Shadow Wars, page 13
Ellyson related—exactly—his conversation with Gilbert Crandall, ending with, “… and that son of a bitch, Ryng, that son of a bitch old enough to be her father, is the one who’s figured out the whole mess so far. Think about it, Norman, he may just be looking right up your ass while we’re talking. That’s how good I think some of your people are.”
Rather than reacting angrily, the even-tempered Smith responded with a touch of sarcasm, “Remember, Wallace, he isn’t her father. You are. I don’t think you should let the fact that Ryng doesn’t have a pedigree that would appeal to you or that he happens to be quite appealing to her get to you. Perhaps situations like this one are more upsetting to those of you who bore offspring later in life.” Without allowing Ellyson time to respond, he then changed the direction of his remarks. “Your daughter is in no danger, not as long as Carl Halder is involved.” That son of a bitch! “Forget about Captain Ryng. Let him chase off after Katherine. We both know eventually he’ll either encounter someone he can’t handle or perhaps he’ll find her and they’ll live happily ever after. But don’t you ever forget that Katherine’s disappearance will keep you off any short list of suspects when things start getting hairy. Maybe it was done at the wrong time. We’ll find out why. And I don’t need to remind you how unhappy I’d be if you ever forget your place in this mission. Are we clear on that?”
Ellyson stared out of the phone booth at the fine flakes of snow blowing down the narrow, ancient street. Smith had him dead to rights on that one. A young couple, no older than Katherine and obviously in love, strolled across the street arm in arm oblivious to a taxi that was forced to stop in the middle of the road to avoid them—without a care in the world he thought to himself. That was what he wanted for Katherine, a young boy hopelessly in love, not an aging soldier of fortune. “We are clear, Norman. There’s never been a doubt in my mind about that. I know where I’m going. And,” he reasserted himself, “I must assume your people, at least those you’re going to make sure are with her constantly, are good enough so there will never be the slightest concern on your part for Katherine’s safety. You might start thinking how I react to all of this.”
“Please be assured my people understand that I consider her as my own daughter. There really wasn’t any need for this phone call if that was your main concern. Trust me, Wallace. Carl understands the situation also, but I expect to be discussing it with him. I have a great deal of faith in your abilities,” he added reassuringly. In a contest of wills, Norman Smith had the advantage, and in this case the final word.
“Enough said. Good-bye.” Ellyson hung up the phone and turned back to the street to gaze enviously at the young couple. But they were gone. The snowflakes were growing in size and falling more steadily as he stepped out onto the street. He glanced to either side to be sure there were no familiar faces before he turned in the direction of the embassy.
It was odd, he mused as he stuck out his tongue playfully to see if he could still catch a snowflake, the effect the telephone had on his life. The call from the White House had struck a raw nerve, put him on edge. The one he had just completed, no matter how angry Smith’s attitude had made him, was reassuring and left him feeling as if nothing in the world stood in his way. Kat would be all right. They’d have an answer for everything. How odd that modern electronics allowed decisions affecting the entire world to be made without the protagonists ever coming face-to-face. Norman Smith said that was the sign of the perfect organization and more likely than not he was correct.
With the telltale click of Ellyson angrily hanging up the phone, Norman Smith wondered for perhaps the thousandth time at the vagaries of the nonmilitary leader and the civilian decision maker. He’d never been comfortable having his authority challenged, even though he’d been trained all his life to accept the inevitability that the ultimate direction of the military came from its civilian counterparts. He’d been treated with deference much of his professional life because his competence was rarely questioned. This had been true in both peacetime and war. His talents were incomparable and he would have had little trouble acquiring that fourth star if he’d wanted it.
But glasnost and perestroika had discouraged him to the point of resignation, and the failure of the coup and the power of Yeltsin had made it a necessity. Without a distinct and hated enemy, he was certain America would lose its strength—no less than Samson when his locks were shorn. It was just as frightening as getting your balls cut off—the Russians would geld you one way or another.
His resignation was Norman Smith’s concept of an honorable solution. Let others oversee the emasculation of the American dream. He went back to Washington just once and that was to assuage his old friends who could not comprehend why he wouldn’t accept a high-paying position with a defense contractor or at least run for a senatorial seat if he wouldn’t allow them to push for his reinstatement. None of them could understand why his only wish was to retire to the villa in Nice that he and his wife had purchased for just that purpose. None of them realized, nor did he wish them to know, that it allowed him absolute privacy and the opportunity to accomplish just what he was trained for.
He rose from his desk, which he’d placed against the inside wall to avoid any distractions, and strode across the broad living room to stare out at the sea below. The Italians called it the Ligurian Sea north of Corsica but it really was an arm of the Mediterranean, and the Med in winter could be wild one day and tranquil the next. Today, it was a mix, a westerly wind raising whitecaps that announced another front approaching from the Atlantic. But the sun was bright enough to provide some warmth to the chill air and he went out on the deck and sat in a comfortable chair to watch the water and think. That chair was one of the few luxuries he allowed himself when his mind was working.
