by Larry Bond
His shoulders slumped. “But in this day and age I don’t think our Supreme Court will ever get to hear such a case.”
“So we are losing the last vestige of our rights.”
“Perhaps. In any case, it would be well to lie low for a while and see how things develop. Getting yourself in trouble won’t help anything.” Bartha suddenly stood up, ending the interview. He went to the door, opened it, and looked left and right down the hall.
We’ve become prisoners in our own country, Hradetsky thought sadly. Even our best officials are afraid.
He took his leave quickly and left the building. Silvanus’ documents were still in his briefcase. Walking back to his own office gave him time to think. He didn’t even feel the cold wind still blowing off the Danube.
Things were as bad at the Prosecutor General’s Office as they were inside the Interior Ministry. Maybe even worse. Watching existing laws flouted or ignored under emergency military rule had been troubling enough. But he’d be damned if he’d enforce a whole new set of laws designed to make Hungary’s serfdom a permanent condition.
So nobody in higher authority would talk to him. Very well. He grimaced. Bartha’s advice to “lay low” left a bad taste in his mouth. He’d laid low long enough.
Changing direction, Hradetsky lengthened his stride. He had a long way to go, but he needed the time to plan. He knew someone who would look at the evidence he carried. Someone who might be able to do something about it.
CHAPTER 13
Revelations
MARCH 21 — WISMAR, GERMANY
Vance could smell the sea as soon as he climbed out of his rented Audi. He was beginning to hate that smell.
Nothing in his privileged childhood in one of Connecticut’s wealthy suburbs, his Ivy League schooling, or his initial CIA training had prepared him for this. Germany was his first operational posting and this was his first assignment. For nearly three weeks now, the young intelligence officer had been working his way west along the Baltic coast, trying to visit two or three tiny villages or larger towns a day. It hadn’t been easy. Poorly maintained and poorly marked roads turned even the shortest drive into a grueling, time-consuming chore.
The abysmal weather made it worse. Stretches of dark, gnarled trees, saltwater lagoons, beaches, and rugged cliffs were blurred by rain and fog until the whole bleak countryside seemed one vast, flat, waterlogged mess. Sandwiched between the winter snows and spring rains, March was supposed to be a relatively dry month, especially in a part of Germany that was usually drier than the rest. But not this year. One storm after another had lashed unpaved roads into muddy quagmires and left paved highways slick and deadly.
If anything, trying to worm useful information out of the locals was even more difficult than finding them in the first place. Decades under communist tyranny gave the region’s inhabitants an ingrained dislike for nosy, prying strangers — especially strangers who had trouble following their slow, slurred local dialect. To them, his fluent High German was either the mark of an arrogant, Berlin-bred twit or, worse, a snooping, sneaking official. With high tariffs and import restrictions on foreign goods, smuggling was making a comeback in northern Germany, and smugglers survived by keeping their mouths shut. Few people were willing to even talk to him, let alone help him find one particular fishing trawler out of the hundreds berthed up and down the coast.
Still, he was learning. In the beginning, he’d tried visiting every waterfront Gasthaus and bar, hoping to pick up some local gossip and make useful contacts. Instead, he’d earned nothing but hard, flat stares, hangovers from drinking too much beer, and an abiding hatred for pickled herring in sour cream. Now he made a sweep through each harbor first, looking for the right boat or one that looked something like it. Then, armed with a specific trawler’s name, he went looking for its owner, ostensibly with an unspecified “business proposition.” He’d also stopped trying to pretend he was German. Ironically the Baltic coast seamen and fisherfolk trusted shady foreigners with ready cash and illegal goods more than they did their own inland countrymen.
Of course, Vance thought sourly, the final results had all been the same.
Nada.
A big fat goose egg. He’d seen big boats and small boats, old tubs that would barely float, and brand-new “fishing” craft packed with high-powered engines and navigational gear. None of them had been the trawler spotted off Gdansk by the KH-11.
