Paris, 1979
Helen switched on the bedside light, unable to sleep. What she needed was a nightcap, anything to calm her nerves so she could wake up rested for what promised to be a long and eventful tomorrow. It wasn’t yet midnight, so she threw back the sheets and got dressed.
Claire had booked her a spacious room on the third floor of a modest five-story hotel on a one-way street. French doors opened onto a narrow terrace with potted geraniums and a wrought iron railing, with a commanding view of the street below, although at the moment the wooden shutters were closed.
Helen had made a quick reconnaissance right after checking in. At one end of the hundred-yard block was the Canal de l’Ourcq, with a tree-lined roadway running alongside it and a pedestrian bridge that crossed to the other bank. At the other end was the Avenue de Flandre, where busy sidewalks were populated mostly by Parisians, just as Claire had said.
She was about to head out when she remembered the copy of Paris Match, with Claire’s report stapled inside. It sat on a console table, trying to look inconspicuous among a few tourist magazines, but Helen didn’t feel comfortable leaving it there. Figuring it was easier to hide the report than the magazine, she loosened the staples and removed the pages. Then she took down a framed Chagall print that hung above the bed, pried out the back panel, slid the folded pages between the backing and the poster, and hung the frame back on the wall.
Downstairs, the empty street felt a little spooky, although it saved her time by not having to decide whether any bystanders were there to keep an eye on her. She chose her destination by sound, turning in the direction of the noisier Avenue de Flandre, and within a few blocks she found a brasserie on a corner next to an entrance to the Metro. A few hardy customers sat at sidewalk tables in the October chill, but Helen opted for the smoky coziness within. An older man had just stood to leave a table by the door, so she took his place.
The brasserie was nearly empty, which suited her fine. Two tables down, a pair of backpacking young Germans—and, yes, it figured that any tourists in this neighborhood were bound to be backpacking young Germans—bent low over a massive Michelin map. They jabbed forefingers and made pencil marks, as if planning an assault on the Arc de Triomphe. Only her second night in Paris, and Helen was already viewing Germans as uncharitably as the locals. Or maybe she was just tired and on edge.
They, too, soon departed, just as Helen’s whiskey arrived in a cut-glass tumbler, borne aloft on a tray by a bored waiter in a smudged apron. The Germans folded their map but left behind a newspaper, which made Helen realize she hadn’t seen or read a shred of news in the past twenty-four hours. She had thought about buying an International Herald Tribune earlier that evening, but hadn’t been sure if that’s what a Canadian would do. Now she no longer cared.
She stepped over to the empty table and grabbed it before the waiter could clear it away. It was today’s edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a little conservative for her tastes, but written in a language she could understand. She sipped her whiskey and settled in for a nice, restorative read.
As had been the case for weeks, the big news was out of Iran, where student protesters and the new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, were freshly outraged because the deposed Shah had just landed in the United States. Yet another reason Berlin station wasn’t getting much attention, although she supposed her little escapade must have turned a few heads in Langley by now.
She flipped the page. More foreign news. A bit of domestic politics. Nothing about any CIA personnel going AWOL. Not that she’d expected it. The Agency did its best to keep these kinds of internal breaches quiet. She flipped another page. Some jerk in Bavaria had gotten himself arrested by making a Hitler salute on a subway car.
A story in the corner caught her eye: “Auto Accident Claims Life of SPD Policy Maker.” The victim was Werner Gerntholz, forty-five, “a prominent thinker in Social Democratic circles, known for outspoken views on relations with the United States, especially with regard to nuclear policy.”
The same fellow whose keys had been copied by Kathrin and Anneliese for Kevin Gilley and his young American helper, Kurt Delacroix. She recalled the details: a red key for a garage, and one that fit a BMW. The story said Gerntholz’s BMW had run through a guardrail on a high mountain pass. He was alone, and had apparently fallen asleep. His body showed signs of carbon monoxide poisoning, leading authorities to suspect he’d passed out due to a faulty exhaust system.
Helen dropped the newspaper, took a deep breath, and then gulped half the remaining whiskey. She gazed out the window onto the sidewalks of Paris. Sleep was no longer an option. She quietly paid her bill and left.
In the morning, rather than being rattled, she was surprised to find that the news of Gerntholz’s death had steeled her resolve. She hit the sidewalks with a swagger in her step, attuned to her surroundings. With the better part of a day to kill before her daily contact with Claire at 4 p.m., she decided to spend the next few hours plotting out escape and evasion routes in the blocks near her hotel, figuring that she might as well prepare for the worst.
She carried out her reconnaissance under the guise of shopping, all the while scouting for stores with rear exits, stairways, side doors, and other passages that she might employ to her advantage later. She also mulled the wide variety of quick changes she could make to her appearance with the help of the wig, scarf, sunglasses, and other items that Claire had assembled for her in the tote bag.
Confident that she was up to the task, she then amused herself by looking for the ugliest, tackiest item of tourist kitsch a bird-watching Canadian woman might want to take home. The pickings for such items were fairly slim on the Avenue de Flandre until she hit the jackpot at a small shop that offered hundreds of replicas of the Eiffel Tower of almost every imaginable size and style. There were gold ones, ceramic ones, plastic ones, and they could be had as key chains, paperweights, refrigerator magnets, clocks, and tree ornaments. Then there were the snow globes. Some with an entire miniature Paris inside. Red, blue, yellow, and gold, from small to large.
Finally she settled on one of the larger snow globes—nearly six inches in diameter, with a gilded Eiffel Tower inside. It had a massive and heavy plastic base on which “Paris” was chiseled in blocky blue letters—to her eye, the single most tasteless item in the store. She carried it gleefully to the register, where the proprietor searched in vain for a price tag and then, sensing her eagerness, quoted the outrageous figure of thirty francs, or around six bucks.
“Done!” she answered in English, although the moment she left the store she knew she would have to take it back to her room rather than lug it around for the rest of the day. What a dreadnought it was! Two pounds, at least. She smiled to herself and hoped she would have a chance to show it to Claire, and then she checked her watch. Just after 1 p.m. Less than three hours before she would find out whether Marina was ready for a rendezvous.