Paramour

by Gerald Petievich

  "The mission-"

  "I signed a paper years ago promising to never reveal operational facts," she interrupted. "They said I could be prosecuted."

  "The only way I'm going to be able to figure out what the hell is going on is if you tell me what you know."

  "I'm a flight attendant," she said softly. "A few years ago I was recruited by a pilot to help the CIA with a few small intelligence chores. It sounded exciting and I agreed. I was given some training, the usual trade craft. My first assignments were simple ones: to mail letters from certain cities I fly to or rent apartments here and there and mail the keys to an accommodation address. I never knew the ramifications of any of this and I never asked. I liked the extra money and, besides, I thought I was doing something worthwhile for the country."

  Amazed, Powers sat back. "Who assigned you the missions?"

  "Different CIA people. I never knew their real names. After a couple of years I was told that my name was being put in the Inter-Agency Source Index. I filled out a detailed questionnaire and took some photos for the computer so that any government agency could use me according to the needs of a particular mission. From then on I never met anyone. I would get the mission by phone. Once the FBI asked me to stop by a gallery in Amsterdam and inquire about a painting they thought was stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

  "How did you get the assignment to impersonate Marilyn Kasindorf?"

  "On August twelfth I flew into Dulles Airport from London on a Lufthansa flight. There was a message waiting for me at the flight desk to call 'Cousin Sandy' at a local number. 'Cousin Sandy' was the code that someone had a mission for me. I phoned the number and a man told me I was picked from the Inter-Agency Source Index because I had a close physical resemblance to a CIA agent named Marilyn Kasindorf. Also, I had a working knowledge of art, a subject she was familiar with. I was directed to an airport rental locker. In it was a color photograph of Kasindorf and some biographical information. I was told to dye my hair and make myself up like her, then check in at the Dupont Hotel and wait for further instructions. For the next few days, he would call and tell me to go places: the French restaurant La Serre, the apartment house on Scott Circle, some buildings with government offices. I spotted you following me."

  "You weren't living in the apartment on Scott Circle?"

  She shook her head. "No. Sometimes he instructed me to go in the front and out the back, other times to come in the back and out the front. I never went into any apartment."

  Powers ran a hand through his hair. "The lights in the apartment must have been on a timer," he ruminated.

  "In Germany I followed the scenario he gave me the same way."

  "And he told you to compromise me."

  "He said you were suspected of working for hostile intelligence and the purpose of the mission was to test your loyalty. What happened between us started as an act, a mission. Then, I don't know exactly why or how, but I could tell you weren't a spy. I liked you...I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say-oh, hell." She covered her eyes with her hands.

  Powers drained his glass.

  "The morning you left?"

  "I was told to park my rental car in front of a building on Erlangenstrasse and then walk to my apartment. That's what I did."

  "Slick."

  "Look, I'm really sorry for the problems this caused you," she said. "I know now that the suspicions they had about you were wrong-"

  "How did you verify that you were being activated by the proper people?" he asked.

  "There's a code, a series of numbers they read off when they call.... Why are you asking me this? You must know how the Source Index works. You don't believe a word I'm saying, do you?"

  He returned her stare.

  "I guess I can't blame you for that," Susan said. She got to her feet and moved onto the balcony. He followed her. "When I was first recruited it was thrilling-leading a secret life and all that." She put her hands on the balcony rail. "I never thought I'd be ashamed. But I am."

  "Both of us were used," he said quietly.

  She turned to him. "What did all this accomplish? Who benefited?"

  "I have a better question," Powers said. "Where is the real Marilyn Kasindorf?"

  "I don't know." She paused, "What are you going to do now?"

  He shrugged.

  She wiped her eyes. "Would you like another glass of wine?"

  He nodded.

  Susan picked up the bottle from the kitchen counter and poured.

  "If you'd like, I can fix dinner while we talk," she said, avoiding eye contact.

  "Okay."

