“Help me first, and then they will have a reason to trust you.”
“If I help you,” he said, “I lose the only reason they have to release me.”
The numbers she had read in that report Arthur gave her kept pulsing in her thoughts. Hundreds likely dead already. Thousands massed at the breaches. Soldiers and tanks on both sides of the border with guns pointed at the refugees and at each other. Everything she knew, her family, her studies and research: they all seemed so trivial now, compared to what she had fallen into here. The air was thick with war, not as some abstract concept, but bloody and immediate.
“They are killing people,” she said. When she started to speak, she had wanted to say something more eloquent, but maybe straightforward was the better approach. “Shooting them in the streets. It is only getting worse. We have to do something.”
“What precisely would you do?” he asked, his eyes suddenly bright with anger. His question rang in Karen’s ears. “Repair the Wall? What of all those people who see it every day and curse? What of the families that Wall separated? What of this city? If people are dying trying to cross the broken border, it is because they think it is worth the risk to come. Would you deny them that, American?”
Again she felt heat on her face. Had she really not stopped to ask if repairing the Wall was the right thing to do? The Soviets had put it in place, after all; if it fell, wouldn’t that be a blow to them? Yet if the Wall fell entirely, it could be a massacre. And the West couldn’t just let it happen. Could they?
“Forgive me. It is not my place to argue diplomacy,” he said softly. Though his tone softened, the anger wasn’t gone. She realized now that it had always been there, lurking behind everything he said, a slow-burning but well-fueled fire. “Leave that to the politicians and the generals. Let them decide the fates of thousands.”
“I am sorry,” she said. “I only want to help the people of Berlin.” She neared the bars, but he suddenly pulled back, as if afraid she might touch him. The act was so instinctual that it seemed to surprise them both.
“As do I. And I will help,” he said, pointing to the locked cell door, “when I am freed.”
Karen nodded. “I will see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” he said. As she turned to go, he spoke again, surprising her. “I wonder why you are so eager for my help. What can I offer your efforts that you do not already have?”
“What do you mean? You worked on the Wall spell,” she said. “That expertise is invaluable. Without that, we’re blindly guessing at what—”
“Ah,” he said again.
“‘Ah’? What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Nothing.”
She approached the bars. “Tell me.”
He stared at her. Despite what he had said back in his apartment, it was not the sort of look that men often gave her, the ones she was painfully used to by now. She knew how to respond to men who thought she was dumb, or pretty, or uppity. But this was different, harder to place. If she had to put a name to it, it would be pity.
“It means,” he said, “that your superiors do not fully trust you either.”
* * *
• • •
Karen heard it when she was still some distance away: a low, steady roar. It sounded like the ocean. She pictured the times her family had visited the beach when she was younger. Her sister had run straight into the surf, but she had held back. She’d been afraid. She remembered the sharp taste of that moment, could still see the blue-white waves. It had just been too big. Did her parents not see? How could her sister play in the water when it had no end?
This was no ocean, but the fear felt the same on her tongue. There must have been a thousand people, maybe more, their voices thrumming the ground. Beyond them a line of soldiers, some holding the people back, some watching across the border. Even more there: another endless sea, this time of humanity, breaking not on sand but on tanks and riot gear. Breaking now, but how long until the tide changed?
And then there was the Wall. It looked sick. Dying.
She had immediately gone to Arthur and reported about the conversation she’d had with Ehle, excluding for now his parting words to her. Had he been right? Were they keeping secrets from her about the Wall? Ehle was a stranger and she had no reason to trust him. She didn’t know Arthur well, but he was one of the good guys; why should she believe an East German over the head of the CIA in Berlin?
Another voice in her head, the one that so often haunted her thoughts with the things she’d rather forget, whispered: Why trust any of them?
Arthur had nodded and absently ran a thick-fingered hand through thinning hair. “So unless we let him out,” Arthur had said, “he’ll keep his mouth shut.”
“That seems to be the situation,” she replied.
“And without him . . . ?” He looked at her expectantly.
“I can’t stop it,” she said. “You can get more magicians from the OMRD out here, maybe together we can figure something out, but they won’t know anything more about the Wall than I do.” She wondered now if that were true. Was that what Ehle was trying to say?
“Alright,” Arthur said. “Thank you for speaking to him.” He reached for his telephone. “I’ve got to make some calls, then I’ll pay our guest a visit myself.”
“Is there anything else I can do?”
“Don’t wander off,” he said, pointing the telephone’s receiver at her. “And whatever you do, don’t leave the building.”
* * *
• • •
She pushed into the crowd. The air was thick with the smell of sweat as she wound through the people. She did not understand the words they chanted, but the sentiment was universal. Young and old, men and women, they were angry. If the Wall had been made of brick and concrete, they would probably be armed with hammers. As it was, they shouted their defiance toward the breach, toward the men holding back the waves, toward their friends and family separated from them by politics and magic.
