Tom Clancy Red Winter, page 33
“What do you want from me?”
Ponytail shook his head. “And there you go again. That makes me think you know exactly what we want.”
Lorna’s weeping and grunting started up again. The man in the sweater had taken up a spot beside her and now stroked the top of her head as if trying to soothe her.
It was not working.
Ponytail took a carving knife from the butcher block and dragged the point of it down the counter so it made a hissing noise.
“Let me explain to you how this will work,” he said. “I do not intend to even ask you any questions. You already know what I need. At the first lie, I will kill this woman’s baby—”
Lorna thrashed and jumped, tipping over the chair. The man in the sweater caught her easily and sat her upright, like this had happened before.
“. . . and then the woman . . . and then . . .” Ponytail shook his head slowly and pointed the knife at Hans. “But I do not think we will get that far, because your dear boy will not die quickly.”
The woman took the boy by his wrist, tut-tuting her friend. “But not before we have our bath.”
Hauptman swallowed.
“Hans,” he said, quieter now. “I am so very sorry . . .”
Ponytail frowned, brandishing the knife. “As you wish,” he said. “I will go and fetch the baby—”
A crack to Uwe’s right caused everyone in the room to turn at once. The front door flew open and a tall man flowed into the room, pistol up, eyes wide, searching.
Hauptman had never seen Kurt Pfeiffer, but this had to be him, come to admire his handiwork.
* * *
—
Clark’s only plan was to go in and destroy the threats. Entering the apartment was like climbing into a car in the middle of a wreck. A baby screamed. The Hauptman boy wailed in the arms of a naked giant, and a woman tied to a chair made awful, otherworldly sounds that chilled even Clark, who thought he’d seen everything.
The man with the knife was an obvious choice.
Hauptman was kneeling, hands up, but he turned as soon as he saw Clark, roaring at him.
“Pfeiffer!”
“What? No, I’m not Pfeiffer,” Clark said. He shot the ponytailed man with the knife twice above his ear.
But Hauptman was already moving, and Clark, who was rarely taken off guard, found himself bowled over by an angry husband out for his pound of flesh.
Clark attempted to shake the man off, tying up his gun hand.
“I am not Pfeiffer!”
A new threat rushed in from Clark’s left, growling and brandishing a knife. Clark spun, taking Hauptman with him, narrowly avoiding the blade.
There was really no such thing as a knife fight. There was knife defense—running away—and knife attack—best accompanied with a healthy dose of surprise. Clark surprised his attacker when instead of trying to disengage from the snarling Uwe Hauptman, he drew the Fairbairn Sykes dagger from his belt and drove it into the new threat’s throat as he turned for another attack. Even so, the man’s blade sliced a neat gash across the shoulder of Clark’s wool coat.
Clark shoved an astonished Hauptman away, freeing his Glock to dead-check the man he’d just stabbed. He’d seen people like this do a hell of a lot of damage while they were bleeding to death.
Two down, Clark pivoted, swinging the barrel past Hauptman to settle on the snake-hipped woman who stood naked holding the terrified kid in front of her like a bulletproof vest. Blood dripped from a ragged bite wound in her forearm. Good job, kid, Clark thought. She’d locked on now, feigning a smile, but inched backward toward a gun on the TV behind her.
“How many?”
“These three only,” Hauptman said, finally figuring out that Clark was on his side.
A scant fifteen feet away, the woman would have normally been an easy target, but the kid was big, and she was strong enough to hold him up high so he covered her face and most of her vitals. Worse yet, he would not stay still.
The boy writhed and fought like a wounded animal caught in a trap, adding layers of difficulty. The unnatural way he held his left arm made Clark think the woman had broken it when she’d hauled him up.
“Lower your weapon or I will break his neck!”
“Listen to me, Freakshow,” Clark hissed. “Put him down . . .”
The side of the woman’s head presented itself, but the screaming boy jerked that way before Clark could take a shot. The woman gave the boy a violent shake, growling at him to calm down.
Unfortunately for her, he did.
Clark’s first shot destroyed her right knee, causing her to list that way. The boy, feeling her grip relax, pushed away. Clark’s shots stitched upward, taking more target as it was exposed. First her shoulder, then the top of her chest, and finally one on the point of the chin.
Clark secured the pistol that was on top of the TV, press-checking it quickly to see that there was a round in the chamber in case he had to use it later. With eight rounds gone from his Glock, he swapped out the remaining nine rounds for his last fresh magazine, dropping the partial in his coat pocket. Ten rounds was a lot, but eighteen was better.
