At eight she walked into the KGB headquarters building half a mile from the embassy and made her way to the Communications Office. They would be able to call Potsdam and confirm that the flight schedule was unchanged. While waiting for her information, she took coffee and shared a table with a young lieutenant who was plainly very tired and yawned often.
“Up all night?” she asked.
“Yep. Night shift. The krauts have been in a flap the whole time.”
He did not use her title because she was in plain clothes, and the word he used for the East Germans was uncomplimentary. The Russians all did that.
“Why?” she asked.
“Oh, they intercepted a West German car and found a secret cavity in it. Reckon it was being used by one of their agents.”
“Here in Berlin?”
“No, down at Jena.”
“Where is Jena, exactly?”
“Look, love, my shift’s over. I’m off to get some sleep.”
She smiled sweetly, opened her purse, and flashed her red-covered ID card. The Lieutenant stopped yawning and went pale. A full major of the Third Directorate was very bad news indeed. He showed her—on the wall map at the end of the canteen. She let him go and stayed looking at the map. Zwickau, Gera, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt—all in a line, a line followed by the convoy of the man she hunted. Yesterday ... Erfurt. And Jena fourteen miles away. Close, too damned close.
Ten minutes later, a Soviet Major was briefing her on the way the East Germans worked.
“By now, it will be with their Abteilung II,” he said. “That’s Colonel Voss, Otto Voss. He’ll be in charge.”
She used his office phone, pulled some rank, and secured an interview at the Lichtenberg headquarters at the SSD with Colonel Voss. Ten o’clock.
At nine, London time, McCready took his seat at the table in the conference room one floor below the Chief’s office at Century House. Claudia Stuart was opposite, looking at him reproachfully. Chris Appleyard, who had flown to London to escort the Soviet War Book personally back to Langley, smoked and stared at the ceiling. His attitude seemed to be: This is a limey affair. You screwed it up, you sort it out. Timothy Edwards took the chair at the head, a sort of arbitrator. There was only one unspoken agenda: damage assessment. Damage limitation, if any was possible, would come later. No one needed to be briefed as to what had happened; they had all read the file of intercepts and the situation reports.
“All right,” said Edwards. “It appears your man Poltergeist has come apart at the seams and blown the mission away. Let’s see if there’s anything we can salvage from the mess.”
“Why the hell did you send him, Sam?” asked Claudia in exasperation.
“You know why. Because you wanted a job done,” said McCready. “Because you couldn’t do it yourselves. Because it was a rush job. Because I was stopped from going myself. Because Pankratin insisted on me personally. Because Poltergeist would be the only acceptable substitute. Because he agreed to go.”
“But now it appears,” drawled Appleyard, “that he had just killed his hooker girlfriend and was already at the end of his tether. You didn’t spot anything?”
“No. He appeared nervous but under control. Nerves are normal—up to a point. He didn’t tell me about his personal mess, and I’m not clairvoyant.”
“The damned thing is,” said Claudia, “he’s seen Pankratin. When the Stasi get him and go to work, he’ll talk. We’ve lost Pankratin as well, and God knows how much damage his interrogation in the Lubyanka will do.”
“Where is Pankratin now?” asked Edwards.
“According to his schedule, he’s boarding a military flight from Potsdam to Moscow right about now.”
“Can’t you get to him and warn him?”
“No, dammit. When he lands, he’s taking a week’s furlough. With army friends in the countryside. We can’t get our emergency warning code to him till he gets back to Moscow— if he ever does.”
“What about the War Book?” asked Edwards.
“I think Poltergeist’s got it on him,” said McCready.
He got their undivided attention. Appleyard stopped smoking.
“Why?”
“Timing,” said McCready. “The rendezvous was at twelve. Assume he quit the lay-by at about twelve-twenty. The crash was at twelve-thirty, ten minutes and five miles away, on the othe