What would she do in their place? Would she brave the crossing? She had magic to protect her, though she didn’t want to find out if it could stop a bullet. How much was a new life worth? How much was any life worth?
She hoped she would fight. She hoped she would try to fight for her future, or that of her family. She hoped she would be like those all around her who defied order and prudent diplomacy and made their voices heard in support of justice. She hoped . . . but something deep down told her she was kidding herself. You’d hide, it said. You’d watch from a distant window, and you’d let someone else take the risk.
Karen closed her eyes and focused on the voices of the people around her, letting them drown her unwanted thoughts. It didn’t matter what she might or might not do with another life. It only mattered what she was doing with this one.
She had just started to turn to leave when she felt the hand clamp down on her elbow from behind.
TWENTY-FOUR
Use your own discretion, Arthur, they had said. Berlin was his area of operations, after all, so they agreed to defer to him. They wanted it to sound like they trusted him, but these were not men given to trusting others. So that only left one option: they were scared out of their damned minds and didn’t have a clue what to do. It might say “In God We Trust” on the dollar, but the true motto of Washington, DC, was: “If you can’t come up with a good idea, settle for a convenient scapegoat.” That’s where he came in.
“That’s right, Mr. Senator,” they’d say in the hearing. “He was acting on his own. Completely outside of our authority. A rogue element in the Agency. We never liked him anyway.”
To hell with them. If they wanted to give him enough rope to hang himself, he’d see how many extra nooses he could fashion.
“Open up,” Arthur said to the guard at the door. The kid’s eyes bugged out seeing who was addressing
him, but he quickly fumbled for his keys. “Time to pay my respects.”
The asset was sitting in the cell, hands on his knees, watching the door. Like he was waiting for him. Like he knew Arthur was coming.
“They tell me,” Arthur said as he dragged a metal chair across the floor to place in front of the cell’s bars, “that you speak English.”
“I do,” the asset said. Arthur felt the weight of those eyes on him and wondered for the first time just how effective the magical wards they’d paid to have installed on that cell were. “Though I am not yet certain if I speak American.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find talking American isn’t all that hard,” Arthur said, leaning back in his chair. “It’s like speaking English, but with the twist that we only hear what we want to hear.”
Ehle smiled at that, though without as much as even a crease around his eyes. “What is it that you want to hear?”
“How to stop a war, for starters,” Arthur said. “After that, things might get interesting.”
“Ah,” he said. The asset raised an eyebrow. “And what does a man like yourself,” he asked, “find interesting?”
“Me? I have wide interests,” Arthur said, coming forward. “One area in particular I enjoy is history. Do you like history? Europeans always do, since most of the good stuff is about you guys. Different empires, same wars, for a thousand years. But what I find so fascinating about history is how some things get left out. Facts sometimes just fade away. Have you ever seen this peculiar forgetfulness in action?”
Ehle sat perfectly still. A cool customer, this one. After a long silence, he spoke. “A true history,” he said, “can be elusive. In my experience, therefore, it is prudent to judge a man by his present, not his past.”
“See, now that’s a fascinating theory,” Arthur said. “It’s one that I’ve heard before, usually championed by men with something in their history they’d rather forget.”
“Every man I have ever known has something in his past he would rather forget.”
“Someone once told me that life is just the accumulation of memories and regrets.”
“A wise saying.”
“Worst part is, the older I get, I forget about the memories, but those regrets tend to stick around,” Arthur said. He shrugged. “That said, some men’s regrets are bigger than others. I might say that I regret not making more time for my wife when we were married. She deserved better. But another man might say, for example, that he regrets being an active member of the Nazi Party and fervent supporter of the Third Reich in its attempt to conquer the world and purge it of impure races.” He weighed both in upturned hands. “Not all regret is created equal.”
To his credit, Ehle didn’t even blink. “You do not know me,” he said.
“It’s my job to know you, Mr. Ehle,” Arthur said. “It’s also my job to help keep this part of the world from blowing itself up, and I take that job rather seriously.” Arthur stood, the chair scraping. “Let’s be clear: the fact that the evil a man does can be wiped away if he happens to have useful knowledge makes me sick. And I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean I want to vomit, like I did when my battalion liberated Dachau. The very sight of you makes the bile rise in the back of my throat.”
Arthur took the cell’s key out of his pocket. “But see, you do have useful knowledge, and I’ve got a war to stop.” He unlocked the door with a sharp metallic click. “So welcome to the West.”
The asset stood and straightened his shirt. “Thank you.”
“I’m not quite done,” Arthur said, stopping him at the cell door. “I’ve got two conditions to your release. First, you promise me you’ll keep the magician you’re working with safe. I’ve seen enough people get hurt in this infernal city and I don’t want her on my conscience. Got it?”
Ehle replied, “And the second condition?”
“You don’t tell her the real reason for the Wall.”
TWENTY-FIVE
“Stay very still,” the voice in her ear said in English with a German accent. The grip on her arm was like steel. “They are watching you.”
