Tom Clancy Red Winter, page 27
“Oh, my friend, the things I know about events in Nevada would astound you. But I need assurances before I give you that. For now, I will tell you the name of your mole. That should let your superiors at Langley see that I am a serious man with serious information. You can only imagine the importance we place on an asset deep in the bowels of the American CIA. She is vital.”
Neither Ryan nor Foley were shocked when he named Jen North. In fact, it seemed inevitable.
The receiver in the center of Ryan’s chest buzzed once and stopped. It was the first time he’d gotten any kind of signal in half an hour and he jumped, drawing a side-eye from Pfeiffer. The notifications had come periodically, even before they’d arrived at the meeting spot—a vibration here, two there, as Truly Bishop and her boss triangulated radio signals that were moving closer to their given location. The city was teeming with police—secret and otherwise. Complete radio silence would have been cause for concern.
Ryan went to the window now, staying well back as he pulled aside the tarp a hair to peek outside. Though not crowded, the sidewalks had a steady flow of pedestrians, many of them coming from a small bar on the corner to Ryan’s right. At the opposite end of the block, near the corner on the left, a lone man stood beside the driver’s-side door of a brown Lada. He wore a heavy coat and a fur hat. It was difficult to be sure from that far away, but Ryan thought he held a radio microphone in his hand. He scanned the block, checking out the buildings from roofline to street level. It was much too far away for Ryan to read his lips, but it was obvious he’d said something into the mic.
Moments later, the device on Ryan’s chest buzzed again. Berlin Station had picked up the transmission near his location.
Nice to know it worked.
Ryan bladed and stepped back, making himself slightly less visible.
“You need to take a look at this.”
Foley switched places with him at the window, leaving Ryan to keep an eye on the major. If there were a raid, the quickest way for Pfeiffer to save himself would be to shoot both American spies before anyone had a chance to hear their side of the story. His supervisors would have questions, but he might even come away as a hero.
Hand on the window covering, Foley turned and glanced over her shoulder. “There’s a man sitting in his car down the street. Are you expecting someone?”
“Probably just a routine Volkspolizei patrol.” He pushed away from the wall. “Even so, we have been in this place far too long. There is no need to meet face-to-face again.”
He pulled a bright green stocking cap down low over his ears and then shrugged into a heavy wool sweater. With the addition of a pair of dark-rimmed glasses, he’d completely changed his look from when he’d arrived. His overcoat and fedora went into a large paper sack he carried as if he’d been to the market. Ready to go, he took a cube of pool-cue chalk from his pocket and handed it to Ryan.
Pfeiffer gave them the address of a phone box.
“Speak with your people. Tell them what I told you. If they want more and agree to the terms as I have explained them to you, then put a mark at the top of the sign on the door of the phone box. You can do it as you step inside. The sign is white. The chalk is white. No one will be able to see it unless they specifically look for it. Any Stasi who are following you will be far more interested in what call you are making. So, make one. Telephone someplace innocuous and not attributable to your government. Once I see the chalk mark . . . If I see the chalk mark . . . I will assume that Jennifer North has been arrested, and that the gods who decide such things have agreed to my terms. I will present myself to the U.S. Mission in West Berlin.”
Ryan shot a glance at Foley.
“No,” he said.
All the color drained from Pfeiffer’s face.
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“We’re going home,” Foley said. “You’re right in that there is no need for another face-to-face meeting, or any sort of meeting, for that matter.”
“What—”
“Look, Major,” Foley said. “I’m ready to sign off if you check out. Don’t come to the Mission first, though. Your people are watching that place twenty-four/seven. Once you go in, there’ll be no changing your mind.”
“I don’t intend to change my mind,” Pfeiffer snapped.
“Better you meet us at the McDonald’s near Grunewald Forest tomorrow at noon. You know where it is.”
“I do,” Pfeiffer said. “But I am not prepared to come over until—”
“The information you gave us on Jennifer North is old news,” Foley said. “She fled the U.S. Mission earlier. As a matter of fact, we believe she’s already crossed into East Berlin.”
Ryan shrugged. “You’ll be safer in the West.”
The major twisted his wool scarf in a tight knot. “I will think on it.”
“Just be there,” Foley said.
Pfeiffer left quickly, turning back at the door just long enough to give a slight dip of his head, agreeing to the terms. With that, he wheeled and slunk down the hall like the vermin that he was.
There was never any question that the CIA would accept Pfeiffer’s relatively inexpensive demands if he turned out to be a legitimate walk-in. He appeared to be a horrible human being, feckless and irredeemable, but just like in the federal Witness Protection Program, angels who betrayed their own people were at a premium. More often than not, it was merely the first pig to the trough who got the best deal. It was a dirty little secret in the CIA—one of many, Ryan was learning. A staggeringly high percentage of the people they recruited were tyrants, murderers, and rapists in their previous lives. If those rapists, murderers, and tyrants had something of value to the United States, they received a get-out-of-jail-free visa, a new life, and some money to live it. They were of course required to behave themselves from that point forward, a task that most people of that ilk found impossible. But there were other ways to deal with that—after the intelligence had been gathered.
