It was the finest meal he had ever had, said Caspar an hour later, “and that includes one of Uncle Walter’s banquets I was invited to two years ago.” Claudia was pleased, and emptied the wine bottle into Caspar’s glass.
“Come on, let’s go to bed. We can clean up later.”
As was their habit, Caspar went into the stateroom first, arranged the lighting in the way he knew Claudia liked it. She came in, in her nightgown, from the bathroom. She smelled like apple blossoms, but then she always did. Caspar was stirred, and quickly they were embracing. He felt the special intensity of her embrace and returned it, his passion now overwhelming. Claudia gasped, and when it was over clasped him to her, her arms around his neck.
“Darling, darling. I can’t breathe.”
She loosened her hold on him, but just a little. “Caspar, there is something I must say to you.”
“Well, silly, say it.”
“We must leave.”
He sat up. “Leave … Berchtesgaden?”
“No. Leave East Berlin.”
Caspar was thoughtful, but said nothing.
“We know now it may not be possible after Sunday.”
“But—what would we do?”
“What did the thirty thousand who left in July do?”
“Well, yes. I suppose we could find jobs. I don’t need to worry about my mother. What about yours?”
“She has been urging me to leave for over one year.”
Caspar said, “Don’t you think we ought to check it out with Henri?”
“I think we should tell him; I don’t think we should give him a veto.”
“No, I suppose you’re right. On the other hand, if the Americans do what we expect them to do, Sunday won’t mean anything.”
“Your uncle will find some other way of stopping the traffic. Caspar, let’s just agree to go on Saturday night, as if we were going to a movie over there—and then just not come back. Henri would look after us.”
“Yes, he would. I don’t worry about that.” He sighed. “Oh dear, how I shall miss Berchtesgaden. Claudia! I just had a wonderful thought. Couldn’t you, since you work for the director of the railroads, issue an order that car 10206 should be hauled out of the sidings, and railed over to West Berlin? Tell them it is in exchange for a traitor, or something like that?”
“You are a silly ass, Caspar. Now. We will stop by on Saturday afternoon and say goodbye to Berchtesgaden. And it will just be a happy dream.”
“How long does it take to get a marriage license in the West, I wonder, Claudia?”
“Why do you wonder?” she smiled, now the coquette.
“I was just wondering, that’s all. You don’t need an excuse to get a marriage license, do you?” And he returned her embrace, and inhaled her apple blossom, and reflected on how deeply he loved her, and how happy he was when in her company, and how in West Berlin they would insist only on this, that they work together wherever next they worked.
33
Blackford had been asleep a half hour when the telephone rang, just before one in the morning. He had that afternoon slept two hours, then attended to his rounds. The report on Frank proved nothing much. His real name was Dmitri Gouzenko, he had not lived in Berlin up until about a month ago, so that he might indeed have been at the camp in Vorkuta. And he was attached to the Amtorg Trading Corporation in the foreign merchandising division, and he did inhabit 117 Frankfurter Allee, and there was, at that address since last Tuesday, a young woman registered as Mrs. Gouzenko. If he was KGB, which Blackford continued to believe was the case, Dmitri was being thorough. Blackford had attempted to reach Henri to give him this information, and indeed told Bruni, to whom he had been put through, that the matter was of some importance. He was surprised that Henri did not get back to him, but reasoned he would do so in the morning. Still tired from his trip, he had gone to sleep just after midnight. Now, awakened by the phone, it required a few seconds to orient himself. He dreamed he was in an airplane.
“Yes,” he picked up.
“It’s Bruni. Number one priority. It is 12:47. Can you meet me outside at 1:04? I’ll be in a blue two-door Fiat.”
It was Bruni all right, no question about the voice. Bruni had been in this business for several years. But Blackford had been at it for ten years. And certain things certain people in this business do not do. Like go out of their houses into a strange car after midnight.
“Bruni, sorry, it doesn’t work that way. And you’ve made things tough on me, because if someone is standing beside you with a gun pointed at your head, he is obviously also after me, which is going to bring on a sleepless night.”
