Aaron Elkins - Gideon Oliver 01 - Fellowship Of Fear

by Fellowship Of Fear

"Well," said Dr. Rufus, frowning and reaching into the puffed wheat, "well now—"

  "Dr. Rufus, I’ve been through a lot since I came to USOC. I’d certainly appreciate the truth."

  Dr. Rufus absent-mindedly popped a kernel into his mouth. "All right, Gideon, I agree with you." He was still frowning, and Gideon could see little beads of sweat glistening on his pink forehead. "I’m just not sure how much I’m allowed…" He wiped his brow, snorted forcefully, and appeared to come to a decision.

  "All right," he said, looking extremely uncomfortable. "About a week before the new faculty came to Heidelberg, Mr. Marks called me. He had a list of, oh, three or four of you. There was you, and Dr. Kyle, and, um, Mr. Morgan, I think. Mr. Marks asked me if I could assign any of you to both Sigonella and Torrejon, as a favor to the NATO Security Directorate. Ah, no, it wasn’t Mr. Morgan, it was Dr. Gordon. I remember because—"

  "You mean he would have taken any of us? He didn’t want me, specifically?"

  "You, specifically? Oh, no, no. They ran checks of the incoming faculty, and the three of you—you know, I think it was Morgan—were found to be entirely trustworthy; ‘clean’ was the way Mr. Marks put it. Choosing you, I’m afraid, was my doing."

  "Why did you pick me?"

  "Well, Dr. Kyle teaches physics, you see, and Torrejon had just had physics last semester; and Mr. Morgan—yes, it was Morgan, I’m sure of it—teaches only undergraduate courses, and Sigonella needed a graduate offering. You, on the other hand—"

  "…got into this incredible situation because I happen to teach graduate anthropology."

  Dr. Rufus looked contrite. "I’m afraid that’s right. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that it’s resulted in so much trouble for you. If I’d had any idea you’d be hurt…" He spread his hands, palms upward, in an impotent gesture of sympathy.

  "Dr. Rufus," said Gideon, "forgive me, but just what sort of thing did you think NSD had in mind?"

  The chancellor shook his head woefully. "I suppose I didn’t think. Mr. Marks assured me there wouldn’t be any risk. And I, well, I felt it was USOC’s duty to provide assistance to NATO, as long as it didn’t interfere with our plans."

  "Well, it sure interfered with my personal plans."

  Abstractedly, Dr. Rufus ate some more puffed wheat. "Of course," he said, "I don’t know what it is Marks asked you to do; I never do. But are you certain that your, ah"— he gestured at Gideon’s scarred face—"is a result of your… um, association with NSD?"

  Gideon ignored the question. "What do you mean, you never do? Has Marks asked you to do this before?"

  "What?" In his surprise at the question, Dr. Rufus put back into the bowl a kernel he had been about to eat. "Well, yes, certainly, of course. Didn’t I say that? Nearly every semester. There’s always some small schedule rearrangement or program change they’d like us to make. If we can, we do. If we can’t, that’s the end of it. But nothing like this has happened before… Sicilian gangsters shooting at you…"

  "What about the two previous visiting fellows?"

  "Oh no, surely you don’t think…why, I can’t really recall…Mr. Marks asks us not to keep records of that sort of thing….But look, Dr. Dee wasn’t attacked; he was killed in an automobile accident in Italy."

  "And so would I have been, if I hadn’t been able to brake in time. Dr. Rufus, I can’t believe you’ve allowed your faculty to be used like this."

  The chancellor’s remorseful expression made him relent a little. "Of course," Gideon went on, "I understand why you’d want to help NATO. I feel the same way. But to simply do whatever they want without asking any questions, and to put your staff into situations of danger without their even knowing it…" Feeling unpleasantly sanctimonious, he let the sentence trail away. Dr. Rufus hadn’t put him into his situation; he’d done it himself. If he hadn’t wanted to go along with NSD, he’d had his chance to say so to Marks and Delvaux.

