Vortex- Berlin

by Lee Jackson

  Klaus nudged Etzel, a cautionary gesture. “Uri was terrified of you,” he said. “He wanted us to escape to Hungary with him. He pulled a pistol on us,” he lied. “I shot him.”

  Ranulf grunted. He appeared mollified. “All right. I’ll need a full written report. Use one of the desks out front. Do it now.”

  Klaus stood his ground. “Did you talk to the Russian?”

  Ranulf bristled. “I don’t know whose organization you came from, but on this mission, you report to me.” He indicated Etzel with a thrust of his chin. “Does he know everything?”

  “Of course. I couldn’t pull off this job by myself.”

  Ranulf studied their faces. “I spoke with the Russian. He’s not happy. He says Atcho is a greater risk now, thanks to this screwed-up mission. Now get me that report.”

  Klaus did not move. “One more question.”

  Ranulf glared at him.

  “What about the job? Where does it go from here?” When Ranulf only stared, Klaus commented, “If you like, I can ask the Russian, or the Stasi director.”

  Ranulf glared. He rose from his desk and stood inches from Klaus. He leaned down to look him in the eye. “Crossing me is the worst thing you could do,” he breathed. “The job is still on, but you’re both out of it. Now get me that report.”

  The brothers left. They walked down a hall toward an open bay where officers worked at their desks. On the other side was the main exit.

  “He didn’t believe anything we told him,” Klaus muttered. “He’s probably ordered a hit on us already. Keep heading out the door and get to the vehicle.”

  As they crossed the bay, the officers paid them little heed. The brothers glanced toward the door. It was down a set of stairs in a foyer with a low ceiling, casting shadows. Two officers lounged there, effectively blocking passage. Each had a hand near his pistol. They looked up and made eye contact with the brothers.

  Klaus nodded to them and turned to Etzel with an easy smile as though conducting small talk. “Take the one on the right. You know what to do.”

  Etzel smiled. They kept a casual pace as they started down the stairs.

  “Comrades,” Klaus called to them. “Do you know if it’s raining? When we came in, the weather was looking bad.”

  One officer turned to glance through the door. The other shifted his view to see outside.

  Klaus and Etzel pounced. They jammed their forearms into the two hapless men’s throats, ramming their skulls against the hard edges of the doorframe. The men crumpled. The brothers caught them below their chins as they fell and twisted their necks until they heard sharp cracks.

  Klaus peered up the dark stairs into the bay. No one had seen them. They dragged the bodies into the night.

  On the other side of the Wall, Sofia and Brown had just arrived at the police station.

  At that moment, Ranulf placed a call on the ancient rotary phone. “The brothers are here,” he said without greeting. “There’s another man dead. We were lucky he was shot on our side of the Wall.” He listened impatiently. When he spoke again, his voice rose. “This changes nothing. You’ll get what you want, and so will we. We don’t need the brothers. You just be sure you deliver.”

  He listened. When he hung up, he had a sinking feeling. In his final comment, the Russian had insisted the brothers attempt again to kidnap Atcho.

  Ranulf felt sweat beading on his brow. This project had been assigned by the Stasi director himself, with those two damnable brothers.

  Ranulf dialed Oily’s number. “Find Klaus and Etzel. Send them to me. And call off the hit, at least for tonight.”

  “Too late,” Oily replied.

  Ranulf’s agitation reached new heights. “What?”

  “They escaped. When they left your office, they kept walking out the front door. They killed two men I posted there and took their pistols. They dumped the bodies outside the door. By the time anyone saw the corpses, the brothers were gone.”

  Ranulf felt his chest tighten. “Get in here.”

  He dropped his forehead into his hands. He was a classic bully, using his physical size and position to push his way around, but becoming unnerved when a challenge threatened his objectives or, in this case, his life.

  He had been twenty-two when the Wall went up in 1961. He was a guard in the East German Army then, at the frontier between the Russian and American Sectors created under the Four Power Agreement that governed post–World War II Berlin. A source of pride for Ranulf was that he had shot a celebrated casualty of the Wall a year after the start of construction. His target had been a boy in his late teens who had tried to scale it and had become entangled in the barbed wire.

