Winter Work Read online

  “Incredible. I doubt they’ll come tramping through the woods up here anytime soon.”

  “No? Give them time.”

  “Well, if they do, you could certainly command top dollar.”

  “The West Germans already tried. I said no.”

  “Of course, but who knows what the Americans might offer. Not just money. A house in a sunny climate. Asylum. You could name your price.”

  Wolf scowled and shook his head.

  “Except the thing they’d want most from me is names, don’t you think? Names of everyone who ever worked for us on their side. Everyone I ever recruited, nurtured, protected. And I just can’t do that, Emil. Those people risked their lives for me, and they’ve remained loyal. I won’t sell them out.”

  “Maybe in a way you’d be setting them free.”

  “Free? How do you figure that?”

  “Don’t you think our friends in Moscow will want to employ them now? Surely the KGB must have a pretty good idea of who’s available. Or will soon, if they’ve carted off copies of our records like everyone says.”

  He paused, to give Wolf time to either confirm or deny that rumor. Wolf did neither, so Emil continued.

  “Our old agents are a perfect fit for them. What’s the term I heard one of our tech geeks use about some gadget of theirs? ‘Plug and play’? That kind of sums it up, don’t you think?”

  “Possibly.”

  “And do you think that’s what any East German abroad will want to do with his life? Trade one master for another, except now by working for a foreign country?”

  Wolf dismissed the idea with a halfhearted wave, but his eyes looked troubled. “Fortunately, I decided years ago to divide up those agent records into so many different pieces that I doubt any of our old adversaries can possibly obtain them all. As for Moscow, they can’t even make up their mind what to do with their own people, much less ours. A year from now even the KGB may no longer exist.”

  “So I take it that your trip did not go well.”

  Wolf raised his glass, this time taking more of a swig than a sip.

  “For fifty-five years Russia has been a second home for me, and for others, too. We’ve worked with them like brothers. We wear their medals on our chest. Yet what good is any of that to us now?”

  Emil knew the man’s story well enough, because it was an integral part of the Wolf legend. In 1934, after the Nazis took power, the eleven-year-old Wolf had fled with his family to Moscow. They were communists seeking political asylum, and having a Jewish father had doubled the stakes. They remained in the Soviet Union throughout the war, surviving not only the German invasion but also Stalin’s purges.

  By the time the fighting stopped in May 1945, Wolf was twenty-two and spoke Russian with a Moscow accent. He returned to Germany with a cadre of like-minded expats, dispatched by Stalin to establish a political beachhead upon the ruins of Soviet-occupied Berlin. Their hope was to build an anti-fascist utopia based on the ideals of Lenin, Marx, and Engels. The KGB, of course, was right there with them, watching over their shoulders, ready to assist in any crackdowns needed to get things under way.

  Emil had been twelve when the war ended. Two years older and he might have had a rifle in his hands instead of sheltering with his mother and sisters in the cellar beneath their bombed-out apartment. Not until years later, at university, did he learn any Russian. By then his father had walked home from the war and gone to work for the Stasi’s domestic security directorate. Later, his father was promoted to district officer, a prominence that made Emil a natural target for recruitment, and he joined the ministry in 1956. Five years after that, shortly after the Wall went up, Emil moved to the directorate for foreign intelligence, or HVA, which by that time was under Wolf’s leadership.

  Wolf, who had taken command of the HVA just before his thirtieth birthday, was already working wonders. His achievement in building up the agency had been a bit like taking a crystal radio kit and turning it into a massive signal tower, like the one the Americans used in Teufelsberg.

  From Emil’s first days as a spy he had sensed a cultural and professional gulf between “the Russians,” as Wolf’s founding cadre was sometimes known, and the later hires like him. Now, four years after Wolf’s retirement, pretty much all of the old Russian crowd was out of the picture.

  “So, you don’t think Gorbachev will raise a finger to help us?” Emil asked.

  “I couldn’t even get an audience. He’s too preoccupied with making the Americans fall in love with his new Perestroika. They don’t all feel that way, of course. The KGB station chief in Dresden, that Putin fellow, is as outraged as we are. But I suppose we’re on our own now. Isn’t that why we’re both here, poking around in Lothar’s things? C’mon, Emil, you must have heard what people have been saying about him.”

  There it was again, the floating notion that the meticulous Lothar had recently turned reckless and indiscreet. Where was it coming from, and how had Wolf heard it?

  “You think Lothar was going to sell us out?”

  “It was certainly a possibility. Tell me, do you know that fellow running the documents task force for Sub-Department 7, Andreas Plotz?”

  Plotz again. Also disturbing.

  “I am familiar with him, of course. Why?”

  “He’s been saying some things. About Lothar, apparently. That’s why I came over here, to see what Lothar might have left behind.”

  “And you entered with a key.”

  Wolf shrugged.

  “We once had to use Lothar’s dacha as a safe house, for debriefing a defector. One of the few who crossed over in our direction. It was before we built the Waldhaus, further down the lake. He gave me a key then, and I suppose I never gave it back. But, Emil, you still haven’t really explained why you’re here. By breaking in, no less, so I gather it must be for something important.”

