And Faith sat on the stool, waiting.
The interrogator kicked her awake from where she had fallen to the floor. She awoke from one nightmare into another.
“What are you doing for the KGB?”
“Nothing.” Pain doubled her over as she held on to the stool and tried to pull herself up.
“On your feet. We’ve had enough.” The interrogator yanked her hair.
Her scalp burned. The interrogator pulled a blindfold from a pocket and bound it around her head. Fingers sank into her arm. The interrogator led her from the cell, deliberately running her into the hated stool.
Light seeped under her blindfold. Artificial. Night, or a windowless hallway? She sensed someone behind her. She turned her head.
“Walk.” The interrogator shoved her.
Damp cool air rose toward her. She tripped on a step, but someone caught her. She smelled the aftershave. Schmidt. The fucker was here all along.
The interrogator pushed her into a car and climbed in beside her. The other door opened and Schmidt wedged himself into the backseat. The car seemed smaller than the Mercedes that had picked her up in West Berlin. She doubted he was taking her home. They still needed her, she thought—she hoped.
The car sped down a long, straight road. Karl-Marx-Allee? Frankfurter Allee? Leipziger Strasse? She didn’t hear many other cars. The bursts of streetlight under the blindfold grew farther apart, then only darkness. The steady swish of the windshield wipers counted down the minutes of her life.
The car stopped.
“Out!” The interrogator pulled her from the car and dragged her several yards into shallow water.
Faith was shoved onto her knees and she sank into the deep cold mud.
The interrogator grabbed her hair and pushed her down. Faith inhaled just before her face smacked the water. It stung all the way up her nose and the burn radiated through her sinuses. She coughed, inhaling more. She fought, but sank deeper. Terror.
The interrogator jerked Faith’s head from the water. Faith gasped for air. She couldn’t hold on much longer, but she knew her life depended upon it.
“For the last time, when did you first meet Colonel Bogdanov?”
“Friday.” She sputtered.
“How do you contact her?”
“I don’t.”
“What did she want from you?”
“Technology.” Dean Reed.
“Did you tell her you’re working for us?”
“No! No! No!” She was falling into hysteria. “No!”
The interrogator shoved her back under the water. Faith held her breath. Her head throbbed with pressure. Suddenly her lungs contracted. She inhaled, sucking in water. She coughed. She gasped.
Then she was back to the surface.
“What did you tell them about us?”
Faith heaved, her body convulsing. She knew she was going to drown the next time. She had to give them what they wanted. She opened her mouth to tell them the KGB knew.
Before she could speak, the interrogator forced her back under the lonely water.
Dean Reed.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
If people don’t like Marxism,
they should blame the British Museum.
—GORBACHEV
PERGAMON MUSEUM, EAST BERLIN
EARLIER THAT DAY
Margaret prepared to break her vow to God for the second time in some thirty years as she rushed past the Altar of Zeus with its sinful carvings of Greeks exposing their privates to the world. She was taking a shortcut to do His will and she hoped Jesus would forgive her because she wouldn’t forgive herself if she took too long to help and more innocent folks were massacred in Armenia. Yurij had proposed the meeting place even though he knew that as a good Christian lady she’d never go near a pagan altar. He always did have a charmingly ironic sense of setting.
She slowed down as she passed under the towering Gate of Ishtar and spotted him pretending to admire the mosaics of scrawny lions on the walls of Babylon. Yurij was an agent of the devil assigned to tempt her away from the Lord and once he almost succeeded in his mission, but this time she had the wisdom of age on her side. He stole a glance and from the way he looked at her she knew he still saw her as the vibrant missionary reaching out to East Berliners before the Wall. She didn’t want to let herself see the urbane young gentleman who had duped her into believing that she had led him from Lenin to Jesus. She eyed Yurij and wished he weren’t as eye-grabbing as the first day they met.
They stood beside each other, studying some critter made out of glazed brick from the lascivious city of Babylon. Desire tugged at her to reach out and touch him, but she respected protocol. She tapped on a tape recorder borrowed from the museum for a self-guided tour and shrugged her shoulders as if she couldn’t get it to work. She pretended to ask Yurij for help.
“Maggie, too many years have wedged between us for me to believe this is a casual visit.”
“I think we share a common interest,” she said.
“We always have.” He took the recorder from her, removed the tape and tightened it. His hair had gone from blond to distinguished platinum.
“I know you people don’t like what Gorbachev is up to. And, to tell it to you outright, I don’t, either. What’s the point in being a Bible smuggler when Bibles are everywhere, but no one’s reading them? I can’t imagine the spy business is too rewarding nowadays, either. If Gorbachev keeps doing what he’s doing, we’ll both be victims of history.”
“Then there won’t be anything more to keep us apart, will there?” Yurij said with a smile.
“Only God and your wife—and I know the one you fear,” Margaret said. “But I don’t have the right connections to round up enough of what I need. I need you to bend a few rules.”