“Looks like the Lada is leaving,” Ryan said, peering out the window. The driver down the block was back in his vehicle, headlights on. A cloud of exhaust said the engine was running. “That was interesting.”
“We need to get on the road.” Foley was already in her coat and now used her thumbs to punch a message in the SRAC. “First things first, though. We need to confirm with Berlin Station that Jen North has possibly turned.”
“Possibly?” Ryan asked. “You said it, she’s bent.”
“Yep,” Foley said. “But I’ve had those KGB assholes name too many innocent friends of mine just to watch the Agency crucify them out of an abundance of caution.”
“She ran, Mary Pat,” Ryan said. “Occam’s razor . . .”
Foley groaned, finished her missive, and then walked to the window and peeked out. “I know. It just sucks to hear that one of your own . . .”
“Are you sending that from up here?” Ryan asked, getting her mind back on task.
“When we’re ready to walk out the door,” she said. “We’ll get coverage if we’re a little higher out of the building’s shadow. The signal goes out in something like an eight-second burst. Supposedly that makes it harder to triangulate, but I want to be on the move the moment I broadcast.”
“I’m ready when you are.”
She spoke without turning around. “Just watching the street for a minute, getting a feel for what we’re going to be walking into. Hey, did you see Pfeiffer about shit himself when you asked about Nevada?”
“What do you think that means?”
“Either he knows something he doesn’t want to tell us,” Foley said, “or he’s worried he doesn’t know enough to be worth anything to us. If I was a betting woman, I’d say it’s the latter. His government tit is drying up and he’s rooting around for something new.”
“And wants to make sure he has enough to trade.”
“That’s my assessment, too.” Foley gave a resigned sigh. “He’s an asshole, but he’ll have loads of useful insight. Most of it I doubt he even knows he knows. I’m going to recommend the director PL 110 him.”
Public Law 110 allowed the director of the CIA to grant asylum to a given number of assets every year and use public monies for their maintenance and support.
“The man’s shrewd,” Foley said. “I’ll give him that much. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He just exited the building down the block right on top of the Lada, but . . . That’s weird. The guy was in or beside his car last time you looked. Right?”
Ryan joined her at the window. “What’s weird?”
“The Lada’s still there,” she said. “Lights still on, engine running . . . but I’m not seeing the driver.” She shoved the SRAC into her coat pocket. “We’ll wait to send this until we’re clear. Too much danger of getting captured.” She darkened. “And I already told you how that would go down.”
Ryan resisted the urge to pull back the tarp for a better look. The buzzer went off again. Once . . . then three times. Then a constant humming vibration—S . . . O . . . S . . . O . . . S-O-S-O-SOSOSOSOS—until the signals melded together like a swarm of angry bees.
“You’re right,” he said. “We should go now!”
47
On the other side of the wall in the apartment next door, Elke Hauptman popped her neck from side to side, cramped from leaning sideways with one ear pressed against the length of plastic pipe. She’d listened to the entire conversation, warmed by each treasonous word Pfeiffer had spoken. She had the edge now, the power she needed to be clear of him. She just needed to figure out how to use it.
Pfeiffer’s footsteps clicked down the hall as he left the apartment, and for a fleeting moment she trembled at the thought that he might burst through her unlocked door and confront her for spying on him—as he’d done in the Imperial Club. She relaxed by degree as the footfalls grew distant. The Americans were still talking. They seemed to understand that Pfeiffer was a pig, and yet they were still going to help him! It made Elke want to scream.
She chanced a look out the window. Pfeiffer was on the street below now, crossing in the shadows, foolishly thinking he was invisible because he’d taken off his fedora and put on a different hat. It worked, but only because the agent behind the wheel of the Lada was young and too focused on the building.
She’d pegged the Lada driver as KGB as soon as she got a good look at him. Shabby coat, fur hat, and an oafish, plodding manner as if he were fresh from the collective and this was his first trip to the big city.
Curiously, he left his car running and trotted down the sidewalk. Elke’s heart raced when he turned and crossed diagonally toward the building. He was alone now, but he wouldn’t be alone for long. KGB always traveled in wolf packs. Elke had planned to wait until she heard the Americans leave, but there was no time for that. She gave a fleeting thought to warning them, but they were spies. Who could trust a spy?
She grabbed her coat and ran into the hallway without putting it on, nearly running into the two Americans as they came out of the next apartment.
All three of them froze, staring at one another. Elke kept her hands open and out to her sides. She knew from Western television that Americans were trigger-happy cowboys, and she didn’t want them to shoot her.
“Guten Abend,” the American man said, nodding slightly as if to show he wasn’t a threat. The woman’s lips pulled back in a feral growl, looking like she might rip Elke’s head off at the slightest provocation—or no provocation at all.
“No time to explain.” Elke racked her brain to be certain she used the correct English. “Pfeiffer . . . he plays games with you. KGB, Stasi . . .” She pointed to the wall and the street beyond. “I do not know which, but they are here.”
* * *
—
Ryan was surprised to hear this new mystery woman spoke English.
Foley bladed, one hand raised to ward off an attack, the other drawn back, ready to swing.