  That had been an easy shot. Ranulf had watched the boy writhing in agony, begging for help. East Berliners who had seen the horror were frozen to the spot. On the other side of the Wall, people had heard the agonized cries, and they wept. The boy’s pleas became muted. Then, silence. The boy had bled out

  At the end of Ranulf’s enlistment, the Stasi had recruited him, confirming that brutality provided a path to promotion and a lethal deterrent against further escapes. His mediocre intellect had curtailed promotion above mid-levels, but his proven willingness to inflict pain had provided access to higher circles. He was the go-to guy for illicit actions. He had overseen countless off-the-books operations on behalf of senior Stasi individuals with personal aims. He never involved himself in the politics; he did not understand them anyway.

  Over the years, Ranulf had gathered a cohort of shadowy operators, all as ruthless as he. He had rewarded them with favors for successful clandestine actions. None felt allegiance to the country, the Party, the Stasi, or each other. Given sufficient provocation or reward, they would turn on him and Oily, who coordinated their actions.

  Ranulf had felt rising angst for weeks. It resulted from unrest spreading through the country. Nearly a month ago, on the fortieth anniversary of the founding of East Germany, Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had said, "I believe danger awaits those who do not react to the real world. If you pick up on the currents … moving society, if you use them to shape your policies, you have no reason to fear difficulties.”

  Gorbachev’s statement, made in the context of protests in Leipzig for more liberty, seemed to signal that the Soviets would not intervene to maintain East Germany’s iron grip. To Ranulf and many others, the statement had felt like the death knell for the East German regime. He might as well have marched to the Brandenburg Gate and breached the Wall himself.

  Three consecutive days of massive street demonstrations in Leipzig followed, and were emulated in other major East German cities. Infuriating senior Stasi officials, a videographer had sneaked into the bell tower of an old church in Leipzig and filmed the demonstration of over one hundred thousand people.

  A West German journalist had smuggled the video to the West. It had aired to a worldwide audience. Those who saw it were awed by the sheer size of the crowd openly defying the East German terror machine. The clip showed confused Stasi officers standing around, helpless.

  Ranulf shook his head. The Stasi! The same organization had injected fear in every citizen and had tortured masses. No one had been safe from the Stasi. And now they stood by meekly while citizens mocked them.

  Ranulf’s predictable life, along with that of the country, seemed to be spiraling out of control. His superiors whispered their fears. Some talked of escape if the Wall came down. Some feared that escape was no longer possible, that there was no sanctuary from the courts in The Hague.

  Others were determined to protect the status quo. No other alternative existed that preserved the Party, its members, and their privileged way of life. Fear of enraged citizens suffused the lines of authority. Furtive conversations centered on desperate measures outside the control of the Soviet Union, to forestall an opening of the Wall.

  The Stasi director, Johann Baumann, had called Ranulf into his office on the day of the pivotal Leipzig demonstration. The
re, Ranulf had met Klaus, who lounged next to a window near Baumann’s desk.

  Baumann was an old man in his eighties and a proud one, the last of the original hard-liners that had lowered the Iron Curtain on East Germany at the end of World War II. He had executed purges and survived more purges, the most recent being the one that cleared out his hard-line colleagues—all but him.

  Only the sides of Baumann’s head had any strands of hair remaining, neatly combed to the back. He wore thick glasses, and his formerly robust physique had been reduced to that of a slight figure. Nevertheless, he stood erect. As the years had taken their toll, he had come to realize that one of his most potent attributes was that of being underestimated.

  Also present in his office when Ranulf had arrived was a Russian. He was lean and hard, but gaunt, as though he had been through physical trials. His eyes had seemed to burn from an angular, leathery face, and he walked with a limp. He bore the air of a man with sharpened survival instincts, one ready to kill for what he wanted. He could be dangerous to anyone, including the other men in the office. They sensed it.

