The Deceiver

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.

For him, the worst was that he had sent a friend to certain capture, interrogation, and death because he had failed to note the warning signs that now—too late—were so blazingly clear. Morenz had been in no state to go. He had gone rather than let down his friend Sam McCready.

The Deceiver knew now—again, too late—that for the rest of his days, in the wee hours when sleep refuses to come, he would see the haggard face of Bruno Morenz in that hotel room. ...

He tried to drive his guilt away and turned his mind to wondering what happens inside a man’s head when he