Paramour (34 page)

"Did they report any of them helping a woman-"

"They told me three of the four were out of town at the time she would have parked her car there. The fourth was home with the flu."

"Thanks, Charlie," Powers said, coming to his feet.

"This is more than just a routine White House security investigation, isn't it?"

Powers nodded and walked out to his car.

On the way to Frankfurt, Powers listened to a manic army disk jockey play popular music on the American Armed Forces Network. At the northern edge of Frankfurt, he pulled off the highway and wound through the city's eclectic mixture of wide and narrow streets, modern and ancient buildings.

The Frankfurt
Einwohnermeldeamt
was situated in the top three floors of a modern five-story building near the train station. As Powers had learned from working with the German security forces during presidential visits, every city in Germany had an
Einwohnermeldeamt-
a resident
registration office. Every person in the country was required by law to register at the office, and unlike the United States, where some people even balk at answering questions for the national census, virtually everyone complied. There was such an office in each city, and the records contained limited information on every person living in every city residence.

Inside the polished first-floor lobby, Powers crossed a hallway and entered through glass doors. A line of clerks stood behind a long counter. There were short lines at each of the counter stations. Powers made a few inquiries in broken German and was referred to the clerk at the end of the counter. Powers approached the rotund woman. She was wearing a gray skirt and sweater and her dishwater-blond hair was wrapped tightly in a bun. Powers used his broken high school German to ask about obtaining information.

"I speak English," she said officiously. There was a computer screen to her right.

"Is it possible to obtain a list of all Americans living in Frankfurt with the first name Susan?"

"Is it possible? Yes. This information it is possible to come from the computer. There will be too many names, but it is possible."

"May I-"

"Are you German?"

"No."

"It is not allowed for you."

"Do you have the information available?" Powers asked.

"Such information is available in the computer. But you are not a policeman. And you are not German. You are an
Auslädnder.
This information is restricted to you."

"I'm just trying to determine if such information is available in your computer. If it is, I will go through the proper police channels to request it."

She turned and punched up the name SUSAN
and, if he was right, the letters ADK and a control key. Straining his neck slightly, Powers could see the computer screen. It was filled with columns of the name SUSAN.

"Yes. There are many Susans."

"Thank you." Powers moved away, and the next person in line moved to the counter. Loitering at the other end of the lobby, he watched the other clerks as they used their computers, trying to decipher the keys that activated the print function. When he thought he had the procedure down, he left through the glass doors.

Outside, he repositioned his car three blocks away at the edge of a small park, then walked back to the
Einwohnermeldeamt
and went inside. In a hallway just outside the office itself, he sat down on a bench facing glass doors leading into the service lobby.

An hour and twenty minutes later, the woman he'd spoken with left her position. Powers stood up and went back inside. Without hesitation, he walked across the lobby to the end of the counter, stepped over the wooden gate, and punched keys on the computer. The name SUSAN
appeared on the screen, then columns of full names with addresses. He punched the print key. The printer activated and began to print. Employees were staring at him. A young man with thick glasses asked what he was doing in German. Powers just stared at the man as the printed paper reached the floor.

The man picked up a telephone and made a call. Finally, the machine stopped printing. The man grabbed him by the arm as if to usher him out of the work area. Powers resisted. The woman clerk hurried from across the lobby. She screamed something in German and shouted, "You go away!" over and over again, as if Powers was deaf.

Powers shoved the man aside and tore the long page from the printer. The woman and the man both tried to grab the paper out of his hands as Powers backed away. Then he turned and ran out the door. Outside, he ran around the corner and down an alley. Coming to the next street, he stopped running and walked briskly to avoid calling attention to himself on his way to the park. There, he looked around carefully to make sure no one was following him and climbed into the car.

Powers drove a few blocks and parked near a sidewalk café. He took out the list. There were more than two hundred names, each listed with a date of birth, occupation, and physical description including height, weight, and color of eyes, and a Frankfurt address.

Checking the dates-of-birth column, Powers drew lines through more than three fourths of the names. Of the remaining ones, he was able to eliminate about half by height and weight, omitting color of hair and eyes because he knew women often changed the color of their hair and that eye color was often wrong on official documents.

Finally, there were thirty-seven names remaining. For the rest of the day, using a map he purchased at a bookstore, he made his way from one location to another. He was able to eliminate the first ten locations he went to. Either the Susan was home and he would politely tell her he had the wrong address and excuse himself or, if she wasn't, he'd show the Polaroid photograph of Marilyn Kasindorf to a neighbor.

