The Bancroft Strategy Read online

  Belknap shuddered involuntarily. Lugner’s two hirelings just smirked.

  “Don’t worry,” the traitor said in a voice of pretend reassurance. “I’ll be taking you to a place you’ve never been before, too. Have you ever discharged a point-four-ten Mossberg tactical shotgun at close range? At a man, I mean. I have. There’s nothing like it.”

  Belknap’s gaze moved from the fathomless black of the shotgun muzzle to the fathomless black of Lugner’s eyes.

  Lugner’s own gaze drifted to the wall just behind his captive. “Our privacy won’t be disturbed, I can promise you. Wonderful thick masonry in these apartment blocks—the soft lead pellets will hardly blister the skim coat. Then there’s the soundproofing I had installed. I figured it wouldn’t do to disturb the neighbors if some Bahnhof Boy turned out to be a groaner.” Flesh retracted from porcelain teeth in a hideous simulacrum of a smile. “But you’ll be taking a different kind of load today. You see, this Mossberg will actually blast away a large portion of your midriff. It will, mark my words, leave a hole you can reach your arm through.”

  Belknap tried to move but felt himself clamped in place by hands like steel.

  Lugner glanced at his two henchmen; he had the air of a television chef about to demonstrate a surprising culinary technique. “You think I’m exaggerating? Let me show you. You’ll never experience anything like it.” There was a quiet snick-click as he released the safety of the shotgun. “Not ever again.”

  Belknap was able to make sense of the ensuing seconds only in retrospect. A loud crash of window glass; Lugner, startled by the sound, turning to the bay window to his left; muzzle flash from a handgun, a split-second later, sparking into the darkened apartment like a lightning bolt, glaring off mirrors and metal surfaces; and—

  A plume of blood at Richard Lugner’s right temple.

  The traitor’s expression suddenly went slack as he collapsed on the floor motionless, the shotgun falling with him like a stroke victim’s cane. Someone with perfect aim had put a bullet through Lugner’s head.

  The guards spread out in either direction and aimed their weapons toward the broken window. The work of a sniper?

  “Catch!” a voice called out—that of an American—and a handgun came sailing through the air toward Belknap. Belknap snatched it by sheer reflex, alert to the half-second of indecision between the two gunmen, who now had to decide whether to shoot first either at the prisoner or…the lanky stranger who had just swung through the four-paned casement. Belknap dropped to the floor—felt a bullet zing just above his shoulder—and fired twice at the gunman closest to him, striking him in the chest. Center mass: standard procedure for shooting on the fly. But it wasn’t adequate for a close-range standoff like this one. Only a central-nervous-system shot would instantly neutralize the threat. Mortally wounded, scarlet blood gouting from his sternum, the first gunman began discharging the rounds in his magazine wildly. The sturdily constructed suite amplified the boom of the large-caliber shells, and, in the gloom, the repeated white muzzle flare was painfully bright.

  Belknap fired a second time, shooting the man in the face. The gun, an old-style semiautomatic Walther, favored by certain ex–military types because it reputedly never jammed, fell heavily to the floor, followed by its owner moments later.

  The stranger—he was tall, agile, clad in tan workman’s coveralls, glittering with shards of broken glass—leaped to one side to avoid the other hireling’s fire even as he returned fire with a single perfect head shot, another instant drop.

  The stillness was eerie, long seconds of the profoundest quiet that Belknap had ever known. The stranger had looked almost bored as he dispatched Lugner and his crew, nothing indicating that his pulse had risen in the slightest.

  Finally, the stranger spoke to him in a languid tone. “I assume they had a Stasi lookout stationed in one of the alcoves outside.”

  Which was precisely what Belknap should have assumed. Not for the first time, he silently cursed his stupidity. “I don’t think he’ll be coming in, though,” Belknap said. His mouth was dry, his voice scratchy. He could feel a muscle in his leg trembling, vibrating like a cello string. Outside of training exercises, he had never stared down the wrong end of a shotgun before. “I think the play was to leave their special guest to his own devices in…disposing of unwanted visitors.”

