Aleksander reached out reluctantly and took the envelope. He held it between two fingers, nose wrinkled as if smelling something offensive.
“Remember,” Mikhail said. “No one is to open this letter.”
“What if…” Aleksander’s voice trailed off.
“What?” Mikhail asked, annoyed. The lack of sleep was catching up to him and he still had a busy day ahead.
“Well, what if I am challenged, you know, by the authorities?”
Mikhail reached into his pocket and removed a pen and a small pad of paper. He jotted something down and handed it to Aleksander.
“The authorities would have no reason to challenge you, but if you encounter any difficulties, this is my private residential telephone number. Very few people have it. Anyone wishing to question you can call me, any time, day or night, and I will be happy to explain the situation.”
It was clear to Mikhail that Aleksander was not pleased, but that did not matter. He placed the envelope in the interior breast pocket of his suit coat and the men began walking toward the building. Mikhail knew he had just passed the point of no return. He hoped Aleksander Petrovka was up to the challenge.
***
May 29, 1987
10:30 a.m.
The Kremlin
KGB monitoring station
Viktor Kovalenko squinted, his eyes glued to a tiny black-and-white monitor. The screen was crammed into a metal rack mounted on the wall next to his desk alongside eleven similar monitors. Each transmitted a different view of the Kremlin’s exterior.
The image was small, but he could see enough to know something unusual was happening. General Secretary Gorbachev was speaking with one of his assistants, something he did regularly throughout the day. But normally the men would be surrounded by aides and secretaries and assorted party apparatchiks. This meeting was being conducted one-on-one, almost an unheard-of scenario with a low-level bureaucrat like Aleksander Petrovka.
The men were engrossed in an intense conversation, Gorbachev doing most of the talking, Petrovka’s body language suggesting he would rather be almost anywhere else in the world. Gorbachev removed something from his pocket and after stressing a point, finger waggling, handed the object to Petrovka.
Kovalenko glanced at his watch and jotted the time down on a pad of paper, along with a notation regarding Gorbachev’s odd behavior. He watched the small Russian-made Ekran television monitor closely as he lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.
Tried to determine the significance of what he was seeing. Decided to play it safe.
He picked up a telephone handset and dialed a number from memory.
The call was answered on the first ring, as Kovalenko had known it would be. It always was.
He laid out the details on the phone for the KGB watch commander: the virtually unprecedented change to General Secretary Gorbachev’s routine. The seeming reluctance with which Aleksander Petrovka received Gorbachev’s words. The secretive passing of an object—perhaps an envelope, perhaps not—between the two men.
Despite his familiarity with Gorbachev—he had been assigned to this post for over three years—Kovalenko could not guess what the general secretary might be up to. Something was definitely amiss, though.
Colonel Kopalev listened without comment for five minutes or more as Kovalenko reported his observations.
Finally, when Kovalenko had finished, the colonel said, “Continue observing Secretary Gorbachev. When he leaves his office for the day, I want it thoroughly but discreetly searched. Have your men look for anything unusual and then report back to me with your findings.”
Kovalenko grimaced. “Respectfully, Colonel, the object was passed to Petrovka. I very much doubt any evidence will remain in Secretary Gorbachev’s office by the end of the day. There’s probably none in there now. If I may suggest following Petrovka—”
“Thank you for your assessment, Major. Of course we will follow Comrade Petrovka. But it changes nothing as far as you are concerned. You have your orders. I will expect to hear from you immediately if your search turns up any useable information.”
“Yes sir,” Kovalenko replied, and the connection was abruptly broken at the other end. His boss had just slammed down the receiver.
He replaced the handset in its cradle and lifted his middle finger at it, fully aware that he might be under surveillance as well, that his insolence was probably being observed, but he was annoyed enough not to care.
He lit another cigarette and resumed observing the activity in and around the Kremlin.
4
May 29, 1987
10:20 p.m.
Berlin, German Democratic Republic
The vodka burned in a familiar and not unpleasant way as it rolled down Aleksander Petrovka’s throat. He gulped down his first glass in a matter of seconds and realized he should have ordered two at once from the heavy-set barmaid when she had made her first pass by his table.
He shrugged. She would return soon. Any good barmaid could recognize the heaviest drinkers in a crowd instantly. Her livelihood depended upon it.
Aleksander knew it was important to keep his head clear and his wits about him during the upcoming rendezvous. This was only his second trip into the GDR, and every face appeared hostile, suspicious of the Russian interloper. But the prospect of getting through the next hour—indeed, the rest of his life—without the fuzzy reassurance provided by a liberal dose of vodka was unthinkable. The enormity of this mission was not lost on Aleksander, nor was its potential to destroy his life, and for the thousandth time since being summoned by Gorbachev he questioned his commitment to the general secretary.
Nobody defied the KGB and got away with it.
And Aleksander knew that by carrying out the instructions Gorbachev had given him, he was defying the KGB. There was simply no other way to look at it. The very circumstances of their meeting this morning were enough to convince him of that fact. No office. No aides. Just he and the most powerful man in the Soviet Union.
