Undeceived (8 page)

Chapter 12

About a week after the West Berlin field trip, Liam Reynolds was awakened before dawn by incessant phone ringing. Still groggy, his eyes half-closed, he grappled for the phone.

“Reynolds.”

A frantic female voice answered. “Liam, I think I am in trouble.”

“I’m sorry, who is this?”

“What do you mean ‘who is this’?” Now, he recognized the clipped vowels, the harsh tone.

“Oh, Anneliese. Sorry, it’s early. Ah, what can I do for you at”—he checked his bedside clock—“six in the morning?”

“I need to go to West Berlin. Today.”

“That
is
a dilemma, and not one I can help you with. Why don’t you consult your mother for her advice?” He started to hang up.

“She can’t help me now.” Her voice broke. “God, Liam! I have been talking with some people, thinking I could get out of here if I helped them, and now…”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Maybe you know people.” She paused. “You
must
know people.”

“I
must
know nothing of the sort.”

“The Stasi found out what I am doing. They have to know because I am being followed. When I came home last night, I realized they searched my apartment.”

“Then go to the people you’ve been helping. I can’t do anything for you.”

Her voiced turned shrill. “If they pick me up, I will implicate you.”

“I’m only a businessman, I—”

“I will implicate you—and every American I can think of. The little theater student. The authorities will believe me. They are suspicious of any foreigner, and we all went to West Berlin last week together. It would not be much of a stretch. She is always sneaking around after you anyway.”

His heart stopped even as his mind began to race. Had they been so careless? Could Anneliese have seen him with Beth at the theater? Or outside the director’s house that night of the cast and crew party? He’d put even more security in place than usual. Reduced his number of personal contacts, watched his own back—and Beth’s—religiously.

“You will not help me then? Fine. I will contact your intelligence people, your embassy. If the Stasi get me beforehand, it is on your head!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He hung up. Scrubbed his hands over his face.
What the hell is going on? Prague, then Budapest, and now East Berlin?
The GDR was a more dangerous assignment, sure, but damnation! If he were the director, he’d start looking for systematic leaks. For…

A mole at Langley? Is there an enemy, not just out in the field but burrowed in the heart of the CIA?

He replayed Anneliese’s phone call in his mind for any clue as to who her contacts were, or at least who she
believed
they were. She must have thought he knew something, and the only other person she’d implicated was Beth, who might be in terrible danger if she went by the drop this morning. If Anneliese gave Beth’s description or the drop location to the Stasi, they might be waiting for her there. He reached for the phone then put it back down. He couldn’t risk a call to Beth. He’d have to drive over, wake her, and warn her in person.

He got in his car, wound his way around the city in a convoluted survey detection route to make sure he wasn’t followed before slipping into her building. He’d never been in her apartment here so as not to cast suspicion on her. He knocked once. Knocked again.

“Beth?”

The door across the hall opened.

Damn it!

“She left early.” The elderly woman in the opposite doorway looked him up and down as if memorizing his features. No matter, he wasn’t planning to hang around East Germany anyway. He thanked the woman and left.

Perhaps she was at the theater. Or perhaps she’d gone early to check the drop. He stopped dead in his tracks and made a beeline for his car and Volkspark Friedrichshain. It broke every protocol, but he had to know—warn her if possible. Or if she’d been taken, he had to know that too. Gorge rose in his throat. Just like Jirina, and yet, not like Jirina at all. This was a whole new type of terror. Jirina’s capture had released a flood of regret in him. But the possibility that
She
was in custody, being held in a Stasi interrogation room, made the breath back up in his lungs. He could envision it all too clearly: her eyes wide and frightened, stammering her innocence, sitting on her hands so the dogs could come in after and catch her scent from the chair pad. He saw her being released and followed by hounds and men. Saw her capture. The idea that
She
might be hunted down and imprisoned, beaten, drugged, and interrogated clawed at him—a rage unlike any he’d ever experienced.

He stopped the car about one hundred feet from the drop. Sure enough, a chalk mark indicated a message was waiting. He checked around him for surveillance, and finding none, he stepped up to the hollow stones under the pine tree.