  For the next hour or so, as she moved around the kitchen preparing dinner, he sat at the table asking questions and making notes. The note taking continued through a dinner of Zigeuner schnitzel, a sweet-and-sour red cabbage, and warm potato salad. By dessert, apple strudel with thick whipped cream she called Schlag, he finally understood exactly how the defection had been staged. But in the Byzantium that was Washington, Powers understood that knowing what had happened was only the beginning. It was always the why rather than the how that mattered. After all, they'd both been acting on orders. They'd both been used. In fact, she hadn't betrayed him-or the country or anyone else, for that matter. Like him, she'd simply been carrying out a mission.

  Somehow, during the course of the meal, though he felt drained and confused, he came to terms with what she had done.

  After dinner, Susan busied herself in the kitchen, perhaps to avoid him, and Powers strolled out onto the balcony. The traffic noise had subsided and, below, Frankfurt had become a tapestry of blacks and grays held together by dots of light. From the east came the distant sound of a jet. He'd found her, and she wasn't Marilyn Kasindorf. But she was still the woman he'd fallen in love with.

  Later, he smelled her perfume as she joined him on the balcony.

  "I guess I should be going," he said, without looking at her.

  "I never thought I'd see you again, Jack."

  "I haven't been able to get you off my mind," he said with difficulty.

  He felt her hand touch his. He turned and took her in his arms, and they embraced. She met his lips forcefully.

  In bed, they made love for a long time.

  Afterward, they lay in each other's arms, talking quietly for what must have been hours. Finally, there were no more secrets between them. When he finally closed his eyes and dropped off to sleep, she was in his arms.

  Powers woke about nine the next morning feeling more rested and refreshed than he had in months. He realized he was alone in bed and sat up quickly. He climbed out of bed and moved to the bedroom door. The smell of coffee was coming from the kitchen, and Susan (he almost thought Marilyn) was standing at the stove cooking breakfast. Relieved, he let out his breath.

  In the bathroom, he showered, shaved, and dressed. In the kitchen, he put his arms around her waist and kissed her neck.

  "You were talking in your sleep," she said.

  "What did I say?"

  "You said 'Watch out,' as if you were warning someone."

  During breakfast they chatted amiably, avoiding any discussion of what had happened in Kassel, and he found himself becoming relaxed and at ease with her again. Finally, the small talk was over and there was an uncomfortable silence.

  "What is this all about?" she asked. "What is this really all about?"

  "As I see it, either Marilyn Kasindorf used you to stage her own defection, or the CIA engineered the disappearance as part of ... some bigger plan."

  "Why a staged defection?"

  "To cover up for something-a smokescreen, perhaps. I'll find out. This is some kind of renegade operation."

  "How can you tell?"

  "I'm privy to certain things," Powers said.

  "I never thought I'd be involved in ... what are you going to do?"

  "I want you to come back to Washington with me."

  "Jack, I signed a secrecy oath."

  "I think someone is trying to des
troy the President," Powers said, looking her in the eye. "I need you to help me prove it."

  "I had a feeling about this mission," she said, after a while. "When I met you I could see you weren't up to anything. You were just doing your job."

  After breakfast, Powers phoned the Frankfurt airport and reserved two seats on a flight to Washington departing at 2 P.M. Because they had a little time to kill, at Susan's suggestion they left the apartment house and took a short walk. Though Powers was tense and preoccupied, he found comfort in talking and holding hands. On the way back to Susan's place, Powers admitted to himself a feeling he'd never had with any woman in his life before: he never wanted to be without her again.

  Arriving at the apartment, Powers sauntered onto the balcony. It was a sunny day, and the air was filled with the sound of traffic rising from the street below. Across the street a hefty middle-aged woman was standing at a streetcar stop. She was wearing a scarf and a faded long-sleeved flower-print dress. In her left hand she was holding a fishnet shopping bag by the handle. She raised a handkerchief to her nose and mouth, then lowered it.

