“Nick, come in here!” Mann yelled.
There was a feral look in Nick’s eye when he came into the room. He took in the scene and assessed there were no dangers to deal with, then holstered his pistol and spoke.
“Where do you want me to put the bodies?”
“Bodies?” said Großmann.
“Bodies?” Becker said. “I thought we only had one?”
Mann said, “The guy outside—I guess he was the bodyguard— didn’t like Nick’s German and started to pull a pistol on him, so Nick crushed his larynx.”
“Yeah, he said I sounded like I came from the docks in Hamburg. He was a rude little shit,” Kaiser said.
“He is insane!” Großmann cried, looking about wildly. He was truly frightened by Nick.
Nick took a menacing step towards him, but was stopped by Becker’s hand.
“You have no idea what combat does to a man,” Becker said, “but then we really don’t care if you do.”
“The driver’s body will add to the story, Boss, believe me,” Mann said.
Fischer took it all in and said, “I take it we are at the point of no return?”
“It does seem that way. Sometimes you have a plan and then sometimes you just have to make shit up.”
Großmann was about to pee his pants.
“Well, Herr Großmann, it seems you have two options. Stay here or come with us and try out for a Green Card in America,” Becker said.
“Are you all mad? How do you think you’re going to get out of here? You will all be arrested and shot. I will make sure of that.”
Fischer stepped closer to Großmann and around the side of his chair.
“I think I see your plan, Herr Gruber. It’s rather interesting, I think. Your name… are you aware of another Franz Gruber?”
“Not really, no.”
“It’s appropriate, I think. The other Franz Gruber composed ‘Silent Night.’ But, I digress.”
Fischer turned back to Großmann.
“Remember Heinrich Pfeiffer, Bruno?”
“No, who is he?”
“I didn’t think you would; you murdered him. This is for him.”
The pistol was under the man’s fat chin before he could react. Fischer pulled the trigger and Großmann’s head jerked back. His eyes and mouth remained open, seemingly in an expression of surprise. Doctors would tell you that it wasn’t surprise but the instant relaxation of muscles at the moment of death. In either case, Großmann couldn’t be surprised anymore, because he was dead.
“Good bye, Bruno,” Fischer said.
Becker contemplated the corpse for a moment. When the smoke cleared and his ears stopped ringing, he asked, “Perhaps you would like to explain our new plan to me, Herr Fischer?”
“Happily,” Fischer said, “your sergeant there gave me the idea. This is what happened: Großmann came here to kill me. His driver tried to intervene and Großmann shot him first. He fell over there,” Fischer pointed to a chair across the room. “Then he shot ‘me’ in that chair. That’s where you put my Doppelganger. Finally, Bruno was so despondent that he killed himself out of whatever delusional thinking brought him here.”
“That’s better than what I was thinking,” Mann said, “the simplest explanation is best.”
“Okay, we go with our new plan,” Becker said. “Nick and ‘Franz,’ you guys bring in the bodies. We’ll pose them, set the devices and then get the hell out of here.”
“Should we take photos of this guy?” Nick asked as he looked over Großmann’s body.
Becker shook his head. “God, no. We don’t need to be carrying evidence of any kind of crime. Just being here is bad enough.”
Turning back to Fischer, Becker said, “That was rather a quick decision on your part.”
It was a question not a statement.
“Not at all, I have always wanted him dead. Unfortunately my professionalism kept me from realizing that goal until today. He was an evil man.”
“Who was Heinrich Pfeiffer?”
“A journalist, he was the father of a friend.”
“I think your people will thank you someday.”
“Ah, they will never know. The Firm will hush this up and dispose of the evidence. It will be reported as a tragic accident.”
“If we get out of here.”
“Yes, if we get out of here.”
Nick and “Franz” came into the parlor carrying the body of the driver and dropped him into the armchair with his pistol on the floor next to him. Kaiser wiped down the face to get rid of the blood and straightened the nose a bit. Satisfied with that piece of the puzzle, they went back outside and pulled a long, canvas bundle out of the car and walked it into the house.
They laid the body bag on the floor and unzipped it. The corpse inside was a little stiff, but it had lost much of its rigor mortis. It had come out of a cooler to be loaded into the Wartburg before they crossed Checkpoint Alpha.
Mann and Kaiser pulled the bag off the body and stuffed the dead man into the chair, flexing the limbs to look mostly correct. When they were finished, they stood back to admire their work.
“Not bad. He even looks like you, Herr Fischer. The doctor told us he would pass for you after the fire, so your disappearance will be most complete.”
“Go on and get the car ready,” Becker said.
Kaiser and Mann stripped off their gloves and tossed them into the body bag. The bag would go with them. Kaiser dropped a small satchel on the floor close to Becker as they left the room.
Fischer chose to remain distant from his stand-in. Standing next to the dead Großmann whom he hated seemed preferable to being close to the dead man he didn’t know.
“Who was he?” he asked.
“An unknown, an unclaimed person, perhaps a homeless man, that’s all we know. No one will miss him, I hope,” Becker said.
