Perhaps Masters felt she had me on the run. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Special Agent. I don’t want to be here any more than you don’t want me to be here,” I informed her. “I was doing perfectly well back in Maryland, ending my marriage and screwing things up in my own life. Now I have to put all that on pause to hold your hand here—figuratively, of course.” My patience had pretty much run out. And my toothache was back. I was hungry. I also had absolutely no idea how a NATO command, let alone one as seriously big as Ramstein, worked. Masters was right. I was way out of my depth. And, on top of that, I stank. I really should have taken that shower when I could have.

  The look on Masters’s face was the same one I had seen on Gruyere’s—the puzzle-with-the-missing-pieces one. “Are you usually so…?”

  “Lovable?”

  “Sarcastic, negative, contrary.”

  “It’s the toothache talking. I’ll be much better when I have something to distract me from the pain. Like, if you could just shoot me in the leg or something.”

  “Can we go now?” she said. “It’s nine ten. We’re late.”

  I shrugged. She eased the Merc out from the curb.

  The administration building was a long way from Roach’s hangar, so the drive was a good opportunity to take in the base.

  Something from Masters’s direction landed in my lap. It was a bag of what looked like dried apple stems.

  “What’re these?” I asked.

  “Cloves,” said Masters. “I bought them back in K-town.”

  “For me?”

  I picked up the bag and took a closer look at the contents.

  “My grandma’s recipe for toothache. Hold one against the tooth with your tongue and the clove will numb the nerve. They’re good for the breath, too. You should take half a dozen.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “I think.” I suddenly felt bad about being so pushy.

  Masters’s cell saved me from apologizing. It began playing an old KC and the Sunshine Band number, which transported me to my high-school prom, the backseat of my parents’ car, and a pro-wrestling bout with the catch on my date’s bra.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, then “yes, sir,” followed by another, “yes, sir.” Masters managed to pull the fang out of the record groove and said, “We’re at the building now, sir.”

  “Let me guess: Colonel Klink?” I asked.

  “General von Koeppen,” she corrected as the front wheels of her Merc hit the driveway a little too fast and the oil pan clanged on the road.

  “Yeah, that’s what I said—Colonel Klink. Can you ring him back and tell him I know nuh-sink, nuh-sink…”

  Masters and I stood at attention. Wolfgang von Koeppen looked nothing like the buffoon in Hogan’s Heroes, which was disappointing. Instead, he was tall, lean, and tanned, with blond hair and blue eyes. He wouldn’t have been out of place in a Ralph Lauren ad, standing behind the spoked wheel of an old sloop, sweater tied around his shoulders, a pretty young thing behind him laughing in the breeze. Or perhaps sitting in the backseat of a black Mercedes wearing the uniform of the Gestapo Reichsführer, directing a somber queue of women and children toward a railway car.

  “That will be all, Anna,” he said to Masters in an accent that was vaguely English. Something in the way she turned and walked out told me that Masters didn’t appreciate being dismissed. We were, after all, conducting this investigation together. I was at a loss as to why she didn’t stand her ground. She would have been within her rights to do so. “At ease, Major,” he said, giving me the once-over.

  “Special Agent,” I said, getting up the German’s nose from the starting gate.

  “Yes, of course. Special Agent.”

  Ordinarily, I’d have been in civilian clothes while on the job: a suit, or maybe pants and a blazer for that relaxed, hard-ass look. It’s easier to interview an officer, especially one higher up the ladder than you, when he or she has no idea what your rank is. Back at Brandywine, when Arlen had grouped “your passport” and “Ramstein” in the same sentence, I’d decided to put on an ACU. If I was headed to an air base in Germany, wearing a standard Army Combat Uniform would make moving around the place a lot easier. In a suit, I’d be stopped every other minute and asked to show ID. But I was now experiencing the downside of that decision. General von Koeppen looked me up and down and I could tell he didn’t like what he was seeing: an officer of inferior rank, and a rumpled one at that. Maybe Masters was right about the whole neatness thing. At least the feeling between Himmler and me was mutual from the get-go.

  The general motioned for me to sit. He said, “The circumstances that have brought you to Ramstein are indeed unfortunate—” At that moment, one of his phones rang. He apologized and picked up the handset. “Ja,” he began. The call immediately consumed his attention. He swiveled in his seat and looked out the window at the C-5s and C-130s parked on the apron below. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, given that ja was the sum total of my grasp of the language. With his back to me, I used the opportunity to scope out his office. The place smelled powerfully of pine and vanilla—an air-freshener, I guessed—and the room was spotless. I wondered if he would have the chair I was sitting in disinfected after I left.

  Occupying one complete wall was a bookshelf with glass doors, presumably to keep out the nonexistent dust, which housed a number of rows of red and green leather-bound tomes. Against another wall was a glass cabinet containing a pilot’s flight helmet, complete with oxygen mask, as well as a beautifully finished scale model of a Jaguar, a fighter, the German air force’s equivalent of our F-15 Eagle. Above this cabinet, a number of framed photos, some black-and-white but most in color, were symmetrically arrayed. A few showed the general with his squadron buddies, presumably, at various postings throughout Europe. Others had him riding at show-jumping events or standing beside assorted nags with ribbons around their necks. I recognized a face in one of these photos: Prince Charles, the future King of England. Other faces began to look familiar. One photo featured the general and a former U.S. president laughing together. Others showed him trackside at Formula One motor races with drivers and/or Hollywood stars. This guy was a player.

