Clary cleared his throat. 'Colonel?'
Rose looked up slowly. 'Yes, Sergeant?'
'Sir, Ambassador Briggs is flying in from Bonn tomorrow morning.
State just informed us by courier.'
Rose frowned. 'That's not on my calendar, is it?'
'No, sir.'
'Well?'
'Apparently the Soviets have filed some sort of complaint against us,
sir. Through the embassy.'
'Us?'
'The Army, sir. It's something to do with last night's detail at
Spandau Prison. That's all I could get out of Smitty-I mean the
courier, sir.'
'Spandau? What about it? Christ, we've watched the damned coverage all
day, haven't we? I've already filed my report.'
'State didn't elaborate, sir.'
Rose snorted. 'They never do, do they.'
'No, sir. Care to see the message?'
Rose gazed out of his small window at the Berlin dusk and wondered about
the possible implications of the ambassador's visit. The American
diplomatic corps stayed in Bonn most of the time-well out of Rose's area
of operationsand he liked that just fine.
'The message, Colonel?' Sergeant Clary repeated.
'What? No, Sergeant. Dismissed.'
'Sir.' Clary beat a hasty retreat from the office, certain that his
colonel would want to ponder this unpleasant development over a shot of
the good stuff.
'Clary!' Rose's bark rattled the door. 'Is Major Richardson still down
the hall?'
The sergeant poked his head back into the office. 'I'll run check,
sir.'
'Can't you just buzz him?'
'Uh ... the major doesn't always answer his pages, sir.
After five, that is. Says he can't stand to hear the phone while he's
working.'
'Who the hell can? Don't people just keep on ringing the damned thing
when he doesn't answer?'
'Well, sir ... I think he's rigged some type of switch to his phone or
something. He just shuts it off when he doesn't want to hear it.'
Rose stuck out his bottom lip. 'I see.'
'Checking now, sir,' said Clary, on the fly.
Since 1945, Berlin has been an island city. It is a political isiana,
quadrisected by foreign conquerors, and a psychological island as
insulated from the normal flow of German life as a child kidnapped from
its mother. Berlin was an island before the Wall, during the Wall, and
it will remain so long after the Wall has fallen. Kidnapped children
can take years to recover.
The American community in Berlin is an island within that larger host.
It clusters around the U.S. Military Mission in the affluent district of
Dahlem, a giant concrete block bristling with satellite dishes, radio
antennae, and microwave transmitters. In this city of hastily built
office towers, bomb-scarred churches, and drab concrete tenement blocks
whose color accents are provided mostly by graffiti, the American
housing area manages to look neat, midwestern, suburban, and safe. Known
as 'Little America,' it is home to the sixty-six hundred servicemen,
their wives, and children who comprise the symbolic U.S. presence in
Berlin.
These families bustle between the U.S. Mission, the Officer's club, the
well-stocked PX, the private Burger King and McDonald's, and their patio
barbecues like suburbanites from Omaha or Atlanta. Only the razor wire
that tops the fences surrounding the manicured lawns betrays the tension
that underpins this bucolic scene.
Few Americans truly mix with the Berliners. They are more firmly tied
to the United States than to the streets they walk and the faces they
pass each day in Berlin. They are tied by the great airborne umbilical
cord stretching from Tempelhof Airport to the mammoth military supply
bases of America. Major Harry Richardson-the man Colonel Rose had sent
Sergeant Clary to find-was an exception to this pattern. Richardson
needed no umbilical cord in Berlin, or anywhere else. He spoke
excellent German, as well as Russian-and not with the stilted State
Department cadence of the middle and upper ranks of the army. He did
not live in Dahlem or Zehlendorf, the ritzy addresses of choice, but in
thoroughly German Wilmersdorf. He came from eL iiiuiieyed family, had
attended both Harvard and Oxford, yet he had served in Vietnam and
remained in the army after the war. His personal contacts ranged from
TJ.S. senators to supply sergeants at distant Army outposts, from
English peers to Scottish fishing guides, from Berlin senators to
kabob-cooks in the Turkish quarter of Kreuzberg. And that, in Colonel
Rose's eyes, made Harry Richardson one hell of an intelligence officer
Harry saluted as he sauntered into Rose's office and collapsed into the
colonel's infamous 'hot seat.' The chair dropped most people a head
lower than Rose, but Harry stood six feet three inches without shoes.
His gray eyes met the stocky colonel's with the self-assured steadiness
of an equal.
'Richardson,' Rose said across the desk.
'Colonel.'
Rose eyed Harry's uniform doubtfully. It was wrinkled and rather plain
for a major. Harry had won the silver star in Vietnam, yet the only
decoration he ever wore was his Combat Infantryman's Badge. Rose didn't
like the wrinkles, but he liked the modesty. He clucked his tongue
against the roof of his mouth.
'Bigwig Briggs is flying in from Bonn tomorrow,' he announced.
Harry smiled wryly. 'I thought he might.'
'You did. Why's that?'
'Stands to reason, doesn't it? With the ham-fisted way the Soviets have
handled the Spandau mess so far, I figured the negotiations would have
to be bumped up a notch on both sides. Sir.'
'Can the 'sir' crap, Harry. Just what do you think did happen last
night?'
