CIA Fall Guy: A Spy Thriller
Page 12
“Get up, George,” she said. “We have business to attend to.”
George stood up, holding placating hands in front of him — “just another crazy woman to deal with” — as another man came forward. Beth shuddered when she saw it was Jack Lockheim.
“So we did see you in Munich,” she said.
Beth turned back to George. “I've just left Charles with a busted kneecap.”
“Charles?” George said.
“He was setting up David and me.”
George nodded as if this made perfect sense, even if it didn't.
“I've also left another fellow — he was shooting at me — with a broken knee. But right now we need to rescue David Ward! He's being shanghaied.”
Jack motioned to George, who said to Beth, “You wait here and we'll take care of it.”
Beth started to follow the men out of the room, but George said, “This is an ops situation. You are not to leave here. That's a direct order.”
The moment George and Jack were out of the room, Beth said to the silent remaining eight men, “I need to use the bathroom facilities.”
One of the remaining men rose. “I'll have to come with you.”
If only this time the layout would accommodate her! Inside the bathroom Beth opened the window and looked out. Yes!
Moments later she climbed out of the first floor window and strode towards a trellised flower bower.
After only a few steps someone grabbed her, twisted her arm behind her and, without saying a word, marched her towards the Magazine.
The man marched her into the Magazine. As they passed through the narrow entrance space, Beth swung to one side and knocked the man into the walls. She took a step back as the man tried to clear his head and executed the knee-breaking technique on him — the third time is definitely the charm! — and left him screaming in pain.
David must be here. Why else would the newest attacker — again someone she had never before seen — march her here?
Beth ran up the stairs and around the inside of the Magazine. So many closed doors!
Beth opened her mouth to call David's name, but remembered she didn't want to alert David's captor in case the captor was still holding David.
She pushed open doors that circled the round building. No one inside the first or second doors.
On the third try Beth opened the door — to find David sprawled on the floor unconscious. She checked for a pulse at his neck. Then pushed at his shoulders.
He groaned and opened his eyes. When he saw Beth, he smiled.
“Marry me,” he said.
“You're delirious,” she said. “You can't be held to anything you say.”
DAY 7
Beth walked into a restaurant in Georgetown, where David sat waiting for her, his left arm in a sling due to being yanked as he was frog-marched at Colonial Williamsburg. She was enormously pleased they were both wearing clean clothes.
“Did you sleep okay at Kathleen's last night?” David asked.
“Are you finally going to tell me what's going on?” she asked.
“You've been terrific,” he said. David paused as the waiter put down two glasses of wine.
“Isn't it a little early for wine?” she asked.
“Not after what we've been through,” he said.
David reached for his glass as Beth grabbed it from him. “Did you order this?”
David looked at her and threw money on the table and motioned her to get up. “We need to see a man about a dog,” he said as he hurried her out of the restaurant.
“Again?” she said.
A few minutes later Beth stood with David outside the Jefferson Memorial. “Is this one of your mother's favorites, too?” she said.
“You have to learn patience if you want to be in operations,” he said.
“Be in operations?”
“I could use a partner.”
Beth looked around at the nearby tourists. Who could David be meeting? She said to him, “You must say that to all the women who save your measly life.”
“You did not save my life. Someone would have found me. You just saved me from temporary hunger and cold.”
At that moment a man approached the two of them. Beth gasped and grabbed David's arm.
“That's him. That's Hans Wermer.”
“You recognize him after all these years?”
Beth smiled. “I cheated. I found a labeled photo of him in your backpack — along with the condoms.”
Before David can answer Hans reached them and shook David's hand. What the hell was this?
“Guten Tag,” David said.
“English now. I am speaking only English.”
David smiled. “Good day, then. Hans, this is Beth Parsons.”
Hans nodded at her.
“I was hoping you'd show up at the appointed time,” David said.
“I've been here every day — I always follow operational backup plans.”
Beth stared at Hans.
“Operational backup plans?”
Hans smiled. “As I told Herr Ward, I was set up when I was terminated from working for the Americans. I think you Americans call it ‘being framed.’ I never worked for East German intelligence.”
**
George got out of his car in the visitors' lot adjacent to the front entrance of the rehabilitation hospital and walked towards the entrance. He felt badly for Charles.
Inside the building George found Charles in bed, his broken knee in traction. A private security guard sat in the room reading a magazine.
The security guard leaped to his feet when he saw George and said, “He isn't allowed any visitors.”
George showed him his CIA I.D. “Why don't you wait outside?”
