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Page 44.
Scene 19. Ribeye
 A third-string freelancer—whom Camelback Consortium code-named Ribeye—stopped into a yellow Bundespost phone booth in the train station at Kaiserslautern, Germany, to call his contact with Compass News in the United States. He had no idea, nor did he care, who the slightly African-American sounding voice was at the other end, code-named Zephyr.
Norwegian by birth, originally a young street tough from Oslo and later Berlin, he was a young man with dark blond hair cut short around his head in soft, straight lines. He had a very thin, bony face with beard bristles. He wore a khaki raincoat over a fine bluish-gray wool suit. Despite the expensive clothes, his rough and tumble upbringing was reflected in old gang signs tattooed on his knuckles—l-o-v-e on the right hand, and h-a-t-e across his left knuckles. Under his coat dangled a shoulder holster, and in it a small Norwegian-made Union automatic with a six-round clip of 6.35 ammo (.25 ACP). Ribeye preferred it for close action, especially inside buildings. For him, this so-called street weapon was light, easy to hide, easy to ditch, and caused the least spectator notice. If found, it suggested amateur rather than professional, and thus attracted less investigative effort from police agencies.
During his teenage years, he had experienced a religious conversion, switching from messenger money drops to snitch for Oslo detectives—eventually working with the Kripo's department for cases of national criminal importance. As a former petty hood with a savvy brain, he was useful in special ways, until he was nearly killed in a shootout in Berlin, and decided to go on his own. For the past two years, he had gone freelance with this U.S. outfit he knew only as Fire Department. His contact was this mysterious voice (Zephyr) somewhere in North America. The man sounded faintly African-American, as Ribeye could identify from the G.I.s still stationed in Germany, and more importantly, he sounded almost fatherly. It was a quality that evoked in Ribeye what little loyalty he was capable of maintaining. Fire Department always paid on time, and the jobs were more of the brain than the gun.
Ribeye approached the train station in Kaiserslautern, Germany—about a 45-minute drive north of the French border of Saarlouis in Lorraine—with a woman at his arm. She was a cute, tough little broad he liked, from somewhere in Sicily. She spoke good Norwegian, having lived in Oslo as a child—but went by the name Meg Aera.
With a throw-away phone card, he used a land line to call his employer. The phone call instantly became one of millions fleeting across fiber-optic cables among hubs and over backbones in Europe. Lost among myriad other voices, his transmission connected with a man sitting on a sunny patio in San Diego, over 9,000 miles away. Data cannons along the English Channel fired enormous bursts of energy skyward, where high capacity satellites relayed the data among their orbital network. The data streaked down to earth-based transponders, and thence to Johannes Rector's patio table in Loma Portal.
"Zephyr," Ribeye said in Germany, speaking good English with a Norwegian accent.
"Ribeye," Rector said on a sunny hillside in Loma Portal, overlooking the broad expanse of the Pacific Ocean as waves rolled in toward the beach, and surfers darted over the water.
"I have located the Anaconda cell associated with Project David."
Speaking across the heavily encrypted line, Rector said: "Is it what we thought?"
"It appears to me that the sniper rifle is a blind, but I don't know for what."
"Keep working it. Do you need more backup?"
"So far not, but I will let you know."
"Don't take any chances. We can provide plenty of lifting power if you need it."
"I'm not crazy. I take no chances."
"Call me twice a day at this number."
"I will."
Ribeye hung up. He dropped the phone card in a slot designed to shred and dispose of any credit type cards as a public service from the Bundespost, trying to minimize identity theft.
Meg Aera smiled as he emerged from the booth. She was a small, slender woman with long black hair tumbling in waves. Her features could have been Mediterranean, except that her eyes looked faintly Asian. Her dark eyes were large and luminous in a triangular face wide across the forehead and tapering slightly down with an even nose, over a generous and red-painted mouth, down to a narrow chin. He had met her just two days ago, traveling on an express train from Vienna to Frankfurt, and they'd become inseparable lovers.
She was on vacation, returning home from Turkey to Oslo via the former Austro-Hungarian empire. She said she’d lived in Europe most of her life. She was good with languages, and Ribeye believed her.
Ribeye was on a much longer journey. He'd traveled to the People's Republic of China to begin his quest. He was tracking a company called David, which been founded by two entrepreneurial Szechuanese partners. Those two had recently sold the company to Global Anaconda, which was transferring its assets and capital stock from a factory in China to an undisclosed location in the Rheinland-Palatinate of Germany. Ribeye and his handler, Zephyr, thought it might be in Speyer, on the Rhine River, which was less than and hour north of here. Ribeye's mission was nearly complete—to find Anaconda's secret headquarters for Project David. All Ribeye knew was that Project David was about making sniper rifles, and that the technology was important to the military and security forces of the West. It was all he cared to know. More importantly, there would be a large check waiting for him at a Norwegian bank in Paris. He would spend a wild weekend with his new girlfriend—and they'd return to Oslo to plan their engagement. He was falling head over heels in love with her.
