The Rhinemann Exchange: A Novel by Robert Ludlum
Below, the lawn like all the grounds at Habichtsnest: manicured, greenish black in the moonlight, full; with white wrought-iron outdoor furniture dotted about, and flagstone walks bordered by rows of flowers. Curving away from the area beneath his windows was a wide, raked path that disappeared into the darkness and the trees. He remembered seeing that path from the far right end of the terrace overlooking the pool; he remembered the intermittent, unraked hoofprints. The path was for horses; it had to lead to stables somewhere beyond the trees.
That was relevant; relevancy, at this point, being relative.
And then Spaulding saw the cupped glow of a cigarette behind a latticed arbor thirty-odd feet from the perimeter of the wrought-iron furniture. Rhinemann may have expressed confidence that he, David, would be on his way to Mendarro in a couple of hours, but that confidence was backed up by men on watch.
No surprise; the surprise would have been the absence of such patrols. It was one of the reasons he counted on Asher Feld’s priorities.
He let the drapes fall back into place, stepped away from the window and went to the canopied bed. He pulled down the blankets and stripped to his shorts—coarse underdrawers he had found in the adobe hut to replace his own bloodstained ones. He lay down and closed his eyes with no intention of sleeping. Instead, he pictured the high, electrified fence down at the gate of Habichtsnest. As he had seen it while Rhinemann’s guards searched him against the battered FMF automobile.
To the right of the huge gate. To the east.
The floodlights had thrown sufficient illumination for him to see the slightly angling curvature of the fence line as it receded into the woods. Not much but definite.
North by northeast.
He visualized once again the balcony above the pool. Beyond the railing at the far right end of the terrace where he had talked quietly with Jean. He concentrated on the area below—in front, to the right.
North by northeast.
He saw it clearly. The grounds to the right of the croquet course and the tables sloped gently downhill until they were met by the tall trees of the surrounding woods. It was into these woods that the bridle path below him now entered. And as the ground descended—ultimately a mile down to the river banks—he remembered the breaks in the patterns of the far off treetops. Again to the right.
Fields.
If there were horses—and there were horses—and stables—and there had to be stables—then there were fields. For the animals to graze and race off the frustrations of the wooded, confining bridle paths.
The spaces between the descending trees were carved-out pasture lands, there was no other explanation.
North by northeast.
He shifted his thoughts to the highway two miles south of the marble steps of Habichtsnest, the highway that cut through the outskirts of Luján toward Buenos Aires. He remembered: the road, although high above the river at the Habichtsnest intersection, curved to the left and went downhill into the Tigre district. He tried to recall precisely the first minutes of the nightmare ride in the Bentley that ended in smoke and fire and death in the Colinas Rojas. The car had swung out of the hidden entrance and for several miles sped east and down and slightly north. It finally paralleled the shoreline of the river.
North by northeast.
And then he pictured the river below the terraced balcony, dotted with white sails and cabin cruisers. It flowed diagonally away … to the right.
North by northeast.
That was his escape.
Down the bridle path into the protective cover of the dark woods and northeast toward the breaks in the trees—the fields. Across the fields, always heading to the right—east, and downhill, north. Back into the sloping forest, following the line of the river, until he found the electrified fence bordering the enormous compound that was Habichtsnest.
Beyond that fence was the highway to Buenos Aires. And the embassy.
And Jean.
David let his body go limp, let the ache of his wound run around in circles on his torn skin. He breathed steadily, deeply. He had to remain calm; that was the hardest part.
He looked at his watch—his gift from Jean. It was nearly eleven o’clock. He got out of the bed and put on the trousers and the sweater. He slipped into his shoes and pulled the laces as tight as he could, until the leather pinched his feet, then reached for the pillow and wrapped the soiled shirt from the outback ranch around it. He replaced the pillow at the top of the bed and pulled the blanket partially over it. He lifted the sheets, bunched them, inserted the ranch hand’s trousers and let the blankets fall back in place.
He stood up. In the darkness, and with what light would come from the hallway, the bed looked sufficiently full at least for his immediate purpose.
He crossed to the door and pressed his back into the wall beside it.
His watch read one minute to eleven.
The tapping was loud; the guard was not subtle.
The door opened.
“Señor?… Señor?”
The door opened further.
“Señor, it’s time. It’s eleven o’clock.”
The guard stood in the frame, looking at the bed. “El duerme,” he said casually over his shoulder.
“Señor Spaulding!” The guard walked into the darkened room.
The instant the man cleared the door panel, David took a single step and with both hands clasped the guard’s neck from behind. He crushed his fingers into the throat and yanked the man diagonally into him.
No cry emerged; the guard’s windpipe was choked of all air supply. He went down, limp.
Spaulding closed the door slowly and snapped on the wall switch.
“Thanks very much,” he said loudly. “Give me a hand, will you please? My stomach hurts like hell.…”
It was no secret at Habichtsnest that the American had been wounded.
David bent over the collapsed guard. He massaged his throat, pinched his nostrils, put his lips to the man’s mouth and blew air into the damaged windpipe.
