Free Blown by Francine Mathews Page A

once studied boxing with a master. He seemed to know the internal position of each of Eric’s major organs, and how to target them with punishing force. Ernst confined his contact to offerings of towels and water. Ernst alone asked the questions.
    We’re looking for the maker of the bomb. We think we’ve found him. A man by the name of Mahmoud Sharif. He’s Hizballah, a dangerous man. You could do a lot for yourself by helping us.
    He told them he had no idea what they were talking about. He’d never heard of Sharif in his life.
    You stayed with him all last week. You’re his friend. You’re not Hizballah but maybe you’re IRA or an arms dealer or something else, Nigel, we really don’t care. We figure you’ve got your own business to conduct and we’re sorry to be keeping you tied up like this, but we’d like to know what happened to Sharif.
    “I told you. I don’t know Sharif.”
    He did a bunk not five minutes after his wife left the apartment tonight. Disappeared completely. We thought we were following him when we tailed Dagmar’s car, but lo and behold, you popped out of her sister’s garage like a jack-in-the-box and we knew we’d been snookered. Did you do it on purpose, Nigel? The old bait and switch?
    “Who’s Dagmar?”
    Ernst held him this time while Klaus punched him repeatedly in the stomach; Eric vomited and then blessedly blacked out.
    We want Sharif, Nigel. People died at the Brandenburg. Innocent people. And a lot of us lost our jobs.
    The voice was Ernst’s and although it came from a great distance away it percolated through his groggy brain. A lot of us lost our jobs. The aftermath of the Payne kidnapping. The right-wing chancellor’s suicide. The Social Democrats in power again. New brooms making clean sweeps of government ministries.
    “Where was I supposed to be this week?” he demanded vaguely.
    “A little corner in Prenzlauerberg named Knaackestrasse, Nigel. Good old Communist working-class neighborhood. Perfect for that sodomite Sharif and the whore he calls his wife. You know Sharif. Wires home appliances with plastique.Televisions—stereo systems—any type of electronic article. Where is Sharif, Nigel? What hole has he gone down this time?”
    They weren’t police and they weren’t even official, he realized with a blaze of understanding. They knew nothing about Eric Carmichael. Nothing about 30 April beyond the newspaper headlines.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Two hours later, his accent was faltering and his senses were consumed by a universal pain, one that jarred his attempt to reason so thoroughly that he concentrated on the effort as though it were a pinpoint of light piercing the darkness. Waking, after a dream. Caroline’s taut form as she rappelled off the helicopter skid at the Farm, her hair blown into her eyes.
    “Does this Sharif bloke live here in Berlin, then?” he asked thickly.
    Ernst was losing his patience. “You were in his wife’s car. Probably in the trunk. You walked out of her sister’s garage and we followed you. We followed Dagmar, too. She gave you up quite easily, I might add. Probably because she had the children with her. People are extraordinarily frightened of Klaus.”
    “I don’t know why. He’s such a little fuck.”
    The fist in his right ear, this time; his head ringing. Eric began to laugh, a weak and gurgling sound that brought the blood welling to his teeth. Three of them felt broken and his face was a raw pulp, but the humor of the situation overwhelmed him. “You bloody git!” he whispered. “Don’t you know when a girl’s telling a tale and leading you down the garden path? Oh, Lord—what Monika will say when she hears!”
    “Cut the crap,” Klaus snarled, “and tell us where to find Sharif.”
    “ Monika, darling, is Dagmar’s sister. She lives in an apartment building in the Mitte District with her husband, a traveling salesman for Siemens.”
    He was almost babbling in his giddy