“You're the leadership analyst.”
“I follow terrorists, not mainstream politicians.”
“Well, then maybe you should broaden your scope.”
She studied him over the rim of her wineglass.
“What are you saying?”
“Sometimes the boundaries between the state and the fringe aren't so clear. Look at Arafat. One day he's a guerilla hero, next he's a virtual head of state. Or Syria's Assad. How many nut sos with a gun did that guy fund from the presidential palace, huh? I won't even mention Qaddafi.”
“You think Voekl is funding terrorists?”
“Maybe not terrorists. I would never go so far as to suggest he's behind 30 April. He's not that stupid, Carrie. But there's been a rash of hate crimes throughout Central Europe. We think that Uncle Fritz's party is bankrolling some of them.”
“You think?”
Wally tossed his bottle in the trash.
“I know, I know — I need the evidence. All that certainty you analysts love. I'm working on it.”
“What kind of hate crimes? Guest workers? Petty stuff?”
“Not entirely.” Wally suddenly looked uneasy.
“If it were domestic incidents alone, we'd be inclined to sit back and bide our time. Chancellors come and go.
But this stuff is bleeding into other people's backyards. Take the Cafe Avram, for instance.”
“Café Avram.”
“Jewish revival place in old Krakow. Ever been to Krakow?”
Caroline shook her head.
“It's about three and a half hours due east as the crow flies. Eleven hours, if you're lucky, by the Polish roads. I drove over right after we landed here, back in early August. I wanted to see Auschwitz, or rather Brenda did. Some of her people died there.” He leaned forward, hands clasped idly between his knees.
“The camp and the rail yards are sitting right there in the middle of this gorgeous farmland, Carrie. Rolling hills, gnarled old trees, a man walking behind a horse — drawn plow, straight out of War and Peace. Some of the farmers were burning leaves. The essence of autumn, right? Only you draw it in with your breath and you can't help but think, the smell of burning. Ashes and burning. Everybody in that countryside must have smelled the ovens, and they went right on plowing.” He paused abruptly.
Caroline prompted, “Café Avram.”
“Right. The old Jewish quarter of Krakow is beautiful. Spielberg filmed Schindler's List there, you know? Café Avram had become a sort of cultural center. Jewish music, kosher food. A tourist mecca. Anyway, three months ago, somebody torched it. The owners slept over the shop. Both were killed by the fire. And their three kids.”
“And you think Voekl's party was behind the arson?”
“The Warsaw station is looking into it. They cabled us for information.”
Caroline frowned.
“But you said that no German politician can afford to be anti-Semitic. And why would a German party be operating beyond its borders?”
“All politics is local, Caroline. It's just the money that's international.”
“You actually suspect that the Social Conservatives are funding hate crimes in neighboring countries? But Wally, the potential for blowback is immense!”
“The Social Conservatives are funding local chapters of their own German party in small towns throughout the region,” Wally said tensely. “The SC is in Poland, its in Slovakia, it's even showing up in poorer sections of the Czech Republic and Hungary. It's a party that feeds on economic disaffection, Caroline, and there's plenty of disaffection in Central Europe. Communism destroyed their industry; now democracy is destroying their markets. Nothings easier for these poor bastards than to pick a leader who will blame the outcast of the moment and voila, everyone has a target for their anger.” He glanced at her.
“And there's a lot of anger, Carrie. I'm telling you, it scares the hell out of me.”
“So in Krakow, the outcasts were eating at Café Avram?”
“Sure. It takes one to know one. Jews have been the gastarbeiters of Poland for four hundred years.”
Caroline set down her wine. The alcohol was blurring her senses.
“Nobody likes Voekl, nobody trusts him .. . and yet here he is. Running the damn country. How did that happen, Wally?”
“There was a convenient death.”
Gerhard Schroeder. And 30 April had murdered him.
“Voekl was there to take advantage of it,” she said. “He'd amassed a considerable amount of power first.”
“Which means that your premise is wrong, Caroline. Somebody likes Voekl very much indeed. And they voted en masse.”
“More economic disaffection?”
“Maybe. Among the Ossies. Voekl comes from the east, you know. His claim to fame was running the best explosives plant in the GDR. He was an old Party hack before he was the face of the New European Union. But it's more than that. He's charming. He's plausible. He's telegenic in a media age.”
“If you like your men in jackboots.”
Wally laughed.
“Come on, Carrie! The man's a wet dream of Aryan motherhood! Silver hair, blue eyes. The Italian suits, the flashing white teeth. You've got to look beyond the furious rhetoric. Germans like their rhetoric delivered in a fist- pounding fashion.”
“He's been married three times.”
“So he gets out the women's vote. And that kid of his Kiki is like a poster child for family values. She's cute, she's sweet, she's as blond as they come. Go into any hausfraus kitchen, from Kiel to Schleswig-Holstein, and Fritz Voekl's picture is hanging somewhere near the stove. Half of Germany is in love with him.”
“Half of Germany was in love with Hitler.”
“Then we've got to place our hope and our covert funding with the other half,” Wally said bluntly. “A remarkable Resistance sprang up here during the Nazi years. It got zero help from outside, and it was brutally suppressed. But there was no CIA then.”
The CIA: Last, Best Hope for the Free World. Right. There were still some people in Operations who believed it. Caroline considered Wally and all those nights of sympathy wasted in a thousand badly lit bars, his hometown- boy routine threadbare and compromised, and felt a surge of affectionate pity. Thank God there were still people like Wally around to do the Agency's shit work people with integrity. Otherwise, how would the world know what to betray?
Wally knew. He had figured out right and wrong years ago and chosen his side.
Caroline only hoped he'd chosen well.
“The world has changed,” she told him.
“Voekl could never be as obvious as Hitler. Europe won't let him.”
“Voekl's not interested in Europe.” Wally flicked away her objections as though they were gnats.
“He's interested in power at home. And to shore it up, he needs a new enemy.”
“The Turks?”
“The entire Islamic world, Mad Dog. According to Voekl, Islam has torn apart the Balkans, the Central Asian republics, North Africa, the Middle East. And who's to argue? It's pretty tough to find an Arab apologist these days.”
“Some campaign platform,” she muttered.
“Listen.” Wally raised a forefinger and shook it under her nose.
“People said that about the National Socialists in 1930. By 1933, the Nazis had their hands around Germany's neck. Never underestimate the lure of the Big Lie.”
The Big Lie.
