He looked again. No signal—neither primary nor duress—was to be seen. He knew the man he codenamed “Gypsy,” the train driver, was out of the game.
It’s a question of time.
12
Wheeler rang the doorbell of Building 817 and stood back. It wasn’t long before the door swung open. Becker held it open as Wheeler stepped inside. Off to the side, another man stood watching. He was in civilian clothing but had a Walther P5 pistol in his hip holster.
“Jamie, welcome to our lair, we’ve been expecting you.” Becker knew who he was dealing with already, having a photo of Wheeler in hand that had been secure faxed to the unit moments before.
“Thanks, it looks like you guys are ready for unwelcome guests as well.”
“We always keep a few guys on standby. You can never tell, we’re too close to the border here.”
“I wish we did. We rely on the feared German Labor Service guards to protect us.”
“Feared?”
“Most of them are draft evaders from West Germany. The only danger they pose is if they pull their pistols out of the holster. They’ll probably shoot themselves or some innocent being by mistake.”
That brought a laugh to his hosts.
“Let’s go up to our briefing room. We can talk there.”
Becker led the way up a wide set of well-worn granite steps to the first floor and then down the hall to a metal door. He opened the door and gestured for Wheeler to enter.
There were already several men waiting at a table. Wheeler took a seat and opened his briefcase on the table.
“Tell the sergeant major that we’re all here,” Becker said to the escort and shut the door.
“We’re all cleared to talk anything up to Top Secret. The room is secure but not for any special access material.”
“I’ll keep my discussion general then.”
The door opened again and Sergeant Major Bergmann walked in along with another man. Bergmann shook Wheeler’s hand.
“Hi Jamie, I haven’t seen you since Ban Me Thuot!” Bergmann introduced the man who stood behind him.
“Colonel, this is Jamie Wheeler, Deputy Base Chief. He was in Command and Control South with me around 1970, if I remember correctly. Jamie, this is our commander, Colonel Jelinek.”
Jelinek, a man almost as big as Wheeler, stepped around Bergmann to grasp Wheeler’s hand. He squeezed it hard as he pumped it vigorously in a test of strength. Wheeler was apparently up to the task as the colonel dropped his hand with a broad grin.
“Welcome, Wheeler. I just stepped in to tell you that these are some of my best men and they will do what you need done.”
Jelinek spoke with a heavy accent, attributable to his birth in Czechoslovakia. He always called his men by their last names with one exception: the sergeant major. Despite Bergmann’s service with the German Army during World War II, Jelinek respected him greatly. Bergmann served with the Werewolves, the last-ditch resistance at the end of the war, but he had seen the writing on the wall and quickly surrendered to the advancing Americans. His experience with the GIs who captured him persuaded him to emigrate to the States in 1946.
Jelinek continued with the smile of an executioner, “And if you guys screw it up, I will arrange a vacation to the gulags and replace you with another team from upstairs!”
It was as close to a pep talk as Jelinek would ever give.
“Becker, I want a full mission briefback before this goes ahead,” Jelinek added.
With that, the colonel was gone.
“I don’t know him. What’s his background?” Wheeler wondered aloud.
Bergmann explained: “The colonel escaped the Nazis when they occupied Czechoslovakia and fought with the French Resistance through the war. He came to America about the same time as I did. Enlisted in the army, became an officer and he’s been involved in a lot of special projects since then. Helluva soldier, but no one knows him very well. Perfect for this place as he has lived unconventional and clandestine warfare most of his life.”
“But we should get down to business. Would you brief us in on the details, Jamie?” the sergeant major said as he took a seat.
Wheeler took a folder out of his briefcase and laid some notes and a photograph on the table.
“This is the man we need to extract. All the details are written down so I won’t talk about them here. You must adopt the same procedure—names, places, addresses, phone numbers should never be discussed openly. This mission is that sensitive. Understood?”
After looking at each man around the table and receiving their acknowledgement, Wheeler continued.
“He is under surveillance, but has not been arrested. That may mean he is only suspected or maybe he is one of a number of suspects. Maybe they want him to panic and expose his contacts. He is very experienced, however, and is lying low. So we have to get to him first.”
“How soon?” the sergeant major interrupted.
“As soon as possible, hopefully within seven days at the most.” There was a wave of disbelieving comments.
“Seven days? We’ll have to cobble this together from A to Z—we have nothing in place for this kind of contingency. ”
“I know. Not much time at all. But there is another wrinkle. As Tom mentioned before, we need to meet him beforehand to coordinate the plan. We have only one opportunity to meet him and one of you will have to go in to do that.”
“One of your guys can’t do it?” Logan Finch chimed in.
“No. First, he hasn’t been met face-to-face by one of our people in a long time, so it doesn’t matter who meets him. Second, we can’t risk sending any of our officers in to see him because they may be known to the East Germans. Last, we need someone who knows the city inside and out. That leaves you gentlemen.”
“That means we need a clandestine contact plan now and an extraction plan ASAP.”
“Exactly.”
Becker leaned back in his chair and looked at the sergeant major who was reading Wheeler’s papers intently.
