Winter Work, page 31
The work wasn’t easy. It required a steady hand, and the noise was deafening. If the security car were to stop here now, he’d almost certainly be discovered. He paused a few times to listen for any sign of trouble, but heard only the ringing of his ears.
It took about ten minutes to finish, as the base of the safe fell away. Emil set down the heavy saw, the room silent. He shone his flashlight into the opening. Several file folders were inside, and he pulled them out in two batches.
The thickest one was also the oldest, and it explained why Mielke referred to this private archive as the Bülowplatz materials. It was the Berlin police investigation file on the 1931 murders of police captain Paul Anlauf and officer Franz Lenck, at Bülowplatz in Berlin. Emil, who had heard tales for years about this long ago chapter in Mielke’s past, only had time for a cursory glance at the contents, but quickly saw Mielke’s name on several items that mentioned him as a leading suspect. Back then, Mielke had been a young communist rabble-rouser, willing to do anything—even kill—to earn his stripes. What a strange artifact to hang on to. Perhaps Mielke had thought it could be used to blackmail others, although it certainly incriminated him as well. Emil set it aside.
There were several other, thinner files. One was about Lothar’s disastrous affair with the actress, another was a dossier on Wolf’s second wife, Christa, who had been deemed a security risk after her divorce.
The folder Emil sought was near the bottom, and was the thinnest of them all. It was marked “KGB Dead Drop—Little Falls Parkway.” Inside was a brief after-action report, signed by Emil, describing the routine details of the operation. The other eleven pages were photocopies of the documents that had been retrieved from the dead drop—four CIA interagency memos, each with a circulation list on the first page that contained the names of everyone who had received that memo. Whoever had given these to the KGB would almost certainly be named on each of the four memos.
Yes, this was valuable information indeed. Emil shut the folder. He stood, unplugged the saw, hefted it in his right hand, and then tucked the folder beneath his arm. He crossed the room, opened the door to the outside with a groan of metal against concrete, listened for a second, and stepped back into the night.
Now he had to move quickly and quietly, and there was still a lot of ground to cover. He checked his watch. Just past 4 a.m. By now the Americans were probably growing nervous, assuming they had come at all. If they hadn’t, then he would be in for an even longer night, alone in the woods.
His first stop was the van, where he put Moritz’s saw back inside beneath the drop cloth, retrieved a pair of wire cutters, and then gently closed the door. If the security car came now, he’d be caught for sure. But the streets were quiet, the houses were still dark. He hoped Moritz had the good sense to get rid of the saw, or at the very least the special blade. Bits of metal from Mielke’s safe were still lodged in the teeth and flecked on its sides.
Emil set off across the street and into the pines, angling on a northwest heading that would take him to the rendezvous point. He was breathing heavily, carrying the folder in his sweaty right hand. Twigs snapped beneath his feet, and his trousers snagged on briars and underbrush. He stopped to pull a compass from his pocket to make sure he was staying on course, and in only a few minutes he reached a green concrete wall, cracked and crumbling, with barbed wire along the top.
He used a divot in the concrete as a foothold to climb high enough to clip each of the four strands of rusted wire. Then he clambered across. A few sheets of paper slipped out of the folder as he landed, and he plucked them from the twigs and pine needles.
He heard the rustle of other night creatures as he moved forward, and in another few minutes he reached the outer wall, which he surmounted in the same way as the first. He again checked his heading on the compass and adjusted his course. By his reckoning he was now within a quarter mile of where he had instructed the Americans to wait. He thought of Karola and Bettina, worried for him, and perhaps sleepless at the dacha.
Ahead he saw the pale light of a narrow clearing where the woods ended. Beyond it was a two-lane road and more trees, where, he hoped, a car with the two Americans awaited.
He peered into the darkness as he proceeded, straining his eyes to spot a glint of metal, or the welcoming flash of headlights to direct him onward. But for the moment he saw little more than trees, a forest inhabited by predators and prey.
Breathing heavily, he trudged onward, gripping the folder tightly.
49
Put two spies in a car in the woods for a few hours on hostile ground, and secrets are bound to surface. That’s certainly what happened with Claire and Ron Kent as they waited for their East German contact to emerge from the trees.
It was cold, they had finished half a thermos of coffee, and they were skittish about their vulnerable position as they waited on a dirt lane twenty yards off the paved road, sheltered beneath the pines. They had arrived early, ninety minutes ago, after slipping out the back of their inn and retrieving the car from its underground spot.
While en route they’d worried about being pulled over by the authorities, or noticed by other drivers along the way. But the roads were virtually empty. No one stopped them, and few even saw them. So here they were, staring into the gloom, hoping that at any moment the rumpled old fellow in the wool cap would appear in the clearing across the road.
They knew from their map—and, in Claire’s case, from what Baucom had told her the other day about the compound at Waldsiedlung—where he was likely to be coming from, a knowledge that had raised the stakes of the rendezvous. Honecker, Mielke, and all the party heavyweights had once lived in this forest, a proximity that made their presence riskier but also heightened the potential value of any item that might soon fall into their hands.
