by Saul Herzog
Tatyana nodded.
There was someone that came to mind, someone she could conceivably call a friend, but she was a police officer. She didn’t handle to kind of information that would be of interest to the Director of the CIA, and in any case, Latvia was a NATO ally. If she’d stumbled across something, she would have handed it up the chain.
“I have a contact in Riga.”
“A Latvian?”
“Yes. From the national security division.”
“A source?”
“Not a source. More like, well, a friend.”
“What does that mean?”
“Laurel,” Tatyana said, “you know how it is. If you’re a woman in this business, it can sometimes feel like there are a lot of sharks in the water. Over there, the sharks are Russian.”
“I see.”
“She never sold me Latvian secrets. I never asked her to.”
“But you had each other’s backs?”
“We’ll see,” Tatyana said.
“What do you mean?”
“If I show up in Berlin, then yes.”
“Okay,” Laurel said.
Tatyana had known she would understand.
“The thing is,” Laurel said. “Would she pass a message like this?”
Tatyana shrugged. “I don’t know, Laurel. She never did anything like this before. It’s strange for her to start now. But everything about this message is strange.”
Laurel sighed. She shook her head.
“What’s wrong?”
“He’s going to send you in,” she said.
“He has to, Laurel.”
“I know,” Laurel said, “but I don’t have to like it.”
“The president’s response to the bombings is the biggest show of weakness in a generation,” Tatyana said. “If Molotov was going to make a move, now would be the moment.”
“And Latvia would be the place?”
“It might be,” Tatyana said. “He’s desperate to show the world that NATO is just a piece of paper. That it doesn’t decide the issue.”
“Decide the issue?”
“Latvia is afraid of Russia,” Tatyana said. “That’s the reason they’re in NATO. Everyone knows it. Riga, Washington, Moscow. The Latvian government said so publicly. And they said NATO membership meant Russia could never attack them again. They said it decided the issue.”
They were passing the Lincoln Memorial, and Laurel, looking out at it, said, “You know you don’t have to go, don’t you?”
“I made a deal with Roth.”
“Not for this. That was to come back to the Group. He won’t force you to go to Berlin.”
“He doesn’t have to force me.”
“If this note is from the Kremlin.”
“If it’s from the Kremlin, I’ll know how to look out for myself.”
“I’m going to need more than that,” Laurel said.
“What more can I give you?”
“I want a plan, a real one, to get you out if you get into trouble.”
“Nothing I say to you will make this completely safe,” Tatyana said.
“Well, I want something,” Laurel said. “I’m head of the Group, and I’m pulling rank. Unless you come up with some sort of feasible extraction plan, something you can fall back on if this note turns out to be a trap, I’m not letting you go.”
Tatyana thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll tell you what. If you promise to look out for Larissa and Svetlana while I’m gone, I’ll give you a name?”
“A name?”
“The name of someone very important to me. Someone I can rely on if things go south.”
“Just a name?”
“Not just any name,” Tatyana said. “It’s a name I’m sure you’ve heard before.”
Laurel looked at her. “What is it?”
“The Clockmaker of Berlin.”
36
Tatyana looked out as the car pulled up to the opulent Saint Royal Hotel. She knew the place well.
“What are we doing here?” she said.
“This is where we’re meeting Roth.”
“In public?”
“In a suite upstairs,” Laurel said. “I’m arranging to make it our permanent base of operations.”
Tatyana smiled.
“What?” Laurel said.
“Making some changes now that you’re in charge.”
“It’s the perfect place for us to work,” Laurel said.
“Of course it is,” Tatyana said, as an usher in a top hat held the door for her.
Through polished brass doors, they entered the sumptuously decorated lobby, with marble floors and crystal chandeliers hanging on long chains from the ceiling. Another usher escorted them to the elevators, entering with them and pushing the button for the top floor.
“This is a private elevator,” he said. “No one but you has access.”
Laurel glanced at Tatyana before nodding to the usher and thanking him.
The elevators opened into a wide hallway, and they followed the usher through a set of french doors into a high-ceilinged rotunda. It was hexagonally shaped, with a wooden bench and a hat stand between each of three sets of doors.
“There are three suites,” the usher said, indicating the doors. “As per your agreement with the hotel ownership, no one will proceed beyond this rotunda without advance permission, and as I understand it, you will be having your own locks installed.”
“Thank you,” Laurel said.
The man gave them a slight nod and said, “Mr. Roth has requested that a meal be served in the center suite. May I show you in.”
“Thank you,” Laurel said.
They followed him through the middle set of doors into a stunning dining room with a checkered marble floor. High windows, draped in floor-to-ceiling curtains of red velvet, looked out over Lafayette Square.
In the center of the room was an antique wooden table, exquisitely set for a formal lunch and surrounded by high-backed, formal dining chairs.
