Winter Work Read online

  But Dorn’s new authority had its limits. Krauss whistled, and his men fell into step behind him as he shouldered past the policemen and set off down the path. Dorn, trying to save face, called out after them.

  “I will meet you in Bernau.”

  Krauss answered over his shoulder without breaking stride.

  “If you wish to see me, come to my office on Normanenstrasse.”

  It would have been a fine parting shot if all of them hadn’t known the building was padlocked, which raised the question as to where Krauss and his men had come from to begin with. Who had summoned them, and where were they going now? Emil marveled at the strangeness of it all. Not even as a young boy during the horrible years of the war and its bleak aftermath had he ever felt as disoriented as he had in these past few months. Up was down, down was up, and the future was a ledge staring off into fog.

  Then he glanced again at poor Lothar, and his sense of baffled wonder gave way to despair. So many years of working together, of sharing drinks and meals, here and in Berlin. Lothar had never exactly been a close friend, but professionally they had trusted each other with their deepest secrets, right to the end. And it was their final collaboration that now gave Emil his greatest cause for worry. Perhaps that, too, was dead.

  Dorn’s voice jolted him from his reverie.

  “What do you know about this, Colonel Grimm? How long have you been here?”

  Emil bristled at the peremptory tone. Four months ago, he might have dismissed the question with a haughty wave and let his rank do the talking. But given the evolving dynamics of power, maybe this was an opportune moment to curry favor with the young policeman. Krauss had burned his bridge, Emil would build one.

  “As you correctly observed, Lieutenant, Krauss and his men must have been among the first on the scene. Then I came along. I was out for a walk. I’m happy to help you any way I can.”

  Dorn smiled in gratitude, or maybe relief. One of his men began snapping photos. The other, a sergeant, paced the perimeter while scanning the ground, notebook in hand.

  “Should we put up our own tape?” the sergeant asked.

  “Theirs will do.”

  “But, sir, it’s not set at the regulation distance from the body, and if—”

  “Theirs will do,” Dorn repeated.

  Emil turned aside to hide a smile. Germans and their precious Ordnung.

  Dorn again addressed Emil.

  “Is it true what Krauss said, that the victim is a ranking officer of the Stasi?”

  “Yes. Lothar Fischer, a colonel from the HVA. He was a friend. His dacha is not far from here.”

  Dorn couldn’t hide his surprise. Nor could his men, who paused to exchange glances. The one with the camera rose up on his toes as if he’d suddenly realized he was on poisoned ground. Emil wondered how many years it would take before a mention of the Stasi no longer increased pulse rates and produced feelings of dread.

  “Perhaps it would be more convenient if you and I continued our conversation at your dacha.”

  Certainly more convenient for you, Emil thought. You’ll be able to snoop around my house without an invitation or a written order. But to refuse him would only arouse suspicion.

  “As you wish. But there’s something that you and your men should know first.”

  “Yes?”

  The other policemen paused, attentive. Obsolete or not, a colonel was still a colonel. Emil nodded toward the corpse.

  “Lothar was left-handed.”

  All three policemen looked down at the gun in his right hand. The sergeant began writing in his notebook at a furious pace.

  “Does Major Krauss know that?”

  “Good question. You should ask him before he has a chance to find out on his own.”

  Emil stepped past Dorn as casually as he could manage to head uphill. Dorn, momentarily distracted, belatedly set off after him.

  Emil’s muscles and his bad knee needed a stretch after all of the standing around, and he eased into a comfortable stride as he ascended. But the damp morning air felt different now, carrying a hint of something new—a cozy scent of woodsmoke.

  He paused and glanced toward the rooftops peeking above the trees. Smoke was now rising from Markus Wolf’s chimney.

  Sometime during the night, or perhaps earlier that morning, Emil’s enigmatic old boss had returned from Moscow.

  2

  Berlin was not her city, so Claire Saylor moved with extra caution—alert to surveillance, listening for any false note in the music of the streets. Just because the Cold War was suddenly over in this part of the world didn’t mean there weren’t still enemies to worry about. Or even friends.

  Yet to anyone watching from, say, a café table or a shop window, Claire looked as if she absolutely belonged on this gray February evening. Her stride was easy, her features calm. Her unremarkable wardrobe—tapered cotton blouse, trim wool slacks, dun overcoat, and shoes so sensible they made her frown—might have come from the closet of a midthirties office worker in Steglitz. She spoke the language.

  After fifteen years as a spy, going native on short notice was all in a day’s work. So was keeping her feelings under wraps, because at the moment she had good reason to be on edge.

  Two days earlier she’d been summoned here from Paris along with a dozen other colleagues from across Europe: reinforcements in a CIA mop-up action against their recently defeated adversaries in the Stasi. Their weapons of choice? Pay phones. Like scam salesmen in a Florida boiler room, they had begun dialing up the homes of Stasi foreign intelligence officers to make a hot new pitch: Trade in your secrets for a few bucks and a safe place to land. Cash and carry for the minions, but a new identity and maybe even a California condo for the more exalted. Act now to put those prosecution worries and gloomy German winters behind you forever. But hurry, offer expires soon! Operators are standing by!

