The Deceiver

Morenz nodded and sipped his beer.

“What do you want, Sam?”

Sam told him. It took ten minutes. Morenz shook his head.

“Sam, I’m fifty-two. Soon I retire. I have plans. In the old days it was different, exciting. Now, frankly, those guys over there frighten me.”

“They frighten me too, Bruno. But I’d go in spite of it, if I could. I’m black-flagged. You’re clean. It’s a quick one—go over in the morning, back by nightfall. Even if the first pass doesn’t work, you’ll be back the next day, midafternoon. They’re offering ten thousand pounds, cash.”

Morenz stared at him.

“That’s a lot. There must be others who would take it. Why me?”

“He knows you. He likes you. He’ll see it isn’t me, but he won’t back off. I hate to ask you this way, but this is really for me. The last time, I swear it. For old times’ sake.”

Bruno finished his beer and rose.

“I must get back. ... All right, Sam. For you. For old times’ sake. But then, I swear, I’m out. For good.”

“You have my word, Bruno—never again. Trust me. I won’t let you down.”

They agreed on the next rendezvous, for the following Monday at dawn. Bruno returned to his office. McCready waited ten minutes, strolled up to the taxi stand on Tunistrasse, and hailed a cab for Bonn. He spent the rest of the day and Wednesday discussing his needs with Bonn Station. There was a lot to do, and not much time to do it.

Across two time zones, in Moscow, Major Ludmilla Vanavskaya had her interview with General Shaliapin just after lunch. He sat behind his desk, a shaven-headed, brooding Siberian peasant who exuded power and cunning, and read her file carefully. When he had finished, he pushed it back toward her.

“Circumstantial,” he said. He liked to make his subordi­nates defend their assertions. In the old days—and General Shaliapin went right back to the old days—what he had in front of him would have sufficed. The Lubyanka always had room for one more. But times had changed and were still changing.

“So far, Comrade General,” Vanavskaya conceded. “But a lot of circumstances. Those SS-20 rockets in East Germany two years ago—the Yanks knew too quickly.”

“East Germany is crawling with spies and traitors. The Americans have satellites, RORSATS—”

“The movements of the Red Banner fleet out of the north­ern ports. Those bastards in NATO always seem to know.”

Shaliapin smiled at the young woman’s passion. He never disparaged vigilance in his staff—it was what they were there for. “There may be a leak,” he admitted, “or several. Negli­gence, loose talk, an array of small agents. But you think it’s one man ...”

“This man.” She leaned forward and tapped the photo on top of the file.

“Why? Why him?”

“Because he’s always there.”

“Nearby,” he corrected.

“Nearby. In the vicinity, in the same theater. Always available.”

General Shaliapin had survived a long time, and he intended to survive some more. Back in March, he had spotted that things were going to change. Mikhail Gorbachev had been rapidly and unanimously elected General Secretary on the death of yet another geriatric, Chernenko. He was young and vigorous. He could last a long time. He wanted reform. Already, he had started to purge the Party of its more obvious dead wood.

Shaliapin knew the rules. Even a General Secretary could antagonize only one of the three pillars of the Soviet state at a time. If he took on the Party old guard, he would have to keep the KGB and the Army sweet. He leaned over the desk and jabbed a stubby forefinger at the flushed major.

“I cannot order the arrest of a senior staff officer within the Ministry on the basis of this. Not yet. Something hard—I need something hard. Just one tiny thing.”

“Let me put him under surveillance,” urged Vanaskaya.

“Discreet surveillance.”

“All right, Comrade General. Discreet surveillance.”

“Then I agree, Major. I’ll make the staff available.”

* * *

“Just a few days, Heir Direktor. A short break in lieu of a full summer vacation. I would like to take my wife and son away for a few days. The weekend, plus Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.”

It was Wednesday morning, and Dieter Aust was in an expansive mood. Besides, as a good civil servant, he knew his staff were entitled to their summer vacations. He was always surprised that Morenz took so few holidays. Perhaps he could not afford many.

“My dear Morenz, our duties in the Service are onerous. The Service is always generous with its staff holidays. Five days is not a problem. Perhaps if you had given us a bit more forewarning—but yes, all right, I will ask Frдulein Keppel to rearrange the rosters.”

That evening, at home, Bruno Morenz told his wife he would have to leave on business for five days.

“Just the weekend, plus the next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,” he said. “Herr Direktor Aust wants me to accompany him on a trip.”

“That’s nice,” she said, engrossed in the TV.

Morenz in fact planned to spend a long, self-indulgent, and romantic weekend with Renate, give Monday to Sam McCready and the day-long briefing, and make his run across the East German border on Tuesday. Even if he had to spend the night in East Germany for the second rendezvous, he would be back in the West by Wednesday evening and could drive through the night to be home in time for work on Thursday. Then he would hand in his notice, work it out through the month of September, make his break with his wife, and leave with Renate for Bremerhaven. He doubted if Irmtraut would care—she hardly noticed whether he was there or not.

On Thursday, Major Vanavskaya suffered her first serious setback, let out a very unladylike expletive, and slammed the phone down. She had her surveillance team in place, ready to begin shadowing her military target. But first she had needed to know roughly what his routines and usual daily movements were. To find this out, she had contacted one of the several KGB Third Directorate spies inside the military intelligence organization, the GRU.

Although the KGB and its military counterpart, the GRU, were often at daggers-drawn, there is little doubt which is the dog and which the tail. The KGB was far more powerful, with a supremacy that has been strengthened since the early six­ties, when a GRU colonel called Oleg Penkovsky had blown away so many Soviet secrets as to rank as the most damaging turncoat the USSR had ever had. Since then, the Politburo had permitted the KGB to infiltrate scores of its own people into the GRU. Although they wore military uniform and mingled day and night with the military, they were KGB through and through. The real GRU officers knew who they were and tried to keep them as ostracized as possible, which was not always an easy task.

“I’m sorry, Major,” the young KGB man inside the GRU had told her on the phone. “The movement order is here in front of me. Your man leaves tomorrow for a tour of our principal garrisons in Germany. Yes, I have his schedule here.”

He had dictated it to her before she put the phone down. She remained for a while deep in thought, then put in her own application for permission to visit the Third Directorate staff at the KGB headquarters in East Berlin. It took two days to ratify the paperwork. She would leave for the Potsdam mili­tary airfield on Saturday morning.

Bruno made a point of getting through his chores as fast as he could on Friday and escaping from the office early. As he knew he would be handing in his notice as soon as he returned in the middle of the following week, he even cleared out some of his drawers. His last chore was his small office safe. The paperwork he handled was of such low-level classification that he hardly used the safe. The drawers of his desk could be locked, his office door was always locked at night, and the building was securely guarded. Nevertheless, he sorted out the few papers in his safe. At the bottom, beneath them all, was his service-issue automatic.

The Walther PPK was filthy. He had never used it since the statutory test-firing on the range at Pullach years