Hauptman rushed to his son and tried to embrace him, but the boy was having none of it. He screamed and held his elbow.
Clark considered cutting the woman free, but decided that since she was an unknown, he’d put a pin in that.
Facing the door, he knelt beside the crying kid. This was a problem. He’d been in the apartment for less than two minutes, but the neighbors had surely called the police. They needed to leave, but there was no way this child was going to slip past anyone.
“I’m a friend,” Clark said to the boy, taking his arm firmly but gently.
He breathed a shuddering sigh.
“Nursemaid’s elbow,” Clark said to Hauptman. “The joint’s popped out.” He pulled the sobbing boy closer, gently bending his arm and turning his wrist so the palm faced upward. The boy began to hyperventilate, squealing from the pain. Clark found the offending radius bone and covered it with his thumb.
“Try to be brave,” Hauptman said.
Clark pushed, popping the bone back into place. The boy shuddered again and stopped crying almost immediately.
Clark stood up, turning toward the door, pistol in his hand again.
Three minutes down.
“He is brave,” Clark said. “He doesn’t have to try.” He picked up the carving knife from the floor. Lorna Shuman jumped from her chair as soon as he’d cut her free, stumbling on numb legs to get to her crying baby.
Clark and the Hauptmans were gone before she got there.
58
Jack Ryan sat up at the noise outside the door, jostling Foley awake. It was too early for Dr. Hauptman to have returned with the boy.
Foley groaned, tensing when she realized Ryan was staring at the door.
Across the room, Elke Hauptman shot a worried glance at Ryan, then reached into her bag for the revolver.
“Mary Pat,” a voice said from the front room. A female voice. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me.”
“Jen,” Foley muttered.
Ryan frowned. “Jen North?”
Foley eased herself into a sitting position.
“How’d you find us?”
“Happy to tell you,” North said. “As soon as you promise not to have someone sneak up behind me and cut my throat.”
“I’d cut your throat myself, sister,” Foley said. “No point in sending someone else. What do you want?”
Silence—for long enough that Elke began to squirm.
Then, “I got your message.”
“Wrong,” Foley said. “I didn’t send you a message.”
“Okay,” North said. “I got the message you sent to Berlin Station.”
Foley sighed, defeated. “You have the codes to the SRAC . . .”
“I do.”
Ryan’s grip tightened on the Makarov, though he had no target. He whispered, “That means the Stasi have the codes to the SRAC . . .”
“Your new friend’s pretty smart,” North said. “Not bad to look at, either, for a headquarters puke. But no. I kept that little bit of intel for myself. You know, rainy-day shit.”
Foley maneuvered herself up so she was leaning against the wall. She tapped Ryan’s hand, opening and closing her fist until he realized she wanted him to hand her the pistol.
He caught her eye, saw that she was far better at this kind of thing than he was, and handed her the gun.
Elke pointed at the door, pantomiming that she was going to move, offering to be a distraction. Foley shook her head.
“What’s going on in there?” North said.
She was closer now, just around the corner outside the door, separated from them by a thin waferboard wall. Foley realized it, too. She kept the little Makarov low, but aimed it where North was standing.
“Just trying to figure out what your play is,” Foley said.
“I need you to listen to me, Mary Pat,” North said. Remarkably staying put in the same spot, judging from the sound of her voice. “I know you’re getting ready to shoot me.” A sound like a sob. Was she crying? “Hell, I would shoot me if I were you.”
Foley lifted the gun a hair, ensuring that the slide was free from her thigh, able to move with the shot and not cause the gun to jam.
“Here,” North said. “Maybe this’ll convince you.”
A soft grunt came from the other side of the door as North stooped down and slid her pistol across the floor.
“Have your boyfriend secure that,” North said. “Hell, he can point it at my head if he wants, but I’m coming in to talk.”
* * *
—
We’ll always have Berlin, sweetheart,” North said while Ryan patted her down for other weapons. He found a knife in her belt and passed it off to Elke.
“You’re not helping your case by being a smartass,” Foley said. “It’s cold outside. You wearing tights?”
North smirked. “Kind of you to be concerned, but yeah, I’m wearing long johns.”
“Good,” Foley said. “Jack, pull her jeans down around her ankles and sit her on that.” She motioned to an overturned bucket.
