The Freiburg ProjectChapter 27
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The logs were finished and they had made lists of potentially interesting names. It was time for lunch, and they set things in order, ready to go down to a café overlooking Port Ambonne, the Heliopolis marina. Helen and Doris slipped on tee-shirts, and the men donned shorts.
The phone rang, and Helen answered again.
"Helen," said a familiar voice, "It's Johannes."
"Johannes! How wonderful! Where are you? How are you?"
"I'm fine, and I'm outside your damned gate, and I need to see you right now on official business."
"Wuff! That's incredible. Well, I won't waste your time. I'm on my way." Helen hung up and turned to the others, "It's an old friend of mine from Geneva. You go ahead to lunch; go to that Italian café at the end of the Collines, Sandy, near the marina." She turned to Doris and Rummy. "I'll meet Johannes — Sandy will explain who he is — and I'll either bring him to lunch or... or something." She hurried off down the hall to the stairs, her tee-shirt barely covering her bottom.
At the reception center, Johannes stood waiting in a summer-weight business suit, looking very handsome and fit. Helen entered and threw her arms around him, hugging him without restraint. He returned the hug but confined himself to an air kiss beside her cheek.
When they separated, Helen, rather flustered, smoothed her tee-shirt over her hips and said, "God, it's good to see you. Come with me, and tell me what this is all about." She led the way inside the compound, walking toward the Port and both settling on a bench at the side of the marina.
"Tell me what's going on," she said, "because I'm meeting with some friends — colleagues, really — and I'd like you to meet them if that's okay."
Johannes reached into his jacket and pulled out an identity folder. "You probably never knew it, Helen, but I'm an officer in the Swiss Police, seconded to InterPol from the Cantonal Police in Geneva. I'm here to talk to you about the death of your husband, Theo Brechstein. Your lawyer in Stuttgart, Herr Lieber, gave some material to the Landeskriminalpolizei in Stuttgart, and they contacted me."
Helen looked cursorily at the document he offered, then back at him. "No, I never knew you were... Well, it doesn't really matter, I'm so glad to see you. Can the business wait until after lunch? I'd love to have you meet my friends and then we can talk about whatever you want."
Johannes agreed, and they found the others at the café not far away. Johannes removed his jacket as they sat in the sun, and the others made him welcome. He seemed totally unfazed by the naked passers-by and the unclad diners around them.
"Have you been here before, Johannes?" Doris asked, "you seem very comfortable with the... uh... scenery."
"No," Johannes replied with a smile, "but I've known Helen for quite a while and known that she lives here as well. I'm not much into naturism these days, but it's a life-style I've always liked. Unfortunately, I'm here on business."
Helen interposed, "I used to date Johannes in Geneva, but I never knew what he did." She took a breath, looked at Johannes, and went on, "Johannes, all these people know about the material Herr Lieber in Stuttgart sent you. We're also involved in something else that may be related. I think we all need to have lunch and go back to my place and get into the details." She turned to the others, speaking quietly. "Johannes is with Interpol. We'll discuss it later."
They all began conversation meant to seem trivial, Doris explaining her and Rummy's relation to Helen, Sandy chatting about his storage business — each quietly filling Johannes in on their backgrounds. He said little about himself, other than to allude to his frequent meetings with Helen in Geneva.
When they were back in Helen's apartment, the orange cat demanded the right to inspect the new arrival. Johannes knelt down and spoke directly to the animal, introducing himself. The orange cat bumped his nose with his head and pronounced him acceptable.
Johannes stood up and said to the humans in the room, "Thank you for taking the trouble to tell me about yourselves. It will save some time. Now, can you tell me what you meant about a related matter?"
They moved onto the balcony, sitting in the sun. Doris pulled her shirt off to bask in the sunshine, though Helen, conscious of Johannes and their continued, confusing relationship, kept hers on. Johannes took a chair and the orange cat settled himself underneath it.
Rummy picked up the conversation. "Johannes, Helen and I are working on a construction project in Freiburg im Breisgau for a guy in Geneva named Schellen. You know him?"
"Yes," Johannes replied. "I do. Compagnie Schellen. Investments and construction." Johannes pulled out a policeman-like notebook and began scribbling.
"Right. Well, when we were pitching our project to Schellen, this guy who works for Schellen, Paul Dumont, came up to me and asked if Theo Brechstein would be working on our project as 'labor consultant'. I'd never heard of him, and I said so."
"I'd never told Rummy my husband's name," Helen explained.
Rummy continued, "Well, surprise! Dumont was assigned as project manager for Schellen. When we met him at the site, he urged us to use a 'labor consultant' to help — well, he said it would reduce costs.
"And then, after we'd begun excavation, one of our contractors told me that Dumont had offered to supply low-cost laborers and semi-skilled workers. I passed this information on to Helen."
Helen took up the thread, "At about that time, Johannes, Rummy and I were on a site visit. I noticed a trench being dug where there should not have been one. When we went over to see what was going on, the operators of the excavators attacked us with the shovels and — I'm sure of it — tried to kill, or at least severely injure us. We managed to escape without injury, but it was close. We reported this to the Freiburg criminal police.