  Down a few doors on the east side of the street was a green BMW sedan parked at the curb. A man with slick black hair was sitting behind the wheel. In the opposite direction on the south side of the street was another sedan with a single male occupant.

  A streetcar arrived at the stop. Its doors opened and a few passengers climbed off and moved along the sidewalk in various directions. The doors closed; the Strassenbahn pulled away and continued down the street.

  The woman was still there.

  A few minutes later, Susan joined him on the balcony. "You're so quiet."

  The woman lifted the handkerchief to her lips. Her mouth moved. Her hand returned to her pocket.

  "Go inside and get me a drink, then come back out here and hand it to me," he said, without taking his eyes off the street.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "I'm not sure."

  She gave him a puzzled expression and left the balcony.

  The woman lifted the handkerchief to her face, then put it down.

  Another streetcar arrived and left and the woman was still standing there.

  Susan returned to the balcony with a glass of wine and handed it to Powers. The woman on the street lifted her handkerchief.

  Powers put his arm around Susan and turned her to him. "That woman is using a hand-held microphone," he said, smiling in case any of the surveillants were using binoculars. "We're under surveillance." He led her inside and pulled the curtains closed.

  ****

  TWENTY-FOUR

  "Who do you think it is?" she said fearfully.

  "I don't know, but we're not safe here. Pack a bag."

  In the bedroom, as Susan shoved some clothes into a blue Lufthansa suitcase and filled a makeup case, Powers unplugged the lamps on either side of the dressing table and removed the shades. To the harp of one lamp he attached a round Styrofoam wig holder he found in the closet. To the other, he wrapped a bedsheet into a human-head-sized ball. Foraging through drawers in the bedroom and the kitchen, he found some yellow yarn, a feather duster, and some household glue. Using generous amounts of the glue, he pasted the yarn on top of one lamp and feathers from the duster on the other.

  "What are you doing?" she said.

  "Buying time."

  He carried the lamps into the living room and set them on the sofa side by side so that just an inch or two of the camouflage hair showed over the backrest, turned on the television, and adjusted the dimmer switch on the living room lamp to minimum. With the back of the sofa facing the balcony as it was, from outside he hoped the dummies would, in the dimness of the room, look like silhouettes of him and Susan sitting on the sofa watching television.

  He led Susan out the door into the hallway.

  He moved to the curtain, pulled the cord to fully open, and walked quickly in front of the sofa. Lowering himself down below the level of the backrest where he knew he was out of sight of anyone watching him, he low-crawled out the door.

  She touched his arm. "Who are they? Who's watching us?"

  "We'll find out in DC." He picked up her suitcase. "Do you have a car?"

  "No."

  "Is there a rear exit to this building?"

  "Only a fire door in the underground garage."

  He led her to the elevator.

  At the apartment house rear exit, they followed an alley for the entire length of the block. They entered the rear of another apartment house, hurried through a storage and heating room, a dingy lobby, and onto a cobblestoned street lined with small shops. Walking briskly along back alleys and through parking lots, Susan led him to the Frankfurt train station.

  Inside the terminal, Powers checked the train schedule. It was fifteen minutes before the next train to the airport. He purchased two tickets, and they sat down on a bench near the door to catch their breath.

  Susan pointed. "Look," she said, indicating the entrance.

  The woman wearing the scarf who'd been standing across from the apartment was now standing inside the door looking about for them while cleverly obscuring herself among a bustling crowd of passengers. An obvious professional, he guessed she worked for an intelligence rather than a law enforcement agency.

  "Damn," he said.

  "What are we going to do?" Susan said.

  The woman, having spotted them, sat down dispassionately on a bench.

  A train pulled into the station. The sign on the side read WÜRZBURG/BAYREUTH/BAD NEUSTADT.

  The train announcer said something in German, in French, and then in broken English. "The fast train to Würzburg is departing from track nine. All aboard, please."

  "I don't see anyone else. If she's part of a surveillance team, they probably haven't caught up to her yet," Powers said. He picked up the luggage. "Follow me."

