The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) (3 page)

Could have been worse, he consoled himself. He could have been First Directorate, Administration, spending his days reviewing budgets, checking expenditures, and generally being the spook equivalent of an accountant. No, he couldn’t have been. His math stunk. And he had
no engineering background, thereby disqualifying him from the Second Directorate, Material, the Agency’s own special version of James Bond’s Q, the supplier of poison needles in umbrellas, cameras fitted into belt buckles, and cigarette lighters that fired bullets.

He sat back in the car, staring into the snowy night. So why the hell had he left his Eastern European newspapers, TV transcripts, and comfortable if unglamorous office with the view of the Bahnhof in Frankfurt? Worse, why the hell had he volunteered?

Well, he told himself, this was likely to be one of the very last real ops of the Cold War. The Russkies and their workers’ paradise in East Germany were collapsing fast. He had seen the info himself. They were going to be defeated not by superior arms, brighter generals, or better ideology. They were going broke, just plain bust, trying to do the military equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses. Or, in this case, NATO and the United States.

Collapsing or not, he was doing something that could get him killed just for an adventure he could relate to his grandchildren. If he survived to have any.

The car turned onto Friedrichstrasse and slowed to turn into a street the name of which Lang could not see. Stopping in front of a building indistinguishable from its neighbors, the limo waited until a garage door swung open.

Inside was an ancient and battered Opal truck and two men in suits. One stepped forward to open the door next to Lang and extended a hand. “Welcome to Berlin, Lang.”

Lang was uncomfortable, because he was unable to exactly place the vaguely familiar face as he climbed out. Being able to instantly recall the circumstances and sur
roundings of someone was essential to this sort of work. “Thanks.”

“We were afraid the weather might scrub the mission,” the other man said.

Lang had never seen him before.

The first man handed Lang a suit on a hanger. “We’re still running late. See how quickly you can get these on.”

In minutes, Lang was attired in a worn but neatly pressed dark suit and highly starched shirt with frayed cuffs. The black tie was a clip-on.

“These, too.” The first man handed over a pair of shoes.

Lang noted that they were highly polished but there were holes in the soles.

The next item was a shabby overcoat.

“The only thing that doesn’t fit,” Lang observed, rolling the sleeves back from over his hands.

“Even in West Berlin,” the second man said, “most people can’t afford to throw things away, wear hand-me-downs. You’d look suspicious if everything looked tailor-made.”

“Okay,” the first man said, “here’s the plan: You go out of here, turn right onto Friedrichstrasse. Go straight to Checkpoint Charlie. You can’t miss it. . . .”

The other man snickered, drawing a glare from his companion.

“Once through the checkpoint, take your second left. At the corner, there’ll be a man repairing the chain on a bicycle. He’ll get the job done as you arrive. Follow him. The guy you’re picking up will direct you back out.”

Lang was finishing tying the shoes, noting that the laces had been mended by being spliced. “How do I know I’ve got the right man—some sort of password?”

The first man pulled a photograph out of his coat
pocket. “We’ve progressed a little farther than that. This is your man. Be sure you can recognize him.”

This was a face Lang was going to be certain he remembered.

The Opal’s single wiper only moved the accumulating snow from one side of the windshield to the other. Every few minutes, Lang had to crank down the window and reach outside to maintain a hole of visibility. If the heater had ever worked, it no longer did. Lang was thankful for the overcoat, too large or not.

In two blocks, he saw the reason for the laugh. Checkpoint Charlie’s lights would have made an operating room’s illumination dim by comparison. A queue of vehicles waited in front of a billboard-size sign announcing, “You are leaving the American Sector,” as though the number of armed East German military and Vopo didn’t make the fact clear.

When Lang’s turn came, a barrier lifted and a man in uniform motioned him forward. A few feet in front of the truck was another barrier, behind which five or six more soldiers paced up and down, trying to keep warm while holding on to AK-47s.

An officer approached, drawing his hand across his throat, a signal to kill the engine. Lang turned the key and shivered as an icy blast of air rushed through the window as he cranked it down.