“Dammit, Blackford, I’m here alone. This is terribly important. I wouldn’t wake you otherwise. Our friend needs you right away.”
Blackford thought, and relented in part.
“Listen, Bruni. You go and park that Fiat of yours. In fact, at this hour you can even leave the motor running. Then come into my apartment. Then I’ll go out with you.”
Bruni swore. “All right,” he said. “Please be ready.”
Blackford dressed, checked his pistol, turned off his light, looked out the window, and waited. Just after one o’clock a car stopped, a single figure emerged, and he heard the ring above the doorway, apartment 3C. He pressed the buzzer to open the door at the apartment entrance, opened his own door, turned on the lights in the living room into which the apartment door opened, and retreated into the bathroom. From there, with its light off, he could see his living room but not be seen. There was an almost soundless knock and Blackford, pistol in hand, called out, “Come in, Bruni.”
It was he. Blackford stepped out. “Where are we going, Bruni, and what’s up?”
“Henri wants to tell you himself. He asked me just to bring you. Please do hurry.”
Blackford deeply trusted Henri and Bruni. He put down his firearm, tucking it back into the pocket of his raincoat in the closet. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Bruni drove to Lepsiusstrasse, yet another safe house, one Blackford didn’t know. Number 8, Bruni said. The car was parked, and they walked across the street, dimly lit by the streetlight on the corner. Like so many Berlin dwellings, it was new in appearance. Probably it had been built since the bombings, or at least rebuilt—but solid; dark red, it appeared in the dim light. The door opened before they could knock. It was Henri.
“Thanks, Blackford. Come with me, please, to the cellar office.” A figure loomed between them and the cellar door. “Oh, meet Mateus. Mateus used to work for my father.”
Blackford found himself shaking hands with a large, muscular man, bald, in his late sixties, wearing an open shirt and faded brown slacks. Henri had not given Blackford’s name, and now said, “We’re going to meet downstairs, Mateus. If I need anything, I’ll ring.” Mateus nodded.
They walked down stone steps. At the bottom Henri flicked on a light illuminating a whitewashed corridor. A few feet to the right of it was a heavy wooden door. “They used this as a bomb shelter,” Henri said, opening the door and flicking on another light. The interior was small but comfortably furnished, a straw mat on the stone floor, a desk and a cot on the far side and, visible because its door was open, a little, utilitarian bathroom.
Henri sat down at the desk and began instantly to talk.
“Blackford, my men are going to run the blockade on Sunday. In United States tanks. Wait, listen. I was able to organize this afternoon and evening. I have rounded up six men. Three of them drove tanks during the war. Another three work during the day in the armory, two in yours, one in the British armory. My men are Bruderschaft, of course. They understand what it is we are up to. They will assemble at your armory at the McNair Barracks. On Sunday, one of them assures me, the probability is that the situation there will be pretty sleepy. The MP at the gate we may have to overpower if he is suspicious. Though Sunday is not the day for tank testing, it is plausible that orders came in during the night to test tanks that may be suffering from mechanical problems, and be
cause of the general emergency conditions this is being done on Sunday, rather than on Monday. The tanks will leave in a single file. When they reach the Brandenburg Gate, they will fan out in formation and trample over whatever the Vopos have constructed. Having done that, the tanks will swing around and head back for the armory. No one will have been hurt. The Vopos aren’t going to fire from their armored cars at tanks. But the partition of Berlin will have been frustrated.” He paused. “We call it Operation Rheingold.”
“Go on,” said Blackford.
“I want you to help us.”
“How?”
“We have an agent in East Berlin. He knows how to tap one of your codes. If you can arrange for a bogus instruction to come in on that code as if directed to General Greenwalt telling him to proceed with plan A3, and to send three tanks in to destroy the blockade, I can arrange for that intercepted message to get through right away to East German and Soviet intelligence. That would convince them the U.S. military isn’t going to tolerate partition. And when the tanks materialize, they’ll know it for certain.”
“When do you see that message coming in?”
