| Subject: Waiting...Five & Six |
Author:
Enjoue`
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Date Posted: 07:26:55 03/05/01 Mon
In reply to:
Enjoue`
's message, "Waiting...by Enjoue`" on 07:14:24 03/05/01 Mon
FIVE
In the perch a small notification beep preceeded Birkoff’s announcement.
“Michael’s returning, sir.” He paused, then added quietly, “One unlogged passenger on board.”
“Have Michael take him directly to the white room.” Operations ignored the brief affirmative reply and turned to Madeline.
“Your other subject has arrived.”
Already moving, she nodded in satisfaction, then paused with one hand on the doorframe. “Will you be observing?”
“Of course. I’ll be along shortly.”
Madeline disappeared and he forced himself to spend some time clearing reports that were on deadline to Oversight. No slack, no suspicion.
At length he finished, then sent a peremptory summons to Nikita to meet him at the white room. By the time she arrived, reluctantly, Madeline had already softened up her subject and begun questioning him. She strolled around his chair as she spoke, the inflection in her voice slightly flattened by the observation intercom.
“You were with Antonio Fazio in the Argentera Valley of the Italian Alps. You were climbing the north face.”
The man’s head lolled forward onto his chest. “Yes,” he whispered. “The Pelmo Fall.”
“How did you get there?”
He sagged in the chair, unresponsive, supported mainly by the chest restraint. Madeline reached out and grabbed a fistful of his curling, dark hair. Brutally she pulled his face up toward hers. He was a handsome man in his late forties, and the dark eyes he turned on her were glazed with terror. He was nearly at his limit.
“How did you get there,” she repeated, in the same level tone. Gradually the man focused on her.
“We skied in,” he sighed at last. “Camped for two days.”
Madeline released his head, and it promptly flopped back down to his collar. “Pelmo is not a difficult climb,” Madeline said reasonably. She resumed walking, moving around the back of the chair. “And you’d been climbing with Mr. Fazio for – what – about a dozen years?”
“Yes.” He drew a difficult breath. “It is a climb of
medium difficulty. I’d been there many times with Antonio since we started climbing together 11 years ago.”
“What happened, Mr. Nicolosi? How did Mr. Fazio die?” Madeline had moved again to a position directly in front of the chair and now stood looking down at him, an unpleasant, predatory expression on her features.
“Like I told the police,” Nicolosi began, sounding a little stronger as he returned to his script. “We got separated from the other two climbers we were with. Antonio must’ve slipped. The rope came out of the caribiner…maybe he had it loaded front to back…I don’t know.” His head sagged again in apparent defeat. “I was too far away to reach him.”
Madeline smiled regretfully. “I think you can give me a more honest answer, Mr. Nicolosi, if you try.” She stepped in front of him and leaned in, blocking the view from the observation room.
Behind the glass, Nikita turned away from a view of subsequent activities in the room. The sounds of those activities were inescapable, however, and as they filled the small space she couldn’t conceal a sound of disgust.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was actually enjoying this.”
Operations glanced down at her, his satisfaction obvious. “Then you don’t know better.”
He looked back into the white room and continued conversationally. “For some time we have had well qualified personnel to manage the…hands-on…work of interrogation. I believe Madeline finds it interesting to get closer to the process again. From a psychological perspective.”
Nikita supressed a shiver of abhorrence that these people actually could find and enjoy different perspectives of torture. After witnessing Madeline’s interrogation of the Dutch man, Vorst, the day before, Nikita found her tolerance level for the whole business to be lower than usual. Sternly, she reminded herself of what was at stake.
Then the sounds stopped. Nicolosi sat bolt upright, his breathing rapid and shallow. Again Madeline resumed her slow revolutions around the chair.
“Now, Mr. Nicolosi. Do you think you can be a little more complete in your answers?”
“Of course,” he choked out. His eyes alternatively sought
her, then squeezed tightly shut. As if he absolutely had to know where she was, but then could not bear to look at her.
“How did Mr. Fazio die?”
Nicolosi was utterly defeated now. “I killed him.”
“Mr. Fazio was your friend. Why did you kill him?”
“For the Committee. For the future.” His head lolled forward once more. “Aufwartung,” he finished in a whisper.
“Who is the Committee?”
Nicolosi shook his head feebly. “I don’t know.”
Nikita watched Madeline as she continued her probing, feeling a mixture of fascination and aversion. Questioning appeared to have reached an impasse, and things were beginning to get ugly again. When the coded internal communication link beeped on the back wall Nikita was relieved to have its distraction.
A few moments later she closed the link. “Birkoff thinks he’s found something,” she reported to Operations.
At the same time Madeline turned and faced the window. She looked up at Operations with a nod and a small, self-satisfied smile.
“Good,” he murmured, and smiled back even though he knew Madeline could not see him.
He glanced at Nikita. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Leaning down, he pressed the intercom connecting him with the white room. “Madeline, Birkoff has something. Thirty minutes. In the Tower.”
