A bungler’s chore. A fool’s errand. That’s what this was, and it was all due to her lack of self-control. Helen cursed herself as she slid the key into the lock. Mercifully, none of the neighbors seemed to be awake, so at least she wasn’t likely to be spotted.
Need to know. That was the bedrock rule she’d violated. Even if something funny was going on, it wasn’t her business to know it, much less report it. Baucom had seen that right away, just as she should’ve. He, at least, seemed to have a pretty good idea of what the strange conversation was about, which made her feel somewhat better. If it needed to be reported up the chain of command, then Baucom would do it.
Funny how often curiosity was a liability in this business. When they’d first recruited her they’d assured her it was a strength, one of her greatest. Now? Compartmentalize. Avert your eyes. Mind your own business. Or maybe Herrington used that mantra only on her.
She didn’t bother to switch on the lights. Helen knew the house well enough to tour every room blindfolded, and why risk having a passerby see her upstairs before she was able to shut the blinds?
She climbed the stairs, unerringly crossed the room to the side table, and pulled open the drawer. She felt a matchbox, a pen, a pack of cigarettes, and a small notebook as panic began to rise in her chest. But finally, there it was, pushed toward the back by her rummaging. Baucom had advised her to destroy it, and that’s what she intended to do—later, at a more suitable location. But there was no way she was going to carry the tape out of the house without first erasing the conversation.
Moving across the room, she fumbled to load the reel on the spindle before remembering that a blank tape was already in place. She groped for the rewind button to free it from the take-up reel, but after hearing the click and then not hearing the slapping of the tape she realized she must have hit either play or record. Some light would be necessary after all, which meant she needed to shut the blinds. She crossed the room to the window and reached for the cord when, like some sort of bizarre replay, she heard the rattle of a key in the front door downstairs. A surprise visitor. Again.
“Shit!” she whispered. “What the fuck?”
Calm down. Maybe it was Baucom, having decided she needed backup after all. She let go of the cord to the blinds and looked through the lace curtains. Her heartbeat did a drum roll when she saw a male, medium build, in a long dark overcoat. Definitely not Baucom. Had the older fellow from this afternoon waited for her to return? Had he known all along what she’d done? If so, what next? Fight or flight? Then the man turned his head just enough to show his features by the glow of the street lamp. Dark hair, not graying. Too young to be the older man. Nor was he the one named Lewis. In fact, she knew this fellow.
He was a case officer, cryptonym Robert. Real name: Kevin Gilley, although she wasn’t supposed to know that. A fanatic for exotic firearms, a prolific filer of verbose reports. Fancied himself a ladies’ man, or so she’d heard. In fact, pretty much all of her knowledge was from in-house gossip. The only thing she knew firsthand was that, as a onetime previous user of her safe houses he’d been supremely tidy, and hadn’t left a trace. His operational weakness, according to Agency scuttlebutt, was that his cover as a commercial attaché had apparently fooled none of the opposition, and lately there had been talk of an imminent transfer, either to Latin America or a desk job in Langley. She watched him enter the house and heard the door shut.
A nimbus of light appeared in the doorway to the stairwell as he switched on a lamp downstairs. She heard his footsteps heading toward the kitchen. Another customer for the secret stash of liquor, Helen guessed, although at least Gilley was supposed to know where these things were.
Now she was present for yet another unauthorized meeting, at the facility that was supposedly her most efficiently run. She wondered if this sort of off-the-books activity was again becoming standard practice. Maybe Herrington had circulated a memo among his favored operatives, instructing them to ignore her rules. She knew exactly how he’d word it—a mixture of the practical and the profane, with an overlay of his mannered Anglophilia: Look, chaps, this officious chick no doubt means well, but if in your judgment these new requirements are cramping your style, then fuck the lot of them. Henceforth, come and go from the facilities as needed, and we’ll sweat the paperwork later.
Yet, she, too, was again here without notice, meaning she should probably get this over with quickly. Swallow her pride, announce her presence, and be on her way, with the illicit tape burning a hole in her purse as she carried all its secrets back across town to Baucom.
There was a knock on the front door. She looked out the window to see Gilley welcoming a young woman. The sound of their voices ghosted up the stairwell. The woman spoke German in an affected Berliner accent, like someone from the provinces trying to pass for local. Probably one of Gilley’s agents, meaning it was too late for Helen to announce herself without disrupting their meeting.
Helen sighed, carefully slipped off her shoes, and prepared to wait them out. It wasn’t proper procedure, but since when did that matter on this Day of Transgressions? No wonder they wouldn’t make her an operative. Screw up like this in the field and someone would be dead. Screw up like this twice within twelve hours and you’d be dead as well.
The young woman downstairs was talking rapidly now. Even from here, she sounded earnest and eager, as if she’d brought Gilley the best possible material, although Helen couldn’t make out the words. Helen had warned the cabdriver she was liable to be a while, but who knew how long this meeting might take? The fare would be a fortune. She might even have to ask Baucom for a few D-Marks. She remembered the deadline he’d imposed. Back by midnight, or he’d phone the duty officer. Things could get complicated in a hurry. Maybe this pair would leave in time for her to phone Baucom first. But she probably wouldn’t have time to erase the tape before leaving.
