12 Drummers Drumming

by Diana Deverell

  Van Hoof rolled to a stop in Theodor-Heuss Platz, so close to an idling tour bus that exhaust fumes clouded our windshield. “Those are their instructions.”

  “They better stick to them.”

  “Erika has briefed them fully. Number one priority is getting you in and out unharmed. Shouldn’t be a problem. If Krüger wants safe haven, he’ll have the same goal.”

  Sure. If safe haven was what he most wanted.

  The tour bus was sleek, its lower body the color of thick cream. A lanky man with two Nikons looped around his neck was helping a fur-coated woman board through the rear door. Another bundled pair came out of the lobby of the high-rise hotel, which had once provided accommodations for guests of the British Berlin Infantry Brigade. This English-language tour to Potsdam had been laid on primarily for the benefit of retired British military officers who wanted to visit the site where Churchill, Truman and Stalin had met in July of 1945 to determine the future political structure of Europe. I could use it to travel toward Krüger in company of my choosing.

  As I climbed out of the taxi, van Hoof said softly, “Take care.” I managed a smile in reply, then slammed the door.

  I joined the queue at the rear door to the bus, my breath white in the icy air, my neck chilled below the brim of my hat. I pulled my scarf higher to fill the gap and rearranged the fringed ends in front.

  I spotted Bert in the rearmost seat, lips pursed, appearing to concentrate on the newspaper in front of his face. He made a show of turning the page, lowering the paper enough to make eye contact. The message in his was as clear as if he’d spoken: Chin up, girl, I’m with you. Heartened, I took the window seat ahead of the rear door. The floor-heater vent was working overtime. The odor of hot wax rose from my boots and my feet itched from the sudden change in temperature.

  A slender man in an orange blazer and red cap bounded on board to stand in the center aisle. He began his spiel as the bus pulled away from the hotel. The cloud cover outside was so low it almost touched the curved walls of the Olympic Stadium, where in 1936 Jesse Owens gave Adolf Hitler a foretaste of the future humbling of his master race. The boulevard wound south through the leafless Grunewald, the ground beneath the trees as free of sticks as if it were swept daily.

  We rolled across the forgotten border and onto rutted highways of the former German Democratic Republic. Unkempt fields stretched beyond the berm. The feeble daylight faded still more under the thick cloud cover, the sky darkening to match the soot-stained buildings of Potsdam.

  A black mood settled over me, the charred emotions you feel after you’ve been badly burned by your lover.

  For more than a decade, my security file must have shown that Stefan had a half brother who’d worked in HVA—and I’d known nothing about it.

  Harry had known: He’d carefully done his research on Stefan’s half brother. And as my friend, he’d been glad when Krüger died and security could erase the question mark next to my name. Harry naturally assumed that Stefan had long ago given me the critical facts. His half brother’s name. His rank. His assignment in East German intelligence. But Stefan had told me only that his father had an older son with a different mother. At some point he mentioned that his half brother had recently been killed in a car accident. And he’d never spoken of him again.

  Harry also assumed that I’d learned as soon as he had that Krüger was still alive. He figured that Billy Nu would discuss that issue in the context of my background investigation. Billy Nu, who’d been protecting me for years, who knew my security file by heart—Billy Nu hadn’t talked to me about Krüger. So why had Billy remained silent?

  Mike Buchanan’s signature stood out in bold relief. The FBI was already interested in the Belgian sale of embargoed computer equipment to Qadhafi. Buchanan must have surmised a U.S. connection. He was predisposed to detect a treacherous American. When his man in Brussels spotted Krüger in the infamous news photo, Buchanan had made the logical leap from Krüger to Stefan to me.

  He would have gone immediately to my security file. According to the regulations, I had to disclose any close association I had with a foreign national. My written reports regularly included Stefan. I’d never named his half brother. When Buchanan consulted my file, that omission must have alarmed him.

  He’d gotten on my case immediately. Gagging Billy. Combing through my life for evidence of clandestine meetings. Tapping my phone. Examining my financial records. Interrogating Lura.

