by Mark Henshaw
The body rested under a blue plastic sheet held down by rocks to keep the cold breeze from carrying it away. Two uniformed officers from the local Polizeibehörde stood over the departed and Mueller realized that he didn’t know which town was closest to this point of the lake. No matter, he supposed. The locals had called for the federal police, he had arrived, and their duties here would be done by the day’s end. Other officers had roped out a perimeter larger than he needed for the purpose of his visit, and civilians were blessedly absent except for two—a young man, bearded with short brown hair, and a woman, petite with a pixie cut, both sitting in a covered police Gator that someone had managed to drive through the thick woods.
One of the local police, this one a woman dressed in civilian clothes and an overcoat, saw him coming and moved to meet him. “Herr Mueller?” she asked.
“Ja,” he replied.
“I am Johanna Adler. It is a pleasure,” the younger woman replied. She was a head shorter than Mueller, blond, probably half his age and overweight, which he observed from her rounded cheeks, but not so much that young men would find her unattractive.
“The pleasure is mine,” Mueller replied in their native tongue. “Though not so much to be here.”
“I must agree with you,” Adler replied, her voice quiet, unnerved.
“Your first murder scene?”
“Nein,” Adler said. “My second, and at this lake, if you can believe it.”
“And who was the first victim?”
“A young British man, a photographer and hiker, pulled from the lake last month.” Her cheeks were flushed red, whether from embarrassment or the cool air Mueller didn’t know. “I used to love the Müggelsee. Now I am starting to dread seeing it.”
“I hope you will be able to spend happier days here,” Mueller said. “How was the victim found?”
“By the two witnesses, there,” Adler said, pointing to the young couple sitting in the Gator. Closer to him, they looked to be barely more than teenagers to Mueller’s eye, but he was old enough that most everyone looked like children to him now. The woman was distraught enough that she probably had been incoherent an hour before. The man was holding her and saying nothing except to answer an officer’s questions with as few words as possible. Adler pulled out a notebook and read her own handwriting off the pages. “Thomas Gauck and Angela Weidmann. He brought her here this morning at sunrise to propose marriage. He says that he had spent a week wandering the lakeshore to find the best spot and finally settled on this one yesterday afternoon. He hadn’t counted on the rain, but decided not to postpone. They arrived on foot at six forty-five this morning. When the sun finally rose, they saw the victim in the shallows. The body was facedown in the silt, with no shirt or shoes. Mr. Gauck insists that he would have seen it yesterday afternoon had it been there, but the state of decomposition seems advanced, so it is unlikely that someone merely left the body here overnight. That spurred me to call your office. Our local office is not equipped to identify a victim so . . . unrecognizable.”
Mueller walked over to the blue shroud on the ground and saw Adler avert her gaze as he lifted a corner. “Not so bad,” he said. “The dirt from the water makes him look worse than he really is.” It was true, but Adler had not been entirely wrong. The deceased was bloated enough that identification would be problematic. Obviously male, a little under two meters, and moderately overweight, though his swollen tissues made his true weight difficult to estimate. Mueller scanned the muddy ground around the corpse and saw no sign of disturbance. Adler looked ill to him, trying to control her rebellious stomach, but questions had to be asked. “And there were no other tracks on the ground?”
“None that we could find other than those left by Herr Gauck and Fräulein Weidmann.”
“The ground is too soft for anyone to come and go and leave it unmarked,” Mueller observed. “It seems likely that the body floated here.”
“Ja,” Adler replied. “The Spree River inlet is a half kilometer from here, close enough to create a slight current that could have pushed the body from there to this point overnight.”
Mueller nodded. “I cannot say there was violence involved in this, but if so, it is possible that it could have been deposited here in the lake a few days ago, improperly tied and weighted, and worked its way to the surface. Decomposition creates gases in the tissues that make the corpse buoyant. They can be quite difficult to keep submerged.”
He’d recited the science as pure facts, not thinking about the woman standing to his left. He heard her make an unpleasant sound and he turned, seeing Adler’s face pale at the thoughts his words had drawn in her mind. Poor girl, Mueller thought. Such a thing to see before the holiday. He regretted that she would have to suffer through for a few minutes more. Procedures had to be observed. “Did you examine the body for distinguishing marks?”
“Only the areas we could see without moving it,” she said, her voice tenuous. “Obviously, the rigor has passed, but we did not want to disturb the site until you had a chance to inspect the area. He has a military tattoo of some kind on his left shoulder, but I’m not an expert on such marks. We did find something unusual when we checked his pants. If you’ll check the interior label—?”
Mueller donned a pair of latex gloves, then followed the young woman’s suggestion, turning the waistband of the wet blue jogging suit over. Adler saw the older man’s eyes widen when he saw the marking. He let the pants go, extracted a pair of glasses from his overcoat, put them on, and repeated the inspection.