Fischer bowed his head and said a prayer for the dead and asked for forgiveness once again. After a moment he lifted his head and sighed.
“Are we ready then?” he asked.
“Yes, go ahead, sir.”
Fischer raised the pistol and carefully fired two rounds into corpse and then two into the driver. He handed the pistol to Becker. Becker pulled a cloth out of his pocket and wiped the Makarov off, before pressing it carefully into Großmann’s hand. He walked over to the driver and looked at the lifeless body for a moment. It looked a little like a toy doll with its arms and legs askew, the head flopped over to one side. Becker leaned over and tipped the chair over onto the floor with the body splayed over it. The crime scene was complete.
“What about the fire?”
Becker reached down and rummaged around in the satchel Kaiser had dropped. He pulled out a metal tin, unscrewed its cap and dumped the contents over the chair and corpse and across the floor to where Großmann’s lifeless body sat. He then walked into the kitchen with the satchel in hand and poured more fluid on the wood floor near the stove. That done, he placed a small device on the floor next to the stove. When it was properly situated, he took a tube out of the device, crushed it, and inserted it back into its hole. Then he turned on the burners and hurried out the kitchen. He placed a second device in the puddle of fluid on the floor near the chair with the corpse and activated the delay ignitor as he did with the first.
Standing up straight, he took off his gloves.
“It’s a Russian Spetznaz sabotage device,” he said. “A simple incendiary, mostly paraffin mixed with aluminum oxide. The ignitor is an acid delay that will give us about one hour to get far away. It’s virtually undetectable after it burns.”
“And the fluid?”
“An accelerant that will also disappear in the fire.”
“A ghastly business. I hope no one else gets hurt helping me. I wish I could have escaped on my own without endangering you or your men. And your woman—she is okay, I hope?”
“Yes, she’s not mine but she’s fine. This is all unfortunately necessary, but it’s what we do. We agreed th
at you needed to disappear completely. This will be our best chance and Großmann may have given us an advantage.”
“I hope so. Where to now?”
“We head north then southwest to a pick-up point. You’ll see. Are you ready to go?”
“Yes, I have one small valise with papers and a few mementos, that’s it.”
“Then we’re out of here.”
Becker grabbed his rucksack and the can and waited for Fischer to get his bag. Taking one last look around the parlor and hallway, they walked out. Fischer turned in front of the house and took a final look at his sanctuary.
“I hope what they say is true.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“You know—that dead men don’t tell tales.”
33
“Everything in the car?” Becker said.
“Yes, we are all loaded up, body bag included. The other car is clean, no evidence of a scuffle there. So I think we’re ready to go,” Mann said. “You climb in back and look like a couple of perps. We’ll head for the LZ.”
“What’s a perp?” Fischer asked.
“A perpetrator, a criminal.”
“That’s easy, according to East German law we already are ‘perps.’”
“We’ll call it self-defense when we get to the West. Besides, you said he killed someone. Were you a witness?”
“Only at second hand. I read his reports and spoke to a Russian who was present. And it was more than one. There’s no doubt he crossed the line many times, but those were very different times.”
“Maybe, but there is no statute of limitations on murder. You don’t regret what you did, do you?”
“No, not at all,” Fischer said.
“Good, because we are all soldiers in this cause. Now, let’s get out of here.”
They climbed into the car and drove down the track towards the gate. The silent green forest seemed to suck up any idea of the violence that had just occurred. Each man was quietly absorbed in his thoughts. Behind them was a break with the past. In front was a path to an uncertain future.
“Stop short of the gate. I’ll check out the route and wave you on,” Mann said.
“Roger,” Kaiser acknowledged. He halted the car about 75 meters from the gate. Mann got out and crunched down the pebble-strewn road. Inside the car, it was deathly quiet.
Fischer broke the silence. “Sergeant Nick, would you have actually killed Großmann?”
“Yes, I would have. I read your notes about him; he was a nasty man.”
“You have no problem with killing?”
“I don’t, not anymore, but generally only the bad ones. I got used to it a long time ago.”
“What does your religion say about that?”
“It says that the sacrifice of a life is often necessary.”
“What religion is that?”
“I am a Reformed Druid.”
“Is that a recognized religion?”
“It is for me. My parents tried to make me a good Catholic but I failed both the written and practical exams. Then I joined the army and went to Southeast Asia and by the end of my third tour I decided to go my own way.”
“Kim, you have some interesting people in your organization.”
“Indeed we do.”
In front of them, Mann opened the gate and walked out to the road. He turned and motioned for the car to approach. Kaiser let the car roll forward until the car cleared the gate. Mann pitched the lock and chain into the trunk, knowing that some supply officer would try to charge him for lost goods if he didn’t, and hopped back into the car.
“Vamos!”
Kaiser accelerated onto the road and away from the scene. He turned off the main road as soon as a side track appeared and plunged into the countryside. After a few more turns, it was clear no one was behind them.
“You drive my country like you know it well,” Fischer said.
“I have spent some time around this neighborhood.”
“Then I would guess you were a driver for the USMLM.”