The guard walked toward the door, but Charles motioned to the guard. “I'd rather you stayed,” Charles said. What the hell?
“Out. I said out!” George yelled.
The guard lunged for the door, snapping it shut behind him.
“You betrayed me, Charles. I trusted you and you betrayed me.”
Charles said nothing.
“Don't you have anything to say? Any reason for betraying your country?”
Charles shrugged.
“You will tell me your contacts right now. I will meet with them and bring them to justice.”
Charles simply returned George's stare.
Shit! George really needed to know what Charles knew.
“Cooperation is your only hope,” George said. “You may avoid being locked up for …”
**
George entered the diner where Matthew and Frederick, both with legs bandaged and crutches nearby, sat in a booth waiting. Frederick pulled himself up to a standing position and shook George's hand. Then Frederick clasped George in a bear hug. George smiled, turned around and left the restaurant without saying a word.
As he walked towards his car, David and Beth walked towards him. What the hell?
When they reached him, David held up a folded American flag. “It's time to retire your flag,” David said. “You've had a long career — and it's over now.”
George forced a puzzled expression on his face while surreptitiously checking whether he had a chance of getting away. Playing the innocent seemed the better move.
“You're under arrest,” David said.
Suddenly men and women wearing FBI jackets and caps appeared from everywhere. Two of them grabbed George — how dare they! — while the others stormed into the diner.
Moments later George saw the FBI agents exit with Matthew and Frederick limping along on their crutches.
As George was being led to a car, he saw Hans Wermer walk up to David and shake his hand just as Kathleen and Jack Lockheim joined the group. George heard Hans say, “May we have coffee now, bitte?”
**
Beth sat in the diner booth on one side of David while Kathleen sat on the other side. Jack and Hans sat facing them.
“Now you may begin, Hans,” David said.
“Stephen!” Beth burst out.
Hans nodded. “I arranged to come West for a visit to my sick aunt — leaving my wife as hostage in the East. I was to meet Stephen in Frankfurt at the Officers Club.”
Beth's stomach flipped and flopped. Would she finally learn the truth?
“When I got to the Officers Club — the dining room had been bombed. Herr Parsons was dead. I didn't trust contacting anyone else. For years I thought I would be killed.”
David put his arm around Beth.
“The traitor arranged for me to be discredited with the Americans, saying I was a double agent for the East Germans,” Hans continued. “There was no one I could tell who would believe me about the traitor.”
“Then why come forward now?” Kathleen asked.
“Herr Ward contacted me and asked me to do this.”
Beth turned to David. “Why now, David?”
“Because after the Stasi — East German intelligence — files were opened, I finally found enough evidence to set my plan in motion. I felt ever since … the bombing in Frankfurt that there was a traitor within the CIA. But I could never prove it until last month when I asked for a leave of absence from the agency to follow up my own suspicions.”
Hans said. “Herr Ward wanted to expose the traitor. George MacIntosh.”
“Why George?” Beth asked.
“Money? Ideology? Antidote to boredom?” David said.
Beth looked at Jack. “David wondered why you warned me not to eat at the Officers Club that day.”
“Did I? If I did, it was only because the food was so lousy.”
David drank from his coffee cup. “George has been uneasy since the Stasi files have been open. A couple of years ago George asked Jack to go undercover, supposedly checking some bogus story.”
Jack said, “In reality — although I didn't know it — George wanted to ensure there was no trace of his betrayal.”
Beth blurted out: “George found out Hans was meeting Stephen and killed Stephen!”
“Or had him killed,” David said.
Beth felt as if she were a rag doll dumped in the trash. She had her answer — but it didn't help.
“Why not kill Hans instead of Stephen?” Beth asked.
David shook his head. “Killing Hans may have led back to George.”
Had it been her destiny to only have a short time with her husband?
Then she thought of David, her stomach doing another little flop. She asked, “David, why did someone go after you in Colonial Williamsburg?”
David hesitated. “Charles told members of the Germany national group that I would be attending the meeting in Williamsburg. And the group members believed I was the one interfering with their plans.”
“Charles betrayed you?”
David shook his head. “A year ago someone in the agency got a whiff of a possible traitor,” David said. “One of those people checking everyone's finances just felt something was off. From higher up in the agency Charles was assigned to watch George.”
“What? Charles isn't a traitor?” Beth asked.
David shook his head. “He insinuated himself into Frederick's group Deutsches Uber Alles to see if George was involved. Charles never discovered the answer — the cells were kept separate — until now.”