“Ihre Papier, bitte.”

Lang handed the man the several sheets of papers he had been given, along with a West German passport and the requisite amount of deutschmarks, which would be exchanged for worthless DDR currency. The East Germans forbade trading back the other way.

The man retreated to the warmth of the guard hut, while Lang was left shivering. Two enlisted men circled the truck suspiciously while another used a mirror
mounted on a pole to inspect the vehicle’s underside. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the guards were intentionally delaying their inspection, a form of harassment inflicted on all visitors from the West.

At last, the papers were returned, the barrier lifted, and Lang was on his way. The Opal’s meager headlights were as poorly equipped to deal with the snow as the wiper. Even so, Lang could make out the forms of buildings shattered and abandoned in contrast to the shiny new quality of everything he had seen on his brief drive through West Berlin. The DDR, German Democratic Republic, apparently intended to keep ruins as a reminder of World War II.

Lang almost drove by the man, a mere shadow in the car’s pale lights, pushing his bicycle erect and pedaling out into the street. The cyclist never looked back until he turned into an alley. About halfway down, he turned into an open shed and waited for Lang to drive the Opal inside. Then he pedaled away.

The interior was lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. Two men in suits even tattier than Lang’s waited beside a spade-shaped coffin. One of the men was the one in the photograph.

Gerhardt Fuchs, a ranking member of the East German government. It had been a tribute to Herr Fuchs’s durability that he had retained his status even after his daughter, Gurt, had defected to the West. He might not have been so lucky had his comrades been aware she now worked for the Agency. Or perhaps he saw a less-than-prosperous future and that was why he had decided to join her on the other side of the Berlin Wall. He might or might not be of value to the Agency, but it was policy to assist any relative of a defector in departing any Soviet satellite. Policy and good business.

Not being a regular member of the Ops team in Germany, Lang had no idea of Fuchs’s value. He did know that Gurt had specifically requested her father be brought out and that no one be involved that could possibly be recognized by the other side. That put the mission up for volunteers, and Gurt had turned the bluest eyes Lang had ever seen on him. He had taken the opportunity more from testosterone than good sense.

The two men lifted the casket onto the bed of the truck wordlessly. Lang understood that the dead were the only ones freely allowed to cross the dividing line between East and West. Even the Communists realized that families geographically separated by politics should be united in death. Transportation of bodies for burial was common.

But this wasn’t going to work. What could be more obvious than smuggling someone past the border in a coffin? Surely the Ops guys had more sense than to . . .

The man who was not Fuchs tapped on the window, motioning Lang to open the door.

Fuchs climbed in.
“Guten Abend, mein Herr. Lassen uns fahren.”

Let’s go? Fuchs was going to ride up front? What about the coffin? Then the cleverness of the plan dawned. The border guards would be unlikely to think someone would openly try to pass. Instead, they would suspect the body in the back, a false bottom to the casket, or a compartment beneath the truck’s bodywork.

Lang backed out into the alley and followed Fuchs’s directions.

There was no traffic passing the checkpoint from East to West. Lang handed the same papers to the same bored officer along with those provided by Fuchs. The man retreated again to the guard shack to study the documents, as though he had not seen most of them less than twenty
minutes before. The enlisted men were much more industrious than they had been previously. Clearly, the Communists were more concerned about what left than what came in.

Two of the guards climbed into the truck’s bed and, using a crowbar, opened the casket. In the Opal’s rearview mirror, Lang watched them recoil in disgust. He guessed Fuchs had managed to find a very ripe corpse. Not bothering to reseal the coffin, they jumped to the ground as the officer emerged from the guard shack, Lang’s and Fuchs’s papers in his hand.

He extended them toward Lang, then lowered his hand, staring intently at Fuchs. The man was making no effort to disguise the scrutiny he was giving Lang’s passenger. Lang’s hand crept to the door handle. He could slam it open into the East German and make a dash for the border.

