Blood of the Assassin

CHAPTER 1





Sweat streamed down Heinrich Vogel’s face in spite of the chill air gusting through the Berlin streets. The crisp wind sliced through his suit trousers, the heavy overcoat he hugged tight against his slim frame of little use. His footfalls echoed dully off the three a.m. façades of the gray apartment buildings framing both sides of the darkened Obenstrautstrase, the ponderous branches of the surrounding trees rustling overhead as he made his way from shadow to shadow, clinging to the night like a lover. He felt his mind playing tricks on him – no surprise after twenty-four hours like those he’d just had. At the next intersection, he paused, ears straining for any hint of pursuit. Nothing. It was all in his imagination.

A noise from down the block froze Heinrich in his tracks. Logic said it was impossible that he’d been followed – he had been meticulously careful, except for the one calculated risk he’d been forced to chance in order to get the information. A risk that may prove to be my undoing, he thought grimly.

When his informant had turned up dead of an apparent heroin overdose that morning, only hours after their meeting, he’d been immediately suspicious, although the police were treating it as just another dead junkie in a city battling an insidious wave of drug abuse among its former East German population. Unemployment was endemic in whole segments of the demographic, and an entire generation had grown up without prospects after the Wall had come down, leaving Berlin with a lasting legacy of intravenous drug use and crime.

But Heinrich knew that for all his informant’s faults, he hadn’t been a junkie. Perhaps it had been the only vice the man hadn’t embraced. The death had therefore served as an early warning to Heinrich – it was without question a murder, and the timing was too coincidental for him to brush off. After hearing the news, he had spent all day going about his business, filling out tedious reports, the hours crawling past in seeming slow motion in the busy offices of the metropolitan police where he worked as a civilian staffer. When it hit quitting time, he had stayed late, waiting until the day shift disappeared, and then had made his way to a quiet restaurant a few blocks from the huge building that housed his offices, as he did most nights – he was single, no steady relationship, so nobody waiting at home for him with a hot meal and a warm smile.

He’d been pushing the food around his plate and sipping at his Bitburger pilsner for ten minutes when he’d spotted another solitary diner at the far end of the restaurant, who had seemed completely uninterested in him – except for a telltale glance over his book when he’d thought Heinrich wasn’t watching.

That had been enough.

Without hurrying, Heinrich had slipped some euros under his glass and gone to the rear of the restaurant to use the bathroom. Once he had been out of sight of the dining room, he’d made a quick dash for the rear service door, surprising the wait staff moving into the adjacent kitchen, but he’d bluffed his way through, holding his phone out as though it explained everything.

Once through the heavy steel door he’d found himself in an alley, overflowing garbage cans stacked by the back exits that lined the sidewalks, and he’d hurried away from the restaurant to the more crowded plaza a block north.

Behind him, the restaurant door had slammed shut again, confirming his worst fears – somehow, some way, he’d been blown, and now they would want to discover how much he knew.

He’d picked up his pace, afraid to look over his shoulder, debating his options. He couldn’t chance going to his apartment. It was a guarantee that they would be waiting for him. His bolting out of the restaurant had stripped any veneer of deniability from him – innocent men didn’t run from strangers eating schnitzel among a hundred others.

As he’d turned the corner onto the busy boulevard that fronted the plaza, he’d caught a glimpse of the man from the restaurant a hundred yards down the alley. He’d bee-lined for a fast food restaurant where a throng of teens was loitering, and then had slipped out into traffic, jaywalking to get across to the far curb before his pursuer emerged from the alley’s mouth.

A VW Passat had almost collided with him, but he’d dodged out of the way just in time, the sleek anthracite bumper missing him by inches, and then he’d been on the sidewalk, disappearing into the milling pedestrians at the plaza’s edge. He hadn’t waited to confirm that he’d lost his tail, but instead had made his way across the square to a U-Bahn station and descended the stairs before hurrying to a turnstile and slipping through with a swipe of his card.

Standing in the busy subway station, he’d struggled over which line to take, and then decided on whichever arrived soonest. A whistle of air had come from one of the passageways to his right, and he’d pushed past the slower moving travelers to get to the platform just as the train pulled to a stop, its doors opening with a whoosh and disgorging a stream of tired passengers before he stepped aboard.

His mind had raced over his alternatives. One thing was certain – he needed to get the information he’d been given to his control officer sooner rather than later. But the man hadn’t picked up the phone any of the times he’d called that day or the night before. He probably wasn’t in town. There was no reason for urgency on his part – Heinrich’s windfall bombshell of information had come in completely unexpectedly. Normally Heinrich and his control would communicate once every few weeks, which in the current environment of non-aggression was more than sufficient. Nobody had expected Heinrich to get something this hot dropped into his lap, so there had been no emergency protocol set up.

