Agent Orange

by Langford, Stephen

  Blond hair, in his thirties, dark sport coat and tie, studying some kind of pamphlet. Definitely not an old pensioner. Seems completely disinterested. Wait. Blue argyle socks.

  “My name is Zeppelin,” the man said softly in English.

  Keeton’s pulse quickened as he discerned what this could mean. Was Whisper in trouble, unable to make it to the meeting place? Had he returned to East Berlin? “Ich bitte um Verzeihung?” he answered. I beg your pardon?

  “It’s OK. I really am the man who Vogel calls Zeppelin. Whisper the East Berliner, the apartment overlooking the factory, this meeting to discuss the defections, everything. I am Zeppelin. It’s OK.”

  Keeton spoke without looking over. “Do you enjoy Wagner?”

  “I find him repetitive and dull,” the man answered back with the correct countersign.

  “Is Whisper in trouble?” Keeton asked.

  “Definitely not,” Zeppelin answered. “Whisper doesn’t exist. I made him up.”

  Keeton took a sharp breath. “Now you’re going to have to explain, and quickly!”

  “Relax. For your purposes all of the intel passed along is valid. I’m sure that you have an agent being held in that factory. As for the ruse, I don’t want to be just an asset, another one of Vogel’s runners. I want in the company itself.”

  “This isn’t the way to gain our trust,” Keeton snapped back. “But I’ll let Vogel handle that. Do you actually have anything to give me?”

  “Listen, I based Whisper on my very own uncle, who really does live in an apartment building near the factory over on the other side and who really did accidentally notice what was going on. I invented Whisper and a couple other fake assets to make myself look better. But I have a couple of real assets of my own as well. I was going to continue with the Whisper story, but I finally realized it was too much, that this situation was too important.”

  Keeton sighed heavily. “That’s a damned fine story. What do you have?”

  “More pictures, better close-ups of the Stasi team that works at the factory.”

  “Vogel already figured out who they are, from the first set of pictures,” Keeton answered with increasing bitterness.

  “I also have worker credentials that will get you through the gates during the shift change if and when you want to mount a rescue.”

  Keeton drew in another deep breath. “That’s something, then.”

  “Want to know how I did it? I followed one of the line workers into a bar last Friday evening. Knocked him out with a few drops of special juice, stole his factory identification. I graciously mailed it back to him with a little note that said I had found it and didn’t want him to get into trouble, but not before I had it copied—by a professional. You see, I might have lied to Vogel, but I have absolutely put my ass on the line in many ways working for him and giving him good material.”

  “All right, I’m not here to figure this out for you two,” Keeton said. “But I’ll have to tell him what’s going on as soon as I get back tonight.”

  “Naturally,” Zeppelin said. “I’ll smooth it over with him later. In the meantime, you should return back up the Grosse Sternallee. Halfway back to the Victory Column, you’ll see a small makeshift tool shed over to your left, near a cluster of trees. The door is now unlocked. Go into it, to the back. There’s a box of gardening tools on the floor. Underneath the box is an envelope containing the materials I told you about.”

  “OK, I’ll pick it up. Anything else?” Keeton asked.

  “After Vogel stops cursing me, also tell him that I’ll be back on the other side tomorrow. I can help coordinate any rescue attempt.”

  “I’ll tell him. Good-bye.” Keeton stood and walked away without looking back at the informant, heading back up Sternallee. Just as Zeppelin had told him, he found a rickety shed off to the left. He waited until a young couple—late teens, fools in love—passed by before quickly walking over to the shed and letting himself in.

  The shed was small but neatly adorned with a rack of shovels, a couple of wound lengths of watering hose, and an assortment of other grounds-keeping supplies. The air inside was still and hot. A window on one side of the structure let in enough summer-evening light so that he could see. The carpentry was crude enough that nails stuck all the way through several of the thin studs that formed the shed’s skeleton. He recovered the envelope and had pushed it into his hip pocket when a man appeared in the doorway.