Aleksander forced his thoughts back to the present and the raucous East German club. He maintained a continuous watch on the crowded discotheque, eyes darting, alert for potential threats. The notion that the Undersecretary for Presidential Affairs, the very definition of an anonymous apparatchik, would recognize a threat even if it appeared before him and announced itself, was laughable. Aleksander knew this, yet he could not stop himself.
In his obsessive concern for security, Aleksander almost missed the blocky figure of the barmaid approaching his table. She asked him a question, which was lost in the din of the club and the uncertainty of a foreign language, and Aleksander nodded, handing her his empty glass. He assumed she must have asked if he wanted another drink, which he most certainly did. What else could it be?
The barmaid took his glass and clomped away. Standing behind her, entirely hidden by her bulk until she stepped around him, was a smallish, unassuming-looking man, dressed casually, with a receding head of buzz-cut sandy hair and a pale face dominated by black horn-rimmed glasses.
And a jagged scar running diagonally down his right cheek.
In his hand he clutched a glass of clear liquid, presumably vodka.
The man nodded at Aleksander and then sat across the small table without waiting to be invited. “It has been a long time, Dolph,” he said with a tight-lipped smile.
Aleksander stared at the man, nerves tightening. He was supposed to respond. Call the man by a code name. What was it? He had been rehearsing it just a moment ago and now it was gone.
The man’s eyes narrowed and sweat broke out on Aleksander’s forehead. He felt as though he might suffer a heart attack.
Then he remembered.
“Henrik!” he burst out. “It is wonderful to see you, Henrik.”
The stranger relaxed and leaned across the table, waiting to speak until Aleksander had taken the hint and leaned forward as well.
Then, speaking as softly as possible in the noisy club, he said, “Do you have th
e item?” His Russian was flawless.
The barmaid returned with his drink and Aleksander remained silent while she dropped the glass onto the table, vodka slopping over the side. As her hefty form plowed back through the crowd toward the bar—Aleksander could not help picturing a gigantic Tupolev airplane steaming down the runway for takeoff—he returned his attention to his new friend. The man sat drumming his fingers.
Aleksander nodded. “Da. I have it.”
He reached into his breast pocket before realizing how suspicious it would look for him to withdraw the item here in the tavern and pass it across the table to his contact. Although no one seemed to be paying any attention to them, Aleksander knew someone would remember once the KGB started questioning people. The KGB could be very persuasive.
Suddenly terrified, Aleksander froze, hand on the envelope sticking partway out of his pocket. What should he do? How could he avoid becoming the object of everyone’s attention and still complete the mission Gorbachev had entrusted to him?
The Soviet leader was not someone to be trifled with. In his own way he was as imposing and intimidating as the faceless killers of the KGB. One didn’t rise to the position of general secretary of the Communist Party without possessing an iron will and a cold ruthlessness.
The contact saved him. He smiled reassuringly, rising and leaning over the table, clapping Aleksander on the shoulder with one hand and deftly plucking the envelope from Aleksander’s pocket with the other. The envelope disappeared in an impressive sleight of hand, one worthy of a professional pickpocket.
“You’re doing fine,” the man said, again in Russian, as he leaned back in his chair. He had clearly been briefed he would be dealing with a novice.
Then he continued, speaking quietly. “Here is what we’re going to do,” he said. “We’ll share a drink and light conversation, just a couple of old friends catching up. Then I will get up and leave the club. You will wait a few minutes and then follow.”
The contact leaned back and began laughing uproariously, as if Aleksander had just said the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
Aleksander stared, surprised by the man’s sudden outburst, before realizing he was supposed to join in. So he did, feeling silly. He took a big pull on his vodka, emptying the glass. The fuzzy reassurance he’d been waiting for began to tingle through him and Aleksander welcomed it with enthusiasm.
He waved the barmaid over to their table—she hadn’t gotten any better looking, even after two tall vodkas—and ordered another round for himself and his new friend. After all, it was what the man had just said he was supposed to do, right?
The shroud of fear and uncertainty that had been hanging over Aleksander since his meeting with the general secretary began to lift. For the first time Aleksander began to believe things might actually turn out all right. He was almost finished with this frightening business, and then he could return to Moscow and get on with his life, safe and secure in bureaucratic anonymity.
His contact made small talk for a few minutes, and Aleksander returned the conversation with inanities of his own. They laughed now and then, just two men reconnecting after time apart. They could be friends, brother, coworkers.
Still no one appeared to be watching. Aleksander’s concern continued to melt away. He knew it was probably due to the affects of the alcohol but he didn’t care. The sense of relief was too pleasant.
At last, Aleksander’s contact pushed his chair back on the dirty floor and stood. Aleksander stood too and the man with the scar reached across the small table, shaking his hand and drawing him close at the same time.
“Remember,” he whispered in Aleksander’s ear. “Go nowhere for the next few minutes. Have another drink. Relax. Allow time for me to slip away. Then you should disappear. Good luck.”
Then he laughed again, smiling and nodding at Aleksander. He turned on his heel and melted into the crowd.
