Ghost by Fred Burton

rings. I pick it up.
    “Burton,” I answer.
    “Yeah, this is Wyatt at FOGHORN,” comes the response. I reach for my code card. Turns out I don’t need it.
    “We’ve had an attack in Berlin.”
    “I’m on my way.”
    I grab my car keys and rush out to my Jetta. Ten minutes later, I’m hurrying through the hallways at Foggy Bottom, my stomach in knots. Something bad has happened again. What did we miss?
    We missed a big one. At 0149 this morning, a bomb blew up a German disco in West Berlin. Casualties are catastrophic. The situation is chaotic. The Bundeskriminalamt—the German federal police, otherwise known as the BKA—is already sifting through the rubble. Gleason tells me to get over to the German Embassy and find out what they know. Before I leave, I open a counterterror case, CT03–0486–235–0011. CT, of course, means Counterterror, 03 denotes a bombing. The second series of numbers gives us the month and year. The next set is the country code where the incident took place. And the last set of numbers is the total number of bombing investigations opened so far this year. It has been a busy four months.
    The West Germans are all over this, and the decision’s been made to let them take the lead in the investigation. The BKA is the German equivalent of the FBI. These federal cops have an outstanding reputation and rank as one of the world’s best law-enforcement agencies. The investigation is in good hands. When I reach the embassy, I’m ushered into the office of the staff ’s BKA liaison agent. He proves to be exceptionally helpful.
    The attack hit a popular nightclub called La Belle Discotheque in the Schoenburg district of West Berlin. It is a well-known hangout for American GIs assigned to the Berlin Brigade who, in their off-duty hours, want to enjoy a little of Berlin’s celebrated nightlife. The BKA agent tells me there were at least five hundred people inside when the bomb exploded.
    The blast buckled walls and caused part of the ceiling to collapse. Chaos and panic ensued; wounded by the dozen staggered out. A Turkish woman and her GI date were killed. Another American soldier is in critical condition.
    “Right now, we are being told that there are two hundred injured,” the BKA agent tells me.
    Two hundred?
I wonder how many of them are American soldiers. My mind flashes back to the barracks bombing in Beirut. Two hundred and forty-one marines dead. Could this be as bad?
    “The American wounded are being transported to military hospitals at Landstuhl and Wiesbaden.”
    As the agent talks, I scribble notes in my pocket-sized spiral-ringed notebook. The German tells me they already suspect the Libyans. Their agents had detected an uptick of Libyan activity in West Berlin the previous week, which included the sightings of several Libyan diplomatic-types who have been suspected of being involved in past terror operations. Shortly before the bomb detonated a Libyan agent left East Germany, bound for Tripoli on an airliner.
    That was our needle in this pile of needles we’ve been searching through.
    We wrap things up, and I drive down to Langley to coordinate with the Agency. By the time I get there, more developments have taken place. First, it turns out we had received a warning last night of an impending attack. The Libyan People’s Bureau in East Berlin had sent a message to Tripoli announcing an operation was now under way against U.S. soldiers in Berlin. That piece of intel was routed immediately to the U.S. Army, and they were in the process of getting the word out on the street when the bomb exploded. We were fifteen minutes too late to head off the attack.
    In those fifteen minutes at least two lives hung in the balance. We have got to do better next time.
    By late afternoon, the picture comes into focus. Two hundred and twenty-nine people suffered injuries from the bomb blast or falling debris inside the club. The bomb itself had been planted near the DJ’s booth. It was a simple