Winter Work, page 17
He stepped out into the cold, alone with his burdens.
24
Bill Gentry placed a hand on Claire’s elbow and steered her toward a quiet table in a corner of the hotel bar.
Freed from the decorum of the workplace on a Friday night, his movements were more aggressive. He had practically pounced on Claire the moment she stepped off the elevator from upstairs—a hug of greeting, a squeeze of her shoulder, a hand to the small of her back as they crossed the lobby. He nudged her toward a chair, and then slid his own chair closer.
“Lindsey is quite impressed with how you’re handling this, the way you were able to salvage a contact.” He leaned across the small table until their foreheads were practically touching. Claire fought off an impulse to back away. She glanced down at the table to avoid his gaze.
“Not much to be impressed with, really. He made the approach.”
“Yes, but you kept your cool, didn’t spook him, phoned it in right away. And I could tell she liked your ideas for follow-up.”
“I thought she seemed a little wary.”
“Well, maybe this morning. Maybe initially. But I can tell you firsthand that by this afternoon she had warmed to the whole idea. She’s bringing in some help over the weekend, just in time for your contact on Monday. Not that you heard that from me.”
“What kind of help?”
“That will have to come from her. I think she’s eager to personally make the introduction. Probably tomorrow, so hang loose. He’s another outsider, due in at Tegel overnight.” Gentry checked his watch. “In about two hours, in fact.”
“Good to know. Thank you.”
Bad news for Baucom, she supposed, although their partnership would remain in play at least long enough for the trip to see Markus Wolf. Baucom had phoned her only an hour ago with further details of those arrangements. A second fax from the cutout “Roman” had curled onto his floor that afternoon, leading to a phone call that had revealed at least part of Wolf’s reasons for seeking a meeting: Someone from Langley had reached out to him, also through a back-channel connection, and was seeking a personal audience.
Claire had asked Baucom if that someone might be Lindsey Ward.
“Doubtful,” Baucom had answered. “This person is even higher up, or that was Wolf’s impression, anyway. Whoever it was made it a point to say they’d been ‘sent by Webster.’ ”
As in CIA director William Webster.
And now Wolf was hoping Baucom could give him a better idea in advance of what this high-ranking visitor would want from him, apart from the obvious items that Wolf had already made clear he wouldn’t be offering.
“But I have no idea what they want, of course,” Baucom had told her. “So if you pick up anything around the salt mine…”
“Sure. As long as you’re still taking me with you.”
“I tendered that request via Roman. Told him you were an academic researcher, working on your thesis.”
“Is that supposed to impress him?”
“Don’t knock it. The East Germans have always had an affinity for our academics. They can’t believe we actually give eggheads so much access, so they’re convinced they sometimes know as much as the spies do.”
Wolf wanted to meet as soon as Sunday, which would certainly make it easier for Claire. She could tell Gentry and Ward she’d gone off for an afternoon in the country, to clear her head before the important Monday meetup.
Her briefing that morning with Ward—the one Gentry had just characterized as an unqualified triumph—had felt precarious at times, but Claire had at least learned a few things. Ward had confirmed that there was indeed a direct competitor—the aforementioned “Leonid”—who was offering a product comparable to whatever Lothar Fischer had proffered.
To Claire, that made Leonid a likely suspect in Lothar Fischer’s death, and she had said so. Ward, somewhat defensively, had voiced skepticism, and she had not volunteered any further information on Leonid. That was another reason Claire had agreed to meet Gentry this evening, in spite of his obvious ulterior motives. Ply him with drink, flatter when necessary, then sit back and listen. It was shocking how often that still worked, even among professionals.
The waitress approached to take their order.
“Two whiskies, neat,” Gentry said. He got out a credit card, but Claire gently nudged it aside.
“I’m the one on a per diem, so how ’bout if I run the tab?”
“Oh. Sure.”
He sounded disappointed to have lost control of that aspect of the evening, although he did seem pleased by her touch. When the waitress returned with the drinks, Claire smiled, tapped her glass to his, and nudged the conversation in what she hoped would be a more productive direction.
“Must be exciting to be fielding so many high-grade offers for quality information. A real feather in your cap if we pull it off.”
“But there’s always the danger of bad-faith dealers. The old postwar days of the Berlin ‘paper mills’ come to mind. Con artists who would type up whatever they thought we wanted to see, as long as we were offering a few cartons of cigarettes in return.”
“Except this time we know the records are actually there for the taking. The ones that haven’t already been tossed out the window, anyway.”
“Or shredded. Or carted off to Moscow. But, yes.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to see that at least one bidder must have KGB connections, given those skeevy men in leather I ran into. Plus the name, Leonid.”
He nodded but said nothing. Claire saw that his glass was empty and signaled for a refill. The color was up in his cheeks, and he had loosened his tie.
“Who’s Leonid’s contact on our side?”
“Oh, I’m not privy to that. Lindsey has personally taken charge of that side of the action. The initial approach was in Warsaw. Went straight to our embassy.”
