Secret Father (26 page)

The grove of trees had been planted around a granite tablet mounted on a rough concrete base, a memorial of some sort. The trees were young, the branches low. Because the foliage blocked the view of the parade, people had avoided the compact space, which lent a kind of privacy to it. Hal faced Mrs. Healy, me, and Krone. His two companions took up positions on the edge of the grove, and then I saw a third.

"You can't be doing this," Hal said abruptly. "The general—"

Mrs. Healy cut him off. "The general is my concern, not yours."

"I beg your pardon, but he told me this morning that you understood the importance of maintaining the routine." All at once I recognized him as the officer I had glimpsed in General Healy's car, leaving the house at Lindsay. The beard was false, but convincing. "The general has no idea you're in Berlin. He'd be furious. The risk—"

"The risk, Hal, is our son's." Mrs. Healy's calm only made the man's agitation more pronounced. She touched his sleeve. "This is the father of Rick's friend," she said, indicating me.

"I know who he is."

"This is Colonel Cummings," she said to me. "My husband's executive officer."

Evidently their relationship had more texture than the usual one between a general's factotum and a general's wife. Cummings, I guessed, had been with Healy for a long time.

She went on, "You are here looking for Rick, Hal. So am I. What do you know? What have you learned?"

Cummings glanced at me, then at Krone. As if Hans were not able to hear, Cummings asked, "Who is this German?"

I answered, "An associate of mine, our escort."

Without hesitating, Cummings addressed Krone. "Would you excuse us, sir?" Cummings lifted a finger toward the man in sunglasses, who stepped toward Krone with an extended arm, indicating
over here.
Krone looked at me, and I nodded. He allowed himself to be shown to the edge of the grove, apparently out of earshot. I would be aware of him throughout the conversation that followed, watching us.

"First of all," Cummings said to me and Mrs. Healy both, "you should assume that every German you meet here is Stasi. Trust no one."

"Mrs. Healy is German," I said with an edge that surprised me.

Cummings did not miss a beat. "Look, Mr. Montgomery, you are in way over your head. I don't know what you think is going on, but I promise you, you haven't got a clue. This is dangerous, and not only for the youngsters."

Mrs. Healy stood with her hands in the pockets of her trench coat. She was as immobile as stone, staring down. Of course it was true that I knew nothing. But what did she know? The piece of the story that would explain everything to me?

When I spoke then, it was to Cummings, but she was the one I meant to address. "Why don't you tell me what's going on, then? We
have
crossed a border here, and my ignorance at this point serves no purpose."

"Impossible," Cummings said.

Mrs. Healy stepped closer to him, closer to me. She put her hand on Cummings's arm again. "It is all right, Hal. I am sure of it." Then she looked at me. Now when she spoke, it was with the air of a briefing officer, a hint of another life she had led. "Ulrich inadvertently took a bag that contains a roll of undeveloped film, tourist pictures. But along the edge of the film is a reduction of microfilm that contains sensitive material, which is all you need to know. It is all that I know about it."

Microfilm, I thought. Cary Grant. Am I at the movies?

Cummings picked up the explanation, which made me realize none of this was true, or, if true, it was so incomplete as to be false. Not
at
the movies.
In
one. "If Stasi or the KGB were to find that film on Rick, the intelligence loss would be extreme, to say the least. But of more pressing concern"—Cummings shifted to meet Mrs. Healy's gaze—"of
far
more pressing concern to General Healy is Rick's welfare. You know that, Charlotte."

Mrs. Healy, instead of replying, looked down.

Cummings turned to me again. "The certain fact is that Rick would be taken by the Communists to be a professional. They would, I promise you,
not
assume his presence here was some high school joyride. They could only assume that he was in Berlin either to pick up that film or pass it on to someone. He would certainly be arrested, charged with 'illegal relaying of information.' He would be brought to trial for 'illegal agent activity.' Given who his father is, and given the present state of East-West tensions, such a proceeding would be conducted as a show trial, a shameless propaganda exercise. The only hope would be that they might not want to draw attention to what is on the film."

"Which is?"

Cummings laughed.