  "Our train isn't here yet," she said, following him toward the Würzburg train.

  He helped her onto the train. They entered the first empty compartment and set the luggage down.

  The woman with the scarf hurried toward the train and joined the crowd funneling into the aft car door. The moment she stepped inside, Powers grabbed Susan's hand and stepped out of the car.

  "Take a taxi to the airport and meet me at the American Airlines ticket counter," he said. "Go."

  She backed away a couple of steps and hurried into the crowd.

  Peeking through the window in the interior door, Powers could see the broad-shouldered woman moving up and down the aisle searching. She spotted the suitcases in the compartment and, shoving her way past passengers, moved frantically down the aisle in his direction.

  The ten-second warning buzzer sounded. Powers stepped off the train. The train's hydraulic brakes hissed and the train began to move.

  The woman burst from the interior door to disembark.

  Using a straight-arm, Powers shoved her back inside. The doors closed, and he jumped back. The train pulled away. Powers ran past train platforms and out the door. For a few minutes, he waited nervously in a taxi line.

  At Frankfurt International Airport, Susan was waiting for him at the airport ticket counter. Before they boarded the aircraft, Powers phoned Herb Kugler and asked him to meet them on arrival.

  During the flight from Frankfurt to Dulles Airport the aircraft was only half full. They talked nonstop through the airplane movie: a comedy about a rich Wall Street broker who drinks a magic potion and becomes a southern plantation slave.

  "I've lived in Germany for the last ten years," she said. "I majored in art at the Anton Feder Institute. It's a big art school here. Being a flight attendant was perfect for me. I'd fly for a few days and have a week to paint."

  Powers found himself telling her about his childhood in Monterey, California-how during the summers he worked on his father's fishing boat. In high school, he'd been a member of both the cross-country and the gymnastics teams and had little interest in scholarly endeavors. In 1970, rather than flee to Can
ada or hide from the Vietnam draft by joining the National Guard as a lot of his pals on the gymnastics team had done, he'd quit his criminology classes at Pacific Grove Community College and enlisted in the army. After a combat tour in Vietnam as an infantryman, he completed a bachelor's degree in Law Enforcement at San Francisco State College.

  "The classes were boring," he said. "Studying police administrative procedures and law of evidence. Because there is no way you can actually teach someone to be a law enforcement officer, all the classes repeated themselves. It was like studying for four years on how to be a mail carrier."

  "I can see you in college in those days," she said sarcastically.

  "I didn't care much for the hippies," he said. "Who was I to fight the Age of Aquarius?"

  Powers woke up as the aircraft touched down at Dulles Airport. In the early dark, a pall of rain-filled clouds hugged the countryside.

  Powers and Susan had their passports stamped and passed the Customs control point. Herb Kugler was waiting in the baggage area. Powers introduced him to Susan.

  "You can talk freely," Powers said to the reticent Kugler.

  "I was able to raise a serial number on the gun. The trace shows it was purchased from a sporting goods store in San Francisco about a year ago by someone named Daniel McVey. I ran his driver's license number and it comes back to a mail drop, an accommodation address. McVey has no criminal or credit history. He doesn't exist."

  "Sounds like whoever purchased the gun was using a phony license."

  "That's the way I see it."

  "CIA?"

  "The serial numbers of all their guns usually trace to gun stores in Indiana for some reason. If anyone checks, the trail dies then and there. But for what it's worth, I remember a political assassination that occurred in the Caribbean a few years ago. A gun was recovered and, unless I'm mistaken, it had been purchased in a similar way in San Francisco. It was traced to a Syrian military attaché assigned to the San Francisco consulate."

  "Thanks, Herb. I appreciate the help."

  "By the way," Kugler said. "I know of cases where the CIA has obtained weapons using methods that would throw suspicion on other intelligence services. They're into all that sleight-of-hand Yale-and-Harvard crapola."