The guard responded; conscious but not conscious. In semishock.
Spaulding removed the man’s Lüger from his belt holster and a large hunting knife from a scabbard beside it. He put the blade underneath the man’s jaw and drew blood with the sharp point. He whispered. In Spanish.
“Understand me! I want you to laugh! You start laughing now! If you don’t, this goes home. Right up through your neck!… Now. Laugh!”
The guard’s crazed eyes carried his total lack of comprehension. He seemed to know only that he was dealing with a maniac. A madman who would kill him.
Feebly at first, then with growing volume and panic, the man laughed.
Spaulding laughed with him.
The laughter grew; David kept staring at the guard, gesturing for louder, more enthusiastic merriment. The man—perplexed beyond reason and totally frightened—roared hysterically.
Spaulding heard the click of the doorknob two feet from his ear. He crashed the barrel of the Lüger into the guard’s head and stood up as the second man entered.
“Qué pasa, Antonio? Tu re—”
The Lüger’s handle smashed into the Argentine’s skull with such force that the guard’s expulsion of breath was as loud as his voice as he fell.
David looked at his watch. It was eight minutes past eleven. Seven minutes to go.
If the man named Asher Feld believed the words he spoke with such commitment.
Spaulding removed the second guard’s weapons, putting the additional Lüger into his belt. He searched both men’s pockets, removing whatever paper currency he could find. And a few coins.
He had no money whatsoever. He might well need money.
He ran into the bathroom and turned on the shower to the hottest position on the dial. He returned to the hallway door and locked it. Then he turned off all lights and went to the left casement window, closing his eyes to adjust to the darkness outside. He opened them and blinked several times, trying to blur out the white sp
It was nine minutes past eleven.
He rubbed his perspiring hands over the expensive turtleneck sweater; he took deep breaths and waited.
The waiting was nearly unendurable.
Because he could not know.
And then he heard it! And he knew.
Two thunderous explosions! So loud, so stunning, so totally without warning that he found himself trembling, his breathing stopped.
There followed bursts of machine-gun fire that ripped through the silent night.
Below him on the ground, men were screaming at one another, racing toward the sounds that were filling the perimeter of the compound with growing ferocity.
David watched the hysteria below. There were five guards beneath his windows, all running now out of their concealed stations. He could see the spill of additional floodlights being turned on to his right, in the elegant front courtyard of Habichtsnest. He could hear the roar of powerful automobile engines and the increasing frequency of panicked commands.
He eased himself out of the casement window, holding onto the sill until his feet touched the gutter.
Both Lügers were in his belt, the knife between his teeth. He could not chance a blade next to his body; he could always spit it out if necessary. He sidestepped his way along the slate roof. The drainpipe was only feet away.
The explosions and the gunfire from the gate increased. David marveled—not only at Asher Feld’s commitment, but at his logistics. The Haganah leader must have brought a small, well-supplied army into Habichtsnest.
He lowered his body cautiously against the slate roof; he reached out, gripped the gutter on the far side of the drainpipe with his right hand and slowly, carefully crouched sideways, inching his feet into a support position. He pushed against the outside rim of the gutter, testing its strength, and in a quick-springing short jump, he leaped over the side, holding the rim with both hands, his feet against the wall, straddling the drainpipe.
He began his descent, hand-below-hand on the pipe.
Amid the sounds of the gunfire, he suddenly heard loud crashing above him. There were shouts in both German and Spanish and the unmistakable smashing of wood.
The room he had just left had been broken into.
The extreme north second-floor balcony was parallel with him now. He reached out with his left hand, gripped the edge, whipped his right hand across for support and swung underneath, his body dangling thirty feet above the ground but out of sight.
Men were at the casement windows above. They forced the lead frames open without regard to the handles; the glass smashed; metal screeched against metal.
There was another thunderous explosion from the battleground a quarter of a mile away in the black-topped field cut out of the forest. A far-off weapon caused a detonation in the front courtyard; the spill of floodlight suddenly disappeared. Asher Feld was moving up. The crossfire would be murderous. Suicidal.
The shouts above Spaulding receded from the window, and he kicked his feet out twice to get sufficient swing to lash his hands once more across and around the drainpipe.
He did so, the blade between his teeth making his jaws ache.
He slid to the ground, scraping his hands against the weathered metal, insensitive to the cuts on his palms and fingers.
He removed the knife from his mouth, a Lüger from his belt and raced along the edge of the raked bridle path toward the darkness of the trees. He ran into the pitch-black, tree-lined corridor, skirting the trunks, prepared to plunge between them at the first sound of nearby shots.
They came; four in succession, the bullets thumping with terrible finality into the surrounding tall shafts of wood.
He whipped around a thick trunk and looked toward the house. The man firing was alone, standing by the drainpipe. Then a second guard joined him, racing from the area of the croquet course, a giant Doberman straining at its leash in his hand. The men shouted at one another, each trying to assert command, the dog barking savagely.
As they stood yelling, two bursts of machine-gun fire came from within the front courtyard; two more floodlights exploded.