  “I do hope he has a good housekeeper,” the man said, flicking shards of glass from his tan coveralls. They were standing among three bleeding corpses, in the middle of a police state, and he seemed in no hurry at all. He extended a hand. “My name’s Jared Rinehart, by the way.” His handclasp was firm and dry. Standing close to him, Belknap noticed that Rinehart was free of sweat; not a hair was out of place. He was a model of sangfroid. Belknap himself, as a glance in the mirror confirmed, was a mess.

  “You made a frontal approach. Ballsy, but a little headstrong. Especially when there’s a vacant apartment one floor up.”

  “I see,” Belknap grunted, and he did, immediately working out Rinehart’s movements, the nimble sense of situational strategy behind them. “Point taken.”

  Rinehart was slightly elongated, like a Christ in a mannerist painting, with long, elegant limbs, and oddly soulful gray-green eyes; he moved with a feline grace as he took a few steps toward Belknap. “Don’t beat yourself up for missing the Stasi man. I’m frankly in awe of what you’ve accomplished. I’ve been trying to track down Mr. Lugner for quite some months, and without any luck at all.”

  “You caught up with him this time,” Belknap said. Who the hell are you? he wanted to ask, but he decided to bide his time.

  “Not really,” said his rescuer. “I caught up with you.”

  “With me.” The footsteps in Marx-Engels-Forum. The disappearing act of a true pro. The reflection of the lanky workman ghosted in the amber-tinted glass of the Palast der Republik.

  “The only reason I got here was by following you. You were something, let me tell you. A hound on the trail of a fox. And me, breathlessly following like some country gent in jodhpurs.” He paused, looked around with a stock-taking air. “Goodness gracious. You’d think some hotel-room-trashing rock star had paid a visit. But I think the point’s been made, don’t you? My employers, anyway, won’t be at all displeased. Mr. Lugner had been such a bad example to the working spy, living high and letting die. Now he’s a very good example.” He glanced at Lugner’s body and then caught Belknap’s eye. “The wages of sin and all.”

  Belknap looked around him, saw the blood of three slain men seeping into the red carpet, oxidizing to a rust hue like the one it had been dyed. A wave of nausea passed over him. “How’d you know to follow me?”

  “I was reconnoitering—or, to be honest, loitering—around the souks of Alexanderplatz when I thought I recognized the cut of your jib from Bucharest. I don’t believe in coincidence, do you? For all I knew, you were a courier of his. But connected in one way or another. The gamble seemed worthwhile.”

  Belknap just stared at him.

  “Now then,” Jared Rinehart went on briskly. “The only question is: Are you a friend or a foe?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s rude, I know.” A mock wince of self-reproach. “Like talking shop at dinner, or asking what people do for a living at cocktail parties. But I have practical interest in the issue. I’d rather know now if you’re, oh, in the employ of the Albanians. There was a rumor that they thought Mr. Lugner had kept the really good stuff for their Eastern bloc rivals, and you know what those Albanians are like when they feel stiffed. And as for those Bulgarians—well, don’t get me started.” As he spoke, he took out a handkerchief and daubed at Belknap’s chin. “You don’t encounter that combination of lethality and stupidity just every day. So that’s why I’ve got to ask—are you a good witch or a bad witch?” He presented the handkerchief to Belknap with a flourish. “You had a little splash of blood there,” he explained. “Keep it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Belknap said, a mixture
of incredulity and awe in his voice. “You just risked your life to save mine…without even knowing whether I was an ally or an enemy?”

  Rinehart shrugged. “I had a good feeling, let’s say. And it had to be one or the other. A chancy business, I grant, but if you’re not rolling the dice, you’re not in the game. Oh, before you answer the question, you’ll need to know that I’m here as an unofficial representative of the U.S. Department of State.”

  “Christ on a raft.” Belknap tried to bring his thoughts into focus. “Consular Operations? The Pentheus team?”

  Rinehart just smiled. “You’re Cons Ops, too? We ought to have a secret handshake, don’t you think? Or a club tie, though they’d have to let me choose the design.”

