The Thief by Clive Cussler (pocket ebook reader .txt) 📕

“His name?”

“They call him ‘the Monkey.’”

Isaac Bell had called him an acrobat. “What’s his real name?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t pay for ‘I don’t know,’” Curtis shot back, scanning the street ahead and behind. He saw workmen homeward bound, shoppers with groceries, couples holding hands converging on the Kintopp. Oddly, there were no cops.

“He’s an Army officer.”

“That much I knew already.”

“You didn’t know he was a general major,” Reuter replied smugly.

“His rank means nothing without a name,” Curtis lied. If it was true, such a high rank would narrow the possibilities to a handful.

“Would you accept a description?” Reuter asked.

“It’d better be precise.”

They were passing under a streetlamp and Curtis got a good look at Reuter’s face. A confident expression matched his smug tone as he said, “Thirty-five years old, medium height, powerful frame, blond hair, green eyes, long arms like a monkey.”

Thirty-five was unusually young for a general major in the German Army. But the rest of the description was too incongruous to be a lie.

“If you can tell me that, you know his name. There can’t be two officers his age who look like that. No name, no money.”

Two men gliding toward them on bicycles took PO8 Lugar pistols from the baskets attached to their handlebars, and behind him Arthur Curtis heard the carpenter burst out of the Kintopp and drop his toolbox.

HANS REUTER RAN.

The bicyclists shot him down. He tumbled into the gutter. Pedestrians screamed, dove to the cobblestones, and bolted into shops. Art Curtis had already pulled his Browning. He whirled around and dropped the carpenter with a lucky shot to the chest, then spun back around and fired twice, wounding the nearest bicyclist. The man he missed returned his fire.

Art Curtis felt the hammer blow of a 9mm slug and found himself suddenly on his back, staring up at the darkening sky. If anyone had shouted Polizei!, he might have stayed on the ground. But no one did, and the men on the bicycles had Army pistols, and the cops had been ordered out of the neighborhood. That meant they’d been sent to kill him, which gave him the fear-driven strength to stagger to his feet. The man who had shot him looked surprised, raised his pistol, and took deliberate aim.

The Van Dorn detective did not waste precious time aiming at a target six feet away. He triggered his Browning, jumped over the body, and ran.

“YOU’RE WHITE AS A GHOST, my friend,” exclaimed the old Army sergeant when Arthur Curtis collapsed onto the bentwood chair beside him.

“Too much schnapps last night.”

He kept telling himself it was only a shoulder wound, except he could feel in his lungs that the bullet, which was still lodged inside him, had done greater damage. At least it hadn’t broken any bones, and for some reason there was no blood on his coat, just a tiny hole that a moth could have eaten. But it hurt to breathe and his head was spinning, and the walk to the sergeant’s beer garden had nearly killed him.

“Good German lager will fix that! Waitress! Beer for my friend.”

Arthur Curtis rested until the beer arrived, tipped the stein toward the old man, and asked, through gritted teeth, “Do you recall before you retired a general major nicknamed ‘Monkey’?”

The old sergeant shook his head. “No.”

“I heard it the other day. It’s such a strange nickname for a high-serving officer.”

“Well, he wasn’t so high then.”

“What? I mean, what do you mean he wasn’t so high then? Who?”

“I retired, what was it… six years ago? He was only a colonel, a very young colonel. What a man! What a soldier! You’ve never seen a fighter like him. They say he resigned his commission to fight in Africa. A guerrilla fighter with the Boer commandos.”

“Did you know him?”

“Me? A sergeant from Berlin know a Prussian aristocrat? What could you be thinking, my friend?”

Curtis gripped the table to right himself as a sudden burst of pain nearly knocked him off his chair. He put all his might into composing his voice. “I meant, did you serve under him?”

“I only knew him by reputation. He was admired. Still is, I’m sure.”

“Why did they call him Monkey?”

“Not to his face,” the sergeant chuckled. “Mein Gott, Colonel Semmler would have sliced their ears off and made them eat them.”

“Semmler… But why did they call him ‘Monkey’?”

“He looked like one. Enormous arms and big brows like a monkey.” The sergeant glanced about and lowered his voice. “Not quite the picture of the purebred Prussian aristocrat, if you know what I mean. More the sturdy peasant, like me.”

“I thought Semmler was a Prussian name?”

“Of course. And they said he’s a Roth, too—buckets of superior Prussian blood, if not the superior shape. My friend, are you all right? You look at death’s door.”

“What is his first name?”

“Christian.”

Arthur Curtis gathered his spirit in an effort to stand.

“I am thinking it is more than the schnapps. Bad oysters. I had a dozen at lunch. Perhaps… I better go—here, let me pay.”

“No, no, my friend. You always pay. You hardly touched your beer. I’ll pay and finish it for you. You go home and get to bed.”

THE TELEGRAPH OFFICES IN THE main railroad stations were open all night. He would cable Semmler’s name and description to Isaac Bell, care of the New York office, and just to be sure he would also wire it to the Van Dorn field office in Paris. He headed for the nearest station, hoping that his lurching pace would not draw attention on the well-lit streets. He paused just inside the main entrance to check in a kiosk mirror that no blood showed on his coat, and as he did, he saw across the vast hall that the police were checking the papers of the men lined up at the telegraph office. They’d be doing the same at every office open all night and, he realized with