by Saul Herzog
He approached cautiously, and when he got close enough, made out the voices of men speaking German.
He crept closer and saw that one of the men was giving instructions to two others. The area was lit up with electric lights of the kind used by construction workers. There were also some large fans blowing the generator fumes down the tunnel. As Lance’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that two people, unconscious, had been tied to two dollies the way a psychiatric patient might be tied to a bed. The dollies rested precariously at the top of a set of stairs so that if the prisoners struggled, they would be in danger of falling.
Lance didn’t need to see their faces to know that the two people tied to the dollies were Tatyana and Laurel.
It looked like the men were preparing to move them.
Lance felt a flood of relief rush through his body.
He wasn’t too late.
They were still alive, and they were still there.
He crouched behind some slabs of stone and drew his pistols. He wanted to question the leader of the men, so he aimed at one of the others, steadied his hand against the rock, and pulled the trigger. Even with the sound-suppression, the enclosed area amplified the sharp pulse of the gunshot.
One of the men’s heads jerked to the side, and he fell in a heap to the ground.
The man next to him instantly dropped to one knee and returned fire.
Lance ducked as bullets flew all over the tunnel, ricocheting in every direction. Shards of rock flew everywhere, and the dust created a cloud.
Lance glanced over the top of the rock before ducking back down.
He was worried about the way the dollies were positioned. The slightest push from one of the men would send them over the edge, and he didn’t think the women would survive the fall.
He peered around the rock and saw that one of the men was now pointing his gun at Laurel’s head.
“Whoever you are,” he called out, “you better come out.” He spoke English, but his accent was so thick it was hard to make out what he was saying. “If you don’t come out, this girl gets it.”
Lance swung out from the rock, aimed for the man’s chest, and pulled the trigger. The man fell to the ground and dropped his gun. He reached for it again, and Lance shot him in the arm. Then he rolled back behind the rock as a hail of fire came from the third man.
He waited for the shooting to stop before looking again.
The third man was gone.
He was running down the staircase the two dollies were at the top of, and Lance couldn’t take a shot without risking hitting Laurel or Tatyana.
He ran toward the chamber, jumping down the large slabs of rock that led into it. When he reached the steel gangway, he approached the dollies carefully. He wanted to give chase to the man running, but Laurel and Tatyana looked like they were in rough shape.
The man he’d shot in the chest and arm was on the ground, still alive. Lance searched him for weapons and found some cable ties. He pulled his wrists behind his back and tied them.
“Laurel, Tatyana,” he said. “It’s me, Lance.”
He could see they’d been drugged, but as it dawned on them that it was, he could see the relief in their faces. He brought their dollies back from the edge of the stairs and began opening their restraints.
Tatyana was badly injured. She’d been shot in the calf, and the only treatment she’d received was a tight, cloth bandage. Lance looked at the wound and could tell the bullet was still inside.
The wound would be infected soon, if it wasn’t already.
“We need to get you two out of here,” he said.
“You need to go after that man,” Tatyana said, slurring her words badly. “He got information out of me. I couldn’t help it. My mind wasn’t clear.”
Lance looked down the steps and knew she was right. There was no telling what information he’d managed to get from her, or Laurel for that matter, and from the look of Laurel, she was even more drugged than Tatyana was.
He nodded toward Laurel and said to Tatyana, “You’re going to have to look after her. She’s completely out of it.”
Neither of them could stand, they’d been restrained in position for too long, and Lance helped them to the ground, where they sat.
“Watch that guy,” he said to Tatyana, handing her one of his guns.
He wasn’t comfortable leaving them, they were in bad shape, and neither of them was in possession of her faculties, but there was no time for anything else.
He ran down the steps and chased the man who’d gotten away. There were dozens of tunnels and caves, all pitch black, and he had no idea how many ways out of the complex there were. He was unlikely to catch up to the man before he disappeared completely.
He ran down the main corridor for hundreds of yards, and eventually, it opened out into an enormous cavern. It looked large enough to be an underground train terminal, and he knew it was part of Hitler’s plans for a new underground city.
At the far end of the cavern was the rotting, steel hull of an enormous tank. The scale of the machine was monstrous.
And Lance recognized it as a prototype for the largest tank ever built.
He’d seen a prototype just like it before, in a museum. The Kubinka Tank Museum outside Moscow contained what was thought to be the only prototype of the Panzer VIII Maus, a Nazi super tank that was one of the planned Wunderwaffe, or superweapons, that would win the war for Germany.
Lance saw now that the Nazis had built at least two of the monsters.
It weighed over one-hundred-eighty tons and was armed with two main cannons. The first was a 128 millimeter Krupp gun that could take out any Allied tank at a range of over two miles. The second was a smaller, 78 millimeter gun for faster moving targets.
It was so perfectly preserved that it looked like it would be possible to fire up the engine and drive it right out of the cavern.