“They’re going to begin, as you know, at 0100. That’s 7 P.M. Washington time. I would recommend the cabled instructions coming in at, say, 4 A.M. That allows approximately three hours for a) news of the partition to get from the border to the U.S. military here, b) a cable to Washington, c) a couple of hours’ deliberation in Washington, and d) returned orders. To designate the maneuver with a code name ‘A3’ also suggests it is the contingency plan to cope with this maneuver. Will you help? I am talking about the future of Berlin and of millions of Germans. I may be talking about the future of the West.”
Blackford stood up. “Henri, Henri. I’m with you and you know it, but the answer’s got to be No. How in the hell can I? I’m an American citizen and an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, and we get our instructions from the President of the United States, and he gets his from Congress, and Congress gets its from the voters. Now you people have put on one hell of a show. But you also write your own rules. You go out and kill people as required. I’m not saying the people you do this to don’t deserve it. I’m not even suggesting that if I lived here I wouldn’t join your organization. I’m just saying that I’m an American citizen, and when I got into this job I made certain commitments—”
Tod interrupted him. “Blackford, I know about the nature of formal obligations. I also know that you are something of a moralist. So, why can’t you satisfy your conscience by resigning from the CIA? Now. Before you help us? The Agency would no longer have any claim on your movements and you would be freed to advance—history.”
“Henri, that sounds good. But really, it isn’t. I’d be using skills the CIA taught me, contacts the CIA has set up for me—including you. I’d be an accomplice in a venture that involves stealing American tanks and writing American foreign policy in defiance of constituted authority.”
There was silence. Then Henri Tod spoke. His voice was even, the tone almost casual, but his message rang through, like a machine gun hitting only bull’s-eyes. “We’re going to do it anyway, Blackford. If you helped, it would make it safer for everyone. With that cable from the Pentagon backing the tanks, Ulbricht’s enterprise would collapse. I think it will anyway, with just the three tanks. All I can say is, I’m disappointed.” Henri reached over his desk and pressed a buzzer.
“And there’s something else I have to say, Blackford, and I’m very sorry about this. You can understand, though, that I can’t let you leave now until Sunday. After Rheingold.”
Blackford sat down on the edge of the bed. He smiled. “Well, well. Maybe it would be safer still if you just killed me?”
“Don’t say that. Even in jest. The Bruderschaft does not kill people like you.”
“Is this”—Blackford gestured toward the room—“to be my quarters? And”—he pointed to Mateus, who stood now inside the door—“that my guard?”
“Mateus will look after you.”
“I will need some books.”
“There is a library upstairs. Mateus will bring you books.”
Henri rose, as did Bruni. There was an awkward moment, the moment when, under normal circumstances, both he and Bruni would have extended their hands to say good night, but now they wondered if the gesture would be reciprocated. Blackford, recognizing the problem, took the initiative, extending his own hand, which first Henri, then Bruni took. They were on their way out.
“Henri?”
He stopped at the door.
“I got the report on Mr. Frank. I tried to get you earlier. His name is Dmitri Gouzenko, he does work at the Amtorg Trading Corporation, he cropped up in East Berlin only a month ago, and last Tuesday a young woman who goes by the name of Mrs. Gouzenko began to live in his apartment.”
“Thank you, Blackford.”
Blackford said nothing, and the two men left. Mateus spoke:
“I am to get you some reading matter. Do you wish anything to eat or drink?”
“Yes, I’d like—” but what was the point in wisecracking with Mateus? “Yes, I would like a scotch and soda.”
“Very well, sir.”
He left the room, and Blackford could hear the lock turning.
He went instantly to inspect the door. It was a conventional door constructed from heavy wood, with rails, stiles, and six panels. The door lock was of heavy brass. Blackford turned the doorknob, which moved the latch bolt, but, of course, Mateus’s key had moved the dead bolt into the striker plate on the doorframe—the locked position. Right above the doorknob was the keyhole, in its own cylinder. So that the model was clearly of the kind that provided for a key to be used on either side of the door. He looked about him to see whether there might be means of overpowering Mateus. It would not be difficult to make a bludgeon out of one of the legs of one of the chairs. Yes, he could do that. He could also simply try to overpower Mateus. The guard was big and heavy and powerful, but Blackford was well trained. He reflected on this alternative. But first, he thought, it would pay to check on Mateus’s style, and this he would be able to do soon now, when he brought down the drink and the books.