Tatyana and Laurel looked at each other as they were shown to their seats.
“Mr. Roth will be with you shortly,” the usher said before leaving them alone.
“Laurel,” Tatyana said in a mock scolding tone, “you’ve turned Roth’s precious Group into a re-enactment of Versailles.”
“I didn’t know it would be this…”.
“Nice?” Tatyana said.
“Formal,” Laurel said.
Tatyana looked around the room. Everything, down to the finest detail, was exquisite.
“The hotel’s letting you install your own security?” she said.
Laurel nodded.
“And there’ll be non-disclosure agreements?”
“Roth negotiated the whole thing,” Laurel said. “We’ll be installing our own communications lines, our own secure entry system, our own hardware in a special service shed on the roof.”
“If you think about it,” Tatyana said, “it’s the perfect cover.”
“Like hiding in plain sight,” Laurel said.
A waiter in a black suit and bow tie knocked on a side door and entered the room.
“Mr. Roth called to say he will be here very shortly,” the waiter said.
He was holding an expensive-looking bottle of red wine, which he opened in front of them.
“May I?” he said to each of them before filling their glasses.
The two women were seated too far apart to touch glasses, but they raised them to each other, and Tatyana said, “To the good life.”
Laurel smiled. “It’s a tough job,” she said, “but someone’s got to do it.”
They each took a sip of the wine, which was excellent, and Laurel said, “Before Roth gets here, I want to talk more about this extraction plan of yours.”
“The Clockmaker,” Tatyana said with a smile. “I had a feeling that would get your attention.”
“You know who he is?”
Tatyana nodded.
“The man’s a legend,” Laur
el said. “I don’t even think Roth knows much about him, other than rumors.”
“Well, maybe we should wait for him before I tell you about it.”
“Tell me about what?” Roth said, walking into the room and pulling off a pair of black leather gloves.
“Levi,” Laurel said, standing up.
“Don’t get up,” Roth said, joining them at the table. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Something interesting arrived on my desk right as I was about to leave.”
“How interesting?” Laurel said.
“Well, that depends on Tatyana,” he said.
“How so?” Tatyana said.
Roth motioned for the waiter to fill his glass and then waited for him to leave the room.
“I take it Laurel showed you the message.”
“Yes,” Tatyana said. “I’ve seen it.”
“Do you know who it’s from?”
“I think so,” Tatyana said. “There was a woman in Riga that I would refer to as a friend. She’s a corporal in the State Police, National Security Division.”
“I knew it,” Roth said, pulling a grainy, black and white printout of a photo from his coat pocket and handing it to Tatyana.
“What’s this?”
“Look closely,” Roth said.
The picture looked like it had come from a surveillance camera overlooking the main concourse of a train station. From the writing on some of the signs, it had to have been in Poland.
“Warsaw Central train station,” Tatyana said.
“What about the two people?” Roth said.
“They look like they’re talking to each other.”
Roth was looking smug. He was enjoying this.
“Who are they, Roth?”
“One of them is your friend, Agata Zarina, a twenty-nine-year-old policewoman from Riga.”
“And the other?”
“A Kremlin assassin named Mikhail Smolov.”
“Smolov?” Tatyana said.
“You know him?” Roth said.
“Not well,” Tatyana said. “Is Agata Zarina okay?”
“She killed that assassin. Left him in the center of the train station. According to our friends in Poland, she fled the scene on a train to Berlin soon after.”
“So the message is from her?”
“I’d say it appears that way, wouldn’t you?” Roth said.
Tatyana handed the printout to Laurel.
“I hope the image they made the ID with was higher res than this,” Laurel said.
“That’s just what I could print on my way out,” Roth said. “I’ve got a four-page report from the Polish Intelligence Agency.”
“I see,” Laurel said.
“You don’t seem very pleased,” Roth said.
Laurel sighed. The waiter came back in and asked Roth if he should begin serving the meal.
Roth deferred to Laurel. “Ask her,” he said. “This is hers now.”
“Please begin serving,” Laurel said and waited until he was gone before saying, “If the Kremlin’s chasing her with assassins, how do we even know she’s still alive?”
“Other than the note?” Roth said.
They both looked at Tatyana.
Roth said, “Is there anything about the note that suggests Agata Zarina was not the author?”
Tatyana looked at Laurel while answering. “I take it the meet is meant for this bar in Kreuzberg?” she said.
“That’s how it looks,” Laurel said.
“Well, the first time I met her was at a cocktail happy hour like that. A bar in Riga. There’s no way anyone else could know that.”
“So you think it’s legit?” Roth said.
Tatyana nodded.
“And you’re willing to go?”
She nodded again.
Roth turned to Laurel triumphantly. “I’ll have a plane readied at Andrews immediately.”
“Before we send her into God knows what,” Laurel said, “could we at least get our plan straight for what happens if it turns out it’s a trap.”
