Eagle Ascending Read online

  Krueger and the Narcotics team shared a cavernous, wooden-beamed bullpen on the seventh floor of Police HQ, and the sunshine was already flooding through the windows onto the scuffed vinyl flooring. On the far side of the room was Mac Hassler’s office, and as the officers left he came tumbling out while fixing the collar of his grubby shirt.

  The captain was functioning thanks only to coffee and brightly-colored energy drinks. He stumbled up to the newcomers and offered his hand. He was a big ball of a man, all belly and shoulders, but in his eyes, there was a keen, grasping intelligence.

  “Good luck guys,” Hassler said, in a voice that was as ingratiating as it was insincere.

  Knowing he’d never be called on to join the team tasked with finding the killers, Krueger turned to his computer and grimaced at the sight. Marty Lucas, free and grinning, haunted the screen with his pale, pinched face.

  “He’s gone, brother,” Krueger said, “get used to it.” Krueger nodded in grim certainty. Lucas would never show his face again in New York, not since he now knew how closely he was being watched. A trip upstate might shake a few leads free, but Lucas had friends there, and he was smart enough to stay hidden.

  Hassler watched the officers depart. As head of the Narcotics division, he would not be part of the investigative team either, but that didn’t mean Hassler wasn’t trying to make friends with the powerful strangers arriving in the city. “So still no leads?” he asked the man wearing the FBI jacket.

  The man shook his head as he walked past Krueger. “Lotta chatter online,” he replied absently. “Folks in the Middle East celebrating. They cheer when Americans die and when Jews die, so when American Jews die … well, you can imagine how they get.”

  “Damned foreigners,” Hassler muttered.

  “And tovex is mass produced in Pakistan,” the man said, ignoring the remark. “From there it would be easy to get it into the hands of any assortment of scum-bags, provided you had the cash for bribes and transport.”

  Hassler nodded, feigning understanding. A traffic cop who’d taken a job in internal affairs before grabbing a promotion at Police Plaza, he’d never taken a trip outside the country in his life. His knowledge of the outside world came exclusively from talk radio and tabloids. “I see,” Hassler replied, trying to sound more important than he was.

  Suddenly, a young man in a vest and impeccably knotted tie came running from the corridor and nearly crashed into Hassler and the FBI agent. He was breathless.

  The agent grabbed hold of his shoulder. “Calm down, son,” he said. “What you got?”

  The young man whispered into his ear. The bullpen fell silent. They could see in the boy’s face that he had important news about the only case any of them gave a damn about any more.

  “Get me the radio!” yelled the FBI agent, as his calm, indifferent exterior shattered.

  Hassler nodded and led the team to the Comms room nearest the bullpen. Krueger could smell his sweat as they passed.

  Sam O’Brian crossed Hassler as he barged into the bullpen. He wore an expression of fury beneath his curls.

  “What’s up?” Krueger yelled to his partner over the commotion. O’Brian looked down and noticed the deep lines under Krueger’s slate-grey eyes. His dark hair was mussed and the stubble on his unnaturally large jaw was a least a week old.

  “They’ve got a suspect,” O’Brian replied, finally. “Bastard’s image is being handed out now.”

  Hearing this, several other cops bolted from their desks and headed toward the Comms room.

  But O’Brian grabbed Krueger’s lapel and stopped him from following. “I never trusted the wisdom of crowds,” he said, before shoving a large piece of greasy fax paper into Krueger’s unsure hands. “I got a heads up from a buddy of mine over at the Feds’ building. He just sent over the image they got. Wanna see the sicko who did this?”

  Joe Krueger looked down at the photo O’Brian had put into his hands, and the moment he did so, his mouth fell open in confusion and black despair.

  The shot was taken from a convenience store security camera. It was grainy, and the ink had smudged. But still Krueger recognized the piercing eyes, the aquiline nose, and the aristocratic smirk.

  “Oh, God,” he muttered in a voice that did not sound like his own.

  O’Brian could see the horror in his partner’s eyes, and he protectively brought a huge hand to his shoulder. “You know this guy?” he asked.

