He had arranged to meet John in a small cafe on the Marktplatz. He was fifteen minutes early, so he ordered a beer and sat back at an outdoor table, enjoying the view of the old church a hundred feet away. Like the castle above, it had managed to survive the seventeenth-century Orleans War and fires. But the slow depredations of time, which had made the castle a striking dowager, mysterious and alluring, had turned the Heilig-Geist-Kirche into a frowsy slattern. In a sense, though, thought Gideon, the castle was dead and embalmed, a museum piece; the church was still alive. Crude wooden stalls stood between its late Gothic buttresses, just as they had in the Middle Ages. Once they must have displayed venison and oil and rough beer. Now it was newspapers and magazines, and key chains that said "Olde Heidelberg."
A misty rain began to fall, the first precipitation Gideon had seen since coming to Europe. The tourists in the square melted away, and the merchants began to close up their closetlike stalls or to cover them with green canvas. Gideon remained outside, however, protected by a red-and-white table umbrella advertising Grenzquell beer, and enjoying the wet-clay smell of the rain. As a northern Californian, he had come to love the fog and rain, preferring stormy days to sunny ones. Here in Heidelberg he found himself enchanted by the mist that now obscured part of the castle and by the rain that glistened on the antique cobblestones of the square.
How nice it would be if Janet were sitting with him, he thought. His heart contracted suddenly; he had thought of Janet, not Nora. He felt…how? Guilty? Sad, because he was finally saying good-bye to Nora? Hopeful, because the despair might finally be at an end?
He shook his head to clear it. Addicted as he was to it, he knew that introspection of one’s emotions was pointless. Psychiatric dogma to the contrary, one’s emotions would work out their own problems or they wouldn’t; thinking about them wouldn’t help.
Ten minutes later John came up, protected by a trench coat and a big black umbrella, and looking cold.
"Hey, Doc! What are you sitting outside for?"
"Hi, John. It’s beautiful in the rain."
"Not to me. I’m not going to sit out here. What are you, crazy?"
"Okay," said Gideon. He picked up his beer and, under the protection of John’s umbrella, they both went inside. Finding a corner table they ordered Nurnbergerstadtwurst and weinkraut
"Hey, where’s the cane?" John said.
"I left it at home. The ankle felt pretty good this morning. Haven’t missed it yet."
"That’s great," said John with such genuine warmth that Gideon was moved. "I’m sorry I was late. I’ve been finding out lots of good stuff."
"Like what?" Gideon said.
"First tell me what you got from Marks."
"Not much." Over their plates of pungent little sausages and cooked, sweet cabbage, he told John what he had learned from Marks and Dr. Rufus. He also told John that he had no real evidence that any of it was true.
"Uh uh," said John, chewing his wurst, "I think it’s true all right. It fits in with what I’ve found out."
"But it doesn’t make sense. Why would they have sent that guy all the way down to Sicily just to protect me? I didn’t have any real kind of assignment, and I was apparently just one of a string of USOC’rs they used. Certainly they can’t have enough men to give that kind of protection to all their informants. Or do they?"
"Yes, they do. Look, whatever else you might think about Marks and the rest of the Intelligence outfit, they don’t just use people callously. If they thought there was a chance you could get in trouble, yes, you bet they’d have protection for you. Sometimes they use Safety people. I’ve had that kind of assignment."
"Is that what you were doing in Sicily last week?"
"No, I came as part of my regular job-protecting USOC life and limb."
John, who had done more listening than talking, had finished his meal. For a while he nursed his beer, watching Gideon eat.
"Doc," he said finally, "I hate to admit it, but you were right about the apple."
"Come again?"
"The guy on the bridge. You said he was an American because he ate an apple with his mouth."
Gideon had forgotten. "Right!" he said excitedly, with his mouth full of sausage. "He was an American?"
"Yup."
"Ha! You see what scientific ratiocination can do? Who was he?"
"Come on, I can’t tell you that. You want me to compromise-"
"I know, the need-to-know principle. I didn’t mean who is he, I meant what is he?…Where is he from?"
"From where Marks told you. He’s an American, an NSD intelligence agent, and his assignment was to watch out for you."
