Winter Work, page 11
“Coffee, black. That’s all.”
He nodded and scurried away.
The big fellow scraped his chair backwards to position himself closer to the door, although at least now he was scanning the menu instead of her. She was beginning to worry about how easily he’d be able to block any exit, but if push came to shove there was still a rear door, at the end of a back corridor that led past the restrooms. She trusted that Baucom had scouted the alley for her, and she had been pleased to see her old colleague seated as planned at the tram stop, peeping above his newspaper. His experience and competence were reassuring. At least she wasn’t completely on her own. The tracking beacon in her purse had never seemed more useless.
The waiter took a bottle of vodka to the beefy fellow’s table and poured a double shot into a glass. He downed it in a single massive swallow, set down the glass with a hammer blow, and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his leather coat, watching her all the while. What a hammy performance. Puzzling, too. Claire had certainly detected unwanted watchers before at meetups like this, but never with such boldness, as if advertising their willingness to disrupt.
Or maybe he was the contact, which would be stranger still. She stole a glance at her watch. Twelve minutes past the scheduled time, and only eighteen before Baucom would come through the door. She was now wishing they had gone with his first instinct to enter ten minutes earlier.
The man’s chair scraped again, and he stood. He was still staring, so she stared back as he stepped toward her table. He stopped on the opposite side and leaned forward until the knuckles of both hands were resting on the surface. His face moved to within a foot of hers, close enough for a burning whiff of alcohol. He spoke in English, again with a Russian accent.
“We know why you are here.”
“Yes. For coffee.”
She raised her cup, but the bluff was unconvincing even to her.
“No, not for coffee.”
“And who are you?”
“Someone who can help you get what you came for.”
And someone who hadn’t yet offered the required question to trigger her required response, which meant that there was no way she was taking his bait. This whole meeting was blown, and so was she, that’s all she knew for sure. Even if her contact were to enter now, he’d never approach under these circumstances. Time to abort. Self-preservation was now her top priority.
“I have nothing more to say to you,” she said.
She stood. He lifted his knuckles from the table and straightened. He was at least eight inches taller than her. The corridor to the back door was right behind her, but even as she contemplated turning in that direction, she heard a creak of hinges from behind. Heavy footsteps came up the corridor and a second man, similarly attired, hoved up on her right.
“Sit back down. Speak with us.” Another Russian, goading her in English. The waiter had disappeared into the kitchen.
She darted between them with a sudden move, catching them off guard just enough to elude the grasp of the second man. The first man reached for her. She spun like a dancer, placing a foot behind his and then ramming his chest with her left shoulder so that he tripped on her foot, losing balance just long enough for her to reach the front door and slip outside.
He caught the door as it closed and bounded heavily after her as she jumped to the sidewalk, ready to bolt, to run as fast and as far as she needed, or, if it came to that, to turn and confront him—unless, of course, he had a weapon, and was willing to use it on a public street.
Instead, as if summoned, a taxi quickly rolled forward, braking hard at the curb, with the back door almost opening into her face as Clark Baucom’s voice called out from inside.
“Get in!”
The arrival of reinforcements seemed to bring her pursuer up short—did he fear a weapon?—and she heard the soles of his shoes skid on the gritty walkway as she lunged into the back of the taxi, which began accelerating away before the door was even shut.
She took a second to catch her breath as she looked over at Baucom, whose rakish smile told her he was enjoying this far too much.
“Moscow hoods,” he said. “So much for Plan A. Oh, and there’s their fearless leader.”
Claire turned in the direction he was pointing and saw a third, older man, also in a black leather overcoat, standing on the sidewalk. He stared at their cab as it passed, his dark eyes as cold as January. Yet again, there was no attempt to hide his interest. They were sending a message, although she wasn’t yet sure what it was, apart from, “We know your game, and we play it better.”
“Ought to be one hell of a debriefing,” she said.
Baucom barked with laughter, but Claire shook her head, disgusted with the whole affair. Her only small pleasure came from wondering what Ward must be thinking right now as she watched the signal from the tracking beacon receding from the rendezvous point at alarming speed.
Baucom turned to look out the rear of the taxi.
“Well, no one’s following us, so there’s that. And, unlike in the old days, we won’t have any trouble making the crossing back into West Berlin.”
Meanwhile, back on the opposite side of the wide boulevard, up on the sixth floor of the apartment building that faced Frankfurter Allee, the curtain flicked shut on the window in the middle.
15
Emil stood in the darkness of his empty apartment, assessing the strange and unsettling events he had just watched out the window. Lothar had chosen the rendezvous point on Frankfurter Allee specifically to give him this vantage point.
“You’ll be my backup, with a comfortable front-row seat while I do all the work,” he’d said only two nights before, as they sat in the great room of Lothar’s dacha, drinking beer from his fridge. “It’ll be like watching one of those stupid Hollywood thrillers you like so much. Pop some popcorn if you want. Just stay alert to all you see. Maybe shoot a few photos if you can get hold of a long lens. Although good luck with that, I guess, with the whole shop locked up tight.”
“What if you need my help?”