He heard the key turning and Mateus’s voice through the wooden door. “Sir, please open the door, and then step back and stand in front of the desk with the door open.”
Blackford opened the door and found himself facing the muzzle of a Luger. Obediently he stepped back five paces, and now there were twenty feet between him and Mateus. With his left hand Mateus carried a suitcase which he deposited to the left of the door, his eyes always on Blackford, his pistol pointed at him. “I am sorry about this, sir, but my instructions from Herr Henri are very explicit. It won’t be for very long, after all. Every time I come to the door, we must proceed as we have just done. You must not come within reach of me. Now I will fetch you your drink.” He went out again, locking the door.
Blackford went to the suitcase and lifted it up on top of the desk. It contained six books, a dozen magazines, an unused toilet kit, three pairs of shorts, T-shirts, socks, a sweater. He would be a pampered prisoner. All he needed to do was find a way to outwit Mateus before Sunday. Or overpower Mateus.
He decided he would begin by cultivating him. But in stages. This was, after all, two-thirty in the morning.
He heard Mateus’s voice, and went, with ostentatious docility, through his ritual. Open the door; step back in full view of Mateus, who is there with his pistol aimed at my stomach; come to a halt by the desk.
Mateus, with one strong hand, deposited a tray on a side table by the armchair opposite the door. On the tray was a full bottle of scotch, an ice container, and a large bottle of soda. Blackford moved as if to go to the tray.
“Stop, sir! That’s right. You must not be in the same part of the room as I am in.” Pistol pointed at Blackford, Mateus backed out of the door, swung it closed, and Blackford heard the key turning. And, through the door, “Good night, sir. There is a buzzer on the desk i
f you should need anything. Don’t hesitate to call me. Ring when you desire your breakfast.”
“Very well. Good night, Mateus.”
“Good night, sir.”
34
Margret Nilsson had succeeded in arranging her schedule at the hospital to coincide with Franz’s as much as possible. She was with him as an assistant when he did surgery, and the chief nurse indulgently gave Margret primary responsibility for the care of Franz’s patients, which made for additional moments together. Several times a week Franz would call for Margret to come to his office to take postoperative notes on a patient, and it was made known that when Franz was dictating, he was on no account to be interrupted; and, with a leering smile here and there, the staff went along. So what business of theirs was it that Franz also had a wife and little girl? He did his work, so did Margret. So let them go ahead with their amorous dictation, even if during hospital hours.
But the existing relationship was not what Margret wanted, and Franz often told her how unhappy he was at home without Margret, and how unsatisfactory his wife was, and Margret said that they must go away together and live a normal life instead of continuing the imposture. But go away where? West, of course.
Franz agreed but said there was a money problem. He could not in good conscience go without leaving provision of a sort for his wife and child, and he set the sum at ten thousand marks that he must leave her, in the form of civil settlement—alimony, so to speak. The difficulty lay in amassing such a sum of money, on his paltry savings. Margret said she could come up with twelve hundred marks, and perhaps borrow as much as another eight hundred. But that, together with what Franz had in savings, came to only one half the figure they so desperately needed.
It was one morning after a passionate interval with Franz during the dictation hour, when yet again they had wondered how they could find the necessary money, that Margret stopped at the post office. She was there to buy a stamp with which to mail a letter to her sister in Leipzig, where Margret had grown up and gone to school with Claudia. There was a line behind the counter where stamps were sold, and while waiting in that line her eyes traveled to the post office bulletin board. She noticed a sign that appeared fresher than the others, no doubt only recently posted. It announced a government award of five thousand marks to anyone who gave information resulting in the arrest of any seditious enemy of the republic. The terms were of course general, but Margret found her heart racing. Five thousand marks.
The Story of Henri Tod Page 20
