A Question of Time

by James Stejskal

The end state at the Dacha was clean and easy, maybe too easy. Wolf distrusted puzzles that were too easy to solve.

  “And who told Großmann that Fischer had gone to the Dacha?”

  “That was me again. I didn’t imagine that he would run off after him.”

  “And Großmann spoke to no one before he left?”

  “Not that we’re aware of.”

  “Was Fischer the traitor?”

  “I doubt it. We have since received another report from the Soviet penetration agent. It was attributed to the same source, but it couldn’t have been Fischer. As far as I can determine, it was specific information out of Department XXII to which he didn’t have access.”

  “So Großmann not only killed his driver, he killed the wrong man.”

  “It appears so.”

  “Then who is our traitor?”

  “Only time will tell, Minister.”

  There was an uneasy pause.

  “Hoffmann, please have Special Tasks clean this up. It was an unfortunate accident, regrettable, but nothing more.”

  “Yes, Minister,” Hoffmann said.

  The meeting was over and as Wolf walked towards Haus 15. He still had one lingering question.

  We didn’t find your Petschaft. Where did it go? Where indeed, Max?

  Wolf had never lost at this game before and he wasn’t about to start. He made a decision that he would never—could never—reveal.

  Dahle will take the fall, he’s witless and worthless. I’ll throw him under the bus and we’ll move on. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a pawn.

  He looked up into the evening sky, his hands deep in the pockets of his wool trousers. It was chilly, but he stood there and gazed at the darkening red clouds above him. He spoke to the sky with all conviction. “Well played, Max. That’s checkmate—you’re safe now, my friend.”

  But, for the rest of us, the game is still on.

  And with that the Grandmaster continued on his way.

  An extract from The Snake Eater Chronicles 2: An Appointment in Tehran

  1

  It was cool, as November mornings in Tehran often were. To the north, the Alborz mountains were shrouded in a blanket of gray cloud and a light rain was falling. The day had started out quietly enough. The city had been tense for months as internecine squabbles, demonstrations, and street fights broke out across the country between the moderates, the communists, and Islamists vying for influence. The hard-liners of the Council of the Islamic Revolution had only tenuous control. That would soon change.

  In his apartment several blocks from the university campus, Abdul Mezad knelt on a carpet facing the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina and prayed. He was one of the few people in the city who knew what was about to happen. Although the Shah had been overthrown and the revolutionary republic proclaimed months earlier, there was still an infuriating presence in the city, the den of spies—the American Embassy—that housed the very same snakes who had installed the Shah onto the Peacock Throne. It had been a quarter-century, but many Iranians still felt the insult deeply—that the Americans could overthrow their elected government and install their puppet, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was a brazen act by insolent foreigners who knew nothing about the true nature of Iran and its people and cared only for oil. But, he also knew that many other Iranians—apostates all of them—were supportive of the coup and the Shah. He considered them all to be traitors, not true believers of Islam, and they too would be dealt with soon enough.

  After his prayers, Abdul walked in the light drizzling rain through the stirring city. The early morning commuters passing him would have assumed he was a student, dressed in faded jeans and a loose sweater topped off with an olive-drab fatigue jacket he had bought cheaply in a market long ago. But anyone who looked at him closely might have reconsidered, not that he cared. The intensity of a zealot on Jihad burned in Abdul’s eyes, his vision reduced to tunnel vision, focused only on his destination and little else. He had a mission and if he was to be a martyr this day, so be it.

  The shops were still shuttered. Despite the dampness in the air, the smell of barbari baking in the neighborhood ovens wafted through the neighborhood. He ignored his hunger; there would be time enough for food later. Walking with determination, he covered the few miles to his place of appointment rapidly. He turned into Taleqani Street. In front of him he saw his goal. Abdul strode on, over the glistening, damp concrete and stopped outside the embassy gates where crowds had started to gather. He glared at the Americans inside the fence who looked back at him with a stare that conveyed their sense that this day would be unlike any they had experienced before. The Marine Security Guards gathered in small groups near the gates, the front entrance, and even on the roof as the embassy staff hurried to their desks inside the Chancery. They were worried; they were too few to contain the threatening crowd that gathered beyond the fence.

  As the city slowly awakened, the crowd outside grew to hundreds, then thousands of young people outside the 27-acre embassy compound. As the rain tapered off, the throngs grew, made up mostly of students who had not attended school since the uprisings began the previous January. Most believed they were there for just a peaceful protest, but the rain had dampened their spirits. Wistfully, some thought of going home, out of the rain, to enjoy tea and savory cakes. They wanted the Americans out of their new Islamic republic, but had not come with violence in mind. They were not aware of the real plan. But a small group, “the Brethren,” had something else in mind. Today they would finally swing the balance of power over to Ruhollah Khomeini.

