“He must have heard the shots. Call Dmitri at the gate. Have him stop the car” Nemchin grabbed the walkie- talkie from the hall table and keyed it. “Dmitri, are you there”
“Is that you, Sergei”
“Yes. That Mercedes that came up a few minutes ago is on its way back down. Stop it”
“We can’t. We just let him through” Nemchin turned to Baranov who had heard the exchange. “Shall we go after him”
Baranov thought about it for just a moment, then shook his head. “No, we’ll attend to it later”
“But, Comrade “
“Later” Baranov snapped, and Nemchin blanched.
It was a few minutes after 11:00 PM. The weekend was winding down and traffic in West Berlin was almost frantic in its intensity. It seemed as if the city was trying to have fun at a breakneck speed, Perhaps because so many Berliners thought there might not be a tomorrow.
McGarvey sat in the backseat of a cab waiting to cross the frontier.
There were two cars ahead of them. He had picked UP the same Fiat with the East German license tags from the Operations hangar at Templehof. No one had been around this time to greet him, or to ask him any questions, and the airbase gate guard had simply waved him through.
He had driven directly up to the British Sector of the city where he had left the car and his Kurshin identification in a car park on Kant Strasse a couple of blocks west of the main post office and tourist information center. Then he had walked down to the bright lights of the Ku’damm where he had caught a cab. Baranov would know that he was coming tonight. And the man would know that he would be using the Kurshin ID.
It made him sick to think how long this had gone on. All this time Baranov had been at least one step ahead of him because of the penetration agent in Washington. Christ, it was galling. Sitting in the cab, watching the lights of the crossing and the East German border guards doing their jobs, McGarvey tried not to think in any great detail about Lorraine Abbott. Baranov had taken her for bait. As extra insurance to make sure McGarvey would show up. He didn’t think Baranov would have harmed her. Not yet. The man would wait until later. In a way she was going to be the spoils for the victor; if Baranov won, she would be destroyed. McGarvey had to wonder: if he killed Baranov, would Lorraine have any better chance for survival? Border restrictions between the east and west sectors of the city were almost nonexistent, though identification papers were still being demanded and closely scrutinized. When it was finally their turn, McGarvey wound down his window and handed out his Gutherie passport. The border guard looked up sharply from the passport photograph to McGarvey’s face bathed in the harsh violet glow of the big lights. “Do you have another form of identification? Something else with your photograph on it”
“Bloody hell” McGarvey swore, but he dug out the driver’s license and handed it out. The guard studied it for several seconds. One of the other guards walked over and looked at the passport and driver’s license and then studied McGarvey’s face. “Shake a leg, would you be so kind, chaps?
I’m thirsty” McGarvey said. He feigned a little drunkenness.
“Where are you going at this hour” the one guard demanded.
“The Palast Hotel, where the hell else would I be going”
“Let me see your reservations” the guard asked. He looked I on the seat beside McGarvey. “Where is your luggage”
“I’ve got no reservations, you silly bugger. Wn’t you understand? I want a drink. A drink! When I’m done I’ll be returning”
The West Berlin cabbie had turned in his seat. He didn’t look happy.
“Please, sir, I wish no trouble. Perhaps you should go back now”
“Where did you pick him up” the guard asked the cabbie. “The Ku’damm, where else”
The guard nodded, hesitated just a moment longer, then handed the papers back to McGarvey. “See that you stay out of trouble, Hell Gutherie. You wouldn’t find our jails pleasant”
McGarvey slouched down in his seat as they were waved through and the cab headed into the east zone. It was a matter of hard Western currencies, of course. The East Germans were allowing practically anything to attract American dollars, British pounds, or especially West German marks into the country. And who knew, maybe a strong-arm bandit would mug him. At least the money thus gained would find its way into the economy.
This side of the city was much darker than the West, though traffic was about the same. A few minutes later the cabbie dropped him off in front of the modern Swedish-built hotel. McGarvey paid his fare and stumbled into the hotel, crossing the lobby and entering the relatively crowded bar. He ordered a cognac, drank it down, then left the hotel, walking away without looking back.
It was possible that the border guards might have called the hotel, and that the security people there would be watching for him. They had been suspicious of the poor photographs in his passport and driver’s license, and of his attitude. A police car, its blue lights flashing, raced past as McGarvey ducked into the darkness of a doorway. He watched until it turned a corner two blocks away, and then he hurried east, away from the Unter den Linden and the other well-lit main streets. Four blocks away he found what he was looking for in a neighborhood of apartment buildings. The streetlights here were out at both ends of the tree-lined block and very few lights shone from any of the apartment windows. A lot of cars and small trucks were parked on both sides of the street, all of them in the shadows beneath the thick trees. The doors of the fifth car he tried were unlocked. It was a small Renault, fairly new and in reasonable condition. In under sixty seconds he had the ignition lock out of its slot in the steering column, thus releasing the locking pin, and had scraped three wires bare, twisting two of them together. When he touched the third against the pair, the motor came to life. For just a second before he pulled away from the curb and drove off he had the feeling that he had somehow slipped into the edge of a powerful whirlpool, and that he was being inexorably sucked down toward the center in ever-accelerating spirals. But it was too late for second thoughts. It had been too late for a long time now.
The night was pitch-black beneath a deepening overcast. A cool wind had sprung up from the northwest, bringing with it the odors of dampness, decaying wood, rotting vegetation. McGarvey had hidden the car a quarter of a mile away from the boathouse on the lake’s south shore. He stood now in the dark Woods looking down at the driveway and the house, and beyond it the boathouse on the water’s edge. Nothing moved except the tree branches in the wind and the wavelets lapping against the shoreline. Nor were there any sounds, or any hints that someone was here waiting for him.
Yet he sensed danger all around him. On the way out of the city he had intended to write this place off. The penetration agent had told Baranov that he would be coming. He would also have told the man about the equipment that had been left here.
all But of the five men on the Mossad’s list of suspects, did any of them know every operational detail? Did all of them know about this place, and what had been left here for him? He had to find out, and yet he was sick with apprehension about what he would discover here. His pistol in hand, McGarvey moved quietly from tree to tree, working his way through the woods parallel to the driveway until he came to the final clearing up from the lake and the boathouse.
Again he stopped for a few seconds, his every sense straining to detect the presence of someone else. But there was nothing.
Keeping low, he stepped out from behind the hole of a tree and raced across to the boathouse. He hurriedly unlocked the door and stepped inside.
The boat was still there. Outwardly it seemed as if nothing had been disturbed since the last time he had been here. Holstering his gun, he stepped down into the boat and pulled out the packages containing the rebreathing equipment and the assault rifle. Had someone been here? Did Baranov know about this place, these things?
Who to trust? Always in the end it came down to that. Trust no one and your job becomes impossible. Trust the wrong person and you’re dead.
Holding the tiny penlight in his mouth, he unwrapped the AK74 and quickly field-stripped it, finding his answer in less than twenty seconds. “Christ” he swore softly. The firing pin had been removed from the rifle. Maybe it had come like that. Maybe someone in LIGHTHOUSE had been tricked. Maybe someone else had an ax to grind. He shook his head.