"Well, I wish he’d watched out a little earlier."
The policeman showed a sudden flash of temper. "You’re lucky he got there when he did. And that he was brave enough to risk his life for you."
Gideon accepted the rebuke. "You’re right. He saved my life. He wasn’t hurt, was he?"
"Yes, he was hurt," said John, still angry.
"I’m sorry to hear that. Not seriously, I hope."
"Bad enough," John muttered into the nearly empty stein. "About like you. Lacerations, contusions, broken collarbone." He was showing the concern, universal and understandable, of the policeman for his brother. Gideon kept forgetting he was very much a cop.
"Look, John, I’m sorry for what I said about him getting there earlier. I meant it to be funny and it wasn’t. If our positions had been reversed, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to stop and shoot it out with those guys. I owe him my life. I’d like to thank him for it some time." It was easy for Gideon to put conviction into his words; he meant every one.
John seemed mollified. "Not much chance of that. I only know his code name myself. What happened was that the searchlight got shot out and the bad guys managed to get to their car. Our guy chased them for a while, but finally wound up going off the road outside of Catania. That’s where he got hurt."
"Did you know this when we were in Sicily?"
"No, I just found out. I’m breaking all kinds of rules to get the information I’m getting, let alone telling you. But I think NSD has put you in hot water, and I’m not so sure
Marks knows what he’s doing. And you sure as hell don’t."
"Thanks a lot. I appreciate your confidence."
John smiled. "You know about bones and about languages; I give you that. But you’re operating in a different world-with different rules and very nasty people."
"I know it, John. Believe me, I’ll take all the help I can get."
"Are you going to have another beer?" John said.
Gideon shook his head. "I’ve already had two."
John signaled for a beer and then waited for the waiter to deliver it and leave before he began. "You know the questions you keep asking? If we don’t know what it is that the Russians are trying to find out, and we don’t know why they want to know it, what makes us think they’re looking for anything?"
Gideon nodded. "And why," he said, "do we think they’d look for it at Sigonella and Torrejon, as opposed to a hundred other bases?"
"Right," John said. "The answers are pretty simple, it turns out. NSD has been intercepting KGB messages for months that say just that."
"That they don’t know what they’re looking for, either?"
"No, that they need ‘X’ information from certain bases like Torrejon and Sigonella. It’s the ‘X’ that’s the problem. The messages are in cipher, and the ciphers change all the time. We-that is, our Intelligence cryptographers- have been able to get the gist of most of the messages- where the information is; when it’s needed by. But not the most crucial parts, not the ‘X.’ The Russians seem to be using some sort of special codes for those. It could be they don’t want their own field personnel to know what they’re looking for."
"Wait a minute, John. That doesn’t make sense. How can you look for something if you don’t know what it is? How would you know when you’ve found it?"
"You’d know when some person you were waiting for- your source, I think they call it-handed you an envelope or a package, or maybe even just gave you some code word or number that you had to transmit back. You wouldn’t have to know what it meant."
"I’m not following you."
"That’s because I haven’t given you the kicker yet. Doc, you sure you don’t want another beer?"
"Am I going to need one?"
John’s eyes twinkled momentarily in his familiar smile, then turned sober. "No, you can handle it. The kicker is that there’s somebody from USOC involved."
"On their side?"
"Yup. The source-the guy that gets the information from the base and passes it on to the Russians-he’s a USOC’r."
"Holy moley," said Gideon. "This is beginning to sound like a movie. Maybe I will have that beer."
Again they waited for the waiter to leave before they continued.
"Who is it?" Gideon asked.
"Don’t know. Or at least that’s what my contact tells me. Apparently the Russians refer to him only by code name. But I guess there’s no doubt about him being from USOC."
"John, let me get this straight. Are you telling me that someone on the USOC faculty is a Russian spy?"
"Well, an American traitor. It amounts to the same thing. Whatever they’re looking for, a USOC’r gets it and passes it on to them."
"You mean Marks doesn’t have any leads? I mean, it doesn’t sound that difficult. If they know the bases the stuff is gotten from, and when it’s needed, all they have to do is find out which USOC person has been at all the right bases at the right times, and it has to be him."
