Black Traffic

By David Edgerley Gates

It was cold by the Landwehr Canal. The crime scene was contained inside a small perimeter, and understated, no portable generator or halogen lamps. Ambulance, hazard lights off, a diver, already stripping out of his wetsuit, the patrol car, two uniforms next to it, an unmarked vehicle, with a driver. The unmarked car belonged to Inspector Glass, and he was talking quietly into a radio handset. Then there was the body they’d fished out of the canal, not yet shapeless, the dark clothing soggy, the flesh pale as oystershell.

Glass signed off the radio and walked over to where Andy stood, looking down at the dead man. The exit wound in the back of his head was the size of a lemon, and most of his brains had leaked out of the skull cavity. Glass tipped the dead man’s face up with his foot. The features were swollen and distorted, his cheeks puffy and cyanotic, the waxy skin bruised with powder residue.

“They put the muzzle in his mouth,” Glass said. “Not a nine.” He meant nine-millimeter, Luger caliber. “Heavy bullet, low relative velocity, maximum damage.”

“Like a .45,” Andy said. .45 ACP was U.S. Army issue, the duty auto Andy himself carried.

Glass studied the dead man without much curiosity, hands in his pockets. “What was CID’s interest?” he asked.

“GI’s selling on the black market.”

“Is that all there is?” Glass asked him.

Andy turned and made eye contact. “I thought it was just easy money,” he said. “It’s not that easy, some dumb bastard gets his head blown off.”

Glass understood, and let him go. They were all subject to political pressures. It was the nature of what they did, and the place they worked in. They made minor accommodations, unter vier augen, as the expression had it, but Andy had to check in with his people, just as Glass would check in with his. He lit a cigarette and looked toward the searchlights at the far end of the canal, where it met the Spree. Here in Görlitz, they were in the shadow of the Wall, just below the Oberbaumbrücke. Glass shook off a premonitory shiver.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Edgerley Gates
• Release date: May 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301886395

David Edgerley Gates

David Edgerley Gates lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The author of the Placido Geist bounty hunter stories, a series of noir Westerns, he is a past Shamus and Edgar Award nominee for best short story. He recently completed BLACK TRAFFIC, a Cold War spy novel set in Berlin, and is at work on his next book, THE BONE HARVEST. “Many of my characters seem to me to be accidental, or at least uncalculated. The old bounty hunter, for example, stepped into ‘The Undiscovered Country’ about fifteen pages in, without any warning. I had no idea he was waiting in the wings. Benny Salvador, on the other hand, was more deliberate, because he’s modeled in part on stories my friend David Salazar told me about his grandfather, who was a peace officer up in Rio Arriba county for many years.”

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BLACK TRAFFIC

by

DAVID EDGERLEY GATES

BLACK TRAFFIC

David Edgerley Gates

Copyright© 2013 DAVID EDGERLEY GATES

Smashwords Edition

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CONDITION THREE Loaded magazine inserted, hammer down on empty chamber. Regulation military carry.

CONDITION TWO Round chambered, hammer down.

CONDITION ONE Round chambered, hammer at full cock, thumb safety engaged; e.g., cocked and locked.

CONDITION ZERO Weapon at battery.

I

BRUSH CONTACT

II

ESKIMO PUSSY

III

BLACK TRAFFIC

In late April of 1945, in what would prove to be the last days of the European war, a man in civilian clothes but traveling on a military passport crossed from Germany into Switzerland at the Konstanz-Kreuzlingen checkpoint on the western edge of Lake Constance. His documents occasioned suspicion from the SD and Grenzpolizei, and were closely examined, since it was common knowledge that rats were leaving a sinking ship, but his papers were franked with the insignia of the Reich security service, the RSHA, and signed by SS Standartenführer Walter Schellenberg, chief of Amt VI, espionage and counterintelligence.

The documents were in fact genuine, as was the officer. He was Colonel (and also Graf) Eugen von Woldegk, a Prussian whose family had served Kaisers and Holy Roman Emperors. He had no intention of defecting from the Fatherland, although the German military position was about to collapse. Patton’s 3rd Army had bridged the Rhine, as had the British. The Russians were now across the Oder. Zhukov had dropped a noose around Berlin. Red Army artillery mechanically pulverized the city, grid by grid. It was said only the unlucky survived. When the Slav barbarians finally descended, you’d be better off dead.