  I turned my attention to the general’s desk. It was a vast gray granite number. There was the ubiquitous laptop, another smaller model of the Jaguar, and a couple of phones. No in-trays or paper of any kind. I wondered how “hands-on” he was. Roach had commented that Scott was a known workaholic, and I found myself wondering how much of the big picture Scott allowed his German comrade to handle. Zip, most likely. Thanks to the briefing notes provided Stateside, I knew the number-two position at Ramstein had to be filled by a German officer of the rank of lieutenant general. The chief of staff was a British air marshal. The French had their finger in the pie, too, along with the Belgians, the Czechs, the Poles, and more than half a dozen other nations. Being a North Atlantic Treaty Organization facility, the makeup of the combined HQ here had been set up to reflect NATO’s diversity. How the hell they got anything organized was beyond me.

  “It’s a good plane, ja?”

  “Certainly looks the business,” I said, caught out. While my eyes had been snooping around, von Koeppen had finished his call.

  “Do you fly?”

  “As little as possible. I’ve developed issues with it over time.”

  “A great shame. Well, an air force needs all types of talents to function properly, doesn’t it? And yours must be
exceptional for your Pentagon to have sent you all the way to investigate an accident, albeit a tragic one.”

  He was trying hard, working it.

  “A murder investigation, actually. The crash investigation team has concluded that General Scott’s plane was sabotaged.”

  “Sabotage!” he said, jumping up as if his butt had suddenly located a nail in the seat of his leather chair.

  He walked around his office a couple of times with one hand on his waist and the other a balled fist against his chin. “General Scott…murdered?” He shook his head. “I don’t believe it. God!”

  I let von Koeppen have a moment uninterrupted with the brutal reality.

  “That poor woman,” he said. “Mrs. Scott will be devastated. Have you informed her yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “When will you do that?”

  “After I leave here.”

  Von Koeppen went to his window and watched a couple of those Turkish F-4s take off. “I don’t believe it,” he said again, shaking his head.

  “If you don’t mind, I have to ask you some questions.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know anyone who may have wanted to kill the general?” Just about every murder investigation has that question asked at some stage. You always hope the answer’s yes.

  “No,” he said, sticking to the usual pattern.

  “No enemies?”

  “No.”

  “Did he gamble? Have any bad habits that might have brought him into contact with the wrong crowd?”

  “No. General Scott was exactly what he seemed. He was at the top of his game, a fine pilot and an able administrator. He was also my friend. How was it done?”

  “A vital part of his glider was tampered with.”

  “What? How?”

  “We don’t know yet, sir.”

  “Who would have wanted him dead?” he asked, directing the question at the mirror shine of his black leather shoes.

  And why? I added mentally.

  “You will break the news gently to his widow…?”

  No, I’ll bash her over the head with it. “Of course, General.”

  “Anything you need to solve this crime, just ask,” he said. “It’s a terrible business…”

  “Maybe one thing, sir.”

  “Yes?”

  Despite what I’d said to Gruyere about hearing the news of Scott’s death on CNN, I was reasonably sure that the story had not yet been made public. “I think it would be a good idea to release selective details to the press before they start printing unsubstantiated rumors. I would suggest also that we attribute General Scott’s death to accidental causes. At least for the time being.”

  “Of course. Good idea.”

  The phone rang again.

  Von Koeppen excused himself and grabbed the handset with annoyance. “Ja,” he said. His tone instantly changed to one of deep concern. “Ja, of course, of course. Ja, I’ll tell him.”

  Whoever was on the other end of the line was upset and giving von Koeppen both barrels. It sounded like a woman. He hung up, his face a mixture of embarrassment and anger. “Did you give orders for the police to seize General Scott’s files?”

  What?

  Before I could answer, he said, “That was Mrs. Harmony Scott. She is very distressed. I order you to release her husband’s effects back to her.”

  I assumed this was Masters’s doing. If so, General von Koeppen placed me in a pickle. Masters and I weren’t much of a team, but she was the only team I had. She hadn’t warned me about going straight to Scott’s widow’s home, which could have been tit for tat with von Koeppen for his offhand dismissal of her. But I hoped it was for some other more substantial reason, because my reply to the acting commander of Ramstein Air Base was, “No, sir. I won’t do that.”

  “I’m giving you a direct order, Major,” he said, stressing my rank to remind me who was boss. We were back to that superiority shit again.

  I stood and faced him. “I’m sorry, General, but I cannot obey that order.” I was amazed at how quickly the dynamics in the room had changed. Masters must have left von Koeppen’s office, driven like Michael Schumacher over to Scott’s house, and sealed the victim’s records, ignoring as she did so the widow’s attack of apoplexia. I wondered if this was the reason why Masters so readily left von Koeppen’s office. Whatever, the woman had balls.