He sighed, straightened his aching back, and made sure the Audi was locked. Wismar’s nearly sixty thousand citizens made it a much larger town than most of those he’d been scouting through. And with more people came more crime. He didn’t want to call police attention to himself by filing a theft report. He certainly didn’t want to present the Agency’s notoriously unsympathetic accountants with the bill for a stolen rental car.
With his camera slung over one shoulder, Vance set out along the waterfront. On one side, fishing trawlers and sailboats were moored at rotting piers, rocked gently from side to side by small waves. On the other, old warehouses stood empty. Some still showed bomb scars from Allied raids during the closing weeks of World War II.
He had the area almost all to himself. Apparently, few of Wismar’s seamen had any business pressing enough to make them brave the bone-chilling, late afternoon drizzle. Even the shipyard, the town’s only important business, was deserted, padlocked and abandoned to a few stray cats who roamed over and under unfinished hulls.
Vance stopped a hundred meters or so from his car and stood close to the water’s edge, scanning the anchored small craft. It took real mental effort to make more than a cursory inspection. He’d studied so many boats in the past few days that he was starting to see them at night in his dreams. His eyes fell on one of the trawlers, stopped, moved on, and then came back. Something about her seemed familiar somehow. The boxy shape of the wheelhouse? Or the way old truck tires were strung along her hull as makeshift fenders? Had he seen this boat before in one of the other fishing ports? Or…
The CIA officer held his breath as he stared out at the old, rust-streaked vessel. It couldn’t be! He fumbled inside one of his windbreaker pockets for the drawings he’d been given. Holding the artist’s sketch in front of him, he walked further along the quay, trying to duplicate one of the views it showed.
They matched. Even in the fading light the resemblance was perfect. He squinted through his camera’s zoom lens, looking for a name or number on the trawler’s stern. He found one painted in yellowing white across her black hull.
Hexmadchen.
Witchmaiden. Ugly, he thought. Like the boat itself.
Vance snapped several pictures from different spots up and down the waterfront. Comparing his shots to those taken by the satellite should give the Agency’s photo interpreters enough to make a positive identification. Not that he had the slightest doubt. He’d found the mysterious trawler last seen hovering off Gdansk.
Suddenly scarcely able to contain his excitement, the American turned on his heel and hurried away from the harbor, looking for the first sailor’s haunt he could find. Somebody had to know what the Witchmaiden had been up to lately… and who owned her.
Compared to its decaying and desolate wharf area, the rest of Wismar looked considerably more appealing. One massive, red brick church spire towered off to the east, poking high above gabled rooftops. The bombed-out remnants of two other great brick churches stood south of that, near the town’s large marketplace.
Vance found the pub he was looking for there — inside Wismar’s oldest building. The “Old Swede” had been built nearly six centuries before and its age showed in low ceilings, narrow doors, and soot-blackened wood beams. The sound of clinking steins and rough-edged, booming voices led him straight to the bar itself.
He stopped in the doorway. The Old Swede was packed.
Sailors, trawler captains, and townsmen occupied practically every booth, table, barstool, and square centimeter of open space. A thick haze of cigarette and pipe smoke hid the far
corners of the tiny room. Vance’s eyes started watering right away.
Those inside turned to stare at him as he crossed the threshold. In seconds, the whole crowded, noisy place fell silent. Hard expressionless eyes followed him as he came down a pair of stone stairs and made his way to the bar.
“A beer, please.” Vance forced an American accent into his ordinarily flawless German.
The barman glared back at him for several seconds before shoving a full glass under his nose. He knew that look very well. Strangers, especially foreigners, are not welcome, it said. He ignored it and sipped his beer.
“You have some business here, perhaps, mein Herr?”
Vance looked up. The speaker was a stout, red-faced man. Grease stains down the broad front of his brown wool sweater suggested he was a mechanic, a sloppy eater, or both.