Inside the ruined capital, Hitler was isolated in an underground bunker. Behind his back, his senior staff were in clandestine negotiations with the Allies. Schellenberg, with Himmler’s blessing, had met secretly with Count Bernadotte---it was rumored Goering himself had a back channel to the Swedes. SS General Wolff was arranging the surrender of German units in Italy, and Gestapo chief Kaltenbrunner was bargaining for a safe conduct from the Americans.

Graf von Woldegk was on a mission as urgent and genuine as his papers. He had a meeting scheduled in Bern with the OSS resident, Allen Dulles. Dulles would become, of course, in later years, the most famous spymaster of the Cold War, but his reputation was made by the war, with his residency in Bern. His successes contributed to the legend, his failures were written off as plain bad luck. In the clandestine world, opportunity is everything.

Von Woldegk hoped he could present Dulles and the OSS with an opportunity, but in the event, his situation was overtaken by other, more sudden imperatives.

The colonel came straight to the point. We have an enormous amount of intelligence on the Russians, and networks in place, he told the Americans. There’s no need for these spy nets to be compromised. They can be protected, if Abwehr files don’t fall into Soviet hands. I’m offering you these files. We could prove extremely useful to you.

Dulles squinted at the German through the smoke from his pipe, an Ivy League affectation he was already cultivating. Is that the Royal We, do you suppose, Chase? he asked his deputy.

This was a young guy named Chase Ellery, who would also rise through the clandestine ranks in after years. How much protection do you expect? Ellery asked von Woldegk. We’re not covering for war crimes.

The colonel stiffened. I’m a soldier, he said.

You’re a soldier, Ellery mused, nodding to himself, as if thinking it over. You smell like Waffen SS to me, Colonel, bargaining for your own safety. On the Eastern Front, inside of two months, SS Action Groups knocked off a million men, women, and children. In only two days, in September of 1941, one group alone reported killing 30,000 Jews. Where were you in ‘41?

Von Woldegk didn’t drop his eyes. I am neither SS, nor a Nazi, he said. I am a career military officer. I harbor no hatred for Jews, but I seek to excuse nothing. I want simply to save my country from Bolshevism and rampage.

Well, me too, Ellery said. Not your country. Mine.

The colonel didn’t quite follow him.

The rampage we can’t do anything about, Dulles told him. Basically, your people are up shit creek, you should pardon the idiom. As for the Bolshevism--- He shrugged.

Put it on the table, Ellery said. We’ll deal.

The conversation had been in English, and von Woldegk was unsure of himself. I am instructed to give you a codename, he said. You will contact me as AUROCHS.

One of the telephones on Dulles’ desk rang. Since no calls had been put through while they were talking, von Woldegk could only assume this particular call was too important to be blocked by the switchboard. Dulles picked up. He listened.

Thank you, he said, and hung up, carefully. There was a delicate finality in the way he put down the receiver. He glanced at Ellery with a thin smile, and then looked at von Woldegk. His expression was a mixture of pity, triumph, and contempt. Hitler is dead, and the Russians are in Berlin. Your offer, Herr Oberst, seems to have outlived its usefulness.

Von Woldegk recovered his balance, Ellery noticed, without concealing his shock or his sorrow. I may have outlived my usefulness, sir, the colonel said, but my offer stands, and it might yet be of service.

My advice to you, Colonel, Dulles said, is to get lost. Literally. Don’t go back to Germany. Go to ground. Dig a hole for yourself and pull it in after you.

Von Woldegk stood to attention. He didn’t salute, and there was something pitying, triumphant, and even contemptuous in his posture, Ellery decided. He bowed slightly to Dulles and abruptly left the room.

I thought he was about to click his heels, Ellery said.

No, Dulles said. He doesn’t respect foolishness.

You don’t think he was playing us for fools?