“There’s no time to send in an advance team,” Roth said.
“I’m not talking about a team,” Laurel said. “Tatyana’s got a friend in Berlin.”
Roth looked at her. “It seems you make friends wherever you go.”
“What can I say?” Tatyana said. “It must be my bubbly personality.”
“She was about to tell me all about him.”
Roth was intrigued, they both were, and they looked at her expectantly.
“I think you know him as the Clockmaker of Berlin.”
37
“Coffee,” Lance said to the waitress.
“Anything to eat?” she said, eyeing him warily.
He shook his head, and she left. He was at a table by the window, and the sun still hadn’t broken above the horizon. The sky had turned though, a startling orange to the east as if someone had smeared cadmium pigment across it.
He looked at his hands. He was in shock.
He’d seen more death than most, he’d dealt it at his own hand, but something about this, what had happened to Sam, the way it had been done, it wasn’t right.
The Russians could be ruthless, but there was an orderliness to their work. They meted out death with the same bureaucratic disdain they doled out everything else.
What Lance had seen in the forest was not that.
It was not orderly.
It was not bureaucratic.
Someone had gone off the deep end.
And it shook him to the core.
The waitress returned with a cup of black coffee and put it on the table in front of him.
“You okay, Lance?”
He hadn’t noticed she was there. He looked up.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He looked around the diner as if realizing where he was for the first time. He’d walked in thirty minutes ago and couldn’t even remember doing that.
“I am a ghost,” he said.
She looked at him more closely. He knew her. Not well, but enough to know her name.
“What does that mean?” she said.
“Everything I touch turns to ash. Do they have a name for that?”
She shook her head. “Lance, did you go home last night?”
“Did I go home?”
“You were out there again, weren’t you? You’re going to catch your death of cold, if you don’t get arrested first.”
“It’s still there, Hetty. Just sitting there. No one’s coming for it.”
She shook her head. “You need to go home and get some sleep.”
“The snowplow goes around it every night.”
“Please go home, Lance. Your body needs rest.”
He looked down at his coffee cup.
She stood there a minute, then sighed and left.
He looked at his watch. It was almost six.
He left some cash on the table and walked out of the diner. Across the street was the office of the Herz car rental company. It opened every morning at six.
A kid was just unlocking the door, and Lance said, “Who rented the navy Chevrolet that’s been sitting in front of the grocery store for the last three nights.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“The grocery store parking lot. It’s one of yours. Got your sticker inside the windshield.”
The kid looked at Lance, and from the expression on his face, knew not to mess with him.
“I took down the plate number,” Lance said. “Now you’re going to go on your computer and tell me who signed it out. Are we clear?”
“Mister,” the kid said nervously. “I can’t give out that kind of information.”
“I know that,” Lance said, “but you’re going to do it anyway.”
“It’ll mean my job.”
“You just tell them some madman threatened to kill you. If they don’t believe you, go across the street and ask for Hetty. She’ll back you up.”
The kid opened the door and went inside. Lance
stayed close behind him.
“You wouldn’t, though, right?” the kid said. “You were just saying that to give me an alibi.”
Lance was looking at the computer, impatient for the kid to log in and pull up the information.
“Enter your password,” he said.
The kid typed his password and opened the database. Then he looked at Lance.
“What’s the license plate?”
Lance told him what it was, and he typed it in.
“The renter of that vehicle is Ben Edelberg.”
“Who’s Ben Edelberg?”
“He works at the reception of the hotel.”
“The Econolodge?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why would he rent a car?”
“For a guest,” the kid said.
“Don’t you have to get a copy of the license?”
“Looks like they took Edelberg’s license.”
“All right,” Lance said and left.
Lance walked down the street to the Econolodge. Behind the desk, a woman with graying hair leaned back precariously in her swivel chair. Her mouth was open, and she snored intermittently.
“Wake up,” Lance said.
She leaped and almost knocked over her chair. When she saw Lance standing there, a look of alarm crossed her face.
“I’ve got some questions, and you have to answer them,” Lance said.
Lance looked rough. He hadn’t shaved in days. His eyes were bloodshot. The woman was terrified.
“All right,” she stammered.
“Why would Ben Edelberg rent a car from Herz?”
“What?”
“You heard what I said.”
“He’d rent a car for a customer.”
“Is that allowed?”
“If the tip’s right.”
“Do you have his number?”
“Ben’s?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not allowed to give that out.”
“You give him a call and find out who the blue sedan he rented three days ago was for.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to reach him at this time of night.”
“Either you get him on the phone, or I’ll pay him a visit in person,” Lance said.
The lady picked up the phone and dialed a number.
A moment later she said, “Ben, this is Aggy, at work.”
She waited and told him she was sorry for waking him. Then she asked him who the car was for.