The Berlin Conspiracy (18 page)

Josef nodded slightly, acknowledging what he already knew. “It might even be that—hypothetically—this highly placed individual was recruited into the conspiracy.” I knew where Josef and I stood now, anyway. He was for real. Not that it made me feel any better, because if he was for real then so was the conspiracy.

“Is Kovinski being run by Iceberg?” I asked.

“Probably, but he wouldn’t realize it.”

“Do you know who handles him?”

“No,” he answered. “But his code name is Lamb.”

“As in sacrificial…” I studied the face in the picture. It
was defiant, unflinching, maybe even hostile. “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” I said.

“Only one thing?”

I smiled. My brother had made his first joke.

“Why would he pose for a photograph like this?”

“You can ask him when you find him.”

“I don’t suppose you happen to have an address?”

“He won’t be hard to locate,” Josef promised. “It’s the following stage that will be difficult.”

We pulled up in front of Hotel Europa. It was every bit as glorious on the outside as it was on the inside. A woman in a platinum-blond wig and fishnets came out of the shadows and eased toward the car. At least I thought it was a woman until she got closer, then I was stumped. I gave her a warning look through the window and she backed off, waited by the hotel entrance, ready to pounce.

“Okay if I keep this?” I said to Josef, meaning the photo.

He nodded, but I knew he would’ve preferred not to let it go. If it got into the wrong hands and was traced back to him, his future wouldn’t be too bright. But I needed one more piece of information.

“What’s the name of Kovinski’s KGB handler?” Josef gave me a look. “I know it’s asking a lot,” I said, “… but look where I’m sleeping tonight.”

“Kovinski knows him as ‘Sasha,’ “he said. “But that’s all I can give you. You’re on your own now. I’m sorry. I wish it could be otherwise.”

“So do I,” I said, opening the door and sliding out of my seat.

He leaned over and held out his palm. “I’m glad we met.”

“Me, too,” I said, and we clasped hands. As soon as the car pulled away it occurred to me that the last time Josef and I had held hands was on the night our mother died.

I heard what sounded like whispering coming from outside the door. It was faint, so I couldn’t be sure if the voice was in the living room or if it was coming through the wall from the next apartment. I looked down at Hanna, who was still asleep, her chest moving rhythmically up and down with each breath. I gently lifted my arm out from under her, replaced it with a pillow, then eased myself to the edge of the bed. She stirred when I sat up, burrowed her nose into the pillow, and turned over.

Our clothes were strewn across the floor in a trail from the door to the bed. I slipped into my boxer shorts, followed by socks and T-shirt. I was stepping into my pants when I saw that she was watching me.

“Are you leaving?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

“There’s something I have to do.”

“Another meeting?”

“Something like that,” I said, moving toward her and sitting on the bed. I stroked her cheek with the back of my hand and she felt every bit as good as the first time I’d touched her.

“Listen,” I said. “I’ll—”

“Shhh.” She touched my lip with the tips of her fingers. “Don’t say anything. … It’s all right. I don’t regret anything.” I leaned over and kissed her forehead, then left without looking back.

Horst was stretched out on the sofa, fully clothed and wide-awake, sipping a cup of coffee. “I see you and Hanna have become better acquainted,” he smiled, a bit too effortlessly. “Please don’t feel embarrassed. It’s quite natural.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” I said. “Are you?”

“No,” he answered with a shrug. “Would you like a coffee?”

I said sure and looked around the room while he went off to the kitchen. I noticed that the telephone had been moved to a table beside the sofa where Horst had been sitting. It could have been the whispering I’d heard, but maybe I was just being paranoid. Even if he had been on the phone, he could’ve been talking to some girlfriend—or a fellow car thief, for that matter.

I picked up my shoes, which were right inside the door, sat down to put them on, but stopped cold when I spotted my jacket. It lay in a crumpled pile on the floor behind the sofa, the manila envelope protruding halfway out of the inside pocket. Had it been removed and hastily put back? Possibly, but I couldn’t be sure. I tried to recall where the jacket had fallen the previous night, but it wasn’t something I’d been particularly aware of as Hanna was undressing me.

“I hope it’s not too sweet,” Horst said, balancing an overfilled cup as he entered the room. “I didn’t know how many sugars you like.”

“Actually, I’ll have to take a rain check,” I said, “I didn’t realize what time it was.” I scooped the jacket off the floor, allowing the envelope to fall out, and headed for the door.

“You’ve forgotten something,” he called after me. I turned around and he handed me the envelope. “It might be important.”

“Not really,” I said, but I was pretty sure by the way he avoided looking at it that he’d already seen its contents. Maybe it was just innocent thievery and he was disappointed that it hadn’t been filled with hundred-dollar bills.

Then again, maybe not.

My brother was right,
Kovinski wasn’t hard to find. In fact, he turned out to be a listed spy. I came across a public phone a couple of blocks from where Horst and Hanna lived, decided to start there, see if I got lucky. And there he was—”Kovinski, A,” sandwiched between “Kosche, G” and “Krause, H.” I tore the page out, stuffed it in my pocket, and jumped into a taxi.

In the ride over, I took the photo out and studied his face, thought about how I should handle him. He was a weasel, the kind of clown who thinks he’s playing all the angles when in fact they’re playing him. He’d act tough at first, but fold under pressure. I had an idea about how to play him, but I wasn’t gonna fuck around if he didn’t go for it. There wasn’t time and I wasn’t in the mood.

Kovinski lived in a low-rent neighborhood, in a cluster of concrete high-rises built in the Josef Stalin style of architecture.
The buildings were grouped around a sad-looking common that was probably planned as an urban oasis, where residents could get away from their drab, airless apartments, but ended up as an empty patch of dust and overgrown weeds. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

I paid Melik, my Turkish cabby, double the meter and told him to keep it running. A young immigrant with a twinkle in his eye and passable English, he nodded squarely when I told him to follow at a discreet distance if I went anywhere. I found my way to Kovinski’s building and rang the bell for apartment 5C.