  Krueger’s guts turned to ice as he saw, disbelieving, the face of the man who had done more to shape his life than any other—the man who’d haunted his dreams and the dark corners of his waking thoughts.

  “Yes,” Krueger said. “It’s my dead grandfather.”

  -2-

  “AW, HELL! WOULD YOU move, buddy?” Krueger yelled from behind the wheel.

  Slamming his foot on the accelerator, he threaded his Ford Maverick Grabber past the snarl of idle traffic around 62nd Street and headed to his apartment in Queens. O’Brian was in the passenger seat, worried both about his partner’s driving and his state of mind.

  “Take it easy, pal,” he whispered, but Krueger shook his head in defiance. His stomach was turning summersaults as his mind tried to comprehend the incomprehensible.

  The moment Krueger had seen the picture of his dead grandfather, he’d run toward the parking lot beneath police HQ with O’Brian dashing behind him, bewildered. Five minutes later, they were speeding through busy New York streets.

  “It can’t be,” Krueger said. His knuckles were white as they gripped the cracked leather steering wheel.

  The Grabber was a wreck, but with half his paycheck going to the ex and her stockbroker boyfriend, it was all he could afford. Krueger ignored the belching and protesting coming from the car’s engine, sped over the Throgs Neck Bridge, and descended into the warren of busy streets around Murray Hill, which he now called home.

  Krueger left the car idling in the street and ran into his apartment building, a Victorian red-brick mansion. O’Brian whistled as he saw the place, wondering how Krueger could afford such a nice apartment. He didn’t know that the owner had given Krueger a steep discount on the rent as thanks for busting his daughter’s abusive boyfriend.

  Once inside, Krueger didn’t stop to call the elevator. He launched himself up five flights of stairs, ignoring O’Brian’s cursing and wheezing behind him. Still clutching the photo O’Brian had given him at Police Plaza, Krueger fought through the burn that started to kindle in his legs as his sprinted up the stairs. Tired limbs didn’t matter; all that mattered was the picture of his grandfather—the picture beneath his bed that would prove Krueger was wrong—that he was not going crazy.

  Krueger shouldered his door open, pushed past the shabby furniture, and dived under the bed, ignoring the glass that had held last night’s whiskey as it smashed on the floor. Swatting aside the assorted mementos of his service as a Ranger, he grabbed a battered manila folder. Krueger pulled it into the sunlight just as O’Brian emerged, sweating, in the doorway.

  “This is all I have on my grandfather,” Krueger said, opening the folder with fear and apprehension. Behind him, O’Brian could see yellowed newspaper clippings within, mostly written in German.

  And then they saw it together—a large grainy photo, crumpled and blurry. But the face of the man in the picture was easily recognizable. His eyes were light blue. His nose was aquiline. His grey hair was slicked back. And, according to the investigators at the FBI, he was responsible for the Meyer Center bombing.

  Krueger placed the image O’Brian had given him next to the older photograph for comparison. “Oh God,” O’Brian said as he saw them lying together, wondering if God, indeed, heard him.

  “This is General Wolfgang Andreas Krueger,” Krueger said wearily. “General of the Third Reich, recipient of two Iron Crosses, and my late grandfather.”

  “You gotta be kidding me!” O’Brian exclaimed.

  “I wish,” Krueger replied, s
itting heavily on his bed and speaking slowly. “This guy saw action across Europe during the war. Froze his butt off at Stalingrad. Hitler showered him with medals for that. He then had him lead a Panzer Army against our boys during the Battle of the Bulge. But after the attack failed, German resistance crumbled and grandpa here put his wife and daughter—my mom—on a Danish ship headed to neutral Sweden. Three months later they arrived in New York and never looked back.”

  “How… how do you know?” O’Brian asked, feeling as though he were intruding on a man’s grief.

  “Mom told me the story right before I headed to college. Told me everything. Most kids grow up seeing their grandparents as old cuddly retirees. Me? I saw my grandfather as the monster he was.”

  “And now he’s here, in New York?”