“Klar, Herr Fischer.”
“Kim, your organization is beginning to make more sense to me now. Mielke hates the Allies and their liaison missions. He thinks you are trying to subvert East German government.”
Becker smiled to himself. Fischer obviously didn’t understand the differences between SDB and the MLM or that the army was sometimes capable of working together as a team rather than a bunch of disconnected quarterbacks. But then, neither did most senior combat arms officers who thought Special Forces and Intelligence to be anathema to the American way of war.
“I’m sure you will be asked about all that when we get you to safety.”
“You say ‘when’ and not ‘if ’?”
“There are no ‘ifs’ anymore. We’ll do this.”
Kaiser was taking the car north away from the Dacha and was moving at a sane pace for once.
“We have four hours and forty minutes until H-Hour.”
“H-Hour?” Fischer said.
“Our exact time for the pick-up. To be melodramatic we could call it our ‘rendezvous with destiny.’”
“Melodramatic is right, I am starting to get nervous the closer we get to the moment.”
“Why?”
“I feel like I am one of my own agents on an operation. I am about to do something that I don’t have any control over. I don’t know what might happen next but I am committed. It is all risk versus gain. I hope to live to see the gain.”
“What do you want?”
“The satisfaction of seeing the government fall and the people free.”
“What do you worry about most?”
“Being arrested and interrogated. You should not let that happen to me. In your country, I would go to prison. Here I would suffer far worse than that.”
“Do you regret what you have done?”
“No, never. Much of what I have done was unpleasant. Not anything like what Bruno did, but I have a cause, something worthwhile, to help win the Cold War.”
“That’s my goal too. Although sometimes I question our methods, especially when we support tyrants in the name of facing down communism. That said, there is no other country I would want to serve.”
“I have found that no man or country is perfect. We can only do our little bit to try to make them better or change them completely. I have faith in your country and its people. At least they try to improve with age. The country I am about to give up is only concerned with winning by any means—most of their ways are bankrupt of any ethics or humanity,” Fischer said.
“I don’t know if I could find the courage to do what you have done.”
“As long as you are an American, I doubt you could. There are only a few of you who have been persuaded to join forces with the communists. Yes, many have rebelled against society or things like Vietnam, but few would be a traitor to their country because your country can change, the pendulum can always swing in another direction. East Germany, and I suspect most countries of the Soviet Bloc, are filled with potential turncoats because the system is deeply flawed and can never change without a revolution. They are the people who will finally say ‘We have had enough.’”
“You’re one of those people.”
“I imagine in some regard, although I am not without my own flaws.”
Fischer was thinking of Gypsy and the others, especially Lila, who he had abandoned. He hoped there would be no repercussions for any of the living left behind in his wake.
There was a flash of light in the rearview mirror.
“We’ve got company,” Kaiser said.
“What kind?”
“It looks to be undercover Polizei or Stasi. A black Lada with an antenna.”
Fischer turned to look at the car.
“It could be either, I can’t tell. But there appears to be only one man inside,” he said.
“We could outrun him, but that might raise some questions.”
“Boss, what do you think?” Mann said.
>
“Do you feel up to some more role playing?”
“Sure, I’m good with that.”
“Then let’s stop and you can figure out what he wants and get him off our backs.”
“Right. Let’s do it and, Nick, keep your damn mouth shut this time.”
Nick brought the car to a halt on the edge of the road. Mann hopped out and walked toward the Lada, which had also stopped. Nick got out and stood by the door.
“Verdammt,” Fischer said as he turned and saw the driver of the Lada get out and step into the headlights of his vehicle. “What?”
“I know him and he knows me. He is Weber, the district security chief. He’s been to my house several times.”
There was nothing Becker and Fischer could do to affect the situation outside.
“Why are you following us?” Mann said.
“I haven’t seen that car around here before, so I was wondering who you might be.”
“And who exactly are you?”
“Major Weber, Staatssicherheit.” He offered his identity wallet to Mann and left him holding it as he walked up to the Wartburg. “Who do you have here?”
“This is a criminal matter. It’s not your concern.”
“You should know better than to question my authority. Everything and everyone in this district is my concern,” Weber said as he leaned over to peer in the window.
Mann positioned himself on the opposite side of the car from Kaiser and looked down to read Weber’s identity card in the light. Weber stood back up and peered at Kaiser and then back at Mann before he looked into the car again.
Weber took an abrupt step back from the car. “Why do you have General Fischer in your car?”
Inside the car, Fischer fumbled to try to open the door, but he couldn’t find the latch. The panic was evident on his face. Weber was confused.
Why wasn’t I informed if there was going to be an arrest? Are they trying to kidnap Fischer?
Weber reached under his coat for his pistol and pulled it out. It was almost aimed at Mann.
Shit, not again. “Stefan, drop!” Kaiser yelled.
Mann dropped. He turned to see Kaiser move in and grab Weber’s wrist and twist the arm downward as he punched Weber in the head. They struggled for a moment and there was a loud report as the pistol went off.
A Question of Time Page 22