  Dr. Rufus mopped the back of his neck and put his handkerchief in his pocket. He was done with sweating, the gesture seemed to say. He sat up straight, his hands on his knees. "You’re entirely right," he said. "I’ve always been ambivalent about this sort of thing, you know. I should never have allowed it. My God, to think I might be responsible… My boy, we’ll cancel your Torrejon assignment, of course. Where would you like to deliver your lectures instead? I’ll personally arrange it anywhere we have an education office. We certainly owe that much to you. Rome? Athens? How about Istanbul? Berlin?"

  "Torrejon."

  Dr. Rufus looked at him with his mouth open. Gideon had an urge to toss in a puffed wheat kernel.

  "Yes, Torrejon. Now that I’m in it, I want to stay in it. There are too many loose ends for me to just give it up."

  "But my boy, my boy, you’ve already been nearly killed. Oh, I could never let you…oh no, it’s out of the question. I’d never forgive myself…" The handkerchief was out and at work again. "Besides, Mr. Marks, Mr. Delvaux… They’d never permit it—"

  "Are you saying that, as chancellor, you have to get their permission to assign your own faculty?"

  "Well, in a case like this…Why, I think I should… After all…"

  "Dr. Rufus, I’ve nearly been killed twice. I’ve got thirty-some stitches in my face. I’ve been driven to hurting other people, maybe killing one. My privacy’s been repeatedly violated. And," he said, realizing for the first time what the heart of it was, "I’ve been made to feel like a puppet, a pawn…a fool. I’m not out for vengeance; at least I don’t think I am. But I can’t just walk away from it now and let it ferment for the rest of my life." Embarrassed and a little surprised by his vehemence, he stopped.

  Dr. Rufus looked at Gideon with a mixture of pride and concern, as a father might watch a son going off to war. "Very well, my dear boy, I understand, more than you think I do." He patted Gideon’s knee. "Torrejon it is. Mr. Marks can go to hell. But you will be careful, won’t you? If there’s any help I can give you…"

  "Thanks, sir; John Lau’s already being very helpful. In fact," he said, standing up, "I’m supposed to meet him for lunch in half an hour. Then I’ve got a few business stops to make back here."

  The chancellor rose and walked with Gideon across the office. "Ah, yes, you’ll have to pick up your travel orders and tickets and things. And be sure and stop by the library. Bruce has been holding onto some new books for you."

  "I will. I have to return some to him, anyway."

  "Fine." Placing his hand on Gideon’s arm to stop him at the door, he spoke in a low, earnest voice. His honest face, close to Gideon’s, was redolent of after-shave lotion and puffed wheat. "Gideon, are you sure you’re doing the right thing? Shouldn’t this be left to the professionals? My boy, if anything were to happen to you…"

  "Don’t worry, Dr. Rufus. I know exactly what I’m doing," said Gideon, wishing mightily that he did.

  TWELVE

  HE had arranged to meet John in a small cafe on the Marktplatz. He was fifteen minutes early, so he ordered a beer and sat back at an outdoor table, enjoying the view of the old church a hundred feet away. Like the castle above, it had managed to survive the seventeenth-century Orleans War and fires. But the slow depredations of time, which had made the castle a striking dowager, mysterious and alluring, had turned the Heilig-Geist-Kirche into a frowsy slattern. In a sense, though, thought Gideon, the castle was dead and embalmed, a museum piece; the church was still alive. Crude wooden stalls stood between its late Gothic buttresses, just as they had in the Middle Ages. Once they must have displayed venison and oil and rough beer. Now it was newspapers and magazines, and key chains that said "Olde Heidelberg."

  A misty rain began to fall, the first precipitation Gideon had seen since coming to Europe. The tourists in the square melted away, and the merchants began to close up their closetlike stalls or to cover them with green canvas. Gideon remained outside, however, protected by a red-and-white table umbrella advertising Grenzquell beer, and enjoying the wet-clay smell of the rain. As a northern Californian,
he had come to love the fog and rain, preferring stormy days to sunny ones. Here in Heidelberg he found himself enchanted by the mist that now obscured part of the castle and by the rain that glistened on the antique cobblestones of the square.

  How nice it would be if Janet were sitting with him, he thought. His heart contracted suddenly; he had thought of Janet, not Nora. He felt…how? Guilty? Sad, because he was finally saying good-bye to Nora? Hopeful, because the despair might finally be at an end?

