The Deceiver Read online

  Edwards straightened the silk at his neck.

  “Very well, Sam. One last time.”

  “It’s dangerous, and the stakes are high. I want a reward for him. Ten thousand pounds.”

  “Agreed,” said Appleyard without hesitation. He took a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Here are the details Pankratin has provided for the method of the pass. Two alternate venues are needed. A first and a back-up. Can you let us know in twenty-four hours the lay-bys you’ve picked? We’ll get it to him.”

  “I can’t force Poltergeist to go,” McCready warned. “He’s a free-lance, not a staffer.”

  “Try, Sam, please try,” said Claudia. Sam rose.

  “By the way, this ‘Tuesday’—which one is it?”

  “A week from the day after tomorrow,” said Appleyard. “ Eight days away.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said McCready.

  Chapter 2

  Sam McCready spent most of the next day, Monday, poring over large-scale maps and photographs. He went back to his old friends still on the East German desk and asked a few favors. They were protective of their territory but complied—he had the authority—and they knew better than to ask the Head of Deception and Disinformation what he was up to.

  By midafternoon he had two locations that would suit. One was a sheltered lay-by just off East Germany’s Highway Seven, which runs in an east-west line parallel to Autobahn E40. The smaller road links the industrial city of Jena to the more pastoral town of Weimar and thence to the sprawl of Erfurt. The first lay-by he chose was just west of Jena. The second was on the same road, but halfway between Weimar and Erfurt, not three miles from the Soviet base at Nohra.

  If the Russian general was anywhere between Jena and Erfurt on his tour of inspection the following Tuesday and Wednesday, he would only have a short run to either rendezvous. At five, McCready proposed his choices to Claudia Stuart at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. A coded message went to CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia; they approved and passed the message to Pankratin’s designated controller in Moscow. The information went into a dead-letter box behind a loose brick in Novodevichi Cemetery in the early morning of the next day, and General Pankratin picked it up on his way to the Ministry four hours later.

  Before sundown on Monday, McCready sent a coded message to the head of the SIS station in Bonn, who read it, destroyed it, picked up the telephone, and made a local call.

  Bruno Morenz returned home at seven that evening. He was halfway through his supper when his wife remembered something.

  “Your dentist called. Dr. Fischer.”

  Morenz raised his head and stared at the congealed mess in front of him.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Says he should look at that filling again. Tomorrow. Could you come to his office at six.”

  She returned to her absorption in the evening game show on television. Bruno hoped she had gotten the message exactly right. His dentist was not Dr. Fischer, and there were two bars where McCready might want to meet him. One was called “office,” the other “clinic.” And “six” meant midday, during the lunch hour.

  On Tuesday morning, McCready had Denis Gaunt drive him to Heathrow for the breakfast-hour flight to Cologne.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow night,” he said. “Mind the shop for me.”

  At Cologne, with only a briefcase, he moved swiftly through passport and customs controls, took a taxi, and was dropped off outside the opera house just after eleven. For forty minutes he wandered around the square, down the Kreuzgasse and into the busy pedestrian mall of Schildergasse. He paused at many shop windows, doubled suddenly back, and entered a store by the front and left by the back. At five to twelve, satisfied he had not grown a tail, he turned into the narrow Krebsgasse and headed for the old-style, half-timbered bar with the gold Gothic lettering. The small tinted windows made the interior dim. He sat in a booth in the far corner, ordered a stein of Rhine beer, and waited. The bulky figure of Bruno Morenz slid into the chair opposite him five minutes later.

  “It’s been a long time, old friend,” said McCready.

  Morenz nodded and sipped his beer.

  “What do you want, Sam?”

  Sam told him. It took ten minutes. Morenz shook his head.

  “Sam, I’m fifty-two. Soon I retire. I have plans. In the old days it was different, exciting. Now, frankly, those guys over there frighten me.”

  “They frighten me too, Bruno. But I’d go in spite of it, if I could. I’m black-flagged. You’re clean. It’s a quick one—go over in the morning, back by nightfall. Even if the first pass doesn’t work, you’ll be back the next day, midafternoon. They’re offering ten thousand pounds, cash.”