  Emil sighed and stared at his feet for a few awkward seconds, gathering himself to deliver the answer that he had come up with after his second sip of whisky. Wolf, well trained in spotting fakes and lies, would be watching carefully for any telltale sign of stress or deception. But Emil was also trained in such matters, a thought that calmed him enough to look Wolf in the eye with complete confidence.

  “I am looking for a file,” he said. Then he shook his head in feigned embarrassment. “Lothar brought it here quite some time ago. Or told me he had, anyway. And, well…”

  He let his voice trail off.

  Wolf leaned closer and narrowed his eyes.

  “This file, it concerns you?”

  “Only in the sense that its subject was someone I’d once helped train and run, along with Lothar. An agent in the Federal Republic’s foreign ministry. One of the Romeos.”

  The Romeos were among Wolf’s most celebrated success stories—dashing young males inserted into West Germany to attract lonely females who were well placed in the federal bureaucracy. It was a new twist on an old tactic, the male Mata Hari. The Romeos had offered not only sex but also empathy and compassion as they preyed upon their targets. By mentioning them, Emil was playing on Wolf’s vanity.

  “This fellow was one of your top people,” Emil said. “Code name Hermann.”

  “Ah, yes. Quite the looker, like an American surfer. Smart, too. And an excellent listener. You were his trainer, I seem to recall.”

  “And for a brief while, his main contact, before I moved on to the NATO job. So, you see, if Lothar did bring the file here, and never returned it…Well, it will certainly never reach the shredders, and you can see how that might become a problem for me, especially with all the talk of possible prosecutions. So…”

  “Of course. Another item of ‘evidence’ on some cooked-up charge of treason.”

  “Exactly. And with Bettina in her current condition, we can’t afford for me to wind up in jail, so I thought I had better come have a loo
k.”

  “I understand. It wouldn’t serve my interests, either, for it to remain on the loose. Or Hermann’s. He’s still living there, you know. He’s done quite well for himself. And you’re sure Lothar brought the file here?”

  “That’s what he told me, anyway. Back in September. He mentioned reading it out on his deck.”

  “Completely irresponsible, but it is what it is.”

  “Of course, Dorn’s men must have already searched the place.”

  “But surely they wouldn’t have just scooped up all his papers, willy-nilly?”

  “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Yes. Let’s have a look around, then.” Both men stood. Wolf scanned the room, as if pondering where to begin. “Why don’t you start in the main bedroom, Emil. I’ll look in here.” Then, after a pause, “On second thought, maybe we should search in tandem.”

  Obviously, Wolf didn’t trust him to share his findings. Fine, because he didn’t trust Wolf, if only because Wolf hadn’t really said what he was looking for. It wasn’t as if a joint search would cramp Emil’s style. The item he sought would seem meaningless to anyone but him, assuming it even existed.

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Emil said.

  “Then let’s begin.”

  13

  They proceeded room by room, in the methodical way they had both been taught. The only sounds were the shuffling of papers, the opening and shutting of drawers, their steady breathing. Wolf stopped once to go outside for a cigarette. Emil accompanied him without being asked, saying he needed a break. No sense giving Wolf grounds for further mistrust.

  But an hour later they had still come up with nothing. Emil began to lose hope that he would ever find what he was looking for, and it weighed heavily on him. His future was slipping away.

  They were finishing in the final room—the second bathroom—when Wolf sighed in exasperation and retreated to the great room. Emil sorted despondently through the last two drawers, finding only a wilted supply of bandages and ointments, before rejoining his old boss, who by then had poured himself another whisky.

  “I suppose we should be encouraged by our lack of findings,” Wolf said, sounding anything but. “Perhaps Lothar remained loyal right to the end.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Or perhaps that conclusion is premature. The police might have found something. And there are still other lines of inquiry to be pursued. Maybe you and I should pursue them as a team.”

  Emil doubted that was a good idea.

  “Yes, that makes sense.”

  “Could you remain in touch with Krauss and Dorn for us? To see whatever it is they might be discovering?”

  “I can try. And you?”

  “I’ve decided to take aim at a slightly bigger target. The Americans.”

  Emil couldn’t hide his surprise.

  “Don’t worry, Emil. I won’t sell us out. But I might as well use my leverage while I can. I’d like to know what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to. And maybe by stringing them along for a while I can find out.”

  “Who will you contact?”

  Wolf hesitated.

  “Well, they’ve already reached out to me, of course. Through an intermediary. So that’s one channel. But I may try another one first. An older one.”

  It was the most interesting thing Wolf had said all night.

  “Who?”

  Wolf smiled and swirled his whisky.

  “Leave that to me.”

  Emil nodded, intrigued. The idea that any sort of back channel to the Americans had ever existed was the sort of revelation that would have buzzed through the corridors of Normanenstrasse in about five minutes. But for now it was a secret shared only by the two of them.

  They stood in silence, as if neither was certain what to do next. Emil wondered if he would be able to sleep once he got back to his dacha, although he was exhausted, his mind overloaded. The windows of the great room were rectangles of darkness, with no sign of movement beyond. Even the night animals had all gone to bed.

