Berlin Encounter

by T. Davis Bunn

  Travers looked over at her. “We got a squad of Russkies in front and behind us, we’ve spent the best part of an hour staring down the business end of a tank barrel, and you’re just figuring that out?”

  Sally met his gaze straight on. “Why didn’t you tell me you spoke German?” She watched his double take give swiftly over to a denial, but she cut him off with, “Don’t even try, Theo. You knew what I had said to that turkey in blue, and I never even got around to translating.”

  Travers eased off and grinned ruefully. “Harry told me you were a fast one. Guess I just didn’t understand how fast.”

  It was her turn to play dumb. “Harry? You know Harry Grisholm?”

  “Old buddies,” Theo affirmed. “Somehow he heard I was coming over. Asked me to keep an eye on you.”

  “But how—” Sally stopped, the bits and pieces clicking into place. “They left the door to their office open on purpose.” And the file. No confidential file would have been left out for the evening, especially not if there was the possibility of a leak. “I’ve been played for a fool.”

  “Don’t think that even for a minute,” Theo retorted. “You were Harry’s only hope. Of course, that’s all unofficial. Officially, he’s hopping mad over you disappearing without a by-your-leave.” Theo eyed her with mock seriousness. “Not to mention something about a false passport and illegal travel documents.”

  “So he told you everything?”

  “Not me,” Theo assured her. “That’s basically all Harry said when we talked, and I got the impression I couldn’t ask anything more than that. Which was why I didn’t have to play interested when you spilled the beans in the plane.”

  She looked at him with suspicion. “Are you a spy?”

  “Not a chance,” Theo replied cheerfully. “Just watched from the sidelines, is all. Which I guess is why Harry felt like he could trust me.”

  Sally turned her attention back to the window, her mind churning. The morning was strong and clear, the sky pristine blue. But nothing was stirring. No cars, no people, nothing. “I don’t like this.”

  “Too quiet,” he agreed. “Like the calm before the storm. A big one.”

  The atmosphere of buried tension and fear stayed with them throughout the remainder of their trip. The sand pits were at the end of a lower-class neighborhood whose low-slung apartment buildings extended almost to the company’s rusted gates. They drove past the derelict office building, its myriad of broken windows staring down on them like sightless eyes. Two giant mixing towers had escaped the bombings, two others looked as though a giant’s hand had crumpled them.

  Beneath the last of the towers clustered a group of men who made no move as the convoy pulled up. Beside them waited a long, low sedan painted army brown with a single red star on its portal. As Theo and Sally’s convoy halted by the first dig, a soldier opened the car’s rear door. A Soviet officer emerged, straightened his tunic, and walked toward them.

  “Stranger and stranger,” Theo muttered. “What’s a Russian officer want with somebody buying a load of sand?”

  Sally opened her door and stepped forward to greet the officer, but he ignored her and walked directly to Theo’s side of the truck. In heavily accented but understandable English he said, “You are Major . . .” He paused to inspect a card in his palm. “Major Travers?”

  “That’s me.” Theo opened his door and slipped down. “What can I do for you?”

  The officer’s eyes were as glacial as his voice. “Your papers.”

  “Sure.” His cool unruffled by the officer, Theo handed over his military ID. “Mind telling me what gives?”

  Instead of replying, the officer gave Theo’s pass a minute inspection, then turned and snapped his fingers once in the direction of the waiting group. Instantly one older man doffed his cap and came scurrying over. “Ja, Herr Oberst?”

  The officer acknowledged Sally’s existence for the first time. “You will tell this man that he is to execute the major’s instructions, so long as they are restricted to digging in the pits here within the compound perimeter. You will tell him that the major is to pay for his services. Is that not correct, Major?”

  “Anything you say,” Theo replied with false ease.

  “Trucks will begin making delivery in four days, unless there are . . . delays.” A hint of a smile appeared, then vanished without a trace. “You will pay seventy dollars for each load. Cash. No negotiations.”

