Michael said, “The Naval inquiry said it appeared a pipe broke, releasing water that shorted out instrument panels, that led to the reactor shutdown… and they couldn’t keep her up, until she went to crush depth…”
Gus said, “Sure it said that. What else would they say? Sabotage, at one of the most secure shipyards in the country? I went to that office building, where Chandler was supposedly hanging out. Empty. It was all a front. I thought about killing myself, about giving myself up… and I thought about Sylvia and the boys. And I tried to forget it… tried really hard.”
“But here you are, Gus. Every Wednesday.”
Gus leaned forward on his cane. “I lost Sylvia two years ago. Both boys are married, doing fine. One in Oregon, the other in California. I’m here by myself, and every Wednesday, I come here. Pray for them. Pay tribute to them. And ask forgiveness.”
“For how much longer?”
Gus shrugged his shoulders. “Until the very end, I guess.”
“Does anybody else know about you and… what happened?”
“God, not at all.”
“Do you have any evidence from what happened back then?”
“Like what?” Gus shot back. “Pictures of me with that damn Russian? Written instructions on how to sabotage a submarine?”
Michael slowly nodded, and then Gus turned to him, eyes still watery, face flushed. “But what about me now, eh? You and the FBI, you know it all. What now?”
“What I promised,” Michael said, taking out a little notepad and a ballpoint pen, which he clicked open. “That you’ll never be bothered, ever again.”
And with one practiced motion, he took the pen and jabbed it into the base of Gus’s neck.
Gus looked stunned. He coughed, gurgled. A few words were whispered, the last one much quieter than the first.
Michael checked the old man’s neck for a pulse.
Nothing.
He put the pen and notebook away, and walked back to his rental car.
Two days later, after his supervisor held a debriefing, his boss shook his head and said, “Misha, you need to know your history better.”
“How’s that?”
“Two things,” the stern man said. “First, you told the American that your grandfather had fought the Germans for four years. Maybe your grandfather did, but the first time Americans fought Germans were in North Africa in 1942. That would be three years, not four. And you said your grandfather was proud to fight fascism. That’s crap. Americans fought the Krauts, the Germans, the Nazis. They weren’t fighting fascism.”
He just shrugged. “Got the job done, though, didn’t I?”
“But you didn’t have to be sloppy. We can’t afford to be sloppy. The damn Americans are in a loving and forgiving mood. Ready to lend us billions so long as we play nice. If they find out some of our old secrets—like that damn attack submarine and how we sank it—they won’t be in a loving and forgiving mood. Got it?”
He sighed. “Heard you twice the first time.”
The supervisor walked past the office window, which offered a good view of the Kremlin’s buildings and where the white-blue-red flag of the new Russian Federation flew.
“Misha, you’re a romantic at heart. You probably write poetry in your spare time… but stay focused. Now. What did you leave out of your official report?”
“What makes you think I left anything out?”
“Previous experience from that Swedish school teacher who helped Olof Palme’s assassin escape.”
He crossed his legs, shook his head, still in disbelief. “The shipyard worker, he managed to say something as he was dying.”
“What did he say, ‘go to hell, you bastard’?”
Another shake of the head. “No. He said thank you. That’s what he said. Thank you. Like he was thanking me for ending his life, ending the guilt. Can you believe that?”
His supervisor sat down heavily in his chair. “When it comes to Americans, I can believe almost anything. They spend fifty years threatening to burn us off the map, and now they offer us loan credits and McDonald’s. What can you say about a foe like that?”
“Makes you wonder who really won the Cold War.”
His supervisor, a sharp-eyed man named Vladimir, said, “Who says it’s over?”
THE HONEY TRAP
BY BEV VINCENT
Anna picked up her latest target at Tempelhof shortly after he arrived on a Pan Am flight from New York via Frankfurt. She recognized him from the photographs in the dossier tucked under her arm. Though her handlers were in charge of surveillance, she always wanted to see her men in the wild, to get a sense of what they were like when they didn’t know they were being observed. This helped her decide how to approach them. If she was too aggressive with a man who was awkward around porters and taxi drivers, she’d scare him off. If she was too timid with a blustery man who acted like he owned the world, he’d soon tire of her.
Her target was Donald Weatherly. He was fifty-nine and looked it. He wore a brown suit with the jacket unbuttoned, and no hat. He was taller than average, but only slightly. His hair, disheveled after his long journey, was receding at the front and thinning at the back. He wore black-rimmed glasses and had a small, neat mustache that was tinged with grey, as were his eyebrows. He was paunchy but not fat. All in all, not the sort of man a young woman would have typically afforded a second glance.
Older men, she had learned, were particularly susceptible to seduction because they thought their chances of ever being with a sexy young woman again were nearing an end. Not at an end, but almost. This gave them an unusual sense of optimism. They flirted with waitresses, cashiers, stewardesses, and any other pretty women with whom they came into contact. Deep down, they probably knew that their only real option was to pay for it—which many of them did—but they never stopped hoping. Eighty-year-old men flirted with her. She admired their spirit, in part because it made her job easier.
She made sure Weatherly didn’t notice her. With over three million people in Berlin, it would have been too much of a coincidence to run into a person twice in different parts of the city. It happened, of course, but she couldn’t risk making him suspicious. Weatherly wasn’t a spy, but he had a degree from Princeton, so he wasn’t stupid. Gullible, perhaps. Susceptible, she hoped. But not stupid.
She stood at a pay phone, smoking a cigarette and holding an imaginary conversation with the dial tone. A kerchief was wrapped around her dark hair, and she wore oversized sunglasses with tortoiseshell frames. She never looked directly at Weatherly after he came through the security checkpoint with his luggage—one suitcase and a briefcase—but she never let him escape her field of vision either.
A porter approached, offering to take his bags. Weatherly handed over the suitcase, but maintained his grip on the briefcase. He pointed toward the exit and let the porter take the lead. A professional exchange, she decided. The man was neither timid nor brash. Average.
As they drew near, she turned aside and crushed her cigarette out in an ashtray. Weatherly looked straight ahead, displaying little interest in his fellow travelers, the airport shops, or overhead signs. Neither did he look over his shoulder. Civil engineers weren’t typical targets of espionage.