  “He can’t be!” Krueger yelled, rising from the bed and grabbing his pack of smokes. “He died of cancer in a German sanitarium in the early 50s! Look here!” Krueger turned to the back of the folder and picked up the last clipping. It was written in English and the headline read: Wolfgang Krueger, German who terrorized US forces at the Bulge, dies aged 63.

  The report was dated November 3rd, 1951.

  Krueger suddenly realized that his mouth had gone dry. The photographs in front of him, the one taken seven days ago and the one taken in the middle of the last century, showed exactly the same man.

  “Science,” O’Brian mumbled.

  “What?” Krueger asked, crushing his smoke and grabbing another.

  “Science,” O’Brian repeated, as if it were a holy incantation to ward off ghosts lurking behind him. “There’s obviously an explanation. Maybe a forgotten member of the family…maybe a doppelganger.”

  Krueger snorted with derision.

  “Come on, man!” O’Brian yelled, grabbing Krueger roughly by the shoulder. “We’re all exhausted after what happened last week. But think clearly! A man who died sixty-six years ago can’t be walking the streets of New York.”

  Suddenly a light flickered behind O’Brian’s eyes. An idea was kindling.

  “Grab your stuff, Joey,” O’Brian said. He used the name Joey whenever he felt his young partner needed some fatherly mentoring. “I know a guy who knows a guy.”

  “SO YOU’RE GEOFF DUBCHEK’S kid!” O’Brian bellowed, as he enveloped the timid man’s dainty hand with both of his bear paws.

  “I sure am,” he replied, hesitantly. “My name’s Colin.”

  “Well, we sure are pleased to meet you,” O’Brian said. He and Krueger stood in the entrance to the FBI Field Office in Manhattan, O’Brian having insisted on driving Krueger’s Grabber while his partner wrestled with his roiling confusion.

  “Your old man sure was one of the best forensics guys I ever worked with,” O’Brian said, as if we were sharing drunken remembrances in a bar, when in fact he was talking to a man he had only the flimsiest relationship with. He’d asked the receptionist to call Colin down.

  “And now you’ve gone into police work yourself! Good for you, kiddo!”

  “Actually, I work for the FBI,” Colin said stiffly.

  “Hell, we’re all on the same team!” O’Brian replied.

  “Look… Mr. O’Brian,” Colin said, shifting restlessly on his feet. He may have followed in his father’s footsteps by joining law enforcement, but he was pencil-thin and nervous. Wearing a t-shirt and cutoffs, he sure didn’t look like a cop to Krueger.

  “Oh, please call me Sam,” the older detective replied.

  “Well, it’s good to meet you, Sam,” Colin spluttered, “but I’m pretty slammed right now. They’ve got us working overtime here.”

  “Oh sure… sure,” said O’Brian, raising his hands. Krueger waited next to him, gritting his teeth. “I just need a quick favor. Something stupid.” O’Brian smiled, trying to pass off his request like it was a joke, when his heart was racing. “Could you use the computers you got here and tell me if the guys in two different photos are the same person?”

  Colin bit his lip, wondering how best to refuse the request. “It’s not really appropriate,” he said. “Our kit is expensive, and it’s not really to be used for jokes.”

  “It’s for a case,” Krueger said, cutting in with a low, angry voice.

  “Which case?” Colin asked, not pretending to hide his disgust at Krueger’s odd appearance.

  “The case,” Krueger replied, scorning the techie’s stares, and he shoved the two photographs into his hand. Colin gawked at the images. He didn’t stop gawking at them, even as he led O’Brian and Krueger past security and into the elevator.

  Colin Dubchek may have been a small, stringy guy, but he was one of the smartest agents inside the FBI’s Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation unit, cheekily dubbed F.A.C.E. He was the undisputed master of their Next Generation Identification database, which contained over 400 million photographs taken from everything from visas and driver’s licenses to library cards. And though he hated to let these two New York cops enter what he considered his inner sanctum, he relished the challenge they presented. Since his arrival in New York, he’d been chasing one dead end after another, identifying people from security camera footage who turned out to be nothing but summer tourists. In one embarrassing case, he searched his enormous database for a suspicious-looking guy he found on a traffic cam and discovered he was an NYPD desk sergeant on his day off.

