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Johnson was reading a local newspaper he had bought at the Frankenwald service station when his phone trilled discreetly. He picked it up, listened, and offered the handset to McCready.
“GCHQ,” he said. “They want to speak to you.”
It was a friend of McCready, speaking from Cheltenham.
“Look, Sam,” said
the voice, “I think I know where you are. There’s been a lot of radio traffic suddenly broken out not far from you. Perhaps you should call Archimedes. They have more than we do.”
The line went dead.
“Get me Archimedes,” McCready said to Johnson. “Duty officer, East German Section.” Johnson began to punch in the numbers.
In the mid-1950s the British government, acting through the British Army of the Rhine, had bought a dilapidated old castle high in the Harz Mountains, not far from the pretty and historic little town of Goslar. The Harz are a range of densely wooded uplands through which the East German border ran in twisting curves, sometimes across the flank of a hill, sometimes along a rocky ravine. It was a favorite area for potential East German escapers to try their luck.
Schloss Löwenstein had been refurbished by the British, ostensibly as a retreat for military bands to practice their art. This ruse was maintained by the continuous sounds of band practice issuing from the castle with the aid of tape recorders and amplifiers. But in repairing the roof, engineers from Cheltenham had installed some very sophisticated antennae, upgraded with better technology through the years. Although local German dignitaries were occasionally invited to a real concert of chamber and military music by a band flown in for the occasion, Löwenstein was really an out-station of Cheltenham, code-named Archimedes. Its job was to listen to the endless babble of East German and Russian radio chit-chat from across the border. Hence the value of the mountains; the height gave perfect reception.
“Yes, we’ve just passed it down the line to Cheltenham,” said the duty officer when McCready had established his credentials. “They said you might call direct.”
He talked for several minutes, and when McCready put the phone down, he was pale.
“The police in Jena District are going apeshit,” he told Johnson. “Apparently there’s been a crash outside Jena. Southern side. A West German car, make unknown, hit a Trabant. The West German slugged one of the VOPOs who attended the crash and drove off—in the VOPO car, of all things. Of course, it might not be our man.”
Johnson looked sympathetic, but he no more believed it than McCready.
“What do we do?” he asked.
McCready sat on the tailgate of the Range Rover, his head in his hands.
“We wait,” he said. “There’s nothing else we can do. Archimedes will call back if more comes through.”
At that hour the black BMW was being driven into the compound of the Jena police headquarters. No one was thinking of fingerprints—they knew who they wanted to arrest. The VOPO with the damaged nose had been patched up and was making a long statement, his colleague likewise. The Trabant driver was being detained and questioned, as were a dozen onlookers. On the desk of the precinct commandant lay the passport in the name of Hans Grauber, picked up from the street where the broken-nosed VOPO had dropped it. Other detectives were going through every item in the attaché case and overnight bag. The foreign sales director of Zeiss was brought in, protesting that he had never heard of Hans Grauber, but yes, he had done business in the past with BKI of Würzburg. When confronted with his forged signature on the introduction letters, he claimed it looked like his signature but could not be. His nightmare was just beginning.
Because the passport was West German, the People’s Police Commandant made a routine call to the local SSD office. Ten minutes later they were back. We want that car taken on a low-loader to our main garage in Erfurt, they said. Stop putting fingerprints all over it. Also, deliver all items retrieved from the car to us. And copies of all statements from witnesses. Now.
The VOPO colonel knew who was really in charge. When the Stasi gave an order, you obeyed. The black BMW arrived at the SSD main garage in Erfurt on its trailer at four-thirty and the secret police mechanics went to work. The VOPO colonel had to admit the SSD was right. Nothing made sense. The West German would probably have faced a hefty fine for drunk-driving—East Germany always needed the hard currency. Now he faced years in prison. Why had he run? Anyway, whatever the Stasi wanted with the car, his job was to find the man. He ordered every police car and foot patrol for miles around to keep an eye open for Grauber and the stolen police car. The description of both was passed by radio to all units—up to Apolda north of Jena and west to Weimar. No press appeals were made for assistance from the general public. Public help for the police in a police state is a rare luxury. But all the frantic radio traffic was heard by Archimedes.
At four P.M., Dr. Herrmann called Dieter Aust in Cologne. He did not tell him the result of the lab tests, or even what he had received the previous night from Johann Prinz. Aust had no need to know.
“I want you to interview Frau Morenz personally,” he said. “You have a woman operative with her? Good, keep her there. If the police come to interview Frau Morenz, do not impede, but let me know. Try and get from her any clue as to where he might go, any vacation home, any girlfriend’s apartment, any relative’s house—anything at all. Use your entire staff to follow up any lead she gives you. Report back anything to me.”
“He hasn’t got any relatives in Germany,” said Aust, who had already been through Morenz’s past life as revealed in the personnel files, “other than his wife, son, and daughter. I believe his daughter is a hippie, lives in a squat in Düsseldorf. I’ll have it visited, just in case.”
“Do that,” said Herrmann, and he put down the phone. Based on something he had seen in Morenz’s file, he then sent a blitz-category-coded signal to Wolfgang Fietzau, the BND agent on the staff of the German Embassy, Belgrave Square, London.
At five o’clock, the phone set on the tailgate of the Range Rover trilled. McCready picked it up. He thought it would be London or Archimedes. The voice was thin, tinny, as if the speaker were choking.
“Sam? Is that you Sam?”
McCready stiffened. “Yes,” he snapped, “it’s me.”
“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry. I messed it up.”
“Are you okay?” said McCready urgently. Morenz was wasting vital seconds.
“ ’Kay. Yeah, k as in kaput. I’m finished, Sam. I didn’t mean to kill her. I loved her, Sam. I loved her.”
McCready slammed down the phone, severing the connection. No one could make a phone call to the West from an East German phone booth. All contact was forbidden by the East Germans. But the SIS maintained a safe house in the Leipzig area, occupied by an East German agent-in-place who worked for London. A call to that number, dialed from inside East Germany, would run through pass-on equipment that would throw the call up to a satellite and back into the West.