Thousands of early evening commuters hurried into Hamburg's Hauptbahn station. The trains came and went on schedule. Only a few people weren't going anywhere and Willi was one of them. He wished the Turk could be as punctual as the German train system, but punctuality was too much to ask from a dealer, especially when you are desperate for what they have to sell.
Several potential customers cruised the young blonde man. Their heads motioned from him to accompany them into the Klo, but he had more pressing business than a visit to the public toilet with a family man with twenty minutes to kill till his train home. The police on the upper platform pegged the boy in the jean jacket for a hustler and an addict. They would have loved nothing better that to sent him on his way, but as a German citizen the young man had just as much right to loiter as the next person.
Willi tapped nervously.
Working for Cali earned him more money than the streets, there was no greater thrill than stealing a client's wallet and hearing his screams, as you ran out of the bushes. Everything now was all work and Willi hated work. He had a date with Hans tonight and a little heroin would help him get through the evening, because sex with a transvestite banker was too much like doing it with a woman for his tastes.
A smug smile broke across the hustler's lips, as a young boy in a flashy jogging outfit entered the station from Kirchen Allee. The teenage Palestinian might be thin as a rail, but Ali was the best kick boxer in Hamburg. Even the skinheads steered clear of the Leader of the White Snake Gang, unless they were scoring drugs.
Willi went into his pocket for the Reise he had conned off Hans this morning, saying the 1000 DM-note was for epidermal medicine. The love-lost banker was a born sucker for a lie. The two boys vectored across the platform toward each other. Willi and Ali traded the money for the heroin with a blurring sleight-of-hand exchange no one was supposed to see, unless someone was watching, of course the police had been waiting for just such a moment.
A man shouting for them to stop had the opposite effect.
The two young men darted through the passengers. The plainclothes policemen had no chance at catching either boy.
Once outside the terminal the two teenagers wordlessly split on Glockenglesser Wall.
By the corner of Spitalerstrasse Willi was in the clear and leaned against the wall, regaining his breath, then peeked around the corner. No police were in sight. Willi opened his hand and broke into a smile. Ali had given him an extremely good count. He would have loved to shoot up on the street, but that was asking for trouble, especially if you OD'd.
Short the money a taxi, he would take the U-bahn from Monckebergstrasse to the squalid safety of his Hafenstrasse squat. As he stepped away from the wall, the front end of a red Ferrari forced him back. The window rolled down. SS Tommy snarled, "Get in the car."
"No, thanks, I want to walk," Willi replied, for the blond pimp scared him and not a little either. Neo-Nazis had no use for Germans like Willi.
"I am not asking you. I am telling you." SS Tommy's voice warned running from the police was easier to get away from than him. "Cali wants to talk to you."
Willi knew that SS Tommy worked for Cali, but had a bad feeling about getting into the car that vanished when SS Tommy said, "You can shot up in my car on the way to the Reeperbahn."
Willi was too much of a junkie to refuse that offer.
He stuck the packet of drugs in his pants and sat in the low-slung sports car. SS Tommy drove slowly through the pedestrians to Steinstrasse, then accelerated onto the broader street. Willi asked, "What's Cali want me for?"
SS Tommy shrugged and said, "How am I to know. I just do what I am told."
"Just like me, handsome." Willi was comforted by knowing he was an important cog in Cali's plans. He should have kept his mouth shut, because SS Tommy backhanded his passenger with his right fist. The impact propelled Willi's head into the side window and the young hustler's unconscious body slumped down in the bucket seat.
"Next time you will watch your mouth," SS Tommy told his inert passenger. A trickle of blood formed a creek of red down Willi's chin and his eyes rolled back into his skull, signifying he would be out for the ride to Trittau.
Approaching the Von Hausen estate, SS Tommy dropped through the lower gears and the rutted driveway buffeted the sports car's underpinnings, until the Ferrari hit the paved courtyard by the edge of the woods.
Lukas Von Hausen emerged from the house. He had not been expecting the pimp and SS Tommy grinned upon seeing the annoyance on Lukas' face. He pointed to the bruises on the baron's face and asked, "Having wife problems?" "No, I ran into a door," Lukas replied, having heard the line from an American once.
"Keep your eyes open from now on." SS Tommy said, as he got out of the sports car.
