crowded tables to the ladies' room.
A full five minutes later the young blond woman sitting beside Dr. Hans Traupman had a mild sneezing fit, the sympathetic conversation at the table ascribing it to Nuremberg's summer pollen and the breezes. She left the table.
Eighteen minutes later, Karin de Vries returned to her American scholars.
"Here are the conditions," she said.
"And neither she nor I will accept any less."
"You met the girl in the ladies' room." Witkowski did not aska question, he made a statement.
"She understood that if I left the table and walked toward the entrance, she was to make some excuse and meet me there in three or four minutes."
"What are the conditions and how does she earn them?" asked Latham.
"Second question first," said Karin.
"Once inside with Traupman, give her an hour and she'll deactivate the alarm and release the lock on the door."
"She can be our first woman president," said Captain Dietz.
"She asks far less. She wants, and I agree with her, a permanent visa to the United States and enough money to see her through rehabilitation, as well as sufficient funds to live in relative comfort for three years. She doesn't dare stay here in Germany, and after three years, while polishing her English, she believes she'll be able to find work."
"She's got it and then some," said Drew.
"She could have demanded a lot more."
"In all honesty, my dear, she may very well, later. She's a survivor, not a saint, and she is an addict. That's her reality."
"Then it'll be someone else's problem," the colonel interrupted.
"Traupman just signaled for the check," said Lieutenant Anthony.
"Then, as your German guide, I shall also, in several minutes."
De Vries leaned down over her chair as if to retrieve her purse or a fallen napkin. Three tables away the blond woman did the same, picking up a gold cigarette lighter that had slipped from her fingers.
Their eyes met; Karin blinked twice, Traupman's escort once.
The night's agenda was set.
he apartment complex-house did not do it justice -was one of those cold steel and tinted-glass strucTtures that made a person long for stone walls, spires, arches, and even flying buttresses. it was not so much the work of an architect as it was the product of a robotic computer, the aesthetics found in vast wasted space and stress tolerances. However, it was imposing, the front windows literally two stories high, the lobby made of white marble, in the center of which was a large reflecting pool with a cascading fountain illuminated by underwater floodlights. As each floor ascended, the inside corridors were bordered by an interior, fifty-four-inch wall of speckled granite that permitted all but the shortest people to observe the opulence below. The effect was less of beauty than of triumphant engineering.
On the left of the white-marbled lobby was the un tinted sliding glass window of the security office, behind the glass a uniformed apartment guard whose job it was to admit visitors who identified themselves over the entrance intercom after ascertaining their welcome by those in residence. Further, in the interest of privacy and safety, the security desk had at a guard's fingertips the alarms for Fire, Forced Entry, and Police; the last, stationed approximately a half mile away, could be at the building in no more than sixty seconds. The complex was eleven stories high, the penthouse occupying the entire eleventh floor.
The exterior, as might be expected, was in keeping with the establishment's prices. A circular drive led from tall hedgerow to hedgerow, between which was a landscaper's semi-annuity:
sculptured foliage, flowering gardens, five concrete goldfish ponds aerated naturally, and with flag- 9
stone paths for those who cared to stroll outside amid nature's beauty. In the rear of the complex, in sight of the medieval Neutergraben Wall, was an Olympic-size swimming pool, complete with cabanas and an outside bar for the summer months.
Everything considered, Dr. Hans Traupman, the Rasputin of the neo Nazi movement, lived very well.
"This is like breaking into Leavenworth without an army pass," whispered Latham behind the greenery of sculptured bushes in front of the entrance. Alongside him was Captain Christian Dietz, who had previously reconnoitered the area.
"Every access back by the pool is electronically sealed-you touch a screen with a human hand and the sirens go off. I know those fibers. They're heat sensitized."
"I'm aware of that, sir," said the Ranger from Desert Storm.
"It's why I told you the only way was to take out the two roving bodyguards, get past the house security, and reach the eleventh floor."
"Can you