  Baumann introduced the Russian. “He can bring us a small nuclear bomb. We’ll funnel money to him through one of the front companies doing business with the West. The Soviets don’t know about this.” He had turned to speak directly to Ranulf. “Take charge of the details and keep me informed.”

  Ranulf had been startled at the mention of a nuclear bomb. Even more so, he was shocked that the information would be withheld from Moscow. He knew better than to show concern. “What’s it for?”

  “Blackmail, if need be. Detonation, if we must. Preserving the Wall is imperative. I’ll tell you more later. Right now, our Russian comrade has another mission for you. There’s a man coming to West Berlin in a few days. He is called Atcho. His wife is a US State Department senior analyst.” He had gestured toward Klaus, still lounging by the window. “Klaus will fill you in on details. Atcho must be seized and brought back to Stasi headquarters.”

  Ranulf had been disconcerted. On impulse, he asked, “Why?”

  Baumann glared at him and gestured toward the Russian. “Because he wants him here.”

  Ranulf gulped, angry with himself for asking the question. “Yes, sir.” He had turned his attention to Klaus, made eye contact, and knew in an instant that he was very dangerous. Neither man had liked the other.

  The next day, Klaus had come to Ranulf’s office with the information that Atcho and Sofia would be staying at the Mövenpick Hotel in West Berlin. He had supplied the specific dates. Ranulf had assigned Uri and three men to the effort. Two days later, Etzel had joined the group. Together, they had planned and rehearsed the mission to abduct Atcho.

  Ranulf regretted his call to Sofia. He tended to impulsive action. On hearing that Atcho was in his men’s sights, he had reveled in the drama he pictured resulting from that call.

  That Atcho could be such a hard target had never crossed Ranulf’s mind. Now he had to clean up the mess and develop a good story for Baumann.

  He heard a knock on the door. Oily came in. “Find Klaus and Etzel,” Ranulf told him. “Use all the hit teams. I’ll double their normal pay, but it’s got to be done quickly.”

  “Now what?” Etzel’s impatience surfaced, but he held it in check. An hour had passed since they had eluded execution at the Stasi station.

  Klaus stared out the back window of the car, hidden deep inside a vacant building. “Ranulf will expect us to run, but he’ll have his hands full with the demonstrations. We have to get to the Russian.”

  “How? By now Ranulf must have told him that the mission failed. He probably saw it on television.”

  Klaus’ brow furrowed. “Baumann wants the Wall to stay in place. The Russian can get him a nuclear bomb. We don’t care what Baumann plans to do with it. We also don’t know what the Russian wants, except this Atcho. No other American will do. It has to be that one, and he has to be alive.”

  “Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter why. If we deliver this Atcho, we can get what we want.”

  “Which is a second bomb.”

  “Exactly. Since we know Atcho is a hard target, we can plan better. Ranulf’s three hoodlums were incompetent. Better they’re dead. We can do this ourselves.”

  “Are you crazy? With everyone looking for us? They might expect a second try.”

  “We can do it. We’ll steal new Stasi ID and go to our own network.”

  Etzel looked doubtful. “The only way we’ll get Stasi ID now is to kill someone.”

  Klaus grinned. “We know how to do that.”

  7

  The next day, Atcho and Sofia drove to the US Consulate for a long meeting with Brown, Fenns, and other US State Department security officials. The CIA station chief, Sean Shelby, also attended. The intent was to discern why Atcho had been a target.

  Shelby was a rising star in the intelligence community, a taller than average officer with dirty blond hair. His reputation was sterling within the agency for a keen mind and tactical know-how. He had a bookish personality but maintained an athletic regimen, and he knew how to take a joke. He listened closely, analyzed quickly, and arrived at sound decisions without delay. Further, he was known to support his field officers fiercely but allowed little slack if an error resulted from poor planning, analysis, or execution. For this mission, he was Sofia’s boss.

  “Fill me in,” he said as the meeting commenced.