“I’ll do it,” North said, unbuttoning her pants before Ryan had to. He stepped clear with her H&K in case she had anything else hidden down there. “Pretty smart, hobbling me.”
“Yeah, well,” Foley said. “I’m not in the mood to fight you.”
North’s jeans pooled around her feet, revealing a set of snow-white thermals.
“Remember that time in Tbilisi? We were convincing that Azerbaijani gunrunner that he should—”
“Cut to the chase, Jen,” Foley said. “What is it you want?”
“I wanted to thank you,” North said.
“Thank me?”
“For not rushing to judgment. I told you I had the SRAC codes. I read the message you sent. You warned them about me, but insisted there was no proof. I mean, who does that?” She answered before Foley had a chance to. “I’ll tell you who does that, pretty much no one. This Agency will crucify their brightest stars if there is even a whiff of espionage. You don’t even have to be a mole, someone just has to accuse you and then you’re branded as one for life.”
“So you’re clean?”
North leaned her head back and laughed at the ceiling. “Hell, no, I am not clean. I sold out my country and my friends a long time ago. But that’s the point. I quote, ‘CALISTO veracity unsubstantiated. Story re: JN needs confirmation.’ I mean, talk about giving me the benefit of the doubt . . .”
“Jen . . .”
“Look,” North said. “I want to help you. I can get you out of here, but we need to leave now.”
“Go,” Elke said. “I am waiting on Uwe.”
Ryan shook his head. “We can’t go just yet.”
“I get it,” North said. “You’re waiting for the husband and kid. You know there’s a good chance they didn’t survive the morning. And even if they did, they’ll have some very brutal people in tow when they return.”
“Maybe so,” Foley said. She seemed to have perfect faith in the “insurance” she sent to protect them.
North’s shoulders fell. She slumped forward, looking and surely feeling ridiculous, sitting on the bucket with her pants around her ankles.
“I was six weeks along before I realized I was pregnant,” she said. “I mean, there I was, a highly educated, globe-trotting spy and I let some guy knock me up. I mean, holy shit, how stupid can you be . . .” She buried her face in her hands like she was going to break down, but caught herself. “It was so innocent in the beginning. Lane Buckley is such a handsy asshole. He just . . . I mean, there I was, doing the best work of my life, turning and then running one of the most valuable assets the Agency has seen in a decade, and that pompous dick treats me like I’m three parts coffee-getter and one part potential piece of ass that he can add to his trophy belt.” She looked up, still clutching her hair, and met Foley’s eye. “You know how I am. I met this guy at a hotel bar—”
“Jen,” Foley said.
“I know, but, Mary Pat, this one actually listened to me. Treated me like I was somebody. And he didn’t have some fancy job that he got to brag about all the time, I mean, he told me he was in the trash business. Waste disposal. When Buckley screwed me over and took all the credit for Chernenko . . . I just needed a listening ear, I guess. This guy went back and forth to the DDR with his waste-management job, and it turned out he had access to some decent East German financial documents. I thought I could develop him as an asset. Buckley was still chief of Bonn Station and there was no way I was going to trust him, so I just worked off the books.
“Rolfe gave me the listening ear I needed . . . and as it turned out, a little something extra. You know what it’s like, Mary Pat. A male case officer sleeps with a local and the powers that be transfer his ass. The good old boys would have quietly slapped him on the back for his prowess and found him a soft place to land and get back on his feet. Besides, a paid move when he probably wants to get the hell out of Dodge is hardly a punishment. It’s different for us and you know it. If anyone in Bonn . . . or Langley . . . had found out I slept with a source, let alone gotten myself pregnant, they would have thrown me in an active volcano if there had been one handy.”
She wiped her nose with the back of her forearm.
“Can I please pull my pants up?”
Foley shook her head.
“No.”
North sighed, resigned to it.
“The thing is,” she said, “Rolfe didn’t freak out like I thought he would. I mean, he was a real gentleman about it. He asked what I wanted to do and then vowed to support me. Remember I thought he was still my source then. When I told him I was worried about what a pregnancy would do to my career, he arranged for it to be taken care of over here . . . Typical German efficiency. I went back to Bonn depressed, but hopeful.
“It took me all of ten seconds to realize that I was now his source . . . I tried, Mary Pat, I really did. I mean, I only gave him shit intel at first, but he pressed and pressed and pressed . . .”
She started to cry in earnest now.
“I thought that girl was onto me . . .”
Ryan frowned. “Ruby Keller?”
