July 15, 1984 – Surrey, Engnd

  “She’s fast,” Carlos said to the man sitting next to him. “Carol’s breathing like a steam engine trying to catch her.”

  “She’s motivated,” Hank replied. “I would be too if Carol was chasing me like a pissed off rhino.”

  Amy Driver-Long was four inches shorter than Carol Lombardi. Compact and athletic, with well-defined muscle tone, she carried strength in her legs and shoulders, giving her a powerful, banced silhouette ideal for explosive speed and stability on the field. She needed that speed now as she held the ball tucked under one arm, her pony tail swaying back and forth as she ran away from her friend. It was only a training session, but that didn’t matter to either woman. You py like you train was a maxim that they took to heart, and Amy had no desire to be driven into the soft damp earth by the rger woman she resembled in miniature form.

  It felt strange to both men that they’d become friends of a sort. They’d been very much adversaries barely two years ago. Both vying for Edith’s attention, and affection. They had resented Aric’s arrival, and the effect it had on their prospects. How were they to know what direction that arrival would send them, personally and professionally? They had both met exceptional women. One right under their nose, the other more distant, and once removed. Further removed still was the day when both men were convinced that Ed Martell and their entire group would win the Nobel Prize in...what category was still a topic of debate.

  It was after noon, and neither man felt guilty about their choice of drink. Carlos was sipping a family vintage from a small travel wine gss. Hank drank warm bitter straight from the bottle. A small cooler filled with bottles of orange squash and ice sat between the two men, as did a picnic basket filled with bread and cheese and anything else that the four of them had on hand. They’d brought umbrels which they’d driven into the ground a safe distance away from the practice field, and the sweaty, muddy women would not have far to walk before colpsing and enjoying the post workout picnic.

  A short distance away from their teammates Alex and Ed were attempting to teach Aric the finer points—really, any points at all—of cricket. It was a lot for the American to take in, and his mind naturally kept trying to find simirities with the bat and ball game he knew best. Delphine sat in the shade of a rge tree, her head covered by a straw hat. Her eyes were concealed by a pair of sungsses. Her torso—most of it at any rate—was covered by a loose white blouse and her legs, those parts that protruded below her linen skirt, were protected by sunscreen. Occasional fshes of red nail polish caught Aric’s eye when Delphine shifted position and the sun caught her painted fingers and toes.

  “Maybe it would just be simpler if he read your mind,” Alex suggested.

  Ed Martell’s reply was quick and definite. “No mind reading. That’s cheating. He can do it. I have confidence.”

  Bowler. Batter. Wicket. Pitch. Popping crease. Boundary. Aric’s head was spinning almost as much as when he’d absorbed twelve nguages in the blink of an eye.

  Owing to the fact that they had been commissioning a new signal processor to repce their ancient one, they’d collected no data on that particur event. No data, and almost certainly no opportunity in future to duplicate the painful (for Aric at least) process.

  “I would rather snog the entire House of Commons than go through that again,” Aric had said at the mere suggestion, which had resulted in a flood of ughter.

  “I think that’s the first test you’ve ever refused,” Ed noted.

  Carol’s words were mixed with ughter as she looked at Edith. “You’re beginning to rub off on him. He sounded almost British.”

  “Qu’est-ce que snog?” Delphine asked quizzically.

  Aric smiled. “Baiser.” He was rewarded by Delphine’s deyed musical ughter.

  The trio collected their equipment and the four of them began walking toward the road where Ed’s car awaited them. Roz had insisted on cooking a traditional roast Sunday afternoon dinner, but had asked for assistance. Aric had asked her if she would like help when she did her shopping, but the look she’d given him told him she still hadn’t forgotten his st shopping trip. They had all seen the natural state of Ed’s refrigerator, and his half hearted offer had been met with polite smiles and nothing more. Delphine pled total ignorance on the topic of traditional English cooking, so the task fell to Edith. If the four researchers had timed it right they would arrive with a half hour to spare.

