And he knew, if nothing else, how to get started.
“How was your weekend, Franz?”
Frank smiled at Max as they walked toward the worksite. “Quiet. How is your little boy?”
Max just shook his head. “We can’t sleep. He’s up at all hours, always wanting to be fed.”
“This is good! He’ll grow up big and strong like his father!” Frank said, slapping Max on the back. “I hear they eventually sleep through the night. You’ll get there.”
Max just nodded wearily and trudged toward the ladders that would take him to the top of the building where they left off Friday. Excusing himself, Frank made for the latrine — which was right next to the shack the foreman used as an office. The foreman himself was by the ladders, checking people in and exhorting them, as always, to make their quotas and work hard for the glory of the proletariat.
Frank ducked behind the building, rather than using the door, and looked up to see if the men were on the beams yet. They weren’t — but they’d be there in about three minutes, maybe less. Frank prayed the window at the back of the little shack was open — and it was. Deftly, he lifted himself through the window, diving into the office, landing on his hands and holding the position until he could safely place his feet back on the floor with a minimum of noise. It hurt — his arms protested greatly — but at least he retained a gymnast’s sense of balance. That gymnast was named Alan Reeves, and he had died in 1950.
Frank made his way behind the desk and started flipping through papers and folders. There were work orders and personnel folders and delivery receipts, but nothing important. Frank checked the drawers and found the one that was locked. A paperclip and twenty seconds later, the drawer was opened and he found what he was looking for.
Frank dove through the window head-first again, executing a perfect flip and landing on his feet. The conversation up on the steel would be a fruitful one today.
CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET-MAJIK
DATE: 4 June 53
FROM: DCI Dulles
TO: AGENT Stevens CIA, AGENT Sorensen CIA
CC: CMDR Wallace USN, GEN Vandenberg USAF, DR Bronk MJ-12
RE: Operation AERIE
Intelligence indicates potential for disruption of East German political situation on 16 June. Begin planning for Operation AERIE immediately. Identify targets for maximum disruption and impact, particularly on primary target. Do not engage primary target.
On 16 June, AGENT Stevens is to report to Station Chief Moscow for direct updates from Station Chief West Berlin. Should East German disruptions meet minimum operational requirements — deployment of armed police or military, use of deadly force, or widespread protests — launch AERIE on 17 June, or no later than 19 June.
Extraction of Soviet Variants still not recommended. Continue holding until advised. Success of AERIE remains top priority.
Per continued information request, AGENTS Hooks and Yamato remain missing in action.
/s/ Dulles
18
Danny watched with a deep and abiding satisfaction as a throng of workers marched toward Potsdamer Platz along Leipziger Strasse. There were hundreds of them — thousands — and they even somehow managed to find the time and materials to create banners. “Lower work quotas!” “Listen to the workers!” “Unity is Strength!” Some bold souls were hoisting a bed sheet tied to poles that read “We want free elections!”
This was, of course, far more impressive than Danny could’ve dreamed of, and he knew well enough that this wasn’t entirely due to their meddling. At best, he and Frank had simply given it a nudge, and fueled the rumor mill that made the coordinated effort possible. Frank had discovered the date for new pay cuts and higher quotas, and he and Danny had simply spread the word amongst the workers and students. When the cuts and quotas were announced, the construction workers at Frank’s site had rioted and began marching on the Free German Trade Union Federation, gathering workers from other worksites as they went. When the protests at the federation went unheeded, the throng then marched on the government itself at the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus, just a handful of blocks from the East-West border.
From Danny’s perch three stories above Potsdamer Platz, he could see both the protestors at the government building as well as a growing number of West Berliners gathering on the other side of the barbed wire and barricades that separated them from their former countrymen. Would the East Berliners try to break through? Would the West Berliners join them? The Stasi and East German military were conscious of both possibilities, reinforcing the barricades while sending troops to Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus as well. But they were already spread thin — the protestors were growing in number by the minute, and Danny could hear the volume of their chanting increasing as well. Before Danny headed up to his lookout post — a disused corner office of a faceless government building — he saw some of his student cohorts joining the crowd.
It was exciting. It was freedom at work. He couldn’t help but be happy for the East German people, and could only hope that their numbers would be too big to ignore or suppress.
Danny turned away from the protest to the other window, looking toward West Berlin. Off in the distance, he saw a window with an “X” taped on it. He backed away from the window toward the corner of the room and pulled a flashlight out of his satchel. He aimed it at the West Berlin “X” and began flicking it on and off.
A moment later, a series of dim lights answered from the same window.
Contact.
Danny began reporting in. He hoped Mrs. Stevens had everything lined up. It was time to make some noise.
“Ma’am, secure cable coming in.”
Rose Stevens practically launched herself from the sofa outside the secure communications room at the American Embassy in Moscow. The Embassy had already received a handful of unconfirmed reports, mostly cribbed from radio and the wires, that something was going on in East Berlin. Mrs. Stevens knew full well that any spark Frank and Danny created might very well not catch. But her analysis of the economic and political environment in East Germany all pointed to opportunity.
She dashed past the communications clerk and into the secure room, closing the door and flipping a switch. The teletype immediately burst into action, churning out line after line of encoded text. On the face of it, the string of letters and numbers meant nothing. But Mrs. Stevens had looked up the codes of the day and committed them to memory. The rest she did in her head, on the fly, which would’ve made the clerk faint dead away if he saw it.
“AEGIS is go,” she muttered. “Situation optimal for immediate action. Revise timetable and execute ASAP.”
She couldn’t help but smile broadly. They wouldn’t be asking her to speed things up if things were going badly, that’s for sure. Something had caught fire in East Berlin, and it was her job to fan the flames all the way to Red Square.
Good thing she’d planned for this contingency.
Turning on her heel, Mrs. Stevens strode out of the communications room and headed to the embassy’s secure conference room, home to every electronic countermeasure known to man. There, in the windowless room amidst the hum of signal jammers, Sorensen and Katie were waiting. “Good news and bad news,” she said. “Things are going well in East Berlin. Looks like our boys lit the fuse on something big.”