  Lothar’s telephone rang.

  They jolted to attention as if a fire alarm had sounded, looking first at each other and then at the clock on the wall. It was precisely 5 a.m. That detail, and the unlikeliness of a routine call at this hour, told anyone with their training that this was not a random communication. It could only be a prearranged contact.

  The phone rang a second time, jarring and insistent. It was a blocky Bakelite model, avocado green, sitting on an end table by the couch. Wolf strolled over, beckoning Emil closer as he reached for the receiver. He picked it up in the middle of the third ring and angled it so that both of them could hear.

  “Hallo?”

  The line hissed and crackled until a woman’s voice broke through the static, speaking German in an unmistakably American accent.

  “As requested, this is your confirmation.”

  Her words were muffled, murky, like they were bubbling up from the bottom of the lake.

  “All set for sixteen hundred and thirty. Preferred location. Ja?”

  Wolf looked to Emil for guidance. He nodded.

  “Ja,” Wolf said.

  They again exchanged glances, wondering if there was something more they should say or do. Then the line clicked and went dead. The dial tone resumed as Wolf gently replaced the receiver. He exhaled with a sigh and rubbed his eyes.

  “Just when I was beginning to hope that I might be wrong. Our old friend let us down, Emil.”

  “Yes. That’s certainly what it sounds like.”

  “The question now is, what damage has he already done, and is there still time for us to repair it?”

  Emil nodded glumly in commiseration with his old boss.

  But inside his heart was light, his mood hopeful. He finally had the information he had come looking for.

  14

  Claire, arriving right on schedule for the appointed rendezvous, took a seat facing the door, and wondered yet again about the strange dynamics of this assignment.

  Maybe it would be a walk in the park—routine to the point of boring, the espionage equivalent of grabbing a takeout pizza. It might also be a fiasco, a disaster, a lost evening that would cascade into a lost week, or worse.

  On its face, it was a simple chore with clear but limited instructions and open-ended possibilities. She was no stranger to work like that. At times, her job in Paris seemed to offer nothing but: Take this parcel and leave it there. Meet Man A and deliver his message to Woman B. Sit on that bench until 3 p.m., while noting every coming and going from the opposite doorway. And so on. Simple orders with complex possibilities.

  Yet none of those errands had ever been pitched to her as the most vitally important work the station might ever do. None had been personally supervised by the deputy director for operations, and none had involved an asset as lofty as the local opposition’s number five man. An HVA colonel, no less.

  A young curly-haired waiter in a smock, who looked barely old enough to drive, approached her table. If he asked about the East German footballer Andreas Thom, she had her answer ready—He can’t miss—and they would take it from there.

  Instead, he said, “Menu?”

  “Yes, please.”

  It was a dreary little joint, smelling of greasy sausage and of coffee that had been stewing for hours. On the opposite wall from the register was a discolored empty rectangle where Claire guessed that a framed photo of East German premier Erich Honecker had once hung in its requisite place of honor. Atop the serving counter was a plexiglass display case with a few sad pastries that seemed to have been abandoned the previous week. In Paris this place would have been out of business in a fortnight. Here, with change coming at the velocity of a Mercedes on the Autobahn, she gave it three months. At the moment she was the only customer.

  The waite
r returned with a plastic menu and a yellowed dishtowel, which he swiped across the laminate tabletop, deftly removing a coffee stain and a dead fly, but also leaving a streaky wet residue, onto which he plopped the menu.

  As she peeled it off the table, the door opened. A man in his late twenties, beefy and tattooed, and dressed in warm-up pants and a black leather coat, pushed through as if annoyed the door were there at all, and from the moment of entry his eyes were on Claire. He was definitely not the right age for Lothar Fischer, nor did he look like the sort of emissary that a Stasi colonel would choose to represent him. He was one of the men she had noticed converging on the place just before she entered, but she had assumed they were for security or backup, not for making contact.

  But what did she really know of the Stasi’s taste in cutouts and couriers, other than what Baucom and Lindsey Ward had told her? Based on their advice she’d been expecting someone wiry and reserved, a technocrat in gray with pale, steady eyes, clunky shoes, and a deliberate manner. This fellow looked more like a thug, someone who might try to block her way if she decided to leave. His shoes caught her eye. Shiny leather, well polished, probably Italian.

  He took a seat facing her from two tables away—there were only six tables in all—and he kept staring at her, making a show of his insolence. Snapping his fingers, he called out for a menu in German, his accent decidedly Russian. His presence had the feel of a challenge. I dare you to meet your contact now, I dare you to even speak.

  Events were taking a turn toward fiasco, but she decided to ignore him, or at least to pretend to ignore him. She scanned the menu.

  The young waiter reappeared at her side. He didn’t seem to be handling the beefy man’s presence particularly well, and he glanced nervously over his shoulder as he asked for her order. Maybe the two of them had a history, and she had walked into the middle of some other situation. A protection racket, with a payoff overdue. If so, that was more comic than tragic, although she doubted her contact would be amused.