A thaw set in that week and all over Berlin piled snow became dangerous slush. The cold of February became the ambiguous rain of March. It was in those days that Anne began dreaming in German. And from dreaming, she found herself in quiet moments thinking in German. Thinking and dreaming in a different language gave her distance from her old self. English contained her and preserved habits and behaviors that held her back. German freed her from unwanted fearfulness and it allowed her to embrace the possibilities that came from living through the words of a new language.
Anne remembered her compact umbrella this time, but the storm came suddenly, and as she pulled it from her bag and popped it open the downpour was upon her. Sheeting rain passed quickly and then was a remnant drizzle.
She rushed under the cover of the Kempinski Hotel’s canopy, shaking water from her umbrella. It’s over, she thought. Her part was done. But even as she willed herself to believe it was over, she knew in the way that unsettled questions are their own answers, that her life was not put back together. Stefan dead. Kruger alive. Trials of former Stasi languished in political limbo. Right and wrong changing places.
Anne slipped into the booth opposite Cooper. The call to join him had come that morning. She had returned to her job at Clay Headquarters and taken up jogging again. She found comfort in little routines. The tediousness of her job kept her mind from thinking too much. She had convinced herself that her work was important, and that she was good at it.
“I got the message.” she said. “And?”
He lowered his head, avoiding the question. She turned and looked across the haze of cigarette smoke that hung above laughing patrons and tried to catch the waiter’s eye. The place was filled with a mix of uniformed American GIs with arms around German girls who tolerated the Americans’ big swaggering smiles, and a few male couples who’d come for the evening’s cabaret act. Anne waved at the waitress and turned to Chrystal on the well-lit stage, holding a microphone in one hand and a phosphorescent drink in the other.
“Hello darling,” Chrystal called out, spotting Anne.
Anne answered Chrystal’s air kiss with a reluctant wave.
“Not you, sweetie. The handsome man next to you. A politic worm.” Laughter filled the room.
Cooper whispered to Anne, “I have been called worse.”
Anne looked at Cooper. “I’m sure.” She took in his gray worsted wool suit, crisply starched shirt, and tightly knotted necktie. She reset a rebellious corner of his canary yellow pocket square, admiring the unusual formality of his ensemble.
“Interview,” he said, noticing her interest.
“Leaving the CIA?”
“New position in another station.”
Anne nodded at his empty beer glass. “Am I late?”
“I came early. The booths fill up when there’s a show.” Cooper nodded at the stage. “He’s funny when he wants to be.”
“Chrystal is a she.” Anne thought Cooper a victim of some incurable illiteracy. “Yes, she’s funny, clever, helpful, and a friend, confidante, hairdresser, and a singer.” Anne stared at Cooper, waiting for his response.
He raised his hand to get the waitress’s attention. “Beer?”
“Whiskey.” She saw his surprise. “I’m not a fan of beer. When are you leaving?”
Drinks were placed on the table by a waitress. Pleasant laughter came from eager drinkers at the bar, entertained by insults Chrystal directed at her German audience. Cigarettes went to their lips, hands clapping enthusiastically.
Anne picked up her whiskey, but put it down again, centering it on the coaster, studying the amber liquid. The bar was loud, but her mind was quiet—the flat endless hush of uncertainty. She felt his comforting arm on her shoulder and she let the moment linger. She looked up from her glass. “You didn’t invite me here to tell me you’re leaving.”
“No.”
She threw back her whiskey. “What then?” She motioned to the waitress for another.
Anne was surprised when Winslow suddenly appeared, slipping into the banquette as if he’d been close by, waiting for his cue. He smiled, without giving the impression that he had anything on his mind, and nodded grimly. His eyes were tired, he had the pallor of a man who had not slept well, and he folded his hands, interweaving knobby fingers. She saw him looking at his hands, strong hands with manicured nails, and she thought they were the hands of a desk man, a thinker, but a man who could pull a trigger as well as any assassin.
“My job makes difficult demands of me,” Winslow said. He waved off the drink menu offered by the waitress and asked for a glass of ice water. “Sometimes I think the KGB and CIA are drunk fighters stumbling around the ring in the ninth round, throwing wild punches. And then we fall on our faces.”
Anne centered her drink on its coaster. “What do you want?”
Winslow extended his legs, wearing his age like a reluctant concession to vanity. “There is talk of reunification and forgiveness and it will happen in due course. They’ve lost, but they haven’t surrendered. West Germans are paralyzed by the speed of the collapse, but there are those in Bonn who want to move more quickly. They are the ones who wanted to forget the Third Reich and now they want to forget the GDR. There is no appetite for trials. Maybe Honecker will be put in the dock to make an example out of him and appease the critics, but the men who did the dirty work won’t stand trial.”
“And Kruger?” she asked.
Winslow’s expression revealed nothing of his thoughts. He turned his glass of water on its coaster, gazing at the ice. “We don’t think so.”
