The Lie (12 page)

Jimmy Dunster opened his eyes. He saw the silvered curtains at the window and the moon as a cold stone over Washington. Maggie
lay asleep at his side, the soft rhythm of her breathing rising from her part of the bed. Waiting for the weight to leave
his chest, Dunster held still so as not to wake his wife. These incidents frightened her. They frightened him too, but
her
fear was harder for him to take.

Then the pain came, and the feeling of suffocation, and he knew he was not going to get away with it very easily this time.
The nitro pills were on his bedside table, but it took effort just to move and he could feel his heart skipping around inside
like a small nervous animal. When he arched upward to meet the pain, he woke his wife.

“What is it, love?”

She was up on one elbow, blinking at him through the translucent dark. She saw what it was and an instant later she was out
of bed and moving to his side. The floor seemed to pitch under her feet, but she caught her balance and got hold of her husband’s
pills.

“Open your mouth,” she said, and put a pill under his tongue, where it would quickly dissolve.

Then Maggie Dunster lay close beside him, her body leaden on her bones. She imagined his heart kicking in his chest, bringing
him pain, and she willed it to be still. After a few moments she felt his body relax, each part of it—chest, arms, legs—and
he was back with her.

Still, she needed to hear it from him.

“All right?” she asked.

“Fine,” he told her, and pressed her hand.

“Was it a bad one?”

“There are no good ones. I guess it was about middle range.”

Maggie saw his face glinting with sweat and she dried it with the edge of her gown. She held herself close against him and
silently wept.

“I’m fine,” he told her again for reassurance.

“What are we going to do, love?”

“Just what we’re doing.”

“Yes, but for how long?”

“As long as we have to.”

“I don’t know what that means anymore,” she said.

The president took a long, deep breath. “It means it’s under control and there’s no immediate danger. If it ever does get
any worse, there’s always the bypass.”

He said it gently and almost by rote. He had been saying it often lately.

“We both know that’s more of a political than a medical judgment,” Maggie said.

Dunster stared dimly in the direction of the ceiling. She was right, of course. Had he not been president, with all that the
office entailed, he would have been operated on weeks or even months ago. For him to enter Walter Reed for possible life-threatening
surgery, followed by an indefinite period of convalescence and daily medical bulletins, would reduce the remainder of his
term to a lame-duck shambles. As it was, only he, Maggie, and his personal physician knew about his occasional attacks of
angina, and he intended to keep it that way for as long as he possibly could.

They lay quietly beside each other with their thoughts.

Maggie was the first to speak. “Do you love me?” she asked.

Jimmy Dunster smiled and for an instant he was full of peace. “It depends on what you’re about to ask me to do to provent.”

“It’s easy. Just stay away from Wannsee.”

He turned to look at her.

“I mean it, Jimmy.”

“I know you do.”

Maggie was silent.

“You’re making too much of this whole thing,” he said.

“Am I?” Her voice sounded cold and angry to her, not how she wanted to sound. “And all this time I thought
you
were the one making too much of it.”

Dunster sighed.

“Don’t you dare sigh at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like a long-suffering husband with a nagging wife.”

He laughed.

“And don’t laugh at me either.”

“All right,” he said.

“It’s not all right. It’s all wrong. I’m so frustrated and frightened I feel sick.”

“Just because of a brief trip to Berlin and a little harmless speech-making?”

“If that’s all it was, I wouldn’t mind. It’s what you’ve turned it into that terrifies me.”

“What have I turned it into?”

“A mission from God.”

Jimmy Dunster considered his wife in the reflected light of the moon. About to reply with a flip remark, he thought better
of it. “Come on, Maggie. Aren’t you getting a little carried away?”

“Think about it, love.” She spoke more quietly now, working against her creeping panic. “All you lack is your own burning
bush. They’ll just break your heart for your trouble and ship you home in a box. Only I won’t be here to sign for you.”

Maggie paused. “Do you know where I’ll be? Right there where they finished you. At lovely, historic Wannsee. History’s ultimate
charnel house.”

