Helen sensed her new status as a pariah from the moment she entered Berlin station. Averted glances in the hallway. Murmured hellos from clerical staff who refused to look up from their typewriters. Over by the coffeemaker, two men known as notorious flirts scattered so quickly at her approach that you would have thought the fire alarm had sounded.
It might have been bearable if there hadn’t also been practical consequences, which she discovered on a trip to the records room. She was looking for recent cable traffic with any references to “Robert,” “Frieda,” or “Kathrin,” the friend who had supposedly warned Frieda about Gilley. She filled out a request for each subject and dropped it onto the desk of the chief records officer, Eileen Walters.
Walters was blessedly easy to work with—a good egg, as Baucom liked to say. Being married and stable, she was also Herrington’s kind of employee, but Helen liked her because she never played favorites. She worked just as assiduously on behalf of the lower-ranking officers as she did for the most senior operatives, a quality that had engendered a fierce loyalty throughout the station. Only two weeks earlier, Helen, not much of a cook, had slaved for hours over a baked pasta dish for a Sunday potluck at Walters’s home in Zehlendorf.
This morning, however, Walters glanced cursorily at Helen’s requests before saying, “You’re not cleared for this.”
“Of course I’m cleared. I’m not asking for the most sensitive material, just the regular stuff, the same sort of things I send out myself.”
Walters looked up with a glint of sympathy in her eyes.
“I’m afraid you’re not, effective this morning.” She glanced around as if to check for eavesdroppers, slid open a desk drawer, and retrieved a single sheet of paper.
“Here, but give it right back. I shouldn’t even be showing it to you.”
It was a Herrington memo addressed to “ALL,” a group which apparently no longer included Helen Abell:
FYI, until further notice, all clearances for Helen Abell shall be strictly limited to those items and matters that pertain directly to her daily administration of the physical facilities under her immediate jurisdiction.
In other words, he was cutting off any avenue by which she might build or buttress a case against Kevin Gilley. No cables, no reports, no offhand conversations, no access to agents. Nothing.
Walters already had her hand out. Helen briefly considered making a copy, but her access number for the copier would have been deactivated by now as part of her punishment. And why make an enemy of Walters, who at least had showed her the memo? She handed it over. Walters sagged in apparent relief, which in its own small way was the most disconcerting thing Helen had seen all morning.
“So,” Helen said tersely. “That’s that, I guess.”
“I know why he did it,” Walters whispered. “Everyone does, and believe me, a lot of us sympathize. Be aware that you’re not alone.”
In Helen’s turbulent state of mind, the words struck her as potentially sinister.
“What do you mean, ‘not alone’?” She, too, was whispering now. “Am I under surveillance, is that what you’re saying?”
“God, no! Or I don’t think so. I just meant, don’t be surprised if you start hearing from others. Privately, of course. The word is out, and not only in Berlin.”
“About Gilley, you mean?”
Walters again averted her eyes.
“Sorry,” Helen said. “Robert, I mean. Or I suppose I shouldn’t have said that, either.”
“As I said, the word is out. Give it time.”
“Out with who? Who do you think can help me?”
“Please. I can’t say anything more.”
Helen heard the door opening, and the sound of footsteps. Walters lowered her voice further, and Helen had to lean closer to hear.
“I probably shouldn’t be talking to you at all because, well…”
“Well, what?”
“Herrington phoned me a few minutes before you came in. He ordered me to confiscate your key.”
“To the records room?”
“I’m afraid so.” She held out her hand.
“What if I never came in?”
Walters nodded toward the other side of the room, where a case officer, MacIntyre, had opened a drawer. In other words, there was now a witness to Helen’s presence.
With a rising fury, Helen removed the key from her key ring and tossed it onto the desk, making a ringing noise that caused MacIntyre to stop what he was doing. The room was deathly silent.
“Oh,” he said, noticing Helen.
She felt the color rising in her cheeks as she turned to go, and by the time she got back to her desk she was on the verge of vomiting up her breakfast. Her cheeks burned as if she’d been slapped, but she was determined not to display anger or pain. It’s what everyone would be watching for. She gently shut the door to her office and sagged into her chair, her head in her hands as she squeezed her eyes shut.
She reopened them to the sight of another fresh memo from Herrington sitting atop her desk, which must have been delivered while she was in records. It wasn’t the one he’d sent to everyone else.
Miss Abell,
Langley has brought it to my attention that you are more than a week behind in filing the regular safe house usage reports. Please bring your work in this area up to date no later than the close of business today.—LH
Below was a handwritten PS, in which he offered the real news:
Until this disciplinary matter is settled, you will be working under a reduced security clearance. While you will still be expected to stay abreast of your duties, I should clarify that until your clearance is restored you shall not be present, either as a facilitator or as an operator of recording equipment, for any clandestine meetings at our facilities. I have appointed temporary stewards from our clerical pool to assist in such duties until further notice.