  Morenz stared at him.

  “That’s a lot. There must be others who would take it. Why me?”

  “He knows you. He likes you. He’ll see it isn’t me, but he won’t back off. I hate to ask you this way, but this is really for me. The last time, I swear it. For old times’ sake.”

  Bruno finished his beer and rose.

  “I must get back. ... All right, Sam. For you. For old times’ sake. But then, I swear, I’m out. For good.”

  “You have my word, Bruno—never again. Trust me. I won’t let you down.”

  They agreed on the next rendezvous, for the following Monday at dawn. Bruno returned to his office. McCready waited ten minutes, strolled up to the taxi stand on Tunistrasse, and hailed a cab for Bonn. He spent the rest of the day and Wednesday discussing his needs with Bonn Station. There was a lot to do, and not much time to do it.

  Across two time zones, in Moscow, Major Ludmilla Vanavskaya had her interview with General Shaliapin just after lunch. He sat behind his desk, a shaven-headed, brooding Siberian peasant who exuded power and cunning, and read her file carefully. When he had finished, he pushed it back toward her.

  “Circumstantial,” he said. He liked to make his subordinates defend their assertions. In the old days—and General Shaliapin went right back to the old days—what he had in front of him would have sufficed. The Lubyanka always had room for one more. But times had changed and were still changing.

  “So far, Comrade General,” Vanavskaya conceded. “But a lot of circumstances. Those SS-20 rockets in East Germany two years ago—the Yanks knew too quickly.”

  “East Germany is crawling with spies and traitors. The Americans have satellites, RORSATS—”

  “The movements of the Red Banner fleet out of the northern ports. Those bastards in NATO always seem to know.”

  Shaliapin smiled at the young woman’s passion. He never disparaged vigilance in his staff—it was what they were there for. “There may be a leak,” he admitted, “or several. Negligence, loose talk, an array of small agents. But you think it’s one man ...”

  “This man.” She leaned forward and tapped the photo on top of the file.

  “Why? Why him?”

  “Because he’s always there.”

  “Nearby,” he corrected.

  “Nearby. In the vicinity, in the same theater. Always available.”

  General Shaliapin had survived a long time, and he intended to survive some more. Back in March, he had spotted that things were going to change. Mikhail Gorbachev had been rapidly and unanimously elected General Secretary on the death of yet another geriatric, Chernenko. He was young and vigorous. He could last a long time. He wanted reform. Already, he had started to purge the Party of its more obvious dead wood.

  Shaliapin knew the rules. Even a General Secretary could antagonize only one of the three pillars of the Soviet state at a time. If he took on the Party old guard, he would have to keep the KGB and the Army sweet. He leaned over the desk and jabbed a stubby forefinger at the flushed major.

  “I cannot order the arrest of a senior staff officer within the Ministry on the basis of this. Not yet. Something hard—I need something hard. Just one tiny thing.”

  “Let me put him under surveillance,” urged Vanaskaya.

  “Discreet surveillance.
”

  “All right, Comrade General. Discreet surveillance.”

  “Then I agree, Major. I’ll make the staff available.”

  * * *

  “Just a few days, Heir Direktor. A short break in lieu of a full summer vacation. I would like to take my wife and son away for a few days. The weekend, plus Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.”

  It was Wednesday morning, and Dieter Aust was in an expansive mood. Besides, as a good civil servant, he knew his staff were entitled to their summer vacations. He was always surprised that Morenz took so few holidays. Perhaps he could not afford many.

  “My dear Morenz, our duties in the Service are onerous. The Service is always generous with its staff holidays. Five days is not a problem. Perhaps if you had given us a bit more forewarning—but yes, all right, I will ask Fräulein Keppel to rearrange the rosters.”

  That evening, at home, Bruno Morenz told his wife he would have to leave on business for five days.

  “Just the weekend, plus the next Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,” he said. “Herr Direktor Aust wants me to accompany him on a trip.”