“Maggie, you can’t go with me.”

“The devil I can’t. From here on, and until you’re either dead or check into Walter Reed for surgery, you’re not going anywhere
for a single night without me along to feed you your little nitro fix.”

Maggie Dunster glared through the dark, engulfed by love, fear, and a sudden, icy fury. “If you so much as try to stop me,
I swear to God you’ll find yourself reading about your secret angina and plans for Wannsee on the front page of the
New York Times
.”

Later, Maggie was calmer as she lay beside her husband, guarding him in his sleep.

That poor, imperfect, struggling heart. One of these days, she knew, the pills were not going to work. She mocked the intensity
of his spirit, yet she loved it. But hearts could be pushed only so far.

B
ERLIN WAS STILL
B
ERLIN
to Paulie Walters, and at best he had never been comfortable in the city. Too many Germans, he thought, and had to admit
to one of his uglier areas of lingering bias.

Stop being stupid, he told himself.

So he concentrated instead on the map and street signs that he hoped would bring him a bit closer to Klaus Logefeld.

He had just driven in from Tempelhof International Airport; a fine rain was settling over the roads as he headed for the western
rim of the city. Klaus Logefeld intruded, his presence almost shadowlike on the windshield. Paulie tried to make something
of it, tried to put together some sort of face. But he could not even begin to imagine what the German looked like. All he
could do was try to trace him through one or more of the four names that Tommy Cortlandt had given him, along with addresses
listed in three different cities.

For Berlin, the old comrade’s name was Dieter Hoffman. His address, 97 Olbers Strasse. According to the map, it was only about
ten miles from Tempelhof.

The place was a half-timbered, stucco house with an attached carpentry and general woodworking shop.

A young, heavyset woman was working at a desk in a small, glass-enclosed office. She had a playpen set up in a corner, with
a child asleep in it. There were the sounds of sawing
and hammering, and Paulie looked through the glass and saw men working in back.

The woman glanced up and smiled at him. “Good morning,” she said in German.

“Good morning. I’m looking for Dieter Hoffman.” Paulie’s response was in German.

“Ah, you’re American,” she said, switching to English.

“My German is that bad?”

“No, no. It’s very good. In fact, excellent.”

“You mean for an American?”

She laughed. “I’m sure it’s better than my English. Does Dieter expect you?”

“I doubt it.”

“Do you know him?”

Paulie shook his head.

The woman turned and pointed through the glass. “That’s Dieter back there with the power saw. The big fellow. Go right in.”

A husky, balding man with light gray eyes, Hoffman stopped working and switched off his saw as Paulie Walters approached.

“The lady in the office said it was OK,” Paulie told him, starting right off with English this time.

Dieter Hoffman grinned. “The lady in the office is my wife. Everything is OK with her. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for a man you used to know,” said Paulie.

“What are you? An American cop?”

“No.” Paulie took out the business card of a New York law firm and handed it to the carpenter.

“You mean you’ve come all the way from”—Hoffman glanced at the card—“Park Avenue, New York, to find a man you say I used to
know?”

Paulie breathed the fragrance of fresh-cut wood. “That’s right.”

“He must be a very important man.”

“He might be. I don’t know. The only thing that’s important to me right now is that I find him.”

Hoffman looked at the men drilling, hammering, and sanding wood around them. “Let’s go where we can talk.”

He led Paulie into a back room that had a table, chairs, and a Coke machine and shut the door. By the time they were seated
at the table, Hoffman’s initially friendly face had turned cautious.

“So are you going to tell me this man’s name, or what?”

“It’s Klaus Logefeld,” said Paulie.

The carpenter’s pale eyes were cool and steady. “What do you suddenly want Klaus for?”

“Nothing bad, Mr. Hoffman. My firm represents the estate of his late aunt, who lived in New York. The woman died not long
ago and left Klaus a considerable sum of money. All I’m trying to do is see that he gets it. We have no valid address and
I have to find him first.”

Hoffman nodded as though settling something within himself.