Claire had still not uttered Emil Grimm’s name to anyone. She continued to guard his identity out of fear that revealing it would put him in harm’s way.
Imagine her unpleasant surprise, then, when Kent said, out of the blue, “His name’s Emil Grimm, by the way, although I’m betting you already knew that. I figured I should tell you, mostly because Lindsey already knows.”
“What the hell! How did—”
“I picked him out from some photos she showed me this afternoon. I got a pretty good look at him at Tacheles, so it wasn’t hard.”
“Photos? She never showed me any photos.”
“Because she didn’t have any, or not until this morning. A set of five came in on an overnight fax.”
“From who? From where?”
Kent sighed. Claire could tell he didn’t want to say, but now he pretty much had to.
“Someone had blacked out the time signature and most of the other print, but on the third page they missed a line down at the bottom, and it was in Cyrillic.”
“The Russians, then.”
“Probably Karlshorst.”
“Goddamnit, Ron, couldn’t you have held her off at least for another day?”
“I’d already told her I got a great look at him, and Grimm’s photo was clearly a match. She would’ve seen right through me.”
“So finesse it, then. Say it also might have been one of the others. Anything to give him another twenty-four hours. What you did was totally irresponsible.”
“I disagree. Grimm knows how these things work. He’ll have taken precautions. And if he knows we have his ID, it strengthens our bargaining position.”
“You and Ward and your bargaining talk. It’s like you’re negotiating an employment contract, when the man’s life is at stake. Especially with someone like Gregor Kolkachev after him, which is probably who sent the goddamn fax.”
“Wait. You know Kolkachev’s name?”
“You know how these things work.”
“Touché.”
“I also know his thug enforcer’s name, Yuri Volkov.”
“Well, that’s a new one for me. Maybe even for Lindsey. You should tell her.”
“The problem with her approach is that she’s already picked a winner, so she only values Grimm as leverage. But what if he ends up offering something better?”
“If they both have copies of the full agent files, with every piece of that puzzle, then it’s pretty easy to see why she’d think Kolkachev offers greater long-term value. He’s active. So is the KGB. Grimm and the Stasi are dead and gone.”
“Maybe literally in Grimm’s case, if she’s already turned over his name.”
Kent looked off into the darkness.
“I gotta admit, if he’s just stolen something from where we think he is, then that’s pretty impressive. Still, it’s a one-off. Kolkachev could be the gift that keeps on giving. Lindsey’s only playing the odds.”
Lindsey, yet again. Claire was thoroughly sick of it.
“So he has agreed to be her defector in place?”
“You didn’t hear that from me.”
“Then why’d you just tell me?”
“Maybe I have my doubts, too.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ve been looking for this mole upstairs at Langley for a few years now, without really getting anywhere. I was detailed to it for a while, which is one reason she brought me over for this. But the whole search has been plagued by disinformation from the start. At least half the leads from their side seem designed to lead us astray.”
“Hardly surprising. And you think Kolkachev might be offering more of the same?”
Kent sighed.
“Apparently he’s making the case that our problem is a communications breach. A technology thing, not a mole.”
“Communications from where? What channel?”
“That’s what he’s promising to lay out for us.”
“Sounds like another way to keep us chasing our tail. You’d think she’d at least want to see what Grimm comes up with.”
“She will, if he ever comes out of the woods.”
“And survives beyond the next few hours.”
“That’s why we’re here for him. He’ll be safe with us.”
“Maybe. Once the sun comes up. And you’ve got the passports?”
Kent nodded.
“But don’t go making promises we can’t keep. Even if what he’s got looks great at first blush.”
Claire nodded back, but it still bothered her that Kent would control that part of the transaction.
“Look!” Kent said. “Across the road!”
It was Grimm. He had crossed the clearing and had just reached the road. Kent started the engine. At the sound of it, Grimm looked up like startled prey. Then he saw them and picked up his pace. As before, Claire thought she detected a limp.
“Okay, then.” Kent checked his watch. “Three hours to sunrise. Time to rock and roll.”
He put the car in gear and they drove out from under the trees. Grimm waited for them on the near shoulder, holding a file folder in his right hand. He looked exhausted but elated.
Their asset was in hand.
50
Claire thumbed through the pages, awestruck, reading by the light of the glove compartment. She held in her hands what seemed to be a CIA mole’s contributions to the Agency’s greatest enemy. The material felt special and charmed, and she couldn’t wait to get it to safer ground.
But for the moment they were driving at an illicit hour through territory that, newly freed or not, still felt like forbidden ground, so she put the documents back into their folder and slid it beneath the floormat for safer keeping.
Emil Grimm was sagged on the backseat, exhausted. There were twigs on his clothes, and his eyes were red. He had remained silent since handing her the folder, when he’d said, “Here. I’ve done my part, now it’s your turn.”
She’d given him a bottle of water, which he’d polished off with a sigh. Now, perhaps getting a second wind, he leaned forward between the two front seats and eyed the road. They had just turned onto the Autobahn toward Prenden. He smelled like the forest.
