“Fiber optics.”
“Did you tell them we’ve approached you?”
“No.”
“And why would you work for us and not them?”
“I want to find Daddy.” Her voice cracked. “Water, please?”
“Very well.”
The interrogator popped the rusty cap from the bottle of seltzer water and poured it into a glass.
“Thank you.” Faith reached for the glass. The interrogator jerked it away, threw it into Faith’s face and left the room. Faith rushed to the bottle and gulped the remains. She crawled onto the filthy floor, drew her legs tightly against her body to fight away the cold. At least they hadn’t taken away her clothes. She fell asleep to the acrid odor of stale urine and dreamed of her father valiantly rescuing her.
Sharp pain awakened her. She grabbed her side just before the interrogator’s boot smacked into it again.
“On the stool. I told you never to get off that stool unless I give you permission. What does the KGB want with you?”
“Technology from the List.” She clutched her side and had no idea if she had been asleep for seconds or hours.
“Did you tell them you’re working for us?”
“No.”
“What did you agree to do?”
“Nothing.”
“When did you first meet Colonel Bogdanov?”
Faith once again gave the same answer she had every time, but this time the interrogator suddenly left the room. Faith sat on the stool, waiting, but no one came back. She wanted nothing more than to crawl onto the floor and rest. Still, she waited on the stool, wobbling from side to side as she started to fall asleep. She hoped someone knew where she was. Tatyana, or rather Colonel Bogdanov, might know, but she wouldn’t help her in East Berlin. Dean Reed. Faith’s thoughts kept returning to the American folk singer who defected to the Soviets during the Vietnam War. Soviet youth flocked to his concerts; the more savvy East Germans laughed at their Soviet counterparts, who believed Reed was an American pop icon. Dean Reed couldn’t settle into bleak Soviet conditions, so he chose the GDR as his home. He lived peacefully outside East Berlin until he fell out of favor with the regime a few years back. When his body floated face-down in an East German lake, the communists insisted it was suicide. Dean Reed. Face-down in the lonely water.
Faith had been in the cell for days, but, without any clues from the outside world, she had no idea how many. Hunger and fatigue stretched the time.
She yawned as she forced her thoughts back to the puzzle. What would happen if they found out the KGB knew the Stasi had successfully recruited her? Dean Reed. She had to keep up the lie. Whatever they wanted her for, they didn’t want the Russians to know. It made no sense. The Soviets and East Germans were on the same side. East German loyalty had never wavered. Not in fifty-three, when they ordered their own troops to shoot their own workers. Not in sixty-one, when they divided Berlin with a wall. Not in sixty-eight, when their tanks quashed the Prague Spring. The East Germans were Soviet lapdogs. Why would they suddenly want to keep their masters in the dark? Geopolitics aside, what did she have to do with a rift among communists? All Faith wanted was to find out about her father, but she knew she was caught in the rift zone.
And Faith sat on the stool, waiting.
The interrogator kicked her awake from where she had fallen to the floor. She awoke from one nightmare into another.
“What are you doing for the KGB?”
“Nothing.” Pain doubled her over as she held on to the stool and tried to pull herself up.
“On your feet. We’ve had enough.” The interrogator yanked her hair.
Her scalp burned. The interrogator pulled a blindfold from a pocket and bound it around her head. Fingers sank into her arm. The interrogator led her from the cell, deliberately running her into the hated stool.
Light seeped under her blindfold. Artificial. Night, or a windowless hallway? She sensed someone behind her. She turned her head.
“Walk.” The interrogator shoved her.
Damp cool air rose toward her. She tripped on a step, but someone caught her. She smelled the aftershave. Schmidt. The fucker was here all along.
The interrogator pushed her into a car and climbed in beside her. The other door opened and Schmidt wedged himself into the backseat. The car seemed smaller than the Mercedes that had picked her up in West Berlin. She doubted he was taking her home. They still needed her, she thought-she hoped.
The car sped down a long, straight road. Karl-Marx-Allee? Frankfurter Allee? Leipziger Strasse? She didn’t hear many other cars. The bursts of streetlight under the blindfold grew farther apart, then only darkness. The steady swish of the windshield wipers counted down the minutes of her life.
The car stopped.
“Out!” The interrogator pulled her from the car and dragged her several yards into shallow water.
Faith was shoved onto her knees and she sank into the deep cold mud.
The interrogator grabbed her hair and pushed her down. Faith inhaled just before her face smacked the water. It stung all the way up her nose and the burn radiated through her sinuses. She coughed, inhaling more. She fought, but sank deeper. Terror.
The interrogator jerked Faith’s head from the water. Faith gasped for air. She couldn’t hold on much longer, but she knew her life depended upon it.
“For the last time, when did you first meet Colonel Bogdanov?”
“Friday.” She sputtered.
“How do you contact her?”
“I don’t.”
“What did she want from you?”
“Technology.” Dean Reed.
“Did you tell her you’re working for us?”
“No! No! No!” She was falling into hysteria. “No!”
The interrogator shoved her back under the water. Faith held her breath. Her head throbbed with pressure. Suddenly her lungs contracted. She inhaled, sucking in water. She coughed. She gasped.
Then she was back to the surface.
“What did you tell them about us?”
Faith heaved, her body convulsing. She knew she was going to drown the next time. She had to give them what they wanted. She opened her mouth to tell them the KGB knew.
Before she could speak, the interrogator forced her back under the lonely water.
Dean Reed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
If people don’t like Marxism,
they should blame the British Museum.
– GORBACHEV
PERGAMON MUSEUM, EAST BERLIN
EARLIER THAT DAY
Margaret prepared to break her vow to God for the second time in some thirty years as she rushed past the Altar of Zeus with its sinful carvings of Greeks exposing their privates to the world. She was taking a shortcut to do His will and she hoped Jesus would forgive her because she wouldn’t forgive herself if she took too long to help and more innocent folks were massacred in Armenia. Yurij had proposed the meeting place even though he knew that as a good Christian lady she’d never go near a pagan altar. He always did have a charmingly ironic sense of setting.
She slowed down as she passed under the towering Gate of Ishtar and spotted him pretending to admire the mosaics of scrawny lions on the walls of Babylon. Yurij was an agent of the devil assigned to tempt her away from the Lord and once he almost succeeded in his mission, but this time she had the wisdom of age on her side. He stole a glance and from the way he looked at her she knew he still saw her as the vibrant missionary reaching out to East Berliners before the Wall. She didn’t want to let herself see the urbane young gentleman who had duped her into believing that she had led him from Lenin to Jesus. She eyed Yurij and wished he weren’t as eye-grabbing as the first day they met.