The Deceiver (12 page)

“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry. I messed it up.”

“Are you okay?” said McCready urgently. Morenz was wasting vital seconds.

“ ’Kay. Yeah,
k
as in
kaput
. I’m finished, Sam. I didn’t mean to kill her. I loved her, Sam. I loved her.”

McCready slammed down the phone, severing the connection. No one could make a phone call to the West from an East German phone booth. All contact was forbidden by the East Germans. But the SIS maintained a safe house in the Leipzig area, occupied by an East German agent-in-place who worked for London. A call to that number, dialed from inside East Germany, would run through pass-on equipment that would throw the call up to a satellite and back into the West.

But calls had to be four seconds long, no more, to prevent the East Germans triangulating onto the source of the call and locating the safe house. Morenz had babbled on for nine seconds. Although McCready could not know it, the SSD listening watch had already got as far as the Leipzig area when the connection was severed. Another six seconds, and they would have had the safe house and its occupant. Morenz had been told to use the number only in dire emergency and very briefly.

“He’s cracked up,” said Johnson. “Gone to pieces.”

“For Christ’s sake, he was crying like a child,” snapped McCready. “He’s had a complete nervous breakdown. Tell me something I don’t know. What the hell did he mean—‘I didn’t mean to kill her.’ ”

Johnson was pensive. “He comes from Cologne?”

“You know that.”

Actually, Johnson did not know that. He only knew he had picked up McCready from the Cologne airport Holiday Inn. He had never seen Poltergeist. No need to. He took the local newspaper and pointed out the second lead story on the front page. It was Guenther Braun’s story from his Cologne newspaper, picked up and reprinted by the
Nordbayerischer Kurier
, the north Bavarian paper printed in Bayreuth. The story was datelined Cologne and the headline read,
CALL GIRL/PIMP SLAUGHTERED IN LOVE-NEST SHOOT-OUT.
McCready read it, put it down, and stared across toward the north.

“Oh, Bruno, my poor friend. What the hell have you done?”

Five minutes later Archimedes phoned.

“We heard that,” said the duty officer. “So, I imagine, did everyone else. I’m sorry. He’s gone, hasn’t he?”

“What’s the latest?” asked Sam.

“They are using the name Hans Grauber,” said Archimedes. “There’s an all-points watch out for him all over southern Thuringia. Drink, assault, and theft of a police car. The car he drove was a black BMW, right? They’ve taken it to the SSD main garage at Erfurt. Seems all the rest of his gear has been impounded and handed over to the
Stasi
.”

“What time exactly was the crash?” asked Sam.

The duty officer conferred with someone.

“The first call to the Jena police was from a passing patrol car. The speaker was apparently the VOPO who had not been punched. He used the phrase ‘five minutes ago.’ Logged at twelve thirty-five.”

“Thank you,” said McCready.

At eight o’clock in the Erfurt garage, one of the mechanics found the cavity beneath the battery. Around him three other mechanics labored over what remained of the BMW. Its seats and upholstery were all over the floor, its wheels off and its tires inside-out. Only the frame remained, and it was there that the cavity was discovered. The mechanic called over a man in civilian clothes, a major of the SSD. They both examined the cavity, and the major nodded.

“
Ein Spionwagen
,” he said. A spy car. Work continued, though there was little more to do. The major went upstairs and called Lichtenberg, the East Berlin headquarters of the SSD. The major knew where to place the call; it went straight to Abteilung Ü, the Counterespionage Department of the service. There the matter was taken in hand by the Director of the Abteilung himself, Colonel Otto Voss. His first command was for absolutely everything connected with the case to be brought to East Berlin; his second was for everyone who had even glimpsed the BMW or its occupant since it entered the country, starting with the border guards at the Saale River, to be brought in and questioned minutely. That would later include the staff of the Black Bear Hotel, the patrolmen who had studied the BMW as they cruised alongside it on the Autobahn—especially the two who had caused the first rendezvous to abort—and the ones who had had their patrol car stolen.

Voss’s third order was for an absolute end to any mention of the matter on radios or on nonsecure telephone lines. When he had done that, he picked up his internal phone and was connected with Abteilung VI, Crossing Points and Airports.

At ten
P.M.
Archimedes phoned McCready for the last time.