"But to get back to Theo, we told the contractor — Werner Siegmann, he's with Hoch und Tiefbau, — to have Dumont give him numbers and prices. We haven't gotten that yet; it was only a couple of days ago. But about the same time, Schellen called us to Geneva for a meeting. The meeting was, I think, partly to mislead us about Raul Sauter. Do you know who he is?"
Johannes nodded and gestured for her to continue.
"Sauter had shown up at the Freiburg site about a week before the visit when we were attacked. Rummy was there. He called me about it and I had the general contractor tell Sauter to leave the site because he had no business there. At the Geneva meeting with Schellen the day after we were attacked, Schellen wanted to know why we had thrown Sauter out. Sauter's his brother-in-law. I told Schellen that I don't allow anyone on site but our contractors and suppliers without my permission.
"Then, Schellen told us he had a proposal to provide laborers and semi-skilled workers at attractive prices.
"I kind of smelled a rat, and I had told Schellen before that I don't consider contractors who are in court, and he trotted out some bullshit about the people he was talking about not being in court — at the moment. Do you know about Sauter?" Johannes said he did not, and Helen explained about Sauter's legal problems and the new criminal charge. "Well, so we had to ask him for a proposal, just to see what came of it. But, he said some things that I consider threatening, indicating that the proposed arrangement would reduce the risk of... What was it, Rummy?... disputes and misunderstandings, I think."
"Right," Rummy affirmed.
"Anything more?" Johannes asked.
"Well, not about that, but yes," Helen went on. "When I got the letter from Lieber, Rummy and I began looking over the contact logs our contractors keep."
"Why did you do that?" Johannes asked.
"Well, we were wondering about the Man from Bau — you know what I mean by that?"
"You mean the inspectors from IG Bau."
"Yes. Well, we wondered if the contact logs would tell us anything about who shows up from Bau, and how often. I mean, we thought that if Schellen was pulling something shady, he'd have to have someone from Bau in on it. And don't forget, Johannes, Theo worked for IG Bau."
"I know he did. What have you found?"
Rummy said, "We aren't sure. We have a list of everyone who's visited our contractors at the site. We eliminated the ones who only came once, the ones we know, or who're just suppliers or something like that. It's interesting that, of the remainder, the Man from Bau is always the same guy, and he shows up about twice a week. I think that's a little more often than usual, and I know it's unusual for it to be the same guy every time. I'm about to contact our contractors and see what they think, and if they have any more information. And I want to find out if Werner Siegmann got any firm numbers from Dumont."
"May I have a copy of those lists, please?" Johannes asked.
"Of course," Helen replied. Rummy began printing out the files.
Johannes went on, "Now, I think that our office will take over..."
"Hold on, Johannes," Sandy put in, "there's more. Tell him about the call, Helen."
"Yes. Johannes, this morning I got a phone call from Paul Dumont. We made a recording of it. Sandy, can you play it for Johannes?"
Sandy took Rummy's place at the computer, called up the audio file and played it. Johannes asked him to repeat it twice.
"That's very interesting," he said. "He contradicts himself twice, according to what you say about your earlier meetings with him. I think we need to look at this a lot more closely." He looked at Helen. "Why didn't you tell him who Theo was?"
"I'm not sure. I think I didn't want to give him anything he didn't already know."
"Good thought," Johannes said, "now..."
"Johannes," Helen interrupted, "we've given you what we know. Now, it's your turn. How come you're here? What's going on?"
Johannes moved his chair back from the table, rose and took a turn around the balcony, looking rather obviously over the walls at either side and over the wall of the balcony itself. He looked up at the balcony wall of the apartments above that were set back the depth of Helen's balcony, pointed, and looked inquiringly at Helen.
"Upstairs is vacant — actually, the one on the left is where Rummy and Doris are staying. The people on the right are out of town, and there's no one renting the flats at either side on this floor. Nobody below us can hear anything, anyway. Okay?"
"I guess so. I'll tell you what I can." He spoke quietly. "When the KP in Stuttgart re-opened Theo's case yesterday, they finally sent us the serial number from the gun that killed him. We had a record of it." He shook his head and waved dismissively as Rummy began a question, and Rummy subsided.
"Helen, I hadn't known anything about Theo or your relationship with him when we knew each other in Geneva. Nothing. This is all new. But when I discovered your name associated with this matter, I decided to take on the case myself. I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening doing some research and came up with a few matters of interest.
"The first interesting thing is that we had had a watch on Brechstein, on Theo, because he was so often remotely connected with cases of illegal immigrants and workers."
"What do you mean, 'remotely connected? '" Helen asked.
"I mean that Theo was very often somewhere in the background when we broke up cases of illegal workers. He was often the Man from Bau, but he never managed to detect or turn in these people. It may have been the sympathy thing Dumont mentions.
"But there is one strange thing. About a week before he died, we have an e-mail from him — addressed to a known public interface at Interpol — asking us to arrange a meeting. He said he wanted to discuss some matters involving particular sections of the EU labor statutes, which he mentioned only by number. If you look those up, they deal with illegal workers, penalties and that sort of thing.
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