  He’d relied on the FBI’s favorite counterespionage tactic. Let the suspect think she’s under no suspicion, catch her in the act of treason. The longer I went without mentioning my link to Krüger, the more likely it became that our connection was criminal. Then Global 500 went down with Billy Nu and the Brussels LegAtt on board. My name turned up on the FBI list as someone who’d shown suspicious interest in the bombing. On Christmas morning, I slipped out of the country and Buchanan had immediately gotten authority to search my condo. When I returned to the U.S., he resolved not to let me escape again. Lacking sufficient evidence to arrest me then, he tried to bluff me into a voluntary confession.

  The bodies won’t stay buried, if you catch my drift. I hadn’t. I knew nothing about Krüger then. I’d thought Buchanan was overzealous, misinterpreting spurious information that wrongly implicated me. Turned out he was much sharper than I’d guessed. Some funny business going on between that damn Father-Major and your Polish friend.

  Very funny business indeed that had put Billy Nu and the Brussels LegAtt on Global 500. Reasonable to assume they’d been lured to their deaths to halt further damage to Reinhardt Krüger, alias Gunter Storch. No doubt Buchanan tied that back to me, too.

  Buchanan had bluffed. And I’d fled. For Buchanan, flight was prima facie evidence of my duplicity. That rash act had guaranteed my arrest warrant.

  The bus continued on through the murk, past Frederick the Great’s rococo castles, which sat like ornate jewels on poisoned ground. By the time we reached Cecilienhof Palace, the clouds were spitting ice pellets.

  Out of the bus, I felt the sleet sting my face. Clutching the brim of my hat to keep the wind from taking it, I hurried toward the brooding building. New by European standards— built at the beginning of this century—it looked more like an oversize hunting lodge than a castle, a retreat of wood and stone where men came after the killing to compare their trophies. We gathered inside the entrance, coats rustling, boots stomping. The camera-laden man beside me glanced around and said disparagingly to his companion, “Mock Tudor.”

  The museum guide appeared, professorial in a gray cardigan with elbow patches. His hair was sparse, his teeth bad, his speech in English a relic of the Communist era when he’d committed it to memory. We began in the room used by the Soviet delegation. The guide listed Comrade Stalin first in every reference he made to the three men who’d met here. Four men, really, he was careful to note. Midway through the Potsdam Conference the Brits had held an election, booted Churchill out of the Prime Minister’s job and handed it over to Clement Atlee. We passed furniture, wall hangings, memorabilia—all gifts to the German people from Comrade Stalin. We reached the library used by the British delegation and I stopped listening to the guide.

  My eyes automatically went to the book I’d been instructed to locate. The bookshelves in the wall facing the door by which you enter. Fifth shelf from the bottom. Fourth volume from the left. I forced my gaze away from it. I took two steps toward the modest desk, cordoned off by a velvet rope. I checked my watch. We’d begun the tour on time, at ten forty-five. Now it was eleven-fifteen. I was where I was supposed to be.

  I furrowed my brow in an expression I hoped looked meditative and moved as I’d been directed, to stand in front of the many-paned French door. It looked out on the palace’s rear lawn, a sweep of winter-brown grass sloping a hundred yards to the water. In 1945, the American president had come from Berlin by boat down the Havel River, probably mooring only a short distance from where I stood.

  About a third of th
e way to the river, a trio of men lingered with their trench-coated backs to me, hatless, staring out across the water as though waiting still for Harry Truman. The man in the middle was shorter than the other two, older, with white hair pushed toward me by the wind. The men flanking him were thuggish security types with stocky bodies and hedgehog haircuts.

  Time for me to move closer to the book holding the next part of my instructions. As I shifted my weight, I saw the center man smooth the wisps of hair with his right hand, patting the crown as though the cowlick of his youth still tormented him. That gesture—I knew it.

  I froze. I couldn’t take my eyes off the white-haired man.

  He turned his head to peer off to his left. I saw the thickened skin drooping into jowl below his jawline. The small eye that I knew was set in a web of wrinkles. Six weeks ago, I’d pressed my lips against the soft, slack skin of his cheek and took comfort from his familiar scent, Mennen For Men, the bottle of emerald liquid a fixture beside his sink all my life.

