Ultimate Issue (38 page)

“In a way, Captain Verago, you’re very privileged. Not many tourists get to see the inside of Hohenschoenhausen. The trouble is, even fewer ever come out again.”

Then he stood up and called the escort.

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Saturday, July 29,1961

. .

East Berlin

THE little convoy raced through the streets of East Berlin at high speed, two Vopo motorcycle outriders leading the way and a jeepload of Vopos, cradling submachine guns, bringing up the rear. They had priority, and at road junctions and traffic lights police waved them through, imperi-ously holding up everybody until they had passed.

They were escorting a windowless, all-steel grey truck with no insignia and only a couple of small ventilation slits. It was like a self-contained bank vault on wheels carrying high-value cargo. The handcuffed man sitting inside, between two expressionless guards, had no idea where he was being driven.

He couldn’t see the propaganda maxims painted on bullet-scarred walls, the banners hanging from windows, the red streamers flying from long poles, all with slogans. Dictums like “Socialism is Triumphing, We Are Stronger,” “A Strong German Democratic Republic Ensures Peace,” “The Working Masses Will Conquer.”

Nor did he see the billboards with the gigantic portraits of the man with the pince-nez and Van Dyke beard, “Spitzbart,” Walter Ulbricht.

But he heard the klaxons of the motorcycles, and he could feel the pain of his handcuffs. The guards sitting either side of him studiously avoided looking at him, but their hands hovered near their guns.

He knew that he was rated an important prisoner. Not that that was any consolation. They had taken away his passport and his army AGO card. He had no identification. No papers to prove who he was.

With a shock, Tony Verago suddenly realized that he had ceased to exist.

Hohenschoenhausen

Utter darkness enveloped him, suffocated him. Even when his eyes adjusted, he still could hardly see anything.

It was so pitch black that he stumbled around, holding out his manacled hands, trying to grope his way about, to find the walls, to get some idea of the size of the…

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The what? The room? The cell? The dungeon?

Was this the place Schultz had talked of? Hohenschoenhausen. The SSD prison. Reserved for the use of the State Security Service of the German Democratic Republic.

He had heard sharp commands when the convoy finally had halted. Then one of the guards had blindfolded him and, unseeing, stumbling, he had been half guided, half pushed across a courtyard, taken, so he thought, into a building, along various corridors, up a staircase, along another passage, and then an iron door had clanged shut behind him. After a time a guard had entered, taken off his blindfold, and left again. It made no difference to his eyes. The darkness was impenetrable. Not even a slit of light under the door, a glimmer through a crack in the wall.

And it was silent. Terribly silent. No voices, no footsteps. This cage was soundproof.

They’re trying disorientation, thought Verago, desperately attempting to make his brain reason and concentrate.

They want me to lose all sense of time and direction. And, Christ, they’re succeeding.

Already time had started to become meaningless. He tried to retrack his movements. The Braunschweig apartment block. The cafe. The funeral parlor. Schultz. Now this. How long had he been in East Berlin? A day? Two days? Was it morning, was it night?

Without warning, suddenly he was standing in light. From the high ceiling a powerful bulb shone down on him. It hurt, and he closed his eyes, tight.

He heard the door being unlocked and, squinting, Verago saw a man enter. He wore civilian clothes but had military bearing. The door was shut behind him.

“Sit down over there,” instructed Major Fokin.

Verago looked around. For the first time he took in the geography of the cell. It was very bare. A bunk and a three-legged stool. That was all.

Gingerly Verago sat down on the stool.

“I understand you’ve been very uncooperative so far,” Fokin said quite pleasantly, “but I’m sure you’ve been thinking it over, and we’ll get on famously.”

He spoke excellent British English.

Verago held out his hands. “Take these off,” he said. “Please. They hurt.”

“Certainly,” said Fokin. He seemed to have come pre

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pared for the request. He pulled out a key and unlocked the handcuffs. Verago’s wrists were so numb that be didn’t even feel relief. He started rubbing his left wrist with his right hand. That one, especially, had been sheer agony.

“Don’t worry,” said Fokin, “it’ll pass.”

“Who are you?” Verago asked thickly. His mouth felt awful. More than anything, he wanted to clean his teeth.