“I’ll go,” Becker spoke emphatically. Bergmann studied Becker for a moment.
“Your mission, your team, Kim. Give me a plan and you’ll brief it back to the colonel.”
“I have an idea. I’ll discuss it with my men and be ready to brief you in a couple of hours. We’ll need some help from you, Jamie.”
“Whatever you need, we’ll do our best.”
“Okay, first thing: a set of diplomatic identity cards in pseudonym for a man and a woman, two tickets to the theater and reservations at the Palast Hotel.”
“I’ll get on it. I’ll need biographic details for the documents.” “One set will be for me, I’ll have the names and other details in a while. I’ll explain later.”
“I heard you were a fast operator.”
“Who told you that?” Becker was puzzled. “Sergeant Major Greener, a few years back.”
The name brought back a flood of memories from Vietnam. The dark expression on Becker’s face told Wheeler he had brought up a bad subject and he quickly changed the conversation.
“Sergeant Major, might I have access to your secure telephone?
I need to make some preliminary arrangements.”
Bergmann got out of his chair and motioned for Wheeler to follow. After they had left, Becker stood up and pulled the documents in front of him so he could better read them. After a minute, he shoved the file over to Finch.
“I want to do this one, Boss,” Stefan Mann said. “My German is perfect and why should you have all the fun?”
Becker stared at the members of his team. He could see the eagerness in each face and knew that every one of them wanted to take on the mission. Fred Lindt and Mann spoke excellent German, but they were also relatively junior. Nick Kaiser also spoke the language and had combat experience, but not much time on the streets yet. The others could pass as Europeans, like Stavros with his Greek heritage, but that wasn’t what was needed for this task. He thought back to the promise he had made to
himself several years ago and looked Mann in the eye. His headache, a result of the previous evening’s festivities, made him sound a bit more serious than usual, but he explained his rationale calmly and authoritatively. “Why? First, German isn’t the language of choice for this one.
Whoever goes needs to pass themselves off as part of the occupation force, but not American or British. That leaves French. Second, it’s my responsibility to make sure each of you comes home from a mission alive. I would take any of you if more than one of us was needed. But only one man will go over to make contact and I won’t risk anyone without going first.”
Becker rarely gave speeches and somehow his team knew better than to argue.
“Everyone read the file and when you’re all finished we’ll game this out. In the meantime, I need a woman,” he said.
“Don’t we all, Boss,” said Fred Lindt, always the first with a quip, “but what for?”
“To go with me.”
“That’s one hell of a first date—” Lindt again. “Why not one of us?” “Because you’d look like a gay couple,” Mann said. If he couldn’t go, no one else on the team would either. “I have a suggestion,” Stavros spoke up. “Let’s hear it.”
“My girlfriend, Sarah. She’s an Army Security Agency intercept operator. She speaks four or five languages well and has a TS clearance.”
“I’ve met her. She’s sharp; doesn’t ask questions or talk shop,” Finch said. He gave his endorsement based on what he knew of the women in the Field Station. They were mostly too book-smart to operate on the streets or they talked too much despite their clearances. Becker paid this scant attention; Finch was from eastern Kentucky and his taste in women was suspect.
“Would she be able to handle the mission?” Kim had to be sure he had the right person for the task.
“I should think so,” Stavros said, “she escaped from Czechoslovakia with her family in 1968 when she was about ten years old. She doesn’t talk about it much, but I don’t think it was an easy trip.”
“I like your thinking, Paul. Okay, you guys crash on the exfil planning. Come up with options and all the data and logistics we need. You already know the terrain and the enemy, so that part is easy. In the meantime, I need to convince the old man and sergeant major to break a girl loose from her daily routine.”
13
Specialist 5th Class Sarah Rohan climbed off the shuttle bus that brought her to the enlisted living quarters from the ASA listening station perched atop Berlin’s Teufelsberg—the so-called Devil’s Mountain that had been built from the rubble of a destroyed city after World War II. She was looking forward to some down time after twelve hours of duty, most of which was sitting at a console listening to Soviet and East German radio communications. The rest was spent summarizing conversations into intel notes. Much of her day was boring as hell, which was probably ninety-eight percent of the time. It was critical work, but she felt her language skills were being misused. Many of her colleagues were trained to soley get the gist of the Russian radio traffic and couldn’t speak the language well, if at all.
She, on the other hand, was essentially a near-native speaker. Her Russian came right behind her mother-tongue of Czech and the French she spoke at home. There was also the German she had picked up in living in Bohemia and then the English she learned after coming to the States. When she scored high on the army’s language aptitude test, she was singled out by a recruiter who lured her into ASA and its Field Station in Berlin with tales of intrigue that mostly proved to be lies. But then there was the big cash bonus for signing up for four years. The question was what she should do when this tour was up: reenlist for another specialty like Intelligence or go back and finish her Master’s.
