The Apocalypse Watch (12 page)

The man known in covert operations as Sting trudged through the knee-deep snow untrampled by preceding
feet, breathlessly hoping he would see the first of the marks he had made weeks before—
years
ago in his mind—when he was first escorted to the hidden valley. There it was! Two broken limbs of a sapling that would not rejuvenate until spring. The small tree had been on the left, the next marking was on the right, a descending, diagonal right.… Three hundred yards later, his face hot and flushed, his legs freezing, he saw it! The branch of an alpine spruce he had snapped; it was still angled downward, its remnant dried, devoid of sap. The mountain road between the two alpine villages was less than five miles away, most of it downhill. He would make it. He
had
to!

Finally, his feet in ice-cold agony, his body bent over in pain, he did. He sat down and massaged his legs, his hands scraped by his half-frozen trousers, when a truck appeared on the left. He propelled himself to his feet, staggered into the road, and violently waved his arms in the beams of the headlights. The truck stopped.

“
Hilfe!
” he yelled in German. “My car went off the road!”

“No explanations, please,” said the bearded driver in accented English. “I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve driven up and down this road for the past three days, hour after hour.”

“Who
are
you?” asked Harry, climbing into the seat.

“Your deliverance, as the British say,” replied the driver, chuckling.

“You
knew
I was coming out?”

“We have a spy in the hidden valley, although we have no idea where it is. She, like everyone else, was taken there blindfolded.”

“How did she
know
?”

“She’s a nurse in the hospital down there, a nurse when she isn’t ordered to copulate with another Aryan
Brüder
so to produce a new Sonnenkind. She watched you, saw you folding pieces of paper and sewing them into your clothes—”

“But
how
?” interrupted Latham/Lassiter.

“Your rooms have hidden cameras.”

“How did she get word to you?”

“All the Sonnenkinder are permitted, even ordered, to reach parents or relatives to explain their absences with pleasant fictitious stories. Without those explanations, the
Oberführer
fear exposure, as with your American cults, who barricade themselves in other mountains and valleys. She reached her ‘parents,’ and with precise codes told us the American would be leaving, the precise day or time she couldn’t know, but you were definitely going to escape imminently.”

“The evacuation—and it is just that—was my way out.”

“Whatever, you’re here and on your way to Burghausen. From our humble headquarters there you may reach whomever you like. You see, we are the Antinayous.”

“The
who
?”

“The opposite of the one who, under the nom de plume of Caracalla, slaughtered twenty thousand Romans who opposed his despotic rule, according to the historian Dio Cassius.”

“I’ve heard of Caracalla, Dio Cassius as well, but I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

“Then you are not a serious student of Roman history.”

“No, I’m not.”

“So we’ll bring it up-to-date, in another context, in another reversal,
ja
?”

“Whatever you say.”

“Anglicized, we are anti-Nyoss,
ja
?”

“Okay.”

“Substitute ‘neos’ for ‘nyoss,’
h’okay
?”

“Sure.”

“Then what have you got? Anti-neos,
nicht wahr
? Anti-neo-
Nazis
. That’s who we are!”

“Why do you have to hide under an obscure name?”

“Why do
they
hide under the secret name of the Brüderschaft?”

“What has one got to do with the other?”

“Secrecy must match secrecy!”

“Why? You’re legitimate.”

“We battle our enemy both above the ground and underneath the dirt.”

“I’ve been there,” said Harry Latham, falling back into the seat. “And I still don’t understand you.”

“Why did you leave?” asked Drew, having gotten Karin de Vries’s telephone number from security.

“There wasn’t anything more to say,” replied the D and R researcher.

“There was a
hell
of a lot more to say, and you know it.”

“Please check my clearance files, and if anything upsets you, report it.”

“Forget that crap! Harry’s
alive
! After three years under cover, he escaped and he’s on his way back!”

“
Mom Dieu
. I cannot tell you how happy, how
relieved
I am!”

“You knew all along what my brother was doing, didn’t you?”

“Not on the telephone, Drew Latham. Come to my flat on the rue Madeleine. It is twenty-six, apartment five.”

