Games of State - Tom Clancy [25]
And if Sinatra calls, thought Op-Center's Staff Psychologist, you want to be able to get right back to him.
For the three years they'd been living together, Liz's workaholic freelance musician friend had done all the nightclubs and weddings and Bar Mitzvahs she could get. She'd been working so hard, in fact, that Liz had not only ordered her to take a vacation, but had kicked in half the money to make sure she could go.
Liz finally found the phone sitting on one of the kitchen chairs. Before picking it up, Liz took a moment to change worlds. The dynamics between Liz and each of her patients were such that she created separate worlds in her mind for each of them, and inhabited those worlds fully in order to treat them. Otherwise, there would be spillover, lack of focus, distractions. Though Monica was her best friend, not a patient, it was difficult sometimes to make a clear distinction between the two.
As Liz slipped into her Monica world, she checked the message list from under the Chopin magnet on the refrigerator door. The only ones who had called were Monica's drummer, Angelo "Tim" Panni, and her mother, both of whom wanted to make sure she got to Rome okay.
"Pronto, Ms. Sheard!" she said as she clicked on the phone. A telephone hello was one of the two Italian words she knew.
The decidedly masculine voice on the other end said, "Sorry, Liz, it isn't Monica. It's Bob Herbert."
"Bob!" Liz said. "This is a surprise. What's happening in the land of Freud?"
"I thought Freud was Austrian," Herbert said.
"He was," Liz said, "but the Germans had him for a year. The Anschluss was in 1938. Freud died in 1939."
"That's almost not funny," Bob said. "It looks like the Fatherland may be flexing its muscles for a new era of empire-building."
She reached for her cigarette. "What do you mean?"
"Have you watched the news this morning?" Herbert asked.
"It doesn't come on till six," she said. "Bob, what the hell happened?"
"A bunch of neo-Nazis attacked a movie set," Herbert said. "They killed some of the crew, stole a trailer filled with Nazi memorabilia, and drove off. Although no one's heard from them, they appear to have taken an American girl hostage."
"Jesus," Liz said. She took several short puffs.
"It appears as if the group was led by a woman named Karin Doring. Heard of her?"
"The name is familiar," Liz said. She took the phone from the kitchen and began walking toward the study. "Give me a second and I'll see what we've got." She switched on the computer, sat down, and accessed the database in her office at Op-Center. In less than ten seconds, the file on Doring had been downloaded.
"Karin Doring," she said, "the Ghost from Halle."
"The Ghost from where?" Herbert asked.
"Halle," Liz said. She scanned the report. "That's her hometown in East Germany. They call her the Ghost because she's usually gone from the scene before anyone can catch her. She doesn't go in for ski masks and disguises, wants people to know who's behind things. And get this. In an interview last year with a newspaper called Our Struggle, she describes herself as a Nazi Robin Hood, striking a blow for the oppressed majority of Germany."
"Sounds like a psycho," Herbert said.
"Actually, she doesn't," Liz said. "That's the problem with people like this." Liz coughed, continued to draw on her cigarette, and spoke as she scanned the file. "In high school, in the late 1970s, she was briefly a member of the Communist Party."
"Spying on the enemy?"
"Probably not," Liz said.
"Okay," Herbert said, "why don't I just shut up?"
"No, what you just said would be a logical assumption, though it's probably a wrong one. She was obviously looking for herself, ideologically speaking. The Communist left and the neo-Nazi right are very much alike in their rigidity of thought. All radicals are. These people can't sublimate their frustrations so they externalize them. They convince themselves, usually subconsciously, that others are causing their miseries-- 'others' meaning