Beth glared at Kathleen, who laughed and said, “I just learned that Charles was undercover and had to play his part. The group wanted info from the guy who arranged for Hans to come here. Grabbing David as he arrived at the meeting was their opportunity.”
“How did they know David arranged for Hans to come to the U.S.? I thought Hans made a claim?”
“Hans did make a claim, but I recommended that the claim be investigated,” David said while Hans nodded his agreement.
“Then who sent Charles to meet me in Baltimore?” Beth asked.
David smiled. “George did. When I got signaled to attend the meeting in Colonial Williamsburg, I said I couldn't — I had to meet someone. George told me to send Charles to meet whoever it was, although George probably knew it was you.”
Beth looked at David. “And when did you know that Charles was still a good guy?
David smiled. “I've known all along — we all had parts to play in uncovering the traitor.”
“Oh, dear,” Beth said. “I kept a gun on Charles all those hours. Why didn't he immediately tell me where you were?”
Now Jack smiled. “Beth, I taught you about need to know. Even when something seems innocuous to tell someone, our training automatically makes us secretive.”
Beth turned to Hans. “And why did you end up with the Germany group?”
“I needed somewhere to go after my CIA driver was shot. I didn't know what my old friend was up to. Once I found out, I said nothing in order to see what would happen.”
Beth nodded. Then asked, “Then why was the driver shot?”
“Mistake,” Hans said. “I was the target. My old friend thought the person arriving at the CIA was a traitor to the Fatherland and wanted the traitor — how do you say it? — ‘taken out.’ But at the park the sun shone in the eyes of the shooter. When he shot the driver, I ran!”
Now Kathleen asked, “What about Mark, who kept showing up?”
“Just doing an ops assignment for George,” David said, “but he doesn't know anything.”
Beth felt the heat rise throughout her body. “We all were supposed to be the fall guy for George?”
“Again!” Hans said.
**
Outside the diner Beth and David stood next to Beth's rental car, Beth leaning against the car and David facing her.
“Will you be reactivating your status with the CIA now?” she asked.
David nodded.
“And do you have a home — someplace besides planes and trains you jump out of?”
David laughed. “I have an apartment near Langley with a landlord who watches things for me.”
“Does the landlord also watch your pets and water your plants?”
David shook his head. “No pets and no plants.”
Beth stared at her shoes. This was the man who had — inadvertently — caused her husband's death …
“I'm sorry,” David said.
She looked up. Could he read her mind?
“For the train being late that … day.”
Beth shook her head. “What difference would it have made — except you would have been killed too?”
David took her hands. “And the riddle. The one I received. I realize now it wasn't from the bombers. It was from one of my informants, trying to warn me of what was about to happen.”
“What was the riddle?”
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
“The Trojan horse? A traitor in the middle of a gathering of men,” she said.
Beth squeezed his hands. Was everything that had happened since she'd been approached at the dojo a karmic payback?
David leaned down to kiss her but she twisted away. She wasn't ready, ready to risk love. She wheeled around, yanked open the car door, and got in. She waved through the glass as she turned on the engine.
David motioned her to roll down the window, which she did only a couple of inches.
“Go to Langley — there's a pass for you,” he said. “Kathleen wants to tell us something.”
“Is it a riddle?” Beth asked.
Beth drove slowly to Langley with no attempts to “catch” yellow lights. She wasn't in a hurry to face David again. She had folded into herself so many years ago. How could she unfold now?
Back at Langley Beth was met at the front by Kathleen and escorted to the cafeteria, where David waited for them at a table.
The moment they had sat down, Kathleen said, “I'm becoming co-director with Charles of our section. Thanks to Beth's escape I finally got a chance to prove I cou
ld do operations.”
Beth and David congratulated Kathleen. Beth felt pleased that even more good had come out of all this.
“Will it be hard to return to Philadelphia?” Kathleen asked Beth.
“Go back to being a civilian?”
David and Kathleen laughed at her use of the word.
“I'll probably still be somewhat in the loop,” Beth said.
She didn't wait for them to ask how. Instead she added, “I'm planning to hold David to his proposal.”
David looked up from his food, his fork half-raised to his open mind.
“My marriage proposal? What made you change your mind? A half hour ago you gave me the brushoff.”
Beth smiled. “Driving here I realized that, if I could jump out of a perfectly good plane — not once but twice …”
“… and a train,” David said.
“I could take the leap and marry again.”
David leaned towards her for the kiss she had missed out on earlier. Again she pulled back.
“Can I keep the gun?” she asked.
“Consider it an engagement gift,” he said.
And now she met him halfway — and they finally really kissed — in the cafeteria of the CIA!
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