Agent Orange

by Langford, Stephen

  “My name is Ziska Weber. I’m…I’m the new secretary. I was sent down here by Rudolph—that is, by Mr. Nast—to find some kind of inventory. He’s been drinking, and so it wasn’t even clear to me what I was to find, or where. I thought he said to look in the basement.” Ziska noticed the contrast between the sterile, controlled Stasi captain and the leering, unstable Gerolf Grunwald.

  Which one is more dangerous? she asked herself.

  “It’s very doubtful he would say that,” Junger said to her. “Everyone knows better than to spy on the Ministry of State Security. Right, Wendel?”

  The young soldier glanced over at the captain, having not relaxed his position yet. “Yes, Captain.”

  “Captain? State Security?” Ziska asked. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. I didn’t know…I was hired to be a secretary in the office upstairs.”

  “That fool Rudolph would also know that he doesn’t have a key to those doors. So how did you get through?” Junger took a step closer.

  “The doors were unlocked. Ask him.” Ziska pointed to Wendel, and more tears traced down her cheeks.

  Wendel started. “Captain, I checked them myself!”

  Junger walked over to the metal doors and pulled them open. “Unlocked.” When Wendel began to protest, Junger simply raised his hand to demand silence. He called to Gerolf and pointed to Ziska. The underling happily walked over and grabbed her wrist, spun her around, and held her tightly against him. The clipboard clattered back to the floor. Pinned in Gerolf’s arms, she felt his face push down into her hair as he took in her smell.

  Junger walked slowly back to the corner, as if in thought. Suddenly he bent down and picked up the lock-picking wires Ziska had discarded. “Well, this is not good news for your story, Miss Weber.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ziska said. “What does that mean?”

  “These are the tools of your trade, aren’t they?”

  “I only brought the clipboard, Captain,” she insisted. “Those things are just garbage from the floor!”

  “Not true. You see, Gerolf here can vouch for the sanitation of these halls. For reasons we don’t have to go into right now, we tend to need them cleaned frequently. We can get to the bottom of things soon enough, I think. Gerolf, take Miss Weber to Room Three. I’ll be along in a bit.”

  Gerolf pulled her arms back behind her so that he could steer her to the room, forcing them up in order to cause pain and to pull her shirt tighter across her chest, to the point of popping one of the buttons. He laughed menacingly at her predicament.

  Ziska thought she now had the answer to her question about which of these Stasi was the more dangerous to her.

  ***

  “Where is Ziska Weber?” Bleudot demanded to Rudolph. He was clutching the drunkard’s collar tight enough to choke him.

  “I…I don’t know. I was sleeping…she was here,” he stammered back uncertainly. His eyes were wide from fear and stupor. Bleudot released him and pushed him back down onto the couch from which they had rousted him a few moments earlier.

  Keeton glanced at his watch. It was just going on three in the morning. They had moved easily past the guardhouse using the fake ID cards. The narrow stream of similarly shuffling workers had all taken a midshift break in the nearby all-night cafe or in one of the bars. The old man on duty as factory security wouldn’t have learned any of their names, or faces, or schedules.

  “Listen to me, you little toad,” Bleudot continued. “You are going to help us locate her, or I’ll personally pull the handle at your hanging!”

  Rudolph had just recovered his breath. “I could call her—on the intercom. I will call her back up to the office.” He stood up and wobbled.

  “No, we don’t need that,” Keeton said. “Sit down. What you will do is stay in this office. No one else but us comes in, and no calls are taken or made. It turns out that Ziska is the spy, not Junger. So you stay here, and we’ll handle her.”

  As Rudolph fell back to the couch and began murmuring about Ziska, Bleudot opened his lunch pail and removed the false bottom to retrieve a Beretta 70 and a suppressor that he attached quickly to the pistol. Keeton followed suit, and they secured the guns inside their coveralls.

  “We should take him out,” Bleudot whispered, nodding toward Rudolph.

  “We can still use him,” Keeton replied. “At the very least he’s fodder, and we might need a good cover story to get out.”