Anne turned to Cooper, startled.
Winslow added, “There are people who want to protect him and others who want to punish him. He may stand trial.”
Even then, early in the conversation, Anne felt a startling shift in Winslow’s casual admission.
“He had Stefan executed,” she said. Her voice rose. “He ordered Stefan to kill me.”
“These are not normal times.”
She was aghast. “Set free?” she asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“We don’t condone what he did,” Winslow said, “but he can be useful to us. He is debating our offer.”
There was a beat of silence. “What offer?”
“He has information that will help us piece together an answer to an important national security problem. That’s all I can say. It’s all you need to know. I have helped him see that it’s in his interest to cooperate.”
Anne’s hand trembled. She muttered something inaudible.
“We know Praeger has questioned you to build a case against Kruger. I can’t tell you not to pursue the case, but I think you’ll find that the BND’s hands are tied. Politicians are uncertain. Kruger’s at home, weighing his choices, waiting to see if he’ll be tried before accepting our offer. Kruger’s playing a waiting game. I would do the same if I were him.”
Stunned, Anne looked at Cooper. “This wasn’t our bargain. That’s not what I was told.”
Winslow added, “He can face a trial here and see if he is convicted, and if convicted, whether he spends time in jail, hoping to stay alive. Or he’ll be flown to Washington to work for us.”
She turned to Cooper.
“Their case is built around you,” he said. He hesitated. “No one else is speaking up. You shouldn’t, either. It will come out better for you.”
Anne felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Her voice was thick with sarcasm. “How decent of you to instruct me.” She looked from one to the other. “Decent men who must put duty above decency and how it must weigh heavily on your conscience. You come to enlist me, not impeach me, for which I am grateful. Justice is a small sacrifice to keep official secrets.” She glared. “Decent, honorable men doing their duty.”
Winslow set down his glass of water and slowly centered it on the coaster. “Langley is calling the shots.”
She spoke with contempt. “You are Langley. There is a God with a ledger of right and wrong. This is wrong.”
Winslow drew the shallow breath of a patient man. “You may be right, but in this case, at this moment, we know what we must do. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to pretend to understand.” Winslow was expressionless. “Nothing in this world is certain, but intelligence from men like Kruger helps. And it comes at a cost. To protect our values, sometimes we must violate them.”
Anne’s glass dropped from her hand, shattering on the floor. She picked up the pieces, cutting her finger on a sharp edge. She waved off Cooper’s concern and made an effort to smile. “I need to use the bathroom.”
Anne stood and felt a sudden weakness in her knees, and a disabling dizziness. She steadied herself and focused on a way through the crowded bar, passing laughing drinkers who glanced at her, seeing her distress. Anne felt the world around her was a frightening hallucination.
She entered the stall closest to the bathroom’s door, locking it. Her mind was a jumble of fevered thoughts and unspeakable contempt. She wrapped toilet paper on her cut, but she hadn’t come to the bathroom for first aid. She needed time to think. An unreality came over her. Then she felt a kind of blasphemous guilt for having listened to Winslow calmly lay out his case.
Anger flushed her face. She wished it was a different day, a future day, and that the calendar pages had magically flipped forward to transport her to the other side of this terrible moment. But that was not how time worked. She was prisoner of the present, as she was of the past, and the present had a claim on her.
Anne stared at the stall door. Her thoughts drifted to all the incidents and decisions that had brought her to this precipice. In her mind’s eye, she saw her choices, each a different type of hell. She rested her head in her hands. Humiliation overcame her, and depression. She came to see that her failure as a child, as a woman, as a person was her willingness to tolerate the ways others used her. In marriage, in friendship, in love. In return, she had received disappointment and betrayal. Her clenched knuckles whitened. She was cold. It was warm in the stall, but she was shivering.
Metamorphosis is a painful process. She felt the excruciating agony of the caterpillar turning into the butterfly, closing up inside its hard chrysalis. Deep inside her, in a process she was only dimly conscious of, she left behind the part of her that greeted each day by enjoying birds chirping outside her window.
The idea came to her slowly. It emerged first as a vague thought. Then it took form, assumed a shape, its elements fit together, and it became a plan. When the consequence of her action settled in, she felt nothing. She saw the arc of the moral world bending away from justice. In that moment, she regretted that it had taken her so long to understand that there would be no trial. A hard shell of vengeance wrapped around her. To endure pain, she would inflict it.
Cooper began to measure her absence by the number of sips it took to finish his beer. He swigged the dregs and set the glass down impatiently.
“What’s taking her so long?”
“Patience, Jim. She has no cards to play.”
“You don’t know her.”
“I don’t have to know her. I know what hand I’m playing.”
Cooper aligned pieces of his napkin that he’d torn into halves, quarters, and eighths. He looked up when Anne sat down.