  Abdul was aware. He was one of the “Brethren”—a true insider. They were the core element, even closer knit than the “Islamic Brothers.” They were the vanguard of the revolution. While the placards and shouts outside the compound announced to the Americans that they should leave Iran, the Brethren had other ideas. They wanted to consolidate the Imam’s power and eliminate rival militias. By seizing the embassy temporarily, they would not only break the links between the supporters of the provisional government, who wanted a “democratic Iran,” and the Americans, they would also destroy the power of the leftists who remained a threat to the Islamic revolution.

  While hundreds of young men and women kept the Marines on the perimeter of the facility busy, others climbed over the barrier fence and engaged in a tug of war over the halyards of the flag pole. These distractions occupied the Marine guards. Unseen in the crowd, a small group of men pulled bolt cutters from bags and severed the chains that secured the perimeter gates. With that psychological barrier opened, the masses outside were easily pushed to storm the compound.

  After a few hours, Abdul found another of the Brethren, Ervin Rajavi, his friend and confidant, in the Ambassador’s office suite looking out the window at the thousands of students roaming the property below him.

  The Embassy Chancery had succumbed to the tidal wave of humanity that stormed inside the now meaningless perimeter fence. Bedlam followed. Not only did they occupy the grounds; the students penetrated every secure building on the compound. The ninety members of the staff inside the compound, sixty of whom were American, were herded into the basement for safekeeping.

  Abdul Mezad was ecstatic, he hadn’t expected the den of spies to give up so quickly and certainly not without a shot. They had been prepared to accept martyrs, but the Americans held their fire.

  Were they scared of us? Or did they just want to avoid a massacre?

  Abdul regarded his ostensible leader, he knew Rajavi was wavering in his commitment.

  Rajavi turned to Abdul as he walked in but said nothing.

  Abdul spoke: “What now?”

  “We read our declaration and leave,” Rajavi said.

  “But we have an opportunity here. We have their people and all their secrets. We can hold them hostage to embarrass and punish the Great Satan.”

  “No, we read our declaration and leave. That was our plan.”

  “I’m sorry my brother. The plan has changed,” Abdul said. I g
ave you an opportunity and you failed.

  “On whose authority?”

  “Imam Khomeini himself.”

  2

  Master Sergeant Kim Becker and Staff Sergeant Paul Stavros walked up to the 500-meter firing range. Both were in full assault uniform, a Walther P5 pistol in a belt holster and a Walther MPK submachine gun slung over their shoulders. In their dark olive-green coveralls with two SMG magazine pouches attached to their gear, they looked more like German Fallschirmjäger—paratroopers—than US Army soldiers. Except maybe for their long hair. They called it “relaxed grooming standards.” As Team Sergeant, Becker was fine with that. It was better that he and his men be confused for the local Polizei than be identified as Americans. They held back and together silently watched the two men on the firing line in front of them, not wishing to disturb their intense concentration. They knew better than to distract a man with a gun, especially one that that could swat a gnat 100 meters away in the dead of night. One of the two was peering through a 20-power M49 spotter scope; the other lay unmoving on the ground, a long black rifle extending out in front of him.

  The firing range was old; it predated World War II and there was an air of Prussian Army formality about the place. But with no Bundeswehr in Berlin these days, it was normally used by the Berlin Police for training. Today it was closed to outsiders, reserved for use by a small team of Americans. The rifle marksmanship stands were narrow but long, room enough for three shooters side by side. On this day, however, there was just the one shooter on Stand Four. A small rise in the ground allowed the man to lie on the ground and see the target stands down range. There were old brick walls about five meters high on either side of the lane that guaranteed privacy, but more importantly prevented stray bullets from escaping anywhere but up. In the early morning, steam rose as the dew on the grass evaporated into the warming air.

  The man behind the Heckler & Koch PSG1 rifle controlled his breathing as he had been taught to do a number of years before. He peered through the Hensoldt ZF 6x42 scope at the target down range and tightened his index finger on the sensitive trigger. Just so much pressure at first, then slowly increasing the pull while regulating his breathing. His mind was focused not on his body functions or the reticle in the scope, but on the target down range. Just at the pause between his exhale and inhale, the trigger released the sear and the firing pin sprang forward to impact the primer of the Lake City 7.62mm M118 Match cartridge. Propelled by the burning gases, the 168 grain Sierra MatchKing bullet left the barrel at a supersonic 2,550 feet per second and cracked through the cardboard target seven-tenths of a second later. It was his fifth shot. He waited.

  Down range, the target slipped down into the pit so the sniper’s shots could be graded. A voice came over the radio speaker.