A bough slipped from his fingers, whipped toward his face. His head snapped back, and he was stunned as the sniper’s bullet whizzed past and lodged itself in the tree trunk. He dove for the ground, taking cover behind the trees. Using the foliage to hide, he fled down the other side of the knoll. He scanned the street and started running, trying each car door until he found one unlocked. He hotwired the Trabant and took off toward his own apartment.

No suits loitering about his building front door, no suspicious characters he could see.
Thank God for small favors!
He sprinted up the steps to his flat. He had to find a way to contact Beth and get them both out of East Berlin. He tore through the well-ordered heap of useless but damning information left by Collins weeks earlier. Reynolds chastised himself for not prioritizing that mess. It was tortuous boredom to wade through the copious notes, but now they were costing him dearly in escape time. If there was anything worthwhile in there, it was about to be lost in his haste to destroy it.

He heard footsteps on the stairs. Beth! She might have figured out the mismatch between the signal and no message at the drop.
No, no, no! It’s dangerous for her here! She mustn’t rush over here to investigate!

He yanked open the door and looked straight into Anneliese’s harsh, beautiful face. Then he glanced down.

“Son of a bitch,” Liam said under his breath, staring down the business end of a silencer. “Are you the reason I had an unexpected visitor on my morning walk?”

“You think you’re so damned smart.
Super Spy Darcy
. Thought you didn’t need to bother with protocol because nobody could tail you. Never even considered that I don’t need to tail you because I know all about you and your little American friend. Theater student, my ass.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, Anneliese.” He eased back into the room, hoping she’d follow him. It would give her less opportunity to cover the flat and the building’s entrance if they were inside the room.

“It’s Natalia, not Anneliese.”

“You don’t like the name the Stasi gave you?”

She shook her head, smiling grimly.

“And Oberst Vandenburg is not your mother, I presume.”

“She was a means to an end, that’s all. A means to
your
end as the heroic CIA officer. She’s been in on this from the beginning. The very beginning.”

“Then it appears that I am amazingly stupid.” She was twitchy, he realized, and that might give him an opportunity to escape. “I thought we were on the same side. I even broke protocol for you because I thought you were in trouble. I thought we all were. I wanted to help you, maybe I still can, but I couldn’t say such a thing on the phone. I had to get—had to warn…”

“The chorus girl?” She snorted. “Don’t look so shocked. I know you pretended to be passed out drunk that night we spent in West Berlin so you could avoid sleeping with me. And I have seen the way your eyes follow her everywhere she goes. A smart woman intuits these things. But she is expendable, no one of consequence. I knew all along it was
you
they wanted. Wilhelm told me…”

“Who?” Reynolds demanded in spite of himself. “Who told you?”

“Shut up!” she said in Russian and cocked the pistol.

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Not particularly, no. I like you, Darcy. But he wants you—alive and working for us if possible, but if not, just gone will work. Either way, your time here is over. You are coming with me.”

She blinked, a tell signaling what was to come, and that gave him the split second he needed. He dove to the left, behind the metal desk, drawing his handgun out from the holster strapped beneath his jacket. A searing pain tore through his right arm, and he switched the gun to his left hand.

Damn it to hell, damn it to hell!

The Stasi would be along any minute. He heard footsteps storming the hallway. But the voices he heard weren’t German, they were Russian.

Of course, Anneliese would have a KGB partner on this little expedition. They’d never send her in alone. He was probably the sniper, the sniper that had missed him on purpose and driven him here, right into their trap.

“I told you to wait!” The male voice hissed out a Russian expletive.

There was a silence, and he knew she was giving her comrade the location of her prey. Darcy drew in his attention and focused on the two shooters. He listened for the disturbance of air and the scent of fear that would give away the man’s position. Inching around the metal trashcan, he fired a shot that caught the guy in his knee. As the big Russian bear fell back against the wall, Darcy rolled out from behind the desk, and in one fluid motion, he triple tapped him, two bullets into the man’s chest, one into his head. He whirled around just as Anneliese took aim, and before she could pull the trigger, he pointed and fired, right through her forehead.

Her finger reflexively pulled the trigger as she fell, and his side exploded with pain.

He screamed—out loud? Or just in his head? The scream burned in his throat, echoed in his mind.

He reached for the phone. Dialed.

Holy hell, am I in trouble!

