The Berlin Conspiracy

THE BERLIN CONSPIRACY.

by TOM GABBAY.

PROLOGUE.

I left Berlin on the morning after my mother was buried. A few hours before she died, my brother and I were roused from our beds and told we should say our final good-byes. The memory of that night is still vivid, even through the fog of all those years. on the morning after my mother was buried. A few hours before she died, my brother and I were roused from our beds and told we should say our final good-byes. The memory of that night is still vivid, even through the fog of all those years.

A band of warm light spilled into the room as we entered, illuminating her face. She didn"t look real, already more an angel than our mother. After a moment, she spoke, softly, on shallow breath. "Kommt," "Kommt," she whispered. "Come. ... Don"t be afraid." She was young, far too young to die, but even I could see that precious little life was left in the slender frame that faded into the shadows. she whispered. "Come. ... Don"t be afraid." She was young, far too young to die, but even I could see that precious little life was left in the slender frame that faded into the shadows.

Outwardly, nothing had changed. The dressing table was neatly arranged with lipsticks, rouge, and powders; the music box still sat on the mantel, its waltzing couple frozen in silent midstep. Next to the bed stood a formal wedding photo in a silver frame and, on the wall, a fuzzy picture of a smiling man in uniform-black ribbon and medal of honor draped over the image of a husband and father who, like many others, never returned from "The War to End All Wars." Everything was in its place, yet the room had changed in some way. The smell of medicine was gone; now there was death in the air.

I took Josef"s hand and led him to our mother"s side. He was only eight, five years younger than me, and probably didn"t fully understand what was happening. n.o.body had explained it to us, not in so many words.

She lay there, very still, for what seemed like an eternity and the thought crossed my mind that she might"ve died in the time it took us to cross the room. Finally her eyes lifted and turned toward us. She studied our faces for a long time, as if trying to memorize them. Or maybe she was gathering strength, determined to use those last few breaths to carry the words that she wanted to leave behind.

"Give me your hands," she whispered. I felt her weakness as she attempted to close her fingers around ours. "You see..." She tried to smile. "A family... Do you understand?"

I nodded, though I wasn"t sure that I did.

"Say it," she demanded.

"A family," I responded obediently.

She slipped her hand away, leaving Josef"s palm in mine. "And now-" she breathed. "Still a family ... Always a family."

I felt that she wanted to say more but was unable to summon the strength. I wanted to say something, too, but words wouldn"t come. Not because I was too emotional. In fact, I can remember wondering why I wasn"t more upset. I loved my mother dearly and I knew she loved us more than anything, but for some reason I felt removed from it all, watching the scene from someplace far away, like I am now.

Not many came to her funeral. Three, maybe four faceless men in dark suits and polished shoes standing a few steps behind us, heads bowed, hats in hand. I didn"t know any of them. Josef and I stood in front of the open grave with Auntie between us. The lady who came once a week to clean the house-I don"t remember her name-was the only one who sobbed quietly as the priest said his prayers and remarked that although it was sad our mother had left her sons orphans, G.o.d knew best and must have needed her in heaven more than we did on earth. I hadn"t thought of myself as an orphan before that.

I think Josef and I each placed a flower on top of her coffin as it was lowered into the ground, but I"m not sure. I remember that we stayed long after everyone else had gone, wanting to see that the headstone was properly placed. It read simply: Gertrud Teller.

18951927.

On the first night she lay in her grave, I lay on my bed thinking about a cold December day, shortly before my brother was born, when she and I went to a toy shop in central Berlin. I was completely mesmerized by a display of wooden soldiers in the window, two opposing armies-complete with cavalry and artillery batteries-lined up against each other in neat rows of red and blue. She tried to interest me in all sorts of other toys and games-spinning tops, puppets, a bright red fire truck-anything other than those soldiers. But I could see nothing else. Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve of 1918, I found a small box under the tree with my name on it. Inside were two soldiers, one red and one blue.

Two full battalions now faced each other across the floor of the attic room I shared with Josef. I studied the carefully arranged formations into the early hours of that morning, until I finally drifted into a restless dream, where I joined the painted soldiers in combat and felt the gut-wrenching fear of a position being overwhelmed by opposing forces. When I woke, something had changed. The soldiers no longer came to life.

