The Deceiver

There were rumors he worked for Western intelligence. They were not true, though he occasionally brought out someone on contract to the CIA or SIS. There were rumors he was hand-in-glove with the SSD or the KGB; that was unlikely, as he did East Germany too much damage. Certainly he had bribed more border guards and Communist officials than he could remember. It was said he could smell a bribable official at a hundred paces.

Although Berlin was his bailiwick, he also ran lines through the East German-West German border, which ran from the Baltic to Czechoslovakia. When he retired finally with a handsome fortune he chose to settle in West Germany, not in West Berlin. But he still could not drag himself away from that border. His manor was only five miles from it, high in the Harz Mountains.

“So, Herr McCready, Sam my friend, it has been a long time.”

He stood with his back to the fire, a retired gentleman in a velvet smoking jacket, a long way from the animal-eyed alley-kid who had crawled out of the rubble in 1945 to start selling girls to GIs for Lucky Strikes. “You are retired also now?” he asked.

“No, Andre, I still have to work for my crust. Not as clever as you, you see.”

Kurzlinger liked that. He pressed a bell, and a manservant brought crisp Mosel wine in crystal glasses.

“Then,” asked Kurzlinger as he surveyed the flames through the wine, “what can an old man do for the mighty Spionage service of Her Majesty?”

McCready told him. The older man continued staring at the fire, but he pursed his lips and shook his head.

“I am out of it, Sam. Retired. Now they leave me alone. Both sides. But you know, they have warned me, as I think they have warned you. If I start again, they will come for me. A quick operation, across the border, and back before dawn. They will have me, right here in my own home. They mean it. In my time I did them a lot of damage you know.”

“I know,” said McCready.”

“Also, things change. Once, in Berlin, yes, I could get you across. Even in the countryside I had my rabbit runs. But they were all discovered eventually. Closed down. The mines I had disconnected were replaced. The guards I had bribed were transferred. You know they never keep guards on this border for long. Constantly switch them around. My contacts have all gone cold. It is too late.”

“I have to go over,” said McCready slowly, “because we have a man over there. He is sick, very sick. But if I can bring him out, it will probably break the career of the one who now heads Abteilung II. Otto Voss.”

Kurzlinger did not move, but his eyes went very cold. Years ago, as McCready knew, he had had a friend. A very close friend indeed, probably the closest he had ever had. The man had been caught crossing the Wall. Talk was, later, that he had raised his hands. But Voss had shot him all the same. Through both kneecaps first, then both elbows and both shoulders. Finally in the stomach. Soft-nosed slugs.

“Come,” said Kurzlinger, “we will eat. I will introduce you to my son.”

The handsome young blond man of about thirty who joined them at table was not actually Kurzlinger’s son, of course. But he had formally adopted him. Occasionally, the older man would smile at him, and the adopted son would look back adoringly.

“I brought Siegfried out of the East,” said Kurzlinger, as if making conversation. “He had nowhere to go, so ... now he lives here with me.”

McCready continued eating. He suspected there was more.

“Have you ever heard,” said Kurzlinger over the grapes, “of the Arbeitsgruppe Grenzen?”

McCready had. The Borders Working Group. Deep within the SSD, apart from all the Abteilungen with their Roman-numeral designations, was a small unit with a most bizarre specialty.

Most times, if Marcus Wolf wanted to spirit an agent into the West, he could do it by passing through a neutral country, the agent adopting his new legend during the stopover. But sometimes the SSD or the HVA wanted to put a man across the border on a “black” operation. For this to happen, the East Germans would actually cut a rabbit run through their own defenses from East to West. Most rabbit runs were cut from West to East to bring out people who were not supposed to leave. When the SSD wanted a rabbit run cut for its own purposes, it used the experts of the Arbeitsgruppe Grenzen for the job. These engineers, working at dead of night (for the West German Frontier Service also watched the border), would burrow under the razor-wire, cut a thin line through the minefield, and leave no trace of where they had been.

That still left the two-hundred-yard-wide plowed strip, the shooting ground, where a real refugee would probably be caught in the searchlights and machine-gunned. Finally, on the Western side, there was the fence. The Arbeitsgruppe Grenzen would leave that intact, cut a hole for the agent as he went through, and lace it up again after him. The searchlights, on the nights they ran someone westward, would be facing the other way, and the plowed strip was usually thick with grass, especially in late summer. By morning, the grass would have straightened itself, obliterating all traces of the running feet.

When the East Germans did it, they had the cooperation of their own border guards. But breaking in was another matter; there would be no East German cooperation.

“Siegfried used to work for the ACG,” said Kurzlinger. “Until he used one of his own rabbit runs. Of course, the Stasi closed that one down immediately. Siegfried, our friend here needs to go across. Can you help?”

McCready thought that he had judged his man aright. Kurz­linger hated Voss for what he had done, and the man’s grief for his murdered love was not to be underestimated.

Siegfried thought for a while.

“There used to be one,” he said at length. “I cut it myself. I was going to use it, so I did not file the report. In the event, I came out a different way.”

“Where is it?” asked McCready.

“Not far from here,” said Siegfried. “Between Bad Sachsa and Ellrich.”

He fetched a map and pointed out the two small towns in the southern Harz, Bad Sachsa in West Germany and Ellrich in the East.

“May I see the papers you intend to use?” asked Kurzlin­ger. McCready passed them over. Siegfried studied them. “They are good,” he said.

“What is the best time to go?” asked McCready.

“Four o’clock. Before dawn. The light is darkest, and the guards are tired. They sweep the plowed strip less frequently. We will need camouflage smocks in case we are caught by the lights. The camouflage may save us.”

They discussed details for another hour.

“You understand, Heir McCready,” said Siegfried, “it has been five years. I may not be able to recall where it was. I left a fishing line on the ground where I cut the path through the minefield. I may not be able to find it. If I cannot, we will come back. To go into the minefield not knowing the path I cut is death. Or my former colleagues may have found it and closed it down. In that case we come back—if we still can.”

“I understand,” said McCready. “I’m very grateful.”

They left, Siegfried and McCready, at one o’clock for the slow two-hour drive through the mountains. Kurzlinger stood on the doorstep.

“Look after my boy,” he said. “I only do this for another boy Voss took from me long ago.”

“If you get through,” said Siegfried as they drove, “walk the six miles into Nordhausen. Avoid the village of Ellrich—there are guards there, and the dogs will bark. Take the train from Nordhausen south to Erfurt, and the bus to Weimar. There will be workers on both.”

They drove quietly through the sleeping town of Bad Sachsa and parked at the outskirts. Siegfried stood in the darkness with a compass and a penlight. When he had his bearing, he plunged into the pine forest, heading east. McCready followed him.

Four hours earlier, Major Vanavskaya had confronted Colonel Voss in his office.

“According to his sister, there is one place he could go to hide in the Weimar area.”