Right now, she was too tired to think about it. Shuffling along with the other unmarried soldiers into the barracks, she thought for the thousandth time that most of them were pretty weird. She never socialized with any of them and they seemed to think she was arrogant. She wasn’t; she just didn’t like them. A few were really bizarre, like the guy who wallpapered his room with aluminum foil because he thought the Russians were bombarding him with radio waves.
Most of these kids don’t belong here…
“Rohan!”
Her reverie broken, she looked up to see her first sergeant standing in the doorway.
“Yes, Top?” She never quite got the rank part of the army, much to many of her seniors’ chagrin.
“The commander wants to see you in his office right away.”
“Now?”
“Now!”
Sarah climbed the stairs with her senior non-com and turned towards the commander’s office. The first sergeant stopped at the door and knocked once.
“Specialist Rohan is here, sir.”
“Send her in.”
The first sergeant shut the door after her and made his exit back down the hall wondering what all the fuss was about.
She walked up to the commander’s desk. “Specialist Rohan reporting, sir.”
Only then did she notice the three men in civvies sitting at the conference table.
Colonel Newhouse stood up. “At ease, Specialist. Come over here and sit down,” he said motioning to a side chair. He took a seat at the head of the table.
“These gentlemen want to ask you a couple of questions. But, first, whatever they ask, you are under no obligation to say yes. You can say no and nothing more will be said, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine.” Turning to the others he introduced Colonel Jelinek and Sergeant Major Bergmann. “They’re from the unit next door. They are our neighbors, so to speak.”
Rohan didn’t recognize these two, but she did remember seeing the third, unintroduced man a couple of times and knew he was somehow connected to her boyfriend, Paul.
Jelinek led off. “Specialist Rohan, we have a very important task that is critical to national security. We think you have the qualifications we need. Would you be willing to help us?”
Sarah recognized the name and accent and responded formally in Czech, “Tell me more, sir.”
“We can’t tell you much here, but it would be a short duration trip, not dangerous, but probably exciting,” Jelinek said as he smiled his broadest smile, trying to win her over or at least convince her she wouldn’t be sacrificed to the wolves.
“Trip? Where to?”
“To East Berlin. Strictly voluntary of course.”
“Colonel Newhouse, I thought it was forbidden for us to travel over there because of our clearances. And especially me, because of my family’s background?” Sarah responded, slightly confused by the attention she was getting.
“We will make an exception for you. You’ll be in good hands.
Isn’t that true, Colonel?”
Newhouse was a bit skeptical of the mission, of which he knew only that it meant travel into East Berlin.
“Rohan.” Colonel Jelinek paused for effect. “Your family name is French, but you were born in Czechoslovakia.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They were of Huguenot descent.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.
“Yes, sir.”
For the benefit of the others, Jelinek explained, “The Huguenots led a rebellion against the French king. When it failed many of them fled into exile. Some came to Berlin and many went to what is now Czechoslovakia.”
Testing Sarah he asked, “When was that, Rohan?”
“In the early seventeenth century, sir. They rebelled against Louis XIII.”
“Indeed. Courageous people, the Huguenots, especially the Duke.” “If you say so, sir. If I may, you do know your history. Henri, Duc de Rohan is my ancestor.”
“It’s our common history, Rohan. Now it’s time for you to make your own.”
Sarah turned red. She paused for a moment of reflection and then gave a definitive answer.
“Okay, I’m in. What’s next?”
Bergmann took control of the details. “This is Master Sergean
t Becker. He’s in charge of the job and will take care of getting you ready. He’ll be with you all the way. I suggest you get some rest and then meet your friend Paul on the soccer field at 0800 tomorrow in casual civilian clothing. He’ll bring you over to the unit.”
Becker stood and leaned over to shake Rohan’s hand. “Glad to be working with you, Sarah. I’ll see you in the morning. And call me Kim, we’re on a first-name basis.”
Jelinek spoke one last time as he was about to leave the office, in Czech, “Rohan, don’t speak of this to anyone, not the first sergeant or your mother.”
Turning to Newhouse he continued in English, “Thank you, Charles. We’ll return her to you in good shape, no worries.” He smiled, genuinely this time, as he turned and left.
Not that Colonel Newhouse would ever dream of questioning Jelinek or his men; he knew what they could do.
14
Fischer hated being forced to sit idle and do nothing. He had warned the Americans and checked on his agents; there was little else he could do at the moment. Sitting behind his desk thinking about what had transpired, he now understood what had led “S” to suspect him. Gypsy had been compromised. It was doubtful that he had been caught in the act; he knew his job too well. And, because neither his sign of life nor his duress signal had been there, Fischer was certain Gypsy wasn’t being run back at him. That meant he had been arrested or killed. If he was arrested, he was being interrogated. Fischer knew the interrogators; their methods were not pretty but they were effective at extracting information.
If Gypsy is dead, then I am safe for now. If alive, he will not be able to resist long. It’s only a question of time before they come for me…
Something had given Gypsy away. The Americans might have a traitor in their midst, but he knew his case was handled in the most restricted channels and the likelihood of his name being compromised was very small. Possibly they made a mistake when they passed information to the West Germans and a Russian penetration could have reported something.
A Question of Time Page 9