“'Sorry' doesn't cut it, Mister. 'Sorry' endangers our ship and our mission. 'Sorry' gets people killed. 'Sorry' is what an unsatisfactory officer says. Do you understand me, Mr. Shaw?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine.” The word came out as a curse. “Let's make sure this never happens again.”
The rest of the half hour was spent going over the records of the exercise. The officers left the room for a larger one, where they would relive the exercise, learning what the Red Team had seen and done. Lieutenant Commander Claggett slowed the Captain down.
“Skipper, you were a little hard on Shaw.”
“What do you mean?” Ricks asked in annoyed surprise.
“He didn't make any mistakes. I couldn't have done the track more than thirty seconds faster myself. The quartermaster I had with him has been doing TMAs for five years. He's taught it at sub school. I kept an eye on both of them. They did okay.”
“Are you saying the mistake was my fault?” Ricks asked in a deceptively gentle voice.
“Yes, sir,” the XO replied honestly, as he had been taught to do.
“Is that a fact?” Ricks walked out the door without another word.
To say that Petra Hassler-Bock was unhappy was an understatement of epic proportions. A woman in her late thirties, she'd lived over fifteen years on the run, hiding from the West German police before things had simply become too dangerous, precipitating her escape to the East Zone — what had been the East Zone, the Bundeskriminalamt investigator smiled to himself. Amazingly, she'd thrived on it. Every photo in the thick file showed an attractive, vital, smiling woman with a girl's unlined face framed by pretty brown hair. This same face had coldly watched three people die, one after several days of knife-work, the detective told himself. That murder had been part of an important political statement — it had been at the time of the vote on whether or not to allow the Americans to base their Pershing-2 and Cruise missiles in Germany, and the Red Army Faction had wanted to terrify people into seeing things their way. It hadn't worked, of course, though it had made the victim's death into a gothic exercise.
“Tell me, Petra, did you enjoy killing Wilhelm Manstein?” the detective asked.
“He was a pig,” she answered defiantly. “An overweight, sweaty, whoremongering pig.”
That was how they'd caught him, the detective knew. Petra had set up the kidnapping first by attracting his attention, then by establishing a brief but fiery relationship. Manstein had not been the most attractive example of German manhood, of course, but Petra 's idea of women's liberation was rather more robust than the norm in Western countries. The nastiest members of Baader-Meinhof and the RAF had been the women. Perhaps it was a reaction to the Kinder-Kuche-Kirche mindset of German males, as some psychologists said, but the woman before him was the most coldly frightening assassin he'd ever met. The first body parts mailed to Manstein's family had been those which had offended her so greatly. Manstein had lived for ten days after that, the pathologist's report stated, providing noisy red entertainment for this still-young lady.
“Well, you took care of that, didn't you? I imagine Gunther was somewhat unsettled by your passion, wasn't he? After all, you spent — what? Five nights with Herr Manstein before the kidnapping? Did you enjoy that part also, mein Schatz?” The insult scored, the detective saw. Petra had been attractive once, but no longer. Like a flower a day after cutting, she was no longer a living thing. Her skin was sallow, her eyes surrounded by dark rings, and she'd lost at least eight kilos. Defiance blazed out from her, but only briefly. 'I expect you did, giving in to him, letting him 'do his thing.' You must have enjoyed it enough that he kept coming back. It wasn't just baiting him, was it? It could not have been just an act. Herr Manstein was a discerning philanderer. He had so much experience, and he only frequented the most skillful whores. Tell me, Petra, how did you acquire so much skill? Did you practice beforehand with Gunther — or with others? All in the name of revolutionary justice, of course, or revolutionary Komaradschaft, nicht wahr? You are a worthless slut, Petra. Even whores have morals, but not you.