  Six weeks ago, we’d celebrated Thanksgiving in Oregon.

  Now I was in Potsdam. And so was my father.

  17

  I leaned toward the window. Pressure on the velvet cord moved the stanchion an inch across the floor, the rough squeak like a shriek in the quiet room.

  The three men turned and started toward me. I saw my father’s face full on. His eyes were clouded. I wasn’t sure he registered the sight of the building in front of him. Let alone his daughter peering out from the security-barred French door. Then the threesome veered off to the left and I couldn’t see them anymore.

  I went over to the bookcase. Reached up and pulled a book out at random. My eyes wouldn’t focus on the page. I couldn’t read the title. My heart fluttered inside my chest, a bird trapped in an airshaft. Only by an act of will could I keep myself from gasping.

  I pulled out another book. My damp fingers marked the cover. In all, I left my fingerprints on at least a half-dozen books. Finally, I held Plutarch’s Lives in my hands. It smelled of mildew and the binding was frayed. I removed the folded onionskin inserted between the cover and the spine. Then I carefully put the book back on the shelf.

  I looked at three more books before I crossed to the exit door, where our guide waited. In a loud voice, I asked for directions to the women’s rest room. I didn’t listen to his reply. I knew my next stop was the adjacent building, which our tour group had reserved for a catered Sunday dinner. My boot heels clicked against the cement as I crossed the space between the two buildings. The air inside was heavy with the sweet-sour smell of venison marinated overnight for sauerbraten and then left to simmer since dawn.

  I latched myself into a stall in the ladies’ toilet and unfolded the paper. My instructions were to find the red-brown Ford parked in the third row of the lot, key beneath the driver’s seat. Use it and the map beneath the seat to get to the indicated location at ten minutes before three o’clock. Divulge my destination to no one.

  That was all. No WE HAVE YOUR FATHER. No sentence beginning, IF YOU WANT HIM TO LIVE. Krüger didn’t have to put his threat in writing. I knew that to keep my father safe, I had to arrive at this meeting alone, without backup.

  On the other side of the partition, an aerosol can sighed. I smelled hairspray. I heard a murmur of German. Then the tinny sound of small change hitting the dish set out for tips. My wristwatch read 11:25. The minute hand seemed to spring ahead to 11:26. So far to go. So much to do. I lifted the lever and water roared into the bowl.

  I slid my hand into my coat pocket. My fingertips found the basting threads and broke them. I inserted my thumb and forefinger through the false bottom. The tracking device was a centimeter in diameter. I dropped it into the sanitary-napkin receptacle. I flattened my hat and stuffed it in on top of the transmitter. A corner of winy-red felt stuck out. I tamped it down. Then I yanked off my coat. The lining of charcoal silk slid over my hands like water. I turned the coat inside out and draped it over my arm so that the gray color showed instead of maroon.

  The five-mark coin I dropped into the tip dish rang against the porcelain. The attendant’s head snapped toward the sound of real money. While she was scooping it into her apron pocket, I hurried into the anteroom, dumped my coat into the waste-basket and pulled crumpled paper over it. If the attendant discovered the coat, it was hard to guess where she’d go with it. But the transmitter would keep on signaling from inside this room.

  The henna-haired woman defending the cloakroom folded her arms and raised both her chins. She tried hard to make me understand that she couldn’t give me a wrap unless I first produced a claim check. My flustered incomprehension won her over. Plus the German coins I kept shoving at her as though I were equally confused about their value. She let me have the ratty fur I’d last seen on my British tour companion. I shrugged into it and lifted my scarf up over my hair.

  Outside, I kept my head bowed, my feet moving. A gust of wind cut my eyes like a whip and I stumbled. Bert stood watch beside the open door of the tour bus, shoulders hunched. He held a lighted cigarette. His hand moved toward his mouth as he pretended to enjoy one last smoke before going inside to eat. I walked purposefully by him, the distance between us less than fifty feet. But he kept his eyes on the buildings.

