Winter Work Read online

  Emil started his car. The engine coughed blue smoke out of the tailpipe as he made a U-turn, passed the Volvo, and turned right onto the highway—in the opposite direction from his dacha. He could be headed to Berlin, or anywhere else you might want to go in their suddenly wider world. And he was doing so even though Bettina was waiting alone at home, which worried Karola.

  Seconds later, the Volvo crept away and followed, accelerating smoothly with no trace of smoke. She crossed to another window and saw the Volvo tuck in behind the Wartburg and easily close the gap. She watched, holding her breath, until both cars were out of sight.

  9

  Bill Gentry locked in on Claire the moment she arrived at Berlin base.

  “Where’d you go last night? I called your room and there was no answer.”

  “Went for a walk, over toward the zoo. Needed to stretch my legs.”

  “Eventful?”

  This was not idle curiosity. Gentry was checking up on her. Claire had no way of knowing what he knew of her movements, so she answered carefully.

  “Not particularly. Stopped in a neighborhood bar for a beer along the way. A few of them, in fact.”

  “Beers or bars?”

  “Beers.”

  “Meet anyone special?”

  The path ahead narrowed. She picked her way forward.

  “I’m not involved with anyone here, Bill, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Oh, well, that’s nice to know. Glad to hear it.”

  She was pleased to have diverted him from any track that might have led to Baucom, but annoyed that he seemed so pleased by her response, and was now stepping closer. Gentry had recently left his wife, and was said to be a man on the prowl, and not particularly choosy. He was one of those fellows who liked to casually touch, squeeze, or even pat you on the rump if you gave him half a chance.

  “Sorry I didn’t reach you, then. It would have been nice to have had a drink before this op gets rolling.”

  Now she detected a hint of a leer in his tone. Claire knew all about men like Gentry, and while they were a damned nuisance, their eagerness sometimes also made them an easy mark for cultivation as a source, as long as you could hold them at bay.

  “We could have lunch today,” she suggested. “If you’re free.”

  “I am, but I doubt you’ll be. Someone’s waiting to see you, and will probably be keeping you tied up well past noon. I promised to deliver you first thing. This way.”

  He smiled a bit wickedly, took her by the arm, and led her toward the conference room. She resisted the urge to shake him off, only because of her worries about who might be awaiting her arrival. Maybe it was a security officer, a grim-faced fellow who would display surveillance photos of her and Clark Baucom and then hand her a plane ticket home.

  Gentry opened the door to a view of a long table with a woman in a navy blue business suit seated at the far end. Her head was lowered, face obscured by a curtain of light brown hair as she examined some papers.

  “Claire Saylor, as requested,” Gentry said.

  The woman nodded but didn’t look up. Gentry left and shut the door. So much for a proper introduction. Claire resisted the temptation to clear her throat, but decided to remain standing until her presence was acknowledged. The only sound was the whisper of pages as the woman set aside one to read another. There was a coffee maker at the opposite end of the room, so Claire walked over and poured a cup, even though she’d already had plenty.

  “Get one for me,” the woman said, bossing her like Claire was a secretary. “With milk, unless it’s the fake stuff.”

  Claire poured a second cup. There were little plastic tubs of milk, but the customer hadn’t earned that level of service, so she walked the cup across the room, set it down just out of reach, and watched with amusement as the woman groped for it without success. When she finally looked up to locate her coffee, Claire recognized her face from newspaper photos—Lindsey Ward, the new deputy director of operations.

  Ward frowned when she saw the coffee was black.

  “Sorry, didn’t see anything but powder,” Claire said. “I heard you’d gone back to Langley.”

  “I did. Then the issue of this new asset came up, so I flew back. Didn’t even have time to unpack.”

  “It’s that important?”

  “And I’m here to personally tell you why, because a lot of it is beyond Bill Gentry’s need to know.”

  It was almost enough to make Claire wish she’d added milk. High-priority ops were rare occurrences for her. It’s one reason Paris station had made her available when Berlin called for reinforcements. Expendable. Although she supposed her fluency in German had also played a role.

  Ward gestured toward a chair to her right. Claire angled for a peek at the pages, but Ward gathered them up, popped the edges against the tabletop, and slid the pile into a folder stamped “Top Secret.”

  “Will I be getting a look at that?”

  “I’ll brief you on the contents.”

  “That sounds like a no.”

  “Gentry said you weren’t easy. He also said you’re good at your work. I guess that will have to be enough.”

  Some managers softened backhanded compliments with a smile. Not Ward. Claire was fine with that as long as the same rules applied to her. She had some tough questions, and didn’t want to have to disguise them as admiring ones.

  “What do you know about the hierarchy of the HVA?” Ward asked.

  “Not much.”

  Not entirely true. Baucom had given her a decent briefing the night before, covering half a dozen names and titles, but admitting to that much knowledge might have invited unwanted curiosity as to its source.

  “Apparently none of us knew all that much until the last month or so. Here’s a flow chart and a few bios from the upper echelons that we’ve managed to assemble. Study it after we’re done, but it’s not to leave the room.”

