She thought he wouldn't say anything. But after a moment, in which she noticed he didn't look at her, he sat up and began:
“I had a Joe in Prague. He was to meet a Russian contact. A successful meet would have netted important missile strength numbers. I was to meet the Joe afterwards at midnight. He didn't show.”
Now he looked at her. What was it he wasn't saying?
“Not such a big deal. Happened before. I went to the fallback at 1 o'clock. Again no show. I went on to the fallback at 2.”
Beth's stomach flipped — she knew what was coming.
“The Joe was there. Dead. His throat cut. Who could have known our fallback?”
Without meaning to Beth reached out and took David's hands in hers. She felt responsible for asking him to relive this. He didn't appear to notice what she had done.
“I looked around — an old people's home was across the road. I dashed to it.”
He paused, then continued. “I ran up the stairs and along the corridor. There was no one around. The door to one room was open.”
Beth lightly squeezed his hands, encouraging him to go on.
“Inside an old man lay on a filthy sheet, groaning. I went in, sat down next to him. He reached out his hands, his eyes sightless. He said in Czech, ‘Milo, my son, is it you?’ In that instant I became Milo. I answered in Czech, ‘Yes, my father, I am here.’ I sat with that old man, told him I loved him, until he took his last breath. Then I fled.”
David's eyes were on their hands. Suddenly Beth was suspicious. She pulled her hands away.
“Is this a true story? Or are you playing another part? Tender-hearted citizen of the world.”
David didn't answer; he simply turned away from her, and lay his head down on his backpack.
But instead of turning the lantern off, he said, “Now it's your turn to tell me a story.”
Beth shook her head. “Nothing to interest you.”
“Tell me about how you met your husband.”
How she met Stephen? What a strange request. “Why do you want to know?”
“Tell me the story,” he said.
Why not?
“My family moved to a different neighborhood in Philadelphia. Stephen and I were in the same 4th grade class. We were the best spellers. Each week we would compete to see who got the most right on the Friday spelling test. It was a big deal in our classroom — boy vs. girl. Often we tied.”
Beth paused. How silly it seemed now. But she went on, “We kept our tests in a bound spiral notebook. One week by mistake Stephen tore his test out of his notebook. The teacher gave him a zero. He was devastated.”
Fourth grade. A zero meant so much then. “I felt so badly for him that I tore mine out too — so we would be even again. From then on we were best friends.”
“You started dating your husband at age 10?”
Beth smiled. “That came later. Much later.”
David turned off the lantern. She couldn't see his face. What had he thought of her story? What had he …
“Come on, Beth. It's time to get up.”
Beth sat up. The dark was as pervasive as it had been when they first got here. “What time is it?” she asked.
“5 a.m.” David turned the lantern on.
“I must have finally slept. How did you sleep?”
“I didn't. Someone had to stand guard.”
“I should have taken my turn,” Beth said.
David folded the two emergency blankets into little squares and stuffed them in his backpack before answering. “No, you shouldn't have. You're the civilian.”
“The civilian. Right.”
Beth swung her backpack on her back and took the flashlight from David while he put the lantern in his backpack.
“Do you know how to get out?”
David's only reply was to smile.
She followed him down a tunnel until suddenly there was a noise up ahead. David flicked off the flashlight and pushed her behind him before taking out his gun.
From down the tunnel came “Ist dieser platz frei?”
David answered, “Ja, dieser platz ist frei.” Then he snapped the flashlight back on.
“Rodney,” David said to her. “He has the worse German accent of anyone I know.”
Beth laughed. “You haven't heard mine.”
Then Rodney and Kathleen entered the arc of David's flashlight.
“Kathleen! What? How?”
DAY 5
Beth sat in the back of Rodney's BMW with Kathleen while David sat up front with Rodney.
Kathleen had promised to answer Beth's questions once they were on the road.
“I don't like getting left holding an empty bag,” she said. “After I went on a wild goose chase to Cape Cod, I returned to Langley and used my connections and my computer.”
Rodney spoke over his shoulder as he drove. “She contacted me for information and she detected my hesitation when she asked if I knew your location.”
Kathleen laughed. “After that it was easy to get what I wanted to know. I just threatened …”
Rodney cut in. “She promised not to reveal to George or Charles what I told her.”
“I agreed because I know they're not keeping me in the loop.”
Beth watched Rodney glance at David. “Saw the company you had last night.”
“Could you tell who they were?”
“Only that there were two of them driving the usual BMW.”
Beth laughed. “You should talk.”
“I'll send someone back for your car later,” Rodney said to David. “Someone who will check the car for any surprise gifts.”
“You couldn't have shown up last night?” Beth asked.
“Sorry you had to spend the night in the bunker. But we had to stick to our fallback plan.”
Beth tapped David on the shoulder. “No wonder you weren't worried about finding a way out. You knew the rescue dog would find us.”
An hour later Rodney pulled off the road and alongside a small airstrip. Beth followed Kathleen out of the car.