There was a yell from the area of the guard shack, accompanied by orders shouted in German. Lang, Fuchs, and the suspicious officer looked as one. An American officer was struggling with two Vopos, bellowing curses. The man was clearly drunk. Lang guessed he had been one of the military personnel who risked crossing the border to visit the prostitutes that flourished in the Communist sector. Unwilling to admit such a thing existed, the East German government tacitly allowed the trade to exist as one of the few ways to bring hard currency across the wall.

Two white-helmeted U.S. Army MPs were making their way to the barrier, pistol holsters empty and hands held up to show they carried no weapons. From the lack of interest shown by the East Germans, Lang guessed he was witnessing something that wasn’t exactly unknown. The Germans were dragging the still-cursing American
officer to the westernmost barrier, where the MPs waited patiently.

Suddenly, the American jerked an arm free and took a swing at one of his captors. The East German officer stepped back from the Opal, snatching his pistol loose and shouting commands. Lang prayed the Opal’s starter worked better than the rest of its equipment, turned the key, and pressed the old-fashioned starter button. The second the engine turned over, the Communist officer started to swing the hand with the gun in it around. Too late. Lang had already smashed through the westernmost barrier and was in West Berlin.

A half an hour later, he was in a small apartment being debriefed over a bottle of scotch by the same two men he had met on arrival.

“That American at Checkpoint Charlie,” Lang was saying. “If he hadn’t—”

A knock on the door interrupted.

“Any luck at all, that’s dinner,” one of Lang’s inquisitors said.

The other opened the door.

In the hall stood a tall man in a dirty and torn U.S. Army uniform. His right eye was swollen shut by what Lang guessed would be a class A shiner by morning, and his lower lip was still bleeding. It was the guy from Checkpoint Charlie.

He walked into the room as if having drunk military personnel interrupt Agency debriefings were the most normal thing in the world.

“These guys treating you okay?” he asked Lang.

Lang didn’t know what else to say. “I guess so.”

The American officer eyed the scotch. “You got another glass, or do I have to drink out of the bottle?”

As one of the men got up to look in the kitchen, the new arrival extended a hand. “My name’s Don Huff.”

Seville, Spain
Calle Colon 27
9:21 (the present)

The patio seemed an odd place for what was happening. The enclosure was murky, the morning’s sun not having yet scaled the enclosing stucco walls. Flashing lights from police cars gave bright hues to water from the thirteenth-century Moorish fountain, and words from crackling radios ricocheted off handmade bricks. In fact, anything modern seemed anachronistic along the narrow streets only a few blocks from the Moorish Mudejar alcazar, where a young sailor from Genoa, according to legend, had convinced a queen to pawn her jewels to finance a voyage. There was nothing merely legendary about the columned and canopied sarcophagus that held the remains of that sailor in the massive cathedral north across the cobblestone Piazza de la Virgen los Reyes.

The huge bells of that cathedral had just chimed the
hour, as they had done for centuries, when the young woman had stopped in front of the ornate ironwork of the gate, inserted a key, and entered to begin her day’s work. Inside a wall impressive only because of its height, she crossed a patio still cool from the shadows of the previous night. The fragrance of orange blossoms came from trees lining the street outside, leaves still wet with the morning’s dew.

Another key opened a modern dead bolt set into a massive and ornately carved set of double doors. Her rubber soles squeaked on ceramic tile as she made her way across a three-story entrance hall. To her right was a stone staircase that doubled back on itself as it climbed to twin galleries of living quarters. Ahead of her was a massive dining room, its table separating twelve chairs on each side. It was at the end of the table that she stopped, scenting the air like a wary doe in an open meadow.

She did not smell coffee.

Strange.

Every morning for nearly two years now, the American had been in the kitchen drinking freshly brewed coffee when she arrived. Every morning he was in Seville, that is. Many times she would come to work to be greeted only by a note that set forth tasks to be performed in his absence: research some phase of the Franco government, find the address of some aged Falangist he wanted to interview, reduce whatever she had done to a three-by-five card that went into an endless series of filing boxes. It was as if the American did not trust the computers on which they worked.