  The Ford was easy to spot—a European-built, four-cylinder compact with a manual transmission. The ice on the windshield was no more than would have accumulated in fifteen minutes. The velour seat was warm and I smelled minty chewing gum.

  The engine responded eagerly. I headed southwest toward Wittenberg, where Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the church door in 1517. Not my destination today. Krüger had summoned me to a hideaway in the Spreewald, the picturesque forest bordering the river flowing southeast from Berlin. I was heading for Wittenberg only to discover if I’d eluded my minders.

  A mud-spattered Audi pulled in behind me. In my rearview mirror I saw a woman driver with a male passenger. They weren’t Krüger’s people. It wasn’t likely that Krüger would allow anyone else to know he was considering refuge in the U.S. Even if he were having my movements watched, he’d do it surreptitiously, to see who else was keeping track of me. The car behind me had to be one of Erika’s teams, borrowed from the Mossad.

  So Bert had spotted me. My protector, he’d scrambled to get my backup in place. He’d managed to alert at least the pair in this car. They’d be wondering what I’d done with the transmitter. They’d want to keep me in sight. I puttered along at a slow speed, driving south on a pockmarked highway. As we approached Beelitz, the Audi moved up. The car tapped my rear bumper and the horn blared. The woman took her hand off the horn and jerked her thumb to the right. The command was unmistakable. Pull over.

  I slowed to twenty-five, scanning the side streets for a likely spot. Halfway along the town’s main street, I saw an alley that cut through the middle of the block to a parallel street. I turned into the alley, downshifted into second, held in the clutch with my left foot, braked with my right. The Audi pulled in so close that the off-white paint on its hood became pink in the reflection from my brake lights. The driver’s side door opened and a tall woman got out. Her blond hair was braided and coiled on top of her head in the style favored by Wagnerian opera singers. An imperious Brunhild, she slammed her door and took a step toward me.

  Even the pros make mistakes.

  I released the brake. I moved my foot off the clutch while at the same instant I mashed the gas pedal to the floor. The Ford shot down the alley, the perfect racing start my father had taught me, ordered me never to use on a public street. A pedestrian jumped backward out of my way. My tires squealed through the sharp left into the street. I bent over the wheel, urging the car forward. At the first cross street I turned right, heading for the countryside.

  I’d gained maybe five seconds’ lead over the Audi. I raced down the side road, took a curve on two wheels, fishtailed onto a gravel road and found a dirt track leading into a patch of evergreen trees stunted in their youth by t
he GDR’s coal-poisoned air. The road split, then split again, and I took first the left fork, then the right, following narrowing tracks blanketed with red-brown needles. For the last kilometer, I was on no discernible road at all, gliding across a carpet the same shade as my car, wending my way between the scrawny trees until the gaps became too narrow to continue.

  I turned off the engine and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. It was silent except for the random noises from the cooling engine. I smelled only my own sweat. I raised my head and checked my watch. Twelve thirty-three. My path had been unpredictable and far-ranging. Unless my followers were lucky, they wouldn’t come near me. And if they did, from ten yards away my car was invisible, blending in with the forest floor.

  I let out a sigh. The people in the Audi couldn’t make the systematic search it would take to find me. No matter how well documented they might be, Israeli agents preferred not to attract attention to themselves in Germany. I was safe from them so long as I didn’t move.

  I forced my neck to stiffen, dragged my head upright again. I had to move. I had to go to Krüger. The rendezvous location was one hundred and fifteen kilometers away on back roads. I had little more than two hours to get there. I couldn’t linger. I had to return to the road. Risk being spotted again. How big a risk? Surely the Mossad hadn’t put more than two cars into this operation. Not enough to cover the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle around Potsdam, trying to discover which way I’d gone.

  Was there any chance they knew my destination?

  I had to figure no. The Mossad had made an attempt on Krüger’s life. He would be careful to go only where he felt certain they wouldn’t find him. My destination in the Spreewald had to fall into that category, a private place where Krüger was confident his enemies would not surprise him.