  He shook his head to clear it. Addicted as he was to it, he knew that introspection of one’s emotions was pointless. Psychiatric dogma to the contrary, one’s emotions would work out their own problems or they wouldn’t; thinking about them wouldn’t help.

  Ten minutes later John came up, protected by a trench coat and a big black umbrella, and looking cold.

  "Hey, Doc! What are you sitting outside for?"

  "Hi, John. It’s beautiful in the rain."

  "Not to me. I’m not going to sit out here. What are you, crazy?"

  "Okay," said Gideon. He picked up his beer and, under the protection of John’s umbrella, they both went inside. Finding a corner table they ordered Nurnbergerstadtwurst and weinkraut

  "Hey, where’s the cane?" John said.

  "I left it at home. The ankle felt pretty good this morning. Haven’t missed it yet."

  "That’s great," said John with such genuine warmth that Gideon was moved. "I’m sorry I was late. I’ve been finding out lots of good stuff."

  "Like what?" Gideon said.

  "First tell me what you got from Marks."

  "Not much." Over their plates of pungent little sausages and cooked, sweet cabbage, he told John what he had learned from Marks and Dr. Rufus. He also told John that he had no real evidence that any of it was true.

  "Uh uh," said John, chewing his wurst, "I think it’s true all right. It fits in with what I’ve found out."

  "But it doesn’t make sense. Why would they have sent that guy all the way down to Sicily just to protect me? I didn’t have any real kind of assignment, and I was apparently just one of a string of USOC’rs they used. Certainly they can’t have enough men to give that kind of protection to all their informants. Or do they?"

  "Yes, they do. Look, whatever else you might think about Marks and the rest of the Intelligence outfit, they don’t just use people callously. If they thought there was a chance you could get in trouble, yes, you bet they’d have protection for you. Sometimes they use Safety people. I’ve had that kind of assignment."

  "Is that what you were doing in Sicily last week?"

  "No, I came as part of my regular job—protecting USOC life and limb."

  John, who had done more listening than talking, had finished his meal. For a while he nursed his beer, watching Gideon eat.

  "Doc," he said finally, "I hate to admit it, but you were right about the apple."

  "Come again?"

  "The guy on the bridge. You said he was an American because he ate an apple with his mouth."

  Gideon had forgotten. "Right!" he said excitedly, with his mouth full of sausage. "He was an American?"

  "Yup."

  "Ha! You see what scientific ratiocination can do? Who was he?"

  "Come on, I can’t tell you that. You want me to compromise—"

  "I know, the need-to-know principle. I didn’t mean who is he, I meant what is he?…Where is he from?"

  "From where Marks told you. He’s an American, an NSD intelligence agent, and his assignment was to watch out for you."

  "Well, I wish he’d watched out a little earlier."

  The policeman showed a sudden flash of temper. "You’re lucky he got there when he did. And that he was brave enough to risk his life for you."

  Gideon accepted the rebuke. "You’re right. He saved my life. He wasn’t hurt, was he?"

  "Yes, he was hurt," said John, still angry.

  "I’m sorry to hear that. Not seriously, I hope."

  "Bad enough," John muttered into the nearly empty stein. "About like you. Lacerations, contusions, broken collarbone." He was showing the concern, universal and understandable, of the policeman for his brother. Gideon kept forgetting he was very much a cop.

  "Look, John, I’m sorry for what I said about him getting there earlier. I meant it to be funny and it wasn’t. If our positions had been reversed, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to stop and shoot it out with those guys. I owe him my life. I’d like to thank him for it some time." It was easy for Gideon to put conviction into his words; he meant every one.

  John seemed mollified. "Not much chance of that. I only know his code name myself. What happened was that the searchlight got shot out and the bad guys managed to get to their car. Our guy chased them for a while, but finally wound up going off the road outside of Catania. That’s where he got hurt."

  "Did you know this when we were in Sicily?"

  "No, I just found out. I’m breaking all kinds of rules to get the information I’m getting, let alone telling you. But I think NSD has put you in hot water, and I’m not so sure

  Marks knows what he’s doing. And you sure as hell don’t."

  "Thanks a lot. I appreciate your confidence."

