The Target

by Saul Herzog

  Hans Frank, Governor-General of occupied Poland.

  Hanged.

  Hermann Göring, Reichsmarschall and original head of the Gestapo.

  Suicide in his cell.

  Alfred Jodl, Wehrmacht Generaloberst.

  Hanged.

  Wilhelm Frick, Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.

  Hanged.

  Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Commander of the Einsatzgruppen.

  Hanged.

  Wilhelm Keitel, Head of the OKW.

  Hanged.

  Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs.

  Hanged.

  And on, and on, and on.

  As the old man grew older, he developed Alzheimer’s. It was then that he really started talking about the things he’d done. The atrocities he’d committed.

  He talked about identifying students in the schools and universities who would one day become a threat to the regime. They weren’t a threat yet, they were teenagers writing essays, making jokes, but Prochnow’s father’s team developed the techniques that headed them off before they ever had a chance to metastasize.

  Predictive correction, they called it.

  They would falsify their health records, have them forcibly committed to asylums, then subject them to experimental forms of psychiatric corrective therapy.

  They operated a prison, Hohenschönhausen, which never officially existed. The area it occupied in East Berlin was blacked out on all maps right up until the 1990s. At its peak, it had over four thousand inmates.

  Not even the government knew the full extent of their suffering.

  Prochnow’s father, however, did, and in the addled state of his waning years, he shared muddled tidbits from those years increasingly freely.

  Thousands died there under his watch.

  They were kept in windowless, underground cells that the inmates themselves had been forced to construct with shovels, cement, and cinderblock.

  “The Nazi regime never ended,” he would whisper. “Once darkness has been released into the world, it cannot be put back in its bottle. We continued what they had begun. Sure, the political slogans had changed. We had a new flag. We had a new ideology. But the methods, down to the finest detail, came straight out of the Nazi playbook. What Hitler’s henchmen did, that’s what we did.”

  Prochnow wasn’t sure what to do with this information.

  “What they did,” his father told him, “I did. If they hung, I should hang.”

  Prochnow listened to every word his father said, and as the man grew older and more senile, Prochnow spent more and more time with him. By the time he was twenty, he knew as much about Stasi torture chambers and methods as anyone alive.

  And he realized, at some point, that his father’s boasts, his jokes, were not bravado. His father wasn’t bragging.

  He was confessing.

  He knew what he’d done was evil, and he was preparing, in his own way, to meet his Maker.

  Prochnow watched it all happen. His father’s decline from a man who turned heads when he entered a room, to a blabbering, incontinent fool.

  And the month he died, he decided to go to Russia and join the GRU. It was the closest he could come to honoring a man that the rest of the world could only curse.

  His father was right.

  If the new government had conducted trials, he’d have hung from the gallows.

  And Prochnow decided if that fate was good enough for his father, it was good enough for him.

  When he returned to Germany, he was sworn to the service of the Kremlin. He didn’t care what they asked him to do. He didn’t care one whit about the politics. The ideology.

  What he did, he did because his father had done it.

  There could be no loyalty more fundamental than that.

  When he heard the gunfire, he ran around the embassy as fast as he could, and by the time he reached the Holocaust Memorial, Berlin Police were already in control of the scene. He could see four cars from where he stood, and the lights of more on the far side of the river flashed in a long procession toward the bridge. Overhead, police helicopters were scanning the surrounding streets for anything related to the shooting.

  Prochnow had two Heckler & Koch semi-automatic pistols, both silenced, and without hesitating, drew them and began walking toward the memorial.

  The memorial was large, its thousands of concrete slabs spread across multiple city blocks.

  Two police officers told him to stop as he entered, and he raised his guns and unceremoniously shot them.

  Then he climbed on top of a concrete slab and made his way quickly across the maze, leaping from slab to slab until he was looking down at two police officers who were administering CPR to a woman who was lying on her back.

  He was behind them, but she was looking up at him, and in the hazy euphoria of the final seconds before her death, they locked eyes.

  She’d been speaking to the officers, telling them something, but she was speaking Latvian. In her delirium, she told them about a note Maksim had taken from her. It was in a newspaper, and he’d put it in his pocket.

  Prochnow stood with his legs spread over the passageway on two separate slabs and fired two shots into the back of each officer’s skull.

  They slumped onto her.

  Prochnow jumped to the ground and walked over.

  Her breathing was very weak. She was almost there, almost in the hands of her Maker. She’d be dead in a matter of minutes.

  He didn’t need to do what followed.

  But he stood over her, one foot on either side of her head, pointed down at her face, and fired a bullet straight into the center of her forehead.

  He took her purse and searched her pockets for any identifying items. She had a passport in her coat, which he took, along with her watch, a necklace, and two silver rings.

  Her body would be in the Berlin police morgue for a week before anyone identified the body.

  Then he went to Maksim’s body and checked for a pulse.

  He was alive but barely.

  There was no way Prochnow was going to get him out of there without being spotted. There was also no way he was leaving him there alive to be questioned by the police.

