Berlin Encounter

by T. Davis Bunn

  “Quite right.” The frosty visage nodded once, satisfied with the dressing down. “You are American?”

  “I just said that.”

  “You don’t sound American,” he said suspiciously.

  “Good.” Jake inspected the man, wondered if he would be able to keep hold of his temper during the days to come. “Where is your beard and haircut?”

  The lofty irritation returned. “Really, Colonel. Your people could not truly have expected a man of my standing to resort to such pettiness.”

  “This affects all our security,” Jake said, tempted to leave the man behind.

  “I have a hat he can wear,” Dr. Grunner said with a nervous desire to ease the tension. “And his beard will grow swiftly.”

  Jake locked eyes and wills with the blond man and had a sudden impression of this man standing with a gun on the hills above the Normandy beaches, watching as Jake’s brother struggled in futility to land and find safety. Not some fellow Nazi, not some soldier with similar features, this man. The rage which filled him was so great and came so swiftly it almost blinded him. But before the anger was transformed to action, the doors leading into the hillside creaked open once more.

  “And what is this?” The voice was scarcely above the level of a whisper, yet it had the effect of shaking the arrogant Dr. Hechter as Jake could not. The ice-blue eyes faltered, the shoulders hunched slightly. Jake glanced up, and understood.

  Like the official at the main gates, this man also wore the blue uniform of the People’s Police, the puppet officials of the occupying Soviet forces. But this was no ineffectual marionette. Instead, he was lean to the point of perpetual emaciation. Years of suffering had pressed his lips to thin bloodless lines, stripped his features of all softness, and turned his eyes to slits of gray-blue marble. “Well? I am waiting for an answer.”

  Jake shifted his gaze back to the blond scientist and stated flatly, “I don’t care who you parade out here. I am not dropping my price one pfennig.”

  There was a slight relaxing of the officer’s tight features. “A trader? Two of my top scientists are out wasting time with a trader?”

  “He has our tools,” Grunner said, picking up the thread.

  Jake saw the officer’s reaction, knew the way this one would think. Life meant nothing to someone like him. Jake added swiftly, “Half of them. You want the others, you pay full for these. No talk, no threats. The price we agreed on.”

  “I agreed to nothing,” the officer snapped. “And you, gypsy, you watch your tone or I’ll call out the guard.”

  The blond scientist turned about and announced, “You know full well the condition of our machinery. It is vital that we receive these tools. All of them.”

  “I know that you are falling further and further behind schedule in your work,” the officer snapped. “And when I see the way you waste your time, I can well understand why.”

  “You will address me as Herr Professor,” the scientist responded icily. “Or you will not address me at all.”

  Dr. Grunner lifted a battered envelope from his coat pocket and brandished it between them. “We have the money,” he cried. “Our tool budget has been approved for months. You yourself signed the requisition. But there have been no tools anywhere, for no price. And now he has come with exactly what we need.”

  The political officer radiated a viciously compacted disapproval. “Exactly? You are sure?”

  “We would be,” Dr. Hechter replied frostily, “if you would allow us to go about our business.”

  The disapproval focused into vengeful bile. “It may not be possible to shoot you as should happen to all Nazis, Professor. But punishment can be arranged if your attitude does not improve. You do not need both feet to perform your duties, for example. You would do well to remember that.”

  When the door had closed behind the officer, the blond scientist said quietly, “Former Nazi.”

  Rolf Grunner took a shaky breath, said to Jake, “You truly have the tools?”

  “The ones you requested in the last message we received before our man disappeared,” Jake answered, his eyes still on the door. “That was too close.”

  “That man should be taken out and shot,” Dr. Hechter said from beside him.

  Jake found his own unreasoning anger resurfacing. “That would be your answer to everything, would it?”

  The scientist jerked as though slapped, but before he could respond his colleague was between them. “Gentlemen, please, I beg you, our very lives hang in the balance here.”

  Jake took a breath, nodded. “Let’s unload.”

  When the bulky sacks were piled at the landing on top of the stairs, Grunner handed over the money. “This was the amount the last communique told us to have. Exactly.”

  “I need to count it in case someone’s watching.” Jake bent over the packet, lowered his voice, said, “There are two grenades in each of the sacks, one smoke and one frag. If you have to use them indoors, be sure to crouch and cover your ears.”

  “I’ve never used a grenade before,” Grunner stammered.

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to learn tonight. If you do, it helps to pull the pin before you throw.” Jake scanned the empty field across from the laboratory. “How is security?”

  “Poor,” Grunner replied, certain for once. “The guards are as badly paid and poorly treated as we are.”

  “That makes our job easier. I will be by this door at two minutes to midnight. Get here early enough to check and see if it’s locked. If so, I will blow it just before the diversion is set to go. Wait ten paces back, or around a corner, in a doorway, anything that will give you protection.” Jake stuffed the bills into his jacket. “There is a path about a kilometer and a half before the main gate. I saw it on the way in. It looks like an old road, and runs straight as an arrow through the forest in this direction.”

  “I know it,” Dr. Grunner said. “It comes out on the other side of the launch-pad. They used it when they were constructing these halls.”

