The minutes ticked by. Inside the engine bay he tinkered vainly away. He glanced at his watch. Six minutes past four. Where the hell are you? he asked. Almost at once there was a slight crunch of gravel under wheels as a vehicle came to a halt. He kept his head down. The Russian would come up to him and say in his accented German, “If you are having trouble, perhaps I have a better set of tools,” and offer him the flat wooden toolbox from the jeep. The Soviet Army War Book would be under the wrenches in a red plastic cover.
The dropping sun was blocked by the shadow of someone approaching. Boots crunched on gravel. The man was beside and behind him. He said nothing. Morenz straightened. An East German police car was parked five yards away. One green-uniformed policeman stood by the open driver’s door. The other was beside Morenz, gazing down into the BMW’s open engine bay.
Morenz wanted to vomit. His stomach pumped out acid. He felt his knees becoming weak. He tried to straighten up and nearly stumbled.
The policeman met his gaze. “Was ist los?” he asked.
Of course it was a ploy, a courtesy to mask the triumph. The inquiry if anything was wrong was to precede the screams and shouts and the arrest. Morenz’s tongue felt as if it were stuck to the roof of his mouth.
“I thought I was losing water,” he said. The policeman put his head into the engine bay and studied the radiator. He removed the wrench from Morenz’s hand, stooped, and came up with another one.
“This one will fit,” he said. Morenz used it and retightened the nut. The trickle stopped.
“Wrong wrench,” said the cop. He gazed at the BMW engine. He seemed to be staring straight at the battery. “Schöner Wagen,” he said. Nice car. “Where are you staying?”
“In Jena,” said Morenz. “I have to see the foreign sales director at Zeiss tomorrow morning. To buy products for my company.”
The policeman nodded approvingly.
“We have many fine products in the GDR,” he said. It was not true. East Germany had one single factory that produced Western-standard equipment, the Zeiss works.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I wished to see Weimar ... the Goethe memorial.”
“You are heading in the wrong direction. Weimar is that way.”
The policeman pointed down the road behind Morenz. A gray-green Soviet GAZ jeep rolled past. The driver, eyes shaded by a forage cap, gazed at Morenz, met his eyes for a second, took in the parked VOPO car, and rolled on. An abort. Smolensk would not approach now.
“Yes. I took a wrong turn out of town. I was looking for a place to turn when I saw the water gauge misbehaving.”
The VOPOs supervised his U-turn and followed him back to Weimar. They peeled off at the entry to the town. Morenz drove on to Jena and checked into the Black Bear Hotel.
At eight, on his hill above the Saale River, Sam McCready put down his binoculars. The gathering dusk made it impossible to see the East German border post and the road behind it. He felt tired, drained. Something had gone wrong up there behind the minefields and the razor-wire. It might be nothing of importance, a blown-out tire, a traffic jam. ... Unlikely. Perhaps his man was even now motoring south toward the border. Perhaps Pankratin had not shown up at the first meet, unable to get a jeep, unable to get away. ... Waiting was always the worst, the waiting and the not knowing what had gone wrong.
“We’ll go back down to the road,” he told Johnson. “Can’t see anything here anyway.”
He installed Johnson in the parking area of the Frankenwald service station, on the southbound side but facing north toward the border. Johnson would sit there all night, watching for the BMW to appear. McCready found a truck driver heading south, explained that his car had broken down, and hitched a lift six miles south. He got off at the Münchberg junction, walked the mile into the small town, and checked into the Braunschweiger Hof. He had his portable phone in a totebag if Johnson wanted to call him. He ordered a cab for six A.M.
Dr. Herrmann had a contact in the BfV. The two men had met and collaborated years earlier, working on the Guenther Guillaume scandal, when the private secretary of Chancellor Willy Brandt had been revealed as an East German agent. That evening at six, Dr. Herrmann had rung the BfV in Cologne and asked to be put through.
“Johann? This is Lothar Herrmann. ... No, I’m not. I’m here in Cologne. ... Oh, routine, you know. I was hoping I could offer you dinner. ... Excellent. Well, look, I’m at the Dom Hotel. Why don’t you join me in the bar? About eight? I look forward to it.”
Johann Prinz put the phone down and wondered what had brought Herrmann to Cologne. Visiting the troops? Possibly. ...
Two hours later, they sat at the corner dining table and ordered. For a while, they fenced gently. How are things? Fine. ... Over the crab cocktail, Herrmann moved a little closer.
“I suppose they’ve told you about the call girl affair?” he asked.
Prinz was surprised. When had the BND learned of it? He had only seen the file at five. Herrmann had telephoned at six, and he was already in Cologne.
“Yes,” he said. “Got the file this afternoon.”
Now Herrmann was surprised. Why would a double murder in Cologne have been passed to counterintelligence? He had expected to have to explain it to Prinz before asking for his favor. “Nasty affair,” he murmured as the steak arrived.
“And getting worse,” agreed Prinz. “Bonn won’t like those sex tapes floating around.”
Herrmann kept his face impassive, but his stomach turned over. Sex tapes? Dear God, what sex tapes? He affected mild surprise and poured more wine.
“Got that far, has it? I must have been out of the office when the latest details arrived. Mind filling me in?”
Prinz did so. Herrmann lost all his appetite. The odor in his nostrils was not so much of the claret as of a scandal of cataclysmic proportions.
“And still no clues,” he murmured sorrowfully.
“Not a lot,” agreed Prinz. “First K have been told to pull every man off every case and put them onto this one. The search, of course, is for the gun and the owner of the fingerprints.”
Lothar Herrmann sighed. “I wonder if the culprit could be a foreigner?” he suggested.
Prinz scooped up the last of his ice cream and put down his spoon. He grinned. “Ah, now I see. Our external intelligence service has an interest?”
Herrmann shrugged dismissively. “My dear friend, we both accomplish much the same task. Protecting our political masters.”
Like all senior civil servants, both of these men had a view of their political masters that wisely was seldom shared with the politicians themselves.
“We do, of course, have some records of our own,” said Herrmann. “Fingerprints of foreigners who have come to our attention. ... Alas, we haven’t got copies of the prints our friends in the KA are seeking.”
“You could ask officially,” Prinz pointed out.
“Yes, but then why start a hare that will probably lead nowhere? Now, unofficially—”
“I don’t like the word unofficial,” said Prinz.
“No more do I, my friend, but ... now and again—for old times’ sake. You have my word, if I turn anything up, it comes straight back to you. A joint effort by the two services. My word on it. If nothing turns up, then no harm done.” Prinz rose. “All right, for old times’ sake. Just this once.” As he left the hotel, he wondered what the hell Herrmann knew, or suspected, that he did not.
In the Braunschweiger Hof in Münchberg, Sam McCready sat at the bar. He drank alone and stared at the dark paneling. He was worried, deeply so. Again and again he wondered if he should have sent Morenz over.
There was something wrong about the man. A summer cold? More like the flu. But that doesn’t make you nervous. His old friend had seemed very nervous. Was his nerve gone? No, not old Bruno. He had done it many times before. And he was “clean”—as far as McCready knew.