The colonel’s currency just fell to zero on the exchange rate, Dulles said. Whatever he figured to sell, we’ll pick it up now at discount prices.

Ellery thought his boss was right. He still had a question for him. What’s the significance of AUROCHS? he asked.

Dulles smiled. The aurochs is a prehistoric species of oxen, thought to be the ancestor of the modern European domestic animal, he said. It was supposedly hunted to extinction by the Neanderthal, although it’s mentioned by Caesar, and there’s anecdotal evidence the breed may have survived into the Middle Ages. They say the last of them died in 1627, in the Jaktorowka forests of western Poland.

Ellery was no longer surprised by his chief’s display of the arcane. Dulles had a habit of deploying these details, as a means of catching his subordinates off-guard.

Our friend, Colonel von Woldegk, belongs to a species soon also to be extinct, Dulles remarked.

Yeah, Ellery said, sourly, the Nazis and everything they stand for.

Well, actually, I was thinking of the, ah, Good German.

The last Good German was Beethoven, Ellery said.

You’re an unforgiving man, Chase, Dulles said, smiling.

I learned from the best, Ellery said.

Don’t flatter yourself, Dulles said, pleased all the same by what he took as a compliment.

Ellery knew Dulles was easily rubbed up, like a magic lamp. He hadn’t meant to flatter either one of them.

But with Germany’s immediate disintegration, Dulles was of course proved right. The senior Nazi elite scrambled to get their bids in first, but in a lot of cases, their bids weren’t high enough. Nothing would have saved Goering from the rope, for example. And many of the others didn’t have much to trade. Speer, though: a lot of corroborative material there, none of it self-incriminating. The thing about the Nazis turned out to be how ordinary, how opportunistic they were, what a bunch of toadies and sycophants, ready to please, eager to misunderstand, or understand the subtext all too well. Even more astonishing was the lack of euphemism, and more astonishing still the sheer volume of documentation, the legalisms, the inventories, the food chain of silence and extermination. Uncle Aaron has his citizenship erased, his property confiscated, his family shipped East; Aunt Sophie loses her dignity, her past, her children. At the last, they all get turned into lampshades, or soap.

That was history, however. History that was horrific and criminal, true, and being sorted out by improvisation, as the Occupation worked on the details of de-Nazification and the Allied governments argued over whether to convene a war crimes tribunal---there were strong factions in both Washington and Whitehall that favored simply executing the ringleaders, as well as ranking SS, SD, and Gestapo---but it was still cleaning up the past. There was a more forward-looking group. Again, both American and British, small in number, but with good lobbying skills, who’d shifted their sights to a different target. That target, of course, was Uncle Joe Stalin and the ruthlessly efficient Soviet security apparat, particularly the foreign directorates of the NKVD and GRU. In this context, Colonel von Woldegk’s initiative didn’t pass unnoticed, but in the end, it was only noted in a forgotten memorandum, because the Golden Goose fell into the hands of the OSS. Fell, in fact, into the hands of Chase Ellery, Dulles’ former deputy in Bern. This stringy bird (Ellery gave him the workname GOSLING) was General Reinhard Gehlen, former head of the Fremde Heere Ost, FHO, a military intelligence unit tasked with running live agents and deception operations against the Russians. Gehlen had taken the precaution of securing all his paperwork in a secret location.

Hostage to fortune, Lt. General Silbert suggested.

Extortion, Ellery said.

Nobody’s giving you an argument, the general said. Ed Silbert ran G-2 in Germany. Ellery was now assigned to OMG, the Occupation Military Government, and reported to the G-2 chief.

Gehlen wants a pass, Ellery said.

Sure he does, Silbert said. Problem being, he’s a Nazi. And a heavyweight Nazi, at that. How do we handle it?

Ellery didn’t address the question directly. Problem being, in actual point of fact, that the Russians themselves are looking for Gehlen. We’re not eager to cough him up.

Screw the Russians, Silbert said, grinning. What’s your sense of it?

We can pressure Gehlen to give us his material, Ellery said. The complicating factor is, I don’t think we can use it, not without the original operational protocols FHO set up.

In other words, we buy into the cookie jar, and we have to buy Gehlen as part of the deal.