“I’m looking for a man who owns a boat.”
“Really.” The fat man’s piggy eyes almost disappeared as he grinned broadly. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place, friend. Hasn’t he, boys?”
The room exploded in laughter.
Vance waited for them to quiet down, smiling faintly. When he had their attention again, he went on. “I meant a particular trawler. The Witchmaiden. I’d like to speak to her captain about a quick… charter… I have in mind.”
The other man had obviously elected himself spokesman for everyone present. He chuckled again. “Old Hummel’s boat? Then you’re too late.”
“I am?”
“Ja. Somebody else already beat you to it. Put cold cash right in that sour fart’s hot palm.” The big man gestured with his own beer. “Naturally old Hummel legged it off that floating wreck before they could think twice. And nobody around here has seen him since!”
“Bastard owed me money, too,” one of the other sailors muttered.
“Half the town, more like. But it would have cost the buyers more than the boat cost to settle all his debts.” The fat man drained the rest of his beer and then glanced at the American. “Maybe they were some of your competitors, eh?” he asked shrewdly.
“Maybe.” Vance said it as casually as he could. He shrugged. “Those damned Swedes are always fast off the mark.”
The fat man shook his head in amusement. “They weren’t Swedes, friend.” He pointed to the bar around them. “We know them very well here.”
The CIA agent nodded his understanding. One of the guidebooks he’d consulted had said Wismar was once a Swedish foothold on German soil — all the way up to the early 1900s, if he remembered right. He’d mentioned Sweden deliberately to turn the conversation toward nationalities.
He wanted to forge ahead faster, to ask outright who had bought the boat, but he pulled back at the last second. Dragging useful data from these clannish fishermen was like making your way through a minefield. You couldn’t move too fast. “You look thirsty. Another?” He raised his own glass.
The German smiled contentedly. “My thanks.”
Vance looked around for the barman and frowned. He wasn’t there. The man had vanished sometime during the conversation, leaving a harried-looking assistant in his place. He’d probably dodged out to avoid being forced to sell another drink to an American. Well, screw him. He tapped his glass on the bar to get the assistant’s attention. “More beers, please. One for me. And the rest for these good gentlemen here.”
That earned him several more smiles.
In the end it took him several drinks and nearly half an hour to bring the conversation back around to the Witchmaiden’s new owners.
“Who, them? They’re French. Not that they want us to know that. Secrets, eh?” The big German tapped his own nose and winked. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another swig. “Standoffish bunch, aren’t they, boys?”
His companions nodded their agreement.
“You’re sure of that? That they’re French, I mean.”
“Very sure.” The fat man snorted. “Snail-eaters with too much money and too little sense, if you ask me.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Who else would be stupid enough to pay Hummel all that money for a boat and then leave her sitting after just one trip?”
Vance sipped his own beer to buy time and stay calm. This was what he’d been waiting for. “A trip?”
“Ja. Last month.” The German grinned. “I thought that would interest you. Maybe they were on a little jaunt across the water to bring back a few crates of untaxed whiskey? Or some other luxury goods, eh?”
The CIA officer nodded vaguely, listening with only one ear while the sailors batted back and forth their own ideas about the Witchmaiden’s illicit cargo. He was busy trying to evaluate his next move. Should he keep digging or head back to Berlin?
Berlin, he decided. Although all the evidence he’d gathered was only circumstantial, it was strong enough to warrant further investigation by more experienced personnel. He’d narrowed the field down to one trawler in one small German town. That should be good enough. Once America and Great Britain flooded Wismar with trained criminal investigators, there would be too much international publicity for the French to sweep things under the rug.
But first he’d better phone in a preliminary report. Berlin was a long drive away, and his superiors would need time to assemble the right team. He disengaged himself from the small circle still arguing the relative profits to be made from smuggled liquor or other products.
The barman was back, still with the same angry look and sullen disposition.
“Is there a telephone here?” Vance asked.