I said, "And General Healy kept this roll of film at home?" That seemed an obvious lapse, but then I thought of that darkroom. He had it at home to develop it himself? But I left the sarcasm in my voice as I pushed further. "He left such a sensitive roll of film where his son could, as you put it, inadvertently take it? How is that, Colonel? Maybe the general has something of his own to protect here. 'National security' was his mantra with me. Has the general himself breached it?"

Mrs. Healy touched my arm, not in a particularly friendly way. "My son is what is important," she said. "As is your son. As is Katharine." To Cummings, then, she issued an order. "Tell us what you have learned."

Cummings recited his brief. "They arrived on the duty train at 1915 hours last night. They were picked up in the station by a labor council functionary, an SPD recruiter named Tramm. We know he is a Berliner with his whole family living in the West, but we still have to assume he's Stasi. He took them to the labor council hostel last night, where they stayed. They left the hostel in Tramm's company this morning at about 0900, aiming to go first to the SPD rally at Schöneberg, then over here for the parade. We learned all this only about noon. Since then, we haven't had any more luck in finding them than you have. Odds are they're in this crowd. Or were. Or were stopped trying to get here. The
Vopos
have arrested a couple of hundred people in the last three hours, drunken pugs from the FRG, black market buckos, assorted goofballs. Our kids could be in the net, hardly noticed."

"Americans? Hardly noticed?" I said, but both Cummings and Mrs. Healy ignored me.

"If Tramm is Stasi," she said coolly, "would it not be certain that they are being held by now?"

"The question is the film. Does Tramm know of it? For that matter, does Rick know of it? Again, assuming they make the connection to the general, they wouldn't dare hold Rick without a violation—a carton of Marlboros, a copy of
Playboy
..." Cummings indicated the potential length of the list with a shrug.

"Especially considering," I said slowly, playing the only card I held, "the state of Stasi paranoia since the fatal fire. Isn't that the background noise against which this concert is being played?"

Cummings did not flinch. "What fire?"

I refused to look away from him, and I did not answer. Finally—what I was waiting for—he shot an accusing look at the woman beside me. The charge was clear enough: Why are you telling this dumb bastard?

Before Mrs. Healy could react, giving me the next clue of what in hell was going on, a screeching noise broke over the square, an ungodly roaring from above. Like all the thousands around us, we looked up, but in order to see we had to shift quickly to the edge of the memorial grove, to be clear of the foliage canopy. In the blue sky, swarming from the east beyond the
Fernsehturm,
was a cloud of war planes, dozens of olive-green aircraft flying in close formation. All at once, half a dozen of the planes peeled off and down, swooping toward Alexanderplatz as if to strafe us. I recognized these planes as MiG 21s.

They descended like kamikazes, which I had seen once from the bridge of the
Stephen Case
as they dived into a sister ship. The MiGs came down so ferociously that I took Mrs. Healy's hand, and instinctively she pulled close to me. Like the throng around us, we had begun to duck, but just then the planes pulled up. For the barest moment they were close enough for us to see the fire of their engines, feel the heat of their afterburn on our faces, and smell the sweet odor of their fuel. Then the jets curled back up to the sky where they belonged.

They rolled together, swooping up, up, up. In perfect synchrony, they slipped back into the last rank of the mass formation as it made its way across West Berlin. As the engines' roar faded, the crowd saluted back by breaking into its first authentic cheer, a throaty roar of its own that said, Thank the gods of revolution, for you have spared us!

In the aftermath of the roars, I became aware of Mrs. Healy again, how I was holding her, my arm around her shoulder. Cummings was watching us with cold disapproval. Mrs. Healy stepped away from me.

"Where are you staying?" Cummings asked.

Staying? We hadn't yet considered it, and when neither of us answered, Cummings misunderstood, and felt obliged to explain, "So I'll know where to contact you when we find them."

Hans Krone had watched all of this from the edge of the grove, between Cummings's men. We had moved closer to him to see the fly-by, but he was still apparently out of earshot. Yet now he piped in with the answer: "The Kempinski."

Cummings looked at him with a questioning expression: How had the German heard?