5
Klaus Hahn slipped the envelope into his breast pocket and picked his way through the crowd. American disco music blasted through tinny speakers in the background, and the temperature had skyrocketed inside the densely packed tavern. He was sweating profusely, and not just from nervousness.
A veteran of more than a decade of service to the American CIA, Klaus looked forward to the day when his beloved Germany would be reunited. No more East and West, with the ugly concrete and barbed-wire barriers splitting the country arbitrarily and needlessly, in some cases literally tearing families apart, half living on the side of freedom and opportunity and half on the side of repression and paranoia. Klaus Hahn’s goal was to help end the fear and forced servitude on the eastern side of that wall.
Klaus had not hesitated on that day years ago when co-opted by his CIA handler, a man known to him only by his alias, “Mr. Wilson.” He had made no secret of his willingness to work in the name of freedom, and when approached by Mr. Wilson had enthusiastically accepted the opportunity to contribute, even in some small way, toward a free and unified Germany.
The majority of the tasks Klaus had handled over the years were relatively small and risk-free. Most often his assignments had simply involved funneling names and addresses of hard line Communist sympathizers to Mr. Wilson, as well as names and contact information of other freedom-seeking individuals like himself.
Tonight was different, though. Mr. Wilson had approached Klaus with the offer of something much more substantial. Something big. So big, in fact, that Mr. Wilson had said this would be the last job Klaus would ever do for the CIA. Klaus would be toxic after this.
“Toxic.” That was the exact phrasing Mr. Wilson had used. If the job was completed successfully, Klaus could expect an uncomfortable night of questioning by local authorities and, quite likely, the Stasi, the German Democratic Republic’s feared secret police.
If unsuccessful, well, Mr. Wilson had not spelled out any details under that scenario, but elaboration had not been necessary.
“Stick to your story when you’re questioned,” Mr. Wilson had told him. “Do not deviate from it. You stopped off at the club for a few drinks after work. You ran into an old friend from school, quite by accident. You do not even remember his name. You shared a drink and discussed sports, women, whatever. Then you left. They will not believe you, but there will be nothing they can do about it. After several hours of intense questioning, they will reluctantly release you. But you will be watched, and we can never meet again. Your work for us will be finished.”
Klaus had agreed. He was not afraid of a night of questioning, by the police or by the Stasi. He was disappointed his work toward the cause of a reunified homeland was going to end, but he had no choice but to accept when Mr. Wilson stressed the importance of the assignment.
He wiped his brow with his sleeve, weaving through the crowded tavern, moving steadily toward the door. Halfway across the floor he turned sideways to allow a pretty young redhead to pass by. It was his contact, and she was dressed provocatively, in skintight black leather pants and a silk blouse that did little to hide her considerable assets.
She caught his eye and flashed a smile before rubbing against him out of necessity—the crush of thirsty bar patrons crowded them from all sides.
They squeezed past each other. Klaus felt a brief tug and then the envelope was gone and so was the girl. He continued toward the door as Mr. Wilson had instructed him to do. He had been told not to look back but he couldn’t help it—he took a quick peek behind as he exited the front door. The beautiful young girl was nowhere to be seen.
Klaus strolled into the cool Berlin night, glad to be free of the claustrophobia-inducing, sweat-soaked, sexually charged atmosphere, not to mention the annoyingly loud music. He turned left and began walking toward his car, moving faster now.
Before he had made it five steps, a hand gripped his elbow. Attached to the hand was a tall, skeletal man dressed in a dark suit. An unbuttoned overcoat flapped in the chilly breeze.
The man said, “Where is it?”
Klaus a
nswered, “Where is what?”
“Don’t play stupid. Where is the envelope?”
Klaus wrenched his arm free and turned, staring directly into the man’s eyes. The street lighting was dim and shadows running from the man’s hook nose across his face gave him the appearance of a vulture.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“You’re coming with me,” the man said, and Klaus knew his night of questioning had begun.
6
Tracie Tanner lifted the envelope effortlessly from her East German contact and slid it down the front of her blouse. The heat generated by all the bodies crammed together inside the tavern was stifling, and Tracie thought the envelope might have to be peeled away from her skin with a chisel when she finally made it to safety. She felt naked without her weapon, a Beretta 92SB, but her skimpy attire left no room for it.
Tracie had nursed her glass of soda water and loitered on the other side of the room, watching out of the corner of her eye as her contact received the envelope from an extremely nervous Russian bureaucrat. She watched while rebuffing a succession of young East German men doing their best to capture her attention.
The moment her contact—she had never met him, had been told only that he was an East German citizen committed to reunification of his country—shook his companion’s hand and turned toward the door, Tracie offered a dazzling smile to the young German currently chatting her up and gave him a little wave. “Nice meeting you.”
The kid blinked in surprise, jaw hanging open, his disappointment obvious. Tracie turned and strode across the room to intercept her contact.
The exchange went off without a hitch, and the moment Tracie had secured the envelope she turned and began working her way through the dense crowd toward the rear of the club. The bass track thumped and the people shimmied as Tracie headed for the swinging door behind the bar leading to the back exit.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 2