For the moment, paperwork was her only duty. She was reminded of Baucom’s characterization of her from the night before as a desk jockey, a pencil pusher—wartime terms that his generation had coined, and in her case they were painfully apt. With her clearance gone, she officially ranked even lower than a typist on the scale of Agency trust. She took out a sheaf of blank usage reports and scrolled one into her typewriter. She was so flustered that she had to use Wite-Out six times in the first five minutes.
All day she waited for the cavalry to arrive, based on Walters’s vague assertion that others might soon rally to her cause. Not a single person knocked at her door. Her phone was silent. On her three trips into the hallways—one to the break room, two to the ladies’ room—no one approached or called her name. She was so intent on looking straight ahead that she didn’t know if anyone even dared to look at her. She did train her ears for the sound of Baucom’s avuncular voice, but came up empty. Perhaps he’d been warned off as well, and was holed up in that restricted-access conference room in the back, where the Old Boys liked to gather.
Around 4 p.m. she completed the usage reports. She sipped at the cold remains of her midday coffee and reviewed her remaining options for investigating Gilley’s misbehavior. Slim pickings. Copies of earlier usage reports were filed right here in her office, so she at least had access to them. Maybe there were records of previous meetings involving Robert, Frieda, or Kathrin.
She checked back through a year’s supply, but found only a report for one previous visit by Robert, to a safe house in Steglitz that had since been decommissioned, and there was no mention of whom he’d met. If Robert was a more frequent customer, then he’d never reported his other visits. She did, however, find a record for previous visits by Frieda and Kathrin, one apiece. Each had met with Linden, a case officer whose actual name was Rick Ford.
That was something, she supposed. Ford would still know how to get in touch with them, although by now he, too, would have received Herrington’s memo. Helen was damaged goods.
But Baucom could ask Ford on her behalf. This was war, and she should act accordingly. As far as Helen was concerned, Herrington had already fired his heaviest weapons—short of suspending her outright—and she would eventually have to use hers, meaning the tape. The nuclear option. But first she had to come up with the best possible means of deployment, because she would probably only have one chance to use it.
It was nearly 6 p.m. She was exhausted and disheartened. She locked her office and headed for the exit. The route took her by records where, to her surprise, the door was ajar, a rare lapse in security by Walters. With a stab of wishful thinking, she wondered if Walters might have left it open just for her. Maybe this was the sort of help Walters had been hinting at earlier?
Helen pushed through the door. Walters looked up from her desk and frowned right away. So much for that theory. Helen was about to slink away in shame when a man’s voice called out from across the room.
“Guten abend, Frau Abell!”
It was Erickson, a field man whose German was notoriously bad, and whose Russian was worse. “Was ist los?”
“I should be asking you that,” she answered, seizing on his greeting as an excuse to linger. “Must be something important if you didn’t even bother to shut the door behind you.”
Walters was glaring now.
Erickson smiled. Had he not seen Herrington’s memo? Or maybe he didn’t give a damn. Rumor had it that he’d been relegated to the most undesirable assignments until he improved his German.
“Oh, nothing all that earth-shattering,” he said. “Major cleanup over in the produce aisle, and I’m the designated mop.”
Walters cleared her throat. Erickson didn’t notice, and Helen didn’t dare look her way.
“A cleanup?”
“Some agent of ours—a minor one, thank God, but ours all the same—seems to have gone smash on the floor.”
“Blown?”
“Dead.”
“Good God!”
“Oh, it’s not an operational casualty. Still, there are procedures to be followed because this one’s going to make the papers.”
Walters again cleared her throat. Helen again ignored it.
“How terrible.”
“Yes. A lot of drinking involved. These young ones do put it away, although I’d always credited you gals with being more under control in that department.”
“Gals? The agent was a young woman?” Helen strained to keep her voice under control.
“Anneliese Kurz,” he said, looking at the file. “Nineteen years of age. Ever come across her at one of your houses?”
“Well, not by that name.”
“Oh, of course.” He smiled, silly him. “I guess you only know them by their cryptonyms.”
She held her breath. By now even Walters wasn’t stirring.
“Here we go, then. Frieda, it says here. Lovers’ quarrel, or that’s the working theory of the Polizei. Some young anarchist on a rampage, also drunk—over in jolly old Kreuzberg.”
Helen wished he would shut up, but he kept on chattering. She tried to smile as he continued but could barely mask her agony and astonishment.
“So, off I go. Mop in hand and official ID at the ready.” He rolled his eyes. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to fancy a drink, would you? Later, of course, when I’m free and clear of all this? Helen? Helen?”
“What? Oh. Sorry, but no. I’m, uh, busy.”
“Ah. So I’ve heard. The lucky old dog.”
The innuendo bounced right off her, and she barely noticed as Erickson departed. Walters stood from her desk and bustled forward.
“Leave!” she hissed, her face a thundercloud. “You can’t be in here, Helen. Leave now.”