  “Seventy it is,” Theo agreed.

  The officer glanced at his watch. “I was informed that you require samples.”

  Theo gestured toward the truck. “Got the shovels and the sacks in the back.”

  “You are to gather your samples and depart before twelve noon.” He fastened his full attention upon the major. “You will not be permitted to delay your departure one minute beyond twelve. Is that clear?”

  “Twelve sounds good to me.”

  “I don’t care how it sounds, Major,” the officer snapped. “I am telling you what you will do. You will treat these as orders, and you will obey. Now is that clear?”

  Instead of anger, there was merely a deepening to Travers’ gaze. Even from where Sally stood, she could see the depth and strength beneath the major’s calm veneer. All he said was, “Perfectly.”

  Without another word, the officer wheeled about and stomped away. He stopped to give crisp orders to the two jeeps, then walked back to his car. The driver closed the door behind him, climbed in and shut his own door, then drove off.

  Travers watched them depart in thoughtful silence. Then he turned to examine the old man who stood waiting to one side, his hands crumpling the brim to his battered hat. “Ask the fellow here what’s planned for this afternoon. And why the streets here have about as much life to them today as a tomb.”

  When Sally had finished translating, the man nervously replied, “I know nothing, madam. Nothing at all. I am a simple laborer. My family is hungry. I will work hard. Please, tell us what it is we are to do.”

  “It’s like trying to get an answer out of a rabbit,” Sally told the major.

  “Well, he’s had a lot of experience in learning how to survive.” He raised his hand toward the old man, motioning for him to stay where he was, then grasped her arm and led her toward the first sand pit. More quietly he asked, “See the good Colonel Burnes around here anywhere?”

  “No.” She squinted in the growing sunlight, searched the empty grounds, willed him to appear before her eyes, for them to get back in the truck and leave and have all this behind them for good. “Not a sign.”

  “With our minders over there, I’m not surprised.” Theo motioned toward the bottom of the pit. “Okay, then let’s make a little circuit, just the two of us. I’ll point out places and afterwards you go back and tell them where they’re supposed to dig. A sack from each. Got that?”

  “Yes.” They were so close. If he got her message. If he wasn’t picked up. If, if, if. Her legs suddenly felt weak as water.

  “Steady, now.” They made a slow circuit of the first pit, started over the uneven ground toward the second hole. Beyond was a pile of dirt excavated and mixed and ready for shipment. It had rested there long enough to sprout a meager crop of weeds. Beyond it rose a motley-colored sand dune with a giant hunk bitten from the nearest face. Theo led her slowly but steadily in that direction, pointing every once in a while, Sally nodding with one hand pressed to her chest, certain that if she did not keep a solid grip her heart would leap from her body.

  “Maybe he’s worried about me,” Theo muttered. “Guy doesn’t know me from Adam. Okay, let’s split up here, you walk over that way, keep your eye on me. I’ll make little motions, you mark spots with your foot.”

  Sally moved off and headed toward the hillside. And even though she was waiting for it, eager for it, hoping with all her heart for it, when the hiss came from the little channel she was about to cross, she almost collapsed with fright. She recovered quickly enough to make it look like a stumble, returned Th
eo’s signal, stood and looked across the pit toward the major, and whispered, “Jake?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The pan he was just about to stack slipped from his hand, rattled on the tailgate, then clanged on the rocks below when the voice announced, “Your wife is a very beautiful woman.”

  Jake did not need to look to know it was Hans Hechter. “Where is Rolf?”

  “Gone.” He kept his voice low as he bent over, picked up the pan, and wiped it with his grimy handkerchief. “She is intelligent as well. Not to mention courageous.”

  “Gone where?”

  “To the American base. Disguised as a sack of sand, riding in the back of a dump truck, escorted by two jeeploads of Soviet troops.”

  Jake accepted the pan, set it in place at the top of the stack, turned back and leaned nonchalantly upon the tailgate. The morning customers for coffee and husks were gone. Now the market was almost empty. A few stragglers stepped hesitantly over the rough ground, picking at the paltry items on offer.