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t quite that crass, but it was close, and by the end of her first day of cold calling Claire was almost feeling sorry for them as one after another of her targets either slammed down the phone or lashed back with a lecture.

  You Americans always think everyone’s for sale. Our life’s work for the price of a washing machine? Fuck off!

  Then, earlier today, just before lunch, West Berlin base chief Bill Gentry had pulled her aside to launch her in a different direction, one with bigger stakes, and starring a willing participant from the other side. The sudden change of mission was flattering, but its details—or lack of them—immediately made her wary. That’s when Claire decided it was time for a little field research, even if it ran afoul of office rules.

  So now, instead of resting in her hotel room before dinner as Gentry believed she was doing, Claire was out on the streets, dodging ghosts through the shadows of spying’s most storied theme park as she made her way to an unauthorized meeting with an off-limits source. And when a bicycle courier swerved a little too closely on her left, and then a fellow up ahead knelt to tie his shoes, she braced for evasive action even as she strolled onward without a hitch.

  The bicyclist wobbled, found his line, and pedaled away. The kneeling man rose and rounded the corner. To her rear, nothing. All clear, then, with only a block to go. Claire checked her watch. Six minutes early. Ample time for a deep breath and, then, a brief reflection on her upcoming meetup.

  The contact was Clark Baucom. Claire had last seen him ages ago on her home ground of Paris, when they had teamed up to help a colleague on the run, a mutual friend named Helen. Baucom, recently retired, was an old hand of the old school, which made him a trove of knowledge with regard to Eastern Europe’s murkiest corners. He had spent years on hostile ground, sometimes going months without letting his guard down. Lately, or so she’d heard, he had developed a tendency to drink too much and tell too many stories, although he was careful to play the raconteur only among former colleagues
.

  Claire’s recollection of their first meeting was of an easy rapport that had served them well. Not surprising, given their similar outlooks. Both were meticulous about tradecraft, yet open to improvisation when circumstances allowed, and they expected no less from colleagues.

  Baucom had cut his teeth as a spy in the late ’40s, when freewheeling excess came with the territory. Claire, hired in the ’70s, had won her freedom of action partly by default. Station chiefs unaccustomed to supervising women had tended to overlook her, which gave her leeway to expand smaller roles into bigger ones—at least until someone noticed. Whenever an op confined her to the dark, she sought her own path toward the light. It kept the job interesting even as it tended to thwart professional advancement. And that’s what she was doing now by meeting Baucom—seeking knowledge above her clearance and her pay grade.

  Baucom lived in Charlottenburg, one of the few West Berlin neighborhoods that still looked a lot like it had before American bombers and Soviet artillery pounded the city to rubble in the Second World War. He had a grand old apartment with high ceilings, tall windows, and built-in bookcases, up on the third floor of a brownstone with a marble foyer. Helen had once described it to her, and Claire was hoping he would invite her upstairs to see it.

  Streetlamps flickered to life as she made her way up the cobbled walkway, lending a sepia wash to the scene, like in a tintype of Old Berlin. She could have pinpointed her location by smell alone—the bracing Berliner Luft, with its wintry bite of coal smoke, the raw dampness that stole into your clothes like a pickpocket.

  She reached the building. Next to the massive oak doorway was a panel with six buttons, one for each floor. She glanced up at the windows. There was no flick of the curtains—Baucom would never be so obvious—but when she pressed the buzzer he answered right away.

  “Ja?”

  Even through the static of the squawk box she recognized the rumbling baritone.

  “It’s me.”

  A pause, followed by the hiss of a deep exhalation.

  “Zwiebelfisch. Ten minutes.”

  “Onion fish?” If this was code, she didn’t know it.

  “It’s a bar. Savignyplatz.”

  So much for the idea of being invited up. She supposed that with no office anymore he had become even more protective of his lair. Maybe he regretted having invited her at all.

  “Okay. See you there.”

  Zwiebelfisch turned out to be one of those joints that looked like it had been around forever, but without seeming tired or run-down. Plate glass windows threw a welcoming glow onto empty trestle tables on the chilly sidewalk. Above the doorway was an inscription in Latin from Dante, Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate. Abandon hope, all ye who enter. An in-joke for regulars, no doubt, because the place instantly felt like a cheerful getaway, somewhere you’d be allowed to get comfortable for a few hours without having to drink yourself into a stupor. The shallow main room had a cozy bar along the opposite side. Off to the left was a second room with more tables, most of them small. The walls were covered by old posters and moody black-and-white photos.

  Helen had once told her about a bar where she and Baucom used to meet, long ago, but that place had sounded darker, mustier, and it supposedly had an inscrutable old proprietor who flipped a towel over his shoulder as he descended into the cellar for rare and wondrous vintages. The barman here was young, no towel, but seemed affable enough. She nodded to him and headed for the far room, where she took a table in the most remote corner, but with a seat facing the windows. All the rest of the early arrivals were in the other room, keeping their voices down. That was one of the things Claire liked best about Berliners. They knew how to keep quiet.

