Tom Clancy Red Winter, page 30
Still fuming. “And I am only now hearing about this?”
“With due respect, Colonel Zima. This information, too, must remain compartmented. We trust you, of course, but we have kept those with knowledge of the operation very small. Our primary mission is to capture the traitor before he does great harm—”
Zima looked him dead in the eye. “Have you?”
“What?”
“Captured LAVENDEL before he does great harm?”
Zima stuffed his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, breathing in hard through his nose. He dipped his head toward the nearest body.
“I do not think you have.”
The poor man lay facedown in the gutter, one arm trailing over the curb, as if he’d been attempting to push himself to his knees. The top of his face had been shot away. Schneider had seen wounds like that before—pistol executions from close range. The smaller Makarovs were not quite so destructive. A nine-millimeter Luger often did this kind of damage. The other three looked to have been shot only in the chest, center mass. The bodies were stacked, as if they’d been standing bunched together when they were murdered.
“That one is Major Popov,” Zima whispered. He stared into the darkness at nothing. “It could have easily been me. I was with him not two hours ago. You say the Americans are involved in this?”
“This?” Schneider said. “I do not know. But they are here to discuss a defection.”
“Americans!” Zima spat. “We have rules. They know these rules. Traitors are one thing. They can be killed, tortured, whatever. Both sides do it.” He pounded his fist against an open palm to punctuate each word. “Officers! Are! Not! Touched! What do you think they would do if I gunned down four employees of the CIA? They would weep and wail and threaten sanctions.” He jabbed a fat index finger at Schneider. “I will tell you what they would do. They would PNG every Soviet diplomat in the United States. Well, PNG my ass. I am not a coward. They kill four of ours, I will kill ten of theirs!”
Schneider looked up and down the block for Fuchs, who would be able to shed more light on the shooter. He wasn’t to be found. Still, now was not the time to mention his story.
Zima was too incensed to change his mind, so Schneider decided to divert his focus to the present.
“What about upstairs?” he asked.
Zima took a few deep breaths, regaining a semblance of composure. “What do you mean ‘upstairs’? What is upstairs? The dead are here.”
A graying KGB man stepped closer and spoke to Zima in low tones.
“Okay,” Zima said after the man had gone. “Another one of my men was following a physics professor from the university. This man called for assistance.” Zima waved an open hand over the four bodies. “I gave him the assignment. Instead of assistance, he also gets slaughtered.”
“I have a witness,” Schneider said. “He saw everything.”
A dreadful growl rumbled out of Zima’s barrel chest. “One of your men stood idly by while my people were gunned down?”
Dieter Fuchs’s voice startled even Schneider, and he knew to expect the man. The little man had a way of materializing in a way that was extremely off-putting, and, Schneider thought, was likely to get him shot one day.
“I was much too far away, Colonel,” Fuchs said. “This man was a professional. It was over before I could cross the street.”
“You . . .” Zima said in disgust. “It would not be unreasonable to say that this looked like your particular brand of butchery.”
“I admit to that,” Fuchs said. “But it is not.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?”
Fuchs shot a glance at Schneider.
“Taking care of a small matter for me,” Schneider said.
“Ah,” Zima said. “Your traitor . . .” He looked up suddenly. “What’s this about upstairs?”
“The fifth man you mentioned,” Fuchs said. “The one who called for assistance. He took the elevator up over an hour ago, following a fellow who I do not think was aware he was being followed.”
Zima pursed his lips, exhaling sharply between the gap in his top teeth, visibly shaken.
“Mikhailov . . .”
He spun on his heels and with a snap of his fingers that echoed through the rainy night summoned five KGB officers to accompany him. Even Schneider, who wielded no small amount of power within the Ministry, was impressed. There was little in the world more frightening than a KGB colonel who felt he had been personally wronged. Five officers fell in around Zima in a trench-coated phalanx. A dozen others remained outside in the rain with the Volkspolizei and processed the homicide scene with photographs and diagrams.
Schneider and Fuchs followed the group into the lobby. Any information on LAVENDEL/CALISTO was sure to be upstairs.
An elderly pensioner wearing a maroon tracksuit met them as they were coming in. He pointed to a small knot of women in everything from dressing gowns to a yellow culotte jumpsuit.
“What you are looking for is on floor number five,” the old man said.
Zima snapped his fingers again, growling something in Russian that was much too fast for Schneider to catch. The rearmost man peeled away from the group and ushered the pensioner to the wall, flipping open a little notebook to pick the old man’s brain clean of what he’d seen or heard.
The group of women from the fifth floor would also be questioned. In the meantime, they told Colonel Zima and the others what to expect—and it was not good.
The Linde Plattenbau was comprised of two hundred fifty-two boxy concrete apartments, a third of them under construction and therefore vacant for the time being. These would be the perfect place for LAVENDEL/CALISTO to meet with the Americans and discuss his treason as well as a spot to hide—if one was foolish enough to stay in place and wait for the KGB hounds to sniff them out.
Evgeni Zima dropped to his knees beside the dead boy. He checked the body for a pulse, but the pallor and huge pool of blood left no doubt.