  If one were to make the twenty minute drive—or seven minute flight—from Ed Martell’s house they would find Teresa Moreno accepting delivery of her farm’s newest resident.

  “She’s a proper Hereford girl, she is,” the man said as the 500 kilogram cow walked calmly out of the trailer. Her white face took a moment to survey the new surroundings, and no effort to move her massive red-brown body made any progress.

  “Leave her be,” Tess said sharply before changing her tone to one more soothing. She walked slowly towards the cow, speaking soft words to keep her calm. But Skye showed no such reservation as he pranced up to the towering figure and began sniffing its leg. The rge white head dipped down to make its own investigation, and it seemed to take less than a minute for bovine and canine to become friends.

  “She was stuck in the mud,” Tess's vet said on the phone earlier. “The fire team rescued her, but we don’t know who she belongs to. Can you keep her until we find her owner?”

  She’d agreed reflexively. The world would stop revolving before Teresa Moreno abandoned an animal that needed help. At any rate, it would only be temporary, and she had plenty of room—in the fields and in her barn.

  But when she got her first look at the sweet white face that looked back at her with beautiful eyes she knew that she would fight anyone who tried to take her away.

  “You don’t need an owner, sweetie. You need a family.”

  “She needs a name too,” one of the men said as he scratched her behind one of her prominent ears.

  “Well,” Tess said as she stroked the cow's muzzle, “we’ll see what we can come up with.”

  She thought for a minute and then spoke to the white face that was now rubbing itself against her shoulder.

  “We’ll call you Rosa.”

  July 15, 1984 — Feuerbach, West Germany

  Sabine called up the stairs, pitching her voice to penetrate her son’s closed bedroom door.

  “Willie, lunch is ready!”

  “Coming!” came the reply in a four-and-a-half-year-old’s voice, but she couldn’t detect any movement.

  Still lying on his bed reading comic books, she thought.

  “If you want him to come down, you’re going to have to go up and get him,” her grandmother said as she set the table.

  Sabine climbed the stairs slowly, her mind wandering.

  She wondered if Rodney had ever tried to find her. If he even remembered her now. Her face. Her body. The way they had molded themselves to each other.

  She wished she could remember exactly what he looked like. Now—almost five years ter—all she had was a vague memory of a big, ughing youth who had completely upended her preconceived notions of what Americans were like.

  Maybe when her son grew older, and began to take on the shape of a man, she would recognize his father in him.

  But when she opened his bedroom door, all she saw was a small reclining figure: a comic book with legs and stockinged feet.

  “Come on, pipsqueak,” she said lovingly, “your great-gran has lunch on the table.”

  He put down the comic, hopped from the bed, and ran to her, leaping into her arms.

  His tiny arms and legs wrapped around her as much as they could, his head resting on her shoulder.

  She kissed the side of his head as she held him.

  She made sure none of her tears found their way to him.

  July 15, 1984 – Frankfurt, West Germany

  Rainer had no idea how long he’d been stuck in the small room. They’d taken everything from him, including his clothes. The coarse jump suit he wore now was too short in the legs and sleeves, leaving his bare ankles and socks visible above the flimsy slip on shoes.

  He didn’t even have the noises in the corridor to distract him anymore. Those had ceased a short—but still indeterminate—time ago. Prior to that he’d heard a pair of voices shouting, and he was certain that he’d recognized one of those voices.

  I’m the only true German in this room you little shit!

  The shouting had ended with the sound of something impacting a wall. Rainer had felt the slight vibration as his ears picked up the sound that preceded the shift from shouting to profanity-ced—pain-tinged—screaming. A moment of silence ended with a sharp gasp for air, and the words, I think it’s broken.

  Rainer smiled thinly. He knew they were watching. It was probably the only reason the man hadn’t punched him instead of the wall outside. When they finally came to get him, to take him to a different room, he knew that in that new location there would be no cameras. Nothing but eyes to witness what was done to him. Eyes attached to minds that would do anything, and say nothing. When he finally heard the footsteps stop outside his door and the key turn in the lock a wave of fear came over him.