“A cold caller?”
“Or his cutout. Dropped a sample over the transom, with the understanding that any further transactions would be conducted here.”
“I suppose by now we must at least have his true identity, right?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Of course. I’m probably overestimating our ability to connect the few dots Lindsey Ward has chosen to draw for us.”
“Oh, I’ve managed to coax more than a few dots out of her.” He laughed smugly.
“I should have guessed you’d be on top of that.”
“Not that I can brief you fully, of course.”
“Understood. At my level I’d be satisfied with just a dot or two.”
He smiled and seemed on the verge of saying more. Instead he picked up his drink for another sip, as if to keep his mouth too busy to misbehave. Claire didn’t give up.
“I guess it’s obvious he must be based at Karlshorst, not Warsaw.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, you’re an ex–field man, Bill. Isn’t that how you’d play it if you had some dangerous information to peddle? Make first contact in someone else’s backyard, a place you’d be less likely to be seen by your own people. But for any further business you’d want to be working on your own turf, because that’s where all your help is. Your muscle, like those lovelies in black leather.”
“Not a bad assumption.” He seemed mildly disconcerted that she’d connected those particular dots. “But that’s all I should say for now on that front.”
“Of course.”
Someone from Karlshorst, then, and probably from the higher ranks of operatives and supervisors. That would only narrow it down to a few dozen people, and she wasn’t familiar with the personnel there, but it was a start.
Gentry again leaned forward, back on the prowl. This time he took her hand before she could pull it out of reach.
“So, then. Now that it’s the weekend and we can let our hair down a bit, I was pleased to hear you say the other day that you weren’t currently involved with anyone.”
“Not in Berlin, anyway. I believe that’s how I put it.”
“Nor in Paris, according to Marston.”
Marston was her station chief. Gentry had obviously scouted her out in advance of her summons to Berlin—not just for operational fitness, but for her potential as a personal conquest in his new life as a bachelor.
“Which only goes to show that Marston knows less about me than he thinks.”
“Oh?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Still, you strike me as the type willing to play by different rules when you’re off your home ground.”
“Do I, now?” She smiled, not yet ready to crush his feeble hopes. Or not until she’d had a chance to ask about Markus Wolf. “Well, at the very least I’d say this calls for another drink.”
“Right, ho.”
He said it with a jolly British accent and signaled to the waitress. Claire tried not to feel too queasy about Gentry’s smile as it widened into a leer. Maybe if she got him telling old war stories he’d stray from the main objective.
“Here’s a question I have for all of you more experienced Berlin hands. Did you often run into your competition in places like this?”
“Not the known ones. But you always had to be careful. And still do, where the Russians are concerned. Look at this place tonight, for example. Dead as can be. I suppose our waitress or bartender might potentially be on the payroll at Karlshorst, but she’s keeping her distance except when we call for her.”
“How about the East Germans?”
“Oh, their people were everywhere, and they were always listening.”
“Was that mostly Wolf’s doing? The fellow we couldn’t manage to get a picture of for so long?”
“Markus Wolf, yes, the Man Without a Face. Finally retired a few years back, thank God.”
“Have we ruled him out as a possible co-conspirator of Lothar Fischer’s?”
“Oh, absolutely. Ideologically he’s as pure as the driven snow. He’d never give us anything that would reveal the identities of his own people. But, well…”
“What?”
His smile was now more conspiratorial than salacious.
“Apparently the thinking on Wolf is that he might be more useful with regard to what he knows about our mutual friends in Moscow. Especially if they refuse to lift a finger to protect him or his people from prosecution. And that squares with recent events.”
“Like what?”
“Some strange doings at Harnack House.”
Harnack House was a stately old building in the U.S. Army compound in Dahlem, only a few blocks from the CIA base. It was home to the local Officers’ Club, with a restaurant, a few bars, and limited lodging for privileged guests. Lindsey Ward was currently staying there.
Gentry lowered his voice, his eyes alive with the excitement of privileged information.
“Lindsey got bumped out of her suite yesterday.”
“They gave her a whole suite?”
“The Brigadier’s Suite, yeah. But she’s been relocated to another floor. To make room for someone higher up the ladder.”
“How much higher?”
“Top floor, or that’s what Lindsey heard. Some recent heavyweight of counterintelligence, dispatched by the director himself. Due any day now.”
“And you think this is about Wolf?”
“Who else would rate that kind of visitor?”
There was a sudden burst of noise from the entrance. Five men in suits—all of them late twenties, all speaking English in British accents—traipsed loudly toward the bar and took seats at a nearby table. When the waitress approached, they ordered pints in this land where beer was measured by the liter. So much for any further privacy, and it was just as well. Claire had gotten all the information she was likely to receive.
Gentry gave her hand a squeeze and said, “You know, we could always retreat to a more secure location. Does your room have a minibar?”
She smiled and pulled her hand free.