“I understand that you don't trust me,” Kathleen said.
“Trust you? First I was told this ridiculous story of identifying someone. Then the driver of that unidentified person is shot. I thought I was being set up to be the fall guy.”
“And what do you think now?”
Beth hesitated. What did she think? She said, “Maybe the answer will be in Berlin.”
Kathleen nodded, then motioned Beth into the back seat of a small plane.
“I'm an amateur pilot — it can come in handy,” Rodney said.
David smiled at Kathleen. “Good for seeing your girlfriend on quick trips across the Atlantic.”
Rodney laughed. “Never mix business with pleasure, or almost never.”
Beth put her hand on Kathleen's arm to stop her from following Rodney to the cockpit. “Thanks, Kathleen, for letting me see this through.”
“What goes around comes around,” Kathleen replied.
Beth tightened her seatbelt as David said, “Sorry no food service again.”
Beth looked out the window as the plane took off. Then she looked back at David.
“How did the bombers know you were going to be at the Frankfurt Officers Club that day? Why target you there?”
David hesitated, his hands drumming on the seat's armrests. “There was a scheduled luncheon called by the commanding general of the Frankfurt kaserne — post. He wanted to discuss procedures for discovering infiltrators on his kaserne.”
Beth nodded encouragement at David to “go on.”
He was scheduled to attend as representative of the U.S. embassy's political section — his cover at the time. “Lots of people knew I was going to attend,” he said.
Beth thought about this. It didn't make sense. “Why kill other people simply to get at you? There must have been an easier way.”
David nodded. “I've gone over and over that question. Unless I wasn't the only target that day. Maybe so
me of the others also got the riddle.”
Riddle. Why had Stephen died?
David touched her arm. “What were you and Stephen doing at the club that day?”
The plane's engine rumbled as it started up and her stomach flopped. Or maybe her stomach flopped because of the memory.
“Stephen had to meet someone in Frankfurt.” She had gone up with him on the train the night before so they could spend a night in Frankfurt. And the next day she had gone to the PX while he went off to his meeting. “We were to meet up at the officers club.”
“He was waiting for you there?”
She nodded. “The funny thing is that Jack Lockheim had told me not to bother eating at the Frankfurt Officers Club. Said it had lousy food.”
David sat up straighter. “Jack Lockheim warned you off the officers club?”
Beth looked at David. “Warned me off? He just said we shouldn't bother trying the lousy food.”
David didn't reply so Beth spent the flight watching the landscape below, thinking about how she and Stephen had flown to Berlin together. And how scary it had been as the plane came in to land at Tempelhof, almost seeming to touch the roofs of the nearby buildings.
But this time they weren't landing at Tempelhof. She watched as Rodney landed on yet another runway in the middle of a field. But just as the plane was about to stop, it turned and rolled back down the runway and took off again.
David and Beth tore off their seat belts and squeezed into the cockpit with Rodney and Kathleen.
“What the hell was that about?” David asked.
“A wave-off. Didn't you see the car at the far end of the runway? Had a German flag flying from the radio antenna.”
David nodded.
“That was the wave-off signal. My guy didn't want us to land.”
“What about radio contact?” Beth asked. “This is the modern era.”
“Didn't want the opposition to know. Would put my guy at risk. Better to let them think we noticed something.”
“We'll have to try our back-up plan,” David said.
“I'm not going to jump out of a plane again,” Beth said.
David grabbed her arm. “You're an old hand at this now. And we don't have any other options.”
Beth opened her mouth to protest. But, really, what else was there to do? She followed David back to the chutes. This time she even put on her own chute. But she did say, “Will you hold my hand again?”
David nodded, opened the rear door, checked the ground, and called to Rodney “Now!”
He took her hand and they jumped.
This time she watched David, and when he pulled his chute she pulled hers.
Even her landing was better this time.
David gathered his chute and hers. “I knew you could do it,” he said.
And he leaned down and kissed her. For a second she felt …
He pulled away. “I got carried away.”
He thrust the chutes under a large tree and led her to the road, where he waved down a farm truck.
He lifted her up onto the truck bed and followed her up. But he didn't look at her or touch her again.
Beth counted the trees they passed as the truck drove towards the former West Berlin.
When they reached the Kudamm they got off and waved thanks to the driver. David took her arm and led her off the main boulevard and into a street of small shops.
At the entrance to a bookshop he held the door open for her. Inside an old man sat hunched over his wares.
David said, “Haben Sie ein Buch von Sigmund Freud?”
The man replied, “Ja, habe ich.”
Beth remembered just enough of the German she had studied in two German for foreigners courses to know that David has asked for a book by Sigmund Freud and the old man had said he had one.
The old man punched a button partly submerged under the books on his desk, and David walked to the back of the shop and pushed open a door into a room beyond. Beth followed David through the open door, which clicked shut behind her.
The disparity between the old book shop interior and this room shocked Beth. This room was stuffed to overflowing with computers, laser printers, and other equipment.