  “The bastards,” Belknap said, whipsawed by the revelation. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

  “Always keep ’em guessing—that’s the philosophy. If you ask the op boys at 2201 C Street, they’ll explain that it’s a procedure they occasionally use, especially when there are solo operatives involved. Separate and de-linked clandestine units. They’ll say something fancy about operational partition. The potential downside is you trip over your tail. The upside is you avoid groupthink, lockstep, get a wider variety of approaches. That’s what they’ll tell you. But the truth, I bet, is that it was an ordinary screwup. Common as crabgrass.” While he spoke, he turned his attention to a mahogany-and-brass liquor stand in one corner of the study. He lifted up a bottle and beamed. “A twenty-year-old slivovitz from Suvoborska. Not too shabby. I think we could both stand a wee dram. We’ve earned it.” He splashed a little in two shot glasses, pressed one on Belknap. “Bottoms up!” he called out.

  Belknap hesitated, and then swallowed the contents of the shot glass, his mind still whirling. Any other operative in Rinehart’s position would have maintained an observation post. If a direct intervention had to be staged, it would have been timed to a moment when Lugner and his henchmen had put their weapons away. Some moment after they had been used. Belknap would have been given a posthumous ribbon to be placed on his casket; Lugner would have been killed or apprehended. The second operative would have been praised and promoted. Organizations valued prudence over valor. Nobody could be expected to enter, alone, a room that contained three gunmen with weapons drawn. To do so defied logic, not to mention all standard operational procedures.

  Who was this man?

  Rinehart rummaged through the jacket of one of the slain guards, retrieved a compact American pistol, a short-barreled Colt, released the magazine, and peered inside. “This yours?”

  Belknap grunted assent, and Rinehart tossed him the weapon. “You’re a man of taste. Half-jacketed nine-millimeter hollowpoints, scalloped copper on lead. An excellent balance between stopping power and penetration, and definitely not standard-issue. The Brits say you can always judge a man by his shoes. I say his choice of ammunition tells you what you need to know.”

  “Here’s what I’d like to know,” Belknap said, still piecing together his fragmented memories of the past few minutes. “What if I weren’t a friend?”

  “Then there’d be a fourth corpse here for the cleanup crew.” Rinehart put a hand on Belknap’s shoulder, gave a squeeze of reassurance. “But you’ll learn something about me. I take pride in being a good friend to my good friends.”

  “And a dangerous enemy to your dangerous enemies?”

  “We understand each other,” his voluble interlocutor replied. “So: Shall we leave this party at the worker’s palace? We’ve met the host, paid our proper respects, had a drink—I think we can go now without giving offense. You never want to be the last to leave.” He glanced at three slack-faced corpses. “If you’ll step over to the window, you’ll notice a bosun’s chair and scaffolding, which is just the thing for an afternoon of window-washing, though I think we’ll skip that part.” He led Belknap through the smashed casement and onto the platform, which was secured to cables anchored to the balcony of the apartment above. Given all the maintenance work done on these apartment buildings, it was unlikely to attract notice on the side street, seven floors below, even if there had been anyone around.

  Rinehart brushed a remaining fragment of glass from his tan coveralls. “Here’s the thing, Mr….”

  “Belknap,” he said as he steadied himself onto the platform.

  “Here’s the thing, Belknap. You’re how old? Twenty-five, twenty-six?”

  “Twenty-six. And call me Todd.”

  Rinehart fiddled with the cable lanyard. With a jerk, the platform started a slow, erratic descent, as if lowered by a series of tugs. “Then you’ve been with the outfit for just a couple of years, I guess. Me, I’ll be thirty next year. Have a few more years of seasoning on me. So let me tell you what you’re going to find. You’re going to find that most of your colleagues are mediocre. It’s just the nature of any organization. So if you come across someone who has genuine gifts, you watch out for that person. Because in the intelligence community, most of the real progress is made by a handful of people. Those are the gemstones. You don’t let them get lost, or scratched, or crushed, not if you give a damn about this enterprise of ours. Taking care of business means taking care of your friends.” His gray-green eyes intent, he added, “There’s a famous line from the British writer E. M. Forster. Maybe you know it. He said that if he ever had to choose between betraying his friend and betraying his country, he hoped he’d have the guts to betray his country.”