He looked out across the enormous space and counted eight separate tunnels leading out of it. He had no idea which way the man had fled, and in any case, was in a hurry to get back to the women.
He’d get the man another time.
58
As Lance made his way back to the women, he saw something on the ground. It was a pistol, the old Browning he’d given Tatyana a long time ago in a hotel room in Damascus.
He picked it up and, when he got back, gave it to her.
“Thank you,” she said, handing him his Glock.
She looked like she was doing a little better, and Laurel’s drugs seemed to be wearing off too.
“I need to get you two to some medical attention,” Lance said.
“How do we get out of here?” Tatyana said.
“The same way I got here, but first, we have to decide what we’re going to do with this guy.”
He was standing over the captive. He’d been shot twice and would bleed out soon if he didn’t receive medical attention.
“Tell me,” Lance said to him. “Who do you work for?”
“You know who I work for,” he said.
“The Kremlin.”
“Yes,” the man said.
“Didn’t you hear?” Lance said, “The Soviets lost. They had their day. Now they’re done.”
The man spat at him, and Lance stepped back. “Feisty,” he said, “for a man that’s about to be left down here to bleed out alone.”
“You wouldn’t leave me down here.”
“Sure I would,” Lance said.
The man shook his head.
“What were you going to do with these two women?” Lance said.
“He came in at the end,” Tatyana said. “It was the other guy, the one who got away, that was running the show.”
“What were you brought in for then?” Lance said to the man.
“Go fuck yourself.”
Lance pulled his cigarette lighter from his pocket and said, “Why don’t I set your hair on fire? See if that jogs your memory.”
“No,” the man said, as Lance raised the
lighter to his head. The air filled with the acrid smell of burning hair, and the man said, “No, stop. I’ll talk.”
“Talk, then,” Lance said.
“Prochnow needed help transporting the women,” he said. “He’d been ordered to get them to Russian soil.”
“What Russian soil?”
“We were going to drive them to the Kaliningrad border. The Kremlin was to send a crew to meet us in Poland. Someone wanted them back in Russia. Alive.”
Lance nodded.
It sounded plausible.
It would take more than one man to get the women to a vehicle and out of the city. Hence the dollies and the extra manpower.
He turned to Laurel and Tatyana. “It’s time to get you two out of here.”
He helped them to their feet, and the man said, “What about me?”
“What about you?” Lance said.
“I’m going to die down here.”
“You might not die. Someone might find you.”
“No one will find me,” he said. “No one knows what’s down here.”
Lance shrugged. He helped Laurel and Tatyana up the rock slabs, back toward the tunnel he’d come down, as the man cried out for them not to leave him there.
“It would have been kinder to shoot him,” Tatyana said as they approached the round steel door.
“I wasn’t feeling kind,” Lance said.
When they reached the opening back out to the street, Lance went first and made sure the coast was clear. When he was satisfied, he pulled Laurel and Tatyana out, attracting as little attention as possible. They walked down the deserted street to the corner, through the courtyard of some government buildings, and out to a busier street where Lance was able to flag down a cab.
“Where to?” the driver said, eyeing them in his mirror.
The women looked in no fit state, both had been drugged, and Tatyana’s leg was drenched with blood.
The driver’s eyes widened, and he said, “What’s going on here?”
Lance took his wallet from one pocket and a gun from the other.
“In Colombia,” he said to the driver, “they have a saying, plata o plomo. Silver or lead. Which do you choose?”
The driver looked Lance in the eye, then looked at the two women.
“Please,” Tatyana said, “believe it or not, he’s actually our friend.”
The driver sighed.
“I’m going to make a call,” he said to the driver, “then I’ll tell you where we’re going.”
He called Roth.
“We’re out,” he said.
“All three of you?”
“All three of us. I need a safe house, and Tatyana’s going to need to see a doctor.”
“All right,” Roth said. “I’ll send you a location.”
Lance hung up, and a moment later, his phone dinged with the address of an apartment in the Bergmannkiez district. He didn’t give the driver the address but told him to drop them at the main train station. At the train station, they switched cabs, and the second driver didn’t object to the condition the women were in. Lance told him to take them to Bergmann Straße.
They then walked the last stretch to their building, with Laurel and Lance helping Tatyana walk.
The building was an elegant tenement from the nineteenth century with a wrought iron gate in front of the door. Roth had sent a code to get inside the building, and Lance typed it into a metal keypad. From the hallway, they got into an old-style elevator that was made like a cage.
The elevator brought them to the fourth floor, and from there, they entered the apartment.
The apartment was clean, simple, with minimal décor and a marble fireplace that housed an electric fire.
Lance waited by the window, smoking and watching the street while the women washed up in the bathroom. Laurel helped Tatyana into one of the bedrooms, then joined Lance in the living room.
“When will the doctor be here?” she said.
“Not long.”