A young man rose from his desk to greet them. David shook the young man's hand, then said to Beth, “This is Jim. He may look young, but he is a repository of knowledge that all the old gang could give him as well as that of his beloved computers.”
Jim smiled at Beth while David bent closer to Jim to speak into his ear.
Beth asked where the restrooms were, and on her return she found David typing at a computer terminal.
David pointed to his screen. “According to official reports, Jack Lockheim died in a boating accident off the Gulf of Mexico. His body was never recovered.”
Beth nodded as David pointed at a photo on his screen. “Here's the last official photo of him, taken 10 years ago. Now I'm going to age him 10 years.”
David tapped on some keys, then asked Beth if the photo looked familiar.
Beth studied the photo, then thought of the man in the cafe in Schwabing. She told David what she thought.
“His warning to you about the Frankfurt Officers Club. I think he was waving you off. You just failed to take the signal.”
Beth sank into a chair next to the computer station. How could this be? Had Stephen been killed because she didn't pay attention to what her boss had told her?
David reached over and took her hand. “It's not your fault.”
She looked up at David. How sensitive of him to guess what she was feeling.
She took a deep breath and said, “Why would he want to bomb his own country's men? Whose side was he on?
Before David could answer Jim came over to them and handed a single sheet of paper to David. He read it and then fed it into the nearby shredder.
“What did it say?” she asked.
David took her hand and pulled her up. “Let's eat,” he said.
“Now there's food service?” Beth said.
Ten minutes later Beth and David sat at a small table at an outdoor cafe on the Kudamm. Beth leaned closer to David and said, “It's about time you gave me some information.”
David shrugged. “Every time I think I'm getting close, something happens to confuse the picture. Now Jack Lockheim may have been in Schwabing yesterday watching us.”
The waiter arrived at their table and put a glass of wine in front of each of them. Beth reached for her glass.
“Did you order this wine?” Beth asked.
For answer David knocked the glass out of her hand and yanked her up with him as his glare took in the whole room.
He thrust money on the table and propelled Beth out of the cafe with his one hand still clamped on her arm.
Before Beth could even get out one word, David had pulled her into a dress shop. A salesclerk moved towards them as David said, “Your bag! Give me your bag.”
David released Beth and grabbed her backpack with both his hands. Beth and the salesclerk watched him searching. Then he pulled something from the lining of the backpack.
“Let's go,” he said. “We need to lose this.”
Beth smiled at the clerk, then said to David, “I suppose we don't have time to shop. I could use a change of clothes.”
David flipped over the price tag of the nearest displayed outfit. “Not at these prices,” he said.
**
In George's office it was still early in Washington. But he had asked Charles to come in at this time today.
“I'm concerned that Mark hasn't caught up with Beth yet,” George now said. “The tracking device isn't working?”
Charles crossed one knee over the other. “Yes, but she's moving fast. Mark is definitely dogging her; he just hasn't made contact yet.”
George looked out the window. What should he say?
“And we have no more information on where Hans Wermer may have misplaced himself to?” George asked?
Charles smiles, his
beautiful patrician smile. “He's also vanished from sight.”
George nodded his dismissal and said as Charles crossed the room, “This is not good, not good at all.”
The moment Charles crossed the door behind himself, George picked up the phone and dialed.
“Mark, where are you?” George asked. “Berlin? Do you have them in sight now?”
George listened to Mark's reply, then said, “Stay with them and complete your mission. Also, Charles just told me that you hadn't sighted Beth. Interesting?”
**
The moment Charles left George's office, he strode to his own office, dialed a number, said one sentence, and then grabbed his gym shoes from a desk drawer.
A while later he was jogging on the Capital Mall as Matthew, also apparently jogging, came up alongside Charles.
“We're working on our little problem,” Matthew said. “Moving targets are not so easy to hit, especially now that she has an escort.”
“Have you IDed the escort? We haven't.”
“Not yet. But we're right there with them.”
Charles paused in his jogging to retie a shoelace. Matthew stopped beside Charles.
“Do you really need to derail this woman and whoever is with her?” Charles asked.
Matthew didn't reply at first. Then he said, “When you got involved with us, you know we played hardball. Relax — and leave the doing to us.”
When Charles stood up from re-tying his shoelace, Matthew was gone.
**
In Berlin David hurried Beth down the street, causing pedestrians to get out of their way.
“Don't you have a way to call for help?” she asked.
David didn't answer, just led her towards the entrance to the train station and through the platforms until he found the train he wanted.
Striding down the corridor in the first-class section with Beth in tow, David found a first-class compartment occupied only by a solitary German man. David pushed Beth into the compartment. He knew she wouldn't ask questions in front of a stranger.
But when a few minutes after the train started the man left the compartment, David knew he was in for it.
Instead Beth said, “I have to use the facilities. I'll be right back.”
“Make sure you don't vanish,” he said.
Beth looked at him, then watched as he wrote an unintelligible word on the steamed-up window. When she smiled, he knew she got it.
CIA Fall Guy: A Spy Thriller Page 10