  But it was a woman who entered, not an angry man with his hand in a cast. She smiled politely as she nodded before sitting in the empty chair.

  So we’re not going anywhere. Not yet at least.

  The woman opened a file, gnced at it for a moment, and began to read.

  “Rainer Voss. Born 12 April 1950, Offenbach Federal Republic of Germany. Graduate of the Technische Hochschule Südwest, degree in electronics and signal processing. Currently employed as a civilian radar systems technician at the NATO JHAMS in Frankfurt.

  “Mother, Ilse Margarete Voss, née Bauer — born 1920 in Leipzig, Magdeburg. Fled to the American sector in 1945 following the Soviet occupation.

  “Father, Friedrich Voss, former Wehrmacht soldier. Worked as a railroad signalman after the war. Died 1965.”

  She closed the file and sat back in her chair. Her eyes studied him impassively. There was nothing of hostility or animosity in her demeanor, not like the man before her. Maybe she hid it better. There was a reason they sent an attractive woman to question him. It could just be that she was the only option now that they were a man down. But Rainer didn’t think so.

  “How’s your mother?” the woman asked like they were old friends. Rainer was certain that she already knew the answer.

  Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.

  It was true of wyers. And—up to a point—of security service interrogators as well. But they didn’t have all the answers already. Otherwise, why question him at all? No, this was just a warm up. To build rapport. Then the real questions would begin. And he would answer them.

  Rainer smiled at the pretty face, and lied. “She’s fine.” Her own question had been a lie, and he wanted her to acknowledge that fact. Which she did. She smiled back, ceding him a point fairly won.

  “That’s not what we hear. Multiple Sclerosis. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  He nodded, and lied again. “Yes. I thought you were asking how she was when I left her this morning. She was having a good day.”

  As long as he kept her in this room, kept it friendly, they wouldn’t take him anywhere else. And as faces to look at went, he could do much worse.

  “Is there anyone else that can look after her while you’re …indisposed?”

  His heart skipped for a moment as the thought that they might use his mother as leverage crossed his mind. His throat closed up and all he could do was shake his head.

  She saw his reaction. She’d have to be blind not to. She leaned forward and covered his hand with her own.

  “Sorry. Don’t read anything into that. It was just a question. We’ll get someone round to her ft.”

  Rainer let out a shuddering breath—which he hadn’t realized he’d been holding until then.

  “Thank you.”

  She released his hand and sat back again. “You’re welcome.” She took a few seconds. “It must have been expensive caring for her. We know how much you earned. You couldn’t have done it on your own. Is that why you—went to work for someone else?”

  Now that they were down to the real questions he felt himself rex. As long as he told them the truth—the whole truth—they wouldn’t torture him.

  “Yes, that was partly it.”

  She nodded. Used her hands to emphasize the question. “Why not just take a second job?”

  He looked at those hands. They were slender. Fine. If he didn’t know who she worked for he might be fooled into thinking that they were delicate. He was fairly certain she could kill him with just those hands.

  He shrugged. “I did, at the beginning. But it wasn’t just the money.”

  She leaned forward as if interested in his words. “What was it? From what we saw in your apartment you’re not a fan of the Soviets.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” he said. His heart rate increased even thinking about the Soviets and what they did.

  Her fingers crept slowly towards his hand. Her eyes watched their progress as she spoke. “So why work for them?” she asked softly, as if they were sharing an intimate moment.

  Rainer lowered his voice to match hers. It was a dance, and she was leading. He would follow her anywhere as long as it didn’t lead to that other room. He shook his head. “I don’t work for them. I’d never work for them.”

  She was leaning forward, their fingers almost touching when she lifted her eyes to his. “Who do you work for then? Who did you work for, since your employment, for us and them, appears to have come to an end.”