Chapter 13

Darcy frantically gathered files and rifled through them, pulling out the occasional stray paper and stuffing it into a beaten-up leather briefcase while he damned Bill Collins and his organizing ways to hell and back. Destroying all this paper was sucking away valuable escape time.

Spy Rule Number Four: An undercover man’s worst enemy is a set of neat, orderly files. “
Stupid fool.” Darcy muttered under his breath.

The voice on the other end of the line was drowsy, reminding him of the time difference between East Berlin and the States.

“Who is this?”

“You know who this is!” he hissed in a violent whisper that evolved into a gasp. He looked down at his bloodstained shirt. It had bloomed significantly in the last minute or so.
How much time do I have before I pass out from loss of blood?

“Good God, man—it’s four in the morning!”

“Well, it isn’t four in the morning here, and they’ll be able to spot me a mile away in the bright German sunshine.”

“Where are you?” His colleague’s voice changed from a yawn to a semi-awake mumble. “And what’s the security status of this phone line?”

“I’m in a dive in East Berlin, where I had to set up shop after Budapest—and this may be my final destination if either the Stasi or their KGB handlers find me and finish me off.”

All sleepiness faded as the man’s voice leapt from drowsy to aware in a fraction of second. “Tell me.”

“This morning I got a frantic—and unsecured—phone call from Stonewall.”

“What did she say?”

“She was in trouble. The Stasi knew everything. She wanted out.”

“She wanted asylum? We can’t give everyone asylum. You know we’re supposed to keep the assets in place. Convince this one to stay put and let us assess the situation first.”

“Don’t quote me agency clichés from the safety of your uppity Georgetown address. I’ve got a real emergency here!”

“Stonewall called
you
? And didn’t contact the cutout through the drop? That’s not procedure.”

“I know, I know. But it’s complicated. Because Stonewall isn’t an asset. She’s a damned KGB officer who’s played us all. She’s the actress, and her so-called mother is in on the whole operation. Stonewall threatened me, all of us here: the staff, my—”

“Okay. What’s been done so far?”

“I think the other officer is safe. She should be at work this morning, and she wasn’t at the drop when I got there.”

“Hold it. You went to the drop in person. You, yourself?”

“There wasn’t time to do anything else. I couldn’t risk her…” A fresh rush of pain washed over him.

“You there?”

“Yep, I’m still here. But God, I’m so screwed! There was a sniper waiting for me at the drop. I think he missed me on purpose—to drive me into the trap.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve blown your cover—again!”

“It appears that I have.”

“What’s your status right now?”

“I was followed, and they got me. This place will be crawling with Stasi any minute. Call USBER. Tell them I’m on my way to West Berlin, and I’m going to need to get through Checkpoint Charlie in the next couple of hours.” He winced. “Tell them to be waiting outside Café Adler.”

“A couple of hours?”

“There’s someone…no, something…something I have to find first.”

“No, your identity’s been compromised. You’re wounded. I can send a team to your location. Just stay where you are.”

“Negative. It’s suicide to stay here, man!”
We saw what happens after the mess in Prague: interrogation, torture. Who knows how long I could withstand torture in this state? Thirty-six hours…forty-eight? What would they get from me? Officers’ names? Asset names? Drop locations?
“Can’t let the others be compromised. Have to get out of here—now.”

“I can have our people there in ten minutes. Or I can contact our man from MI6. Stay put.”

“I don’t have ten minutes! Call Mission Berlin. I’ll meet them at the rendezvous.” He hung up.

“Damn it!” He clutched his side as he ignited papers stained with his blood and threw them into the fireplace.

Spy Rule Number Seventeen: A good fire covers a multitude of sins.

He took one last look around as he yanked the phone out of the wall. Already, he could hear sirens in the distance.

The fire escape clanged as he let it down, and the last rung unfortunately stuck about ten feet above the ground. Darcy strapped his leather messenger bag across his good shoulder and shimmied down the ladder. He missed half the rungs as he went, and fell the final distance to the ground. With a groan of agony, he stood and began the eight-block trek to the infamous Wall, the demarcation line between East and West, holding one hand to his hastily bandaged gunshot wound.

***

“
Beth?” Karl came up behind her and put a hand on her arm. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Karl.” She reached down to straighten the seam in her stocking, dislodging his hand in the process.