  A waiter approached, a wiry man in his twenties with a wry expression that said he knew she was a first-timer. The others were drinking beer, so she ordered one, and he soon returned with a foamy glass of Schultheiss.

  When half of it was gone, she began to wonder if Baucom had stood her up, even though that had never been his style. When only foam remained, she began to fear for his safety.

  3

  It was now thirty-four minutes past their scheduled rendezvous.

  Claire tried to be rational about it. Maybe in retirement Baucom had grown timid, and had concluded he’d be putting his pension at risk. It happened, even to the boldest of old field men. She knew about the forms they made you sign on your way out the door, the promises they extracted, especially when you were planning on staying overseas. A memoir? Don’t even think about it, unless you had the best of connections and were prepared for page after page of redactions. She had contacted him by phone, which in retrospect felt careless.

  But there were other, more disturbing possibilities. Perhaps someone had waylaid him, or even bundled him into a van, and by now he was either answering questions in a windowless room or knocked cold on a sidewalk, with blood coming out his ears.

  She decided to give it another fifteen minutes before setting off to look for him, by retracing her steps to his apartment.

  Then she looked out the window and there he was, staring back with an expression of frank curiosity, like she was an oddity in a museum. Jarring, but Claire checked herself from flinching. His eyes narrowed, like he was deciding whether to come in. Maybe it was the lighting from the streetlamp, but the years hadn’t been kind to him. More bulk in the middle, a greater sag to the jowls. Creases around his eyes looked careworn, and his color was off.

  Claire tried out a smile and gestured toward the empty chair. Baucom’s face lit up with a grin, and ten years fell away. He set out for the door with a stride that was surprisingly brisk, although by the time he got to the table he was out of breath and reaching for his cigarettes. Gitanes, she noticed, then remembered they had always been his brand. He was a classic long-term expat, adopting European clothes and customs, yet, in his case, with a leathery face as American as a baseball glove.

  “I was beginning to think you were a lost cause.”

  “I took a rather roundabout way.”

  “Do you think that was necessary?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe that depends on why you’re in town and what you want to know. And, well…” He shrugged and glanced toward the window.

  “What?”

  “Little things, the past week or so. Probably nothing. Maybe I’m just out of practice.”

  Baucom rested his cigarette on an ashtray. The waiter brought a beer without taking an order. Baucom nodded in appreciation, took a long, deep swallow, then licked the foam from his lips and settled into his chair.

  “This isn’t where you used to bring her, is it?”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, c’mon. You know who I mean.”

  He dipped his head as if to hide a blush.

  “She probably told you about Lehmann’s.”

  “That’s the name. With some sort of wonderful cognac?”

  He smiled again, and this time his eyes wandered off to a distant locale, far beyond Claire’s reach.

  “That stuff was older than she was. But not older than me, of course.”

  The age difference had been a subject of Agency gossip, although Claire had never faulted Helen for it. Then, as now, Baucom projected a raffish charm, a man with valuable lore at his disposal, the very reason she’d sought him out. As if to drive home the point, he immediately offered a story.

  “I met Lehmann in the winter of ’46. Coldest on record. Not enough grub to even keep the dogs fed. Any friend you made then tended to be forever. Gone now. So is his bar. They turned it into a Friseur, a place with pink walls where the Hausfrauen sit in their curlers. Wish he could have been around to see all the fun last November. He would have picked up a sledgehammer and joined in.”

  “Must have been pretty great for you as well.”

  Baucom shrugged.

  “It’s always nice to wi
n, even by default. So, yeah, I went down there like everybody else, hugging and cheering and popping corks while we watched the Trabis roll through the breach. But now the Trabis are still here, blowing all that bilge out their tailpipes while the Ossis squander the last of their ‘welcome money’ on currywurst and refrigerators. And what I’m starting to realize is that I kind of liked being stranded on a free capitalist island in the middle of their goddamn Red Sea. Because now the developers and architects have come ashore, and next it’ll be that whole goddamn crowd of paper pushers from Bonn. By the time they’re done fucking up the place I won’t be able to afford the rent. Or do I sound ungrateful?”

  “You sound like an old spy who liked feeling needed.”

  “Yeah, that too. Not that we ever did anything in this city but get our asses kicked. Well, mostly.”

  He looked Claire in the eye, and for a second she thought he was about to get down to business. Then he clasped his hands on the table and leaned a little closer.

  “Are you ever in touch with her?”

  “Now and then. Christmas cards, mostly. Some years she’s newsy, some she’s not. She’s married.”

  “Hardly unexpected.” He gazed at his beer glass and steepled his fingers.

  “A farmer’s wife.”

  His hands unclasped. He picked up his cigarette and erupted with a smoky laugh. “Our Helen? Stranded in a goddamn cow pasture?”

  “I couldn’t believe it, either. Chickens, crops, a barn.”

  “Children?”

  “One. And she was pregnant at Christmas, so by now there may already be another one. I forget the due date.”

  “I don’t suppose she’s ever, well…”

  “Asked about you?”

  He nodded.

  “Afraid not.”

  “Just as well.”

  “For both of you, probably.”