Arriving at her desk early the following Monday, Helen almost immediately found herself reimmersed in the realm of forbidden pursuits. All it took was a terse interoffice phone call from Eileen Walters.
“I have something for you. See me.”
She hung up before Helen could reply.
Helen arrived at her desk a few minutes later. Walters looked around as if to reassure herself they were alone. Then she leaned forward and lowered her voice.
“Was anyone else coming down the hallway?”
“No.”
“Good. We need to wrap this up as quickly as possible. If anyone else comes in, we’ll stop what we’re doing and then finish when they’ve gone. Understood?”
“Yes.”
Walters reached into her desk and pulled out a sealed envelope.
“This arrived this morning by diplomatic pouch, over at the consular office. It was addressed to me but the sealed parcel inside was intended for you.”
“By diplomatic pouch?”
“To avoid the usual cable traffic, encrypted or otherwise. A courier brought it by. Herrington knows nothing about it.”
Helen flushed with anticipation.
“I told you there were others. Well, this is one of them. I’m a go-between, nothing more.”
“Who is it from?”
“She’s in records, in Langley, someone I’ve never met but have often been in touch with. All I can say for sure is that she appears to know a little bit about everything, so I’ve always gathered that she’s fairly senior. Beyond that I can’t tell you anything, so please don’t ask. And you’re not to reply through me. That’s also been made clear.”
“All right.” Helen’s palms were tingling as she took the envelope. “Thank you.”
“You should probably go now, before someone else sees us talking.”
“Of course.”
Helen moved breathlessly away from the desk and went out the door. The hallway was still clear. She carried the sealed envelope back to her office, shut the door behind her, and then set it on her desk, as if it might open of its own accord. Taking a few seconds to collect herself, she decided to lock her door. Then she took a letter opener from her desk, tore through the tape, and slid out a single folded sheet of CIA stationery with three typewritten paragraphs.
The sender was someone named Audra Vollmer. Helen had never heard of her. Her letterhead said she was chief of records for the analytical group of the Information Operations Center. An archivist, located at the heart of all Agency records. Like Walters, but to the tenth power. For anyone needing the kind of information Helen had been seeking, Audra Vollmer was a connection of the highest possible value.
Vollmer’s inclusion of her name and title was a bit surprising, as was her use of official Agency stationery. For someone who seemed so intent on keeping this communication a secret, she seemed just as determined for Helen to know not only exactly who she was, but also what sort of authority she wielded.
The message was concise and, as Helen soon realized, intriguing:
Your concerns with regard to Robert are not isolated. Information that I believe to be pertinent is available. Toward that end, an asset will soon be in contact.
On housekeeping matters, my perusal of your safe house usage reports and associated records indicates that your secure facility on Sachsenwaldstrasse is overdue for maintenance. In keeping with suggested protocol I have scheduled a resupply of cleaning materials for delivery at approx 19:00.
I will forward instructions for further communication. Do not reply until you have received them. Please destroy this message and envelope upon receipt.—AV
No wonder Vollmer had contacted her this way. She had apparently decided to enlist in Helen’s secret war on Kevin Gilley, cryptonym Robert. Somehow—perhaps through Walters—word had reached her of what had happened in Berlin. This told Helen that Gilley had his enemies, Baucom’s warning notwithstanding, and that they were interested in joining forces.
It was promising. Check that. It was fantastic.
Helen slowly reread the message. Obviously, a third person was about to become involved—the “asset” to whom Vollmer referred—and apparently that would happen at seven o’clock this evening via some sort of delivery at the safe house on Sachsenwaldstrasse. The message, with its vague reference to “cleaning materials,” made her wonder exactly who or what would be arriving at the house. She wondered what Vollmer’s prior experience was.
The Sachsenwaldstrasse safe house was on a leafy street in Steglitz, and was the smallest of the four locations Helen administered. It was a third-floor flat in a bland stucco apartment building, near a children’s playground that the Agency sometimes used—albeit rarely—for dead drops and brush passes, two ways of handing off messages between agents and case officers.
On the pecking order for hypersensitive meetings it probably ranked last among the four locations. But, due to its tenant’s full travel schedule and the neighborhood’s high level of pedestrian traffic, it was often the handiest for crash meetings and other emergencies. In that sense, Vollmer had made the perfect choice. She had done her homework. She must have studied the fine print of Helen’s reports and lease agreements, copies of which were all on file in Langley.