A boy"s battles are fought on the field of his imagination. There"s no cause, no doctrine, nothing to gain, it"s just Blue vs. Red. Not so different from life, I guess, except that in life the colors can get muddied, making it hard to tell which side is which. I must have sensed that there were other battles waiting for me, bigger battles to be fought on a larger field. Or maybe it"s a smaller field. Anyway, I knew it was time to put my toys away. I found an old tin box and began to dismantle my childhood fantasies.

Josef woke and watched respectfully from his bed as I carefully placed each soldier in the box. Not until I had closed the tin did he feel he could speak.

"Where will we live now?" he wondered.

"You"ll stay with Auntie," I said without looking up.

"Where will you be?" he asked with growing concern.

"America," I said. "I"m leaving today." As far as I can remember, it was the first time the idea had entered my head, but it seemed as good a plan as any, so I stuck with it.

"I"ll go with you," Josef quickly decided.

"No," I said flatly. "You"re too young."

"So are you," he frowned.

"I"ll come back for you when you"re older," I said, thinking that I might, in fact, return for him once I"d established myself.

"Did Auntie say you could?" he asked, knowing full well that the idea could not have been authorized.

"You can"t tell anyone, Josef. It"s a secret."

"Mama says not to keep secrets."

"It depends on the secret," I explained. "Some secrets are like promises. If you tell the secret you break the promise. Then you become a traitor and a traitor is nothing more than a coward." But I understood my brother well enough to know that this lesson in ethics wouldn"t keep his mouth shut. I held the box of soldiers out to him.

"Would you like to have these?" I asked enticingly.

"Until you come back?" he ventured, looking very skeptical.

"For as long as you keep our secret," I said. He let that sink in for a moment, then smiled conspiratorially and took the tin into his possession. I suppose there"s a moment in everyone"s life when they learn the value of a secret. That was Josef"s moment.

So it was that on a sunny morning in late September of 1927, at the auspicious age of thirteen, I packed a bag and set out to begin my adventure with the world. Maybe I actually believed that one day I"d return for my younger brother, fulfilling our mother"s last wish that we remain a family. But life didn"t work out that way.

ONE.

In 1963, the world was divided into two camps, and Berlin was on the front line. They called it a "Cold War," but one spark in that divided city and it wouldn"t be cold for long-the whole d.a.m.n planet would go up in flames. Of course, I"d contributed more than my share to this nonsense doing contract work for the Company through the fabulous fifties, but after Cuba the shine had gone off and I dropped out of the insanity. was divided into two camps, and Berlin was on the front line. They called it a "Cold War," but one spark in that divided city and it wouldn"t be cold for long-the whole d.a.m.n planet would go up in flames. Of course, I"d contributed more than my share to this nonsense doing contract work for the Company through the fabulous fifties, but after Cuba the shine had gone off and I dropped out of the insanity.

I found an agreeable retirement spot in a small bungalow near Pompano Beach, Florida, about forty miles north of Miami. At that time it wasn"t much more than a couple of bars and a convenience store on a strip of sand off the highway, but it suited me fine. The idea was to get rich as a bestselling author of spy novels and then find more desirable living quarters. I had a typewriter and loads of material, but nothing ever came together in my head, let alone on paper. So I did a lot of fishing.

It wasn"t the first time Sam Clay had phoned in the middle of the night, but it was the first time in a while. Sam was DDP (Deputy Director for Plans, in charge of covert operations) and as near to a real friend as I had, even though I"d only seen him once since I dropped out. I hadn"t left the agency on the best of terms, not that Sam held any of that against me, but when you"re out you have to be completely out. I"d made my own bed and didn"t mind sleeping in it, if it wasn"t for the c.o.c.kroaches, that is.

Anyway, I was surprised to hear Sam"s voice. He didn"t waste time asking how the fishing was, just got to the point, which was a ticket waiting at the TWA desk in Miami for the morning flight to New York, connecting through to Frankfurt and Berlin. There would be a car waiting for me at the airport and he"d see me in a few days. That was it. No small talk, no explanation. Not that I would"ve expected one over the phone.

