doing there. Actually, he was recruiting the then Colonel Pankratin, she learned later. It was she who had taken him over.
Edwards had not missed the body language. He wondered what was behind it and guessed aright. It never ceased to amaze him that women seemed to like Sam. He was so ... rumpled. There was talk that several of the women at Century House would like to straighten his tie, sew on a button, or more. He found it inexplicable.
“Sorry to hear about May,” said Claudia.
“Thank you,” said McCready. May. Sweet, loving, and much-loved May, his wife. Three years since she had died. May, who had waited through all the long nights in the early days, always been there when he came home from across the Curtain, never asking, never complaining. Multiple sclerosis can act fast or slow. With May, it had been fast. In one year she was in a wheelchair and two years later gone. He had lived alone in the Kensington apartment since then. Thank God their son had been at college, just summoned home for the funeral. He had not seen the pain or his father’s despair.
A butler—there would have to be a butler, thought McCready—appeared with an extra flute of champagne on a salver. McCready raised an eyebrow. Edwards whispered in the butler’s ear, and he came back with a tankard of beer. McCready sipped. They watched him. Lager. Designer beer. Foreign label. He sighed. He would have preferred bitter ale, room temperature, redolent of Scottish malt and Kentish hops.
“We have a problem, Sam,” said Appleyard. “Claudia, you tell him.”
“Pankratin,” said Claudia. “Remember him?”
McCready studied his beer and nodded.
“In Moscow we’ve run him mainly through drops. Arm’s length. Very little contact. Fantastic product, and very pricey payments. But hardly any personal meets. Now he has sent a message. An urgent message.”
There was silence. McCready raised his eyes and stared at Claudia.
“He says he’s got hold of an unregistered copy of the Soviet Army War Book. The entire Order of Battle. For the whole of the Western front. We want it, Sam. We want it very badly.”
“So go get it,” said Sam.
“This time he won’t use a dead-letter box. Says it’s too bulky. Won’t fit. Too noticeable. He will only hand it over to someone he knows and trusts. He wants you.”
“In
“No, in East Germany. He begins a tour of inspection soon. Lasts a week. He wants to make the hand-over in the deep south of Thuringia, up near the Bavarian border. His swing will take him south and west through Cottbus, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt, and on to Gera and Erfurt. Then back to Berlin on Wednesday night. He wants to make the pass Tuesday or Wednesday morning. He doesn’t know the area. He wants to use lay-bys—road pull-offs. Other than that, he has it all planned how he’ll get away and do it.”
Sam sipped his beer and glanced up at Edwards. “Have you explained, Timothy?”
“Touched on it,” said Edwards, then turned to his guests. “Look, I have to make it clear that Sam actually can’t go. I’ve mentioned it to the Chief, and he agrees. Sam’s been black-flagged by the SSD.”
Claudia raised an eyebrow.
“It means that if they catch me again over there, there’ll be no cozy exchange at the border.”
“They’ll interrogate him and shoot him,” added Edwards unnecessarily. Appleyard whistled.
“Boy, that’s against the rules. You must have really shaken them up.”
“One does one’s best,” said Sam sadly. “By the way, if I can’t go, there is one man who could. Timothy and I were discussing him last week at the club.”
Edwards nearly choked on his flute of Krug. “Poltergeist? Pankratin says he’ll only make the pass to someone he knows.”
“He knows Poltergeist. Remember I told you how he had helped me in the early days? Back in ’81, when I brought him in, Poltergeist had to baby-sit him till I could get there. Actually, he liked Poltergeist. He’d recognize him again and make the pass. He’s no fool.”
Edwards straightened the silk at his neck.
“Very well, Sam. One last time.”
“It’s dangerous, and the stakes are high. I want a reward for him. Ten thousand pounds.”
“Agreed,” said Appleyard without hesitation. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Here are the details Pankratin has provided for the method of the pass. Two alternate venues are needed. A first and a back-up. Can you let us know in twenty-four hours the lay-bys you’ve picked? We’ll get it to him.”
“I can’t force Poltergeist to go,” McCready warned. “He’s a free-lance, not a staffer.”
“Try, Sam, please try,” said Claudia. Sam rose.
“By the way, this ‘Tuesday’—which one is it?”
“A week from the day after tomorrow,” said Appleyard. “ Eight days away.”
“Jesus Christ,” said McCready.
Sam McCready spent most of the next day, Monday, poring over large-scale maps and photographs. He went back to his old friends still on the East German desk and asked a few favors. They were protective of their territory but complied—he had the authority—and they knew better than to ask the Head of Deception and Disinformation what he was up to.
By midafternoon he had two locations that would suit. One was a sheltered lay-by just off East Germany’s Highway Seven, which runs in an east-west line parallel to Autobahn E40. The smaller road links the industrial city of Jena to the more pastoral town of Weimar and thence to the sprawl of Erfurt. The first lay-by he chose was just west of Jena. The second was on the same road, but halfway between Weimar and Erfurt, not three miles from the Soviet base at Nohra.
If the Russian general was anywhere between Jena and Erfurt on his tour of inspection the following Tuesday and Wednesday, he would only have a short run to either rendezvous. At five, McCready proposed his choices to Claudia Stuart at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. A coded message went to CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia; they approved and passed the message to Pankratin’s designated controller in Moscow. The information went into a dead-letter box behind a loose brick in Novodevichi Cemetery in the early morning of the next day, and General Pankratin picked it up on his way to the Ministry four hours later.
Before sundown on Monday, McCready sent a coded message to the head of the SIS station in Bonn, who read it, destroyed it, picked up the telephone, and made a local call.
Bruno Morenz returned home at seven that evening. He was halfway through his supper when his wife remembered something.
“Your dentist called. Dr. Fischer.”
Morenz raised his head and stared at the congealed mess in front of him.
“Uh-uh.”
“Says he should look at that filling again. Tomorrow. Could you come to his office at six.”
She returned to her absorption in the evening game show on television. Bruno hoped she had gotten the message exactly right. His dentist was not Dr. Fischer, and there were two bars where McCready might want to meet him. One was called “office,” the other “clinic.” And “six” meant midday, during the lunch hour.
On Tuesday morning, McCready had Denis Gaunt drive him to Heathrow for the breakfast-hour flight to Cologne.
“I’ll be back tomorrow night,” he said. “Mind the shop for me.”
At Cologne, with only a briefcase, he moved swiftly through passport and customs controls, took a taxi, and was dropped off outside the opera house just after eleven. For forty minutes he wandered around the square, down the Kreuzgasse and into the busy pedestrian mall of Schildergasse. He paused at many shop windows, doubled suddenly back, and entered a store by the front and left by the back. At five to twelve, satisfied he had not grown a tail, he turned into the narrow Krebsgasse and headed for the old-style, half-timbered bar with the gold Gothic lettering. The small tinted windows made the interior dim. He sat in a booth in the far corner, ordered a stein of Rhine beer, and waited. The bulky figure of Bruno Morenz slid into the chair opposite him five minutes later.
“It’s been a long time, old friend,” said McCready.