  “Come,” Colin said, sounding like a battlefield general now they were entering his area of expertise. His lab was a dark, air-conditioned room in the heart of the building, with ranks of humming computers along the wall.

  Silently, Colin smoothed the image of General Krueger and placed it on a scanner. Moments later, the image flashed up on the nearest screen. Soon another image came up: the photograph taken of the terror suspect.

  The room fell silent. Krueger only heard his own labored breathing and Colin clicking away at his keyboard.

  Please tell me I’m wrong, Krueger thought. For the love of God, please.

  Suddenly, a series of red dots blinked to life over the faces of the two identical men. A faint beeping came from Colin’s computer, followed by a sharp intake of breath as the techie reviewed his data.

  “Yes,” he said solemnly. “I can say with 95% certainty that the two men in these photos are the same.”

  Krueger didn’t hear what Colin said afterward. The world in front of his eyes melted, and he steadied himself on the table. He’d lost good men in Iraq, and chasing the guys who’d killed them had driven him to very edge of insanity. But this was different. This was so much worse.

  “We need to take this higher,” Krueger said finally, trying to forget the dark riddles racing through his mind.

  “How high?” O’Brian asked.

  “Right to the top,” came the reply.

  SPECIAL AGENT LUCILLE Hawtrey, head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, was wise enough to understand she wasn’t being pranked. A waspy New Englander with twenty-five years of service in law enforcement, she knew that the three men before her were serious-minded professionals.

  Nevertheless, their story was so ridiculous she was tempted to order them each to undergo a psychological evaluation.

  “Enough!” she said, rising from her seat. Around her in the bland conference room sat various officials from other agencies assisting with the investigation into the Meyer Center bombing, plus the two New York cops and the techie who had arrived with their tale of Nazi generals returning from the grave.

  Hawtrey sighed loudly. As the woman who the President had personally tapped to head the investigation, she was now managing the inflated egos and simmering stress of her team—and now, cockamamie ghost stories too.

  “I know how it sounds,” Krueger confessed. He felt the eyes of very important people staring at him, judging him and his ludicrous claims.

  Krueger pretended to scratch his freakishly large chin, but was actually trying to hide it from those hard eyes peering from across t
he table. He’d been diagnosed with cherubism in high school, and the disease had left him with a bulbous jaw that people couldn’t help but gawk at. He’d gotten it from his dad, a gambling addict who’d split for Florida when Krueger was still in diapers. It was, as Krueger’s mother was so fond of saying, the only thing he’d ever gotten from him, and since his chin had begun to grow, since his cheeks had inflated like a hamster’s, he’d heard every possible insult—some offered in jest by his classmates, others spat with venom by instructors at Ranger school. He’d heard them so often that even when they weren’t spoken, they still rattled around his head, tearing his confidence like a ricocheting bullet.

  They think I’m a freak, Krueger thought.

  Krueger was lucky, his was a mild form of the disease. He’d read of other people who’d been left grotesquely disfigured by cherubism, which was caused by an abundance of fibrous tissue in the face. Nonetheless, his cheeks and his chin were enormous, and he felt secretly humiliated whenever strangers stared at him.

  Mac Hassler, who was sitting across from him, sighed so loudly his breath could have reversed the tides. He’d somehow managed to get himself invited to the meeting in the Field Office, and his chorus of laughs and snorts during Krueger’s presentation had done more to anger Hawtrey than anything else.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Hassler said as he stood and approached Hawtrey, as if offering the FBI agent a favor.

  A single shake of Hawtrey’s head was all it took to silence the captain and return him to his seat. Hawtrey knew that this was the largest investigation of her career, and she was determined not to be railroaded by any of the ambitious men surrounding her.

  “Dubchek,” Hawtrey asked, trying to keep her voice calm, “have you run this picture against everything in the database?”