Ultimate Issue (16 page)

“You don’t seem very surprised he’s been committing adultery,” said Sullivan. “Or did you know about it?”

“Go to hell,” she said, and her lips were trembling.

Now he got to his feet.

“We need the letter he wrote to you. And any other correspondence you’ve had with him.”

“Too bad,” she said.

“You’ve still got the letters?”

“I’m not answering another question.”

Sullivan pulled a folded paper out of his inner breast pocket.

“Mrs. Tower, this is a search warrant. We have authority to search this apartment and everything in it and to take whatever is material evidence. Now, will you cooperate, or do we have to take the place apart?”

She gaped at him.

“Please,” he offered. “Read it yourself.” He held the paper out to her. She took it, unfolded it, and scanned it with almost unseeing eyes.

“Why?” she asked. “Why?”

“That’s what the air force asked for.”

“Who in the air force?”

“The Office of Special Investigations. The OSI. We’re only doing a job for them. We’re not involved. Now, Mrs. Tower, let’s see the letters.”

She walked slowly to a door leading to her bedroom. It stood open, and they saw her go to the dressing table and open a drawer. She took out three letters.

“Here,” she said, when she came back. “I hope you think they’re worth it.”

She sank down on the chair and buried her face in her hands.

“There’re only three letters here,” said Sullivan, looking

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at the envelopes. “February 1961. December 1960. May 1960.”

“That’s all I’ve got,” came her muffled voice. “Look for yourself if you think I’m Iying.”

“No, that’s an right, Mrs. Tower,” said Sullivan. “These will do.”

Out of one of the envelopes dropped a small snapshot. It was a picture of a man in civilian clothes.

“Is this your husband?” asked Sullivan.

She didn’t even look up. “Yes.”

“Where was it taken?”

“Berlin, I think,” she said.

“Thank you, Mrs. Tower,” said Sullivan, and he paused. “We appreciate your cooperation.”

Mattingly stood up and folded his notebook.

“Don’t disturb yourself, please,” added Sullivan. “We’ll let ourselves out.”

Even after she heard the door slam, she sat there for a long time.

At last she got up. She went over to a cupboard and took out a bottle and a glass. Slowly, deliberately, she filled two thirds of the glass with vodka. Then she drank it, in big gulps.

She held up the glass against the light and stared into it, like a fortune teller into a crystal ball.

Then she hurled the glass right across the room, and it smashed against the wan.

Marientelde

On the edge of the Soviet sector, the camp sprawled over an acre of West Berlin territory.

“Warning!” cautioned the big sign inside the entrance. “Beware of Spying and Abduction!”

Pech drove his Volkswagen past the main gate of Marienfelde reception center and showed his pass to the guard. The man nodded and waved him on.

Department B1 had its own office in the camp, tucked away between the administrative buildings, the dormitory area, the medical division, and the big central dining had where meals were served in shifts.

Marienfelde was bulging with 3,000 refugees from the east sector, but Pech was concerned with one girl.

They had her in custody, and she wasn’t permitted to go anywhere unless accompanied by a plainclothes man from B1.

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Chaperoned, she was allowed to stroll in the fresh air, and she was given five marks a week pocket money. Sometimes her escort bought her a Coca-Cola from the little stand in the camp. She liked Coke; it was a forbidden drink where she came from.

Pech parked the car in his own reserved space in front of the B1 building. He got out and walked toward a hut.

“Attention,” called out the camp loudspeakers. “Will the following please report to administration: 2690, 6498, 7125, 8843.”

No names were allowed inside Marienfelde. Everyone was a number, because names betrayed identities, and those became secret once inside the gates.

Helga was 6221. And she was very special.

Most of those who got across the border stayed in Marienfelde for two or three weeks only, while they were vetted, interrogated, debriefed, and assigned to other locations inside West Germany. The average investigation lasted twelve days, while stories were checked, relatives in the West contacted, and clearances given.

But there were some who didn’t move on.

Like Helga.

The hut that was her home in Marienfelde stood in a little enclosure surrounded by a wire fence, and the gate was guarded. There too they knew Pech.