  The door opened and a tall blonde with an unbelievably ample chest, wearing the uniform of a sergeant in the USAF, entered the room. She had to be von Koeppen’s PA—handpicked, I had no doubt, because of her efficiency. The sergeant informed her boss that some famous person was on the line and gave the name. The name she dropped was familiar and then it clicked—the President of Germany had called for a chat. Von Koeppen’s face had flushed a bright red and his eyes were locked with mine. He was a man unused to having his orders ignored. But he knew, and I knew, and I knew he knew, that I answered to a higher authority—namely the big cheese back at Andrews. The general blinked first. A call from the German president himself could not be ignored. “Dismissed, Special Agent,” he said with an imperious wave for the benefit of his PA.

  The sergeant held the door open for me. I heard von Koeppen pick up the handset and start talking in a jocular fashion, switching from shitty to happy camper on a dime. The performance reminded me that generals are as much politicians as soldiers. As I passed the noncom, I happened to catch her name tag, and not because it was clinging to possibly the most spectacular hills this side of the Himalayas. It was because I caught the smile, a faint one, one that implied she appreciated seeing von Koeppen with a bug fisted up his colon. Maybe the general wasn’t well regarded, and I was suddenly interested to know why.

  FIVE

  I wanted to have a few words with von Koeppen’s PA, but it would have to wait. I bummed a lift back to my rental outside Roach’s hangar. At the security gate, I asked for, and was given, the dead general’s residential address. Before the soldier gave it up he checked my identity again and cleared it with Ramstein’s OSI office.

  The drive back to Kaiserslautern was uneventful and it gave me time to think. I’ve been present many times when bad news has been delivered to the friends and relatives of murder victims. Von Koeppen’s reaction to the news was a terrific performance. Even though I didn’t like the man, I believed his shock was genuine. A high percentage of murders are committed by people close to the victim and that fact was going through my mind when I broke the news to him, my personal radar tuned in. But something didn’t feel right. I had expected to be grilled about where the investigation was, what Roach’s findings had been, whether Washington had been informed, who I would be interviewing, and so on. But there was none of that. He expressed his sorrow and surprise that Scott’s violent end had been the result of persons unknown, and then I was sent on my way. He seemed most concerned about Harmony Scott. Was that because she was a widow left alone by her loving husband, or because her father was America’s top head-kicker? Or some other reason? I gave a mental shrug. I still had no suspects. I also still had an exposed nerve in a left lower molar. I drove down the highway with my knees doing the steering while my hands searched for the packet of cloves. The dried herb worked wonders, especially when combined with chemicals from Pfizer. I thanked Masters’s granny and popped two of the little black stems into my mouth.

  Not surprisingly, General Scott and his wife lived on the opposite side of town from where I was staying. The drive to their home took me past the entrance to the Palatinate Forest, one of the largest remaining contiguous forests in Germany, or so the tourist blurb on my map said.

  I pulled up behind three camouflage-painted Land Rovers, each wearing the white star on blue of the NCMP—the NATO Combined Military Police. A purple Mercedes headed the column. It was a sprawling home with exposed wooden beams and red-painted stucco in the local style. Impressive and ugly. I left my vehicle and walked up the path that bisected an immaculate lawn punctuated by gardens full of
brightly colored flowers. Beside the house, nestling up against it in taupe-painted board with a curved white stone-chip driveway leading up to it, was a three-car garage. Inside were two white Mercedes and a crystal blue 1968 Mustang sedan. At the halfway point between front gate and front door sat a large fountain with water gushing from the mouths of leaping bronze virgins cavorting with dolphins and heroically muscled Teutons. What else?

  The massive oak front door swung open just as I was about to lift the heavy brass door knocker: an eagle hinged at its beak, a small deer skewered in its talons. Nice. Eight people stumbled out onto the covered porch, Masters among them. Each carried a brown cardboard document storage box. Masters had a laptop under an arm, protecting it like a running back shielding the ball. Everyone appeared to be in retreat, fighting a rearguard action. Snapping at their heels was a small, anorexic woman with perfectly coifed blond hair and makeup to match. She wore a black silk blouse with a tan suede skirt. What with the coloring, bone structure, and attitude I was reminded of a Doberman-whippet cross.

  “Who are you?” she demanded when she saw me. Her accent was Boston with a touch of London fog. Before I had a chance to answer, she said, “I know who you are. You’re the ringleader of this insult to my husband. I’ve just spoken to General von Koeppen about you.” She read the name on my uniform. “Yes, Cooper, that’s right. Now, have my husband’s effects returned to his study immediately.” She spoke like someone used to being obeyed.

  “As I explained to you, Mrs. Scott,” said Masters, jumping in, I suspected, more for my benefit than for the widow’s, “we are securing General Scott’s records as part of our investigation into his murder. Whoever killed your husband tried hard to make it look like an accident, ma’am. When the word gets around that we know what really happened, the killer or killers may get nervous, and bold. If there is any evidence contained in these records that may lead to their identity, and the murderer knows that, then quite possibly you’ll be in danger. Removing them to a more secure place puts you out of harm’s way.”