  They both knew it, but only one of them had accepted it.

  He leaned down close to him and put his gun to his temple.

  “No,” Maksim said.

  “Goodbye, old friend,” Prochnow said and pulled the trigger.

  The top of Maksim’s head came off like the cap of a hard-boiled egg, spattering blood and bone and brain onto the concrete wall of the nearest slab.

  Prochnow reached into Maksim’s jacket pocket and found the newspaper.

  He put it inside his own jacket and then made his way to the east end of the memorial, where he was able to get onto a quiet street called Cora-Berliner. It was lined with cafés, the customers sitting outside under umbrellas and propane patio heaters, sipping hot toddies and mulled wine and fancy coffees.

  Prochnow wiped some blood from his hand and walked calmly across the street. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. A cab at the corner pulled into the street and stopped right in front of him. He got into the back and told the driver to take him to an address in Kreuzberg.

  25

  Prochnow took careful evasive measures to make sure he wasn’t followed. He took the cab to Alexanderplatz and switched at the station to another cab, which he took to Friedrichstraße. There, he took the U-Bahn to the natural history museum, where he disembarked with crowds of day-tripping school children.

  He caught another cab outside the museum and had it drop him off three blocks from the apartment in Kreuzberg.

  At the apartment, he had a storage locker in the underground parking lot. He passed through the lobby and took an elevator down.

  The locker was about the size of a king-sized bed, and inside he had a change of clothes, a hat and gloves, black leather boots, and two fresh Heckler & Koch pistols. He changed his clothes, put on the hat,
then got into a white Range Rover with blacked-out windows.

  He drove the Range Rover across town to another underground parking lot. The lot was connected by a pedestrian tunnel to the Gesundburnnen U-Bahn station.

  He caught the westbound train to Westhafen, where he switched lines to Osloer Straße.

  From there, he caught a cab to a nondescript nearby apartment on the Residenzstraße.

  He entered the apartment, which was as spartan as they came, and turned on the heat. It had been empty for some time.

  On the kitchen counter was a coffee maker, a carton of Marlboro cigarettes, and a selection of protein bars. He opened the cigarettes and lit one.

  In the next room, two wooden chairs faced a window overlooking the street outside, and next to them, there was an electric space heater.

  The entire apartment was devoid of all personal effects, all identifying objects.

  He took the guns from his coat, checked them, and placed them on the kitchen counter.

  Then he went to the coffee machine and inserted one of the little metallic capsules. A shot of espresso poured into a cup, and he carried it to the window.

  He sat on one of the chairs, turned on the heater, and drank the coffee. He used the empty cup as an ashtray.

  He shut his eyes for a minute, took a few deep breaths, then opened them and removed the newspaper he’d taken from Maksim’s coat and opened it up.

  He flicked through it. On one of the pages, someone had circled an advertisement for a bar and written a brief note by hand with a ballpoint pen.

  Tell Roth that Tatyana Aleksandrova’s friend from Riga needs to talk.

  Prochnow smiled. He lit another cigarette and leaned back in the chair.

  This was big. If he played it correctly, this was going to be a step up for him.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and called his operator.

  “This is fourteen,” he said when she picked up.

  “Status?” she said.

  “Two hundred.”

  “And seven?”

  “Four hundred.”

  “Thank you,” she said and was about to hang up when he cleared his throat.

  He spoke up, saying something he’d never said to any operator before in his entire career. He said, “I need to speak to the Prime Directorate.”

  The woman hesitated, only for a second.

  “Hello?” Prochnow said.

  “You said your status code was two hundred.”

  “I know what I said.”

  The woman hung up, and Prochnow took a long draw from his cigarette. He tapped it against the rim of the espresso cup.

  Outside, snow was falling slowly onto the street below.

  This was risky. He was sticking his neck out. Asking for attention.

  Showing ambition.

  When his phone rang, he stubbed out his cigarette and answered in Russian.

  “This is Prochnow.”

  “Christoph Prochnow,” a voice rasped from the other end of the line. The sound of it brought to mind a lizard. “This is Jacob Kirov. I’ve been told your mission was a success.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s done.”

  “The woman is dead?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re quite certain?”

  “I shot her in the forehead from point-blank range.”

  “Of course you did,” the voice said, sounding very pleased.

  “I also shot Maksim.”

  “Out of necessity?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  “Only asking, my boy,” Kirov said with a chuckle.

  “He was hurt. I had no choice.”

  “Relax, Prochnow. I’m more interested in the fact that you asked to speak to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m flattered,” Kirov said.

  “Sir,” Prochnow said, his heart pounding, “the woman was trying to make contact with the US embassy.”

  “That’s correct, Prochnow.”

  “I have the message she was going to pass them.”

  “I see,” Kirov said. “You’re showing all kinds of initiative today, aren’t you, Prochnow.”

  “Sir,” Prochnow said, uncertain how to respond.

