“The plates kind of give you away as a US serviceman. It could be dangerous for Faith. I think we’d better go for the cab,” Kathy said.
“Thanks again, but she’s got a point,” Summer said as he opened the door for Kathy. “We’ll follow you to the base to get my stuff. No telling what she needs help with. Wait at the gate for me and I’ll ride in with you. She can stay with the taxi.”
She slid across the leather seat, making room for Summer. He closed the door behind her and she rolled down the window. “Hey, aren’t you getting in?”
He pulled on the handle of the front passenger door and leaned over to the back window. “I’m kinda funny about riding in the back of cabs-particularly in foreign countries and New York City.” He hopped into the front seat and put on his seatbelt. He greeted the driver with a nod. “Wait a second, then follow that Pontiac.”
The driver shrugged his shoulders. “No English.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Kathy translated for the cabbie. He shook his head at first and then after a few more words seemed to understand. The driver waited for the Pontiac.
“Was that some weird dialect of German you were speaking with him? It sounded kind of funny,” Summer said as he took note of the off-duty cab behind them.
“Oh, I speak Swiss German. I was an exchange student in Zurich for a year. Swiss German is really different from what the Germans here speak. You know, when West German TV shows movies from Switzerland in Swiss German, they use subtitles because it’s so hard for Germans to understand. I keep wanting to learn High German, as they call it, and I’d hoped to pick it up in Berlin.”
“He seemed to understand you without subtitles. It sounded like you switched languages or something all of a sudden.”
“I think he’s an Ausländer, a foreigner. They usually only know Low German because that’s what the Germans speak with them when they work in the factories and stuff. But you did hear a shift. I switched from my stab at High German to my regular Swiss German, which is a sort of Low German. At least I got my point across.”
The cab sped up. Summer jerked his head around. “Hey, where’d they go?”
“I think they’re ahead of us. He’s speeding up to catch them.”
“They must’ve turned. Tell the cabbie to turn around.”
Kathy spoke to the driver, then to Summer. “He says he knows a shortcut to the base.”
How does he know which base we’re headed to? “How did you say you knew Faith?”
“She’s my nephew’s professor at Ozark U.”
“Ozark U., is that right?” A professor? Ozark U.? Bullshit. Summer discreetly unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door handle.
Before he could jump out, Kathy pushed a gun against the back of his head.
“Put your hands on the dashboard. Now!” Kathy said, then immediately shouted orders in another language.
Now Summer recognized it. Roosky.
He wished he hadn’t had so much beer as he placed his hands on the dashboard and surveyed the front of the cab for potential weapons. Not even a stray pencil lay on the floorboard. A professional must have gone over the car. The taxi raced through the empty residential streets. It felt as if they were going south, but he knew that, in West Berlin, every direction led East.
“What do you want with me?”
“I told you, you’re going to help your friend.”
“Bullshit. You don’t need to kidnap me for that. You know the Allies will stop you before you can get me through the Iron Curtain.”
“Didn’t Faith explain to you that all of Berlin is behind the so-called Iron Curtain? No one checks cars leaving West Berlin. The cavalry isn’t going to come over the hill and save you, cowboy. You were on our turf as soon as you set foot here. The East Germans aren’t particularly keen on it, but it’s quite a convenient arrangement for us.”
“I’m happy for you. Would you mind not pushing that thing against my skull? I’m not giving you any resistance, and I’d sure hate for it to go off next time we bounce over a pothole.” In the rearview mirror Summer saw the Pontiac run the other taxi into a fire hydrant and speed past it. Come on, Leroy.
“Sorry, commander. I know about your training.”
The Pontiac was gaining on them. Punch it, Leroy! The driver turned onto a wide boulevard. Floodlights. Barbed wire. Watchtowers. I’m fucked.
Leroy’s car was closing the gap. Fifty feet. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. Five feet. The border was seconds away.
Now, Leroy!
The Pontiac rammed the Mercedes. Tires squealed. The car spun and the gun moved away from his head. He shoved the door open and sprang from the vehicle. Spotlights blinded him.
“Hände hoch!” A sentry butted a Kalashnikov against his chest.
Summer stared at the white line across the cobblestones. Ten feet. Ten fucking feet behind the Curtain. He threw up his arms.
Guards swarmed around the taxi and the Pontiac, weapons drawn. Steam poured from under the hood of the Pontiac. The engine growled, but wouldn’t turn over. Come on, start, damn it. Start. The engine let out another pathetic growl, but wouldn’t fire. You son of a bitch. The Pontiac straddled the boundary, the front half clearly in the East, the trunk in the Free World. Guards yanked the doors open and dragged Walters and Meriwether from the car. Soldiers poured from a bunker, firearms drawn.
A black Mercedes with red Cyrillic license plates sped across the border and screeched to a halt. At the same time, the driver and Kathy jumped from the taxi. The East Germans drew their weapons. Kathy shouted at them in German, then Russian. She grasped the handle of her weapon with two fingers and held it into the air. A guard stepped forward and snatched the weapon from her. Summer understood her when she cursed him in German.
“Oberst Bogdanov der KGB, du Arschloch. Don’t point your weapons at me.” She repeated herself in Russian, her voice rising in tandem with her anger as she struggled to salvage the botched operation. She gritted her teeth and shook her head as she watched the chaos unfold around her. Where was German order when you needed it? She looked in the eyes of the teenage sentry and saw fear. Not good. His rifle barrel trembled. So did his finger on the trigger. For more than a minute spotlights had been shining on her black operation. Anytime now the West Berlin and Allied military police would be there, photographing the melee. “Get your captain over here at once if you don’t want a tour of Siberia with me. Mach schnell!”
“Captain Holtzer, you’d better get over here. She says she’s a KGB colonel,” the kid shouted.
The captain strutted toward the colonel with slow Prussian arrogance. She yelled at him in German with a heavy Russian accent, hoping it would expedite the situation. “Colonel Bogdanov, KGB. I’m taking charge of the situation. Ivashko in the black Mercedes has my identification. You can verify it when we’re all safely away from Western eyes. Order your men at once to get these cars out of sight. If they’re not concealed within one minute, you fly with me to Lubyanka tonight. Davai! Davai!”
The captain barked orders to his troops. Three guards tossed their weapons over their shoulders and pushed Leroy’s car completely across the divide onto the sovereign territory of the German Democratic Republic.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
LUBYANKA (KGB HEADQUARTERS), MOSCOW
One of General Stukoi’s twelve phones began ringing. He moved his head over the phone bank and touched the third phone. He felt the vibrations of the ringer and picked it up with confidence. “Listening.”