“His Makarov is gone!” Zima’s chest heaved. “I will need to inform his wife. She is to have their first child next month.” He wiped a tear from his eye with his knuckle. “I sent this boy here.”
Schneider shot a glance at Fuchs. That was something.
“Not here, exactly,” the KGB man said. “I assigned him to follow a physicist . . . A Dr. Hauptman. He is German . . . One of yours, doing important research. Sensitive research. A family man.” He stood quickly, as if an idea had just occurred to him. Half a head taller than Fuchs, he glared down. “Describe this assassin you witnessed on the street.”
“Heavy coat,” Fuchs said. “Wool hat pulled down low. Well muscled. Over two meters tall. He has had a lot of training. I will tell you that.”
“American?”
“Possibly,” Fuchs said, seemingly aware that his next words could well begin a bloody war. “He could have been BND.”
Zima shook his head. “The Americans are here. They killed my men.” He pointed emphatically at the body with each word. “They murdered this boy.”
He wheeled and started for the elevator.
“Should we search the building?” Schneider asked.
“My men will do just that,” Zima said. “I am going to see to my dead . . .”
“And then?” Schneider prodded.
“Then I am going to find some Americans and shoot them . . . in the face—so they see it coming.”
“Colonel,” Schneider said. “Perhaps there is more going on here than meets the eye.”
“Nonsense! It is clear as day. Dr. Hauptman has not returned home. The Americans have come across the border and kidnapped him for the precious knowledge in his head.”
“Can you tell me about this precious knowledge?” Schneider asked.
“You should know,” Zima said. “Your people are watching him as well. We found Stasi hardware while placing devices of our own.”
“Were they active?” Schneider asked.
Stasi listening technology could be found in every other dwelling in the DDR, many of them from past investigations. Not a day went by that MfS electronics surveillance specialists placing a device did not cry out in glee because holes had already been drilled or wiring run on a given project.
“If your own command wants to keep you in the dark, then far be it from me to read you in,” Zima said, smug, obviously still upset about Schneider not being completely forthcoming about his CIA asset. “Alert the border guards to be extra-vigilant. They will surely try to get him across. These American dogs believe they can come to the East and do this without any repercussions? I will show them where the crawfish go for winter!”
The idiom sounded quaint, but Russians understood it for what it was, something akin to banishment to Siberia.
Fuchs spoke up, the breathy timbre of his voice oddly disconcerting. “Colonel Zima, I believe I know a way to help Colonel Schneider find his mole. I suspect this mole will know exactly who murdered this young man, because I suspect he was there when it happened.”
Zima stood and fumed. He looked back and forth between the two men, glancing down at young Mikhailov’s body every few seconds as if to top off his rage.
“Go on, then,” he said at length. “I need to see to these bodies and inform their families.”
Schneider sighed, not quite relieved. “So shooting anyone is off the table . . . for the time being?”
Zima pushed the button to summon the elevator. “Unless I see an American while I am still angry. Then all bets are off.”
Schneider turned to Fuchs as soon as the elevator doors closed with Colonel Zima on board on his way to the lobby.
“That was a reach,” he said. “It was a lone shooter downstairs. You saw it yourself.”
“True,” Fuchs said. “A professional, to be sure. But look at this.” He hunkered down next to Mikhailov’s body. “This guy was in a fight. See the bruising on his face. His disheveled clothing. I would bet the pathologist finds multiple injuries in addition to the bullet wound. And he was shot in the neck. No neat center-mass shots like the ones on the street. The bullet broke his collarbone and clipped an artery, but the flesh around it is still relatively intact. I’d say it was a slightly slower projectile.”
“Different caliber, different shooter,” Schneider mused.
“That is my guess,” Fuchs said. “It is a good bet your traitor either pulled the trigger or was with the ones who did. The KGB shows up while he is meeting with the Americans . . . It is not difficult to imagine things going to shit.”
Schneider darkened. “I had hoped you would take care of this problem.”
“And we were in the process,” Fuchs said. “We have successfully whittled down the surveillance team. Now we only need to find the Americans again. They will lead us to your traitor.”
“They are long gone,” Schneider said. “How do you propose to find them now?”
“I do not think they are gone.” Fuchs took five steps down the hallway and pointed at the floor.
“Blood,” Schneider gasped. “Mikhailov wounded one of them!”
“He did,” Fuchs said. “We know he followed Dr. Hauptman here, to the two Americans.”
“So Dr. Hauptman is the traitor?”
“Perhaps,” Fuchs said. “But do not forget, both Stasi and KGB have his home under surveillance. I could be mistaken, but I believe his treachery would have been discovered by now. That said, I would bet he knows who the traitor is. If he is wounded, the Americans will be helping him. If they are wounded, he will be helping them. I am telling you, Hauptman is the key. Hauptman will lead us to the Americans, and I feel sure the Americans will lead us to your traitor.”