Ribeye had never met a woman like her before, and already he knew he wanted to marry her. Meg Aera was gentle, humorous, and always ready to cuddle. She had family in Oslo, she'd told him, but her grandparents lived in the town of Scala, in the province of Agrigento, near the south Sicilian coast. Since they had fallen in love so suddenly, she had changed her travel plans to stay with him. She was a computer consultant in Oslo, and she spoke excellent Norwegian with an Italian accent. She was on her annual, six week vacation—which native Europeans enjoy at full pay, in addition to many holidays. She had nothing better to do than make love with him in first class railway cars. All she asked was that they spend a long weekend together in Paris. Kaiserslautern was on the direct train route to Paris.
She opened her arms for him, and he embraced her after stepping from the Bundespost booth. She whispered over his shoulder: "I think this is the longest we've been separated since we met."
He held her in both arms, but stepped back. "I think I have lost my mind. I am falling in love with you."
She raised a finger to stroke his chin, while her eyes looked soulfully into his. "I think I have always been in love with you. It was just a matter of waiting to meet you."
They each raised a hand, palm open, and touched fingertips—soul mates.
“This is so romantic.” She took his hand and kissed his palm.
He held her tightly to him.
Minutes later, Meg and Ribeye walked arm in arm, two lovers, down the drizzle-slicked streets of Kaiserslautern. A faint whiff of coal or wood smoke hung in the air. From the small square at the top of the hill at the train station, on the Bahnhofstrasse, they walked downhill on the Richard Wagnerstrasse among the few older buildings that had survived World War II. Many were narrow, two or three story purplish sandstone buildings with antique, ornate fronts.
Ribeye and Meg Aera came to a small, triangular square at the Beethovenstrasse. The square was just big enough for a bench or two, a yellow Bundespost telephone booth, and a public bicycle rack. The square was sheltered on two sides by mundane modern concrete-block buildings with glass store fronts, forming a corner. According to Zephyr's instructions, this was a Sigma 2020 safe house. Somewhere near here was the Anaconda technical center where a new sniper technology was to be developed. The two super-corponations kept an eye on each other everywhere around the world. The corporate details did not concern Ribeye, only the money—and he had not told Zephyr about his new girlfriend.
"We'll spend the night here," he told Meg. "Tomorrow we'll go back up to the Bahnhof, and we'll be in Paris by noon." He kissed her tenderly, holding his fingers in her rich hair. She raised her head, his lover, eyes closed and mouth open, to accept both the rain drops and his kisses. She radiated devotion to him, and to him alone.
Ribeye ran a grimy fingernail up and down a vertical row of rusting door bells and scrawled names. When he came to the name M. L. Sombra, he stopped. "There it is." He pressed the button.
"Ja?" came a middle-aged woman's voice in German.
"Ribeye."
"Komme' sie hinuff," the woman said in the Palatinate or Pfälzisch dialect.
A buzzer sounded, and a dark, heavy door popped open an inch or two.
"Is this where your friends live?" Meg asked in her girlish voice.
"Yes, darling. Hurry on up with me—we'll have a room to ourselves, nice and cozy…"
"I can't wait," she said sweetly.
Ribeye pushed forward into the dark landing.
Meg moved in the shadows behind him.
He hardly noticed her as he concentrated on pushing the door shut. He went to lock it, to keep out the chill, moist wind. He fumbled with the light switch. "Must be burned out," he muttered.
"Yes," Meg Aera said behind him, "all burned out."
He felt the garrote on his neck. It looped over itself behind his head, cutting off his breathing. He clawed at it with his blunt fingernails, but the fine piano wire of the upper octaves was buried deep in his skin and cutting into the flesh in his neck.
Meg Aera—Relentless Megaera the Avenger—climbed up his back on her knees. She planted her knees firmly in the small of his back, supporting herself with her wiry arms on his shoulders. She held the garrote tightly, while balancing her elbows on his torso.
Helplessly, Ribeye felt his body go slack as the light faded and eternal night rose in his blood. There is a cozy bed for us upstairs…Meg darling, will you marry me?… was his terminal thought as the car rushed down a tunnel of lights, toward a spiraling Milky Way galaxy over a sunny meadow and then black, empty space. Why was he alone?
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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