North nodded emphatically, racked with sobs. “I heard her singing about dead kids, Kindertotenlieder . . .” She covered her face with her hands again. “I swear, I thought she knew . . .”
“Where is she?” Ryan asked.
North sniffed. “In prison. Hohenschönhausen.”
“But she’s alive?”
North nodded. She wiped her face again. Still jolted by periodic sobs, she composed herself by degree.
Foley cleared her throat, raising the Makarov. “Go ahead and pull up your jeans.”
“Thank you,” North said, doing just that and then resuming her seat on the bucket. She knew the drill. “Look, I know everything I just told you is not an excuse, but it is a reason.”
“I’ll give you that,” Foley said.
“I’m going to get you out, if you’ll let me, no strings attached, but would you do me one little favor?”
“Jen—”
“Hear me out,” North said. “One of these days, you’re going to transfer, and Moscow will send a cable to your new station informing them of all your exposures. I don’t know how many you have . . . but . . .” The sobs started to take over again, but she got the better of them. “But somewhere in that list will be a line that says something like ‘. . . BETRAYED BY THE TRAITOR, JENNIFER NORTH . . .’ People will talk shit about me for years, decades maybe, but if you get the chance and some new kid asks you, just tell ’em there was more to it than that . . . Or don’t, I don’t give a shit anymore. I would like to get you out of here, if you’ll let me.”
“How do you propose to do that?” Foley asked. “I’m not sure you’re even in such good standing, with everything that’s gone down.”
North rose to her feet, apparently no longer worried about getting shot.
“A tunnel.”
59
Jack Ryan knew the story. Most everyone in the intelligence community heard it at some point early in his or her career.
Operation Gold—1,480 feet of tunnel under the most heavily patrolled and guarded stretches of border in the world. Worried about Soviet nuclear testing in the early 1950s, the CIA and MI6 had decided they needed to devise a way to tie in to communication lines in East Berlin. The Germans were still digging out from the war back then and were a relative footnote compared to the KGB and GRU.
Work on the tunnel began in September of 1954 and was completed in approximately eight months. It remained operational for almost a year, during which time it recorded tens of thousands of Soviet communications, believed by the CIA to be well worth the cost of construction, which was equivalent to the cost of two U-2 spy planes.
Ponytail shook his head. “And there you go again. That makes me think you know exactly what we want.”
Lorna’s weeping and grunting started up again. The man in the sweater had taken up a spot beside her and now stroked the top of her head as if trying to soothe her.
It was not working.
Ponytail took a carving knife from the butcher block and dragged the point of it down the counter so it made a hissing noise.
“Let me explain to you how this will work,” he said. “I do not intend to even ask you any questions. You already know what I need. At the first lie, I will kill this woman’s baby—”
Lorna thrashed and jumped, tipping over the chair. The man in the sweater caught her easily and sat her upright, like this had happened before.
“. . . and then the woman . . . and then . . .” Ponytail shook his head slowly and pointed the knife at Hans. “But I do not think we will get that far, because your dear boy will not die quickly.”
The woman took the boy by his wrist, tut-tuting her friend. “But not before we have our bath.”
Hauptman swallowed.
“Hans,” he said, quieter now. “I am so very sorry . . .”
Ponytail frowned, brandishing the knife. “As you wish,” he said. “I will go and fetch the baby—”
A crack to Uwe’s right caused everyone in the room to turn at once. The front door flew open and a tall man flowed into the room, pistol up, eyes wide, searching.
Hauptman had never seen Kurt Pfeiffer, but this had to be him, come to admire his handiwork.
* * *
—
Clark’s only plan was to go in and destroy the threats. Entering the apartment was like climbing into a car in the middle of a wreck. A baby screamed. The Hauptman boy wailed in the arms of a naked giant, and a woman tied to a chair made awful, otherworldly sounds that chilled even Clark, who thought he’d seen everything.
The man with the knife was an obvious choice.
Hauptman was kneeling, hands up, but he turned as soon as he saw Clark, roaring at him.
“Pfeiffer!”
“What? No, I’m not Pfeiffer,” Clark said. He shot the ponytailed man with the knife twice above his ear.
But Hauptman was already moving, and Clark, who was rarely taken off guard, found himself bowled over by an angry husband out for his pound of flesh.
Clark attempted to shake the man off, tying up his gun hand.
“I am not Pfeiffer!”