  “That’s nice,” she said, engrossed in the TV.

  Morenz in fact planned to spend a long, self-indulgent, and romantic weekend with Renate, give Monday to Sam McCready and the day-long briefing, and make his run across the East German border on Tuesday. Even if he had to spend the night in East Germany for the second rendezvous, he would be back in the West by Wednesday evening and could drive through the night to be home in time for work on Thursday. Then he would hand in his notice, work it out through the month of September, make his break with his wife, and leave with Renate for Bremerhaven. He doubted if Irmtraut would care—she hardly noticed whether he was there or not.

  On Thursday, Major Vanavskaya suffered her first serious setback, let out a very unladylike expletive, and slammed the phone down. She had her surveillance team in place, ready to begin shadowing her military target. But first she had needed to know roughly what his routines and usual daily movements were. To find this out, she had contacted one of the several KGB Third Directorate spies inside the military intelligence organization, the GRU.

  Although the KGB and its military counterpart, the GRU, were often at daggers-drawn, there is little doubt which is the dog and which the tail. The KGB was far more powerful, with a supremacy that has been strengthened since the early sixties, when a GRU colonel called Oleg Penkovsky had blown away so many Soviet secrets as to rank as the most damaging turncoat the USSR had ever had. Since then, the Politburo had permitted the KGB to infiltrate scores of its own people into the GRU. Although they wore military uniform and mingled day and night with the military, they were KGB through and through. The real GRU officers knew who they were and tried to keep them as ostracized as possible, which was not always an easy task.

  “I’m sorry, Major,” the young KGB man inside the GRU had told her on the phone. “The movement order is here in front of me. Your man leaves tomorrow for a tour of our principal garrisons in Germany. Yes, I have his schedule here.”

  He had dictated it to her before she put the phone down. She remained for a while deep in thought, then put in her own application for permission to visit the Third Directorate staff at the KGB headquarters in East Berlin. It took two days to ratify the paperwork. She would leave for the Potsdam military airfield on Saturday morning.

  Bruno made a point of getting through his chores as fast as he could on Friday and escaping from the office early. As he knew he would be handing in his notice as soon as he returned in the middle of the following week, he even cleared out some of his drawers. His last chore was his small office safe. The paperwork he handled was of such low-level classification that he hardly used the safe. The drawers of his desk could be locked, his office door was always locked at night, and the building was securely guarded. Nevertheless, he sorted out the few papers in his safe. At the bottom, beneath them all, was his service-issue automatic.

  The Walther PPK was filthy. He had never used it since the statutory test-firing on the range at Pullach years before. But it was so dusty, he thought he ought to clean it before handing it back next week. His cleaning kit was at home in Porz. At ten to five he put it in the side pocket of his seersucker suit and left.

  In the elevator on the way down to the street level, it banged so badly against his hip that he stuck it into his waistband and buttoned his jacket over it. He grinned as he thought this would be the first time he had ever shown it to Renate. Perhaps then she would believe how important his job was. Not that it mattered. She loved him anyway.

  He shopped in the center of town before driving out to Hahnwald—some good veal, fresh vegetables, a bottle of real French claret. He would make them a cozy supper at home; he enjoyed being in the kitchen. His final purchase was a large bunch of flowers.

  He parked his Opel Kadett round the corner from her street—he always did—and walked the rest of the way. He had not used the car phone to tell her he was coming. He would surprise her. With the flowers. She would like that. There was a lady coming out of the building as he approached the door, so he did not even have to ring the front bell and alert Renate. Better and better—a real surprise. He had his own key to her apartment door.

  He let himself in quietly to make the surprise even nicer. The hall was quiet. He opened his mouth to call “Renate, darling, it’s me,” when he heard a peal of her laughter. He smiled. She would be watching the cartoons on television. He peeked into the sitting room. It was empty. The laughter came again, from down the passage toward the bathroom. He realized with a start at his own foolishness that she might have a client. He had not called to check. Then he realized that with a client she would be in the “working” bedroom with the door closed, and that the door was soundproofed. He was about to call again when someone else laughed. It was a man. Morenz stepped from the hall into the passageway.

