Thirty minutes passed and the man called Catbird could contain himself no longer. He dialed a number deep in the forests of Vaclabruck, Germany.
“This is information I do not care to hear,” said General Ulrich von Schnabe, the words delivered through a frozen mist. “The targets were to be eliminated at the earliest opportunity. I approved Dr. Kroeger’s orders, for you, yourself, told the doctor that there would be no difficulty, as you had the itinerary. On that basis alone I permitted you to contact the Blitzkrieger.”
“What can I say, Herr General? There is simply no word, no communication. Nothing.”
“Check with our man at the American Embassy. He may have heard something.”
“I have, sir, from public phones, of course. His last intercept simply confirmed that the Latham brother was under the protection of the Antinayous.”
“Those black-loving, Jew-kissing scum. No location, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“Stay in Paris. Stay in touch with our killer unit and keep me informed of any developments.”
“Now you’re the one who’s crazy!” cried Karin de Vries. “They’ve seen you, they know you, you can’t possibly be Harry!”
“Sure I can, if they don’t see me again, and they won’t,” said Drew. “I’ll operate in absentia, from one place to another, keeping in touch with you and the colonel because I don’t dare show up at the embassy. As a matter of fact, since we know the embassy’s penetrated—hell, we knew it when Little Adolf showed up as my driver the other night—we might be able to find out who it is, or who they are.”
“Just how?”
“A railroad trap.”
“A what?”
“Like in a row of railroad cars filled with passengers, only one of them holds wild dogs.”
“Please—”
“I’ll call you as Harry three or four times asking for papers from my dead brother Drew’s files, naming one of Witkowski’s couriers to meet me at a given time and place—a crowded place. You process the requests and I’ll be wherever it is, but not where anybody can see me. If a legitimate courier shows up—I know them all—and he’s not followed, fine. I’ll throw away whatever you send. Then later I’ll call again, with another request, telling you it’s urgent, I’m on to something. That’s your cue to hang up and say nothing, relay nothing.”
“And if anyone shows up, you’ll know he’s a neo, and that my phone was tapped from inside,” Karin interrupted.
“Exactly. If the circumstances are right, maybe I’ll be able to take him and turn him over to our chemists.”
“Suppose there’s more than one?”
“I said if. I’m not about to challenge a crowd of swastikas.”
“To use your own technique, I see a very large ‘gap,’ as you called it. Why would Harry Latham remain here in Paris?”
“Because he is Harry Latham. Tenacious to a fault, unrelenting in his pursuits, all the things that Harry was with the added intensely personal burden of his younger brother having been murdered here in Paris.”
“Certainly a convincing motive,” agreed De Vries. “Yours actually.… But how will you get the news out? Isn’t that a problem?”
“It’s touchy,” said Drew, nodding his head and frowning. “Primarily because the Agency will throw up its collective hands and cry foul. However, it’ll be too late if we’re off and running, and I have an idea the colonel might come up with something. I’m meeting him later at a café in Montmartre.”
“You’re meeting with him? What about me? I believe I’m somewhat intrinsic to this strategy.”
“You’ve been shot, lady. I can’t ask you—”
“You don’t ask, monsieur,” Karin broke in. “I’ll tell you. I’m going with you. Frederik de Vries’s wife is going with you. You lost a brother most horribly, Drew, and I lost a husband … most horribly. You will not exclude me.
The door of the outpatient surgery room opened, and the doctor cleared by the embassy walked in. “I have reasonably favorable news for you, madame,” said the physician in French, an awkward smile on his face. “I’ve studied the postoperative X rays, and with therapy you should regain at least eighty percent of the use of your right hand. However, the tip of the middle finger will be lost. Of course, a permanent replacement can be attached.”
“Thank you, Doctor, it is a small price and I’m grateful. I’ll come to see you in five days, as you instructed.”
“Pardon, monsieur—your name is Lat’am?”