Her mind tripped over itself searching for and rejecting options: that spell was too dangerous in a crowd; this one was too dangerous at close range; another was far too dangerous with the Wall’s disruption. Come on, Karen, do something. Even just spin around and knee him in the groin. That sort of magic always worked.
“I am not here to hurt you,” the voice said and now, despite the constant buzz around them, it sounded familiar. “I need to speak to you.”
“Dieter?”
“Do not turn,” he said. “There are two men behind us, about thirty meters. They have been following you since you left the Americans’ building.”
“What happened when—”
“I will explain, but not here.” His fingers relaxed on her arm. “South of here, three city blocks, there is an alleyway between two brick buildings. It appears to be a dead end, but there is another passage near the back. I will meet you there in ten minutes.”
Then the hand was gone. She didn’t look back. She was a little surprised that the CIA had sent minders for her, and more than a little surprised she hadn’t noticed them herself. She supposed she still had a lot of work to do before she was a full-fledged international spy. No time like the present to start.
She stepped in front of a knot of particularly tall protestors and ducked low. She loosed her hair and let it fall down around her shoulders. Though the autumn air was cool, she took off her jacket and tied it around her waist, then started moving south, careful to keep her head down and her path jagged. The crowd thinned as she neared the buildings Dieter had told her about, so she stayed with the multitude as long as she could, constantly fighting the urge to look over her shoulder.
Just as she was about to make her break for the alley, she heard the first gunshot. The crowd went strangely quiet, as if under some mass spell. Then another shot rang out, and then the chattering of more, and the crowd came alive. Everyone ran, some away from the breach, others toward it. The guns didn’t sound close; even though she couldn’t see, Karen was certain they were coming from East Berlin.
Through the churn of limbs, she caught glimpses of the breach. For a moment, she saw men running, arms waving, rifles held to shoulders. Then smoke, so thick and roiling that she knew in an instant it was magical, poured in, clogging the gap, snatching all of the eastern side of the city from view.
More shots. Yelling. Someone ran past her, toward the soldiers, carrying a crude brick and shouting. Nearby, someone was screaming.
Move your legs, Karen. Now.
She reached the alley at a sprint and didn’t bother to see if she was being watched. Down at the end, behind a stack of crumbling wet cardboard boxes, she found the other alleyway. This one seemed like a mistake in architecture. A few feet wide, barely enough to walk in, with the daylight from some other nameless street at the far end. She saw no one, but clutched her locus all the same.
Dieter appeared a moment later. He held up a finger and peered around the corner back up the alley.
“What happened out there?” Karen asked in a whisper.
“They have set up barricades on the Eastern side of the Wall, and someone tried to cross them,” Dieter said, still looking away from her. “I do not think the crossing was successful.”
Karen took a few steps back from Dieter. Where his jacket lifted away from his waist, she could see a sliver of dark metal tucked into his pants. She tried to control her breathing, her snare-drum heart, and summoned a kinetic shield between them.
Dieter turned. If he saw the shimmer of the barrier, she didn’t know, but he did not try to approach and he kept his hands away from the gun.
“What happened to you? In East Berlin. Where did you go?”
“They came,” he said in his harsh-sounding English. “As soon as you were out
of sight, the Soviets came.”
“You were in the basement,” she said. “How did you know?”
“I am not a trusting man,” he replied. “I went up and watched, and then when they arrived, I escaped. Only just.”
“How did you get back to West Berlin?”
“I have resources,” he said. “I have not wasted them all by sharing them with the Americans.”
“The others thought . . .”
He sneered at that, a laugh dying stillborn on his lips. “They thought it was me? Narren. I risked everything by letting you use the tunnel. Do you know how many I could have saved with it? And now they think I betrayed them?”
“Come with me,” she said. “We can explain. We can make them understand—”
He shook his head once, hard and final. “It is you that does not understand. The Soviets knew about your mission. Someone has betrayed you and they will do it again.”
“It was Ehle,” Karen said. “He told someone who was compromised by the Soviets.”
“Ehle did not know about the tunnel,” Dieter said. “Even if they followed you back from his apartment, they would not have had time to place their trap. They knew everything before we took our first step into East Berlin.”
She felt stupid. Of course they’d known.
Why trust any of them? her mocking thoughts echoed.
Run away, they whispered. Run before it is too late.
“We have to do something,” she said, hating how weak her voice sounded.
“It is about to get worse,” he said, glancing back toward the Wall behind the building. “If the Wall falls, some will make it to safety. Many more will die. I will not do nothing.”
“Is that why you found me? To warn me about the traitor?”
“No,” Dieter said. “I came to tell you what I saw afterward.”
“Afterward?”
“I watched,” he said. “I watched them follow you into the building. I heard the explosion and felt my tunnel collapse. And after they were finished inside, I watched them drag someone out alive.” Dieter’s deep-set eyes dug into her. “It was James.”
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