The train had lurched forward and quickly clattered its way to the next station, and Heinrich had used the lull to consider his choices – none of which had been particularly appealing. He’d need to disappear, which would require money – a lot of money, which Heinrich didn’t exactly have at his fingertips. But surely the information would be worth a fortune – at least a small one, which would be more than enough to take him to a new town and equip him with a new identity. Maybe even get him out of Germany entirely. Somewhere warm, where he could run a bar and spend his days on the beach.

The screeching of steel wheels had jolted him out of his daydream and forced him back into the moment. Yes, perhaps the information would buy him a ticket to somewhere else, but first he would have to pass it to his handler. Based on what he knew, that wouldn’t be easy – people got killed over far less than this every day, and he had no illusions that because he was a low-level police department clerk he wouldn’t be targeted. If he was right, the data was pure dynamite. And as with all highly explosive materials, it would have to be treated delicately.

Four stations later he’d gotten out at Wilmersdorfer Strasse and emerged into the night, moving to the pedestrian thoroughfare, thousands of his fellow Berliners around him, buying him a temporary measure of security. He’d fished his cell phone from his overcoat pocket and dialed his handler’s number yet again, but it had gone to voicemail. He’d left his fourth message of the day, this one more urgent than the earlier ones.

“This is Heinrich. I was followed from work. I think I’ve been compromised. You need to bring me in. Like I said earlier – I’ve got something...big. Really big. Call me. I can’t go home. I’m out on the streets. My phone’s on.”

He’d hung up and stared at the little screen with frustration, and then sighed. It would do no good to get any more agitated. It wouldn’t be much longer until his phone rang, and then it would all be over.

That had been seven hours earlier. His control had finally called a half hour ago and set up a meet, sounding more annoyed than concerned. So now, after as many beers to soothe his frazzled nerves, he was alone on a desolate street in the wee hours, and someone who meant him no good was coming for him.

He heard footsteps echoing down the block – at least two men, moving quickly. His eyes swept the street for possible hiding places. He was still too far from the rendezvous point, so there wouldn’t be any help from that direction. And he was out of options.

Then he spotted it. A black iron gate, maybe seven feet high, but scalable.

The question was whether he could do so quietly enough that they wouldn’t hear him. And if he could, whether there was an escape route on the other side. He peered into the gloom, and then the footsteps picked up their pace, making his decision for him.

Heinrich scrambled up the gate, driven by fear and desperation, and was at the top, hoisting himself over, when his coat caught on one of the faux spear heads that served as flimsy protection against attempting precisely what he was doing. He pulled at it, desperately trying to free himself, the sound of his pursuers now too close for comfort.

The coat gave with a tear and he dropped inside, falling against the cement walkway and landing on his arm, which snapped with a muffled crack, the pain instant and mind-numbing. Tears welled in his eyes as he stifled a cry, and then he forced himself to his feet, his breath stopped in his chest from the agony. It was at least a fracture, if not worse, but the sound of running footsteps urged him forward. He edged down the cramped side passage, a service access way for the building that was primarily used to haul leaking garbage bins, judging by the stink of it.

He was nearly to the rear corner of the building when two men stopped at the gate. He was far enough that they wouldn’t see him. Unless they had flashlights.

Heinrich watched them, willing his breathing to a shallow draw, and tried to shrink into the surrounding concrete, pressing himself against the wall, groping, hoping to find a recess he could use for cover. His fingers felt along the edge of the building and had reached the rim of a doorway when his heart sank. One of the two men was pointing at the top of the gate, where a thin strip of overcoat fluttered in the breeze.

He bolted into the inky black at the far end of the walkway, and then a chip of concrete struck his face, ripping a gash as his ears registered the distinctive pop of a silenced small-caliber pistol, followed almost instantly by the tell-tale whistle of a ricochet. Another pop, and then the whine of a slug skimming the wall on the opposite side, only five feet away. He instinctively ducked and threw himself onto the hard cement path, hoping he could crawl to a position of relative safety behind the building, out of range of the rounds his assailants were firing blindly in the hopes of a lucky hit.

Blood ran freely down his face from the cut, but he ignored it – the least of his worries at the moment. He almost fainted from the pain radiating from his ruined arm, but he inched along, using his good hand and his legs to further himself from the danger at the gate. He’d just reached the corner when he heard the iron barrier clatter as one of the men pulled himself to the top, and Heinrich understood that he would only have seconds to find a way out, or die cold and alone from a gunman’s slug to the back of the head. If he was lucky. If not, they would torture him for hours first, in an effort to get him to reveal what he knew.

And then he was clear of the passageway and at the back of the building. He drew himself to his feet and stumbled blindly in the gloom, hoping for a reprieve of some sort as the sound of his pursuers moving towards him echoed off the walls, their footsteps bringing with them the certainty of his life ending in moments, barring a miracle.