A new threat rushed in from Clark’s left, growling and brandishing a knife. Clark spun, taking Hauptman with him, narrowly avoiding the blade.
There was really no such thing as a knife fight. There was knife defense—running away—and knife attack—best accompanied with a healthy dose of surprise. Clark surprised his attacker when instead of trying to disengage from the snarling Uwe Hauptman, he drew the Fairbairn Sykes dagger from his belt and drove it into the new threat’s throat as he turned for another attack. Even so, the man’s blade sliced a neat gash across the shoulder of Clark’s wool coat.
Clark shoved an astonished Hauptman away, freeing his Glock to dead-check the man he’d just stabbed. He’d seen people like this do a hell of a lot of damage while they were bleeding to death.
Two down, Clark pivoted, swinging the barrel past Hauptman to settle on the snake-hipped woman who stood naked holding the terrified kid in front of her like a bulletproof vest. Blood dripped from a ragged bite wound in her forearm. Good job, kid, Clark thought. She’d locked on now, feigning a smile, but inched backward toward a gun on the TV behind her.
“How many?”
“These three only,” Hauptman said, finally figuring out that Clark was on his side.
A scant fifteen feet away, the woman would have normally been an easy target, but the kid was big, and she was strong enough to hold him up high so he covered her face and most of her vitals. Worse yet, he would not stay still.
The boy writhed and fought like a wounded animal caught in a trap, adding layers of difficulty. The unnatural way he held his left arm made Clark think the woman had broken it when she’d hauled him up.
“Lower your weapon or I will break his neck!”
“Listen to me, Freakshow,” Clark hissed. “Put him down . . .”
The side of the woman’s head presented itself, but the screaming boy jerked that way before Clark could take a shot. The woman gave the boy a violent shake, growling at him to calm down.
Unfortunately for her, he did.
Clark’s first shot destroyed her right knee, causing her to list that way. The boy, feeling her grip relax, pushed away. Clark’s shots stitched upward, taking more target as it was exposed. First her shoulder, then the top of her chest, and finally one on the point of the chin.
Clark secured the pistol that was on top of the TV, press-checking it quickly to see that there was a round in the chamber in case he had to use it later. With eight rounds gone from his Glock, he swapped out the remaining nine rounds for his last fresh magazine, dropping the partial in his coat pocket. Ten rounds was a lot, but eighteen was better.
Hauptman rushed to his son and tried to embrace him, but the boy was having none of it. He screamed and held his elbow.
Clark considered cutting the woman free, but decided that since she was an unknown, he’d put a pin in that.
Facing the door, he knelt beside the crying kid. This was a problem. He’d been in the apartment for less than two minutes, but the neighbors had surely called the police. They needed to leave, but there was no way this child was going to slip past anyone.
“I’m a friend,” Clark said to the boy, taking his arm firmly but gently.
He breathed a shuddering sigh.
“Nursemaid’s elbow,” Clark said to Hauptman. “The joint’s popped out.” He pulled the sobbing boy closer, gently bending his arm and turning his wrist so the palm faced upward. The boy began to hyperventilate, squealing from the pain. Clark found the offending radius bone and covered it with his thumb.
“Try to be brave,” Hauptman said.
Clark pushed, popping the bone back into place. The boy shuddered again and stopped crying almost immediately.
Clark stood up, turning toward the door, pistol in his hand again.
Three minutes down.
“He is brave,” Clark said. “He doesn’t have to try.” He picked up the carving knife from the floor. Lorna Shuman jumped from her chair as soon as he’d cut her free, stumbling on numb legs to get to her crying baby.
Clark and the Hauptmans were gone before she got there.
58
Jack Ryan sat up at the noise outside the door, jostling Foley awake. It was too early for Dr. Hauptman to have returned with the boy.
Foley groaned, tensing when she realized Ryan was staring at the door.
Across the room, Elke Hauptman shot a worried glance at Ryan, then reached into her bag for the revolver.
“Mary Pat,” a voice said from the front room. A female voice. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me.”
“Jen,” Foley muttered.
Ryan frowned. “Jen North?”
Foley eased herself into a sitting position.
“How’d you find us?”
“Happy to tell you,” North said. “As soon as you promise not to have someone sneak up behind me and cut my throat.”
“I’d cut your throat myself, sister,” Foley said. “No point in sending someone else. What do you want?”
Silence—for long enough that Elke began to squirm.
Then, “I got your message.”
“Wrong,” Foley said. “I didn’t send you a message.”