  “Is the asset on the chart?”

  “We’ll get to that. How much do you know about their record keeping, particularly their agent files?”

  “Practically nothing.” Which was true. She and Baucom had covered a wide range of topics while lingering at Zwiebelfisch a few hours longer, but this wasn’t one of them.

  “From what we’ve managed to determine, there’s no central registry. It’s more like a puzzle, with different pieces in three separate card files. The first and largest covers around three hundred thousand ‘persons of interest’ to the Stasi. Buried among those are two thousand or so HVA agents serving abroad, but to ID them you need the cards from the second file, which summarize their ops and actions, plus the third set, the ‘agent’ cards, which give you their cover names only, plus some biographical detail. All of them are apparently on microfilm. Our concern is that anyone offering this material might really only have one or two of the pieces, especially since the East Germans have been destroying most of them, and have supposedly shipped surviving copies to Moscow.”

  “So this could be a con job?”

  “Or disinformation, perhaps in cooperation with the main enemy.” Meaning the Russians. “Or he could be the real thing.”

  “Is he at least someone who could potentially deliver the goods?”

  “His rank gives him the right access, and he has offered enough authentication to at least verify his identity. It’s the product that’s in question.”

  “So what will I be doing? Accepting delivery of a sample?”

  “He hasn’t said. But I have a rendezvous time for you. Four-thirty this afternoon. Early this morning we confirmed that the meeting is still a go.”

  “Confirmed how?”

  “Direct contact with the asset.”

  “Impressive.”

  “As for what you can expect, you know as much as I do. We’re leaving it to the contact to set the tone. The vaguene
ss is one reason I chose you for this job.”

  “You personally?”

  Ward nodded.

  “For your demonstrated ability to…improvise, if necessary.”

  “My superiors have at times characterized that talent as insubordination.”

  “I reserve the right to do the same, if you abuse it.”

  “Hard to see how I’d manage that this afternoon, if the contact is setting all the rules.”

  “We’re counting on increasing our leverage as events transition forward. You’ll be our instrument for that.”

  “How so?”

  “Since he first got in touch, other developments have changed the equation more in our favor. Let’s just say that it’s no longer strictly a seller’s market.”

  “He has a competitor?”

  “It’s not that simple. If it was, I’d be happy to have you tell him so.”

  “Then what do I tell him, assuming he’s even the one who makes contact?”

  “As little as possible. We want to see his play, and, hopefully, get a clearer idea of what’s on offer. Then we’ll plan our next move.”

  “If this is so important, why am I going it alone?”

  “Because he insisted. It’s his strictest rule.”

  “How would he even know if we were breaking it?”

  “He probably wouldn’t, but the meetup is in his territory. And, based on the track record of our station over there, well, our operational security has never exactly been airtight in East Berlin.” Her polite way of saying they might still have a few leaks. “We did look at the possibility of supplying you with a portable communication device.”

  “One of those new mobile phones?”

  “Yes, but apparently they’re completely unreliable here. Can’t even get a signal, here or anywhere else in East Germany. But you won’t be totally isolated. You’ll be taking this with you.”

  Ward opened a stainless steel attaché case and withdrew a black metal square four inches per side and about an inch thick. She handed it to Claire.

  “A tracking beacon?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the range?”

  That would at least tell her how closely any sort of support might be lurking as she moved toward the rendezvous point.

  “It’s state of the art, the latest model from our technical people.”

  A non-answer, which told her not to ask again.

  “You’re to activate it the moment you leave Berlin station, whether that happens to be an hour from now or later. You’ll leave it on until you’ve returned.”

  Meaning that Ward wanted to know her whereabouts before, during, and after the op. Did they already suspect she’d made an unauthorized contact? If so, why would they even keep her on this job?

  “Whose protection is this for, exactly? Mine or yours?”

  “Why can’t it be for both? In the meantime, here are some further briefing materials to help you prepare, mostly to do with the location, the best routes in and out, the current status of different crossing points, that sort of thing.”

  She slid over a pile of maps and photographs.

  “Those items will also remain in the room, but take your time studying them. We’ll have your lunch sent in.”

  “Do I at least get a name?”

  “You have it in your hand. He’s the number five man on that flow chart.”

  News to quicken the pulse. Based on the ranking, she was pretty sure she already knew who it was, thanks to what Baucom told her the night before, but she consulted the chart to make sure. All the while, Ward watched with interest.

  “Lothar Fischer,” Claire said.

  “Age sixty-one. Deputy chief of the directorate for foreign operations. Potentially the most important asset we’ve had here for quite awhile. Your own little cameo in the final act of the Cold War.”

  Claire nodded, pleased yet wary, mostly due to the one big question that continued to chafe at her, like a blister on her heel: Why her?