“I’m afraid it’s over,” said the duty officer. “No, they haven’t got him yet, but they will. They must have discovered something in the Erfurt garage. Heavy radio traffic, coded, between Erfurt and East Berlin. A total shutdown of loose chit-chat on the airwaves. Oh, and all border points are on full alert—guards doubled, searchlights on the border working overtime. The lot. Sorry.”

Even from where he stood on the hillside, McCready could see that over the past hour the headlights of cars coming out of East Germany were very few and far between. They must be holding them for hours under the arc lights a mile away as they searched every car and truck until a mouse could not escape detection.

At ten-thirty, Timothy Edwards came on the line.

“Look, we’re all very sorry, but it’s over,” he said. “Come back to London at once, Sam.”

“They haven’t got him yet. I should stay here. I may be able to help. It’s not over yet.”

“Bar the shouting, it is,” insisted Edwards.

“There are things here we have to discuss—the loss of the package being not the least of them. Our American Cousins are not a happy group, to say the least. Please be on the first plane out of Munich or Frankfurt, whichever is the first of the day.”

It turned out to be Frankfurt. Johnson drove him through the night to the airport, then took the Range Rover and its equipment back to Bonn, a very tired young man. McCready grabbed a few hours’ sleep at the airport’s Sheraton and was on the first flight for Heathrow the next day, landing, with the one-hour time difference, just after eight o’clock. Denis Gaunt met him and drove him straight to Century House. He read the file of radio intercepts in the car.

Major Ludmilla Vanavskaya rose early that Thursday, and for lack of a gymnasium did her sit-ups in her own room at the KGB barracks. Her flight was not till midday, but she in tended to pass by the KGB headquarters for a last check on the itinerary of the man she hunted.

She knew he had returned from Erfurt to Potsdam in convoy the previous evening and spent the night in the officers’ quarters there. They were both due to take the same flight back from Potsdam to Moscow at noon. He would sit up front in the seats reserved, even on military flights, for the
vlasti
, the privileged ones. She was posing as a humble stenographer from the huge Soviet Embassy on Unter den Linden, the real seat of power in East Germany. They would not meet—he would not even notice her; but as soon as they entered Soviet air space, he would be under surveillance.

At eight she walked into the KGB headquarters building half a mile from the embassy and made her way to the Communications Office. They would be able to call Potsdam and confirm that the flight schedule was unchanged. While waiting for her information, she took coffee and shared a table with a young lieutenant who was plainly very tired and yawned often.

“Up all night?” she asked.

“Yep. Night shift. The krauts have been in a flap the whole time.”

He did not use her title because she was in plain clothes, and the word he used for the East Germans was uncomplimentary. The Russians all did that.

“Why?” she asked.

“Oh, they intercepted a West German car and found a secret cavity in it. Reckon it was being used by one of their agents.”

“Here in Berlin?”

“No, down at Jena.”

“Where is Jena, exactly?”

“Look, love, my shift’s over. I’m off to get some sleep.”

She smiled sweetly, opened her purse, and flashed her red-covered ID card. The Lieutenant stopped yawning and went pale. A full major of the Third Directorate was very bad news indeed. He showed her—on the wall map at the end of the canteen. She let him go and stayed looking at the map. Zwickau, Gera, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt—all in a line, a line followed by the convoy of the man she hunted. Yesterday … Erfurt. And Jena fourteen miles away. Close, too damned close.

Ten minutes later, a Soviet Major was briefing her on the way the East Germans worked.

“By now, it will be with their Abteilung II,” he said. “That’s Colonel Voss, Otto Voss. He’ll be in charge.”

She used his office phone, pulled some rank, and secured an interview at the Lichtenberg headquarters at the SSD with Colonel Voss. Ten o’clock.

At nine, London time, McCready took his seat at the table in the conference room one floor below the Chief’s office at Century House. Claudia Stuart was opposite, looking at him reproachfully. Chris Appleyard, who had flown to London to escort the Soviet War Book personally back to Langley, smoked and stared at the ceiling. His attitude seemed to be: This is a limey affair. You screwed it up, you sort it out. Timothy Edwards took the chair at the head, a sort of arbitrator. There was only one unspoken agenda: damage assessment. Damage limitation, if any was possible, would come later. No one needed to be briefed as to what had happened; they had all read the file of intercepts and the situation reports.