  “I have four rounds in the center of the ten ring, the group is a little less than two and a half inches in diameter. You’re missing one round. Still, not bad for a cold barrel.”

  “Check the oblique target behind,” said Fred Lindt, the spotter. “Stand by… Okay. All five are there. One round must have gone through the same hole. You’re good.”

  “Of course he’s good,” said Lindt back into the mike.

  Of course I am, Logan Finch smiled to himself.

  Becker finally spoke up. “Okay, good shooting Logan, but let’s wrap things up quickly. We’ve been recalled to the building. Training is cancelled.”

  As they packed up their gear, Finch and Lindt exchanged glances, not sure whether to be disgusted or worried. Recalls generally meant one of two things, either some bullshit training exercise or the real thing—just possibly an alert and a live mission.

  ***

  Five of Support Detachment Berlin’s six Special Forces “A” Teams had assembled on the second floor of their headquarters building. They were waiting expectantly as it was unusual to have more than one formation in a single day. The teams had been recalled to the building from their training at the range or off the streets by the Motorola pagers they carried. It had taken about an hour for the men to gather. The only team absent was Team 3, which was training with SEAL Team Two in Greece.

  Becker stood in front of Team 5, engaged in banter with Bill Simpson, Team 6’s senior sergeant. Stavros tried to listen in but all he caught was what he thought to be a Serbian expletive from Simpson and Becker’s counter in French.

  Whatever…

  Otherwise it was quiet, quieter than the usual raucous morning formation. Everyone was expecting something important but not even the bravest dared to hazard a guess.

  Finally, Colonel Jelinek and Sergeant Major Bergmann came up the stairs. Without a word of command, the unit came to attention. Bergmann slowly surveyed the assembly before him—one of the best trained and most unusual units in the US Army—and then with his usual gruffness addressed the men.

  “Team sergeants, are all your people here?”

  Receiving an affirmative from each of the five, he continued.

  “Stand at ease, gentlemen.”

  Colonel Jelinek stepped in front of the sergeant major. Everyone knew something was up; he rarely addressed a formation. Jelinek was a big man. At six foot three and around 240 pounds he stood several inches taller than Bergmann. He was also very fit for a man nearing fifty. He had his sternest expression on, not than he often showed any other. He rarely laughed, but when he did, the sound carried through the building. And you didn’t want to be on the end of one of his counseling sessions. Luckily, he left most of those to the sergeant major, at least for the enlisted men. For the officers, it was a different story.

  A refugee from Czechoslovakia during World War II, he had fought with the French resistance against the Germans. His English was still colorfully tinted with the accent of his mother tongue.

  “Gentlemen, as you already know the US Embassy in Tehran was overrun and occupied by radical Islamic students yesterday. Approximately sixty American staff have been taken hostage. A planning group has been set up and I will be departing for Washington tonight. As for you, Special Operations Task Force Europe has put us on alert as of 0900 Zulu. I want to see team leaders and sergeants in my office now.”

  Bergmann waited until the colonel disappeared down the stairs before he spoke.

  “In case it needs to be said, all TDYs and leaves are cancelled. We’re on a twelve-hour string. Get your gear together and prepare to upload the alert package. Go to it!”

  Acknowledgements

  I want to thank Casemate Publishers for the steadfast assistance I have received, especially from Ruth Sheppard, who supported my concept from the beginning and made it happen, Isobel Fulton, one of the people who keeps Casemate running but who changes her name periodically to keep me guessing, Daniel Yesilonis who promotes like crazy, and David Farnsworth, who backed this idea in spite of his better judgement. I also want to thank my editor Alison Griffiths who showed me which questions my writing exposed and suggested how best to answer them. Sometimes I listened.

  I also want to thank my Beta readers, Jon, Jim, and Pierce who told me where I was off base and provided much-needed tips to improve the story. Thanks very much.

  Thanks as well to the staff of the Publications Classification Review Board. You do important if unrecognized work.

  Next come my friends and Kampfgenossen who through the years have mentored, amused, and frightened me. You inspired my writing. You were and are all great friends and role models—both devil and angel—for Special Forces and die Sondereinsatzkommandos. They include Jon, Stu, Russ, Jeff, Stan, Peter, MG, Poncho, Ron, Howie, Juan, Dave, Doctor X, das Boot, Rick, Rich, Big Jim W, Monty, Dieter, Christian, and especially Nick and Stryker who helped me break contact in the firefight.

  Then there are the mentors from the Potomac River Campus who trusted me to run alone and with scissors, who counseled patience when it was warranted, and gave me valuable advice when needed. Among the giants are Gordon H., John B., Mike D., Billy H., and Joe K.

  Most importantly, I thank m
y wife Wanda and the rest of my clan for their love, support, and understanding.

  J. S.