No one recognized her.

By 9 P.M., his feet and back hurt and he was starting to have doubts about the entire endeavor. After all, he was following up a bit of information that could be totally meaningless. The name Susan was probably just a cover name Marilyn had given Winona Alberts. Or maybe Susan was a second name ... or God only knows.

One of the last fifteen names on the list, Susan Brewster, was listed as living in apartment 403 at 8 Kohlengasse, a side street joining the wide Mainzer Landstrasse. Kohlengasse 8 was a modern, ten-story graystone building, each apartment having its own sliding glass door leading onto a narrow balcony.

The front door of the building was open, and he entered a large lobby whose brown utilitarian carpeting he imagined was chosen because it would easily hide winter mud stains. The walls were undecorated and there was the strong odor of fresh paint. It was a busy place, and a steady stream of people were entering the building: a young German man, an older couple, a couple of East Indians whom Powers guessed to be university students, a tanned young German army lieutenant in dress uniform.

On the fourth floor, Powers stepped out of the elevator and moved down the hallway. At apartment 403, he touched his ear to the door. There was the sound of music coming from inside-vocalist Matt Monro singing "My Kind of Girl"-and someone was moving about, perhaps in the kitchen.

He knocked. There was the sound of footsteps.

"Wer ist da?"
a woman said.

"Susan Brewster?
"

The lock turned and a young woman wearing a loose-fitting purple Adidas jogging suit opened the chain-locked door a few inches. Her platinum-blond hair was in a pixie cut and she was wearing eyeglasses with European designer frames. There was something familiar about her.

"Are you Susan Brewster?"

Because of the chain, the door was only open a few inches and she remained half hidden. "Yes," she said.

"I'm Jack Powers. I'd like to ask you a few questions. May I come in?"

"No."

"I've come here from Washington, DC, and I need to speak with you."

"I don't allow strangers in my apartment," she said. There was a thick nervousness in her voice. Was it Marilyn's voice? Powers's breathing quickened and he had a sudden unexplainable sense of anxiety, an excitement he felt deep in his loins. Was it the smell of Marilyn's perfume?

"Do you know Marilyn Kasindorf?"

"No," she said quietly. "Is there anything else?"
It
was Marilyn's voice.

"Marilyn?" he said, studying her features closely.

"There is no Marilyn here." She slammed the door.

Powers, feeling heat rush to his face and limbs, stepped back and kicked the door handle powerfully. The door flew open. He stepped inside.

She was standing in the middle of the living room, her hands covering her mouth.

The facial structure, the complexion-"I know it's you, Marilyn."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You made a fool of me. You played me for a sucker."

"I don't know who you think I am, but you're wrong. Please go away."

The living room was furnished with a white Danish-modern sofa with overstuffed pillows, a lounge chair, and a wide glass coffee table. On a tile-topped island separating the kitchen from the living room was a large bowl of papier-mâché fruit in garish, almost fluorescent colors. On the wall was a large abstract tapestry: a rectangle of black and green splashes surrounded by a thick border of iridescent red.

She backed away from him fearfully. At the coffee table, she turned and grabbed a telephone receiver. "I'm going to call the police."

"Go ahead. Tell 'em you're an American CIA agent who staged her own defection and is living here under an assumed name."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Please leave me alone. You have the wrong person."

"Do you actually think that because you've cut and dyed your hair I wouldn't know it was you?"

"Who do you think I am?"

"Marilyn Kasindorf."

"My name is Susan Brewster."

"Why aren't you dialing the police?"

She set the receiver down. "You've made a mistake. If you leave right now I won't call the police."

He grabbed her and tore open her blouse. The scar was there on her shoulder. "A scar is a bad thing for a spy to have."

Covering herself, she pulled away from him. There was a long silence.

"What do you want from me?" she said finally, her voice cracking.

"An explanation."

"There's nothing to say."

"I fell for you and you humiliated me."

"Please go away."

"I was forced to resign from my job."

"I'm sorry about everything," she said stiffly.

"I'm not leaving until you give it to me by the numbers," Powers said. "The whole story from beginning to end."

She cleared her throat. "Anything I say is only going to get me in trouble."

"Now, tell me right now. I want to know exactly what the hell is going on."

"Everything I did was authorized-"

"What's that supposed to mean?" he interrupted. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"By the ... U.S. government. What I did was official business. That's all I'm going to say."

"Are you telling me someone ordered you to stage your own defection?"

"Yes. I'm sorry you-got caught up in all this. I mean that." There were tears in her eyes.