“Everything okay?” Cooper asked. He nodded at the toilet paper wound around her finger. “You were gone a while.”
She nodded.
“You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine. Kruger called me earlier today.”
Winslow had been cleaning his eyeglasses with his necktie’s silk lining when she spoke. He replaced his glasses and looked right at her. “When?”
“This morning. When I returned from jogging.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“How did he know how to reach you?”
She stared at Winslow a moment and then laughed dismissively. “He picked me. Placed me. He knows who I am. He knows more about me than either of you.”
Winslow nodded, forgetting. “What did he want?”
“To talk. He has doubts.”
“Doubts about what?”
“Everything. He is confined to his apartment. He lost his wife last year. He can’t see his son. His world has collapsed and he’s been vilified. You think it’s easy for him?”
“What did he say?”
“He wanted to apologize. I told him to fuck off. That didn’t make him feel good.”
“That wasn’t helpful.”
“I don’t need to be helpful.”
“You should want to be helpful,” Winslow said. Calm. Threatening. “You haven’t been cleared and you can still be charged. Think about it before you act hastily.”
“You want him to apologize?” Anne said. “You want me to give him the satisfaction of an apology?”
“If that’s what he wants, yes. Contrition. Remorse. Apology. Whatever is on his mind. If he wants to apologize and it helps him agree to cooperate, then let him have his moment of contrition. What else?”
“He wants to meet me.”
“When?”
“I didn’t agree to meet him.”
“Call him back. Take the meeting. The sooner the better.”
“I don’t have his number. He called me.”
Winslow took out his Montblanc and wrote a telephone number on the cocktail napkin. “Here.” He handed it to her. “Tell him you’ll listen and you’ll meet him. Tell him whatever is needed to make him comfortable. Call him tonight.”
“It’s too late. Tomorrow. This is wrong,” she said.
“Wrong? Right? There is no justice in what we do.”
Anne folded the napkin and placed it in her purse. She glared at Cooper.
Winslow put his hand on Cooper’s arm as he went to respond. He looked at Anne. “He’s not to blame. If you need an enemy, make me the enemy. The world is a dangerous place. Ordinary people experience horrible things. Prosecuting Kruger won’t change what happened, or bring back those who suffered, or return dignity to his victims. But Kruger’s cooperation will help us solve a national security problem and it will make the world safer.”
“Bullshit.” She added sarcastically, “Safer for who?”
Winslow arched his eyebrow. He went to respond, but thought better of it. “Your view of the world isn’t the world I live in. Deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” He leaned forward and spoke softly. “You misjudge what’s at stake here, and you misjudge me. I don’t mind if you think I’m without scruples, but if you’re going to hold that opinion, and it’s your right to hold it, then you should know what’s at stake. I’m not lecturing you—but you need to know—in defense of freedom we sometimes do things that we don’t like to talk about. Kruger is important to us.”
“You put your trust in a traitor.”
“A traitor to a lost cause. The GDR has collapsed. The Soviet Union will fall next.”
Anne and Winslow stared at each other. She thought him dangerously cynical and she knew that he viewed her as hopelessly naïve. She listened to him put forward opinions full of dubious claims and she knew he was trying to shape her thoughts with pleasant fictions. He used words like a magician used hands—offering a diversion while the real action was in what he wasn’t saying. Anne threw back her whiskey.
“We’ve offered Kruger asylum.” Winslow lifted the glass and sipped his ice water. “He’ll tell us what he knows and in exchange he will live out a quiet retirement in rural Virginia, or if he prefers, Santa Barbara. He’ll get a new name and a pension. Maybe he’ll write his memoir.”
She heard him trying to sound reasonable, as if he were a butcher upselling a reluctant shopper to a better cut of meat—a simple transaction part of routine work.
“Through Kruger, we will establish the truth about a problem we have. Nothing in this world is certain or secure, but intelligence helps. Intelligence won’t prevent war, but it will keep us from losing a war.”
Winslow looked at Anne, hoping that some of what he’d said convinced her, but seeing her skeptical expression, he said, “For Christ’s sake. Kruger’s not Mengele. We’re not talking Nazi science or concentration camps.”
Anne was quiet. Unbelievable, she thought. She turned to Cooper, seeking an ally against Winslow’s expedient arguments, but she saw only complicit reluctance.
Anne stood abruptly. She shoved one arm in her coat sleeve and then the other. She had gone a few steps toward the bar’s exit, when she turned.
“You’re as bad as he is. You’re all the same.”
When Anne left the Kempinski Hotel she was numb with disgust and alive with terror, and later, when the scandal in Berlin was far enough in the past for Anne to have perspective, she understood that when she walked out of the bar, she was already the person she would become. That revelation came to her much later when she read transcripts of the CIA inspector general’s inquiry, which revealed the full extent of their deception, and it helped ease the pure horror of what she did when she left the Kempinski Hotel.