  “I doubt he’ll be any use at all, but it’s your operation,” Bleudot said, just as Rudolph fell back over, disoriented. “Ready?”

  Keeton nodded and led Bleudot out of the manager’s office, through the outer room where Ziska the secretary would have sat, and back down to the factory floor. The machines were up and running at full speed, which for this East German factory meant at about one-third capacity. However, the noise was still formidable. They spotted the stairs and descended to the double doors. When Keeton tested the handle, he was surprised to find them unlocked. Like Ziska, he carefully entered the hallway, which was silent and dark. Toward the far end, a single beam of light shone out from a small square window. Both men pulled their guns and walked toward it. As they crept closer, and as their eyes began adjusting to the dark, they saw that the window was inset into a gray, paint-chipped metal door. Bleudot leaned into Keeton.

  “Cover me,” he whispered. “I’ll take a look in the room.” He bent down and aligned himself with the window, then slowly rose to see what might be on the other side, in the room. “Oh, no!” he cried in a whisper. His face became a mixture of anger and fear in the yellow light streaming from the window. He burst through the door. Keeton took two steps forward and peered inside.

  Ziska had been worked over thoroughly. She was tied to a metal chair, naked except for a sheet thrown carelessly across her waist. Half her face was swollen from a beating, and dark bruises had formed on her neck, bosom, hips, and legs. She was awake but staring off into the distance. At her feet lay her braided hair, the long tail having been sliced off with Gerolf’s knife. With the door now open, the hall had brightened, but there was still no sign of other activity.

  “Damn!” he heard Bleudot say, and he looked back in to see the Frenchman’s gun raised and pointing to something in the corner near the door. Keeton finally stepped in. Gerolf’s body lay in the corner, lifeless but looking up at them, white froth drying on his lips and cheeks. His body was twisted from the throes he experienced after Ziska had gotten to him with the poisoned weapon. The dead man’s clothes had been hastily rebuttoned, which caused Keeton’s subconscious to twitch with danger.

  Ziska raised her head to look up at Keeton. “Things went to shit.”

  The lights all came on at once. A soldier appeared at the door and pushed Keeton into the room, calling for them to halt. Bleudot pivoted and shot the soldier with the suppressed gun, two slugs tearing through the soldier’s skull. A second soldier was standing behind the first, and he fired. Within the small confines of the room, the sound of the rifle was deafening as Bleudot went down to the ground, his gun clattering away. Keeton had crouched to his knees, his own gun now concealed beneath his bent body.

  “Don’t try it!” another voice called, in English. “I have more soldiers, and the girl will die next. Slide your gun over to the far wall.”

  Keeton hesitated. Bleudot was writhing on the ground. Ziska was helpless and could only be a human shield at this point. There were at least two men—one of them, and probably both, armed—behind him. Things went to shit, all right. He faced harsh interrogation, imprisonment, and perhaps execution—or worse—all of it at the hands of the KGB. He knew and lived with this danger on all of his missions and many times had imagined being captured or shot. To turn and raise the gun would end it, the speculation about how he would be treated in the East, whether his death would be made public, or even if Morrison might ever learn the truth. If he forced the soldier to kill him, he would not have to watch Bleudot die or the girl be brutalized any further. It wa
s that spark, however, that kept him from that desperate action—the little ember of hope that he would make it through. He could imagine surviving and having a future with new missions, or a change of profession and an unfettered existence with Lynette. All of those things were within his intellectual grasp. But he could not really imagine dying, not the moment after the final moment. Was there such a thing? Was he ready to find out?

  Keeton slid the gun over to the other side of the room and raised his hands. He stood up and turned as the soldier who had shot Bleudot filed in, followed by the men Keeton had seen in the photos: Captain Junger and the East German soldier named Albert. The soldiers had their rifles trained on Keeton and backed him against the wall.