Helen’s first action was to follow Vollmer’s final command by shredding the message. Her second was to give notice in writing that she would be making a maintenance visit to the Sachsenwaldstrasse safe house between the hours of six and nine that evening. If Herrington happened to see it, he’d be pleased to see that she had returned to her tame role of Agency domesticity.
She kept to herself as much as possible the rest of the day. Shortly before six, which was well after sunset in Berlin in late October, she departed for Steglitz, first by bus, then by taxi, and then by U-Bahn, a roundabout journey that took forty minutes but left her satisfied that no one had followed her from Berlin station.
She let herself into the safe house and took up a watchful position at the front window, louvering the blinds open at an angle that would allow her to see anyone approaching the building downstairs without being seen from the street. The nearby playground was dark and quiet. Last-minute shoppers headed home with full tote bags. Bicycles came and went.
At two minutes before seven, a mailman in a Deutsche Post uniform approached with a push cart. He reached into his mail bag and carried a stack of envelopes up the steps and into the building. It was certainly a bit late for a real postman to be on duty.
Helen unlocked the door to the stairwell and held it ajar to listen to the sound of the mailman on the floor below as he opened the bank of mailboxes in the entryway. A moment or two later it clanged shut, and she heard him leave. She took the tenant’s mailbox key and descended the stairs. Awaiting her was a phone bill, an advertising flyer, and a white envelope that appeared to be a personal letter. All were addressed to the tenant, Gerthe Schneider. But the envelope for the personal letter was neither stamped nor metered, and the name Vollmer was scribbled above the return address. Helen took it upstairs. She opened it in the kitchen.
Folded inside was a single sheet of paper with a two-line message. It was typewritten, but not in the same font as the message that had arrived by diplomatic pouch.
The first line read: Call at 20:00. Use phone box and coins.
The second line was a phone number with the country code for France. The message was unsigned. Looking closely at the paper and envelope, it was obvious that all the materials had been acquired locally. Whoever Audra Vollmer was, she seemed to have a lot of resources in the field at her disposal. Helen memorized the number, burned the message over the toilet, and then flushed away the ashes.
Helen knew from her own scouting of this location that there was a phone booth only two blocks away. But with extra time on her hands she decided to go farther afield, partly for security and partly to walk off her nervous energy. She stopped in a bar down the street to change some bills for D-Mark coins. She considered buying a shot of whiskey to brace herself, and then thought better of it. Instead she bought a copy of Tagesspiegel.
Twenty minutes and many roundabout blocks later, she chose a phone booth on a relatively busy stretch of Bismarckstrasse. There was a fallback location just around the corner in case someone jumped into this one at the appointed hour. Helen checked her watch. Six more minutes. She sat on a nearby bench and opened the newspaper, checking the time obsessively until a minute before eight, when she stepped into the booth.
The overhead light flickered on as she shut the door. She dropped in a handful of coins and punched in the number. A woman answered on the third ring.
“Hello? Is this Berlin?” American accent, someone about her age.
“Yes. Hello.” She had given a lot of thought about what to say—not her name, certainly—but she had never come up with an opening line she was comfortable with, so she settled for something fairly bland. “I’m, uh, calling about Robert?”
“Splendid. I have instructions for you.” So cool and competent, this one. And a surprisingly friendly tone, which helped put Helen at ease.
“Go ahead. I’m ready.”
“First, if I may step out of operational character for a moment, I’d like to say what a relief it is to finally have an ally on this. Thanks for sticking your neck out.”
Under other circumstances the woman’s approach might have made her suspicious. But Helen detected the same notes of relief and release that she was experiencing, so her answer came naturally.
“Thank you as well. You’re right. It’s good to have an ally.”
“Now, if we could only share a drink afterwards.”
They laughed. The tension eased.
“I suppose you’re working for the same firm as me.”
“Yes. As is the old gal in the home office who got in touch with both of us.”
“I’ve never met her. Have you?”
“No. Not sure I’d want to. Very formidable, even in print. Okay, down to business. A little post office has been set up for you, at some kiddie playground you’re supposedly already familiar with?”
“Yes. But that seems sort of chancy. I think some of our people are already using that.”
“This spot for us is along the back wall, beneath a corner brick by the drinking fountain. Same place?”
“No. The usual operational location is over by the swing set.”
