Heidi smiled a bright American smile.
The shop was separated from the back room by a bead curtain. Heidi parted it and stepped through the doorway. When Christopher did not follow she held out a hand, her body on one side of the curtain, her slender arm with its many bracelets on the other. Because there was no way out the front door it was pointless to stay where he was, so he followed her into the back room. It was as large as the shop, boxes stacked everywhere. The space was better lighted than the rooms in the Red Orchestra Inn, but dim all the same. In one corner an electric ring glowed red beneath a teakettle. A very small man, little more than five feet tall, sat in a frayed chair with his feet dangling. He was elderly and bald. Tufts of gray body hair protruded from his shirt collar. He held a glass of tea in his hand. With a gesture he offered Christopher a chair that had been drawn up to face his own. Behind him Heidi worked with swift efficiency and handed Christopher his own glass of tea. Then she sat on the floor at the old man’s feet, her legs crossed, her expression intent. Christopher sipped the oversweetened tea. He could taste the sugar on his tongue many seconds after he had swallowed it.
The little old man lifted his glass to Christopher and speaking English with a heavy accent said, “I am happy to see you again.”
Christopher had already recognized him. He was not a figure who, once encountered however briefly, was likely to be forgotten, but Christopher had other reasons besides his unforgettable appearance to know who he was.
The small man said, “Do you remember the last time we met?”
“Yes,” Christopher said, “in Rügen. We were introduced on the beach. You went sailing with my parents. I was left behind.”
“You were what in nineteen thirty-four, nine or ten?”
“About that.”
“You were tall for your age, about my size, I remember that,” said the small man. “That sailboat burned, I hear. A shame, it was so beautiful.”
Christopher was not in the least surprised that this man knew this detail. He specialized in details.
Christopher said, “Am I to understand that you’re still working, Mr. Stern?”
“From time to time, off the books, when the job is interesting. Call me Yeho. You’re old enough now.”
In his writings Hubbard had called Yeho Stern, who had been his friend, the hidden man. Yeho was hiding now. He was polite, deeply so, but it seemed to Christopher that this was an impersonation of politeness, just as Heidi’s role for tonight was an imitation of Americanness. It was Yeho who had planted in the minds of Hubbard and Lori the idea of smuggling Jews who had no other hope of getting out of the Reich. Yeho had asked them for help and they had given it. In asking for help he asked them to put their own lives on deposit as well as the lives of the people they rescued. They had paid the price. What did he want now?
Expressionless, Yeho watched Christopher as if he had no need to read his thoughts—as if he already knew them by heart, having read the same kind of thoughts in other people so many times before. He finished his tea. Heidi took the glass from his hand. Yeho never took his eyes from Christopher’s face.
Finally he said, “I have some information.” Christopher waited. Yeho said, “You’re much more like your mother than your father, did you know?” In spite of himself Christopher reacted to these words—something in his eyes, a slight movement, a half smile. Yeho said (was he making a little joke or did he think that Christopher might mistake his meaning?), “What I just said to you is not the information.” Eyes fixed on Christopher, Yeho accepted another glass of tea from Heidi.
He said, “This is the information. We have located this subject in whom you are interested, this Stutzer.”
These were startling words but once again Christopher was not surprised that Yeho should know something that almost nobody else in the world knew, or that he should share this secret with him. Yeho made no altruistic gestures. He wanted something in return. But what?
Yeho said, “You have nothing to say?”
“I was waiting for the rest of the information.”
“Good,” Yeho said. “Very good. Everyone says how good you are. The abduction of Stutzer, excellent. Foolhardy but excellent. One man against the Stasi and such a target, this Stutzer, such improvisation. Forgive me, it’s too late to critique, but you should have waited a minute. You should have let Heidi and the boys help you. They wanted to help you.”
“And now you want to help me.”
“I want to make it possible for you to do something you want to do.”
This was O. G.’s formula. Christopher wondered which old man had plagiarized the phrase from the other, or whether experience had planted the same maxims in both their minds.
Christopher said, “Ah. And what would that something be?”