“It’s as close as you people get. Yes.”
“You’re to telephone a Monsieur S in Washington when it’s convenient. You may use the phone here. All expenses are billed, naturally.”
“Naturally, but it’s not convenient at the moment. If he calls again, please tell him I left before you could give me the message.”
“Is that proper, monsieur?”
“He’ll thank you for not adding to his problems and personally approve your charges.”
“I understand,” said the doctor, his smile now appreciative.
“I don’t,” said Karin, her first words as they walked through the entrance of the medical building and up the concrete pavement toward the parking area.
“Don’t what?”
“Understand. Why didn’t you want to talk to Sorenson? I’d think you’d want his advice; you said you trusted him.”
“I do. I also know that he basically trusts the system, he’s lived with it for decades.”
“So?”
“So he’d have trouble with what I’m going to do. He’d say it’s the Agency’s turf, the Agency’s decision as to what happens next, not mine. Of course, he’d be right.”
“If he’s right, why are you doing it?… Sorry, don’t bother to answer, it was a stupid question.”
“Thank you.” Latham looked at his watch. “It’s nearly six o’clock. How’s your hand?”
“I can’t say it’s terribly pleasant. The local anesthesia is wearing off, and thank God I couldn’t see anything with my hand in that little cloth tent.”
“An hour under the knife means a lot of cutting. Are you sure you want to go with me to meet Witkowski?”
“My damn hand can fall off and you still won’t stop me.”
“But why? You’re one exhausted lady and you hurt. I wouldn’t keep anything from you, you should know that by now.”
“I do.” They stopped at the car as Drew opened the door; their eyes met. “I know you won’t keep anything from me, and I appreciate that. But perhaps I can add something, once I understand what you’re really trying to do. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
“All right, I’ll try.” Latham shut the door, walked around the Renault, and climbed into the driver’s seat. He started the engine, maneuvered the car into the exit lane, and continued, aware that she was staring at him. “Who’s Gerhardt Kroeger and what hold did he have over Harry?”
“Hold? What hold? He’s obviously a Nazi doctor, a skilled one apparently, whom your brother knew in the Hausruck. He probably treated Harry for some sort of severe trauma. One can appreciate even the enemy if he helps you, especially if it’s medical.”
“This Kroeger goes beyond normal gratitude,” said Drew, studying the road signs for the one that would lead them to Paris’s Montmartre. “When I asked Harry who Kroeger was, he answered me with these words; they’re exact and I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. ‘Lassiter can tell you. I don’t think I should.’ That’s frightening, lady.”
“Yes, it is—it was. But it was also consistent with his behavior. The sudden display of emotion, the weeping, the cries for help. That wasn’t the Harry we both knew and described to each other, not the cool, analytical man, the dispassionate man we talked about.”
“I disagree,” said Latham quietly. “Isolate those words, repeat them, and you’ll hear the Harry we knew speaking, pondering an option, not prepared to make a decision until he thought it through. ‘Lassiter can tell you. I don’t think I should
.’ ” Drew shuddered as he turned the Renault into the main highway toward the center of Paris. “Gerhardt Kroeger is more than just a doctor he met in the Brüderschaft valley. I called him a son of a bitch before, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s the one who helped my brother to escape. Whoever he is, he can tell us what happened to Harry when he was there, how he got his hands on that list of names.”
“You’re saying that Kroeger may be an ally, not a neo, and that Harry in his psychological confusion is actually protecting him?”
“I just don’t know, but I do know that he’s more than a doctor who treated him for a bad cold, or the arthritis Harry was beginning to complain about. Gerhardt Kroeger was too important to my brother, I sense it; I’m convinced of it. That’s why he’s the key, and that’s why I have to find him.”
“But how?”
“Again, I don’t know. Witkowski may have some ideas. Maybe we can enlist the Antinayous, they can spread the word that Harry’s still alive. I simply don’t know. I’m flying blind, but our combined antennas will pick up things.… Sorry, Madame Linguist, I should have said ‘antennae,’ except it sounds silly.”