  John smiled. "You know about bones and about languages; I give you that. But you’re operating in a different world—with different rules and very nasty people."

  "I know it, John. Believe me, I’ll take all the help I can get."

  "Are you going to have another beer?" John said.

  Gideon shook his head. "I’ve already had two."

  John signaled for a beer and then waited for the waiter to deliver it and leave before he began. "You know the questions you keep asking? If we don’t know what it is that the Russians are trying to find out, and we don’t know why they want to know it, what makes us think they’re looking for anything?"

  Gideon nodded. "And why," he said, "do we think they’d look for it at Sigonella and Torrejon, as opposed to a hundred other bases?"

  "Right," John said. "The answers are pretty simple, it turns out. NSD has been intercepting KGB messages for months that say just that."

  "That they don’t know what they’re looking for, either?"

  "No, that they need ‘X’ information from certain bases like Torrejon and Sigonella. It’s the ‘X’ that’s the problem. The messages are in cipher, and the ciphers change all the time. We—that is, our Intelligence cryptographers— have been able to get the gist of most of the messages— where the information is; when it’s needed by. But not the most crucial parts, not the ‘X.’ The Russians seem to be using some sort of special codes for those. It could be they don’t want their own field personnel to know what they’re looking for."

  "Wait a minute, John. That doesn’t make sense. How can you look for something if you don’t know what it is? How would you know when you’ve found it?"

  "You’d know when some person you were waiting for— your source, I think they call it—handed you an envelope or a package, or maybe even just gave you some code word or number that you had to transmit back. You wouldn’t have to know what it meant."

  "I’m not following you."

  "That’s because I haven’t given you the kicker yet. Doc, you sure you don’t want another beer?"

  "Am I going to need one?"

  John’s eyes twinkled momentarily in his familiar smile, then turned sober. "No, you can handle it. The kicker is that there’s somebody from USOC involved."

  "On their side?"

  "Yup. The source—the guy that gets the information from the base and passes it on to the Russians—he’s a USOC’r."

  "Holy moley," said Gideon. "This is beginning to sound like a movie. Maybe I will have that beer."

  Again they waited for the waiter to leave before they continued.

  "Who is it?" Gideon asked.

  "Don’t know. Or at least that’s what my contact tells me. Apparently the Russians refer to him only by code name. But I guess there’s no doubt about him being
from USOC."

  "John, let me get this straight. Are you telling me that someone on the USOC faculty is a Russian spy?"

  "Well, an American traitor. It amounts to the same thing. Whatever they’re looking for, a USOC’r gets it and passes it on to them."

  "You mean Marks doesn’t have any leads? I mean, it doesn’t sound that difficult. If they know the bases the stuff is gotten from, and when it’s needed, all they have to do is find out which USOC person has been at all the right bases at the right times, and it has to be him."

  "Very good; you’re starting to think like a cop. The problem is that this has been going on for a long time, a year or more. At least ten bases have been involved. We still haven’t figured out what the first seven were—never broke the codes. Then the codes changed or something— this is out of my line, remember—but we were still only able to figure out the last three the Russians needed: Rhein-Main, Sigonella, and Torrejon. Now only Torrejon is left. If they get what they need there…" John had been leaning forward with his elbows on the table. He sat back and moved his glass in slow circles on the table. "If they get what they need there, then they’ll have everything they need…for whatever purpose they need it. And nobody on our side knows what that is. Or who the leak is. Hey, Doc, you haven’t touched your beer."

  Gideon thought he saw where the discussion was leading, and it made him uncomfortable. "I don’t really want it. What I’d really like is to take a walk in the rain. How about it? You have a raincoat, and that monster umbrella of yours will cover us both."

  "Out in that rain? Brr…But okay, you’ve had it tough; I’ll humor you."

  After the stuffiness of the restaurant, the moist, cool air renewed Gideon’s strength. Even the sound of the rain hissing on the paving stones was refreshing. They walked a block to the river, each in his own thoughts, and found themselves at the foot of the Alte Brucke, the oldest of Heidelberg’s three bridges across the Neckar. For a while they stood looking at the twin towers that marked the entrance, each one topped by a "German helmet" that gleamed wetly.

  "There’s a cell in one of those towers, did you know?" Gideon said.