  “It’s a pity, isn’t it?” Junger said with a smirk as he picked up Keeton’s discarded pistol. “Look at you, dressed in the factory uniform as part of your cover stories. All that trouble and preparation, all of it undone by sending this dumb little whore in first. We caught her. I found her lock-picking tools, and Gerolf brought her in here. It really didn’t take long for her to break her cover as the innocent bimbo—her disposition is more angry than intelligent. When Gerolf really got going she started talking about someone coming in to exact revenge or some such nonsense. Then she managed to stick this into him.” He delicately pulled the fake collar stay out of his shirt pocket and held it up. Fully half of it was stained with Gerolf’s blood. “I guess we could say she was just returning the favor, no? Anyway, this hidden little weapon is from a man’s wardrobe. So we expected…shall we say, company?”

  Keeton stood with his arms raised and his mind racing. Don’t respond yet. Buy some time. Listen and learn. Look for openings; look for weapons of opportunity.

  “Do you want to know why I’m speaking in English?” Junger continued. “It’s because I know you’re CIA. I know this because I know the first fool we caught is CIA; he has practically admitted it, although I will admit he’s savvy and tough.”

  Present tense, Keeton thought. Red’s still alive, but where?

  “So what’s next?” Keeton broke his silence, in English. “Do you think I’ll break and tell you where the poet is?” he asked, noting the minute and momentary reaction in Junger’s face. That’s it. Red didn’t break, didn’t give him any material about Neumann. But he wants it; he needs it. Start using that.

  “I couldn’t care less about the poet,” Junger answered bitterly and then realized the slip he had just made. He scowled angrily and stepped over to Ziska, placing the tip of the suppressor from Keeton’s gun against her forehead. She didn’t move but simply glared up at him.

  “You don’t need to threaten her,” Keeton said. “It won’t work, anyway. She betrayed me. Do what you want with her. If you want me to talk, I have to have assurances. For me, not for them.”

  “You have to have…” Junger answered back sharply. “That’s so very typical of you arrogant Americans. You think that you can…” His sentence was cut short as Ziska reached her mouth up to bite his hand, clamping down hard enough to break the skin and start rivulets of blood running down.

  “Ziska, no!” Keeton called out.

  Albert brought the butt of his rifle down onto her neck and she let go with a groan. Junger’s eyes flashed with anger, and he clutched the injured hand. Then he switched the gun into his left hand, pointed it at her head, and shot her. As she slumped backward, Keeton rushed toward them, but Albert intercepted him and they fell together onto the floor. The other soldier jumped over, and together they wrestled Keeton to his stomach and held him down.

  Junger walked over, his voice garbled with fury and spittle. “You’ll talk to me, American! You…will…talk!”

  Keeton heard a metallic clicking, then felt a needle plunge into his neck. For a few seconds, he wondered what was just injected into him and then it didn’t matter to him anymore. He felt like he was floating, then spinning—or was it the room that was turning while he was stationary?

  A moment later the blackness enveloped him.

  Chapter 8. Survival Kit

  The first sensation that Keeton felt was the cold washing over his entire body. He could tell that he was standing and that his hands were cuffed together above his head. The initial dull pain in his wrists increased as he gained consciousness. He was naked. Finally he was able to work his eyelids open and see that he had been moved into a different cell. There was no dead Ziska tied to a chair, no Bleudot dying on the floor, and no Stasi goons, alive or dead. There was just a small table near the door, with a chair to the side of it. He was positioned over a large hole in the floor, his feet straddling it. He pushed up to relieve the pressure on his wrists. Rudolph had mentioned equipment-washing rooms, and he expected small covered drains—the hole in this floor was at least eighteen inches in diameter.

  He looked up. Clesujo brand handcuffs, with a metal cable link. A chain was threaded through them and then up and around the piping overhead. A thick padlock held the links together. The tension on his hands and arms was enough that he could only remain standing above the hole. A putrid stench drifted up from it.

  I can get out of this, Keeton thought. It’s just going to take…

  The silence was broken by the sounds of the lock and door being opened. Junger walked in, accompanied by another suited stooge who was carrying a paper sack, which he sat on the table. The faithful Albert followed them and closed the door.

  “I am Captain Junger. This is Eckart,” Junger announced, again in English, and indicated the new man. “Eckart, introduce yourself.”