“I concur. I’m also intrigued by your constant apologies over the things you say and think, backtracking, as though I’m a tutor of sorts.”
“I guess it’s because you were closer to Harry than I was in those areas. He was constantly correcting me, mostly in a nice way, but he never stopped.”
“He loved you—”
“Yeah,” Drew interrupted wearily. “Let’s change the subject, okay?”
“Okay. What do you think the colonel will come up with, as you put it?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea, but if he’s anything like his dossier, it’ll be pretty fine-tuned.”
THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE—
Paris Edition
Terrorist Attack on U.S. Embassy
Personnel
The United States Embassy has revealed that yesterday terrorists in stocking masks assaulted a restaurant in the Villejuif area, where two Americans were having lunch. Mr. Drew Latham, an attaché at the American Embassy, was killed. His brother, Mr. Harry Latham, a liaison at the embassy, survived and is currently in hiding on orders of his government. The assassins escaped and neither the identity nor the cause of the assailants are clear, for they disappeared. They are described as two men, medium height, and wearing dark business suits. The surviving Mr. Latham described both assailants as being severely wounded as a result of his brother’s alertness. Mr. Drew Latham was armed and fired his weapon repeatedly until he was killed. French authorities, under enormous pressure from the American Embassy, are looking into the matter. Speculations center upon both Iraqi and Syrian—
“For Christ’s sake, what’s going on over there?” yelled the Secretary of State, Adam Bollinger, over the phone to the ambassador to France, Daniel Courtland.
“If I knew, I’d tell you. Do you want to replace me? If so, go right ahead, Adam. You bastards put me into a raging fire and I don’t know enough French to call for help. I’m career State, Mr. Secretary, not one of your fucking political appointments—come to think of it, none of your contributors speak the language anyway, most barely speak English.”
“It’s no time to be vitriolic, Daniel.”
“It’s time to have a chain of command, Bollinger! Drew Latham, one of the very few spooks with an open-minded head on his shoulders, is killed after four previous attempts on his life, and I don’t have any answers!”
“His brother’s alive,” said the Secretary of State lamely.
“That’s just terrific! Where the hell is he?”
“I’ve got open lines to the Agency. As soon as I know, you’ll know.”
“You’re something else,” said Courtland derisively, letting his breath out. “Do you really think deep-cover Agency personnel will tell you a goddamned thing? You’re sitting behind a desk, but they have to survive. Hell, I learned that when I was posted to Finland, and the KGB was right next door. We’re zeros in situations like this, Adam. We’re told what they want to tell us.”
“That’s hardly proper. We are the ultimate authority, your chain of command, if you like.”
“Tell that to Drew Latham, who got blown away because we couldn’t support him. Even our own embassy is penetrated.”
“I simply can’t understand you people.”
“You’d better begin to, Mr. Secretary. The Nazis are back.”
Director Wesley Sorenson of Cons-Op sat at his desk, his head forward, resting on his fingers. His sorrow was such that tears slowly emerged from his eyes, the loss so tragic, so unnecessary, that he questioned the essence of his own life. Drew Latham taken out—as he might have been so many times—and for what? What changes could the life of a single intelligence officer make when the hoo-haws of international negotiations came together at their fancy hotels and their banquets, their flag-strewn parades in convention halls signifying nothing but ceremonial hypocrisy?
Sorenson felt that it was the end for him. He had nothing more to give; he had seen too much death in the shadows of those parades. If there was a spark of light, it did not come.
And then it did!
“Wes, I trust we’re on scrambler,” said the familiar voice on the line.
“Drew? My God, is that you?” Sorenson lurched forward over his desk, the blood drained from his face. “You’re alive?”
“I also trust you’re alone. I asked your secretary and she gave me an affirmative.”