  The master bedroom door was open a few inches, the gap partly obscured by the fact that the big closet doors were also open, with overcoats strewn on the floor.

  “What an arsehole,” said the man’s voice. “He really thinks you’re going to marry him?”

  “Head over heels, besotted. Stupid bastard! Just look at him.” Her voice.

  Morenz put down the flowers and the groceries and moved down the passage to the bedroom door. He was puzzled. He eased the closet doors closed to get past them and nudged the bedroom door open with the tip of his shoe.

  Renate was sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed with the black sheets, smoking a joint. The air was redolent of cannabis. Lounging on the bed was a man Morenz had never seen before—lean, young, tough, in jeans and a leather motorcycle jacket. They both saw the movement of the door and jumped off the bed, the man in a single bound that brought him to his feet behind Renate. He had a mean face and dirty blond hair. In her private life Renate liked what is known as “rough trade,” and this one, her regular boyfriend, was as rough as they came.

  Morenz’s eyes were still fixed on the video flickering on the TV set beyond the end of the bed. No middle-aged man looks very dignified when making love, even less so when it is not happening for him. Morenz watched his own image on the TV with a growing sense of shame and despair. Renate was with him in the film, occasionally looking over his back to make gestures of disdain at the camera. That was apparently what had caused all the laughter.

  In front of him now, Renate was almost naked, but she recovered from her surprise quickly enough. Her face flushed with anger. When she spoke, it was not in the tones he knew, but the screech of a fishwife.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to surprise you,” he mumbled.

  “Yeah, well you’ve fucking surprised me. Now bug off. Go home to your stupid potato sack in Porz.”

  Morenz took a deep breath.

  “What really hurts,” he said, “is that you could have told me. You didn’t need to let me make such a fool of myself. Because I really did love y
ou.”

  Her face was quite contorted. She spat the words.

  “Let you? You don’t need any help. You are a fool. A fat old fool. In bed and out. Now bug off.”

  That was when he hit her. Not a punch—an open-handed slap to the side of the face. Something snapped in him, and he hit her. It caught her off balance. He was a big man, and the blow knocked her to the floor.

  What the blond man was thinking of, Morenz later could never decide. Morenz was about to leave when the pimp reached inside his jacket. It seemed he was armed. Morenz pulled his PPK from his waistband. He thought the safety catch was on. It should have been. He wanted to scare the pimp into raising his arms and letting him go. But the pimp went on pulling his pistol out. Morenz squeezed the trigger. Dusty it may have been, but the Walther went off.

  On the shooting range Morenz could not have hit a barn door. And he hadn’t been on the range for years. Real marksmen practice almost daily. It was beginner’s luck. The single bullet hit the pimp right in the heart at fifteen feet. The man jerked, an expression of disbelief on his face. But nervous reaction or not, his right arm kept coming up, clutching his Beretta. Morenz fired again. Renate chose that moment to rise from the floor. The second slug caught her in the back of the head. The padded door had swung shut during the altercation; not a sound had left the room.

  Morenz stood for several minutes looking at the two bodies. He felt numb, slightly dizzy. Eventually, he left the room and pulled the door closed behind him. He did not lock it. He was about to step over the winter clothes in the hall when it occurred to him, even in his bemused state, to wonder why they were there at this time of year. He looked into the coat closet and noticed that the rear panel of the closet appeared to be loose. He pulled the loose panel toward him. ...

  Bruno Morenz spent another fifteen minutes in the apartment, then left. He took with him the videotape of himself, the groceries, the flowers, and a black canvas grip that did not belong to him. He could not later explain why he had done that. Two miles from Hahnwald he dropped the groceries, wine, and flowers into separate garbage cans by the roadside. Then he drove for almost an hour, threw the videotape of himself and his gun into the Rhine from the Severin Bridge, turned out of Cologne, deposited the canvas grip, and finally made his way home to Porz. When he entered the sitting room at half-past nine, his wife made no comment.