His wife found him there half an hour later wearing a light sweater, deep in thought, oblivious to the forty-five-degree temperature. He turned and smiled when he heard her shut the door. She came over behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders, rubbing his neck as if that would warm his body. “You’re going to catch a cold, or worse, sitting out here without any clothes on in this breeze.”
“I’m wearing clothes,” he teased.
“Oh, you know that’s not what I mean. It’s still winter, Norman. I was just watching the weather report on television and there’s another front approaching. Snow up north, heavy rain for us, but still cold.” She spoke fluent French and enjoyed interpreting for him when he tired of trying to understand the local announcers. “You’re not a young major setting an example for your men anymore. And you’re more susceptible to colds and flu at your age.” She bent over and kissed his cheek. “You know I don’t want to nag,” she whispered in his ear. “I just want to spend a long life here with you, just the two of us.”
He patted her hand without taking his eyes off the Mediterranean. “I know that, General,” he teased, “and I’ll do whatever you say.” He stood up. “Let’s go inside. It’s warmer there and I have to make some telephone calls.” He slid the door back and gave her an affectionate pat on the rump as she stepped inside. “It looks like I’ll have to make a short business trip later in the week, bad weather or not. Why don’t you go out to the bar and mix us a Manhattan. Better yet, how about a pitcher.”
When she had left the room, he picked up the phone, dialed the correct international access codes, and then the number for a telephone that only three people were aware of. He knew it wouldn’t be answered personally. When the polite voice on the answering machine was finished and he heard the last beep, he said, “There are going to be some changes in our shipping dates which I believe we have to discuss. I will meet you at the same place for lunch in Sophia on Thursday.”
Smith had no idea whether General Raskova was at his dacha that evening or not, but he knew that answering machine was checked religiously by Raskova every day. Raskova would find a reason to get out of Moscow and fly to Bulgaria that Thursday.
Halder could wait. Smith didn’t like to talk to the German until he’d thought everything out, especially when Halder had gone totally against their plan. Better to learn Raskova’s opinion. What was in it for Halder that he didn’t know?
In Poland, in the thousand-year-old cities of Wroclaw and Poznan, the cost of basic foodstuffs reacted to the market economy each week just as they did in other cities—they responded to the law of supply and demand. Prices increased steadily, well beyond the capability of the average working person to sustain his family on a subsistence diet. The food that was available was substandard. Meat was a luxury. Fish, all of it frozen, disappeared from the stores as soon as it became available, hoarded by those few who could afford to purchase it in large amounts and possessed freezers to hold it. There were no fresh vegetables in the winter. The potatoes were dry and wrinkled from months of storage, the carrots woody, the cabbage wilted and full of dead insects.
But the difference between Wroclaw and Poznan as opposed to the other Polish cities was that Carl Halder’s groundwork had been completed. Poland’s democratically elected civilian government had proven inept at convincing the citizens that the market economy could work. It was almost impossible to convince men and women whose entire lives had been under communist domination where the state supplied everything, whether or not there was enough.
The effort to re-educate the twenty percent of the workforce who were unemployed and had little chance of finding work in the coming months proved impossible. The cultural leadership, those religious and ethnic leaders who had been traditionally respected, had become victims. A rash of mysterious accidents and disappearances, combined with revelations of moral weaknesses, increasingly disturbed the public. Speakers appeared on the street corners, in the union and parish halls, even in the workers’ pubs of old Poznan and the university centers in Wroclaw. Their message was simple—only you are going to return your city and your country to the old system when everyone had a full belly. It didn’t matter whether or not anyone who listened remembered better days. There always seemed to have been shortages, always hunger in at least one district. The citizens understood the present and they knew that right then they faced critical shortages, that there appeared no end to the winter storms that followed one another down from the Sudety Mountains, and that there were people willing to speak up who had answers. There was no bishop of Poznan. There was no Solidarity leader in Wroclaw. There was no counterbalance.
Poland would take care of itself. Halder was positive of that. Keep up the pressure and the Poles would respond to the disaffection already evident in Germany and Russia. Neither democracy nor a market economy could change the stark reality of generations of Marxism. It was a simple matter of taking advantage of the people’s disappointment.
In Budapest, no single candidate rose to the forefront who was strong enough to replace the president who had disappeared. The political parties that sprang out of the nation’s newfound democracy represented every special interest group in Hungary and they stubbornly refused to unify behind any single individual.
It wasn’t difficult for members of the Hungarian Socialist party to quietly begin a discussion program within the student associations and the unions concerning the days when, they emphasized, the government represented the people, not special interests. Even during the Eighties, they pointed out, a period when the economy stagnated and inflation escalated, Karoly Grosz had been gradually able to return the country to stability. Under his leadership, Hungary had balanced socialism and market economics before her neighbors and the result was that the people were reluctant to give up their socialist safety net to experiment with total democracy. It was a pity then when the free elections near the end of the decade had placed new untried people in power in an experiment to replace what many thought was an acceptable system.