“All right,” said Edwards. “It appears your man Poltergeist has come apart at the seams and blown the mission away. Let’s see if there’s anything we can salvage from the mess.”

“Why the hell did you send him, Sam?” asked Claudia in exasperation.

“You know why. Because you wanted a job done,” said McCready. “Because you couldn’t do it yourselves. Because it was a rush job. Because I was stopped from going
myself
. Because Pankratin insisted on me personally. Because Poltergeist would be the only acceptable substitute. Because he agreed to go.”

“But now it appears,” drawled Appleyard, “that he had just killed his hooker girlfriend and was already at the end of his tether. You didn’t spot anything?”

“No. He appeared nervous but under control. Nerves are normal—up to a point. He didn’t tell me about his personal mess, and I’m not clairvoyant.”

“The damned thing is,” said Claudia, “he’s seen Pankratin. When the
Stasi
get him and go to work, he’ll talk. We’ve lost Pankratin as well, and God knows how much damage his interrogation in the Lubyanka will do.”

“Where is Pankratin now?” asked Edwards.

“According to his schedule, he’s boarding a military flight from Potsdam to Moscow right about now.”

“Can’t you get to him and warn him?”

“No, dammit. When he lands, he’s taking a week’s furlough. With army friends in the countryside. We can’t get our emergency warning code to him till he gets back to Moscow— if he ever does.”

“What about the War Book?” asked Edwards.

“I think Poltergeist’s got it on him,” said McCready.

He got their undivided attention. Appleyard stopped smoking.

“Why?”

“Timing,” said McCready. “The rendezvous was at twelve. Assume he quit the lay-by at about twelve-twenty. The crash was at twelve-thirty, ten minutes and five miles away, on the other side of Jena. I think if he had had the manual stashed in the compartment beneath the battery, even in his state he’d have taken the drunk-driving rap, spent the night in the cells, and paid his fine. Chances are the VOPOs would never have given the car a rigorous search.

“If the manual was lying in the BMW, I think some hint of the elation of the police would have come through on the intercepts. The SSD would have been called in within ten minutes, not two hours. I think he had it on him—under his jacket, maybe. That’s why he couldn’t go to the police station. For a blood test, they’d have taken his jacket off. So he ran for it.”

There was silence for several minutes.

“It all comes back to Poltergeist,” said Edwards. Even though everyone now knew the agent’s real name, they preferred his operational code-name. “He must be somewhere. Where would he go? Has he friends near there? A safe house? Anything?”

McCready shook his head. “There’s a safe house in East Berlin. He knows it from the old days. I’ve tried it—no contact. In the south, he knows nobody. Never even been there.”

“Could he hide out in the forests?” asked Claudia.

“It’s not that kind of area. Not like the Harz with its dense forests. Open rolling farmland, towns, villages, hamlets, farms.”

“No place for a middle-aged fugitive who’s lost his marbles,” commented Appleyard.

“Then we’ve lost him,” said Claudia. “Him, the War Book, and Pankratin. The whole deal.”

“I’m afraid it looks so,” said Edwards. “The People’s Police will use saturation tactics. Roadblocks on every street and lane. Without sanctuary, I fear they’ll have him by midday.”

The meeting ended on that gloomy note. When the Americans had gone, Edwards detained McCready at the door.

“Sam, I know it’s hopeless, but stay with it, will you? I’ve asked Cheltenham, East German Section, to step up the listening watch and let you know the instant they hear anything. When they get Poltergeist—and they must—I want to know at once. We’re going to have to placate our Cousins somehow, though God knows how.”

Back in his office, McCready threw himself into his chair in deep dejection. He took the phone off the cradle and stared at the wall.

If he had been a drinker, he would have reached for the bottle. Had he not given up cigarettes years earlier, he would have reached for a pack. He had failed, and he knew it. Whatever he might tell Claudia of the pressures they had put on him, it had, finally, been his decision to send in Morenz. And it had been a wrong one.

He had lost the War Book and probably blown away Pankratin. It would have surprised him to know that he was the only man in the building to hold these losses as secondary to another failure.