“It does. But Jacques is supposed to be calling in about half an hour.”
“Jacques?”
“A friend. In Paris.”
“Ah, of course. That damn Marston. No wonder he can’t land a posting as important as Berlin. No aspersion on your own capabilities, of course.”
“Of course.”
She caught the eye of the waitress and mouthed a request for the check.
“Thank you for a lovely evening, Bill. It’s been nice to unwind. Looking forward to meeting the new arrival tomorrow.”
“Yeah, sure. And, well, if you happen to change your mind later about the need to unwind further…”
She smiled again but said nothing. The waitress handed her the check. Claire signed it and rose from the table.
They said goodbye a few moments later in the lobby, where she preempted another hug by holding out her hand for a farewell shake. Gentry offered a halfhearted squeeze along with a wan smile, then departed into the revolving door. Claire watched it eject him onto the street before turning toward the elevators.
She checked her watch.
There was no actual Jacques currently in her life, although there was an Henri. But the man next on her call list was Clark Baucom, because there was still work to be done.
25
Grimm knew firsthand that Andreas Plotz was an incurable night owl and a late riser, so he rose at dawn on Saturday to drive to Plotz’s apartment in Marzahn. Catching the man asleep might be the only way to jolt some honest answers out of him.
Emil knew this because long ago he had trained Plotz in the arts of deception, and by now the fellow had lived so many lives under so many identities that lying came to him as easily as breathing.
He had first known Plotz by the name his parents gave him, Thomas Eberhardt. Emil had spent six months preparing Eberhardt for his first mission before sending him to Brussels, where under a new name he quickly landed a job as an office clerk at NATO headquarters. Thus was Agent “Schumacher” born, and under that identity Plotz steadily climbed the ranks of the NATO office pool until he was promoted to archivist, giving him access to some of the organization’s most sensitive documents.
Two years later, after a wildly productive span in which he had given the HVA a stunning array of secret NATO reports, maps, and orders of battle, Schumacher began growing a bit too enamored of his increasingly louche Western lifestyle. He stayed out late, drank too much, broke too many hearts, and talked freely to too many people he barely knew.
Recognizing the warning signs from previous failures, Emil began planning for the worst. By doing so was he able to engineer an extraction operation on only two hours’ notice after learning that Schumacher’s cover had been blown. The operation smuggled him safely across the border just as authorities in Brussels were breaking down the door of his apartment.
Emil then did what he always did with his damaged goods. He bestowed on him yet another new name, moved him to Berlin, bought him a car, and inserted him into a dull but steady job within the East German bureaucracy—in this case, a low-level slot in the HVA’s Department Twelve, official records, where Eberhardt/Schumacher was reborn as Andreas Plotz, file clerk.
Again he rose quickly through the ranks, although Emil hadn’t realized quite how high until a few months earlier, when he had learned that Plotz was running the emergency Task Force 7, created to secure and dispose of the HVA’s most sensitive records.
Emil heard this news from none other than Lothar Fischer, who told him over a few beers on a sunny Saturday in early December, just after they’d chopped some firewood for Lothar’s dacha. Due to their usual “need to know” strictures, Lothar wasn’t aware until then that Plotz had once been one of Emil’s agents. Emil later wondered why he had decided to tell Lothar even then. Was it an indiscreet outburst of professional pride? A feeling of futility about his future? Maybe both. Or perhaps it was a simple case of opportunism, because after a few more beers he and Lothar had concluded that Plotz’s access and skills made him a uniquely valuable asset with regard to their hopes for a more secure future. Especially since, as they both knew, the last thing Plotz needed now was for any authorities in a reunified Germany to find out he’d once been a Stasi spy.
Lothar’s willingness to proceed with their scheme had taken Emil by surprise. Lothar had always been far more vocal than Emil about his loyalty, not only to the HVA but also to the party, the nation, the cause. It had made him prone to windy, tiresome lectures whenever their colleagues gathered socially.
But his personal downfall had apparently changed all that, and on that chilly Saturday at his dacha, it had taken only one more beer for Emil to tap into Lothar’s deep-seated resentment.
“That bastard Mielke cast me aside like one of these empties,” he’d said, gesturing toward the spent bottles of Berliner Pilsner. “And for what? A goddamn woman? A tart who I never said a word to about anything we did? And by doing that, of course, the asshole gave license to Käthe to throw me over as well. Thirty-six years of marriage and she walks out over a single mistake. I worked hard to keep their secrets, and I did it better than anyone else, even that preening peacock, Wolf. But none of it meant a damn thing to them once I unzipped my pants without their permission. So fuck them.”
Three days later, Lothar had set their plans in motion by paying a visit to Plotz—at his home, not his office. Now Emil was following the same route to Plotz’s door as he turned the Wartburg onto the Autobahn, heading due south past the exit for Bernau.
Half an hour later he was steering through light traffic on Blumbergerdamm. Pale sunlight seeped into the dimness of the gray horizon to his left.