“Where did you get it, if you’re willing to say? Any detail like that will certainly help with the authenticity evaluation.”
“From a safe. In Erich Mielke’s house.”
Claire looked over at Kent, who grinned back. He gave a low whistle of admiration.
“Damn, man. And you just waltzed in there after dark?”
“I had help, but those kinds of details can wait. Did you bring the passports?”
Another exchange of glances, this one with looks of concern.
“We’ll discuss that when we’re on safer ground.”
“Safer ground? That’s not the right answer.”
Claire didn’t want to officiate an argument. She also believed Grimm should know as soon as possible about the heightened danger he was in, so she said, “We need to start taking greater precautions, all of us. Because I’m pretty sure that by now Kolkachev has your name.”
Emil’s eyes widened as he absorbed the blow.
“Because your people told him?”
“It wasn’t my doing.”
“But your people, all the same.” He was angry, and she didn’t blame him. Kent, to his credit, spoke up.
“It’s my fault. They showed me a photo array. I ID’ed you from that.”
“What time did this happen? How long ago?”
“Around four yesterday afternoon.”
“Scheisse! That was more than twelve hours ago! He could be waiting at my goddamn house by now. We need to move. Faster!”
Kent sped up, but not enough for Grimm.
“Faster, man!”
“We can’t afford to get pulled over.”
“I’ll deal with the Volkspolizei. Just go!”
Kent floored it. The Mercedes, true to its reputation, leaped to another stratum of speed and power. They exited the Autobahn a mile later and reached Prenden only a minute after that. Because it was a farming village, there were already lights on in some of the windows, ambering the cobbled lanes.
When they reached the right turn for the dirt lane to the Bauersee, a Citroën was emerging at high speed, fishtailing and throwing gravel as it darted onto the main road.
“Uh-oh, who’ve we got here,” Kent said. “If they stop us, we’re fucked.”
But the car only seemed interested in making a getaway. The driver reacted to their sudden appearance by shutting off the headlights, which felt all wrong.
“I don’t like this,” Grimm moaned. “Faster!”
Every window of the dacha was dark. The only car in sight was the Wartburg, parked in the driveway. Grimm bolted from the back before they even came to a full stop. He stumbled and cried out in pain, but never stopped.
Claire followed as he threw open the door of the house and disappeared inside. But she could already see there was a problem by the haze of smoke that came boiling out the open door. No flames, only smoke. She put a hand over her mouth, lowered her head, and ran inside, already hearing Grimm’s voice calling out from a bedroom on the left.
“Bettina! Karola! No!”
She coughed, gasping for air, and switched on a light. The culprit seemed to be the woodstove in the middle of the main room, so she went to shut it down, closing dampers and vents. But smoke kept leaking from it, as if something had blocked it from above, or in the flue. She heard Kent behind her now, coughing.
“I’ll get that,” he said. “Get Grimm out of here before he collapses!”
She ran to the bedroom door, trying to hold her breath, and saw a desperate scene unfolding. Grimm stood between an angled hospital bed and a fold-out bed, bent over, coughing. There was a sleeping woman in each bed. Grimm looked torn, distraught. He stepped to the hospital bed and stooped over the still figure beneath the sheets.
“Bettina! Bettina!” He shook her. “She can’t wake up. She won’t open her eyes.”
Claire switched on the light. She recognized the woman in the fold-out bed as the one who had driven the Wartburg. Like the other woman, she seemed to be dead or unconscious. Neither was reacting at all to the noise and commotion. Claire stepped forward, coughing, feeling faint now, and grabbed the woman beneath her arms. Then she thought better of it and turned to Kent, who had just rushed in behind her.
“Grab that end of the cot. We’ll carry her out!”
It was an awkward job, but they moved fast, heaving the cot out into the fresh, cold air just in time for both of them. They sagged to the ground, coughing.
But they could still hear Grimm calling out from inside, as if his lungs would never stop working, his voice now a croak of fury and despair.
“Bettina, Bettina! Open your eyes!”
51
The police caught up to them at the hospital in Bernau. A plainclothesman, Lieutenant Dorn, approached Claire and Kent in the small, dreary waiting room. He addressed them in German.
“Emil tells me you two were with him when he found the bodies, yes?”
“Bodies?” Claire said. “So they’re…?”
“His wife is dead. The other one, the caretaker, it’s too early to say. She remains unconscious.”
“Yes, we were with him.”
It was an awkward moment, and not only because of what they’d been doing overnight, or the contents of the folder, which was still stashed beneath the floormat of their car. Both of them knew that, operationally, they should have moved on as soon as the ambulance arrived. Instead they had driven the distraught Grimm to the hospital, and felt obligated to stay for his protection, even though neither of them was armed.
Claire had tried to talk Kent into heading back on his own with the folder before they attracted further attention, but he had refused to let her shoulder the burden alone. So there they were, two hours later, with the sun coming up and a detective asking questions. Emil was off in the hospital room where they had taken the two women. Both had been alive, barely, when they’d first arrived.