“You have to ask? You want Stutzer. You have a right to him. I will help you take him, and this time keep him. No more hypodermics at the last minute.”
“In return for what?”
Yeho lifted a forefinger, teaching. “Again you have to ask,” he said. “What can I tell you? Maybe I want what you want and this is a way for both of us to get it. Maybe I can’t do what I want without you. Maybe vice-versa. Maybe I owe you something and I want to pay the debt. Maybe you owe me something without knowing it. Maybe it’s just opportunity that has put us together.”
Christopher felt exasperation rising into his throat. He pushed it down. Yeho was an Oriental to the marrow, and Christopher realized that the little man was trying to exasperate him. He was dickering as though they were in a bazaar and the price of a carpet was at stake. Exasperation is the most valuable tool a bargainer possesses. Exasperation makes the other man give up, it makes him say have it your way! Yeho wasn’t trying to cheat him. Like a woman trying to manipulate a man, he was trying to see how well Christopher held his own, what he was made of, how strong he was. How otherwise could he know? He hadn’t seen Christopher with his own eyes since he was nine years old. The rest was gossip.
Christopher said, “I will need more information.”
“Okay, why not, what could be more reasonable,” Yeho said. “Here is some information. Tomorrow, thirteenth August, early in the morning, something is going to happen in Berlin. Something big. At breakfast, listen to the radio. If it’s big enough to make you curious, come here tomorrow night at closing time and I will know that the son of my old friends wants to be my friend, too.”
2
The next morning, Sunday, August 13, 1961, East Germany sealed the frontier between the two Berlins and began to build the Wall and rip up streets that connected East and West. At eight o’clock that evening Christopher appeared in front of the necktie shop in Rome. It was closed. From inside the shutter was rolled up with a clatter, but only halfway. Heidi’s beckoning arm and hand, clinking bracelets and vermilion fingernails, appeared in the gap. No passerby could possibly understand such a signal as anything but a lover’s invitation. Christopher ducked under the shutter and went inside.
In the back room Yeho sat with his feet on an ottoman, his head reclined on the back of the chair, his eyes closed. Without opening his eyes he said, “So what do you think?”
“I think they’ve got balls.”
“Sad but true.” Yeho opened his eyes. He said, “Maybe this is all your fault. Maybe the way you kidnapped their secret policeman was the last straw. Don’t laugh. George Washington started the War of the Spanish Succession—a world war, my friend—by shooting a few French soldiers in the woods in Pennsylvania. Everything starts small.”
Christopher said, “You’re in a world-historical mood today, Yeho.”
“You’re right. I apologize. Next time I’ll give a signal when I’m kidding you. But I’m not kidding when I say that Stutzer is as now safe as a war criminal can possibly be as long as he stays inside East Berlin.”
“I agree.”
“You do? Good, because there’s a however.”
Now Yeho assumed a crafty look. Christopher chuckled. He was c
harmed by this homunculus, this terrorist and mastermind who had probably shot a hundred enemies between the eyes with the cumbersome .45 caliber Webley revolver that folklore described as his weapon of choice. Christopher understood that he was supposed to be amused. Yeho was doing his routine.
Christopher said, “A however?” And he thought, What a surprise.
Yeho said, “A big however. But first, are you with me in this thing? I’m offering you a chance to do what you want to do. We will get him, I promise you. Personally, because of what’s going on in Berlin, I think this is going to be your last chance. But if you want to refuse, refuse. No hard feelings. However, I can’t tell you the information till you tell me yes, you want to help, yes, you will help, yes, you are in the game. Now is the time to walk away if you want, before I give you the information.”
“What about afterward?”
“Afterward, no walking.”
Christopher said, “Three yeses, Yeho. Tell me.”
Without so much as a pause for effect, Yeho said, “Believe it or not, Stutzer is on the island of Rügen.”
This information literally took Christopher’s breath away. While his heart beat wildly, his lungs shut down for the space of five or six breaths and for that brief interval his body seemed to forget how to breathe involuntarily. He turned his back to Yeho, wrapped his own arms around himself, and tried to remember how to draw air into his chest and then expel it. For the first time in his life he was unable to have two thoughts at the same time, so he blacked out Stutzer and the cascade of images that had chased Stutzer into his mind—the schloss, the chalk cliffs, the beeches, the bone-white houses of the island, the gulls, the sloshing gray sea, Mahican aflame—and commanded his lungs to breathe. Then he was all right.