* * *
SIX
“Are you absolutely sure this communication cannot be traced, Birkoff?” Operations hovered over him menacingly, like a tall, gray predatory bird. “Compromise would be unacceptable at this point.”
But Birkoff was on his personal turf now, and despite the implicit threat, he nodded confidently.
“Rock solid, sir. I’ve got this routed through so many channels we’re going to have a delay like he’s on the dark side of the moon. There’s no way Oversight can trace this.”
Operations narrowed his eyes skeptically, then finally
reached out to the Tower’s makeshift comm setup and pressed the connection. Pixel by pixel Poole’s face appeared on the screen.
“Good evening.”
“Poole.”
“You are certain this communication is secure?”
Operations cast a threatening glance at Birkoff as he answered. “Yes. We are secure.”
“Good. I’ll be brief. If Mr. Birkoff will give me a protected channel I have an encrypted file that I will send. It contains data I’ve assembled during the years I have been observing this situation. Not all the information can be verified; however, it will provide a starting point, and as additional data is collected, we can begin to narrow it down to a more meaningful list of names.”
Operations glanced over at Birkoff, who had begun working immediately. “We’ll have a channel set up within…” he paused until Birkoff held up one hand with the fingers spread. “…five minutes,” he relayed to Poole.
There was a tiny delay as the communication wound through
its roundabout paths.
“Very good. You have something further?”
“Yes,” Operations replied brusquely. “We picked up the two people you suggested were responsible for the deaths of the Italian and Dutch bank governors. Under questioning, they have both admitted to responsibility for the killings on behalf of an organization they call the Committee. They knew nothing above their level except the name of their contact, which was not surprising. When pressed, the only other thing they have to say is Aufwartung.
“Interesting,” Poole observed. “The German word for ‘waiting’. And the contact?”
“The same for both men. His name is Klaus Renke. We haven’t come up with anything on him yet, but we’re still looking.”
Another short lag. “I believe I can save you a little time,” Poole said, his attention partially on his keyboard as he typed and spoke at the same time. “Yes. Here. I have a file on him from a year ago when I was collecting information on individuals who seemed likely to be involved with this matter. While he has no official record, Mr. Renke has numerous ties to neo-Nazi organizations in Europe and the United States.” He glanced up into the camera. “I shall send his file along with the other as soon as Mr. Birkoff gives me a channel.”
Operations nodded. “We’ll cross reference your list of suspects with our neo-Nazi database. This may give us a smaller group to look at. In the meantime, we will talk with Klaus Renke and see if he can move us one more rung up the ladder.”
Madeline stepped forward into the camera’s range. “Mr. Poole.”
For a disconcerting second he did not react. Then as the communication lag caught up, Poole smiled warmly at her. “Madeline. Thank you for the book you sent. Gisele Pineau is a marvelous author.”
“You’re quite welcome,” she replied briefly. She reached forward and pressed a key. The photo of a large-framed man with iron gray hair filled one quadrant of the screen. “Do you know this man?”
“Of course,” Poole responded. “He is Georg Schultheiss, governor of the German Bundesbank.”
“Analysis indicates a high likelihood that he is involved,” Madeline said. “We’ll have him under surveillance by this evening. If he’s involved, the disappearance of his two assassins may prompt some action on his part. As yet, we don’t know of any direct connections to the neo-Nazi community, but I believe we have a way to begin researching that.”
“Indeed?”
“Mr. Birkoff has discovered the existence of something called the Thule Network. It appears to be a type of clandestine computer or electronic mailbox network, but is not itself linked to the Internet. Its use is restricted and highly secure, entrusted to only the most committed members of the neo-Nazi movement.”
“That makes sense,” Poole commented. “German sentiment toward Naziism would have driven them far underground. Is there a way to infiltrate it?”
“We’re working on that,” Operations replied, “Very carefully. There won’t be any second chances if we make them suspicious.”
“How can I be of assistance?”
Operations already knew what he wanted.
“Your eyes and ears, Mr. Poole. You have never shared with us the exact nature of your intelligence-gathering mechanism. What would be useful to us now would be surveillance of the people you most suspect of being involved with this Committee. Everything we can learn about their activities and contacts will be useful.”
Poole inclined his head. “Certainly. I understand that the need for…discretion…within your organization limits the resources you can apply.”
“Thank you, Mr. Poole,” said Madeline in a conclusive tone. “We will keep you informed.”
Poole nodded. “Until the next time, then. Please tell Mr. Birkoff I will send the files immediately.”
The transmission terminated to black.
Madeline tented her fingers as she mentally reviewed the conversation. “Picking up Renke could create suspicion
within this Committee,” she noted. “We may already have done that by taking the first two. We’ll need to move more cautiously on this contact in order to avoid driving them underground.”
“Agreed,” said Operations, then repeated his earlier words, “There won’t be second chances.”
* * *
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