“I was relieved when I saw you here this morning.”

“Why?”

He looked around before bending to whisper in her ear. “Anneliese is missing.”

“Missing? What do you mean missing?” It came out in English first; then she shook her head and lapsed back into German.

“Shh! Not so loud, okay? She didn’t come to rehearsal earlier, so Heinrich sent a messenger to her place. She isn’t there.”

“Maybe she’s sick. Have they contacted her mother?”

“I’m sure they have, but I haven’t heard anything. Heinrich’s got the understudy warming up.”

Beth made a quick scan of the theater. If Anneliese had been picked up and was being interrogated, she might finger Beth as her cutout.

Karl leaned over and spoke in her ear. “I thought you’d want to know because you two seemed close.”

“Close?”

“You hang around together sometimes, and you took that trip West together with that Brit and that American.”

“Well, yes, but…” People were associating her with Anneliese because of that stupid trip. Not good.

“I thought maybe they got you too.”

“Wait, Karl, did the Stasi get Anneliese?”

“People talk, but you never know if what they say is true or not.”

“Why would they pick her up? She’s an East German theater darling from Dresden. Her mother’s a military border guard officer.”

“You’re right—it’s probably nothing. I just wanted you to know I’m here for you. If you needed help, or…” He lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug. “I have friends.”

“Oh, Karl.” She wondered what kind of friends he had—ones that would turn her in, turn him in, or truly work to get her out. She wondered whether he even knew what kind of friends they were, or whether he himself would be the informant. If he was sincere about helping her, well, it was kind of sweet. If poor Karl only knew she could take him down in seconds flat, concoct half a dozen ways to poison him, or slip over the East-West border virtually unseen with an hour’s lead time…

But he didn’t know, and for his sake, she’d make sure he never would.

And yet, she worried. She could evade and elude the authorities pretty well, but all bets were off if the wrong government officials got suspicious and plucked her off the street or out of her flat without warning. Suddenly, Beth Steventon knew way too much for comfort. As soon as she could, Beth would check the drop for news from Anneliese—maybe check in with Darcy, or Fitz at the British Embassy. A sense of foreboding raced up and down her spine.

After Karl went off to check the lighting, Beth slipped out the back theater door, scanning for anyone tailing her. There was a Sunday matinee at two o’clock; she couldn’t be gone long. Satisfied that she wasn’t being followed, she rode her bike by Volkspark Friedrichshain. Sure enough, there was a chalk mark on the sidewalk, indicating a drop had been made. She walked up behind the fir trees and, bathed in their evergreen boughs, leaned down to lift the bottom layer and open the hollow stone.

Empty.

Empty?

Meaning someone had been there before her and retrieved the message but hadn’t erased the chalk signal. The message
should
have been coded, but if it wasn’t…

Her head began to pound as the possibilities poured through her mind like water over a dam.

She peered out of the boughs of the tree and headed down the back side and out the west entrance of the park, pedaling as fast as she could go.

Beth approached Darcy’s flat, slowing when she saw the suit standing outside.

“Not good, not good,” she muttered. If Anneliese was gone, a message was missing from the drop, and the Stasi were outside the flat, something must be going down. But she couldn’t rush in there or rush away. She veered smoothly across the street and ducked into the cafe without being noticed. She’d grab a seat and watch. Maybe Darcy wasn’t even in his flat. Maybe they were just searching it, and she could warn him in time. Or confront him. Catch him in the act of double espionage. She’d finally have the evidence Wickham was looking for.

And then what? If he were innocent, they’d both be in hot water, surrounded by East German secret police. If he were guilty, she’d go the way of the mysterious Jirina. Beth shivered. She’d wait it out and see what transpired.

She’d been idling at the outdoor cafe about five minutes when a shot rang out in the crisp morning air. The agent rushed into the apartment building, and Beth had to swallow her heart back down because it had leaped into her throat at the sound of more gunfire. Surreptitiously, she exited the cafe and, leaving her bike out front, began the four-block walk to the British Embassy. There, she’d find Fitz or use the embassy’s safe room to call Washington for further instructions. About a block away, at the sound of a siren, she turned around and saw a lone, tall figure make his run toward Brandenburg Gate. She recognized him at once. William Darcy had been compromised by either East or West and was on the move.