“And you are?”
“Ich bin . . . My name . . . is Elke Hauptman,” the woman said. She shook her head, out of breath, hands shaking. “We must go now! I got the gist of who you are through the wall.” She nodded to the elevator alcove just three apartments away. “They will come out there. We should go to the far end of the hall and take the other set of stairs.”
“We know where the stairs are,” Foley said.
“Good for you,” the woman snapped. “That KGB thug is alone—which gives us a moment to flee. They are known more for prudence than bravery. He will wait for his friends, but we should go at once!”
“Hauptman?” Ryan repeated. It was a name he’d not heard before.
“Yes, Hauptman!” she said. “I will tell you everything, but not here.”
Foley gave a shake of her head, eyeing the woman. “Why should we follow you? Who are you to Pfeiffer?”
She threw up her hands. “If you must know, I was here to shoot him in the face! Now, really, we have to go—”
Around the corner, the elevator chimed as the car reached the floor and whirred to a stop.
“Sheisse!” Elke Hauptman cursed. “That KGB fool came up alone!”
Running away went against everything in Jack Ryan’s makeup. Rather than risk being shot in the back, he bounded toward the elevator, closing the distance. The chime pinged again. The doors slid open, revealing a startled man whose hand dropped immediately to a holstered Makarov at his belt. Young and farm-boy strong, he outweighed Ryan by at least fifty pounds. The heavy coat made him look like a monster.
The man spat something in Russian, a curse, from the tone of it, and began to draw the pistol.
Ryan sprang through the doors, slamming the Russian into the back wall of the elevator. Ryan trapped the gun arm with both hands, while driving the point of his shoulder into the man’s chest. He brought his knee into the Russian’s groin over and over, sometimes connecting, but mostly glancing off the man’s thighs during the struggle.
Though his gun hand was trapped, the man still had complete use of his left. He began to pummel blows into Ryan’s unprotected kidney. Bucking and twisting, he kicked up a leg and used the wall as a platform to throw Ryan off.
Enraged, Ryan fought his way through the nauseating pain. He rolled his shoulder inward toward the Russian’s centerline, bringing the man’s gun arm with him. He borrowed a page from his opponent and kicked off the wall with his feet, slamming them both against the wood paneling on the opposite side of the elevator.
Only seconds had passed, and the doors hissed closed behind them. The car began to move again. Down.
Ryan drove his forehead upward, slamming into the bridge of the man’s nose. The delivery wasn’t textbook, and the blow stunned him, too, but at least blood wasn’t pouring from a gap in the top of his nose.
The Russian staggered sideways, the Makarov slipping from his hand. He was up again in a flash, lunging for the gun on the ground. Ryan kneed him brutally in the face, then kicked the gun away. He reached behind him and blindly started pressing buttons. The Russian’s friends were on the way. He had to stop the elevator before it reached the bottom and opened to a bunch of KGB thugs. He was having a tough enough go with this one guy . . .
* * *
—
Foley almost made it through a gap in the elevator doors, but they slid shut when she was just inches away. She spun immediately, sprinting for the stairs, giving Elke Hauptman’s shoulders a yank as she ran past.
“Come with me!”
“What . . . Where are you—”
“Elevator’s going down,” Foley said. “We took it part of the way up and it was pretty damned slow. If we take the stairs now—”
“We can beat them down,” Hauptman said, finishing Foley’s sentence.
They hit the stairwell at a dead run. The door cracked like a gunshot when Foley flung it open.
“You said you came here to shoot Pfeiffer,” she said over her shoulder, bounding down the stairs with Hauptman in tow.
“Yes . . .”
“Good,” Foley said. Still running when she reached the landing, she grabbed the metal banister and whipped around, keeping up her speed as she descended the next flight. “Then give me your gun!”
* * *
—
Ryan and the Russian faced each other, panting, hunched forward, both with their backs to their respective walls of the elevator. The gun was on the floor between them, but whichever one of them moved to get it would earn himself a boot to the teeth. Ryan had not been in many fights as an adult, but the ones he had been in were brutal, more than one of them to the death. His old man had been a scrapper, though, and instilled a fighting spirit in his son—at least enough that he could protect himself. Chiefly, the elder Ryan had taught his son to take the fight to his adversary. Most fights, the old man said, were not fights at all, but shoving matches to establish dominance. The way to win a fight was not to joist and parry, but to attack, furiously and without warning—speed, surprise, and violence of action.
So he did . . . and the Russian soaked it up like Ryan was throwing marshmallows at him.
Ryan got what he thought were a couple effective jabs and two good right crosses to the man’s jaw. His nose was bent sideways, and his teeth smeared with blood, but apart from his looks, he did not seem any the worse for wear. He didn’t slow down, and the liver shots he meted out to Ryan’s torso said he still had plenty of power.
Ryan slumped, flailing for the wall to keep his feet.
The Russian chuckled.
Ryan suddenly felt heavier. Cables clanked as the elevator slowed, then whirred to a stop.
Behind him. The chime dinged and the doors opened with a sullen hiss, like it was ready to get rid of these guys.