  “What are you doing in here?” he demanded in German. He was dressed in brown work pants and a light-blue button-down shirt with pocket embroidery that indicated he worked for the city of West Berlin and that his name was Jakob.

  “I’m very sorry; I just got lost,” Keeton answered quickly. “Excuse me, please.”

  Jakob stepped to one side. As Keeton pushed past, he heard a metallic zipping sound. He had heard this before, somewhere back during his early training. In the half second that elapsed during his next step, he had recalled the origin of the sound and instinctively lowered his chin to his chest and raised his hand up to his throat. An instant later the presumed grounds keeper had flung a piano-wire garrote around Keeton’s neck from behind and snapped it backward. Then he reached a foot out and kicked the door closed.

  Keeton’s hand took the brunt of the force of the wire being pulled taut. His attacker was hearty and strong—not to mention professionally trained. He managed to pull Keeton’s fist against his own throat. Keeton felt his airway collapsing. He tore at the wire with his free hand to no avail. He thrashed and spun for a few seconds until dark spots began to form in his field of vision. He was not going to be able to shake the assassin. Then he spotted the nails.

  Desperately Keeton walked the two of them around and pushed back against the floor with all the force his legs could muster. They went stumbling backward. Jakob let out a howl of intense pain as Keeton pushed him into the nails. The pressure from the garrote was slacking. Keeton pulled Jakob off the nails then slammed him back again. On the fourth push two nails penetrated Jakob’s neck, and his grip dissolved altogether. Both men fell to the floor, Keeton gasping for air while Jakob lay motionless on his stomach. Several red circles expanded on his shirt like cartoon balloons being inflated. Two neat little holes at the base of Jakob’s neck blinked back at Keeton.

  By the time Keeton recovered his wind and got to his feet, the balloons on Jakob’s back had covered the entire canvas of his blue shirt. He picked up the garrote device and put it in his pocket. Then he took a last look at the mortally wounded man on the floor. Spinal cord punctured, probably. He can’t move, and he’s going to bleed out. Poor bastard. Could have just as easily been you down there. Is that what you want? No? Then get the hell out of here.

  He retrieved his hat and cracked the door open to see who might be close by. Sweat trickled down his temples and soaked through his shirt from the fight in the closed, hot shed. An old lady meandered north up Sternallee. He checked to make sure the envelope from Zeppelin was still in his pocket.

  Keeton grimaced. Jakob could have had a partner who had gone after Zeppelin. He didn’t like turning his back on a member of the mission team, even if he was sort of a schemer. Which one of us isn’t a schemer, anyway? Keeton thought. And he’s given us a lot. Still, by now he’s either safe or dead. And I’ve got material that could help save Red, with the clock ticking.

  He stepped out and closed the door of the shed behind him then made his way up to the broad path and followed the old lady back toward the Victory Tower—away from the Wagner memorial where he’d met Zeppelin.

  The air outside was cooler and refreshing. By the time he passed the old lady, he had stopped sweating. He scanned around him every twenty feet but couldn’t detect anything suspicious. Up ahead the big Victory Tower dominated the landscape of the large traffic circle. As he emerged from the Tiergarten and spotted Roy’s car driving the predetermined and repetitive pickup route, he transferred the trilby hat into his right hand and held it down to his side.

 
; “Look,” Vogel said from the passenger seat. “The call-off sign.”

  “I see it,” Roy answered, maneuvering the car past Keeton and on to the prearranged secondary pickup.

  Keeton took to the sidewalk along Straße des 17. Juni and then turned south and followed Hofjägerallee for ten minutes to its intersection with Tiergartenstraße, where Roy met him with the car. Keeton got into the back seat.

  “What happened?” Vogel asked from the front. “What’s wrong?”

  “Let’s get back to the safe house,” Keeton told Roy. “Vogel, you’re going to love this.”

  ***

  “Scheiße!” Vogel cursed for the fifth time since Keeton had told him about Zeppelin’s invention of Whisper. “That little bastard lied to me.”