They looked at each other awkwardly until Laurel said, “I’m going to make coffee.”
“There isn’t any,” Lance said.
“You checked?”
He nodded.
That seemed to upset her, and she slumped onto the sofa. The fireplace was gas-fueled, and Lance went over to it and switched it on.
“I’ll go buy some supplies,” he said. “You two are going to need some fresh clothing and toiletries.”
Laurel nodded.
He gave her a Glock. “Don’t take your eye off the doctor.”
She took the gun and leaned back on the sofa.
“And don’t fall asleep,” he said.
“And you quit barking orders.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“We’ll be fine,” Laurel said.
Lance left the apartment and went down to the ground floor. He had no intention of leaving the building just yet.
He trusted Roth, but the doctor could be anyone.
And besides, he had no idea how secure the Berlin safe house network was. There was always a chance the Russians knew about the place.
He found a place to hide on the ground floor and waited for the doctor to arrive. It didn’t take long. The man looked like a doctor. He carried a leather bag of the type doctors carried.
He knew the code for entering the building and acted like he’d been there before. He got into the elevator, and Lance raced up the steps to keep up with it. He was on the third floor when the elevator reached the fourth, and he stopped running. He remained out of sight and waited to see what the doctor did next.
From where he was, he could see the door of the apartment. If the doctor put a foot out of step, it would be lights out.
The doctor pulled something from his pocket. Lance drew his gun and aimed at the man’s head.
It was a cell phone. The doctor looked at the screen, then knocked on the door.
Lance took his finger off the trigger.
Laurel came to the door, and the man said, “I’m the doctor. Levi Roth sent me.”
59
Both women were asleep when Lance returned with the supplies. The doctor had seen to Tatyana’s leg, and it looked like he’d bandaged Laurel’s wounds also.
Lance had picked up enough takeout from a local Chinese place to feed six people, and he made tea before waking the women.
They sat together in the living room by the fire, Tatyana laid out on the sofa and Laurel on an enormous, upholstered armchair.
They were relaxed.
At ease.
When they were done eating, Lance went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of chardonnay he’d picked up.
He poured three glasses, and Tatyana made a toast.
“The team’s all back together,” she said.
Lance glanced at Laurel then away.
“The man who captured you,” he said, changing the subject, “he was German.”
“His name is Prochnow,” Tatyana said. “Christoph Prochnow.”
“Who does he work for?”
“He’s GRU. I never worked with him directly, but I knew of him. Apparently, he’s more loyal to the Kremlin than any Russian.”
Lance raised his eyebrow.
Tatyana was looking at Laurel, then she said, “You went to see the Clockmaker, didn’t you?”
Laurel nodded. “He wasn’t there.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“He’s dead,” Lance said.
Tatyana said nothing for a moment, then she said, “I thought maybe that was a dream. Or a nightmare.”
“Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault,” Laurel said.
“He drugged me. He got me to talk. I gave him up.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Tatyana.”
“He trusted me. He put his life in my hands. He’d been operating here since long before any of us was born, and now, because of me, he’s dead.”
“You had no choice,” Lance said. “You were drugged. You know what
those serums do.”
Tatyana shook her head. “There’s always a choice,” she said. “What I said, it killed him, as surely as if I pulled the trigger myself.”
Laurel cleared her throat. “If we’re making confessions,” she said, “I was the one who sent you blind into a trap.”
“I knew the risk I was taking,” Tatyana said.
“It’s all my fault,” Laurel said. “I’m Group Director. I’m the one who’s supposed to interpret the data. I’m the one who’s supposed to call the next move. I messed up.”
“You didn’t mess up,” Tatyana said. “We needed to know what Agata Zarina was running from. We needed to know what information she had.”
“And we still need to,” Lance said.
They looked at him.
“We still don’t know what message it was she was trying to get to Tatyana, but I think it’s safe to say, whatever it was, it was important.”
“Important enough for GRU assassins to chase her through three countries,” Tatyana said.
“There’s another clue,” Lance said.
Both women looked at him.
“When I was trying to find you, the satellite operator said they were having problems with the Keyhole feed.”
“That’s right,” Laurel said. “There’s interference from a new Russian satellite.”
“Is it affecting the entire Keyhole network?” Lance said.
“No,” just one.
“The one above us.”
She nodded.
“They’re getting ready to make a move,” Lance said. “I bet dollars to donuts they’re planning an invasion.”
“Of Latvia?” Laurel said. “Are they ready to run that risk?”
“Molotov’s emboldened,” Lance said. “He blew up the embassy, and the president did nothing.”
“But an attack on NATO. That’s going to lead to nuclear war.”
They both looked at Tatyana. She said, “Molotov wants to reconstitute the entire USSR,” she said. “It’s no secret. Invading the Baltics would be the first step.”
Laurel drained her glass. “I need a cigarette,” she said.
Lance handed her one and held up his lighter.