Lukas looked at the unconscious boy in the front seat and asked, "Who is that?"
"The banker's boyfriend," SS Tommy answered, tugging the creases out of his leather shirt.
"What's he doing here?"
Somehow Lukas had imagined that this end of the business would stay in Hamburg. He had been wrong to assume anything.
"I remembered you saying you had a bomb shelter."
"Yes, but no one has used it for years."
"Well, all the more perfect to stash our guest for the next few days." SS Tommy effortlessly lifted the limp boy from the car. Lukas stood motionlessly, until SS Tommy said, "Show me the way."
The pimp slung the boy over his shoulder and followed the baron through the woods. Anyone unaware of where the bunker was would have walked right by its camouflaged entrance. Lukas stopped at a small mound covered with shrubs, then bent down to pull open a steel door to the shelter his father had installed in case of an atomic war or full-scale invasion by the Soviets.
"You first." SS Tommy said to Lukas.
"Why? You don't trust me?" Lukas had thought about locking the pimp inside the bunker, but that treachery was too obvious to a professional such as SS Tommy. He would have to devise something more devious or stupid to get rid of the pimp once this was over.
"I do not trust anyone. It is safer that way."
"Good, I feel the same way too." Lukas proceeded down the dusty steps into the mildewed hole. SS Tommy carried Willi down the stairs and the junkie's head scrapped against the wall.
Lukas flicked on a light. Neglect covered every surface with dust.
SS Tommy slapped Willi back to consciousness, then submitted him to an interrogation punctuated by brutal blows to the face and ribs.
Willi told them over and over again he was only following Cali's order to be the banker's lover and that they were leaving for Thailand next week. "Nothing else?"
SS Tommy scoured the young boy's memory with a series of kicks to the ribs, leaving Willi gasping for breath. Lukas joined in the fray to prove to SS Tommy he was more than a spectator.
With each punch Lukas came to really enjoy inflicting pain, but then deeper down he had always known that. He wondered how far he would have gone, if he had been in the SS. Unfortunately after a few exhausting minutes, Willi was unconscious without telling them anything new. Lukas asked, "What now?"
"We shut him in here and go. He's a big boy and can take care of himself." SS Tommy kicked the hustler in the side, eliciting a groan. Once they were above ground, SS Tommy rubbed his hands. The skin was scuffed and the tendons swollen. "I have to give it to him. The little Schwule took that like a man."
"Yes, he was a real man." Lukas would have given up after the first punch in the stomach by SS Tommy and maybe Willi would have too, if the pimp had given him a chance.
"What he say make any sense to you." The intensity of the interrogation also seconded as a warning for Lukas to think twice before double-crossing his partner.
"A few more pieces fell into the puzzle." Lukas' hunch that the banker had told his gay lover everything had paid off. The transvestite's embezzlement to pay for sex with the rent boy, the entrapment by Cali, the scheme to wire money to a Swiss account clarified what he had already suspected.
"Such as?" SS Tommy was tired of Lukas holding out on him, as if he were a lackey, instead of a partner. He would pay for that later.
"Their going to Thailand next Friday means whatever they have planned will happen then too."
"So we call the banker and tell him we have his friend. If this banker would sacrifice everything for this 'Klabfleisch', then I think we can do the same." SS Tommy brandished the hustler's tooth and leather jacket, saying, "Especially once he sees this."
"I was wondering what that was for?"
"Physical proof. You always need it in a kidnapping," SS Tommy declared to enlighten Lukas as to the gravity of their crime. "I will send this to the banker and you will call him. You know what to say?"
"I have a good idea."
"Me too."
Turning around, Lukas caught sight of his wife standing by the window.
SS Tommy also spotted the blonde wraith and asked, "Your wife will not call the police."
"Oh, no, my friend, I have locked her up with no phone," Lukas announced, sure the pimp would approve of such treatment.
"And afterwards?" Having a living witness to what had just transpired was an unnecessary worry.
"Killing her seems a waste, considering she is my wife, but I suppose I could live with myself, if she vanished forever. Is that possible?" Lukas asked, having heard about SS Tommy's side racket in white slavery to the Middle East.
"Without any trouble." SS Tommy understood exactly what Lukas intended for his unfaithful wife. An airplane from the Emirates would make a night landing in Hamburg. A body inside a carpet would be transported on board. Several hours later they would land in Arabia and she would be sold to the highest bidder for a living burial within a harem or something worse.