The sound of shattering glass broke her train of thought. So much for Gilley’s usual neatness. Then a thud, like a chair overturning. What in the hell were they doing? Helen moved toward the doorway, where she heard grunts, as if from a wrestling match.
“Stop it!” Gilley shouted.
“Nein!” the woman replied.
“I told you, stop that!” Then, in German: “Unvorstellbar! Genug!”
Had she threatened him? If Gilley was in trouble, right here in Helen’s most secure safe house, then she needed to act immediately. She slid into the hallway and onto the landing, and then stooped lower to try and see what was happening below.
She eased down a step, and then another. She heard the tearing of fabric, and a pinging of small items—buttons?—bouncing on the wooden floor like sleet against a windowpane.
“Hold still!” Gilley shouted. “Stupid whore!”
Only a whimper from the woman. Gilley had either turned the tables or had been the aggressor from the start. She eased farther down the steps and heard a massive thump.
“That’s better,” Gilley said, his voice smug. The woman grunted.
Helen, horrified, now saw everything. Gilley had climbed atop her on the couch, which was knocked askew. His bare white back glistened with sweat, and his shoes and trousers were off. He wore only brown socks. The woman lay on her back below him, her face turned to the side and her eyes shut. Black skirt rucked up around her waist. Blouse torn open. The couch shook like a raft on a tossing sea. The woman grimaced and bit her lip.
“Nein, nein, nein.”
“Stop it!” Helen shouted.
She clambered down the stairs, nearly slipping as she reached the bottom.
The woman’s eyes opened in shock. Gilley looked over his shoulder, but didn’t budge from the couch.
“It’s you!” he said, almost laughing. “The goddamn station busybody!”
He lurched backward and slung his legs to the floor like a cowboy dismounting a horse. Smiling, he turned to face Helen, his erect penis standing red and glistening with moisture. Helen turned away and, then, figuring that was what he wanted, looked him in the eye.
“I was…I was sleeping upstairs,” she ad-libbed, even while at another level she was wondering why she was the one having to explain. “What the hell are you doing to her? You’re…you’re…” She needed to say the word. He was raping her.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, tossing a hand to the side, flippant in his gestures. “Frieda likes it rough. Enjoys it more when there’s a tussle. Isn’t that right, Frieda?”
Frieda, if that was indeed her name, was sitting now, with her knees drawn up protectively against her chest. Her feet were still clad in black sneakers. She pulled the front of her blouse together, but the buttons were gone. Then she shook her head and muttered an answer beneath her breath.
“Speak up, my dear.”
“Ja,” she said. “Yes.” She smoothed her skirt and stared at the floor. “It is as he says.”
“So you see?”
“I know what I saw. And I know what I heard.”
“Then do as you must, of course. But if anyone’s out of bounds here, I’d say it was you, interrupting a private meeting between a case officer and his agent. Sleeping, you said? Like hell you were. Nosing around where you shouldn’t be, more likely. Way out of your depth. Probably grounds for dismissal, or at the very least, reassignment.”
“I’d heard the same about you. Now I think I know why.”
He grinned widely. Infuriating. His eyes, the blue-green of a swimming pool, flashed with anger.
“Just the sort of disinformation I’d expect to hear from someone at your level. You really don’t know anything, do you?”
Gilley picked up his boxers and slipped them on, and then his pants. He finished dressing as casually as if he were alone in a hotel room. All the while he smiled at Helen, who remained rooted to her spot at the foot of the stairs.
“I know what I saw and I know what I heard,” she said again, less assertively this time.
“As do I. Guess whose version will be accepted? Guess which one Frieda will verify. And guess which one of us will be held in violation of policy for their activities tonight?”
He turned toward the woman on the couch.
“Maybe next time, Frieda. When there’s a little more privacy, yes?”
She said nothing and continued to stare at the floor. Gilley smiled ruefully and glanced around the room as if checking to see if he had forgotten anything. Then he departed, shutting the door behind him. Helen felt like she had taken a blow to the head. It was as if everything the Agency had ever taught her about tradecraft and secrecy and doing your job the right way had just been spilled onto the floor in a broken mess that could never be reassembled. She drew a deep breath and put a hand to her chest, where her heartbeat was only beginning to slow down. She looked over at Frieda.
My God, practically a girl. Twenty at the oldest, probably younger. One of those pale, undernourished Berliner waifs who wore nothing but black. Hair chopped in a statement against style. Helen guessed she was Gilley’s connection to some fringe leftist cell in Kreuzberg, groups notoriously infested with East German operatives. And now here she was tugging at her blouse as she scanned the floor for missing buttons.
Helen opened her mouth to speak, but Frieda beat her to it.
“I was warned,” Frieda said in English. “Before.”