David saw the men freeze, their concentration shifted to the front. The guard with the dog yanked at the straps, forcing the animal back into the side of the house. The second man crouched, then rose and started sidestepping his way rapidly along the building toward the courtyard, ordering his associate to follow.
And then David saw him. Above. To the right. Through foliage. On the terrace overlooking the lawn and the pool.
Erich Rhinemann had burst through the doors, screaming commands in fury, but not in panic. He was marshaling his forces, implementing his defenses … somehow in the pitch of the assault, he was the messianic Caesar ordering his battalions to attack, attack, attack. Three men came into view behind him; he roared at them and two of the three raced back into Habichtsnest. The third man argued; Rhinemann shot him without the slightest hesitation. The body collapsed out of David’s sight. Then Rhinemann ran to the wall, partially obscured by the railing, but not entirely. He seemed to be yelling into the wall.
Screeching into the wall.
Through the bursts of gunfire, David heard the muted, steady whirring and he realized what Rhinemann was doing.
The cable car from the riverbank was being sent up for him.
While the battle was engaged, this Caesar would escape the fire.
Rhinemann the pig. The ultimate manipulator. Corruptor of all things, honoring nothing.
We may work again.…
That is always the way, is it not?
David sprang out of his recessed sanctuary and ran back on the path to the point where the gardens and woods joined the lawn below the balcony. He raced to a white metal table with the wrought-iron legs—the same table at which Lyons had sat, his frail body bent over the blueprints. Rhinemann was nowhere in sight.
He had to be there!
It was suddenly … inordinately clear to Spaulding that the one meaningful aspect of his having been ripped out of Lisbon and transported half a world away—through the fire and the pain—was the man above him now, concealed on the balcony.
“Rhinemann!… Rhinemann! I’m here!”
The immense figure of the financier came rushing to the railing. In his hand was a Sternlicht automatic. Powerful, murderous.
“You. You are a dead man!” He began firing; David threw himself to the ground behind the table, overturning it, erecting a shield. Bullets thumped into the earth and ricocheted off the metal. Rhinemann continued screaming. “Your tricks are suicide, Lisbon! My men come from everywhere! Hundreds! In minutes!… Come, Lisbon! Show yourself. You merely move up your death! You think I would have let you live? Never! Show yourself! You’re dead!”
David understood. The manipulator would not offend the men in Washington, but neither would he allow the man from Lisbon to remain on his personal horizon. The designs would have gone to Mendarro. Not the man from Lisbon.
He would have been killed on his way to Mendarro.
It was so clear.
David raised his Lüger; he would have only an instant. A diversion, then an instant.
It would be enough.…
The lessons of the north country.
He reached down and clawed at the ground, gathering chunks of earth and lawn with his left hand. When he had a large fistful, he lobbed it into the air, to the left of the rim of metal. Black dirt and blades of grass floated up, magnified in the dim spills of light and the furious activity growing nearer.
There was a steady burst of fire from the Sternlicht. Spaulding sprang to the right of the table and squeezed the trigger of the Lüger five times in rapid succession.
Erich Rhinemann’s face exploded in blood. The Sternlicht fell as his hands sprang up in the spasm of death. The immense body snapped backward, then forward; then lurched over the railing.
Rhinemann plummeted down from the balcony.
David heard the screams of the guards above and ra
The path abruptly curved. To the left.
Goddamn it!
And then he heard the whinnies of frightened horses. His nostrils picked up their smells and to his right he saw the one-story structure that housed the series of stalls that was the stables. He could hear the bewildered shouts of a groom somewhere within trying to calm his charges.
For a split second, David toyed with an idea, then rejected it. A horse would be swift, but possibly unmanageable.
He ran to the far end of the stables, turned the corner and stopped for breath, for a moment of orientation. He thought he knew where he was; he tried to picture an aerial view of the compound.
The fields! The fields had to be nearby.
He ran to the opposite end of the one-story structure and saw the pastures beyond. As he had visualized, the ground sloped gently downward—north—but not so much as to make grazing or running difficult. In the distance past the fields, he could see the wooded hills rise in the moonlight. To the right—east.
Between the slope of the fields and the rise of the hills was the line he had to follow. It was the most direct, concealed route to the electrified fence.
North by northeast.
He sped to the high post-and-rail fence that bordered the pasture, slipped through and began racing across the field. The volleys and salvos of gunfire continued behind him—in the distance now, but seemingly no less brutal. He reached a ridge in the field that gave him a line of sight to the river a half mile below. It, too, was bordered by a high post-and-rail, used to protect the animals from plummeting down the steeper inclines. He could see lights being turned on along the river; the incessant crescendos of death were being carried by the summer winds to the elegant communities below.
He spun in shock. A bullet whined above him. It had been aimed at him! He had been spotted!
He threw himself into the pasture grass and scrambled away. There was a slight incline and he let himself roll down it, over and over again, until his body hit the hard wood of a post. He had reached the opposite border of the field; beyond, the woods continued.