  “Things are not adding up,” Stan Brown began. “I could understand if the kidnappers had tried to take Sofia.” He switched his attention to her. “But as far as anyone knows officially, you’re a senior intelligence analyst with no diplomatic portfolio. You should hardly be anyone’s target.” He paused in reflection. “But to try to kidnap Atcho to pressure you?” He exhaled. “I’d sure like to know what you’re really doing here.” He looked her directly in the eyes. “Before you answer—I hate to do this, Sofia, but we have to address the fact that your cover is blown. The caller said straight out that he knew about your connections to the CIA.”

  Sofia rolled her eyes.

  “Brown makes a good point,” Shelby said. “Someone found out your status and maybe has a good guess why you’re here. I’ve known you a long time. No one doubts your capability, but prudence and policy say to take you off the mission.”

  Sofia felt a rush of adrenaline. “Don’t do that, Sean. We’re too close. If you pull me out …” She looked around, recalling that not everyone in the room was cleared to know her mission. “If you pull me out, the principal is likely to balk. You can’t shove in a substitute. You know why. We’d have to go on a wing and a prayer.”

  The room had gone quiet. Shelby looked perplexed.

  “Please,” Sofia implored. “You know the stakes. My mission is already on a deniable basis.”

  Shelby sat in silent contemplation. “Go on with the meeting,” he said at last. He directed his attention to Sofia. “You and I will have to talk.”

  “My job would be a lot easier if I knew what the hell was going on,” Brown said pointedly.

  “My apologies,” Shelby replied. “This is close hold. We won’t talk about it further.”

  Atcho broke in. “Has anyone contacted the Stasi?”

  “The US made a formal complaint through diplomatic channels,” Fenns said. “Obviously, the East German government disavowed knowledge and issued another harangue about violent crime in the West. They won’t claim the three dead bodies.”

  “What about West German intelligence?” Atcho pursued.

  “Nothing,” Fenns replied. He thrust his chin toward Shelby. “CIA and FBI are in the loop, but so far the van is our only lead. It’s registered in West Berlin to a bakery that had reported it stolen. That’s a dead end too.”

  “KGB?”

  “Same.”

  “That brings us back to where we started,” Brown stated flatly, frustration straining his voice. He turned to Shelby. “The wannabe kidnapper said that Sofia needed to stick to of
ficial duties and stay away from whatever else she’s doing.”

  Shelby and Sofia met him with blank stares. Brown became visibly irate. “We’re trying to help.” He directed his outburst at Shelby. “You know the rules. If we have the required level of clearance and a need to know, we’re allowed to know. The person who originally classified the information can make the determination. That’s either you or Sofia. Now, help us help you. Please.”

  Sofia stared at him coldly. “If I think you need to know,” she said evenly, “you’ll know. Meanwhile, I suggest you beef up security at the hotel.”

  Shelby stood. “I said we would not discuss the mission further. I have to go.” He caught Sofia’s eye. “See me when this is over.” He left the room.

  Brown grunted his irritation. “All right.” He turned to Atcho. “You might need this.” He handed him a Glock, Atcho’s preferred pistol. Atcho put it in his jacket.

  “Your permit to carry is done,” Brown added. “Sofia, you have yours?” Sofia nodded. “Good,” he went on, “we’ll tighten security, but we’re already spread thin.”

  The group left the meeting tired and disgruntled, with nothing resolved. Sofia had a short session with Shelby, then she and Atcho returned to the hotel.

  When they arrived back in their room, fatigue had set in. They intended to retire early but sat on the sofa in the bedroom to talk. Atcho flipped on the television and turned up the volume to disrupt any listening devices.

  “Why won’t you tell anyone what you’re doing?” he asked.

  “Because too much is at risk, too many lives affected, too many people could be killed. You saw Shelby. He backed me on that.”

  “Then tell me precisely what you’re supposed to do.”

  Sofia sighed. “OK. That declaration about opening the Wall to free travel is imminent. Just the fact that the date hasn’t been set shows how tenuous it is. We’re going to preempt the formal announcement by reading it publicly as soon as we can, as if it’s a done deal, effective immediately.