  They were all back at the safe house, save Roy who was doing a dead-drop check in the several nearby locations that Zeppelin might have used to pass along information. The rest were supping on warm fresh bread from the bakery below and sausages and beer from the little restaurant down on Mainzer Straße. On the car ride back, Keeton had relayed everything that had happened, including the deadly fight with Jakob and his worries about Zeppelin’s safety. They were then let off in different locations, and they arrived back at the safe house at intentionally different times, taking the utmost care to look for tails.

  “Zeppelin’s material is very good,” Philippe commented. “Finding a way to get into the factory was great work. And fooling us about Whisper shows that Zeppelin can run an op pretty effectively.”

  “Perhaps he can,” Vogel said, sneering. “Still…well…scheiße!”

  “Wait a minute,” Philippe said with a grin. “You’re worried about his safety, aren’t you? Admit it, you like his grit and his guts.”

  “To the extent he has given us workable material and risked his life doing it, yes,” Vogel answered. “But did you ever think he might be a double? Maybe this is a trap.”

  “I thought about it,” Keeton answered as he entered the main room from the bathroom. He had removed the disguise of Reimund Huber, down to the fake beard and red hair coloring. They had agreed in the car that the operation needed to move quickly to the rescue phase. “Who attacked me, and how did they know I’d be there? I was attacked at London, too. Are those two events linked? A lot of unanswered questions. But we aren’t going to stop, not at this point. I assume Zeppelin was being watched and I was a collateral target. And I actually did believe his story.”

  “Maybe so,” Vogel said. “But he made the story of Whisper convincing to me, and I couldn’t figure it out. I’m just saying that we should be careful now. He could be dirty, or he could have gotten caught and been pressured into turning on us.”

  “No one is saying we should rush through it,” Keeton answered. “The good news is that my second cover, Marzell Adler, is already in place.”

  “It’s your show, boss,” Philippe said. “How do you want to do this?”

  Keeton answered while eagerly attacking the food. “Top level—Roy, Philippe, and I will handle the op itself. Vogel, we’ll need you to be the liaison between intel here in WB, our safe house, and Red’s team on the other side.”

  “Got it.”

  Keeton nodded. “If and when we learn about Zeppelin’s status, you can decide whether to use him as a runner or send him to the sidelines. Your call.” He picked up the envelope he had recovered from the shed and dumped the contents out on the table. “We have pictures of Captain Junger and this Gerolf goon. But we also have good pictures of the van they’ve been using and its license plate.”

  “Make a duplicate,” Philippe muttered. “Brilliant. A couple different ways to use this, if we can actually get it done on the other side.”

  “It won’t be easy, but I can try to find a local crew over there,” Vogel said.

  “And we have this factory ID,” Keeton continued. “This is gold. Literally, it’s my ticket into the factory.”

  “Won’t be hard to fix your picture into it,” Philippe said. “But we’ll need a factory uniform.”

  “Standard socialist republic issue,” Vogel said. “Should be able to get close enough from our stock here in the safe house.”

  “Good,” Keeton said. “With the Adler cover, I’m hoping to get a two-or three-day visa at the crossing—one day to reconnoiter the factory, then hopefully going back in the next day to get Red out. Maybe I can get a second day for recon, but that would be pushing it.”

  “Assuming he’s there, and assuming you get enough intel on day one,” Philippe said. “Sorry, just reminding you. Anyway, Zeppelin left the name off the ID. What do you want to do about that? Steal a name?”

  “Marzell Adler,” Keeton answered. “If we use a real worker’s name, someone checking might recognize it. If I get caught, the cover of an investigative journalist might be enough. I know—if I get caught, I’ll be in deep shit no matter what.”

  Vogel shrugged nonchalantly. “Then don’t get caught.”

  ***

  Roy walked along Badensche Straße, having seen the signal that indicated a package left by Zeppelin at the dead-drop location. He turned down the passageway between the Zwei Füchse apartments and stepped into the rear service door recess of one the buildings. He made sure there was no one in sight then bent down and dislodged the brick in the wall that hid the drop. Surprisingly, the cavity was empty.