Mueller let the pants go and pulled the suit top away from the corpse’s shoulder until he could see the tattoo. He stared at it for several seconds, committing it to memory, then stood, removing the glasses and the thin gloves. All sense of charm had vanished, replaced by a more serious demeanor in the time it had taken him to come to his feet. “I will talk to the witnesses and call in a forensic unit. We will take responsibility for the remains and the site, but I doubt there will be any evidence to collect here beyond the body itself. If you would share your interview notes and any suspected evidence, I would be most grateful. And could I trouble you to please summon the Bundesamt für Verfassungsshutz? The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution might have some domestic intelligence that could be useful. Interpol may also become involved.”
Adler’s brow furrowed deep. Mueller saw her confusion. “You recognize Cyrillic letters when you see them, yes?” he asked.
“Of course, Herr Mueller.”
He nodded. “I am familiar with military tattoos. The one on the victim’s shoulder is not uncommon among soldiers of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate. You might know them as the GRU, the old masters of the Spetsnaz Special Forces. That and his suit label together suggest this gentleman was a Russian intelligence officer at some point in his life. If he was still a military officer at the time of his death, then this is almost certainly a murder. No Spetsnaz soldier, past or present, would drown in the water unless he suffered a cardiac arrest or some other medical issue. The gray in his hair and his weight, even accounting for the bloating, suggest that he’s likely an officer, possibly a senior one. Enlisted soldiers of the Russian military are typically conscripts, and tend to be younger and more trim. So we face the possibility that a ranking Russian Special Forces officer died on our soil, possibly from misadventure or natural causes, but murder seems more likely to me. Unless we can rule that out, we must consider this as a potential national security matter, possibly involving espionage or organized criminal activity. So you are freed of responsibility for this matter.”
Adler exhaled. “I cannot say that I am sorry for that, Herr Mueller,” Adler said. “My men and I will be most grateful not to have to work this case.”
“I would say that you’re most welcome, Fräulein, but I’m not pleased to catch such a case myself.” He was past the age where he sought the big cases that promised recognition and advancement.
“I understand,” Adler said. “I will fetch m
y case notes for you and place the call.”
“Danke.” Adler trudged away toward the officer interviewing the witnesses and Mueller knelt down again and pulled back the plastic sheet. Thus ends my holiday, I think, he told himself. Perhaps next year.
Flughafen Berlin-Tegel Airport
Tegel, Borough of Reinickendorf
Berlin, Germany
The Boeing 777 carrying Alden Maines arrived late, which chafed him but created no real inconvenience. Nothing short of incarceration would truly upset his schedule. That was a real possibility, though a small one and not enough to cause him any anxiety as he made his way through customs. If the Germans had known to detain him, they would have sent men onto the plane before allowing anyone off. His logic proved right and the customs officer hardly looked at his face as she processed his passport and waved him into the Federal Republic of Germany without a welcome.
A driver was waiting for him, holding a card with the cover name the Russians had assigned him. The car was more average than Maines thought he deserved, but he supposed that anything expensive would’ve drawn attention. The driver gave him a sealed envelope before leaving him at a boutique hotel near the St. Clement-Kirche Chapel and the Hebbel Theater. He opened the letter in the privacy of his room, and the cryptic instructions inside ordered him to dine at a local eatery before calling a contact number. The operator at the other end of that call sent him another mile northwest on foot to a pub in Tiergarten, giving him time to walk a surveillance detection route and buy the current copy of the Economist. He held the magazine in his left hand at the intersection of Stulerstrasse and Cornelius at 2:45 local time to signal another driver, who was punctual.
Maines would’ve preferred some time to shake off the jet lag before the meeting, but he knew that he wouldn’t have slept. The world was going his way. The Russians had sampled the product he was offering and liked it enough to pay him a nice sum and ask him to come here. They would want to control him, of course, but he was the one selling the secrets, so the advantage was his. The Russians would follow his lead or they would lose his services. It was his neck on the block, wasn’t it?
The driver made the final turn and Maines was surprised at the destination. He’d expected a safe house.
The Russian Embassy in Berlin was a great stone slab of Stalinist design, hollowed out in the center and surrounded by a low rock parapet and wrought-iron gates. The white walls and trees in the courtyard at the building’s front tried to persuade onlookers that the embassy wasn’t some granite pustule erupting out of Berlin’s underside, but the pilasters and parapets above advertised the building’s cold, austere spirit. The enormous complex violated German laws governing the height of buildings along the Unter den Linden highway, but East Germany had been in no position during construction to ask its Soviet masters to obey regulations.
The car passed through gates manned by Russian guards and pulled into an underground garage. The driver gestured for Maines to follow and the two worked their way through back hallways and little-used stairwells. He supposed that his sponsors didn’t want the staff to see an American expatriate walking the corridors, but the small office where the sentry finally delivered him was disappointing. After he’d made peace with being at the embassy, he’d assumed that the meeting would take place in one of the finely furnished conference rooms on the building’s top floor. Maines had owned a larger office at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, and the chairs in this one hardly qualified as comfortable, much less ornate. The light was harsh, the walls concrete, and the pipes in the ceiling exposed. It was hardly a place to fete a man who could provide the information he held.
