“It feels good. Doubly good because it must annoy you so much to watch me walk away.” He made an elegant and ironic gesture with the glass and tossed it back Russian style, one gulp, and I watched his eyes close with the pleasure of it — it was the first drink of first-class home-style booze he’d had in a dozen years.
I said, “Did you ever find out what led me to you in Arlington in the first place?”
“Does it matter?”
“It was a trivial error.”
“Humans make them.”
“Yes. But I have the feeling you’ll make the same mistake again — the same weakness will trip you up next time.” I smiled. “In fact I’m sure of it.”
“Would you care to bet on it, Dark?”
“Sure.”
“How much, then?”
“Your freedom,” I said.
He was amused. “We’ll never meet again, unless it’s in an East German prison — you inside, me outside.”
“I’ll take the bet, Stossel.” I turned to watch the Viscount taxi toward the terminal. “I’d like you to memorize a telephone number. It’s here in the Western sector.”
“What for?”
“You may want to get in touch with me.” I gave him the number: I repeated it three times and knew he wouldn’t forget it — he had an excellent memory for numbers.
He laughed. “I can’t conceive of—”
The phone rang, interrupting him. I went to the bar to answer it. Listened, spoke, then turned to Stossel. “The car’s here.”
“I’m ready.”
“Then let’s go.”
I stood on the safe side of Checkpoint Charlie with my hatbrim down and my collar up against the fine night drizzle and watched the big Opel slide through the barriers. The Wall loomed grotesquely. Stossel emerged from the car at the DDR booth and I saw him shake hands with the raincoated delegation of East German officials. They were minor functionaries, police types, Vopos in the background in their uniforms; near me stood an American TV crew with a portable camera, filming the scene for tomorrow’s news. It was all bleak and foreign-intriguish; I hoped they were using black-and-white. The East Germans bundled Stossel into a dark Zis limousine and when it disappeared I walked back to Davidson’s Volkswagen and squeezed into the passenger seat.
Davidson put it in gear. “Where to?”
“Bristol Kempinski.”
On the way to the hotel he tried to pump me about my plans. Davidson is the chief of the Berlin station; Myerson hadn’t had any choice but to brief him on my mission because there’d have been a flap otherwise — jurisdictional jealousies are rampant in the Company and never more ferocious than on the ultra-active stations like Berlin. Myerson had been forced to reveal my mission to Davidson, if only to reassure him that I wasn’t horning in on any of his own works-in-progress. But he knew none of the tactical details and he was seething to find out. I had to fend him off without putting his nose too far out of joint. I didn’t enjoy it; I’m no good at it — I’m an accomplished liar but that sort of diplomatic deceit is not quite lying and I lack the patience for it. In any case I was tired from the long flight and from the adrenalin that had shot through me during the crucial stage of the set up. If it had gone wrong at that moment.... But it hadn’t and I was still on course and running.
In the hotel room I ordered a huge dinner sent up. Davidson had eaten earlier but he stubbornly hovered, still prying for information, watching with amazement and ill-concealed disgust while I demolished the enormous meal. He shared the wine with me; it was a fair Moselle.
“What did you want from that Air Force colonel who met you at the airport?”
“Look, Arthur, I don’t mean to be an obstructionist, I know it’s your bailiwick but the operation’s classiffied on a need-to-know basis and if you can get authorization from Langley then I’ll be happy to fill you in on the tedious details. Right now my hands are tied. I ask you to understand and sympathize.”
Finally he went away after making it clear he intended to file a complaint. I was relieved to see his back. I tumbled into the luxurious bed and was instantly asleep.
There wasn’t much I could do but wait for the phone. I had to spend the time in the hotel room: Some discreet machinations had taken place, through Davidson’s offices, to get the private phone line installed on short notice. I might have been in prison for all the freedom of movement I had; it made me think of Stossel with irony. At least I had a comfortable cell; it was why I’d picked the Bristol Kempinski — Old World elegance, hot and cold running everything.
I caught up on reading, watched some soporifically slow German television programs, enticed Davidson and some others into a sixteen-hour poker game that cost them, collectively, some four hundred dollars, and growled at the phone frequently in an effort to will it to ring.
The television brought me news of the hijack story in South America. All their other demands having been met, the hijackers forced the aircrew to fly them to Buenos Aires on the first leg of a journey to North Africa. While the plane was refueling at Buenos Aires a gang of Argentinean commandoes got aboard in maintenance coveralls, isolated the hijackers neatly and brought the caper to its end; passengers and crew were released unharmed; two hijackers dead, three wounded and captured. Case closed.
About that time I had a blistering phone call from Myerson. “Are you still sitting on your four-acre duff? You’re free to go in and get him now.”
“I’ve still got jet lag. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Damn you—”
“You want it done properly, don’t you?”
“The pressure’s on me.”
“Live with it.” I rang off, amused and pleased. I hadn’t revealed my plan to him. Let him stew. I summoned a whopping great lunch from room service.
Between me and Myerson lies the unspoken understanding that he has half his hopes pinned on my accomplishing the objective and the other half pinned on my falling flat on my big face. I’m uncertain which of the prospects gives him the greater anticipatory thrill.
By the fourth day Myerson’s phone calls were nearly apoplectic and I was rested, replete and recumbent. Today would be the most likely day for things to break according to the science of the situation.
Myerson was issuing ultimata. “I know you’re scared of going over into the Eastern zone. Well, it’s just too bad, Charlie. If you’re still in that hotel at midnight I’m throwing you to the wolves.”
I rang it off without replying. I was able to contain my anxiety — if he threw me to the wolves prematurely and then my plan came off successfully, it would make him doubly the fool and he wasn’t going to risk that. The threat was empty for the moment. But he might go around the bend at some point, throw self-preservation to the winds in his rage against me. I couldn’t do much about that except hope it held off long enough to let things sort themselves out.
The real anxiety had to do with Stossel. Suppose he couldn’t get to a phone: If they were still holding him in Debriefing he might not have access to an outside phone. But they’d had him nearly a week now; surely they’d have administered pentathol by now and learned he was still loyal to them.
I knew one thing. Myerson or no Myerson, I wasn’t going over that Wall. No one-way trips for old Charlie Dark. However it topped out, this was going to remain a remote-control job. I’d already pulled the strings and there was nothing left now except to wait and hope the puppet danced.
Davidson kept dropping in when he had nothing better to do. He came at me from oblique angles and doubtless thought himself clever. That afternoon he was pumping me slyly about Stossel. “How did you nail him in the first place?”
“The job was to find him — we didn’t know where he was holed up. He ran his network through a Byzantine series of cutouts and blind drops. Nobody’d ever been able to trace him back to his lair. We knew he was in the Arlington-Alexandria area but that was the sum of our knowledge. I had to ask myself how somebody might find Charlie Dark if he were hiding out, and I answered myself that all you’d have to do would be to find the best Italian food in town and wait for Charlie Dark to show up there. It worked the same way with Stossel. Everybody has preferences, colas or a brand of cigarettes or whatever. It takes a lot of manpower to work that kind of lead but we had no choice. We had the dossier on him, we knew his quirks. He’s half Polish, you know. Always had a taste for the best Polish vodka — the kind that’s sold with a stalk of buffalo grass in the bottle.”