“Wer ist es?”
came a voice over the speaker.

“I’m looking for Aleks Kovinski,” I said. There was a beat of silence before he responded, this time in heavily accented English.

“Who is asking?”

“I’m looking for a lost lamb,” I said, knowing that would cut through a lot of bullshit. An even longer pause followed.

“I come down,” he finally said.

It was turning out to be a perfect June day, sunny and bright, but the stillness of the area was kind of spooky. I felt like I was being watched, but shook it off. Pregame jitters, I told myself. When Kovinski appeared he didn’t hang around, flew out the door and right past me. I caught up after a few yards.

“Who are you?” he asked, glancing over without slowing his pace.

“A friend.” He gave me a contemptuous look, with good reason.

“Do you have a name?”

“Not one you need to know.”

“Some friend,” he scoffed.

“Maybe the only one you have.”

“What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “Talk.”

“Can we slow down a little?”

He eased up a bit, looked me over more thoroughly. He was pretty much what I’d expected, only more so. I hadn’t even said “boo” yet and he was ready to panic.

“No one is suppose come here,” he said. “They don’t tell you?”

“Who are ‘they’?”

He stopped walking, looked at me, and frowned. He had said too much and realized it. “Who do you work for?” he demanded.

“Same as you,” I smiled.

“You make mistake,” he sputtered, taking a step back. “Maybe you look for someone else.”

“You’re ‘lamb,’ aren’t you?”

“You find wrong person.” He turned around and started back toward his building.

“That’s a shame,” I called after him. “Because the Aleks Kovinski I’m looking for needs help.”

“Go to hell!” he yelled back.

“Ever had your picture in the paper?” He kept walking. I took the envelope out of my pocket, waved it in the air. “Because I thought you might wanna see the one that’s gonna go with your obituary! … You know what obituary means?” Apparently he did, because he stopped walking and turned around. I took the photograph out of the envelope and held it out to him.

“Take a look,” I said. “Should make tomorrow’s evening edition.” He hesitated, not sure what to make of it. “Because if you don’t talk to me now, tomorrow’s the day you die.”

“Show me,” he demanded, edging nearer. I complied, without handing it over. His whole body seemed to tense up
when he saw himself standing in front of the flag with the rifle in his hands.

“It’s not the most flattering angle,” I said breezily. “But it makes a statement. The sidearm’s a nice touch.”

“Where you get this?” he said, voice shaking.

“Somebody you know gave it to me,” I said, and he looked at me sideways.

“Who?”

“How about I buy you a cup of coffee?”

He led us to a bar around the corner, where we ordered coffee and sat at a wobbly wooden table in the back, away from the window. The place wasn’t doing much business, just an old man and his lame dog who looked like they were settling in for the day. Kovinski pulled out a pack of nonfilters and started puffing away nervously. Bumming one was out of the question, so I convinced myself I wasn’t interested.

“Is not me,” he said.

“What’s not you?”

“This picture … Is not me.” His leg was bouncing up and down like a Mexican jumping bean.

“You’re a bit high-strung for this business, aren’t you?” I said.

“What business?”

“The playing-both-sides-of-the-fence business. You don’t exactly have nerves of steel.”

“Go to hell,” he said, leaning back in his chair and blowing smoke rings, proving that he was as cool as a cucumber.

“Yeah, you said that before.”

“I dunno this picture. Is not me.”

“You said that, too.”

“Is truth,” he shrugged. I pulled the photo out again,
made a big show of looking back and forth between it and his face.

“It sure as hell looks like you,” I said.

“Is fake,” he said, trying to look bored. “My head maybe, not the rest.” He glanced nervously toward the old man and his dog. He was looking everywhere except in my eye.

I took another look at the photo. It looked real enough to me, but what did I know? If it was a fake, it was a damned good one. It did strike me that Kovinski’s shock when he saw it had been genuine. Then again, Kovinski was a natural-born liar. In the end, it didn’t make much difference. Bogus or not, its purpose was the same.

“You’re being set up, Aleks,” I said. “If the picture’s really a phony, it should be all the more obvious to you.”

“I dunno nothing.”

“I can help you, if you cooperate.”

He blew smoke in my face, which was stupid beyond belief. It was hard to believe the guy could have survived this long in the game he was playing. Of course, his future prospects weren’t looking too bright.

“If I get out of this chair, you’re dead tomorrow,” I said. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“This is bullshit,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette, leg still going a mile a minute.

“You saw the picture.”

“So what? A picture! Maybe you make it!”

“Come on, Aleks, I hope you’re smarter than that. You already know who made it. Shall I tell you
why
they made it?”

He tipped his head back and looked at me out of the bottom of his eyes. I waited. “Okay …” he finally said. “You tell.”

“The CIA is planning the assassination of a senior official in the West German government,” I said. “It will take place tomorrow, while Kennedy is in Berlin. The picture’s part of
a plan to frame you. It looks like you’re being set up to take the fall.”

He froze. Even his leg stopped moving. He leaned forward. “American CIA to kill
West
German official?”

“That’s right,” I said. It was out of the question to tell him that the target was Kennedy, so I’d come up with this story in the taxi on the way over. And if he already had an inkling that he was being set up for something, it would ring true.

“I don’t believe….” Kovinski shook his head. “Why they do this? CIA is ally with West Germany.”

“The Americans think the West Germans are getting a little too cozy with the Russians. The idea is to make it look like the official was hit by a KGB agent. And you’re it.”