“I don’t bend rules.”
“I recollect you’re more apt to break them.” Margaret gestured toward a dragon figure, carefully watching Yurij out of the corner of her eye. He was as fit as always, though he’d added a few pounds to his butt. She still remembered what it was like to squeeze those tight buns.
He randomly pushed buttons on the recorder. “What do you want?”
“Landmines. Lots of them.”
“Impossible. What would you do with anti-personnel mines?” Yurij’s left eye twitched.
“Military types call it ’territorial denial.’ I call it protecting some innocent folks from genocide.”
“You’d be better off giving them assault rifles.”
“I’d never forgive myself for giving someone offensive weapons they could hurt someone with. I want something purely defensive so I can sleep at night.”
“What the devil are you doing?” He put on her headset as if testing the equipment. “You’re not getting mixed up with the Caucasus, are you? It’s worse there than the Balkans ever were. At least the Serbs feel some guilt when they slit your throats—the Tartars feel only pleasure.”
“I’ve got to try to save them. Children are dying and it’s not right. God had to take a very special lady from me to get me to listen to Him. Right before she died in my arms, she delivered a message from the Lord.” Tears pooled in Margaret’s eyes. “That girl was just like my daughter.”
Yurij gingerly pushed back her hair and placed the earphones on her head. “I’ve seen your daughter. She has her mother’s beauty and her wiles.”
“You stay away from my girl.”
“You two haven’t talked in years.”
“She’s still my baby. Look me in the eyes and promise me you’ll leave her be.” She faked a smile for anyone watching.
“I’ll arrange the Moscow contacts you need to acquire the mines. I don’t have the funds to underwrite you, so you’ll have to finance them yourself.”
“Promise me?” Margaret said.
He shook hands with her to maintain the façade of two strangers and slipped her a hotel key. “You know I can never resist you, Maggie. Meet me there in a half-hour. I’ve waited on
you for so long.”
Jesus forgive me, but my flesh is weak. Margaret wrestled with the guilt of rapture as she formulated her prayers for forgiveness.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
A single death is a tragedy,
a million deaths a statistic.
—STALIN
EAST BERLIN
1:17 A.M. TUESDAY, APRIL 25
Faith knelt in the muddy shallows, coughing and gasping for life. She ripped off the blindfold and stumbled to the riverbank. She lay on the ground, hacking, purging the water from her lungs. With each cough, white pain shot through her side.
She crossed her arms and pressed them against her shivering body to preserve heat. Wet hair clung to her face. They had her glasses, but they would have been useless in the pounding rain and darkness. She looked around, but could make out only shadows. The sky glowed in one direction. West Berlin. Thank God for capitalist decadence. She pushed herself up and dragged herself toward the light, toward the West—even though she had no way of crossing the Wall.
She wandered through the woods for what seemed like hours. She stepped into a hole, jarring her entire body. Curling up and sleeping was all she wanted to think about, but she pushed on. The rain pelted her and melted the forest floor into mud. Her foot sank several inches into the muck, but her next step met resistance. A sidewalk. She cried tears of relief as her foot tapped against the concrete. She followed it with renewed determination when she saw lights flickering through the trees.
Even without her glasses, she could recognize a familiar figure, a titanic Red Army soldier protecting the child. At that moment she wanted to take the child’s place. She told herself she’d be okay and, for the first time in days, she believed it. She knew where she was—Treptower Park. Back on familiar ground, her thoughts were free to move beyond survival. She realized she’d done it—she’d convinced them she had nothing to do with the KGB. Faith Whitney had beaten the Stasi—at least in this round. The rush energized her and she picked up her pace.
The rain slacked off as she reached the S-Bahn station. It was deserted except for several stray cats. No suspicious cars were parked nearby. She collapsed onto a bench and waited for a train. Her tormentors were probably at home, sleeping off their fun. She’d never truly desired to kill before, but she wanted them dead. Most of all, she wanted to get Schmidt. Maybe he was the one who took her father from her. He was old enough to have been there. She craved revenge for herself and for her father as she stretched out on the hard bench and quivered with rage, chill and pain.
Faith had no visa, no passport and no money, but she hoped she had a friend. She clung to the shadows as she darted into Jürgen’s apartment building. She removed her shoes so she didn’t leave a muddy trail for the Stasi to follow. She knocked on the door, too depleted to worry about his reaction. No answer. When she couldn’t wait any longer, she pounded. A light switched on.
“Faith, it’s three in the morning.” Jürgen slurred his words. A hasty knot held his bathrobe barely closed. “Come in before the neighbors—”
“Thank you.” Her voice was raspy, her throat raw. A test pattern flickered on the black and white television. Cigarette ashes floated in a glass beside an empty whiskey bottle. Jürgen rustled through a stack of old newspapers and spread a Neues Deutschland on the floor for her shoes.
“Sorry about the hour. I need help.”
“I see that. Don’t worry about it. I haven’t gone to bed yet.” He rubbed his glassy eyes.