  Jake made a pretense of opening one of the sacks, pulling out a gleaming tool, holding it as though for inspection. “If anything happens and you have to get out early, anything, head for where that path intersects the main road toward town.” Jake thrust a tool back inside. He tied the neck of the sack, nerves over what was coming making his motions jerky. “There will be a diversion set for precisely five minutes after midnight. Whatever happens, if for any reason we don’t rendezvous, don’t be here when it goes off.”

  Grunner nodded nervously. “What sort of diversion?”

  Jake turned back toward the truck. “Something loud.”

  “Just one minute, Colonel,” Hechter said, stopping his progress toward the truck. The blond scientist stared at him, his lofty superiority back in force. “You really don’t expect me to carry my own cases all the way through the forest.”

  “Your cases?” Jake shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t expect you to carry them at all.” Before the man could respond, he swung behind the wheel, started the engine, said through the open window, “Midnight. Be ready.”

  Chapter Five

  Sally had never seen Harry Grisholm so angry.

  She had been working at her desk when he arrived, trying to ignore her aching sense of loss. Adjusting to Jake’s absence had been much harder than she expected. Before he had left, when she had thought about the mission at all, she had seen it as a shorter version of her own trip to America with the generals. But the reality had turned out far different from her expectations. Perhaps it was because Jake was the one who had done the leaving this time, perhaps because of the danger inherent in his mission, perhaps because she was more accepting of her own love. Whatever the reason, his absence was pure agony.

  Being home was too much for her to bear alone. The lack of him was with her everywhere. So she had taken to spending more and more time in the office, surrounding herself both with work and with people who knew more about his mission than she did.

  Ja
ke had told her what he was going to do. That had been one of his departing gifts. If the intelligence forces themselves had granted her top-secret classification, he had reasoned, why on earth shouldn’t he use it for something this important? She had listened and struggled to hide her anxiety, knowing that it had to be done, knowing that he was going, knowing that to weigh him down with her own worries would only increase the risk.

  Her office was connected to one of the three administrators assigned to coordinate NATO Intelligence activities. Commander Randolf formerly led a British antisubmarine squadron. His demeanor was as rigid and unbending as his sparse frame. The sea-green eyes which peered out from beneath his bushy brows had the singular intensity of two minutely adjusted gun barrels.

  Yet even his iron bearing had been shaken by that unexpected late afternoon meeting.

  The commander had not wanted to go at all. There had been a visiting dignitary from Holland, a meeting with the Canadian ambassador, two majors arriving from U.S. Army Intelligence, a hundred urgent papers on his desk, and suddenly this call had come to drop everything and run to an urgent meeting for which Sally had been given no reason whatsoever.

  The commander had stormed off, ready to give a solid broadside to whoever was responsible. But he had returned two hours later so troubled that his normal ruddy features had been positively ashen. Sally had risen in alarm at the sight, for some reason pierced by a brilliant shaft of fear. The commander had waved her back into her chair and wordlessly entered his office.

  Harry Grisholm arrived thirty seconds later. He was not shaken. He was furious. He stormed through her antechamber without even seeing her, entered the commander’s office, and shouted, “What an utter shambles!”

  “Lower your voice,” the commander rumbled.

  “Six months in the making,” Grisholm went on, only barely quieter than before. “Delete that. Six months of maneuvering before even the first step could be taken. Then what happens, but we find ourselves faced with the loss of every single American agent NATO Intelligence had in the Soviet sector. But did we suspect something? Of course not. How on earth could we? We’re all so naive as to think that those seven villages just happened to have been chosen for relocation. All within twelve weeks of each other.”

  As quietly as she could manage, Sally scooted her chair into the corner of her office. She was certain that if they realized she was still there they would close the door and close her out. And this she wanted to hear.

  “So we send our most senior American operative,” Harry went on in barely controlled fury, “the man slated to rise into commanding position, over to pick up two defecting German scientists. A trial run, we call it. A chance to pick up some field experience.”

  There was the sound of Harry’s chair being shoved back so hard it slammed up against the wall near her head. Then the little man began his rapid limping pace. Back and forth, back and forth, the words a furious torrent. “And what do we learn now? That the agents in place were identified and picked up because they were known to be agents. Why? Because we, the supposed crown jewel of NATO operations, have been infiltrated by Stalin’s henchmen.”

  Sally heard a faint scratching below her. She glanced down, realized it was the sound of her own fingernails digging through the fabric of her chair, the knuckles white with the strain of not screaming out her fear.

  “I feel as though I’ve taken a direct hit amidships,” the commander mumbled.

  “And well you should. We all have. Every one of us. Especially that poor fellow we’ve just sent out without the first hint of warning.”

  “You think the Soviets know what his mission is?”

  “I dare not.” The pacing became even swifter. “They must have the same communication delays as us with their agents in the field. They must. It would take a certain amount of time to first receive the information, and then act on it, especially as far away from Moscow as Rostock.”

  Rostock. There was no longer any doubt, despite her every desire to refuse to imagine it really was Jake. Jake. Her Jake was in terrible, terrible danger. Sally sat there, her body stiff with terror, her head slowly shaking back and forth, unable to even draw breath.