  10

  Back in the prime of his career, Clark Baucom had never much liked playing a backup role—watching from the weeds, for example, while someone else took care of the main event. This was partly because in many of the places he’d worked—Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, to name a few—the Agency’s resources had been so thin on the ground that you were lucky if you could scare up a couple of local agents to help with logistics or serve as extra sets of eyes and ears. So he had generally taken the starring role for himself.

  But at the moment, seated at a dreary tram stop on Frankfurter Allee in what was still known as East Berlin, the role suited him fine. He was happy to be needed, even if this job was unpaid and off the books. He hadn’t felt quite this alive since, well, six months earlier, when Bill Gentry had gently but firmly nudged him into the ranks of the retired.

  Baucom had known exactly where to set up shop almost from the moment Claire had told him where her rendezvous would take place. As soon as she’d opened the map on the table at Zwiebelfisch, he had jabbed this very spot with his index finger.

  “There. That’s the optimal vantage point for observing your approach. It’s a tram stop shelter, with plexiglass sides and a roof in case it rains. Enough different lines stop there that it won’t look suspicious if I let a few trams pass without boarding.”

  “Great. And then?”

  “Well, let’s see…”

  He ran his finger along the yellow lines of the busier streets, able to envision from memory exactly how everything looked. Some of the names—Karl-Marx-Allee, Lenin Allee—would almost certainly be purged in the coming months, just as previous names honoring kaisers and imperial heroes had been purged in the aftermath of the Second World War, and, before that, the names of Jews and leftists when the Nazis had taken power. With every block came a memory of smells, sights, noises—sensations so vivid that he wouldn’t have been surprised to find his fingertip covered in grit by the time he lifted it from the map.

  “Here’s the café where you end up. It’s a Café-Imbiss, actually, a fast-food joint that sells coffee and crap sausages. Half a block away, on the same side of the street, there’s a news kiosk, right here.” He tapped the spot twice. “It sells cigarettes and coffee, with a couple of tables out front. I can walk over there from the tram stop. Buying a coffee will give me an excuse to hang around for another ten or fifteen minutes, longer if he’s got other customers to keep him busy. Then I’ll make my way back up the street slow enough to keep the doorway of your café in sight for another ten or fifteen. I’ll watch for you. If you don’t like the feel of things when you’re leaving, button up your overcoat as you come outside. Otherwise, leave the coat unbuttoned.”

  “Okay.”

  “And if you’re not out of there in twenty, I’m coming in for a look.”

  “Make it thirty.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. But what if they take me out the back?”

  “The café is in a standalone building. I’ll watch both sides for anyone passing to the rear, and for any arriving vehicles in the back alley. I’ll scout the alley before I set up shop.”

  “Sounds good. If I’m already feeling threatened on arrival, I’ll pause at the door to check inside my purse before going in.”

  “Got it. Oh, and I’m following you back afterward, whether you button up your overcoat or not. That’s mandatory. But if you do button up, I’ll tighten the distance.”

  “I’ll want plenty of notes afterward on anyone who comes onto your radar. I guess that means I’ll need to debrief you after Ward has debriefed me.”

  “I’ll find us a nice, neutral location with more privacy.”

  “Not that I mind this place.”

  “Nobody minds Zwiebelfisch. Or not after their second beer.”

  Claire smiled, folded up the map, an
d signaled for the waiter.

  “In that case, let’s have another. If you’re up for it.”

  Baucom was more of a whiskey and cognac man when he was having more than one. All this beer would keep him up half the night, peeing and gassy, but he sensed in her offer a need to keep talking, so he nodded, and she called for another round, which arrived at its usual efficient speed.

  “It’s a good thing for me you decided to stick around Berlin,” she said. “Will you ever go back to the States?”

  “To visit? Sure. To live?” He shook his head. “I don’t even know the place anymore. The politics, the popular culture. Maybe I was never really at home there, a Foreign Service brat from age five. Warped me for life.”

  “Any family there?”

  “My younger brother and his big brood. Four kids. They came over for a visit back in the late ’70s. Fun enough while they were around, but mostly it made me glad I didn’t have kids of my own. They wore me out.”

  She smiled.

  “My sister has three, and it always makes me claustrophobic. They’re sweet and precious, and they’re not brats. But whenever I see my sister with them, barely keeping track, I can’t help but think of her as this once magnificent ship that’s now dragging three anchors through shallow water. Family stabilizes you, but you can never go far from the home port. Not for long.”

  “Still.”

  “Still?”

  “I dunno.”

  He held his tongue, mostly because he knew she wouldn’t have wanted to hear what he had to say. This was no time for a gloomy lecture on finding yourself alone late in life, not right before a sensitive op.

  But Baucom knew the symptoms firsthand, and in Claire Saylor he saw someone for whom the job, the life, had taken hold deeply enough to pull her free from all other attachments. Exhilarating while it was happening—a life rich in experience that left you with plenty of stories and memories, but perhaps no one to share them with. It’s why he tended to talk too much whenever companionship did come along, if only to feel the blood move again, not so much from the company of an attractive woman as from the kinship of a colleague still on the chase—possibly the last great chase that the Cold War would offer in this city.