Games of State - Tom Clancy [10]
The short man shook his head and began walking toward the trailer.
"Jody, what the hell are you doing there, our soon-to-be ex-intern?"
Karin stood and turned.
The assistant director stopped. He was nearly fifty yards away.
"Hey!" he said. He squinted toward the trailer. "Who are you?" He raised an arm and pointed. "And is that one of our prop guns? You can't--"
A confident pup-pup-pup from the Uzi dropped Hollis Arlenna on his back, arms splayed, eyes staring.
The moment he hit the ground, people began screaming and running. At the prompting of a young actress, a young actor tried to make his way to the fallen assistant director. As he crawled toward Arlenna, toward Karin, a second burst from the Uzi slammed into the top of the actor's head. He crumpled in on himself. The young actress shrieked and continued shrieking as she watched from behind a camera.
The trailer's powerful engine growled to life. Manfred revved it, drowning out the cries from the set.
"Let's go," he yelled to Karin as he shut the door of the cab.
The young woman walked backward, behind her Uzi, toward the open door of the trailer itself. Expressionless, she jumped in, pulled up the collapsible stairs, and closed the door.
As Manfred roared off through the woods, Mr. Buba's dead body flopped lifelessly to the ground.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Thursday, 10:12 A.M.,
Hamburg, Germany
Jean-Michel thought it fitting that his meeting with the leader, the self-proclaimed New Führer, was taking place in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg.
In 1682, a church dedicated to St. Paul was erected here, on the hilly banks of the Elbe. In 1814, the French attacked and looted the quiet village and nothing was the same thereafter. Hostels, dance halls, and brothels were built to cater to the steamship sailors who came through, and by the middle of the century the St. Pauli region was known as a district of sin.
Today, at night, St. Pauli was still that. Gaudy neon signs and provocative marquees announced everything from jazz to bowling, live sex shows to tattooists, waxworks to gambling. Innocent-sounding questions like "Do you have the time?" or "Have you got a match?" brought visitors together with prostitutes, while drugs were offered by name in low, careful voices.
It was appropriate that the representative of the New Jacobins should meet Felix Richter here. The new French incursion, and the union of their movements, would change Germany again. This time, for the better.
The Frenchman had left his two traveling companions asleep in the room and caught a taxi outside his hotel on An der Alster. The fifteen-minute ride to St. Pauli ended at Grosse Freiheit, in the heart of the lurid entertainment district. The area was deserted, save for tourists who wanted to see the sights without the enticements.
Jean-Michel pushed back his thick black hair and buttoned his moss-green blazer. Tall and slightly overweight, the forty-three-year-old executive vice president of Demain was looking forward to meeting Richter. The few who knew him and the fewer who knew him well agreed on two things. First, Richter was dedicated to his cause. That was good. Monsieur Dominique and the rest of the French team were dedicated people as well, and M. Dominique loathed dealing with anyone who wasn't.
Second, people said that Richter was a man of wild, sudden extremes. He could embrace you or decapitate you, as whimsy dictated. In that respect, Richter appeared to have much in common with Jean-Michel's own shadowy employer. M. Dominique was a man who either hated or loved people, was generous or ruthless as the moment dictated. Napoleon and Hitler were the same way.
It is something in the makeup of leaders, Jean-Michel told himself, which does not permit them to be ambivalent. He was proud to know M. Dominique. He hoped he would be proud to know Herr Richter.
Jean-Michel walked up to the black metal door at the front of Richter's club, Auswechseln. There was nothing on the door save for a fish-eye peephole and a buzzer beneath it. To the left, on the jamb,