Ellery knew this was the awkward part. Not just Gehlen.

Silbert’s genial expression froze.

We’re buying the whole package, Ellery said. In effect, we parole the entire Gehlen organization.

Silbert was no naïf. He knew how the world of intelligence worked. But this was sticking a firecracker up his ass.

Ellery was careful not to press. It was Silbert’s decision---or it was Silbert’s decision if Ellery could keep him from kicking this hot potato up the chain of command. Here’s the sticking point, Ellery said, affecting indifference, as if he had no bets on the outcome. Gehlen has established resources, inside the Soviet camp, some highly-placed, from the evidence. How badly do we want to acquire those assets? Are we going to climb in bed with this guy to get them?

Ed Silbert was sharp enough to recognize a hose job. He had to admire Ellery for the effort, but Silbert had been sucked up to, and pissed on, by experts. How many? he asked.

The question took Ellery by surprise. How many, what? he asked in return.

How many, who, Chase, Silbert said. How many Krauts are we bailing out of Ashcan and Dustbin? Ashcan and Dustbin were the detention centers for suspected war criminals. You want me to help Gehlen reconstruct his Russian operation. How many?

Silbert had left Ellery behind. I don’t know, he said.

Well, let’s find out just exactly what we’re talking about, here, Chase, Silbert said. I’m the one putting my dick on the chopping block. So let’s get the goods, first.

Gehlen’s source material.

Why not have some leverage on our side?

Scissors, Paper, Stone. Leverage is circular. OSS itself went on the chopping block, a victim of the ongoing turf war between Wild Bill Donovan and J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover and the FBI had always resented Donovan’s poaching, and it was a long three years before CIA was established, in 1948. Reinhard Gehlen, though, established his Abwehr Ost as indispensable, in those same postwar years, creating an independent satrapy inside what became West Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, the BND, and successfully penetrating the East German security apparat. Over time, he achieved a symbiotic relationship with the other NATO secret services, winning over CIA and the British SIS, inter alia.

General Gehlen had rehabilitated himself by spinning gold out of flax. His product was terrific, his influence essential. He helped make the careers of Dulles and Ellery, among others. Gehlen had worked on the plans for Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of Russia. Now he helped engineer the next assault.

Is it any wonder AUROCHS became a redundant footnote?

******

I

BRUSH CONTACT

Twenty years go by.

Berlin, 1966. Five years since the Wall was built. For a time the city had been the flashpoint of the Cold War, but by now it had settled into an uneasy stasis. There were no longer Soviet or Allied provocations, no tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, no saber-rattling, little visible show of force. Berliners went about their daily business with few inconveniences to remind them they inhabited an island, surrounded by the armor of the Warsaw Pact. It wasn’t as free and easy, or as lewd, as it had been during Weimar, the decadent 1920’s, but it was a hot town for nightlife, still, from upscale clubs like the Troika, where a cognac cost thirty marks (but no cover for the floor show), to the tough GI bars on Potsdamer, where the whores came cheap.

Andy Wye was in a GI bar that night, but not on Potsdamer. He was in Kreuzberg, the district just north of Tempelhof. Andy was Army CID, Criminal Investigation Division, an E-9, sergeant major’s pay, although he was a Spec 9, but with arrest powers over anybody in or out of uniform, commissioned or enlisted, and tonight he was trolling a racket involving enlisted men.

Andy worked plainclothes, and preferred native dress. The guy down the bar, the guy he was teamed with, was in civvies, too. He was OSI, the Air Force equivalent of CID, and he looked the part. Polo shirt, windbreaker, khaki pants with cuffs, white athletic socks, shined brogans. He radiated cop with his Mennen aftershave. Andy wore pleated slacks, no cuffs, in the European style; a dress shirt, not button-down; a soft suede jacket, to cover the weapon he carried in the small of his back; dark, over-the-calf socks; Italian shoes, bought at Ka-De-We. Andy spoke good German. The OSI guy disdained Krauts, spent his off-duty hours at the NCO club, and thought thick.

"Einmal auch?" the bartender asked, smiling.

Andy smiled back. "Bitte," he said.

