Some lettering was stamped into the side of the cylinder it took him a minute to clean enough of the dirt away to read what it said, and his blood suddenly ran cold. “Jesus Christ” he swore softly. “Oh, Jesus Tanner spun on his heel. “Lawson” he shouted. “Tom, topside … on the double, man”
Reid handed the encrypted phone to Admiral Delugio.
“It’s Wells. He sounds … shook up” Now that the Soviet guided missile cruiser had shown up, Operations was alive with activity. Wells had sent out a helo, to which the Russians had made absolutely no response, so far. But they were walking a tight wire every time American and Soviet naval forces were this close together. Now, with a missing attack submarine on their hands, the Pentagon was nervous. “What’s the problem, Charlie” Delugio asked. “Is it the Russians”
“No, Admiral, they’re behaving themselves” Wells said. Delugio could hear that the man was definitely shaken. “Take it easy. Now, what’s going on out there”
“I think we’ve got very big trouble, sir”
“I’m listening” Delugio said, his jaw tightening. “I sent my exec and my DSRV driver over to the Zenzero. They just got back. Randy …
Lieutenant Tanner … found something aboard. In the main saloon. “Go ahead”
“It’s a cylinder small, thick-walled. There are markings. Christ, Admiral, the cylinder came from the Army’s proving grounds in Dugway”
Something clutched at Delugio’s gut. “Any idea what it contained”
“Yes, sir. Labun. It’s a nerve gas. The cylinder is empty “
Delugio closed his eyes. “Run it out for me, Charlie. All the way”
“Terrorists, Admiral. I think the Indianapolis has been hijacked by terrorists”
More than any other city in the world, the capital study in of the failing German Democratic Republic was a stark contrasts. In many respects it was very much like the Berlin before the war, yet there was an Eastern Bloc drabness to the streets and squat buildings. The three-hundred-foot-wide boulevard, Unter den Linden, had been completely rebuilt from the rubble and was the showcase of Eastern Europe It was colossal by any standard; along it a monstrous television tower with restaurant and observation deck rose high above the citykarl Marx Allee, Marx Engels Square, and Leninplatz (all roads led to Leninplatz) were shining and brand-new, filled with activity. Trolley cars ran on polished tracks. Bratwursts were wrapped in paper, not plastic. And there was absolutely no litter anywhere.
But East Berlin was a city of relative darkness. From almost anywhere in or around the city, you could see the night glow of West Berlin.
A couple of blocks off any modern street or square (and there weren’t many of them) you were plunged backward forty-five years, to buildings that still carried the scars of the war. Windows bricked or boarded up.
Narrow cobblestone streets. Machine gun holes in stone walls…
McGarvey, using his Kurshin identification, crossed into the eastern sector of Berlin on the Friedrichstrasse a few minutes after 6:00 in the evening.
On the American side the officials were distantly polite, but on the DDR side, the soldiers were almost obsequious. His bag was not searched. The cabbie dropped him off at the Palast Hotel, then turned and headed immediately back to the western sector. Inside, McGarvey had a drink at the bar, then headed on foot around the huge Alexanderplatz, where behind the Sparkasse-the savings bank-he found the little two-door Fiat Trotter had promised would be waiting for him, the keys in the tailpipe.
He had driven directly over to the working-class district of Prenzlauder Berg, parking the car on the street in front of a very shabby apartment block.
The flat that had been set up for him was on the third floor and looked down on the narrow street. It was well stocked with food, drink, and Russian-made clothing that was his size. A very old black-and-white television set squatted heavily on a small table next to the window, the antenna cable snaking through the window frame up to an aerial on the roof.
Changing clothes and grabbing a quick bite to eat, McGarvey left the apartment a little after 10:00, taking the Leninallee directly out of the city, a few miles to the east, before turning south toward the Grosser Miiggelsee. As he drove, traffic light and in some areas nonexistent at this hour, he lit a Russian cigarette from a pack he’d found in the apartment.
It was half cardboard filter and tasted terrible, but it was Kurshin’s brand It would be a full forty-eight hours before he came this way again. They had figured it would be too dangerous for him to bring his own weapon across the border, and there was no gun in the apartment. Two days and nights, however, was too long to wait, unarmed. Too many things could go wrong. He came down through Tierpark and Lichtenberg, past the huge Pioneer Palace that the Russians had built not so long ago, crossing the Spree River once into Treptow and again toward K6penick along the southern shore of the big lake. This far from the city, the night was very dark, although still to the northwest he could make out the glow on the horizon that was West Berlin, and almost directly west he watched as a jetliner came in for a landing at East Berlin’s Schenefeld Airport. He was alone now. This time absolutely alone. There would be no help for him from any of the East German networks that the Agency maintained, nor would he be able to run for the American Embassy on the Neustadtische Kirschstrasse. He would be denied. At this point he was no longer an American citizen. He was a Russian. The Americans and West Germans would shoot him if he tried to force his way back, and the Russians and East Germans would certainly arrest him if they discovered he was an impostor. But the prize was definitely worth the risk. Baranov was coming. And for that man McGarvey’s hate burned like a supernova in his gut. It was a constant that he had lived with for nearly two years.
The K6penick highway branched off, the larger road heading into the town, the much smaller road running north a few miles to the lake. The forest was thick here, the pine trees crowding in on the narrow highway.
McGarvey slowed down. Somewhere in the woods to the east he thought he could see lights, but then he lost them. He figured it was probably a house along the lakeshore. Baranov’s retreat was directly across the lake, perhaps a mile and a half or two, yet already McGarvey was getting the old feeling of the man’s presence. Baranov was a force, there was no denying that.
Near the water’s edge the paved road ended in a gravel lane that ran completely around the lake. McGarvey stopped his car, switched off the headlights, and got out. There was absolutely no sound here, except for the Fiat’s idling engine, and his own footfalls on the gravel. He walked a few yards away from the car to a spot where he could see the lake through a break in the woods.
Across the water he could see the lights of a few houses on the north shore, but nothing moved on the lake. Thursday night he would take the boat halfway across, don the oxygen rebreathing equipment that was waiting for him, and swim the rest of the way underwater to the shore below Baranov’s house.
He turned after a minute or two and looked back the way he had come. He was not being followed. Lorraine was safely back in West Berlin … or she was as safe as she could be anywhere. She would not have come across. She had not followed him this time. She had given him her word.
He believed her … or he hoped he did.