“Okay,” North said. “I got the message you sent to Berlin Station.”
Foley sighed, defeated. “You have the codes to the SRAC . . .”
“I do.”
Ryan’s grip tightened on the Makarov, though he had no target. He whispered, “That means the Stasi have the codes to the SRAC . . .”
“Your new friend’s pretty smart,” North said. “Not bad to look at, either, for a headquarters puke. But no. I kept that little bit of intel for myself. You know, rainy-day shit.”
Foley maneuvered herself up so she was leaning against the wall. She tapped Ryan’s hand, opening and closing her fist until he realized she wanted him to hand her the pistol.
He caught her eye, saw that she was far better at this kind of thing than he was, and handed her the gun.
Elke pointed at the door, pantomiming that she was going to move, offering to be a distraction. Foley shook her head.
“What’s going on in there?” North said.
She was closer now, just around the corner outside the door, separated from them by a thin waferboard wall. Foley realized it, too. She kept the little Makarov low, but aimed it where North was standing.
“Just trying to figure out what your play is,” Foley said.
“I need you to listen to me, Mary Pat,” North said. Remarkably staying put in the same spot, judging from the sound of her voice. “I know you’re getting ready to shoot me.” A sound like a sob. Was she crying? “Hell, I would shoot me if I were you.”
Foley lifted the gun a hair, ensuring that the slide was free from her thigh, able to move with the shot and not cause the gun to jam.
“Here,” North said. “Maybe this’ll convince you.”
A soft grunt came from the other side of the door as North stooped down and slid her pistol across the floor.
“Have your boyfriend secure that,” North said. “Hell, he can point it at my head if he wants, but I’m coming in to talk.”
* * *
—
We’ll always have Berlin, sweetheart,” North said while Ryan patted her down for other weapons. He found a knife in her belt and passed it off to Elke.
“You’re not helping your case by being a smartass,” Foley said. “It’s cold outside. You wearing tights?”
North smirked. “Kind of you to be concerned, but yeah, I’m wearing long johns.”
“Good,” Foley said. “Jack, pull her jeans down around her ankles and sit her on that.” She motioned to an overturned bucket.
“I’ll do it,” North said, unbuttoning her pants before Ryan had to. He stepped clear with her H&K in case she had anything else hidden down there. “Pretty smart, hobbling me.”
“Yeah, well,” Foley said. “I’m not in the mood to fight you.”
North’s jeans pooled around her feet, revealing a set of snow-white thermals.
“Remember that time in Tbilisi? We were convincing that Azerbaijani gunrunner that he should—”
“Cut to the chase, Jen,” Foley said. “What is it you want?”
“I wanted to thank you,” North said.
“Thank me?”
“For not rushing to judgment. I told you I had the SRAC codes. I read the message you sent. You warned them about me, but insisted there was no proof. I mean, who does that?” She answered before Foley had a chance to. “I’ll tell you who does that, pretty much no one. This Agency will crucify their brightest stars if there is even a whiff of espionage. You don’t even have to be a mole, someone just has to accuse you and then you’re branded as one for life.”
“So you’re clean?”
North leaned her head back and laughed at the ceiling. “Hell, no, I am not clean. I sold out my country and my friends a long time ago. But that’s the point. I quote, ‘CALISTO veracity unsubstantiated. Story re: JN needs confirmation.’ I mean, talk about giving me the benefit of the doubt . . .”
“Jen . . .”
“Look,” North said. “I want to help you. I can get you out of here, but we need to leave now.”
“Go,” Elke said. “I am waiting on Uwe.”
Ryan shook his head. “We can’t go just yet.”
“I get it,” North said. “You’re waiting for the husband and kid. You know there’s a good chance they didn’t survive the morning. And even if they did, they’ll have some very brutal people in tow when they return.”
“Maybe so,” Foley said. She seemed to have perfect faith in the “insurance” she sent to protect them.
North’s shoulders fell. She slumped forward, looking and surely feeling ridiculous, sitting on the bucket with her pants around her ankles.
“I was six weeks along before I realized I was pregnant,” she said. “I mean, there I was, a highly educated, globe-trotting spy and I let some guy knock me up. I mean, holy shit, how stupid can you be . . .” She buried her face in her hands like she was going to break down, but caught herself. “It was so innocent in the beginning. Lane Buckley is such a handsy asshole. He just . . . I mean, there I was, doing the best work of my life, turning and then running one of the most valuable assets the Agency has seen in a decade, and that pompous dick treats me like I’m three parts coffee-getter and one part potential piece of ass that he can add to his trophy belt.” She looked up, still clutching her hair, and met Foley’s eye. “You know how I am. I met this guy at a hotel bar—”
“Jen,” Foley said.