“My name is Fokin, and I’m here to establish some facts about you so we can get this whole thing cleared up.”

“Oh, yesl”

“My advice is for you to be perfectly frank, Captain Verago. You can start by telling me which agency you work for.”

“Agency?” Verago echoed dully.

“Agency. Organization. Service. Which is it? CIA? The Counter Intelligence Corps, CIC? Army Security? The OSI? The NSA? The JIC?”

Involuntarily, Verago yawned. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m tired. Really bushed.”

“Of course you are,” Fokin sympathised. “But you must tell me. Which organisation?”

“I’m a lawyer,” Verago said dully.

Fokin nodded. “I know. Judge Advocate’s Corps. Your boss is Colonel Ochs. You’ve been in England with the air force. Laconbury. Brigadier General Croxford is the commander. It’s an excellent cover. Just out of the ordinary enough to make it believable. But your real mission? Here in Berlin? That’s what I want to know.”

“The Geneva convention “

” does not apply to intelligence officers who enter foreign countries as tourists in disguise.”

“Some disguise,” Verago remarked bitterly. He glanced down at his clothes, shapeless, stained.

“I can see you are tired,” said Fokin, and his sudden consideration baffled Verago. “Think things over. You have plenty of time before the real interrogation.”

The real interrogation. He just slipped it in, but it startled Verago.

“I have to be back in England,” he explained. “I am defending a man in a courtmartial, and the trial resumes on “

“My dear Captain Verago, forget it,” said Fokin.

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West Berlin

“I’m a friend of Captain Verago’s,” said the lean, angular man. He had never met Verago in his life, but Iying came to him quite naturally.

“Oh, yes?” The duty manager at the Berlin Hilton wore his fixed public relations smile. He was Swiss and humorless, but he was always polite, except to people whose credit cards weren’t sanctioned.

“He’s asked me to collect his luggage and pay the bill,” said the lean man.

“Just a moment,” the duty manager excused himself politely: He disappeared into one of the administrative offices, behind the reception desk. The lean man stood in the lobby, unconcerned.

When the duty manager reappeared, his smile was a little forced. “You say you are a friend of Captain Verago’s?”

“Yes. “

“Well, he checked in on Wednesday and said he wanted a single room for several days. We haven’t seen him since.”

The duty manager strongly disapproved of this kind of irregularity.

“That’s right.” The lean man nodded. “He’s been called away.”

“Without telling us?” It was clearly a gross breach of good manners in a hotelier’s book.

“It happens,” said the lean man.

The duty manager had the bill in his hand. “Of course we will expect him to pay in full. We held the room.”

The man took the bill and glanced at it. “That’ll be fine,” he said. “You take dollars?”

“Of course.” The smile was a little warmer.

“Maybe we could go up to his room and get his things,” suggested the man.

They took the lift up to the eighth floor, and the duty manager unlocked the door of the room. Verago had scarcely used it. There were a few toilet things in the bathroom, but his suitcase still contained his shirts and underwear.

In the wardrobe hung his uniform.

“I’ll just pack it,” said the lean man, taking it off the hanger. He gathered the toilet things and also put them in Verago’s case. Then he quickly, expertly glanced around

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the room. It was a trained look, which took in everything.

“That’s about it, I guess,” said the lean man.

Downstairs he went to the cashier’s cage and paid the bill in full. He put the receipt in his wallet carefully.

“Captain Verago should have let us know,” said the duty manager.

“Yes, he should have,” agreed the man.

“It would have saved him some money.”

“I appreciate your cooperation, sir,” said the man.

“Well” the duty manager smiled “we try to be helpful.”

Just as well, thought the man. The less we have to get official the better.

“You sure your friend won’t need the room again?” the duty manager added.

“No,” said the man, “I think you can take that as definite. He won’t need a room again.”

As he carried Verago’s case out of the hotel, he wondered what it was all about. He was a CIC agent, but the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps sometimes didn’t tell its own men everything.

Hohenschoenhausen

Some hours later, Verago’s cell door was unlocked and two armed guards beckoned to him. They wore East German uniforms, but they weren’t Vopos. Theirs was the grey of the death strip guards, the Grepos.