She poured him another Asbach, and a soda chaser.

She had a fabulous pair of hooters and no ass in her pants. Perfect for Amis, who liked their women top-heavy but with no hips. It came from looking at Playboy and Cavalier. Not that Andy had anything against tits, or anything against the girl behind the bar, either. Her boobs had gotten her the job, let’s face it, and why let assets go to waste?

He realized he was getting lugubrious and philosophical. A sure sign of too much time in-country, or too much to drink.

The set-up went like this. The joint he was in, a place called the Tequila-Bar, was licensed to two Germans. One was a merchant seaman who sailed out of Hamburg, and wasn’t around much. The other guy, the main guy, was a sometime prizefighter named Joachim Französisch, or that was the name he used in the ring---Joe French, although he was about as French as French toast. Kreuzberg and Neukölln were tough neighborhoods, insular and clannish. Joe French was a local boy made good.

Andy’s interest was parochial enough, too. Joe French had more than one partner. This silent third party was a GI, from what OSI had put together. Andy was surprised any of the Air Force investigators could find the crack in his ass with his thumb, but the information looked solid enough. Somebody on the inside, at Tempelhof, was fudging the Class VI inventory.

GI’s had ration cards, for cigarettes and liquor, which were exempt from stateside tax. You could buy a carton of Marlboros for two-fifty, US, or a quart of decent Scotch for under five bucks. The rationing system was designed to prevent resale on the black market. But a sharp operator could figure a way to divert shipments of untaxed spirits.

Joe French had gotten greedy, the way Andy figured it. He was getting booze for his own bar, but he must have pressured his GI contact, and now they were selling call brands to half a dozen other bars in Kreuzberg. The volume was getting too big not to call attention to itself. Andy had been assigned to this sting operation because he’d done a tour in Viet Nam, where he was involved in investigating the PX scam, a ring of senior NCO’s who got into everything from black market diversions to kickbacks from entertainers recruited for the enlisted clubs and remote base tours.

In the service, the joke was that you wound up an MP or a cook if you had no usable skills, pre-enlistment, but Andy knew some sharp MP’s, and he figured the cook part was probably wrong, too. The guys in Viet Nam with that MOS had worked out a pretty sophisticated scheme.

Berlin presented a different set of variables. It wasn’t so foreign, in some ways. Then again, Andy remembered the First Shirt’s briefing, when he’d been assigned here. Kowalczek was old school, a supersleeve who’d done time during the Occupation, in Korea, and RSVN.

Don’t be a cowboy, the First Sergeant had said. And don’t get too chummy, either. Nobody’s your pal, not in this town. Berlin’s a God damn minefield. Leave the Krauts to the local cops, but don’t turn your back on them. And watch your own back. Guys in some of these neighborhoods will kill you for your socks.

Not so foreign, after all. No more than Saigon, anyway, no more than the Polish streets of Pittsburgh, where Andy grew up.

But, curiously, Andy felt more at home here than he ever felt in hilly Pittsburgh, steel city, company town, the Carnegie fortune. An inward, inbred place. Berlin gave him room to inhale, as if the air had more oxygen in it. It pumped him up, it filled his lungs and opened his arteries. It charged his heart, as if with ether. Saigon was sweaty, fevered, spicy, and close, crowded with sensation, like you wore thick, down-filled clothes, and were wading through smoke, or oatmeal, scented with jasmine and soy. He missed it sometimes, the heat, the smells, the humidity clamping down like the lid on a pot. Here in Berlin, though, the sky seemed to open up, the air drew you out, instead of locking you down. But here he was, in a smoky saloon in Kreuzberg, with Mr. Cool down the bar, waiting for Joe French to show. Maybe they could jam him up, put the blocks to him, so he’d give up his GI source. Andy thought it was unlikely. He’d have waited, hung around the joint, ingratiated himself. Gone to work on the barmaid, the American kids shooting pinball. But it wasn’t his play. He was just along for the ride.

Then the outer door slapped open and new customer stepped through the weather flaps, and a new dynamic gusted in with him.

October, late in the month, the smell of the street outside like ozone. Andy smelled trouble.