I hung up, sat on the side of the bed, and wished I had a Marlboro. There was an ocean breeze coming through the window and I got up, stood in front of the screen to let it wash across my bare chest. It was pretty black out there, just the sound of the waves slashing onto the beach. Why had I gone along with Sam? I may not have been cutting it as a writer-or as a fisherman, for that matter-but I had no desire to get back into the game. I"d had enough subversion and betrayal for one lifetime and I certainly had no wish to revisit the city of my youth. It might as well have been someone else"s childhood memories knocking around in my brain, that"s how removed I felt from it. There was nothing left of Berlin to revisit, anyway. The places I once knew had been reduced to rubble and rebuilt into something else that I didn"t care about one way or another. It wasn"t that I wanted to avoid my past, either. I just didn"t give a d.a.m.n.

I guess the easy answer was that I was tired of hauling in empty lures by day and staring at blank pieces of paper by night. A change of scenery would do me no harm. And I owed Sam. Anyway, whatever the reason, I packed my bag and thirty-six hours later I was back in the business of chasing shadows.

It would"ve been a routine operation if not for an unusual request, made in a letter written by an unidentified East German official and dropped in the car of a State Department staffer, somebody"s secretary I think it was. The anonymous official said he had important information that he might be willing to share, under the "right circ.u.mstances." Those kinds of letters were fairly frequent in Berlin and the "right circ.u.mstances" usually meant the right price, which was invariably paid, even though the information was usually pretty lame. But the author of this particular enticement wasn"t interested in money or even a one-way ticket west. He had just one demand: me. I was the only person he"d talk to.

And no one, especially me, had the slightest idea why.

It would be a significant understatement to say that the guys in Berlin were unhappy about this request. The chief of station at the time was a joker named James Powell. A mid-forties, tall, slender, tailored-suit kind of a guy with a head too big for his shoulders, he was a Yale man who thought he was a real smooth operator. I thought he was a pretentious a.s.shole, but that didn"t matter. You came across a lot of pretentious a.s.sholes in the intelligence business. I even liked a few of them. Not Powell, though.

He didn"t care much for me, either, which was understandable for a man in his position. No station chief would"ve liked having an outsider brought in to handle a routine letter drop, but having me show up out of retirement (they called it exile) would"ve really got under his skin. He must have lobbied Washington hard to keep me out of it and been overruled. Everyone knew I"d ditched the agency and thought they knew the reason why, not that I cared what they thought. I was back for a limited engagement and didn"t want to get into any of that old bulls.h.i.t.

Still, I was curious about my mystery man. Why the h.e.l.l would some East German official single me out for contact? I"d been out of the game for two years and I"d never worked Europe anyway. It must have intrigued Washington, too. Whoever the guy was, he had access to files on me, and he"d found something in one of them that got his attention. They must"ve figured he was a player, and it wasn"t often that you got the real thing to volunteer. Usually they"d have to be bribed, extorted, or drugged into betraying their country, which took a lot of time and planning, and more often than not you still came up empty. This was a potential gift, one that would come at an extremely opportune moment. Hence the middle-of-the-night phone call from Sam and the p.i.s.sed-off Berlin chief of station.

Everyone was a bit on edge. Except me, of course. I had no bet in this game. Or so I thought.

The instructions went like this: I was to be at the eastbound Charlottenburg S-Bahn station at 8 P.M. P.M. on Sat.u.r.day night, the twenty-second of June. Being a suburban station, used mostly by commuters, it would be pretty well deserted at that hour. I was instructed to sit at the most forward bench on the platform reading a copy of the on Sat.u.r.day night, the twenty-second of June. Being a suburban station, used mostly by commuters, it would be pretty well deserted at that hour. I was instructed to sit at the most forward bench on the platform reading a copy of the Herald Tribune. Herald Tribune. If I was alone, a man with a cane would make contact. The letter had been very clear about me being alone, but of course I wasn"t. Washington wouldn"t have allowed it even if Powell had. If I was alone, a man with a cane would make contact. The letter had been very clear about me being alone, but of course I wasn"t. Washington wouldn"t have allowed it even if Powell had.