They made him wait another hour, the driver standing at the door to make sure he didn’t wander, and his temper was at a full rolling boil when his patron finally approached.
“Spasibo.” Arkady Lavrov ignored the American in favor of the sentry. “Pozhaluysta zakroyte dver.” The escort nodded and closed the door as he’d been asked after Lavrov stepped inside. The Russian GRU director went to his seat on the other side of the small desk, then leaned back and studied the American sitting across from him. “Mr. Maines, it is a shame that you are here. Do you love your country?”
Maines’s brow furrowed and he stared at the Russian. “I . . . of course I do.” What idiocy was this?
“That is unfortunate.”
Maines drew his head back. “General, I’m here to help my country.” He’d told himself that enough to believe it. “Relations between us have suffered because my president is a moron. Our two nations will benefit from having someone like me who can explain to you what my leaders are thinking—”
“You have no access to President Rostow,” Lavrov observed.
“I’ve been with the CIA for twenty years. I know how the White House and the Agency operate.”
“No doubt. But I question whether you understand what this will cost you.”
Maines’s features twisted in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m concerned about your soul, Mr. Maines.” Lavrov leaned forward, clasped his hands, and rested his arms on the desk. “I truly wish you were a mercenary, just giving up your country for money. It would make the new arrangement that I will propose easier on you. I have seen more than a few men commit that treason, some for money, others for revenge or ego, a few for reasons of conscience. The ones who do it out of principle, like yourself, almost go mad from the shame and the homesickness, once they are discovered and have to live in exile. Even the ones who do it for less honorable reasons and are beyond feeling guilt simply never know another day without fear, another peaceful night. They wonder whether this won’t be the day that the knock comes at their door. The money or the vengeance or the excitement never can cure that. So I fear for you, Mr. Maines. If you truly are doing this for principle, then I wish that you had been faithful to your country.”
“I fingered a traitor to your country,” Maines protested. The anger was starting to rise in his chest now. He’d run this meeting through his mind over and over, and no imaginary version of it had ever followed this course. “I helped you neutralize a serious threat to your operations to prove my sincerity—”
“Yes, you did,” Lavrov said. “I almost wish you hadn’t. General Strelnikov had been my very good friend for a long time. It hurt me deeply to know that he had been unfaithful to us. You are correct that he was jeopardizing our work, but it saddened me all the same. He thought he was helping a country that he loved. It’s just unfortunate that he loved two countries and imagined that he could divide his loyalties. I know how he would have suffered for that through the years had you not told us what he had done.”
“ ‘Would have suffered’?” Maines asked.
“He was executed.”
“Huh,” Maines grunted in surprise. He should’ve expected that, wasn’t sure why he hadn’t, but it didn’t rankle him much. Men had been sacrificed before to prevent hostilities between nations, and the leaders who’d sacrificed them were hailed for it later. The masses sometimes needed a few years to realize the wisdom of the choice, but the historians were usually kind.
“He cannot hurt the Rodina anymore, for which I am glad, and now his conscience will not torture him, for which I am also glad. But you will come to regret what you have done, I think,” Lavrov said.
Maines fought the urge to roll his eyes at the man’s stupidity. The entire conversation had left him off balance. The casual way that Lavrov had denied him control of the discussion, deflecting every attempt to seize the initiative from the outset, was maddening. Get on with the business, he thought, but did not say. He pushed ahead. “General, if you don’t want my information, I’m sure there are others in your government who would appreciate what I have to offer,” he said. “But I don’t know why you would be stubborn about security or money. You already paid me fifty thousand dollars.”
“That will not be necessary,” Lavrov told him. “You are here and your information will be useful. So I a
m prepared to hear what you have to tell me. As for money, you will receive none.”
Maines frowned, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“After your flight to Berlin had left America’s airspace, I had one of our people in Washington inform your FBI that you were defecting to the Russian Federation.”
“You . . . what? I don’t—”
“Like Cortés in Mexico, I burned your ship after you landed in the New World, as it were.” Lavrov reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a sheet, and slid it across to the American. “You will not be going home, Mr. Maines.”
Maines looked at the sheet and started to rock back in surprise before he caught himself. He stared at the paper, a copy of an Interpol Blue Notice with his photograph . . . the one from his Agency badge, in fact.
Maines, Alden
WANTED BY THE JUDICIAL AUTHORITIES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR PROSECUTION
IDENTITY PARTICULARS
Present family name:
Maines
Forename:
Alden
Sex:
Male
Date of birth:
10/09/1980 (39 years old)
Place of birth:
Los Angeles, California, United States of America
Language(s) spoken:
English, Russian, Spanish
Nationality:
American (USA)
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Height:
1.8 meter
Weight:
77 Kg
Colour of hair:
Brown
Colour of eyes:
Green
CHARGES Published as provided by requesting entity
Charges:
Treason, corruption