“All I’ll need is your eyes, Emil, so you can tell me afterward who all the players were. They’ve promised to send just one, but since when do the Americans ever send just one? I don’t trust them, so you’re going to stand witness to how badly they cheat.”
“Of course. Understood. But, seriously, what if you need my help?”
“Emil. Stop.”
Lothar had laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“If you see them trying to haul me off in a car, then come running, or even call a policeman. Although, let’s face it, you’ll be too late. But that’s not going to happen. They want what we’re offering far too much to do me any harm. With any luck, they’ll even honor my request to do this in a daylight hour. All the better for you. We’ll know for sure tomorrow, when they set the time. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear. Then, as they say in all those shit movies, we’ll synchronize our watches.”
“Fine, then. But tell me the operational details. Who are you meeting, and what are the protocols?”
“Please, old comrade, you know how these things work! I only tell you what you need to know, and you do the same with me. Better for both of us that way.”
And now Lothar, their front man, was dead, and three Russians had shown up in his place, right on schedule, with the most alarming aspect being that Emil was pretty sure he’d recognized their leader.
Emil shook his head and sipped some cheap red wine that was just beginning to turn. Earlier he’d found the bottle on the dusty kitchen counter and had poured some into a glass, leveling the dose at the black 0,1 liter mark. The wineglass was a souvenir from fourteen years ago, when Bettina and he had attended the opening night gala of the Palast der Republik, East Germany’s parliament building and performance center.
Erich Honecker himself had handed them out, party favors for the chosen few, the leader beaming with pride as he showed everyone around his cavernous creation, a long modernist block of glass and marble. The reception had been held in the lobby, everyone’s voices echoing as they drank beneath a profusion of bright globular lights linked by chrome bars—“Erich’s lamp shop,” as the space would come to be known. Emil had thought the whole look was immodestly hideous, but he had smiled and kept his mouth shut.
Now the wineglass seemed like a relic from a vanished time, a touchstone from a life that would never return. It was one of several unwanted reminders of his past that Emil had encountered since reentering their old apartment after a two-month absence, although so far he had at least avoided bumping into any of their neighbors.
On the drive into the city from Prenden, he had been surprised to see how fast the city was changing. Not just the new billboards for goods of the West, but also the homemade banners of squatters who’d taken possession of several empty buildings. Already there was a new protest to replace the old one, with landlords replacing the party as public enemy number one.
After parking his Wartburg at a safe distance, he had strolled here on an indirect route, keeping a wary eye out for familiar faces as his Pistol-M sagged in the right pocket of his overcoat, banging against his side. He’d noted a spring in the step of many younger people, still flush from their victory over the regime. People closer to his age, on the other hand, seemed to proceed with a hooded caution. Like him, they had seen sweeping change come before—twice, in the case of the oldest people—and each time the utopian promises had led only to ruin.
Emil had considered showing up at the café as Lothar’s stand-in, but due to Lothar’s rigid restrictions of “need to know,” he had no idea what Lothar had promised to give the Americans, or show them, or even what his introductory words were supposed to be. Lothar had only mentioned something vague about handing over a few “proofs” of their offered product. But he hadn’t described those proofs, and Emil didn’t even know if they still existed. Perhaps Krauss had them. Or Dorn. Maybe even Wolf.
Emil had slipped into the door of the apartment twenty minutes before the appointed hour. It was then that he’d spotted the wine bottle on the kitchen counter, so he had poured a glass to calm himself. He’d then opened the curtain in the living room to begin observing the state of play down on Frankfurter Allee.
From the left pocket of his overcoat he had withdrawn a miniature Zeiss monocular spotting scope that had belonged to him for years. At less than half an inch in diameter, it was slightly bigger than a fountain pen, yet it offered sharp images at up to three hundred yards.
Like Lothar, Emil had expected the Americans to cheat. They were firm believers in the doctrine of strength in numbers. But in his initial scan, the only anomaly Emil spotted among the pedestrians and passersby was an older fellow who sidled up the street and seated himself at a tram stop just across the boulevard from the café. He was dressed like a local, right down to his shoes, but upon further inspection he, too, had seemed to be in a watchful posture, and was only paying cursory attention to his newspaper.
Emil had noted a shift in the man’s posture as he glanced left, so Emil had looked that way as well, and in doing so spotted an approaching woman, walking briskly. She was a shade too stylish for any Hausfrau from this part of the city, early thirties, a blonde, either American or French if he had to guess. Emil then immediately noticed a beefy fellow in black about thirty yards in her wake. His neck was tattooed, and he was making no secret of his pursuit. Russian, perhaps. Definitely not American.
The woman confirmed her importance by entering the café. Emil checked his watch. It was exactly 4:30, the appointed time. Sunset wasn’t for another hour, so there should still be good visibility by the time she left. He wondered if she was the woman whose voice he’d heard over Lothar’s phone. Her face wasn’t familiar.
The man in black paused outside, then he entered as well. No one was being very careful or trying to go unnoticed, which puzzled him. He then spotted a second young man in black, heading toward the café from the right. Then, farther down the block, in the direction the woman had come from, a third man, also in black. They might as well have been wearing uniforms, a contrivance that struck him as silly until he turned the focus knob for a closer look at the third fellow.