“Hakan and I had a fight.”
“You here to talk about it? I’m the last person you want to talk about relationships with.”
“Any signs after the embassy visit that the Stasi’s been here?” Each word was an effort.
“Come to think of it, Friday, when I came home, the place didn’t feel right. I haven’t thought any more about it, but it struck me at the time that some things were a little off, a chair in the kitchen, some papers on my desk. What’s going on?”
“You checked for cameras or bugs?” She steadied herself on the back of a chair and lied to herself that she was safe. Her ribs ached with each breath.
“Faith, are you all right?” Jürgen reached out and steadied her, then helped ease her down into an armchair. “Hakan didn’t beat you up, did he?”
“Hakan, never.” Faith shook her head. “They hide them in light fixtures. Any electric plugs go bad lately?”
“Yeah, now that you mention it, one in the kitchen went out late last week. I should get you to a doctor. You look really bad.”
“Check it.”
Faith wanted to soak longer in the tub, but was afraid she’d fall asleep and slip under the warm bathwater. The bruises on her rib cage had turned a deep purple. She forced herself to palpate them. Some had to be cracked. She carefully pulled on a bathrobe and shuffled into the kitchen.
Frayed wires hung from the wall and a tiny camera and microphone were proudly displayed on the table. She sat down and Jürgen draped a wool blanket around her shoulders. She downed two spoonfuls of honey immediately in hopes of quickly raising her blood sugar. Jürgen poured coffee into a chipped mug. “You take cream, don’t you?”
Faith nodded, conscious of the weight of her head. She slopped butter onto dark whole-kernel bread, slapped a piece of cheese on top and downed it in a few hasty bites. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Looks like you could use a friend right now. Want to tell me what’s going on? Why are they watching me?”
The food revived her. “You went to the Soviet embassy. They’re allergic to anything related to Gorbachev.” She bought herself time to think with a mouthful of cheese. She wanted to trust him, but he was a Party member and a man with problems. The Stasi specialized in people like him. “Hakan and I had it out—but he didn’t touch me. I should get my own place. It’s stupid, but it always is. I had to get away, so I came East and went for a stroll in Treptower Park. I forgot how few streetlights there are here. It got dark fast. I fell into the mud and lost my glasses. I got turned around.”
Jürgen studied her face with the care of a palmist reading every line. “You don’t act like this is the first meal you’ve missed. Your eyes are bloodshot like from lack of sleep, not swollen like you’ve been crying. When women fight, they cry. Believe me, I know. So, how badly do you want me to believe this bull?”
“Enough not to want to involve you.”
“You know I stand up for what’s right, but you have to be straight with me.”
Faith took a breath, opened her mouth, then hesitated. Jürgen once wrote a dissertation that his adviser called brilliant, but refused to accept until three politically inappropriate footnotes were removed. He refused and left the doctoral program rather than compromise his principles. Faith supposed she could trust him. She had to. She had to connect with someone and let out a little of the terror.
“I can’t go into details, but I spent time with the Association.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What day is today?”
“Tuesday.”
“Almost three days. I thought four or five.” She devoured another slice of bread with cheese. “They thought I had something going on with the Russians. They kept asking me about our trip to the embassy, implying I was working for the KGB.”
“Are you?”
“No.” She finished the coffee and held out her cup for more. “They dumped me. It’s wretched out there tonight.” Memories of her struggle for breath were too raw to touch. She coughed and it hurt.
“Yeah, it’s been months since we’ve had so much rain.”
“They kept everything, including my passport.”
“So you refused them.”
Faith spread black currant jam on the bread. “I’m sure they’re trapping me here for another crack at me, but I’m not giving it to them. I’ll scale the Wall first.” She sipped the coffee, ignoring the grit.
Jürgen stared at her. “I saw a report on West Berlin TV the other day
. A dozen people make it over every month.”
“I was joking. I’ve heard the shots at night. I am getting out of here and then I’m leaving Germany for good. The stakes are too high. Please understand that if you tell anyone I’m here, your words could translate into my death.”
“They talk to me from time to time, you know. I don’t like it, but what can you do?”
“Try not to talk to them until after I’m gone. Please.”
“You know how it is.” He bowed his head, paused and then pushed himself back from the table. “I’ll make you up a bed on the divan. Stay as long as you like. I have a friend I trust who’s a doctor. If you want—”
“Thanks. Some ribs are cracked, maybe broken, but there’s not much anyone can do for that.”
“You’re very pale.”
“I can’t risk it.”
“I’ll get you a sports bandage and something for the pain. It’ll help you sleep, too.”
“That package I left with you before we went to the embassy. I need it.”
“It’s somewhere in my office. The library’s closed at this hour, but I could get it if you really need it.”
“Get it to me right after work—five at the latest should give me enough time. I know a call to the West is out of the question, so could you send a telegram to Hakan?” She picked up a pen and scrawled on the back of an envelope.
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