  The commander sighed. “So what do we do now?”

  “There is nothing we can do. Not until we are certain where the leak is located.”

  “I suppose I could go,” the commander offered.

  “Oh, don’t be a total fool,” Harry barked. “You’re far too well known. As is every other senior officer here, including myself. That’s why we’re here and not still in the field.”

  “You’re correct, of course,” the commander admitted. “But we must do something.”

  “We can do nothing until the leak is isolated,” Harry countered. “You know that as well as I.”

  “Quite right,” the commander murmured. “No sense sending even more men out to their doom.”

  Doom. The word echoed through her being like the tolling of a funeral bell. Her own. For without Jake her life was over. Finished. No longer a life at all.

  “Not to mention the fact that we might be sending word to the enemy that we know of their infiltration. If they hear that, they will speed things up, make every effort to seal off his escape.” The pacing slowed, halted, the angry voice lowered to a worried mutter. “If he can still escape at all.”

  Chapter Six

  It was the longest afternoon of Sally’s life.

  She remained brisk and busy, forced herself to stay cheerful and show nothing was wrong as far as she knew, even though inside she died a little with every passing second.

  To make matters worse, much worse indeed, she knew she could not give in to panic and desperation and worry. She had to think.

  The first time the commander happened to leave the office, she called her colleague on the floor above. “Rose? It’s Sally.” She paused impatiently while the phone chattered in her ear. “Yes, I know. The commander’s in a major tizzy down here, too. No, no idea. Listen, I need you to cut me a set of travel documents. No, leave out the name, I haven’t heard anything about who yet. Flight tonight to Berlin. Yes, that’s right. Tonight. Official pass into the Soviet sector. Leave the names blank, I’ll type them in as soon as it’s cleared up, then call you back. You’re a dear. Thanks. Bye.”

  When she set down the phone, Sally found that the strain of keeping her tone light and easy had caused her knuckles to squeeze the receiver so hard they had difficulty unlocking.

  Another hour of agony, then the commander left a second time. She was up and out of her chair as soon as the outer door closed behind him. Sally bundled up a pile of papers and her shorthand pad, shook her head violently enough to unpin her hair, took a deep breath, and left the room.

  She raced up the stairs, arriving on the third floor out of breath and flushed, just as she intended. She tripped down the hallway, casting out hurried smiles and hellos to everyone she passed, knocked on the door, and breezed in immediately, saying, “What a day, what a day, what a day.”

  The heavyset bespectacled man looked up and drawled in best New England nasal boredom, “Why, Sally, dear. You look positively frazzled.”

  “Something big is going on, I can feel it.” She leaned across the wooden barrier, asked with the gaiety of just another office snoop, “Heard anything?”

  “Even if I had, do you think I would tell you?” His head dropped back to the document under his oversized magnifying glass. “You’d just hop back down to the power station and tell some bigwig on me.”

  “Wendell, dear, you know I’d never do such a thing. Not to you.” Wendell Cooper was the operation’s forger, his work so good it passed inspection by top experts. Which was the only reason he was tolerated. Those occupying the power station, the name given to the offices on the ground floor, thought him overly effeminate and slightly balmy besides. They avoided him at all costs.

  Sally knew Wendell to be both truly lonely and a genuine lover of gossip. He fed voraciously on the little tidbit
s Sally passed him from time to time and responded with his own brand of friendship. Sally went on in her most excitable manner, “I’m sure something big is going on. I can feel it in my toes.”

  “You don’t say.” Wendell pretended boredom. “Well, you’ll be sure and tell me what you hear. It helps to pass the hours. Speaking of which, how’s the gallant colonel?”

  “Off having loads of thrills and adventures,” she said brightly, though it cost her dearly to force the words around the lump in her throat. “The lucky stiff.”

  “Good time to be away, if you ask me. There’s the feeling around here that heads may roll.”

  “Speaking of being away,” Sally said, unable to stand it any longer. “I need a passport, please. It’s urgent.”

  Wendell sniffed. “It always is, dear. You’ll learn that with time. Getting everybody into a whirlwind gives them a sense of power.”

  “Maybe so, but I was sent up here by rocket.”

  Wendell had still not looked up from his work. “Nationality?”

  “Swiss.”

  “A neutral. Hmmm. Must be something very big not to be going with one of our own. Where is he headed?”

  “She. I’m not supposed to say,” Sally poised delicately, then added the spice. “But I was ordered to have documents prepared for a crossing into eastern Germany.”

  He looked up at that. “They are sending a woman into the Soviet sector?”

  “Strange, isn’t it?” She leaned farther across, kicked up one heel as though nothing mattered more than a little gossip. “Wish it could be me.”

  “No you don’t. Not if you want to ever wake up in your own bed again. Those Russkies play for keeps.” Wendell sighed, pushed his work to one side, opened a drawer, sorted through a pile, and plucked out a red passbook emblazoned with a gold seal. He carefully folded it open on his desk and slid it under the heavy glass ring, said, “Name?”

  Sally gripped the papers to keep her hands from trembling, pretended to inspect her pad, replied, “Stella Frank.”