"One more thing." Lukas took out a photo and handed it to SS Tommy.
"The American, of course. He is the one picking up the money. Why?"
"I do not like him."
"I feel the same way too."
"Do you think you could have him beaten up?" Lukas somehow had to make the American pay for stealing Petra from him. Her absence from his life was becoming unbearable. His wounds were healing and the pain she wielded against his body was a fading memory without the scars.
"I have just the right crew for the job, vicious, but not murderous and do not worry about paying me now. I will put it on the bill." The baron's jealousy amused SS Tommy. If he had learned one thing throughout his long years on the Reeperbahn, it was to never underestimate a man's ability to fall for a woman once she was no longer his.
"What about the woman? What if she gets in the way?"
"I do not want her hurt,' Lukas said, then added, "Seriously not at all."
"Whatever you want, I sometimes forget what a monster I am."
Once Cali was out of the way, giving Petra Wessel what she had coming would be high on his priority list and another thing he would love doing himself. "Anything else?"
"I want to watch the American get it."
"You want to help?"
"Not this time."
"Your wish is my command."
He shook Lukas' hand and told him to stay in touch.
As the Ferrari drove away from the mansion, Vanessa realized that the man they had put in the bunker might be dead and that she might be next. She had to escape, except there was no way out.
The door was securely bolted, the windows bulletproof, the walls solid, and the floor solid teak. A more pressing problem was her increasing weakness after eight days of incarceration. All her baby fat had been melted off and her bones were clearly visible under her taut skin. Hearing her husband's footsteps, Vanessa tensed up, but he climbed past her to the attic, as he had for the past two days and soon the same song played on the stereo.
The same song from the same opera he had been playing for the last eight days announced his arrival upstairs. Sometimes the repetition of Pagliacci’s was as bad as the need for food, and she was beginning to understand the Italian words of the clown finding out about his wife's betrayal.
Several days ago when the Opel had come to the house, she had banged on the thick windows of her bedroom, but the longhaired man had not heard her pleas for help. It had taken several days to work out where she had seen the man from the Opel before. He had been the one taking the pictures at Sylt. Of this she was positive, which meant Lukas had hired a detective to observe her comings and goings.
The blond man in the Ferrari she had recognized as Cali's maddog henchman, further inciting her suspicion that her imprisonment was due to her involvement with Kurt Oster. He had been talking about a big project and she had told Lukas about it. Her husband intended to interfere with this plan to save his own fortune. She wept bitterly thinking she had betrayed Kurt.
She had to warn Kurt.
Vanessa went to the window again. Birds flew from tree to tree in the forest beyond the yard. Occasionally one perched on the window sash, but they did her little good. They were free and she was not. This could not go on much more. Someone had to come.
Anyone.
An excruciating stomach cramp forced her to keel over. After a few minutes the pain eased up, but an ache lingered. Drinking more water filled her stomach, but only temporarily. At least the gnawing hunger was a welcome diversion from her fears. She knelt and said the prayers she'd been taught as a child. Some god had to be listening to her prayers and she prayed it was the right one.
Several hours later Lukas toyed with the idea of giving his wife some food, but reckoned she could stand a few more days on the no-food diet without any permanent damage. Plenty of fat women in America would have paid good money for such treatment.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number he had received from Alex Brucken. SS Tommy and he had neatly divided the labor required to accomplish the task of destroying Cali and Kurt. Step one had been taken by SS Tommy's abduction of the young boy, now step two was up to him. When the banker answered the phone within three rings, he frantically asked, "Is that you, Willi?"
"No, only a friend of Willi." Lukas smiled to himself. The man on the other end was desperate.
"Where is he?"
"Safe."
"Have you received our package?"
"Yes, but what does it mean?"
"That Willi will have to put a tooth under his pillow for the tooth fairy."
"Who are you?"
"None of your business. Just listen to what I have to say and he will be fine."
Several seconds after Lukas' describing the new situation, the banker broke into tears. Lukas calmed him down, telling him his dreams could still come true as long as he did what he was told.
The banker saw it his way, mostly because he had no choice.
None of them did at this point. They were all standing on the precipice. The question wasn't who would jump first, but who would be shoved over the edge first.
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