  “Rings a bell.” Belknap’s eyes were glued to the street, which thankfully remained vacant. “Is that your philosophy?” He felt a drop of rain, solitary but heavy, and then another one.

  Rinehart shook his head. “On the contrary. The lesson here is that you need to be careful about picking your friends.” Another intent look. “Because you should never have to make that choice.”

  Now the two stepped onto the narrow street, leaving the platform behind.

  “Take the pail,” Rinehart instructed. Belknap did so, recognizing the wisdom of it at once. Rinehart’s coveralls and cap were a formidable disguise in a city of laborers; carrying the pail and spackling kit, Belknap would look like a natural companion.

  Another heavy drop of rain splashed on Belknap’s forehead. “It’s gonna start coming down,” he said, wiping it away.

  “It’s all going to come down,” the lanky operative replied cryptically. “And everyone here, in his heart of hearts, realizes it.”

  Rinehart knew the city topography well—he knew which stores connected two streets, which alleys backed onto others that led to yet other streets. “So what did you think of Richard Lugner after your brief encounter?”

  The traitor’s pitted face of malign impassivity returned to him like a ghostly afterimage. “Evil,” Belknap said shortly, surprising himself. It was a word he seldom used. But no other would do. The twin boreholes of the shotgun were etched in his mind, as were the malevolent eyes of Lugner himself.

  “What a concept,” the taller man said with a nod. “Unfashionable these days, but indispensable all the same. We somehow think that we’re too sophisticated to talk about evil. Everything is supposed to be analyzed as a product of social or psychological or historical forces. And once you do that, well, evil drops out of the picture, doesn’t it?” Rinehart led the younger man into an underground plaza that connected a square that had been split by a motorway. “We like to pretend that we don’t speak of evil because we’ve outgrown the concept. I wonder. I suspect the motivation is itself deeply primitive. Like some tribal fetish worshippers of ancient times, we imagine that by not speaking the name, the thing to which it refers will vanish.”

  “It’s that face,” Belknap grunted.

  “A face only Helen Keller could love.” Rinehart mimed the motion of Braille-reading fingertips.

  “The way he looks at you, I mean.”

  “Looked, anyway,” Rinehart replied, stressing the past tense. “I’ve had my own encounters with the man. He was pretty formidable. And as you say—evi
l. Yet not all evil has a face. The Ministry of State Security in this country feeds off people like Lugner. That’s a form of evil, too. Monumental and faceless.” Rinehart maintained a level tone, but he did not hide the passion in his voice. The man was cool—maybe the coolest Belknap had ever known—but he was not a cynic. After a while, Belknap realized something else, too: The other man’s conversational flow wasn’t simply a matter of self-expression; it was an attempt to distract and calm a young operative whose nerves had just been severely jarred. His very chatter was a kindness.

  Twenty minutes later, the two of them—workmen from all appearances—were approaching the embassy building, a Schinkel-style marble building now sooted by pollution. Large raindrops were falling intermittently. A familiar loamy smell arose from the pavement. Belknap envied Rinehart his cap. Three G.D.R. policemen eyed the embassy from their post across the street, adjusting their nylon parkas, trying to keep their cigarettes dry.

  As the two Americans approached the embassy, Rinehart pulled up a Velcro tab on his coveralls and revealed a small blue coded nameplate to one of the American guards standing at a side entrance. A quick nod, and the two found themselves on the inner side of the consulate fence. Belknap felt a few more drops of rain, landing heavily, darkening the tarmac with black splotches. The heavy steel gate clanged shut. A short while before, death had seemed certain. Now safety was assured. “I just realized that I never answered the first question you asked me,” he said to his lanky companion.

  “Whether you were friend or foe?”

  Belknap nodded. “Well, let’s agree we’re friends,” he said in a sudden rush of gratitude and warmth. “Because I could use more friends like you.”

  The tall operative gave him a look that was both affectionate and appraising. “One might be enough,” he replied, smiling.