“Agreed,” Schneider said. He found a piece of lumber in the elevator alcove and laid it on top of the blood spatter. “Spies killing spies could easily turn into a blood feud between nations—the worst possible kind of war. The Russians will go home to Moscow once the shooting starts and we in the DDR will be left to live with the mess. I am not sure we would survive it.” He took a deep breath. “We need to control this narrative. I will find out which unit has Dr. Hauptman under surveillance. How do you propose to locate him?”
Fuchs shrugged as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
“Hauptman is Ossi,” he said. East German. “We will find out who he cares about and hurt them until he tells us what we need to know.”
52
Wolfenberger Engine Repair sat in a squat wood-and-tin building off a quiet alley between an overgrown vacant lot—that may have once held cars awaiting service—and the back of a textile factory that Elke explained made pantyhose. The clattering noises coming from inside said the night shift was going strong, but there were no cars out back and a cursory glance at the ground said it was not a place employees used for smoke breaks. Elke assured them no one ever came here, earning a sidelong glare from her husband.
They hid the scooters behind a rusted trash bin. Uwe took back the key from Ryan and stuffed it into his pocket as soon as they parked. He made no secret of the fact that he didn’t trust any of them at the moment, least of all his wife.
Elke shrugged it off and found a key hanging behind a metal sign advertising East Germany’s Club Cola (Not for everyone. Just for us!).
Ryan took off his coat and spread it over a surprisingly clean cot in the corner of the windowless back room of the abandoned repair shop. The scooter ride in the snow and rain had nearly done Foley in, and she collapsed facedown on the cot as soon as they got inside. Ryan thought to reposition the elastic around her wound, but she’d reached out and stopped him like something from a kung fu movie, her grip surprisingly firm as she pushed his hand away.
“Let it be,” she said. “I’m afraid it’ll start bleeding again.”
“Please excuse me a moment.” Elke disappeared through a double set of doors, leaving them alone with her husband.
“I’m Jack,” Ryan said. “This is my friend, Mary.”
“I am not pleased to meet you,” Hauptman said in heavily accented English. He didn’t look to be an especially powerful man, but he was angry, which made him dangerous. “Elke is too kind for her own good. The woman speaks five languages, much more intelligent than me, but she is prone to recklessness. How dare you involve her in . . . whatever this is.”
Foley sighed, catching her breath. She spoke into the pillow without turning her head. “We did not involve your wife in anything, Mr. Hauptman.”
“Dr. Hauptman.”
“Good. I could use a doctor.”
“Not that sort of doctor,” Hauptman groused. “I am a research physicist at Humboldt University.”
Elke came in with an armful of folded wool blankets and a pillow and made Foley’s nest slightly more comfortable.
“This place once belonged to a friend of mine.”
“Tell it as it is,” her husband snapped. “An old boyfriend.”
“He was,” Elke said. “That is true. I was at university. Very young. Horst Wolfenberger was full of ideas and unable to keep them to himself. A good man, but I could see from the beginning that he was bound to find himself at odds with the state.”
“What did I tell you,” Dr. Hauptman said. “She is prone to recklessness, associating with a man like Horst.”
“I met and married you and Horst attempted to swim the Spree River to reach the West.”
She shook away a memory and put her wrist over Foley’s forehead.
“You need—”
The movement jarred Foley out of her stupor.
“Where’s the SRAC?”
“I’ve got it.” Ryan patted the communication device in his pocket opposite the Makarov. “I was afraid it would fall out of your coat.”
“I have to send that message . . .” Foley rolled onto her side, tried to push herself into a seated position, failed, and then made do with propping herself on the pillow so she could thumb-type on the miniature keypad.
Elke nodded at the device. “A way to communicate with your people?”
Ryan glanced up at her from beside Foley, his fingers curled around the pistol in his coat. It was a hell of a thing to live in a place where you couldn’t trust anyone. He shook his head and relaxed his grip on the pistol. This woman was terrified—and she’d risked her life by bringing them to what was apparently her secret safe space.
“I need to tell you something,” Elke said.
Foley kept typing. “Go ahead.”
“I could hear you speaking to Pfeiffer through the wall,” she said.
Uwe erupted. “Who is Pfeiffer?”
“A bad man,” Elke said. “I am sorry, my love. I am sorry I lied to you. I am sorry for everything . . .”
Tears streamed down her face as she recounted to her husband how the Stasi officer had forced her to steal notes from Uwe’s work, among other horrible things.
Uwe Hauptman slumped in stunned silence.
“Doctor,” Ryan said. “You said you’re a physicist. What’s the emphasis of your study?”
“I . . . That is a sensitive matter—”
“Radar!” Elke blurted. “Pfeiffer was extremely interested in everything to do with radar-avoidance technology. I heard him speak of it with others over the phone many times.”
Foley set the SRAC on the cot beside her.
“He thought I was only his plaything,” Elke continued. “A brainless singer that would not understand what he was talking about on the telephone. What my own husband does.”
“But you did,” Ryan said.
“Yes,” she said. “When he thought . . .” A sob caught in her throat. “He thought I was asleep.”
Uwe Hauptman buried his face in his hands.
Ryan glanced at Foley, then back at Elke, prodding gently. “What was it you heard?”