Drew gave the number to Durbane in Communications, grabbed his jacket, and raced out to the Deuxième car, which was now his constant companion. “Rue Madeleine,” he said. “Number twenty-six.”

“A nice neighborhood,” said the driver, starting the unmarked vehicle.

The apartment on rue Madeleine added another dimension to the enigma that was Karin de Vries. Not only was it large, it was tastefully, expensively appointed; the furniture, the drapes, and the paintings were far beyond the salary of an embassy employee.

“My husband was not a poor man,” said the widow, noting Drew’s reactions to the decor. “He not only played the part of a diamond merchant, he actively participated, and with his usual élan.”

“He must have been some kind of fellow.”

“And then something beyond that,” added De Vries
without a comment in her voice. “Please, sit down, Monsieur Latham. May I offer you a drink?”

“Considering the sour wine at the café of your choice, I gratefully accept.”

“I do have Scotch whisky.”

“Then I more than accept, I beg.”

“No need to,” said De Vries, laughing softly and walking to a mirrored bar. “Freddie taught me to always keep four libations on hand,” she continued, opening an ice bucket, a bottle, and pouring a drink. “Red wine at room temperature, white wine chilled—one full bodied, the other dry, and both of good quality—as well as Scotch whisky for the English and bourbon for the Americans.”

“What about the Germans?”

“Beer, the quality unimportant, for he said they’d drink anything. But then, as I told you, he was extremely bigoted.”

“He must have known other Germans.”

“
Natürlich
. He insisted they had a fetish for imitating the British. ‘Whisky’—which is Scotch—without ice, and although they prefer ice, they deny it.” She brought Drew his glass and, gesturing at a chair, said, “Sit down, Monsieur Latham, we have several things to discuss.”

“Actually, that’s my line,” said Drew, sitting in a soft leather armchair across from the light-green velveteen couch preferred by Karin de Vries. “You won’t join me?” he asked, partially raising his glass.

“Perhaps later—if there is a later.”

“You’re one hell of a puzzle, lady.”

“From where you sit I’m sure I appear so. However, looking over at you, I am simplicity itself. It’s you who are the puzzle. You and the American intelligence community.”

“I think that remark requires an explanation, Mrs. de Vries.”

“Of course it does, and you shall have it. You send a man out under the deepest cover, an extraordinarily talented operative fluent in five or six languages, and you keep his existence so secret here in Europe,
so
secret, he has no protection, no one he can reach as a control, for no
one has the authority, much less the responsibility, to advise him.”

“Harry always had the option to pull out,” protested Latham. “He traveled all over Europe and the Middle East. He could have stopped anywhere, picked up a phone, called Washington, and said, ‘This is it, I’m finished.’ He wouldn’t have been the first deep cover to have done that.”

“Then you don’t know your own brother.”

“What do you mean? For Christ’s sake, I grew
up
with him.”

“Professionally?”

“No, not that way. We’re in separate branches.”

“Then you truly have no idea what a bloodhound he is.”

“Bloodhound …?”

“As fanatic in his pursuits as the fanatics he was pursuing.”

“He didn’t like Nazis, who does?”

“That’s not my point, monsieur. When Harry was a control, he had assets in East Germany, paid by the Americans, who fed him information that dictated his orders to his runners, runners like my husband. Your brother had no such advantage this last time. He was alone.”

“He
had
to be. It was the nature of the operation, total isolation. There couldn’t be the slightest possible trace. Even I didn’t know his cover name. What
is
your point?”

“Harry had no assets over here, but his enemy has assets in Washington.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“You rightly assumed that I knew about your brother’s assignment. Incidentally, his cover name was Lassiter, Alexander Lassiter.”

“
What?
” Astonished, Latham shot forward in the chair. “Where did you get that information?”

“Since even you didn’t know the name he was using, where else? The enemy, of course, a member of the Brotherhood—that’s the name they use.”

“This is getting awfully sticky, lady. Another explanation, please.”

“Only partial. Some things you’ll have to accept on faith. For my own protection.”