  Jake was stationed as he had been instructed, between two other trucks also bearing hardware and household goods. Their vehicle’s front bumper rested close to the single remaining wall of an office building; above their heads were the ghosts of a few placards proclaiming the proprietor who had lost all in the war. Crumbling relics of walls extended to either side, forming a mini-tunnel into which he had nosed his truck. This position offered them a semblance of privacy and distance from their neighbors.

  Jake kept his face immobile as Hechter swiftly sketched out their journey and the contact, his eyes flickering in bored fashion over the few would-be shoppers. If there were watchers, Jake could not identify them. Even their neighbors gave them little mind. They had paid their dues like all the others and been assigned a spot and merited little further concern.

  Hechter reached the point where they had spoken from the ditch and said, “Your wife was most concerned that you had not accompanied us.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “More than concerned. She was distraught. It took the major quite a time to calm her enough to make plans.”

  “What major?”

  A trace of humor came and went within the depths of Hechter’s clear blue eyes. “He said that you would probably ask that very same question.”

  In a voice so low that it scarcely carried to Jake, much less to the people around them, Hechter related the little that he had gathered from the pair while remaining hidden in the ditch. How there had been a leak, probably a spy, within NATO intelligence. How their local operatives had not been simply sent elsewhere, but rather eliminated. How Jake himself might already be compromised. And how the Russian officer had ordered Sally and the major to leave by noon and not return.

  “I have to tell you,” Hechter finished. “Your wife was less than impressed with your reason for not coming.”

  “No,” Jake agreed quietly. “She wouldn’t have been.”

  “She told me to remind you of the promise you made to her before your departure. She said that several times.”

  “I remember,” Jake murmured, his heart aching. “One thing I don’t understand, though. Why couldn’t they take you, too?”

  Hechter shifted his gaze. “They could.”

  “So?”

  “I decided,” Hechter said slowly, “that I owed you a message.”

  Jake inspected the scientist, wondered at his own inability to overcome his aversion and offer the man a simple thanks. But in that single glance toward Hechter’s proud features, Jake found himself again confronted by the specter of the past and what he had lost. The anger simply would not let him be.

  A querulous voice startled him by demanding, “Well? Are you open for business, or is this gossip of yours going to continue on all day?”

  Jake swung around, then lowered his eyes to meet the impatient gaze of a woman as broad as she was high. Two beefy arms rested propped upon her ample hips. A pair of legs thicker than his waist were planted in the rocky soil. Jake started to comment about her not appearing to have suffered overmuch from a lack of food, then changed his mind. The woman looked like she packed quite a wallop. “What can I do for you, mother?”

  “Mother, is it now? You’ll not be garnering a higher price from me with those fancy words of yours, gypsy. That I can promise you for sure.” She stepped forward, shouldered Hechter to one side, and went on loud enough for the neighboring trucks to hear, “I’ve a need for a skillet. One large enough to cook for a hungry man and six children determined to eat everything the cursed war has not destroyed.”

  “Then you’ll be after this one,” Jake said, shifting the pile around and hefting a cast-iron pan fully two feet across. “The finest you’ll find anywhere.”

  She accepted the long handle, grunted noncommittally, and demanded, “So how much do you want to steal from a defenseless old mother, then?”

  “You’re the one who’ll be doing the stealing,” Jake replied, taking in the steel-gray bun, the hands so chapped they had swollen to almost twice their normal size, the determined set to her chin. “You’ll not find a lower price anywhere.”

  “If that’s the case, then perhaps I could find means to buy more than one.” Her back to the market, she leaned over, rattled the pile of pots, asked quietly, “Do you have the Bibles?”

  Jake faltered for a second time that morning. “What?”

  “The Bibles, man, the Bibles.” Her voice carried the continual hiss of a scalding teapot. “Don’t you dare tell me that blind bear of a man sent me to the wrong truck.”

