Campbell peered at him. “No. But he’s done us a favor from time to time.”
“Well, now we can do him one. But how do we work it? I’ll get him to RIAS. But then we’ll need to move. Fast. Before anyone can grab him. And we don’t want him waiting around Tempelhof for a go.”
Campbell thought for a minute. “I’ll have Howley call the dispatcher. Clear him for any plane going out that night. What’s the name?”
“Von Bernuth.”
Campbell looked up.
“You want her cooperation, this is the way to do it. I save her brother, she owes me. Not to mention trusts. And you get a big story on the radio. And somebody who can tell you all about the mines. You’ll be flavor of the month.”
“After we find Markovsky,” Campbell said evenly.
“Set this up, we at least have a shot. In fact,” he said, pausing, as if it had just occurred to him, “clear two places. Same name. I might need that kind of leverage. People will do a lot if you promise to get them out of Berlin.”
“She’d leave Markovsky behind?”
Alex took a breath, thinking fast. Sasha alive, not in the Spree.
“He has to go to the West eventually. He’s a dead man here,” he said. “She might give him to us if we guaranteed getting him out too.” He paused. “Assuming she trusts us.”
“Which brings everything back to you,” Campbell said slowly.
Alex met his eyes. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“What if the Soviets pick her up?”
“You forget. Markovsky’s already with you. You’re going to say so. They’ll want me to find out what she knows. Just like you.”
“I thought you said it was the Germans who recruited you.”
“They work with Karlshorst, don’t they? And now they’ll have something to make themselves look good. I’ll be considered a catch.”
Campbell considered this for a moment, then grinned, a flash of teeth. “But we caught you first.”
“Yeah.”
“All right, we square here?”
“You’ll set it up? How do I contact you?”
“You don’t. Unless you’ve got a fire alarm. Use Dieter. He’ll tell me when to make the call. I’m not really here,” he said, beginning to step away into the fog, a ghost again. Then he turned. “By the way, who recruited you?”
“Who? Someone I knew from the old days.”
“Yes?” Campbell said.
“Markus Engel,” Alex said, feeling strangely disloyal. “Why?”
“We like to know who’s out there fishing. Hard enough keeping track of the Soviets. Now we’ve got the Germans too.”
“He was K-5. Promoted when they formed the new service. I don’t think he’s a recruiter. He just happened to know me. From before.”
“What was the approach?”
“Like you. He appealed to my better instincts.”
Campbell looked at him for a second, not sure how to respond. “That’s the way,” he said finally, then drifted off.
Alex took a gulp of air, then another, calming himself, aware suddenly that his own breathing was the only sound he could hear. The planes had stopped, leaving an eerie silence. He held up his hand. Everything beyond was black, no moon or streetlamps, not even the pinprick of a flashlight. What drowning would feel like, swallowed up in the dark. He stood still for a minute, willing himself not to panic. They were going to leave him here, in place, to race between traps. Nobody could keep that up indefinitely. A matter of time and then caught. One side or the other.
He started to walk. Stay close to the wall, the only marker. If he moved even a few yards away, he’d be lost, going in circles. A pair of headlights swooped into the black. Where Wilhelmstrasse must be. He was about to duck, an automatic crouch, when he realized the car couldn’t see him. The fog had made him invisible too. He could go anywhere and no one would know.
It must have been a piece of girder, something low to the ground, because nothing hit his shin as he tripped and pitched forward, suddenly flying. He put his hands out to break the fall, slamming onto the frozen ground, something sharp hitting the side of his forehead, a warm ooze of blood. He lay motionless for a second, angry at his clumsiness, then sank flat to the ground, the dread back, weighting him down. They’d keep him here. The cold spread across his face then moved down along the rest of him, a damp tomb cold. He’d never get out. He felt as if the marshy Brandenburg soil was reaching up to reclaim him, pull him under. He would die here after all, his exile just a reprieve from the inevitable. Did it matter who pulled the trigger? The Nazis. Markus. Campbell. The end would be the same. What his parents must have felt, climbing into the train, too dazed to resist. Their only comfort knowing they’d saved him.
And he’d come back. A bet against history. Now lying in the rubble. Waiting for what? To be a victim, like the others? No. He pushed himself up. He couldn’t die here, not in Germany. One more Jew. He touched his forehead. Blood but not streaming, a Band-Aid cut. Think. Play your own side. Berlin had. On its knees for a cigarette. Now on seventeen hundred calories a day. He got up and began to pick his way carefully through the debris, then faster, more confident in the dark, suddenly feeling he could walk all the way back to Santa Monica Pier. He had one head start: he knew where Markovsky was. Make up the rest of the story. Isn’t that what writers do? Smoke and mirrors.
If Campbell leaked Markovsky’s defection tonight, Karlshorst would know by morning. They’d come to see Irene again, but what she’d already told them would fit. She just had to keep saying it, frame the story. Be surprised. Disappointed. Maybe even angry that he hadn’t confided in her, just went off with a kiss to her head. But she had to prepare herself, know they’d be coming.
He turned up toward Marienstrasse, following the curb to the bridge. A street he could find in the dark. Maybe there’d even be a few window lights now that he was back in the Soviet sector, out of the blockade. Think it through. What could go wrong? Markovsky himself, bobbing to the surface. But there was nothing he could do about that now. The stones would hold or they wouldn’t. As long as they bought him time. Campbell would know how to feed the story, add kindling. What did Markovsky tell us today? Reports leaking back to Karlshorst, everyone focused on them, not dredging the Spree. If they managed the story right, it could be more valuable than Markovsky himself. Assuming nothing went wrong, no weak link.
He stopped on the bridge, turning his back to a lone truck that was lumbering across. And if they found the body? You had to plan for the unexpected. Look at Lützowplatz. He heard Campbell’s voice again, lodged somewhere in the back of his mind. It wasn’t supposed to go that way. But how was it supposed to go? If they found Markovsky, there’d be hundreds of suspects. Berlin was a desperate city. A Russian alone at night. Anybody might have done it. But only one had seen him last. Nobody made it through a real interrogation. If it came to that. Three people in the room, one of them dead. They’d both be at risk, as long as she was here, easy to pick up, her protector gone.
He found the door with no trouble, then felt his way up the stairs. Underneath the door there was the thin flicker of candlelight. A soft three raps.
“Oh, you’re hurt,” she said, her eyes drawn immediately to the blood. She was clutching at her robe and holding a candle like some figure in a folktale wakened in the night. “What-?”
“I tripped. It’s nothing,” he said, stepping inside, closing the door behind him. He lowered his voice. “Frau Schmidt. Is she still away?”
“What? Oh, Frau Schmidt. No, she’s back.” Fluttering, as if she were having trouble following. “But why-I thought you said we shouldn’t see-”
“It’s all right. Nobody followed.”
“How do you know?” she said, her voice still distracted, clutching the robe tighter.
“Were you sleeping?” he said, finally noticing it.
She shook her head. “Why did you come? You said-”
“I know. I needed to see you. Do you have something for this?” He touched his forehead. “A bandage. A piece of cloth.”