But Krone was smiling broadly, an ingratiating assistant waiting to be thanked. He walked toward us. "The Kempinski, on the Ku'damm. Our best hotel."

"And ifwe need you?" Mrs Healy said to Cummings.

"Call your husband," he answered.

He turned his back on her and strode out once more into the thick bustle of Alexanderplatz. His men dallied a bit, one feigning interest in the grove's memorial plaque, the other shielding his eyes from the glare outside the shade of the trees. In this way, the agents allowed Cummings to go ahead a few paces, and when they followed, each headed into the crowd at a different angle. Soon they were swallowed up by the milling throng, which was dispersing.

I faced Krone. "He thinks you are Stasi."

Krone snorted dismissively, snapping his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and applying it to his perspiring brow. When he met my eyes, I said, "And I am prepared for the possibility that he's right. But I'll tell you something, Hans. I am depending on you. I have no choice. If you let me down, I will destroy you."

The sunlight glinted down through the trees. In another place, the play of light and shadow might have seemed lovely, but the air between me and this German banker, whom I hardly knew at all, seemed threatening. I had spoken without an instant's forethought, yet I knew that what I'd said was true, and so, I sensed, did Krone.

"My dear friend," he said, "it is a grief what these times require of us. Still." He smiled at me, but not without a twitching at the side of his mouth. "I understand."

The last of the airplanes was gone, and a band struck up its march not far away. I turned to Mrs. Healy. "Cummings obviously has a squad of men here, to have learned what he knows. In Schöneberg. At the SPD hostel. You and I are superfluous on the street, hoping to bump into the kids."

"But what else?"

Instead of answering, I faced Krone again. "I have the impression, Hans, that you know what Cummings was just telling us. You shouldn't have been able to hear from where they had you standing, but—"

"Have you worked in the bourse, Paul? The stock exchange? I was a young man, a caller, on the floor of the exchange on Threadneedle Street during the Nazi years. Have you ever tried to hear anything on the trading floor?"

"You read lips."

"Traders bought and sold on the nod, but chits required numbers to the fraction, and it was my job to get them. In that noise, of course one read lips—but without even knowing one was doing so." He had folded his handkerchief again, and now put it back into his pocket.

I said, "It would confirm Cummings in his assumption about you. You gave it away when you answered his question about the hotel."

"But he missed it, did he not?" Krone glanced at Mrs. Healy. "American agents are not infallible. I spoke up then because I wanted you to know that I—how shall I put it?—anticipate."

"So you took it in—Tramm and so on."

"More or less. Tramm, yes." He faced Mrs. Healy. "And your husband, of course. The well-known Colonel Healy. Or, as I gather, General Healy now. You should have told me. It makes the thing clearer. The problem, I mean."

"Let's assume Tramm
is
Stasi. Assume the kids have been detained. Marlboros or something."

"Or the film," Mrs. Healy put in.

"Do you know what's on it?" I asked.

She looked away.

Krone said, "It is obvious—not the particular, but the universal, for sure. Given who General Healy is. I told you, both sides are scrambling. You say 'scrambling'? Ahead of the border closing that any moment comes. Prized information about assets-in-place. Informers. Each side taking one last survey of the other before it is too late. One last penetration. I promise you this, Mrs. Healy. Your husband is remembered here."

She refused to look at him.

"If your sons are carrying film, be certain the film will be found. If the film is, as we say,
Käse,
then"—he stopped, made a point of waiting until Mrs. Healy looked at him—"you have more to worry about than embarrassment to your husband."

It was a nasty moment, and Krone's readiness to skewer her made me angry. But it mystified me, too, that even my bank colleague was privy to things that were kept secret from me. Mrs. Healy, in not replying, made her disdain plain. I had to remind myself that she was German and Krone was a Jew. Did that account for the hostility heating the air between them?

"If the kids have been detained," I said to Krone, "do you have a way of finding out? A way that wouldn't tip off the East Germans if they haven't noticed them?"

Now it was Krone who glanced quickly about to be sure no one was listening, no one reading his lips. Although the crowd in Alexanderplatz was breaking up, even as a band played on, we were still relatively isolated in the grove.