“I know, but, Mary Pat, this one actually listened to me. Treated me like I was somebody. And he didn’t have some fancy job that he got to brag about all the time, I mean, he told me he was in the trash business. Waste disposal. When Buckley screwed me over and took all the credit for Chernenko . . . I just needed a listening ear, I guess. This guy went back and forth to the DDR with his waste-management job, and it turned out he had access to some decent East German financial documents. I thought I could develop him as an asset. Buckley was still chief of Bonn Station and there was no way I was going to trust him, so I just worked off the books.
“Rolfe gave me the listening ear I needed . . . and as it turned out, a little something extra. You know what it’s like, Mary Pat. A male case officer sleeps with a local and the powers that be transfer his ass. The good old boys would have quietly slapped him on the back for his prowess and found him a soft place to land and get back on his feet. Besides, a paid move when he probably wants to get the hell out of Dodge is hardly a punishment. It’s different for us and you know it. If anyone in Bonn . . . or Langley . . . had found out I slept with a source, let alone gotten myself pregnant, they would have thrown me in an active volcano if there had been one handy.”
She wiped her nose with the back of her forearm.
“Can I please pull my pants up?”
Foley shook her head.
“No.”
North sighed, resigned to it.
“The thing is,” she said, “Rolfe didn’t freak out like I thought he would. I mean, he was a real gentleman about it. He asked what I wanted to do and then vowed to support me. Remember I thought he was still my source then. When I told him I was worried about what a pregnancy would do to my career, he arranged for it to be taken care of over here . . . Typical German efficiency. I went back to Bonn depressed, but hopeful.
“It took me all of ten seconds to realize that I was now his source . . . I tried, Mary Pat, I really did. I mean, I only gave him shit intel at first, but he pressed and pressed and pressed . . .”
She started to cry in earnest now.
“I thought that girl was onto me . . .”
Ryan frowned. “Ruby Keller?”
North nodded emphatically, racked with sobs. “I heard her singing about dead kids, Kindertotenlieder . . .” She covered her face with her hands again. “I swear, I thought she knew . . .”
“Where is she?” Ryan asked.
North sniffed. “In prison. Hohenschönhausen.”
“But she’s alive?”
North nodded. She wiped her face again. Still jolted by periodic sobs, she composed herself by degree.
Foley cleared her throat, raising the Makarov. “Go ahead and pull up your jeans.”
“Thank you,” North said, doing just that and then resuming her seat on the bucket. She knew the drill. “Look, I know everything I just told you is not an excuse, but it is a reason.”
“I’ll give you that,” Foley said.
“I’m going to get you out, if you’ll let me, no strings attached, but would you do me one little favor?”
“Jen—”
“Hear me out,” North said. “One of these days, you’re going to transfer, and Moscow will send a cable to your new station informing them of all your exposures. I don’t know how many you have . . . but . . .” The sobs started to take over again, but she got the better of them. “But somewhere in that list will be a line that says something like ‘. . . BETRAYED BY THE TRAITOR, JENNIFER NORTH . . .’ People will talk shit about me for years, decades maybe, but if you get the chance and some new kid asks you, just tell ’em there was more to it than that . . . Or don’t, I don’t give a shit anymore. I would like to get you out of here, if you’ll let me.”
“How do you propose to do that?” Foley asked. “I’m not sure you’re even in such good standing, with everything that’s gone down.”
North rose to her feet, apparently no longer worried about getting shot.
“A tunnel.”
59
Jack Ryan knew the story. Most everyone in the intelligence community heard it at some point early in his or her career.
Operation Gold—1,480 feet of tunnel under the most heavily patrolled and guarded stretches of border in the world. Worried about Soviet nuclear testing in the early 1950s, the CIA and MI6 had decided they needed to devise a way to tie in to communication lines in East Berlin. The Germans were still digging out from the war back then and were a relative footnote compared to the KGB and GRU.
Work on the tunnel began in September of 1954 and was completed in approximately eight months. It remained operational for almost a year, during which time it recorded tens of thousands of Soviet communications, believed by the CIA to be well worth the cost of construction, which was equivalent to the cost of two U-2 spy planes.