She looked up when he entered. She was pale with sunken eyes, her straight hair tied in a bun, wearing a reefer jacket and shapeless trousers. On the table in front of her stood a mug of cold coffee, a tin plate with a piece of garlic sausage, two thick slices of bread, and a pat of butter.

“You haven’t touched your breakfast,” observed Pech reproachfully.

“Any news?” she asked. “Is there any news?”

She twisted her fingers nervously.

Pech sat down on a stool. “Not yet,” he said. “You have to be patient, Helga.”

“How much longer?”

“These things take time, my dear,” said Pech. “We’re trying to process you. We have to be careful. It takes time. We can’t just go across over there and ask them about you. We have to check things by other means. And you’re not helping us by refusing to cooperate.”

Outside they could hear the PA system calling for more numbers to report immediately.

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‘I want to see Captain Tower,” she demanded.

“Well, you can’t,” he replied curtly.

“Where is he?”

“In England,” said Pech.

‘Yell him I want to see him. He’ll understand.”

“I regret that’s impossible.” Pech sighed. “How often do I have to explain to you that the Americans have officially handed you over to us? Forget about them. You are our responsibility.”

He smiled at her encouragingly. “Why don’t you tell us the whole story? Why don’t you tell us what you told Captain Tower?”

“Do you know where we are?” she asked unexpectedly.

For a moment he looked puzzled.

“What do you mean?”

“This camp? Marienfelde. This reception canter. Where is it?”

“I don’t understand you,” said Pech, baffled. “This is Berlin. The western sector. What do you mean?”

“The other side of the camp,” she said. “Where is that?”

“Helga, I don’t follow.”

“It’s five meters from East German territory,” she said slowly. “That’s why I won’t talk to you.”

Pech smiled again. “I assure you, you are perfectly safe. They can’t touch you here. You are under official care. You have the department’s assurance.”

For the first time, Helga smiled too. A wry, cynical smile.

Pech found it quite disconcerting.

Hans Jurgen Kohl, alias 9684, leaned against the wail of one of the twentyfive residential blocks and watched Pech leave the wired enclosure.

Kohl knew who Pech was and who he had been to see in the guarded hut.

That was the reason Kohl was in Marienfelde. His orders were explicit, and they only concerned the girl whose number was 6221.

Kohl, freckle-faced and slightly built, was regarded by the SSD, the East German security service, as one of its up-and-coming young men. He had the rank of lieutenant, and he specialized in cross-sector operations.

It had been no problem for him to pose as an east zone fugitive and get into Marienfelde for processing.

He had been very well briefed. He knew about Pech,

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where B1hadits office, and the location of the security compound. In fact, curiously enough, the whole sprawling camp, with its teeming mass of refugees, held little mystery for him.

Kohl had a good story ready for anyone who wanted to know what made a young man like him commit the heinous sin of Republikflucht (desertion). He was about to be called up for Volksarmee, and no way, he explained, was he going to become one of Ulbricbt’s goose-stepping soldiers.

He was admirably convincing, and people were quite sure that he’d make a good living for himself once he settled in West Germany. They didn’t know, of course, that he was in no hurry to leave Marienfelde.

“Attention,” blared the loudspeaker. “Will 9684 report to Room Nine, Building Seventy-seven, immediately.”

He heard the announcement, and then he froze. 96841 That was him.

Building 77 was an administration block, so what did they want? He had already been debriefed, had his medical, and received his money allowance….

He walked along the corridor and found room 9. It gave no clue about its occupant.

He knocked on the door.

“Come in,” answered a voice.

Kohl entered and stopped. There was only one man id the office, sitting behind a trestle table on which lay a single file.

“I said come in,” repeated Pech. “Come in and sit down.”

Warily Kohl pulled a wooden chair forward and sat down facing the desk.

“You know who I am,” said Pech. “And I know who you are, Lieutenant.”

Kohl’s mouth felt dry. “Lieutenant?” he echoed. “I am a civilian. Somebody has made a mistake.”

“No mistake,” said Pech. He was quite cheerful. “It is all here.” He tapped the unopened file. “You are an offlcer of the Staats Sicherheits Dienst of the DDR.”

Kohl decided to stay silent.

“And people like you are not welcome in Marienfelde.” Maybe it’s a test, Kohl thought desperately. Maybe they’re trying it on.