  “No, no,” Jake muttered, collecting himself. “I have them.”

  “Then listen. Set them in the space between the front of your truck and the wall.”

  “But how—”

  “Just do it, and if you want to save your own worthless hide, you’ll take your lunch in the same spot.” She wheeled about, said more loudly, “You’re as big a thief as the rest of them.”

  “Take it or leave it,” Jake said flatly, his voice as loud as hers.

  “Aye, there it is,” the huge woman said bitterly, handing him a tightly folded bundle of notes. “No choice at all for the likes of me, is there.”

  Jake made a pretense of counting the bills, shoved them in his pocket, hefted two of the larger pans, recognized genuine avarice in her gaze when he passed them over. There was need here, as well as subterfuge. “Wait,” he said.

  He scrambled into the truck and came out with three pairs of children’s boots. He piled them on top of the pots in her arms, was pleased to see her eyes open larger and her voice say softly, “Shoes.”

  “A gift,” he declared loudly. “All I ask is that you tell your friends, those with money, that here stands an honest trader.”

  “Huh!” she snorted. “And how many would a woman of my means know who have money? Saved all winter for these pots, I have.” Then she pretended to shift the pots for a better grip, making a racket in the process, and saying swiftly, “All the shoes up with the Bibles. But none of the pans. Too much noise.”

  Jake nodded, pretended to help her organize her load, asked, “What’s happening this afternoon?”

  “Questions for later.” She took a step back, stopped to eye him up and down. “It’s not often I have to make a second judgment, especially of a gypsy and a man of the road. But I’ll say to all who ask, it’s a pity we don’t have more like yourself.”

  “Good day to you, good woman,” Jake called after her, conscious of the eyes. He then made a pretense of inspecting the almost empty market lot before turning to Hechter and proclaiming loudly, “Is that to be our only customer of the day? I’ve seen more activity in a morgue.”

  He motioned for Hechter to climb on board. “Get up there and start handing me down things. We might as well clean the truck as stand around here looking miserable.”

  Attention soon turned elsewhere, as Jake piled the pots and pans about his feet, then began accepting the bales of shoes and feed and taking them up front. With swif
t motions he shifted the secret handle, then started pulling out the burlap sacks of Bibles. There was nothing on the outside to differentiate these sacks from those holding the shoes.

  By the time the compartment was empty and resealed, both men were puffing hard. Jake handed him a rag and said quietly, “Just move the dirt around as you wipe. Best to keep the doors hidden even if they are empty.”

  Hechter nodded and set to work, all his former bluster silenced. Jake watched him work and wondered again at his own lingering resentment. The man had clearly apologized as best as he was able. He had even returned to tell him of the contact with Sally, when all reason and self-interest would have urged him to escape. Yet here Jake stood, trapped within emotions which both reason and his own faith told him were not only wrong, but also unworthy. But telling himself these things did nothing to free him from what he felt, nor dim this flame of anger whenever he looked in Hechter’s direction.

  Jake waited until Hechter had settled down beside him, then asked quietly, “What was the real reason you came back?”

  Hechter started to reply, then caught himself, looked beyond Jake, and his eyes grew wide. Before Jake could turn around, a tremulous woman’s voice replied, “Because I begged him to.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Don’t be mad with me. Please. I couldn’t stand it just now.”

  “I’m not mad,” Jake replied, and continued to hustle her up front. But when they approached the wall, Jake stopped cold, looked about, asked, “What is going on around here?”

  “I couldn’t go back without you. I just couldn’t.” Sally’s features played halfway between stubborn defiance and a teary-eyed plea. “So I staged a fight with Theo, that’s the major—well, only half staged, because he said I was being a total fool and might jeopardize your safety, but I didn’t care, I don’t care, I couldn’t leave you here with goodness knows what’s about to happen.”

  Jake walked around the space in front of the truck where he had left the sacks of shoes and Bibles. The space was completely empty. He inspected the wall, found it as rock solid and unyielding as before. “I don’t understand any of this.”