“I don’t know where Klaus is, mister,” he said. “I haven’t seen or heard from him in about eighteen years. So I’m afraid I
can’t help you give him all that nice money from his aunt.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Paulie. “When you did see him last, would you mind telling me exactly where it was?”

“Right here in Berlin.” Hoffman paused. “As if you didn’t know.”

Paulie ignored the addendum. “Did anything in particular happen at that time?” he asked.

Dieter Hoffman stared at him. “You mean like that big bombing near the Tiergarten where five people were killed and Klaus
and I were among those picked up afterward?”

The carpenter’s voice was soft, but Paulie could feel the stopped-up anger in it.

“I don’t know who you are or what you’re after,” said Hoffman. “But you don’t have to play these fucking games with me. I’ve
got nothing to hide.”

“I never said you did.”

“You don’t have to goddamn say it. You’re here questioning me, aren’t you?”

Paulie studied the carpenter’s face, watching his needs grow. “Listen,” said Hoffman. “You’re looking at the luckiest sonofabitch
in the world. From where I once was, I could have been dead or in jail a hundred times. Look where I am now.”

Paulie looked around.

“I mean I’ve got a goddamn dream life. I’ve got a wife I’m crazy about, a kid I could eat up, and a business that’s getting
better by the day. Do you know why I’ve got all these things?”

Paulie shook his head.

“Because I woke up one morning, looked at my fucking pissed-off face in the mirror, and decided I’d had enough.”

“Enough of what?”

“Of trying to change the world into what it’s not and can never be.”

Dieter Hoffman took a deep breath. “The point of all this is that I know you’re real bad news and I just want you to forget
about me in connection with Klaus Logefeld and whatever we once were and tried to do.”

“And Klaus?” asked Paulie. “Do you think he feels as you do?”

“What I think,” Hoffman said, “is that Klaus is not me.”

“Which means what?”

“That the crazy bastard is either still trying to change the world or he’s dead.”

“You sound as if you hate him.”

Hoffman looked surprised. “Where did you get that idea? Hey, I love the guy. Always did and always will.”

“Then why did you break away?”

“Simple. I just wasn’t ready to die with him.”

Paulie Walters arrived at Wannsee in the late morning, just as the sun broke through the last of the clouds. He parked among
a bunch of cars and tour buses and strolled casually about the grounds. Everything looked fresh and green in the sunlight,
with the women in their summer clothing adding their own brightness. Paulie saw two uniformed guards walking beside a perimeter
wall, and another guard posted at the entrance gate. They were the only visible security.

Finished surveying the grounds, Paulie entered a main-floor office where he presented CIA credentials under the name of John
Hendricks to a tall, trim man in a gray uniform who introduced himself as Major Dechen, the chief of security, and welcomed
him in impeccable English.

Paulie sat down to the smell of pine-scented air freshener. “When did you receive word I was coming, Major?”

“Yesterday.”

“Were there any special instructions?”

“Just to offer you every courtesy and make sure your identity is kept quiet.”

“You understand that includes staff and anyone else connected with the conference?”

“Yes, sir. But you needn’t worry about that, Mr. Hendricks. In large, multinational meetings of this sort everyone arrives
with their own security needs. One way or another, they’re handled.”

“Any particular worries about this one?”

“Only my normal nightmares.”

“Which are?”

“Either a truckload of dynamite crashing the building or a low-flying plane coming in fast under the radar with a couple of
thousand-pounders.”

“What are your defenses against them?”

“Mostly prayer.”

He said it with a straight face, and Paulie liked that. “If that fails?”

“Concrete barriers on the land approaches, heat-seeking missiles covering the immediate airspace.”

“What’s your estimated effectiveness for all that?”

“About ninety percent. Unless we get some crazy kamikazes coming in. Then we drop to seventy. But I’m not really looking for
any of that heavy-hitting for the thirteenth. So most of our concentration will be small-scale and interior. There’ll be the
usual body checks and metal detectors covering everyone for weapons as they enter the building. All security People will be
issued special lapel badges no earlier than an hour before the first delegates are due to arrive.”