Certain editorial writers at the newspapers in Budapest and other major cities wrote emotionally about what they called “the better days.” Somehow, none of the students or union leaders or newspapermen remembered that that specific Hungarian Socialist party was the former Communist party and that Karoly Grosz was the leader of that party—“socialist” by name only, it was still communist to whomever cared to remember. The people who now spoke out about those “better days” were unfamiliar to the average citizen because they had always remained in the background. In reality, they were the former leaders of the rank and file of that Hungarian Socialist party who had seen their careers disappear with the sudden move toward democracy. But their memories of those better days were absolutely clear. Their dependence on Soviet raw materials and then the Soviet market for their products was easily explained—“We trade our stray dog for their blind cat.”
Hungary would respond by itself.
From the frozen, windswept port of Rostock on the Baltic Sea to Dresden and Leipzig in the southern part of the former German Democratic Republic, money was the primary topic in every citizen’s mind. Bonn had developed the most complex, logical plan for the financial transformation of a reunited Germany. They had begun by exchanging the worthless Eastern mark for their own solid Western mark—at face value.
It might have been a perfect scheme if the German economy had remained strong, if the European Economic Community had been able to follow its rigid structure exactly, if the United States had been able to provide economic aid to the weaker nations, if the World Bank had projected more help for Eastern Europe, if a Middle Eastern war hadn’t weakened the relationship between the U.S. and some of the Western nations, and if the Eastern nations’ economies hadn’t been directly related to the failed Russian economy. But the fatal stroke occurred when the men most responsible for the financial rebirth of the former German Democratic Republic apparently became involved in foolish and tragic efforts to fill their own pockets. This was all that a fatalistic people expected. The expanding unemployment, food shortages, and distrust of the West resurrected a discontent that had been the birthright of every East German since 1945. While the Berlin Wall had been physically demolished, it had been reconstituted mentally.
While it was a vexing winter for reformers, it was a time of renewal for those former secret police, party officials, and military officers whose future had been dimmed by the peaceful revolution.
Carl Halder did have a personal agenda. He would be happy to see the other Eastern European countries fall into step with his own. But he never felt that their collapse under a specific time deadline was an absolute necessity. His Stasi, once they were back in charge again, would gradually spread their people across Europe. He knew that eventually the rest would have to cooperate with a renewed GDR. That’s where he intended to concentrate his remaining efforts.
6
Disappearances
Adolph Geyer took all of his schooling seriously whether it came in the classroom or the field. If there was one lesson he considered more salient than any other, absorbed over many years and retained, it was that of being a gentleman—until there was no other choice. It was a tactic he’d learned, as much as a lifetime lesson, and he’d learned to respect it even more when he was sent to England for advanced hostage rescue training with the British SAS. While his own GSG-9 was considered by many to be the equal of SAS, the Germans also worked on the premise that it never hurt to steal a few methods from your counterparts. While Geyer did return with some unique training methods, the singular, vital lesson in tactics from the British was tact. Simply stated, use your brains before your muscles—courtesy can be disconcerting, and often disarming.
Geyer had been driving Bernie Ryng and David Chance into the city from the Frankfurt airport when headquarters contacted him on his car phone. They had a fix on Drobner and the American woman. The car sped to a spot near the place they’d been seen.
“This is where they were last seen,” Geyer said. “Apparently they came here yesterday directly from the airport. I might have received information sooner but, as mentioned earlier, my people had no idea about Miss Ellyson at the time.” That was Geyer’s bone of contention. If U.S. contacts had provided intelligence earlier, GSG-9 probably would have detained them at the airport.
Now he beamed at Ryng and Chance as they stood on either side of the door. “First, we try a little sugar.” He knocked on the door. “If that doesn’t work, then we do it your way.”
They waited. No response.
Geyer knocked again. “Hello,” he called out in his native language. “Federal census interview, please.”
Silence.
“Can’t be asleep,” Geyer said. “Not with a prisoner, or whatever Miss Ellyson might be.” He knocked once more, harder. “Federal census interview. Anyone home?”
Still no response.
“All right, your way. I don’t believe I have a key that will fit that lock.” A Beretta appeared in his right hand. “I’ll put one slug through the frame by the lock. If that doesn’t work, we may have a problem. Then, you two gentlemen take out the door.” He sounded like a British officer giving a briefing. “Assuming you’ll hit the floor rather than stand about gawking, I’ll go over you and to the left. You”—he indicated Chance—“should roll to the right. And Captain Ryng then takes the first room to the rear. Is that satisfactory?” A half-smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. He was enjoying himself.
“Let’s do it.”
“I’m sure we’re all trained in the same manner,” Geyer said with a touch of humor as he aimed the Beretta.
Ryng and Chance hit the door a split second after the explosion of Geyer’s single shot. It flew back on its hinges. Geyer leaped over them and rolled to his left. Chance came up in a crouch to the right. Ryng continued straight through, coming to his feet with his Beretta fixed on the corpse sprawled on the far side of the tiny kitchen. No more than two seconds had elapsed.
