“You noticed? Your date must not have gone well,” Faith said. German women seemed to adore Hakan. He had the perfectly proportioned features of an ancient Greek statue, but, because he was a Turk, Faith never dared tell him that. She picked up a piece of paper covered with round ink stamps of German eagles holding swastikas. She glanced it over and dropped it back onto the table. “I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m now a Stasi secret agent woman.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“I wish.”
“Congratulations, comrade. When’s your first Party meeting?”
“Screw you,” Faith said with a smile, content to settle into the comfort of their own faux Cold War. Over the last several hours she’d begun to harden herself to the idea of doing a Moscow run for the Stasi, but she was still stunned that her father might be alive.
“I didn’t think you’d ever work for them. Thought you always said you couldn’t bring yourself to choose sides just like you can’t commit to a relationship.” He pressed the stamp into an inkpad and firmly pushed it into the margin of that day’s Hürriyet, flown in fresh from Istanbul. “What do they want from you? The Stasi starting up its own flea market?”
“I deal in antiques, not junk. They want me to transport something into the Soviet Union without the Sovs finding out.”
“The commies always seemed weird to me, but I thought above everything else they stuck together like Jews.” He lowered his visor and studied a proof. “Look at this! Another line break.”
“Seems okay to me.” Faith tossed it onto the table after a polite glance. “Yeah, spying on the enemy is one thing. It’s embarrassing to get caught, but they have the routine down. Relations chill; the other side arrests known spooks, then they all meet on the Glienicke Bridge for a spy swap. There’s even an East Berlin lawyer who specializes in arranging spy exchanges.” Faith sipped her tea.
“I thought I caught everything when I touched up the neg. This isn’t my day. Last time I pulled a proof, all the lines were too thin from overexposure. Can you hand me that stylus by your right hand?”
“This thing? I think my dentist stuck one of these in my mouth last checkup.”
“This has to be perfect before I can do a run. You wouldn’t believe what I went through to get the right paper, and I only found a couple of sheets.”
“Give me a swatch and what you know about it-where it was produced, where it was used-and I’ll see what I can do. I know a paper collector in Karl-Marx-Stadt. If it’s old or from the East, either he’s got it or knows where to find it. I hope this means you finished the job for me.”
“Faith, I don’t know if I’m ever going to finish it. It’s not safe for you. Why don’t you sit this one out? The big boys play for higher stakes than a couple of old dishes. It’s not like you’re dealing in something really valuable like jewels that might be worth some risk.”
“Anyone can traffic stones. You have to make the documents for me in case I get trapped over there again.”
Hakan used his palms to pick up a set of newly minted papers. He compared the fresh stamp to one in a worn booklet and then motioned for her to come closer.
“This is an Aryan pass? What the hell are you doing making Nazi documents?”
“It’s a new product line. An Aryan pass can get you German citizenship. It did for me. The government accepts them as proof of enough German blood to qualify as a citizen. Fascist bastards. But I’m telling you, there’s a huge untapped market in the Turkish community alone.”
“Swell.”
He carved on a rubber stamp, a tiny curl following the stylus blade. “Don’t go back there.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re here, too.” Faith detailed the interrogation and kidnapping.
“Faith, I don’t want anything to happen to my best customer. It’s got to stop before you get hurt. The cavalier way you were talking about it, it didn’t seem like such a big deal.”
“They said they knew what happened to my father.” She paused for a deep breath to steady her composure, but tears streamed down her face. “They claim he’s alive.”
“Come here.” Hakan helped her from the chair and into his arms. He held her tightly. She allowed her body to relax against him for an unguarded moment. She sat back down, but he remained at her side. “At least promise me you’ll go to the Americans for help.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll march into the embassy. ’Hi, the Stasi is threatening my life and they just resurrected my dead father, so I thought I’d work for them, but I was wondering, would you like me to be a double agent or something? I know you didn’t want to hire me before, but I think you can see that I’ve positioned myself well to serve your current interests.’ “
“Just promise me you’ll go to your embassy and ask for help.” He rubbed her neck. “Promise?”
“Hakan.”
“Faith, promise.”
“Understand this is under protest. I promise I’ll think about considering going.”
“That’s as good as I’m going to get, isn’t it?”
“You know me. So does this mean you’re going to do my papers?”
“I have to think about it.”
“You still a student at the TU?”
“In my thirty-fifth semester and haven’t gone to a single class yet. How else would I pay for health insurance?” He wiped fresh ink from the rubber stamp with a rag.
“Someday the Germans are going to catch on and start charging tuition. So you can still get jobs through the student employment office?”
“Haven’t done it in a while, but it’s not a bad way to pick up a few marks.”
“Does Pan Am still use day laborers from there to clean the planes?”
“You’d think after Lockerbie-”
“I do my best not to think about airline security. I’m going to need you to be prepared to get something into Tegel for me. You don’t even have to take it on the plane-just past security. Please, just do the groundwork now so we’re ready to roll whenever they notify me. I’m dead if I don’t get something to Moscow for my new friends. I also need those documents to stash away so I’m prepared for my next rainy day over there.”
“At least think about quitting. Take a little time off-go to the States and visit some friends. By the way, I almost forgot to tell you, Summer called early this morning. It must have been really late his time.”
“What did he say?”
“To tell you happy anniversary and you should give him a call sometime.”
“Oh, no. I totally spaced it with everything that went on yesterday-not that I even could’ve called. This is the first time I’ve been living in the West that I didn’t call him on our former anniversary.”
“He’ll get over it. It’s you I’m concerned about.”
“Hakan, please try to understand. I have to find out.”
“They could be making up the whole thing about your father. Why don’t you quit being so stubborn and ask your mother?”
“I don’t even know what continent she’s living on right now and she’s not going to change her story. I’ve never even seen a picture of him. The only thing I have from him is a brief note Mama used to keep in her Bible and refused to show to me. I stole it when I was eight.”
“Did it give you any kind of clue about who he was?”
“Only that he was a German with old-fashioned handwriting. I couldn’t even decipher it until I was in high school. It wasn’t signed, but the way Mama acted about it, I knew it was from him.” She reached down and gingerly removed the worn paper from her wallet. She read it again before she handed it to Hakan.
He pulled down the visor and examined it. “You’re right about the handwriting, but the note’s thirty years old and most adults would have written that way back then. The paper is interesting, though. You don’t see such coarse paper in the West except in the immediate postwar period. I’d say it’s from the East.”