  “That’s the thing about you Germans. Always so industrious.”

  Prochnow said nothing. He detected a hint of suspicion in Kirov’s voice. As a German working for the GRU, it was something he was used to, but he couldn’t afford to let it hold him back.

  “You came to Moscow when you were eighteen,” Kirov said.

  “Sir, my father served in the Stasi for decades.”

  “I can read, Prochnow. I can read.”

  “I’ve got forty-seven kills under my belt.”

  Kirov said nothing. Prochnow wondered what he was doing. Reading his file, maybe.

  He lit another cigarette.

  “So, what did you want to speak to me about?” Kirov said at last.

  “The message, sir.”

  “You see, Mr. Prochnow,” Kirov said. “I’m sitting here in my bathrobe and slippers, sitting by this fire, and I’m thinking, who is this man who asked to speak to me? I don’t know him. I don’t know his father.”

  “He served…”.

  “In the Stasi, yes,” Kirov said, cutting him off. “You mentioned that.”

  “My service, sir, has been impeccable. My handler will vouch for that.”

  “I’m more interested in what Maksim Mironov would have had to say.”

  “Sir.”

  “But I can’t ask him, can I, Mr. Prochnow, because you put a bullet in his head.”

  Prochnow swallowed. This wasn’t going as he’d planned. He’d expected them to give him a medal for what he’d found. Now, he wasn’t sure Kirov would even let him read its contents to him.

  “I don’t think I need to warn you what will happen if I so much as get a whiff of deception from your direction, Prochnow.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “This message you found, you should have passed it on to your handler.”

  “Yes, sir. And if you tell me to do so, I will.”

  “But now, you have me intrigued, Prochnow, don’t you.”

  “Sir, I only meant to…”.

  “To what, Prochnow? To what?”

  “To put myself on your radar,” Prochnow said with a gulp.

  “And on it, you are, Mr. Prochnow. On it, you are.”

  “Do you want me to give the note to my handler then, sir?”

  Kirov laughed again. There was no joy in his laugh. He did it merely as an affectation, a method of expressing a certain disdain.

  “Tell me what it says,” Kirov said.

  “It’s written inside a newspaper, sir. It says, ‘Tell Roth that Tatyana Aleksandrova’s friend from Riga needs to talk’.”

  “Tatyana Aleksandrova?” Kirov said.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Does that name mean anything to you, Mr. Prochnow?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” Kirov said. “You’re just the messenger, aren’t you?”

  “Sir?”

  Kirov said nothing.

  Prochnow waited so long he wondered if the connection might have dropped.

  “Sir?” he said again.

  “I’m here,” Kirov said.

  “She also circled a specific advertisement, sir.”

  “Oh, she did?”

  “An advertisement for a bar in Kreuzberg. There’s a happy hour every Thursday at five. Two-for-one cocktails.”

  “Thursday at five?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kirov let out a long sigh. Prochnow knew he had his attention. The only question was whether the old man’s curiosity would outweigh his caution.

  “Where are you now?” Kirov said.

  Prochnow said nothing.

  Kirov let out another of his hollow laughs. “Now who’s being the suspicious one?” he said.

 
“Sir, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize, Prochnow. It comes with the territory.”

  “I’m at the safe house in Residenzstraße. My handler knows where it is.”

  “All right,” Kirov said, his voice changing tone. “I’m going to be straight with you, Mr. Prochnow. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  “I’m going to send someone to pick up the message.”

  “I see,” Prochnow said.

  “If I find out you’re up to something, I’m going to get Zhukovsky to flay you alive. Do you know what that means? Flay? I know Russian is not your first language.”

  “I know what it is, sir.”

  “You’ve heard the things they say about Zhukovsky?”

  “I’m not lying to you, sir.”

  “Time will tell, Mr. Prochnow.”

  Kirov hung up.

  Prochnow realized he’d been holding his breath. He hadn’t moved a muscle in minutes. He took a breath. The cigarette between his fingers had burned to the filter and, when he moved, the long tube of ash fell to the floor.

  26

  “We’re a little early, boss,” the driver said to Levi Roth as they approached the Saint Royal Hotel. “You want me to circle the block?”

  Roth nodded.

  He was distracted.

  Someone had dropped off a message at the embassy in Berlin, and he didn’t think he could simply ignore it.

  He didn’t like it, though. Not one bit.

  He smelled a rat.

  Security in Berlin had scanned it for toxins before sending it on to Langley for his attention. The physical copy, an edition of that morning’s Berliner Zeitung, Berlin’s largest daily newspaper, was still in transit.

  What he was looking at was a digital scan.

  Written on one of the pages was a disturbing message,

  Tell Roth that Tatyana Aleksandrova’s friend from Riga needs to talk.

  He’d seen messages like it before.

  It could be a warning, something critical that ended up preventing a catastrophic attack and saving countless lives.

  It could be something mundane that had little effect.

  Or, it could be a trap, and he’d send someone right into it, costing them their life.