“Come with us,” commanded the taller one.

Verago got to his feet wearily and followed them. Another series of corridors, passageways, and staircases, and then he found himself in the open. They crossed a big courtyard and for the first time Verago saw the ten-foot walls that surrounded the confines of Hohenschoenhausen. Surmounting them at strategic points were guard towers, with searchlights and machine guns.

He thought of all the stockades and military detention canters he had visited in the line of duty. It was an unpleasant realization that here, for the first time, he wasn’t a visitor. Nobody would wave him out at the main gate. These machine guns were there to mow him down if he made a false move.

“Keep going,” ordered the taller Grepo.

They led him into another cell block, where the small windows not only had bars but were covered with fine wire mesh. Inside doors were unlocked, and he was

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marched down another long corridor, their footsteps echoing on the stone floor.

At last they stopped, outside a cell door with the number 183.

“In here,” said the taller Grepo, unlocking the door. As soon as Verago stepped inside, it was slammed shut again, with a thunderous clang.

He stood, adapting to the yellowish lighting. A gaunt man, with shaved head and a shapeless uniform, was already on one of the two bunks. He sat, his chin sunk on his chest, his cheekbones prominent in his emaciated face.

Verago walked over to the other bunk and sat down on it.

He studied the other man, who hadn’t even bothered to look up. Poor bastard, he thought, they’ve put him through it all right. And then he froze. Around the man’s neck was a thin chain. And hanging from the chain were two dogtags. Military dogtags. U.S. identity discs.

He sat staring, mesmerised by the dogtags. He couldn’t believe it.

“Are you a Yank?” Verago called over.

Slowly the man raised his head and his sunken, shadowed eyes looked at Verago.

“Are you American?” Verago asked urgently.

As if he had to think it over first, the man nodded.

Verago went over and sat on the bunk next to the man. He held out his hand, but the man just looked at him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” said Verago.

The man said nothing.

“Excuse me,” said Verago, and reached over for the dogtags. He read them quickly.

“Kingston? Matt Kingston? Air force? Is that you? Are you an air force officer?”

Again, very slowly, the man nodded, his eyes never leaving Verago’s face.

“Well, say something, for chrissake,” demanded Verago. Then he controlled himself. “I’m sorry, fella, I’m Captain Verago. Tony Verago. United States Army.” The man didn’t react. Verago pulled out his own dogtags from under his shirt. “Look.”

The man’s hand shot out and grabbed the dogtags and he stared at them.

“My home’s New York,” said Verago. “Where are you from?”

The man let Verago’s dogtags drop.

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“You’re American?” he said at last, his voice low.

“What’s your outfit?” asked Verago. “How did you get in here?”

Kingston stared at him sceptically.

“What did Rhett say to Scarlett?” he asked suddenly.

“Eh?” Verago gaped at him.

“If you’re American, you know what Rhett said to her. Every American does.”

The guy’s crazy, thought Verago. Then he remembered. “‘I don’t give a damn.’”

For the first time, there was a flicker in Kingston’s eyes. “You’re from New York?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s the name of the toy store at the corner of Fifth and East Fifty-seventh?”

“What the hell is this, quiz time?” snapped Verago.

“You tell me the name and I’ll believe you’re from New York,” said Kingston.

“Schwarz.”

The man suddenly appeared interested. “What’s your outfits””

“I’m a lawyer. Judge Advocatb’s Department. Where’s your base?”

Again the hesitation. Then Kingston said, “England. Laconbury.”

“Oh, my God,” said Verago, and momentarily he thought he had gone insane.

“What’s the matter?”

“That’s where I’m from. I’m at Laconbury. On TDY.”

The gaunt man shrank back as if he was suddenly frightened.

“You’re a god damn stool pigeon, aren’t you?” he hissed viciously. “They’ve planted you, haven’t they? Go and fuck yourself, you bastard!”

“Hey, wait a minute….”

Kingston laughed, a slightly demented sound. “You go tell Fokin he’s got to think of something better than this crap ‘t

“Don’t be a fool,” said Verago angrily.

The man calmed down. “Who’s the commander?” he said.