Andy was sitting in a corner at the far end of the bar, his back to the wall. He was on the last stool. The OSI guy, Bobby Fortuna, kept closer to the action, at the other end of the bar. That’s where the GI’s were buying draft beers, flirting with the barmaid, getting change for the jukebox, asking her to dance. Fortuna, like any bored cop, glanced back over his shoulder at the newcomer and then dismissed him as just another Kraut. Andy knew better.

This new guy was a small, tidy sort of person. Natty, even. A little too well turned out for this neck of the woods, but not extravagant. Maybe it was the best he could dress the part. He took the stool one down from Andy’s. "Dobryj vecher," he remarked, pleasantly, in an undertone. But not in German.

Nobody else heard.

There was some chaff with the barmaid, sly and sexy. When she told the tidy little guy he could have Glenfiddich, the price half what he’d pay on the Ku-damm, she made the sale. The little guy turned to Andy. "Kak dela?" he asked, still soft.

Andy wasn’t about to speak Russian with Axel Stern. You just lit me up, he muttered, in English, not looking in Axel’s direction.

With who, the Cave Man? Axel shrugged. He meant the OSI undercover, Fortuna. Or were you speaking about Joe French?

Andy blew out his breath.

Also a cave man, I admit, but useful in a thuggish sort of way. Axel made a face. Such men are always useful.

Andy studied the bottles on the back bar. He realized they needed German revenue stamps. Axel was connected. He’d have access to counterfeits. You’ve got Joe French in your pocket, Andy said.

How not? Axel asked, smiling.

I should have snapped to it sooner.

Axel shrugged. Some of us take the long view, he said.

************

Andy was compromised. He couldn’t use what Axel Stern had given him without opening himself up to indelicate questions.

Axel Stern had an interesting back story. He’d supposedly entered Berlin with the Red Army, and then deserted, to make his way in the free-for-all. Still, he was a Jew, suspect in the eyes of both Germans and Russians, as well as the Allies. Yet he’d survived, without papers, without a sponsor, in the most hostile and unforgiving circumstances, living by his wits. What was the answer?

Andy figured Axel was a spy. Not a passive source, either, but active GRU or KGB. A rezident, in other words.

You’re shining me, the First Shirt said.

Nope, Andy said. He’s in the heavy.

What’s the connection between this Axel character and your boxer pal in Kreuzberg?

"Axel has a club downtown, a block off the Ku-damm. It’s what they call an Amerikanisch over here, meaning a cocktail bar. Even a bierstube served some kind of food. Andy’s point was that Axel only sold drinks. It’s called Balagan, meaning a carnival booth, in Russian, but it’s slang for ‘Masquerade.’"

You figure Axel is one of Joe French’s customers for black market hootch?

Other way around, Andy said. If we tip the Berlin cops, they’ll raid the Tequila-Bar, looking for violations. Axel provides Joe French with bogus German stamps, which means he gets a piece of the action. Joe’s passing along his discount to a bunch of other bars. It adds up.

Kowalczek nodded, doing the math. Quart of Johnny Walker Black sells for what, stateside, ten, fifteen bucks? Your guy turns it over for half of that, clears a hundred a case, and the vig to Axel goes as high as thirty, forty percent?

Enough to pay the rent, Andy said.

It’s still nickel-and-dime, the First Shirt said.

I don’t think Axel’s in it for the money, Andy said.

They’re always in it for the money. Buncha lowlifes, they couldn’t make it on a level playing field.

I mean, Axel’s got another angle, Andy said. His black market connections give him access to the whole Berlin shadow world, and it’s good cover. Not to mention, he can finance his operation without the home office ever being out of pocket. The way I hear, Moscow is tight-fisted with hard currency.

Two questions, Kowalczek said.

Andy could guess what they were going to be, and he thought he had good answers to both of them.

First off, the Russki. He made you in Joe French’s joint, didn’t break a sweat.

We’ve met before, Andy said.

Yeah, Kowalczek said. I should of seen that coming.

Ralph Schaefer took me into his bar one night.

Schaefer. A spook, as I recall.

That’s the guy.