“This is nonsense,” he said. “I have no idea what you

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are talking about. I fled to avoid conscription. I would like to go to Bavaria Anywhere far away from the DDR.”

“I’m sorry, Kohl,” said Pech. “You’ve been rumbled. It was a nice try, but it didn’t work. I know this will be a blot on your excellent record sheet, but that can’t be helped.”

The sarcastic bastard, thought Kohl.

“I am not the only SSD man in Marienfelde,” he said maliciously.

“But you’re the one who’s been spotted.”

Kohl scowled. “So what happens now?”

“Back you go to Herr Ulbricht,” Pech said jovially. “I’ll even get a driver to drop you at zonal boundary.”

“That’s all?”

Pech’s eyes gleamed. “What do you want me to do? Have you shot? That’s not the way the game is played, Hans. If we all started shooting each other … well, I ask you I”

Kohl sniffed.

“Just for the record,” added Pech, “would you formally like to tell me who you were sent to spy on in here?”

“I think you know the answer I’ll give you,” Kohl replied dryly.

Pech shrugged. “I had to ask you, of course. It’s routine.”

“I hope your boss is pleased,” said Kohl, with a touch of bitterness.

“Well,” said Pech, “I try to keep him happy.”

Half an hour later Kohl was on his way to SSD headquarters in East Berlin.

And Pech called his boss in Karlsrube and reported on events.

Unruh congratulated him. It proved that B1 was very alert.

“What about the girl?” he asked.

“Ah, the girl,” reflected Pech. “She is still a problem, I’m afraid.”

“Damn.”

“She seems to be afraid something might happen to her. But I reassured her.”

“You did?”

“Yes, sir,” said Pech. “I promised her that she was quite safe.”

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London

The Bryanston Mews party was in full swing when he came up to her.

“Are you the remarkable American girl everybody been telling me about?” he asked.

“Remarkable,” she echoed, eyebrows raised.

He was very tall, but good-looking, with tousled dark hair and laugh lines around his mouth. He wore a turtleneck sweater and his Rolex watch was twenty-one-carat gold.

“A girl of many talents, they say.”

“You can only be Gene,” said Laurie, and she couldn’t help smiling at the tmabashed cheek of his approach.

“We obviously have mutual friends,” said the man in his curious accent, a mixture of American and central European.

“I was looking out for you,” he added, gently steering her to the punchbowl on the big table at the side of the room.

“Really?” said Laurie.

He ladled some of the liquid into a glass for her.

“I think they’ve put everything including aftershave into this,” he cautioned, “but it doesn’t matter anymore. Two sips and you don’t care.”

There were about twenty people in the room, chatting and laughing to a background of records. Nina and Frederick’s latest recording was fighting a losing battle amid the hubbub.

He filled his own glass and raised it.

“This is my third,” he confided. “It makes the world look beautiful.”

He took her arm and guided her into a corner.

“Tell me,” he said, “what have you heard about me, Laurie?”

Her almondshaped eyes twinkled. “You really want to know?”

He held up one hand. “No, I will tell you. This man, Ivanov, don’t trust him an inch. He is a lecher. He chases women. He adores pretty girls. They’re not safe with him.” He became mock serious. “They’re quite right.”

“You have a high opinion of yourself, Gene,” remarked Laune.

“Can I help it if I am so attractive to them?” he grinned. He saw her raised eyebrows.

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“Don’t worry, I never force myself on a lady.~’ He paused. “Except maybe in the line of duty.”

Laurie put her glass on top of a cabinet containing a collection of Chinese figurines.

“Are you on duty now?” she asked.

“No more than you, Miss Czeslaw,” be said genially.

He finished his drink. “Excuse me,” he said. “I must get another. Would you like a refill?”

She shook her head and watched him make his way through the crowd to the punchbowl. So this was Yevgenni Ivanov, Captain 2nd Rank, Soviet Navy, assistant naval attache, Russian Embassy, London. Man about town, official playboy, assigned special duty.

Very special duty.

Ivanov came back to her. His face was slightly flushed. He likes drinking, she noted.

“Stephen gives good parties, don’t you think?” he commented, looking around the room. “He has this knack of always inviting the most unexpected people.”