  Rainer moved his hand forward until their fingertips touched. “I work for Germany,” he answered just as pinly.

  July 15, 1984 – On a train between Frankfurt and Würzburg, West Germany

  Well, that could have gone worse, Sigrun thought. But it also could have gone better.

  The conductor steadied himself as the car swayed port to starboard, like a dancer following her partner in time with the music of the train’s wheels. It was the third time he had passed her, and the smile he gave each time lingered just a bit longer than the st.

  Sorry, friend, she thought. You are not for me, and I am definitely not for you.

  She’d left her hat and sungsses in the shop. She dropped the dark wig at the first chance, entering the S-Bahn station with her natural hair still pulled back. She untied it and combed it out with her fingers while she stood on the ptform waiting for the train. Once she reached Frankfurt Central, she bought a new hat and sungsses from one of the station shops. Then she slipped into the WC, stripped off her blouse, and repced it with the one from her bag. She doubted the man who had tried to stop her would remember anything, but old habits die hard.

  Sigrun knew that once she reported what had happened, her time in the West—or at least in Bavaria—would come to an end. They would give her a choice: retirement in the East, or another babysitting assignment. Statistically, she should take retirement. She was well past the point—in age and number of assignments—when most agents were captured or killed. Thirty-seven years was a long time for any vocation. Almost four decades in service to her country. Not to her home, which is how she had framed it in the early days. That idea had dwindled with each passing year in the West. She had long since cast off the party line that the capitalist nations would colpse under their own corruption and inequality. She liked the luxuries of hot water, reliable electricity, and abundant food. After all, she was paid to blend in, to be invisible—just another West German going about her day. And West Germans themselves enjoyed all those things, took them for granted, which Sigrun never did.

  There were worse postings. She had seen most of them. Her home, when she st visited, had been one. Eisleben had never been prosperous, not in her lifetime at least. She had stood across the street from the house she grew up in—and left at seventeen to begin her training. It was decrepit, unchanged since her youth. She had considered knocking on the door and asking to see her old bedroom. Her father was long dead—no longer a threat. Cancer had robbed her of the chance to repay him for years of cruelty to her and her mother. But if any man was spiteful enough to cling to life only to haunt a house, it was him. So she kept her feet pnted on the cracked pavement and stared at the dirty upper window that had once been hers.

  Maybe I’ll ask to be stationed in Cuba, she thought. A change of climate would do me good.

  She looked out the window at the passing scenery. One hand rose almost unbidden to massage the spot on her head that still ached. The other rested inside her bag, fingers folded around the small canister of 15 mm film. Whatever it contained, it would be the st delivery they received from Rainer Voss.

  She hoped it wasn’t pictures from his st holiday.

  “I knew her as Frau Hauser. I would leave a signal if I had something special. Otherwise it was regur drops every six months.”

  They had finally gotten around to the real questions. Rainer didn’t know whether they had expected him to resist, or to cim they had the wrong man. But the woman—whose name he still did not know—didn’t react when her questions were rewarded with immediate answers.

  “What was the signal?” she asked conversationally. She didn’t write anything down. More evidence that they were being recorded. She would get the credit if there was any to be had. Rainer pictured the man with the broken hand fuming, knowing all he would get for his efforts was pain—and probably a desk job until his hand healed.

  “It changed from time to time. The st one was an oddly shaped stone in the park. I would rotate it one hundred eighty degrees when I had something.”

  She nodded, sat back in her chair, and tapped a pen she still hadn’t used against the tabletop.

  “Where would you meet to make your delivery?”

  They had finally given him something to eat and let him use the WC. He’d worried that they had drugged the food, but she had picked up a slice of pizza herself, biting off a rge piece before wiping sauce from her chin.

  “He’s no spy,” she had argued to her superiors before gncing at the man who had smashed the wall—and his hand. She knew his type. Had worked with too many of them, and disliked them all. “He’s no tough guy either. Let me handle it.”