All this consumed a second, perhaps less. Yeho said, “It must be soon. Can you get away?”
“I’m already on leave. When do we depart?”
“Today, now, this minute, before you get ordered to Berlin. The Outfit will send everybody to Berlin, it’s only natural. You can’t go home where the phone might ring. We’ve got for you everything you’ll need, the right kind of toothpaste, everything. The business in Berlin is a big diversion. It gives us our moment, our chance. MfS’s attention will be on that. They’re hypnotized by their own folly. They’re scared, their pants are full because they can’t believe the Americans are going to let them get away with this.”
“But we will.”
“I don’t like to say it, but yes, you will. Your new president has no balls. Now go with Heidi. I’ll tell you everything on the ship.”
“On the ship?”
“A ship is the best way to get to an island and leave on your own schedule, no? Go, go.”
“And you?”
“We will meet on the ship, we will do everything together. Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”
That promise, coming from Yeho, might have been enough to make many men worry but Christopher took him at his word. Christopher and Heidi, traveling as a happy couple, Heidi now dressed in a demure suit and pumps, caught an Alitalia flight to Copenhagen. Heidi had provided Christopher with a suitcase and a Canadian passport, along with a wallet stuffed with lira and Canadian dollars and the usual poker hand of fabricated identity documents. In Copenhagen they boarded a freighter registered in Liberia. The name painted on the stern and bow was Olaster. It was a Victory ship, a tramp, but its hull was only slightly rusted. The crew—only a few men—were dark-haired, olive-skinned, young, and voluble in an Eastern language Christopher did not understand but knew to be the Hebrew, whose murmur he had heard in Heidi’s German.
One of the crew, silent and incurious, led Christopher to a cabin. He unpacked the suitcase. Inside it he found the right toothpaste as promised and also a suit, a blazer, shirts and ties, a sweater, underwear, socks, work trousers, turtlenecks, a waterproof jacket, a knitted watch cap, tennis shoes. Everything fit because everything belonged to him. Heidi and/or the mimes had removed it all from his apartment.
The two mimes were already aboard. When Christopher passed them in the corridor they greeted him, deadpan, then disappeared into their cabin. He looked for Yeho but did not find him. He locked his cabin door, lay down on the bed and read a book, a Sybil Bedford novel that he had found in his suitcase. He did not bother to check the room for listening devices or cameras or other hidden apparatus as all good spies were supposed to do. He wasn’t going to talk to himself while he was aboard, he would be sleeping only with Mrs. Bedford, and if Yeho wanted to take his picture he would find a plausible excuse.
Christopher dozed off. He roused when the engines started and the ship moved under him as it left port. He drifted off again. When next he woke to a knock on the door, Hubbard’s old shave-and-a-haircut-two bits, he felt beneath him the rolling swell of the Baltic, unlike any other sea he had ever sailed upon and as familiar as the jaunty knock that had awakened him on thousands of mornings.
3
Farther out, after the wind died, the Baltic was placid. The Olaster sailed smoothly through the calm waters. At dinner, taken in silence, quickly, Yeho ate everything on his plate. Heidi and the mimes followed suit. The mimes seemed to time their chewing to Yeho’s, and finished their supper at almost the same moment as he did. In Christopher’s hearing at least, Heidi had not spoken a syllable in Yeho’s presence. The mimes were just as quiet. In filial silence they listened intently to his every word, eyes shining with admiration as if he had just stepped out of the Torah. Even Christopher had no trouble imagining him as a biblical figure in a cloak—Eve’s adviser, David’s secret agent, Solomon’s conscience, Joshua’s tactician. Christopher left half of his bland food uneaten, and the atmosphere of deference to the patriarch was so noticeable that he would not have been surprised if Yeho had reproved him for wasting eggs and cheese in a world in which children went hungry. Heidi and the mimes cleared the table. With his eyes closed—his signal, Christopher guessed, that the talking lamp was not yet lit—Yeho waited for them to finish.