At the back of her mind, a niggling voice whispered.
If he’s a double agent, why would he run?

***

Two blocks down, six to go
, he thought, scanning left and right and taking a quick peek behind him. Two men stood at the street corner near his flat, smoke rolling out the window above their heads. The Stasi officers pointed in his direction, and as there was no need for secrecy now, Darcy kicked it into gear and took off up the street.

His heart raced with either adrenaline or the necessity of pumping the blood he still had to his vital organs. There was an old safe house in this area. Ducking around the corner of a building, he searched along the alley for the rowan tree above the door—an ancient symbol of protection, marking safe houses that had been in use long before Darcy had come to the divided city.

What would he do after he found the place? He had no mobile communication device on him to call for help.

Halfway down the alley, he found the safe house door. He made quick work of the nine-pane window above the doorknob, breaking the pane closest to the door handle with half a brick. Reaching inside, he unlocked the knob and winced as he cut his hand on the glass.

Wrenching the door open, he eased around the corner, making sure the dark room was empty. Apparently, the safe house had been a bakery at some time in the past; it still smelled faintly of dust and yeast. The flour had been swept up, however. No footprints in white powder would leave a trail for the Stasi to follow, although the blood dripping from his hand might. He stuffed his hand under the opposite sleeve to staunch the wound. He could hear his own harsh breathing in the still of the Sunday morning. Most people were sleeping in, although a few might be subverting the government by attending church services. Darcy tried to remember the last time he slept in or was in a church for that matter—to attend a service, not to drop off money, or instructions, or meet an asset or a defector—but the memory eluded him. Pulling aside the curtain hanging at the doorway of the pantry, he wriggled his way inside the small room. Beyond that back panel lay temporary living quarters. It was a tight fit, but hopefully, it would shield him from prying eyes and passersby until…

Until what? He was starting to become dizzy now, light-headed, cold, and clammy. “Hypovolemic shock.” He mumbled the textbook definition in an attempt to hold onto rational thought. “Symptoms are anxiety, confusion, weakness, pallor, rapid breathing, sweating, unconsciousness.”
I wonder who will find me?

Given the day he’d had so far, she’d be a harsh, beautiful KGB officer—someone who’d kick his body where it lay.

Women—the bane of his existence in one way or another. From his cold, distant mother to the tempting blonde with the ice blue eyes who’d caused today’s disaster. They were all out to get him, or get something out of him.

“No,” he whispered to the silent room.
Not fair—there was one. One who was innocent and trusting.
One girl—he called her a girl, rather than a woman, because she was little more than a child—a little sprite with brains and kindness and bravery.

“Jirina,” he whispered softly and for the umpteenth time, “I’m so sorry.”

In many ways, she was the great regret of his life. Not because he’d never been her lover, because he didn’t care for her in that way. He had, however, let her get away. Or rather, Wickham had—the slimy bastard. It was Wickham who made the self-serving decision that cost the agency one of its most promising assets, and cost her…well, everything. And now the Amazing Jirina, as Darcy had once jokingly called her, was no more. Her joie de vivre, her brilliance, her life—forgotten by all but a few.

Pain roared through his brain and body with renewed vengeance, consuming his attention. His mind wandered, he realized. He began to see little spots behind his eyelids, and his breath came in shallow pants. He tried to swallow them back as he heard harsh German voices pass the front of the safe house. And he hid, desperately fighting the oblivion threatening to overtake him.

Think!
he demanded of himself and tried to remember his train of thought before he let the spirit of Jirina overtake him.

Women.

Not that Darcy didn’t like women. He did—very much so—which was probably part of the reason he was in his current predicament. Some of them were brainy, talented, or helpful in their own way. And some were all of the above. Like
She,
the new, little minion who turned up in Budapest. An accomplished woman in all the ways that mattered although she could certainly be an annoying little shrew.

That smart mouth of hers shouldn’t be so charming. However, she knew her languages like a native, and she’d gotten them out of a jam in Hungary when he couldn’t do a thing to help her. He hoped she could tap that quick-witted resourcefulness now. If she was going to make it out of East Berlin, she was definitely going to need it.

His vision began to darken. He heard shouts again, a man’s, no…there was a female voice in the mix…