“Yes, of course.… Let me catch my breath; this is incredible—I don’t know what to say, what to think. This is you?”
“Last time I checked my pulse it was.”
Silence. The quiet before the storm.
“Then I believe you have some serious explaining to do, young man! Goddammit, I wrote a sympathy note to your parents.”
“Mother’s a tough lady, she can handle it; and Dad, if he’s around, will probably try to figure out which one of us caught the bullets.”
“You’re distastefully cavalier—”
“It’s better than being the other way, Mr. Director,” Latham interrupted. “There’s no time for that now.”
“There’d better be time for an explanation. Then Harry is—he’s the one who was killed?”
“Yes. I’m taking his place.”
“You’re doing what?”
“I just told you.”
“For Christ’s sake, why? I never cleared anything like this, I wouldn’t!”
“I knew that. It’s why I went around you and did it myself. If I make any progress, you can take the credit. If I don’t, well, it won’t matter, will it?”
“To hell with credit, I want to know what you think you’re doing. This is an intolerable breach of field conduct, and you know it!”
“Not entirely, sir. We all have the leeway of on-scene decisions, you gave us that.”
“Only in the event that proper channels of authority can’t be reached in times of crisis. I’m here and you can reach me, whether I’m at the office, at home, on a golf course, or in a goddamned whorehouse—if I had any use for one! Why didn’t you?”
“I just told you. You’d turn me down, and it’d be wrong because you aren’t here, and there’s no way I can make you understand because I don’t really understand it myself, but I know I’m right. And, if I may, sir, knowing something of your service record, I believe you’ve taken such unilateral actions yourself in the past.”
“Cut the crap, Latham,” said a weary, frustrated Sorenson. “What’ve you got and how are you approaching it? Why are you playing Harry?”
Painfully, reluctantly, Drew described the last minutes of his brother’s life, the uncharacteristic outbursts of emotion, the tears, the apparent confusion he had in differentiating between his cover and his real identity, and finally, his refusal to amplify on a name, a doctor, that he brought up several times with Karin de Vries and then with Drew himself. “He mentioned him,” explained Latha
m, “as if the man were some sort of secretive figure, to be either exposed or protected.”
“A sinner and a saint?” Sorenson asked.
“Yes, I guess you could say that.”
“It’s the Stockholm syndrome, Drew. The captive identifies with the captor. His feelings are a mixed bag of resentment, yet he’s still currying favor, until finally, he episodically imagines himself to be the one with power. Quite simply, Harry was burned out; he lived over the edge too long.”
“I understand all that, Wes, including the all-too-familiar Stockholm theory which covers too many bases for me, at least as it applies to Harry. His well-known cold rationality was still there. This Dr. Gerhardt Kroeger, that’s his name, was somehow important to my brother, sinner or saint notwithstanding. He knows what happened to Harry, maybe even how he got that list of names. It’s possible this Kroeger is on our side and slipped them to him.”
“I suppose anything’s possible, and right now those names are a national catastrophe waiting to happen. At the moment, the Bureau is mounting a dozen covert operations to microscope everyone on the list over here.”
“Things have gone that far already?”
“In the words of our ubiquitous Secretary of State, who has both ears of the President, if this administration ‘can root out the Nazi influence in the country, the nation will be forever grateful.’ It’s ‘damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.’ ”
“My God, that’s scary.”
“I agree, but I can also understand why it’s happening. Harry Latham was considered the finest, most experienced undercover man in the Agency. It’s not easy to dismiss his findings.”
“Not was,” corrected Drew. “Is, Wes. Harry’s alive; he’s got to remain alive until I can smoke out this Gerhardt Kroeger.”
“If he’s alive, he’s got to reach the Agency, you damn fool!”
“He can’t, because he knows, as I told you, that Langley is penetrated, as high up as the AA-Zero computers, and that’s practically as close as you can get to Director Talbot.”
“I relayed that information to Knox. He can’t believe it.”