“By Robert?” It felt like a betrayal to use only his cryptonym, even though she knew it was proper procedure. “He threatened you?”
Frieda shook her head.
“Kathrin, she warned me.” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Her name, I should not have said it. Please…”
“Don’t worry. I’m cleared for it. What did Kathrin tell you?”
“That I should not go into a house with him, not alone. Dead drops, brush passes. Yes, all of these are fine. In his working ways he is careful. If I am discovered in this work, it will not be from any mistake he has made. But with women, and in places like this?” She shrugged. “She said to stay away unless others are there. Then I come here anyway, alone, and you see it. You see what happens.”
“So this was not with your consent?”
“No. It was not.” She stood, holding herself, shivering now. Helen stepped closer to console her but Frieda raised up a hand and backed away.
“You were here, then? At the beginning?”
“Well. Yes.” Frieda’s eyes accused her. “I didn’t know he was like this, and I wasn’t supposed to be here. I…I came downstairs as soon as I knew, and now I want to help you. We can start by reporting this.”
Frieda shook her head violently.
“Nein! Please, no! He will expose me. I will be as good as gone. I will have to leave, go back to Braunschweig. You cannot tell anyone!”
“We can’t let him get away with this.”
“We?”
She glared at Helen, face streaked with tears. Then she slowly shook her head, as if to say Helen couldn’t possibly understand. But Helen did. Report this, and Gilley might burn her to cinders among the groups she worked with. If she was an insert, an infiltrator, then they would not only cast her out, they might also tell the East Germans, the Stasi, whose people would be quite happy to punish her. Brutally, perhaps.
That was how it worked here. Even from the earliest days of the Cold War, the Agency and their Soviet counterparts had operated under a gentleman’s agreement when it came to inflicting casualties: Don’t touch ours and we won’t touch yours. But everyone in the middle—the locals who did their bidding—well, they had better watch their step. And now this one was as vulnerable as a fawn on the Autobahn, all because she had been wronged by her case officer, the man she had entrusted with her life the moment she agreed to work for their side.
“Maybe I can do something through back channels,” Helen said. “To try and stop him.”
“No. Please.” She reached out, but was too far away, so Helen closed the gap and took her hand, squeezing it. Frieda flinched from her grasp and stepped toward the door. They heard the sound of rain.
“Do you think he has gone?” Frieda asked, voice quavering.
“Where do you need to go? I’ve got a taxi waiting a few blocks from here.”
“No.”
“It’s raining. Let me get you an umbrella. We have some in the closet.”
“No. I must leave.”
“Tell me your name, at least. Your real name.”
“No!” She opened the door and looked out into the rainy night. A downpour, an empty street in darkness.
“Your coat. Here.”
Frieda turned, nodding absently as Helen picked up the coat from the chair and handed it over. Frieda slipped it on. Three sizes too large, something from a secondhand shop. So young and helpless, and now she was about to disappear.
“Please, use my taxi. I’ll give the fare to the driver.”
“No!” But as Frieda reached the threshold she turned and spoke again.
“You will look out for me, yes? Not to report this, but to see that he does not reveal me to the others. You can do this, yes?”
“Yes. Of course.” An empty promise, but at the moment it was all Helen could offer.
Frieda looked around the room a final time.
“Safe house,” she said disdainfully. She shook her head and walked into the rain and darkness.
Her parting words stabbed Helen as the door shut. For a moment she couldn’t move, and by the time she rushed to the window and pulled back the curtains Frieda was gone. Numbly, she began tidying up—straightening cushions, repositioning the couch, sweeping up the shards of broken glass. She checked her watch, remembering Baucom and his deadline. Even if she left for the cab now she’d be cutting it close, assuming the driver was still waiting, so she decided to telephone instead. Tell Baucom to stand down, that she was on her way.
She used the house phone in the kitchen, an unsecure line that belonged to the tenant, and dialed the number for the house in Zehlendorf.
“Yes?”
“It’s me. All’s well, but there are a few chores I need to attend to, and I didn’t want you sounding the alarm.”
“Are you okay?”
“Absolutely.”
“You don’t sound very convincing.”
“Long story, but not on this phone.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll be back within the hour. Don’t wait up.”
“As you wish.”
After hanging up she wondered what she would tell him later. Handle this rashly and Gilley would get away with everything. She wondered how many other times he’d done something like this. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. Was she forgetting anything?
The tape.
She ran upstairs, her stomach hollow, and switched on the light in the room with the equipment. The reels were turning. Which button had she hit earlier? The red record button was pushed down.
That meant every spoken word, and every noise from the struggle between Frieda and Gilley, were now on tape. So were Frieda’s words afterward. Feeling her heart lift, Helen hit the stop button and exhaled in relief. She rewound the tape, removed it from the spindle, and put it into her bag alongside the other one. Two reels, with two stories. Her own little archive of the forbidden, collected in a single day.
Enough trouble to last her a lifetime, she supposed. The only thing she knew for sure was that none of her training or experience offered the slightest bit of guidance as to what she should do next.