The station sat on a gra.s.sy bank above a small tree-lined road, where a black four-door sedan was parked up on the shoulder. It looked empty, but scrunched down in the front seat, Powell and a young field op named Andy Johnson were monitoring me on a two-way radio link. Johnson was a fresh, crew-cut kid from West Texas who wore big "Buddy Holly" gla.s.ses. Very military. I spoke to him through a microphone that I had in my shirt pocket and he communicated to me over a small, wireless speaker in my ear.

Our man was thirty minutes late when I noticed a guy on the opposite platform taking an interest in me. He wasn"t the subject, but I thought he might be a scout. "There"s a guy across the tracks in a blue overcoat," I whispered into my pocket. "I think he"s in love because he keeps making eyes at me."

"That"s "Mama Bear,"" Johnson said in my ear. One of the sillier aspects of intelligence work is the code names. On this night Powell was "Papa Bear," Johnson was "Baby Bear," and I was "Goldilocks." Mama Bear, it turned out, was a mental case named Roy Chase, a guy I"d heard about but had been lucky enough to avoid up until now. He"d spent a lot of time in Manila, which was the main staging point for operations throughout Southeast Asia. In fact, I was kind of surprised to find Chase in Berlin. It was a very different game here and called for a lighter touch than he had a reputation for. They hadn"t told me he was going to be spotting me, but the guy was so clumsy Ray Charles would"ve made him.

"Well, tell Mama Bear to take a walk," I said too loudly. "He might as well be wearing a f.u.c.king sign."

There was a pause, then Johnson came back on the radio, to Chase. "Uh, Mama Bear, this is Baby Bear. Papa Bear wants you to give Goldilocks some room. ... But stay with the action." Chase shot a nasty look across the tracks, then wandered down to the other end of the platform and pretended to read a train schedule.

8:37. The street lamps were coming on as the last light of day faded away. It wasn"t going to happen. Either the guy was a civilian and chickened out or, more likely, a pro who"d spotted Chase and decided to give it a miss. Either way I"d come a long way for nothing. To my surprise, I felt let down. Being back in action, even such as it was, had my adrenaline going again and my curiosity was aroused.

It started to drizzle.

"We"ve been stood up, guys," I said into my pocket. "Anyway, it"s getting wet out here and Goldilocks needs some hot porridge."

Long pause, me getting wetter while the message was relayed.

"Papa"s not ready to call it," I finally got in my ear. "We"ll go till twenty-one hundred."

Powell knew the guy wasn"t going to turn up. He just wanted to avoid any second-guessing from Washington, but meanwhile I was the jerk getting wet. "Sure," I said, keeping my cool. "But I"m lodging a formal complaint with my union."

"We"ll be sure to put that in the report," Baby Bear a.s.sured me. "And, ah ... Papa Bear requests that you knock off the chatter."

"No problem." Now I wanted to knock Papa Bear"s arrogant head off his gray flannel shoulders.

The rain started to pick up. I was about to tell Powell where to get off when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a figure with a cane approaching. I buried my nose in the Tribune, Tribune, muttered, "Heads up," into the microphone. muttered, "Heads up," into the microphone.

"Yeah, we see it," I got back from Johnson.

My heart picked up a beat.

The figure stopped, maybe fifteen feet short of the bench. I stole a look and saw it was a woman holding a closed umbrella. Mid- to late thirties, with dark hair falling out of a cream-colored nylon scarf with faded red roses around the edge. She looked tired, kind of used up. I noticed a small run in her stocking along her right calf that she had mended with nail polish. She became aware of my look, glanced back over her shoulder, and opened the umbrella.

There was no reason that our mystery man couldn"t be a mystery woman. Of course, an umbrella wasn"t a cane but that could"ve been a glitch in translation. (It wasn"t that unusual. I once saw a description of an especially tall Venezuelan contact translated as "he is unusually high." The meeting never came off because our guys were looking for somebody who was stoned out of his mind. It really happened.) I went back to the newspaper, but kept one eye on her. She was doing the same with me, but not very subtly. I could tell that she was going to make a move and after a few more peeks she did, faking interest in a movie poster to move closer to the bench. I waited, thinking we were wasting our time-this was strictly Amateur Hour.

Finally she turned to me and, in German, said, "You"re getting wet."