The face was familiar. Emil then recalled the name, which came as an unwelcome shock.
Yuri Volkov.
That changed everything.
Volkov was a contract hire for the local KGB headquarters in Karlshorst. He was a known purveyor of “wet jobs”—chores of violence or physical persuasion that no competent intelligence service would ever admit being a party to.
An incident several years ago had first brought Volkov to Emil’s attention. It began with news of a grisly murder in Leipzig, a killing that drew the HVA’s interest when Volkspolizei investigators reported their suspicion of possible involvement by a foreign intelligence service.
A small group of his colleagues had met on Normanenstrasse to discuss the matter on a gloomy January afternoon. They had filled the room with cigarette smoke while passing around gruesome photos of the murder scene. The victim was Boyan Barkov, a male in his forties, a Bulgarian with forged papers. In the luridly colorful photos his naked body was tied to a chair with electrical wire. Deep knife wounds were slashed across his thighs and chest. The attached report said that all the wounds had probably been administered before he died. His head was slumped unnaturally forward, due to a broken neck. The scene was a bloodbath, horrid to behold.
The next day, word came down from the KGB in Karlshorst that the matter should be dropped. At that point, the case was turned over to the Stasi’s Spezialkommission, which issued its final report only three days later, ostensibly in cooperation with the Leipzig Volkspolizei. It concluded that Boyan Barkov had been meddling with an arms smuggling operation that had been sanctioned by the KGB. Thus the Soviets had assigned one of their enforcement people to “tidy up,” before the matter became an embarrassment not only to them, but to their East German comrades as well.
The Spezialkommission’s final report had been brief, which made Emil and his HVA colleagues wonder what had been deleted from the Volkspolizei’s findings. A phone call to the Leipzig police could have probably answered that question, but that would have attracted unwanted attention. The only notable item was a mention of the manager of the KGB operation, Yuri Volkov, whose photo was attached. It was his eyes that Emil remembered best—black orbs of anthracite, radiating a cold intelligence and, even more unnerving, a spark of amusement, perhaps enjoyment. The Spezialkommission report concluded that no further action was necessary on the part of the Stasi or any other East German authorities. It was signed by Dieter Krauss.
In the events this afternoon down on Frankfurter Allee, Emil had been relieved to see Volkov keep his distance from the café after the American woman went inside. But Emil had taken another close look at the man through his spotting scope, focusing carefully.
Those eyes still made him catch his breath.
He had put down the scope and scanned the wider area. The old fellow on the bench had still seemed to be the only other American involved. That, too, was a puzzle. Since when had they ever let themselves be outnumbered in this way?
Then, while Emil watched, the man had suddenly looked back over his shoulder in his direction, a glance probing enough to make Emil lower the spotting scope, so the lens wouldn’t reflect the filtered sunlight. As soon as the fellow had turned back around, Emil shut the curtains until only a slit was open.
That one look at the American’s face had been revealing. He, too, was familiar, and if it had been a normal workday Emil would have headed to the office and stepped aboard the paternoster—the creaky, open-doored elevator that was forever on the move, like a vertical conveyer belt—for a ride to the fifth floor, where he would’ve consulted the photo file of their American adversaries, a gallery they’d amassed from Berlin and the entire East Bloc. Surely this man’s face would’ve been among the pictures. But those records were beyond reach now, locked away or destroyed.
After a few more minutes, the older fellow on the bench had stood and shambled across Frankfurter Allee. Would he, too, enter the café? He was walking fast enough to betray a sense of urgency.
Instead he had veered right, toward a taxi parked at the curb. Maybe one of his colleagues was at the wheel, or seated in the back. Emil had kept watching until the dramatic final scene played out. Lothar, after all his cracks about bad movies, would have gotten a chuckle out of how closely the climactic moment of the woman’s escape resembled a scene from one of those films, even if the choreography was a bit lacking in style or grace, except on the part of the woman. He supposed Hollywood would have at least allowed Volkov’s man to grab her by the arm, forcing her to shake him off with a deft bit of jujitsu or karate before jumping into the speeding taxi. Then, of course, a car chase would have followed, perhaps ending with a crash at the Brandenburg Gate.
Instead, Volkov watched her flee with no visible reaction, as did the other two Russians. None of them tried to block the taxi, or scramble toward a vehicle of their own. While they had obviously hoped to corner the woman, Emil sensed that they hadn’t wanted to kill or even harm her. Maybe they had only sought further information. Their biggest error, as far as he could see, was that they had miscalculated by applying their usual rough edges to a maneuver that had called for finesse.
Emil had then shut the curtain completely before taking his final sip of wine. Now he returned to the kitchen and poured the remainder down the sink.
There was a thump on the wall, followed by the sound of laughter. The muffled voices of children filtered to him from the apartment next door, which meant that their mother must be home as well. Of all their former neighbors, Magda Holbein was the one he least wanted to see. The mere thought of her made his knee ache. How old would Magda’s youngest be now? Seven? Eight? No longer in a stroller, certainly.