So, you and Axel just sort of fell into it. Probably used your Russian language skills, am I right?

Pretty much, Andy said.

Okay, but if we’re reading out of the same playbook, Axel Stern knows you’re CID. He’s got his ear to the ground, he finds out you’re working Joe French. Next thing we know, he’s in the bar, giving you the Captain Midnight recognition signals, and you’re blown. The guy’s playing you.

Sure he is, Andy said. He’s looking for leverage. What better than to have a corrupt cop on his payroll?

You’re playing catch with a hand grenade, Kowalczek said.

Back-stop me on this, Andy said.

Kowalczek sucked his teeth. Okay, he said. But you got to understand, we’re in somebody else’s ball park.

This isn’t a German problem, it’s our problem.

Speaking of our problems, how do we handle OSI? They’ll have to back off, we try and suck Axel in. They won’t cotton to it worth a damn.

This was the second question Andy thought he was ready for. We pull rank, he said.

Kowalczek ducked his head, sensing incoming. His eyes were slits. Screw me now, while my legs are apart, he said.

We put CIA in the picture.

Ach. Kowalczek threw his hands in the air. Your buddy, there, Schaefer.

Ralph wants to get Axel on the line. Wouldn’t hurt us, we had a marker with the Agency.

You ever do a deal with the spooks in Nam? Kowalczek asked him. They’ll empty your pockets and hang you out to dry. I’m no angel, but I keep my word.

Don’t give it, then, Andy said.

Kowalczek grinned. Be careful what you ask for, he said.

************

Jay Oliver had been in Berlin only the previous March. He was group leader on the FIREFLY operation, a recovery effort that went wrong. A Russian aircraft had crashed in the river Havel, in the British sector. Oliver had flown in a Royal Navy dive team for a night job, to cut the plane open underwater and hijack the avionics, while Soviet salvage crews and security personnel were lined up on the banks, waiting for daylight. In terms of intelligence product, the mission was a success, but Oliver had lost one man dead to a freak accident, and crippled a second. The casualties were, in effect, the cost of doing business. An acceptable downside risk, in the Yank parlance. Oliver, however, had jeopardized secrecy by making sure he got his injured man out of the water alive. His humanity was a mark against him.

He needed to recover some momentum.

Then there were the Americans to placate, to cajole, to bring back into the fold. The so-called Special Relationship had been badly damaged by the Cambridge spies, first Burgess and Maclean, then Philby. There was more to the story than this, Oliver knew. Inside the service, there was talk of a supposed Fourth Man, and even a Fifth. The capacity of the Cambridge ring to demoralize SIS, and further erode relationships with the Americans, was cumulative.

Three years after Philby had scarpered to Moscow, they were still digging themselves out from under, but now there was a sliver of daylight, which was what brought Oliver back to Berlin again.

A high-ranking GRU resident had defected in New South Wales earlier that year. Defectors are an odd breed, none of them quite alike, but one thing they have in common is that they can calculate their throw-weight, their effective worth.

GRU, subordinate to the Army chief of staff, had a long historic rivalry with the more political, and politicized, KGB. And KGB had an institutional weakness for what were called Active Measures, assassination and terror tactics, while GRU pretended to be more fastidious---although in practice this was a matter of degree. Politovsky didn’t claim to be a virgin, but he denied GRU involvement in a number of high-profile wet jobs. Bulgarians, he claimed, working under KGB discipline. This accorded with conventional wisdom, and the interrogators pressed for more. Still in debrief, Politovsky gave up a GRU sleeper net, a long-term operation, in place since the late days of the war, to service a particular asset, whose product was closely held, distribution restricted to the highest levels. It smelled like an agent under deep cover.

London was of course eager to identify the Soviet control for the Cambridge spies, and here was an opening, but the Cambridge ring was a KGB penetration, Oliver argued, and KGB would never depend on a GRU net to service their illegals. This was something different. His pointed remarks carried the day, and Oliver had bought himself some breathing room. How to compromise Politovsky’s sleepers was a separate issue. Oliver’s head of section put it to him bluntly.

Do you trust the material? he asked.

"I’d