The captain joined them. Yeho introduced him: “This is Simon, the captain. Simon, an American friend.” The two men, about the same age, nodded to each other. Like the rest of the crew Simon wore ordinary clothes. His badge of rank was an old blue officer’s cap without insignia.
Heidi and the mimes returned to the table. Yeho opened his eyes and said, “Here is a significant fact. This American is the only living witness to Stutzer’s crimes. Otherwise there are no survivors because he either killed all his victims or they died in the camps or afterward. Did you know that?”
“No,” Christopher said. He wondered how Yeho could possibly know this himself, given the scale on which Stutzer had murdered people, but Yeho gave him no opportunity to inquire.
“Besides that,” Yeho continued, “as we know, you have seen Stutzer very recently, and up close, so you can make sure we get the right person.”
Christopher said, “So has Heidi seen him.”
Yeho, talking through this interruption, looked him benevolently in the eye as if to say, Wait and you’ll know everything. He said, “Also, you used to live in the house in which Stutzer is hiding.”
Startled again—evidently Yeho liked surprises—Christopher said, “Stutzer is staying at Schloss Berwick?”
Yeho held up a hand—wait!—and said, “So that means you know the house, the trees, the ground, the beach, the waters as none of the rest of us possibly can. Also, as we know, you have unusual skills.”
He fell into a short silence as if to see if anyone would interrupt him again, then turned to Christopher and said, “The answer to your question is yes, we believe with good reason that Stutzer is inside the schloss. The house and grounds now belong to the state, of course, and it’s being used as a place for Stutzer’s Arabs to be inspired and trained. It’s a good place for that. Hardly anybody in the world knows that there is such a place as Rügen. It’s deep inside the GDR, a long way from Berlin and all other windows into this country, so by the MfS
it’s secure. That’s why Stutzer’s here. He thinks he’s safe. For us, that’s good luck.”
Christopher said, “We go tonight?”
Yeho nodded.
“To do what, exactly?”
“What else?” Yeho asked. “Go ashore, burgle the schloss, snatch Stutzer, bring him back. Sail away.”
Christopher said, “What about the Arabs?”
“Not tonight. Tonight, only Stutzer.” He put a hand on Christopher’s forearm. “Please listen for a minute, my friend, to what I’m trying to tell you.”
Christopher subsided. A steward brought tea in glasses. It was scalding hot. Yeho drank his tea through the usual sugar cube without bothering to cool it and with no sign that it was anything but exactly the right temperature.
To the captain Yeho said, “What time will we reach Rügen, Simon?”
“About two o’clock in the morning. Roughly eight hours from now.”
“That’s when the team gets off.”
“Yes. Then we sail on for an hour, come about, and return to our original position off Rügen.”
“So you’ll be there, waiting, right on schedule at four o’clock more or less.”
“That’s the plan.”
Yeho went on with his briefing. The others had rehearsed the landing together. There had been no time for Christopher to participate, and even if there had been time it would have been insecure. “Don’t worry, when you have good people, improvisation is better,” Yeho said.
He went on. They would go ashore in a Zodiac, a very fast type of boat with a big outboard motor. The landing party would consist of the mimes, Heidi and Christopher. Heidi was the leader. Yeho did not justify this. The mimes did not seem to see anything unusual in the arrangement. “We’ve only got one pair of night-vision goggles,” Yeho said. “Heidi will have them, so inside the house she’ll be the eyes of the team.” There would be a moon tonight, so they could see while they were outdoors. Christopher was the guide, he would go first. Each of the four would be armed with a silenced pistol, a knife, a blackjack, and a stun gun. Also a grenade apiece. They would go silent as soon as they were on land—no talking, hand signals only, a hiss in case of dire emergency. They would have no radio because radios made too much noise. A fifth person—Yeho did not name this operative—would go ashore with them and stay with the boat. He would have a radio with which he could communicate with the ship. The others would signal him, if necessary, by flashlight.
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