“There you go. Same PO, different box. Here’s the protocol. Everything is to be typewritten. We’ll use our respective three-letter airport codes for identities, which means TXL for you, for Berlin Tegel. I’m CDG for Paris Charles de Gaulle. And it will be IAD, for Washington Dulles, for our mother ship. Got it?”
“Got it. It occurs to me that here I am trusting you when I don’t even know your name.”
“Same here.”
Not that it would be all that hard figuring out either of their IDs, Helen thought. Neither Berlin nor Paris station was exactly overflowing with females, and she supposed her new ally was as aware of that as she was.
“But we both know hers,” Helen said, “or at least I’m assuming you do, right?”
“Yes. I was a little surprised she offered that. Speaks to her position of power, I suppose.”
“Or maybe that’s wishful thinking on our part. It would be nice to know that someone with real clout was on our side.”
“Definitely wishful thinking. Run aground on this and we’ll be swimming for the lifeboats. The key is to not run aground. Rely on what you’ve learned in the field, and I’ll do the same.”
Helen didn’t have the heart to tell her that she had no experience in the field. And if Audra Vollmer had also never been a field operative, then they’d be relying on two pencil pushers. Meaning she had better let her new friend in Paris set the tone.
“Where do we start?”
“IAD briefed me on what you saw. I had a similar sighting. I didn’t file anything official, but I did include a version in my weekly report. Nothing came of it, of course. How she heard about it is beyond my clearance.”
“Beyond mine, too. I still haven’t gotten around to putting anything on paper, and doubt I’d even be allowed to at this point.”
“That bad?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Nasty piece of work, isn’t he?”
“Yes. And the repercussions…” Helen’s words trailed off. She faltered for a moment. “The girl in question, well…I’ll fill you in soon enough.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“These dead drops, presumably you’re using one as well?”
“She assigned me a location. Nothing from our usual assortment, as far as I could tell. I changed it to a location more to my liking.”
“Who’s servicing them?”
“That’s also her department. Madame X, as I’ve come to think of her. A very together lady. Or she’d better be. An hour ago I was starting to panic, wondering if we were both fools for trusting her. Then it occurred to me that maybe she’s the fool, for trusting us. All right, then. More to come. Send something tonight, if you can. Madame X promises pickup will be speedy and delivery prompt. She also wanted you to know that she’s at the hub of a lot of useful information, so if you have any requests then send them immediately. But to her only, and only through our channels.”
“Perfect.”
“I thought so, too. Then I started wondering, what happens if that channel goes silent?”
“The one to the home office, you mean?”
“Yes. She’ll have more at stake if things begin to fall apart. Which is why I think we need a contingency. One other channel, just between us, if you’re game.”
Helen liked the idea. And then she didn’t. This woman was friendly, but maybe it was part of a ruse, an effort to make her expose herself more than she should.
“Do you mind if I think about that?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve spooked you.”
Something in her readiness to retreat restored Helen’s trust. And she had a point. Pinning all their hopes and logistics on a single network, run by a single friend in Langley, left few alternatives if that channel was cut.
“No, you’re right. What would you suggest?”
“Nothing fancy. Just remember this number. If you’re ever in a jam, and the usual channel isn’t an option, ring me at the same time as today. Twenty hours. I’ll make this phone box a regular stop at that hour until you tell me to stand down. How does that sound?”
“Perfect.”
“Great. Are we done, then?”
“Yes.”
“Until the next time, then. Goodbye.”
Helen hung up, and almost immediately felt lonely and isolated. The only sound was the buzz of the overhead light. She popped the door ajar to shut it off, and to allow for a moment of privacy in the dark before she ventured back into the streets. She smiled, feeling triumphant, a small victory to build on. Then she scanned her surroundings. For a brief panicky moment she half expected watchers to emerge from a listening van, or from the hedgerow across the street.
But when she stepped from the phone booth, no one approached. No one stopped to stare, or to snap her photo. She walked briskly back toward the safe house, and upon arrival she got right down to business, typing out a message to IAD, putting it into an envelope, and then locking the house behind her. Walking to the playground, she carefully checked her flanks and then posted the message to the dead drop, where the brick came loose easily and then fit snugly back into place.
She took a roundabout route home to shake any surveillance, and by the time she reached her apartment she had concluded that with the help of her new allies she might actually be able to do this. Step by step, and ever so carefully, she could succeed. They all could.