“I haven’t got much faith, even less now, so let’s start with the partial. Then I’ll tell you whether you still have a job or not.”

“Considering my contributions, that’s hardly fair—”

“Give it a try,” interrupted Drew sharply.

“Freddie and I kept a flat in Amsterdam, in his name, naturally, an apartment commensurate with his wealth as a young entrepreneur in the diamond trade. Whenever our schedules permitted, we’d be together there, but I was always, shall we say, a far different woman from the one they saw at NATO … from the one you see here at the embassy. I dressed fashionably, even extravagantly, and wore a blond wig and a great deal of jewelry—”

“You were living a double life,” interrupted Latham again, nodding, again impatient.

“It was obviously necessary.”

“Conceded. And?”

“We entertained—not frequently, and only with Freddie’s most vital contacts—but I was in evidence as his wife.… I must stop here and explain something to you, even though you undoubtedly know it. Whenever powerful government policing agencies are duped by externals, they will, of course, get rid of the penetrators by execution or by inverted compromise, thus causing them to be killed by their own people as double agents, do you agree?”

“I’ve heard about it, that’s as far as I’ll go.”

“But the one thing they will not suffer is embarrassment, the admission that they
were
penetrated; those occasions were kept intensely private, even within their own organizations.”

“I’ve heard about that too.”

“It happened in the Stasi. After Frederik was killed and the Wall came down, a number of his important East German contacts continuously left messages on our telephone answering machine, pleading for meetings with Freddie. I accepted several, in my role as his wife. Two men, the first being the fourth highest ranking officer in the Stasi, and the other, a code breaker as well as a convicted rapist
exonerated by his superiors, had been recruited by the Brotherhood. They came to see Frederik to reconvert their diamonds into currency. As with others, I dined them and filled them with alcohol—laced with powders Freddie always insisted I have in a sugar bowl—and as these two tried to make love to me, each telling me how important he was, they both drunkenly revealed
why
they were so important.”

“My brother Harry,” said Drew in a monotone.

“Yes. Under my prodding, each spoke of an American agent called Lassiter, whom the Brotherhood knew about and were prepared for.”

“How did you know it was
Harry
?”

“The clearest way possible. My first questions were innocuous, but I grew more specific with time—Freddie always claimed that was the best way, especially with alcohol and the powders. Eventually, each man said essentially the same words. They were as follows: ‘His real name is Harry Latham, Central Intelligence, Clandestine Operations, Project Time—two years plus, Code Sting, all information deleted from computers at Level AA-Zero.’ ”

“
Jesus!
That had to come from the top, the
very
top! AA-Zero doesn’t go far down the hall from the director’s office.… That’s pretty outrageous, Mrs. de Vries.”

“Since I had, and have, no idea what AA-Zero means, I submit it is the truth. Those were the words I heard, the reason I requested the transfer to Paris.… Do I still have my job, monsieur?”

“It’s solid as a rock. Only there’s a new wrinkle.”

“Wrinkle? I understand the word, but how do you apply it?”

“You’ll remain in D and R, but you’re now part of Consular Operations.”

“Why?”

“Among other things, you’ll have to sign a sworn affidavit that says you won’t divulge the information you’ve just given me, and it also spells out thirty years in an American prison if you do.”

“And if I refuse to sign such a document?”

“Then you’re the enemy.”

“
Good!
I like that. It is precise.”

“Let’s be more precise,” said Latham, his eyes locked with Karin de Vries’s. “If you turn, or you
are
turned, there’s no appeal. Do you understand?”

“With all my intellect and with all my heart, monsieur.”

“Now it’s my turn to ask. Why?”

“It’s really quite simple. For several years my marriage was a gift from God, a man I adored loved me as I loved him. Then I saw that man crippled by hatred, not blind hatred, but hate seen clearly with wide-open eyes, focused on a reemerging enemy that had destroyed his family—his parents and their parents before them. That glorious, ebullient young man I married deserved far better than was meted out to him. It’s now my turn to fight his enemy, the enemy of all of us.”