“Down the hall.” The man jerked a thumb toward the door he’d just come in. “By the bathroom.”
The American nodded. He tossed a wad of newly issued franc-marks on the bar. “Another round for my friends there, please.” With a cheerful wave toward the sailors, he headed toward the phone.
As he’d expected, the chief of station wanted him back in Berlin that same night, if not sooner. His photos of the fishing trawler were about to become a very hot commodity in Washington and London.
It took him longer than he expected to say his good-byes. The Old Swede’s customers were reluctant to let their newfound source of free drinks make a quick escape. He finally broke lose with the promise to come back after conferring with his “business partners.”
Night had come to Wismar by the time Vance stepped outside, shivering in the sudden cold. At least, the rain had stopped falling while he’d been inside the bar. He zipped his windbreaker up, stuck both hands in his pockets, and walked briskly toward his car — awash on a small tide of beer and general contentment. Despite all the obstacles he’d faced, he’d finished his first assignment with flying colors.
He never saw the two men closing in behind him from a darkened alley.
One of the two French agents knelt beside the American, going through his pockets with practiced hands. The other put two fingers to his mouth and whistled softly, signaling an unmarked van waiting around the corner. That done, he looked down. “Is he dead?”
“No. I only gave him a quick tap on the back of the skull.” The kneeling man straightened up. “Here we go.” He held out Vance’s rental car keys.
“Good.”
The van pulled up beside them. Two more men hopped out through its open side door. Working fast, they picked the unconscious CIA agent off the pavement and bundled him inside. The van was moving almost before they’d climbed back aboard and slammed the door shut.
As the vehicle’s taillights disappeared from view, the team leader turned to his subordinate. “Right. You know the drill. Pay the bartender what we promised. Then bring the American’s car to the rendezvous point. We’ll search it there.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be along. First, I’ve got to call the director and tell him about our little problem here.” He frowned, anticipating his likely orders from Paris. The head of the DGSE never liked leaving loose ends lying around.
MARCH 23 — BERLIN
Richard Strozier, the CIA’s chief of station for Berlin, took a long look before he nodded grimly. “Yes. That’s him. That’s Vance.” He dragged his gaze away from the mangled corpse on the mortuary slab, fighting the urge to vomit.
“You are sure? The features are so badly damaged.”
The American glared at the burly German police captain standing beside him. “Yes, I’m sure, goddamn it.”
“Very well, Herr Strozier. I believe you.” Another German, thinner and in civilian clothes, motioned to white-coated morgue attendants waiting close by. “Cover him.”
“What happened?”
“A car crash near Wismar. Two days ago. The roads were very bad that night. Very wet.” The police captain shrugged, obviously bored by what seemed a routine traffic accident. “And he was intoxicated.”
“Bullshit.”
The second German sighed. “Believe what you wish, Herr Strozier. But the autopsy report was conclusive. Your man Vance had enough alcohol in his bloodstream to knock a young elephant over. And witnesses in the town saw him drinking not long before the accident.” He spread his hands. “What else could have happened?”
Strozier scowled at the BfV liaison officer. He’d known Helmut Ziegler long enough to know when he was being willfully obtuse. Somebody higher up must have told him to play dumb. “What about his personal effects?”
The policeman answered that. “We have them here.” He handed the American a sealed plastic bag. “If you’ll sign for them, you can take them back to the embassy with you.”
Strozier dumped the bag’s contents out onto a nearby table. A wallet. Comb. Passport. Pocketknife. No camera. Naturally. He looked up at Ziegler. “I’ll want to see the crash site.”
“I’m afraid that is impossible.”
“Why?”
Ziegler smiled apologetically. “The Baltic coast is now a restricted travel area, Herr Strozier. We’ve had more trouble up there recently. Riots. Strikes. General unrest. In view of the circumstances, my government has decided to keep all foreign nationals out until we can guarantee their safety.”