  The lieutenant stepped quietly behind Keeton and delivered a hook punch to the side. The intense pain of cracked ribs racked him. Keeton grimaced under the punishment. When he glanced up at Junger, the captain was smiling. The second punch made Keeton cry out briefly and then slump and rise with the cycle of pain as he breathed.

  “Now you’ve met Eckart,” Junger said. “He’s sorry he didn’t get to meet Miss Weber. I suspect they would have become fast friends.”

  A low growl roiled up from Keeton’s gut, and he spun around. The surprised Eckart raised his hands in a defensive posture, but Keeton followed with a kick to man’s testicles with as much leverage and force as he could summon. Eckart dropped to the floor screaming and tossing, and then vomiting.

  “Nice to meet you,” Keeton said through his gritted teeth. He heard movement behind him and thought Albert might shoot him. Instead Junger put the suppressed pistol—the one he had killed Ziska with—to the back of Keeton’s head.

  “Shall I do the same thing to you?” Junger asked angrily.

  “It would be a bit more manly,” Keeton seethed. He was also observing. Eckart’s not wearing a gun. But he is wearing a watch. Nine-fifteen, presumably in the morning. I was out for about six hours. Eichel will have moved to the alternate safe house and filed a report by now. “But you’d lose the information I have about the poet. I’m still in the market.”

  “I somehow think that will never happen,” Junger said wearily. “The way you reacted to the girl’s death tells me your indifference to her was just an act.”

  Keeton slowly pivoted to face Junger, who backed up reflexively. “You’re wrong, Captain. It’s true that I had feelings for her, but only physically. We had become casual lovers. You must admit she was a handsome woman.”

  “More than that, she was strong and beautiful,” Junger nodded. “But no, I still don’t believe what you’re saying. What if I told you that both the CIA man you came to save and the Frenchman are also dead.”

  Keeton laughed derisively. “I don’t want to follow them to the grave. Listen, the first agent you captured was on assignment to bring the poet to the West. You probably already knew that. The Frenchman’s cover was Bleudot—I never learned his real name because he was French SDECE, of course. I’m CIA, as you figured out. I came across at Checkpoint Charlie yesterday morning, and then I met Bleudot for the first time at a little bar called Hauptmann’s. Bleudot was a regular—you can ask the pretty bardam
e. Her name is Heidi. I’m telling you these details so that you can check them and know that I’m serious, but I won’t say anything about the poet until we have an agreement. And the agreement starts with you letting me down, giving me back my clothes, and getting rid of this dumb ape.”

  Behind Keeton, Eckart had finally recovered and now stood and stepped toward him with the ferocity of a hurt animal. Junger held up his hand and told him to stop. Reluctantly he came to stand behind his boss, next to Albert. Junger crossed his arms and sighed.

  “No,” he finally said. “I’m not going to let you come down. As for your clothes, I found your interesting little toys.” He nodded back to Eckart, who picked up the paper sack and handed it to him. One by one, the captain pulled out the parts of the survival kit that Keeton still had on him when he was captured, laying them out on the table. “This belt, inside is some kind of listening device or radio—we’ve cut the wires. The other poison collar tab, which you’d hid in a pocket. The shoelace made of metal cord—for strangling enemies, I suppose. This watch with the hidden compass. All trash.”

  He turned back to Keeton. “You think you’re so advanced, so far ahead of the rest of the world. But you’re not. It’s an illusion, created for a country isolated from the devastation of the world wars. Your factories, your banks, your homes—all left intact while most of Europe was destroyed to the ground. Yes, you’ve had a—what is it called?—head start. But history is a long, long race, and America will fatigue and fall soon enough. You’re simply not that clever.”

  “I’ll tell you where the primary CIA East Berlin safe house is,” Keeton whispered. “If I was hiding Neumann, that’s where I’d send him. Is that clever enough for you?”

  ***

  Keeton gave Junger a cover address that he had memorized as part of the mission brief. Ziska and Bleudot had their own to give in the event of capture, as well. “Now, at least let me sit,” he said.