“And your beloved revolutionary cause,” the detective sneered. “Doch! Such a cause. How does it feel to be rejected by the entire German Volk?” She stirred in her chair at that, but couldn't quite bring herself… “What's the matter, Petra, no heroic words now? You always talked about your visions of freedom and democracy, didn't you? Are you disappointed now that we have real democracy — and the people detest you and your kind! Tell me, Petra, what is it like to be rejected? Totally rejected. And you know it's true,” the investigator added. “You know it's no joke. You watched the people in the street from your windows, didn't you, you and Gunther? One of the demonstrations was right under your apartment, wasn't it? What did you think while you watched, Petra? What did you and Gunther say to each other? Did you say it was a counter-revolutionary trick?” The detective shook his head, leaning forward to stare into those empty, lifeless eyes, enjoying his own work as she had done.
“Tell me, Petra, how do you explain the votes? Those were free elections. You know that, of course. Everything you stood for and worked for and murdered for — all a mistake, all for nothing! Well, it wasn't a total loss, was it? At least you got to make love to Wilhelm Manstein.” The detective leaned back and lit a small cigar. He blew smoke up at the ceiling. “And now, Petra? I hope you enjoyed that little tryst, mein Schatz. You will never leave this prison alive. Never, Petra. No one will ever feel pity for you, not even when you're confined to a wheelchair. Oh, no. They'll remember your crimes and tell themselves to leave you here with all the other vicious beasts. There is no hope for you. You will die in this building, Petra.”
Petra Hassler-Bock's head jerked at that. Her eyes went wide for an instant as she thought to say something, but stopped short.
The detective went on conversationally. “We lost track of Gunther, by the way. We nearly got him in Bulgaria — missed him by thirty hours. The Russians, you see, have been giving us their files on you and your friends. All those months you spent at those training camps. Well, in any case, Gunther is still on the run. In Lebanon, we think, probably holed up with your old friends in that ratpack. They're next,” the detective told her. 'The Americans, the Russians, the Israelis, they're cooperating now, didn't you hear? It's part of this treaty business. Isn't that wonderful? I think we'll get Gunther there… with luck he'll fight back or do something really foolish, and we can bring you a picture of his body… Pictures, that's right! I almost forgot!
“I have something to show you,” the investigator announced. He inserted a video cassette into a player and switched on the TV. It took a moment for the picture to settle down into what was plainly an amateur video taken with a hand-held camera. It showed twin girls, dressed in matching pink dirndl outfits, sitting side by side on a typical rug in a typical German apartment — everything was fully in Ordnung, even the magazines on the table were squared off. Then the action started.
“Komm, Erika, Komm, Ursel!” a woman's voice urged, and both infants pulled themselves up on a coffee table and tottered towards her. The camera followed their halting, unstable steps into the woman's arms.
“Mutti, Mutti!” they both said. The detective switched the TV off.
“They're talking and walking. Ist das nicht wunderbar! Their new mother loves them very much, Petra. Well, I thought you'd like to see that. That's all for today.” The detective pressed a hidden button, and a guard appeared to take the manacled prisoner back to her cell.
The cell was stark, a cubicle made of white-painted bricks. There was no outside window, and the door was of solid steel except for a spyhole and a slot for food trays. Petra didn't know about the TV camera that looked through what seemed to be yet another brick near the ceiling, but was really a small plastic panel transparent to red and infra-red light. Petra Hassler-Bock retained her composure all the way to the cell, and until the door was slammed shut behind her.
Then she started coming apart.
Petra 's hollow eyes stared at the floor — that was painted white, also — too wide and horrified for tears at first, contemplating the nightmare that her life had become. It could not be real, part of her said with confidence that bordered on madness. All she'd believed in, all she'd worked for — gone! Gunther, gone. The twins, gone. The cause, gone. Her life, gone.
The Bundeskriminalamt detectives only interrogated her for amusement. She knew that much. They had never seriously probed her for information, but there was a reason for that. She had nothing worthwhile to give them. They'd shown her copies of the files from Stasi headquarters. Nearly everything her erstwhile fraternal socialist brothers had had on her — far more than she had expected — was now in West German hands. Names, addresses, phone numbers, records dating back more than twenty years, things about herself that she'd forgotten, things about Gunther that she'd never known. All in the hands of the BKA.
It was all over. All lost.
Petra gagged and started weeping. Even Erika and Ursel, her twins, the product of her own body, the physical