  I know I saw the signal, he thought. His instincts kicked in, and he slowly drew the pistol that was concealed in his jacket pocket as he stood up.

  “Is your real name Roy?” a muffled voice said.

  Roy turned to put the service door to his back and prepared for an attack. No one was in the passageway.

  “Over here,” the voice said. Then he saw Zeppelin’s head poke out from a similar recess along the opposing building, about twenty feet away. “I don’t have much time. If you don’t mind, please come to me.”

  Roy scanned up and down the passage and slowly walked toward Zeppelin with the gun pointed in front of him. “What the hell is going on? Why did you give the signal?”

  Zeppelin was still in the same outfit he had worn earlier at the Wagner memorial, but with the addition of a black overcoat. The sun was setting. Zeppelin had one hand inside the coat. “Hurry, please,” he said.

  “Don’t move your hands,” Roy ordered. “Or I’ll have to shoot you.”

  Zeppelin laughed bitterly. “You’re too late,” he said softly before falling to the ground. His hand had slipped out of the coat, and Roy saw that it was covered in blood.

  Roy ran over and knelt beside him. “What happened to you?”

  “Just help me back out of sight,” Zeppelin gasped. “Listen, I have more material to give you. Did the agent I met with earlier make it back?”

  “Yes, but he was attacked. So were you, apparently.” Roy pulled him into the recess and pulled back the coat. The handkerchief that Zeppelin had tried to plug into the wound was soaked in his blood, along with the entire side of his shirt.

  Zeppelin nodded. “When I left Tiergarten, I was followed. When I realized it, I ducked into a bar and escaped out the back door. But the other guy was smarter than me and was waiting for me in the alley. I rushed him and got a knife into him, but he had a pistol and got me, too.”

  “That was almost two hours ago,” Roy said. “Why didn’t you get medical help?”

  “No time,” Zeppelin said before spitting up blood. “Won’t be long. I suppose the team is back there thinking I’m dirty. Doesn’t matter now. Here…” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Should’ve given this to your agent this afternoon, but I was being too clever. I almost blew the whole mission.”

  Roy took the paper, now covered in bloody fingerprints from Zeppelin’s hand. He folded it open to see a hand-drawn diagram of some kind, with notes about stairs and doors. “What is it?”

  “The Sonstige Industrierohr Berlin factory,” Zeppelin responded, barely keeping his eyes open. He was fading. �
�Well, what I could get from several workers after plying them with beer, anyway. Pretended to be a Stasi officer and was testing them. The markings show the basement stairs…that’s where they go with prisoners.”

  “Thanks,” Roy said quietly. “I’ll go get the car and take you…”

  “No,” Zeppelin said. “It’s done. One more thing. I gave a second identification to Red’s team, for the one they call Bleudot. When your agent gets across to the EB safe house, Bleudot will be able to go in with him. Knowing Bleudot, he will insist. Is Bleudot really French, by the way? That would explain his anger.” Zeppelin’s red teeth showed as he grinned at the jab, then his head dropped to one side.

  Roy sighed heavily and stuffed the map into his own jacket pocket.

  Zeppelin’s head moved slightly, but his eyes remained closed. “I was twelve when the Russians carved up the city and killed most of my family. We weren’t Nazis, but it didn’t matter. We let it happen, though—first the fascists and then the communists. I defected and made it across. Since then, I’ve just been trying to do something…something important.”

  “What’s your real name?” Roy asked.

  “Michel.”

  “You did something very important, Michel,” Roy said, removing his hat and crossing himself.

  “Thank you, Roy,” Michel whispered. “But…I’m too small a fish to kill over. You tell your agent…they weren’t after me…they were after him.”

  Chapter 7. Ziska

  “What is your business in Berlin, Herr Adler?”

  “Ah, that is the interesting part, yes?” Keeton answered the officer of the Reisebüro. “You see, I am planning to write a book. A small book but an important book. You understand?”