  “That changed as well,” Rainer said now. “We’d meet. I’d hand over whatever I had, she’d hand me the location for the next drop.”

  More pen tapping. “But not this time?”

  He shook his head. “We hadn’t gotten that far. She went to the WC and then you came in.”

  “What did you give her?”

  “Film. Pictures. Of reports. Anomalous radar signatures. That’s all she was interested in. Radar tracking information. Large data dumps every six months. But anything out of the ordinary I was supposed to signal immediately.”

  Several sets of eyebrows went up in the room where the conversation was being monitored and recorded. The woman had no idea why such information was important, or even interesting. But word was already traveling up the BND chain of command that a problem was brewing.

  “Help me out, Rainer. Fill in some bnks for me. You said you work for Germany. Which Germany? And how does this information help?”

  He had to force himself to remain calm. He would only hurt himself if he lost it.

  “There’s only one Germany. And it’s occupied. We are occupied. Split. Between the Americans and the Soviets. They treat us like vassals. They don’t ask, they take. They take what they want. Do what they want. They’re accountable to no one but themselves. Some of us see the truth. Most don’t. They’re too comfortable.”

  His pulse was quickening, his heart rate rising. She could see it in his eyes, in the sweat forming on his forehead.

  “Is it better in the East?” she asked.

  “No. It’s worse. Much worse. But at least they know it. They hate their occupiers. We should hate ours. But we don’t. We fall into their arms every time they ask. We’re worse than whores. We give ourselves away for free.”

  She was no fan of the Americans. The CIA treated the BND like poor retions. So did MI6. But Rainer Voss was getting more emotional by the second, and to her knowledge his job never brought him into contact with Americans of any type.

  “Why do you hate the Americans so much?” she asked.

  It was like a volcano erupting. An explosion of emotion.

  “BECAUSE THEY RAPED MY MOTHER!”

  His face was red as the tears poured out of his eyes and down his cheeks. For a moment she thought the red on his lips was sauce from their dinner before she realized it was blood. He must have bitten something in his mouth. He buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook as he cried.

  Her face remained impassive but her heart was pounding in her chest. For a moment she was totally lost—no idea how to proceed.

  “The Americans?” she asked gently after a moment. The pizza sat like lead in her stomach. She wished now that she hadn’t eaten it.

  “The Russians,” he said through his hands. His voice was still filled with emotion. He took in a sniffling breath through his nose before letting it out as a sob.

  She sat quietly, giving him time.

  “They raped her over and over again. A friend found her afterward, half dead. He smuggled her out of the East, away from the advancing Russian Army. Got her to the American zone. Reported what happened. And what did the Americans do? Nothing. The Russians raped their way across Germany, and the Americans didn’t do anything to stop them.”

  It was all too common a story. She knew that the German army had been just as bad as it crossed the Soviet Union. Were the Americans and the British just as bad? Not by most accounts, but the victors write history. Who knew where the truth y?

  “That’s why you hate the Americans and the Soviets? Because of what happened to your mother?”

  His head nodded, still buried in his hands. But in a moment he sat up, grabbed a paper napkin, and wiped his face.

  “She almost died. Six months it took for her to recover. Physically. She was lucky to be able to have children after that. She still has nightmares.”

  She realized she had been gripping the pen too tightly for too long, and her hand was sending out urgent pleas for release. She rexed her grip and pced the device on the table. Adjusted it so that it was parallel to the table edge while her mind raced.

  Rainer Voss wasn’t a spy. He wasn’t a traitor. He was—much like his mother—a trauma victim.

  “So you fight for Germany,” she said eventually. “How does this fit in with that fight?”

  “Whatever this weapon is, we can’t let the Americans or the Russians have it. It should be ours. With it we can expel the superpowers that want to keep us divided. We can become Germany again. One Germany.”

  Neither of them had any way to know that, in a room a short distance away, several heads were nodding in complete agreement.