My German was pretty rusty, but I tried anyway, saying something like, "Are you offering to share your umbrella?"

She paused for a beat, looked me over, then, in English, said, "Would you like to have some company?"

I couldn"t help laughing, which took her by surprise. She turned away, looking more embarra.s.sed than offended, which she had every right to be. I was about to apologize when I got Powell in my ear.

"For Christ"s sake, Teller, get rid of the wh.o.r.e," in that weary Ivy League way. f.u.c.k you, I thought, she"s just trying to earn a living, probably a more honorable one than you earn. I removed the earpiece, put it in my jacket pocket, and got off the bench.

"Hey, I wasn"t laughing at you." She looked at me, dubious. "I just thought it was funny that you switched to English. Is my German that bad?"

She smiled. "Terrible." It was a nice, natural smile. She had nice eyes, too. Light brown. Too bad they were ma.s.sacred with mascara.

"I don"t do this all the time," she said after an awkward pause. "I"m a nurse." She didn"t need to explain anything to me, but if it made her feel better that was fine.

I said that in fact I wouldn"t mind sharing her umbrella, and as soon as I was under she started to tell me about how she needed the money to pay for her sick mother"s medical bills and how little a nurse made and how she only went with nice men. I asked her how she could tell if they were nice and she said she could just tell, like she did with me. I thought she probably said that to all her potential customers, but I didn"t mind listening. At least I was dry.

I heard the door of the sedan slam and a minute later Powell was storming the platform with Baby Bear Johnson in tow. They stopped about ten feet away, like they were staking me out.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing, Teller!" A vein was throbbing violently in Powell"s right temple and his head looked like it could explode any minute. He really needed to loosen his tie.

"I was just talking to-" I turned to the lady. "I"m sorry, I don"t know your name."

"Rita," she responded, looking kind of apprehensive.

"I"m Jack," I smiled. "Jack Teller."

"h.e.l.lo." She nodded warily.

"Zip it up, Jack. Fun"s over," Powell barked.

I started to say that I hadn"t actually had a lot of laughs so far, that maybe Rita and I would try to salvage the evening, but I stopped short because that"s when I saw him-standing under a street lamp on the road below was our man, watching the whole scene with an expression of utter contempt on his face. He didn"t move, just stood there like a statue, one hand in the pocket of his raincoat, the other holding the cane, rain splashing off his fedora, waiting patiently for us to spot him.

"Looks like we all got caught with our pants down." I nodded toward the street.

He waited for Powell to see him, then turned and disappeared into the darkness. Powell signaled Chase on the opposite platform and he took off after him, hoping to get some kind of ID-a car, a face, anything, but I knew he"d come up empty. This guy wasn"t your run-of-the-mill East German bureaucrat building a retirement fund. He was for real, you could tell.

I wondered again why I would be of such interest. I"d been turning it over since I was briefed, thinking about operations I"d been involved in that might have attracted his attention. Iran, Guatemala, Mexico, or even Cuba-nothing connected. I"d been active in all that stuff and knew a lot, but nothing a lot of other guys didn"t know, too. The most reasonable explanation was that I looked like a candidate for recruitment because of the way I walked out, but that didn"t work, either. If they wanted to try me they"d have used a discreet approach, at the beach maybe, with a well-stuffed bikini as bait, not a letter that alerted the entire intelligence community to their intentions. No, it had to be something else that hooked him. But now it looked like I"d never know-it was highly unlikely that he"d give us a second shot.

"We won"t see him again," I said.

"If that"s true, you"re in big f.u.c.king trouble," Powell flashed. "h.e.l.l, you"re in big f.u.c.king trouble anyway."

"Really?" I answered as coolly as I could. "I"m the only one who"s supposed to be standing on this platform. Besides, I"m here on a guest pa.s.s, so if anyone"s in big f.u.c.king trouble it"s you, Chief."

Powell signaled Johnson with a nod. The kid reached out to take hold of my arm, and without really meaning to, I laid him out pretty cleanly with a simple left hook. To be fair, he wasn"t expecting it, but it felt good anyway. Powell sighed like a frustrated headmistress.

"For Christ"s sake, Teller, was that really necessary?"