“Spying is the oldest game in the book next to prostitution, dear.” Mrs. Schroeder laughed, “It’s also the most hated profession in the book, next to prostitution—that’s probably why the two go hand in hand. And like prostitution, as long as spying has existed, there have existed methods of deterring it. Sometimes the best way of getting rid of a spy is to kill him or her. But most of the time, the best way is to use them without them knowing it, by feeding them secret information that’s outdated or altogether false. Spies aren’t going to know the difference. And if the information is good enough, not even the analysts will know. That is, until the top-secret files that state ‘Russia’s anti-aircraft capabilities can’t shoot down anything over 50,000-feet’ get an American U-2 spy-plane shot down at 80,000.
“Every now and again, CI-agents get the chance to flip an enemy asset—threaten and reward him or her to work for their side, that sort of thing—but the best counter-intelligence comes from consistency and coordination. If you create a parallel reality where an entire network of NATO agencies are intentionally collecting and disseminating false information and working towards a fake goal together, then the Soviets will be following the trail of that goal for years… putting together very fake dots on a very real map.”
“That sounds really complicated.”
“The more complicated the better,” Mrs. Schroeder laughed. “That makes it more believable. Spies are naturally suspicious people who are trained to see ghosts… but CI-agents exist to create those ghosts. They get caught up in a world of such intense suspicion and paranoia that they have to have a sense of whimsy about them. Otherwise, they will go absolutely insane.”
“But what’s the point of it all?” Lena asked, even more exasperated than before. “It all seems needlessly complicated.”
“That’s why you and I are just assets. We like the adventure of it all, without really caring all that much about the result. And why should we? The results rarely affect us personally. But these people—meaning the people who cultivate us and pay our bills—these people’s main purpose is to know why. You may think it’s stupid wasting millions of dollars and putting hundreds of lives at risk trying to bring some British punk rocker into the GDR. Especially since that person could likely come here of his own accord on the subway and receive a hero’s welcome. But if that punk rocker’s Bosses’ goal wasn’t all that honorable where the GDR is concerned, well, that’s a different story. Certainly, changing the economic and political structure of the GDR in its entirety is worth millions of dollars.”
“But what in the world could he do?” Lena asked. “He’s just one person.”
“Oh, you would be surprised what one person can do.” she gestured solemnly, “A pawn seems like a pointless piece in the game of chess—and if you are a layman playing against another layman, it is. But if you are a master playing against another master, the pawn is no less important than the bishop or queen. Every move a pawn makes, however small, is valuable and necessary.
“The pawn makes small moves; but it makes small moves that the bishop and knight can’t make, and it makes moves that the queen or castle can’t be bogged down with. And thank the Lord about that. If the chessboard had only knights, bishops, queens and castles, it would be a very different game indeed. It would look very much more like open trench warfare than the elegant asymmetry of spy games, and millions more people would die.
“It’d be faster.” Lena grumped.
“Oh, of course it would be! And so would launching the nukes at each other. So would starting another World War to fight over whatever is left, but that’s not an outcome anyone wants. Make no mistake: you and I may be pawns, with our small purviews, making our small moves on a huge board filled with big important pieces; but that British punk rocker is a knight jumping over all of the laws and customs of the State, and moving strangely around the board to do things that you didn’t consider initially. We are here to make sure that wherever he lands, the bishops of counter-intelligence don’t have an opening to mow him over.”
“But wouldn’t that mean we get mowed over instead?”
“Maybe,” Mrs. Schroeder answered honestly, “but probably not. Would you take a pawn, if all you gained was taking a pawn? Especially if it might mean losing your bishop in the process?”
“It might, if I knew how important that pawn was.”
“And that, my dear, is the purpose of our counter-intelligence: to make sure they don’t see the value in that strategy.”
“By moving the Pawns around.” Lena said, drearily.
“See, this is why our boss gets paid more than us. They find this stuff a lot more interesting and profitable than you and I do.”
“How the hell do you deal with this?!” Lena threw her hands up in exasperation. “It’s all so… twisted and tangled up. You never know who knows what, or what anyone really wants or has planned for you. You can’t trust anyone. Doesn’t that scare you??”
“My dear, that’s why I choose to trust. It isn’t always easy, but it gets easier the more it proves itself out. Sometimes it isn’t about trusting someone entirely; but rather finding those precious things about them that you can trust. I trust you, even if I don’t know entirely what you are up to when you aren’t working for us. I trust you because you and I have a history together, and that has to mean something. I trust that friend of yours, Vivika, because you have made a choice to trust her… and she hasn’t given me a reason not to. I won’t tell her what you and I are up to, but I’ll certainly trust her with Kraut. And in my book, that’s pretty close to trusting her with my life.
“I trust Walter Müller, even if he is spying for the Stasi. With Walter, it’s not that I don’t trust him with information that he could use against me; it’s that I save the poor man from having to keep more secrets from them. I trust him because I have more of a history with him than I do even with you, and I know he watches out for Mick and Herr—little idiots though they may be—just the same as I trust Jonathan and Janet to be good parents, even if I don’t trust their marriage to each other.
“I trust our boss. Not just because he’s proven to be trustworthy, but because if I don’t, that puts me and everyone else’s lives at stake. I trust him to know far more than me about the great game, and I trust the training he has been given to train me on what I need to do. Moreover, I trust my network to do their individual parts without me double-checking their work, because that makes us function better.
“I trust Grips to hold out for as long as possible, because he trusts that we are coming for him. And I trust that if he finally cracked, that our counter-intelligence folks had long planned for that exact eventuality. Moreover, I trust that they are the type of people that are still coming for Grips, knowing full well that his actions spell out betrayal to the letter of the law… because of all the things I do trust, I don’t number the letter of the law amongst them.
“If all else fails, I trust God in whatever form he or she takes, because when times get tough and the road ahead gets confusing, and no matter how bleak it truly does look, I trust that he or she has a good use for these old bones. Failing that, I trust that a horrible death in a black cell ends with an eternity spent with my dead husband and this sweet little dog that everyone seems to hate.”
As if on cue, the relentlessly lazy Kraut made more snoring/wheezing sounds as he rolled onto his back, displaying his tummy to the world.