"Very good; you’re starting to think like a cop. The problem is that this has been going on for a long time, a year or more. At least ten bases have been involved. We still haven’t figured out what the first seven were-never broke the codes. Then the codes changed or something- this is out of my line, remember-but we were still only able to figure out the last three the Russians needed: Rhein-Main, Sigonella, and Torrejon. Now only Torrejon is left. If they get what they need there…" John had been leaning forward with his elbows on the table. He sat back and moved his glass in slow circles on the table. "If they get what they need there, then they’ll have everything they need…for whatever purpose they need it. And nobody on our side knows what that is. Or who the leak is. Hey, Doc, you haven’t touched your beer."
Gideon thought he saw where the discussion was leading, and it made him uncomfortable. "I don’t really want it. What I’d really like is to take a walk in the rain. How about it? You have a raincoat, and that monster umbrella of yours will cover us both."
"Out in that rain? Brr…But okay, you’ve had it tough; I’ll humor you."
After the stuffiness of the restaurant, the moist, cool air renewed Gideon’s strength. Even the sound of the rain hissing on the paving stones was refreshing. They walked a block to the river, each in his own thoughts, and found themselves at the foot of the Alte Brucke, the oldest of Heidelberg’s three bridges across the Neckar. For a while they stood looking at the twin towers that marked the entrance, each one topped by a "German helmet" that gleamed wetly.
"There’s a cell in one of those towers, did you know?" Gideon said.
"Fascinating," said John.
"Yes, the left one. Or maybe the right, I’m not sure. There was a pope imprisoned there in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Or the twelfth? Maybe it was a bishop, not a pope, come to think of it.." He paused. "I think I better go back to the guidebook."
They walked across most of the deserted bridge in silence. Then Gideon finally said what was on his mind. "As far as the last two bases go-Rhein-Main, Sigonella- there is one person from USOC who was at both."
"Yes," said John, "you. You landed at Rhein-Main from the States."
"Yes. Does Marks suspect me?" He stopped walking suddenly, struck with a thought that should have been obvious. John continued on for a step, and the soft rain fell on Gideon’s face. He hurried to catch up.
"No, he couldn’t," he said, answering his own question. "Marks is the one who sent me to Sigonella."
"That’s right. Anyway, Marks isn’t involved in this part of it. His job is to flush out the KGB agent. Finding the USOC’r, the traitor, that’s Bureau Four’s responsibility. And they and Marks don’t share their information."
"The need-to-know principle in action. That’s really insane, isn’t it?"
"No, to tell the truth, I think it makes sense. You couldn’t do ordinary police work-the kind I do-that way…separate investigations, completely separate systems. But espionage is a different thing. It took us a long time to figure out that you can’t let even your own agents in on other agents’ secrets-"
"Come on, John, really-"
"No, it’s true. That’s why the British have MI-5 and MI-6. The Russians have their separate departments too, but they keep changing the names. Even the U.S., for that matter, has the FBI and the CIA. A Russian spy in Texas, that’s FBI business; the same spy goes over the border to Mexico, it’s the CIA’s affair."
"All right, I buy it…I don’t, really…but if Marks doesn’t tell this Bureau Four the reason I was in Sigonella, won’t they suspect me?"
"Marks has told them. They do communicate when they have to. They’re on the same side, you know. They just don’t do it any more than they absolutely must."
At the far end of the bridge, they turned left along the path that followed the bank of the Neckar. The rain had subsided to a mist; Gideon stepped away from John’s umbrella to enjoy the feel of it moistening his face and collecting in his hair.
"You’re crazy," John said. "You really enjoy getting wet, don’t you? You’re going to catch one hell of a cold."
"You don’t-"
"You don’t catch colds from the rain. I knew you were going to say that." John was slightly annoyed. "Colds are caused by getting wet and tired," he went on. "Goddamit, just because you’re a professor doesn’t mean you know everything about everything. Why the hell do you want to take chances? You just came out of the damn hospital."
John’s tone was exactly that of an anxious mother scolding a five-year-old who had gone into the rain without galoshes. He was not so much angry as worried, Gideon realized with a stab of guilt.
Gideon moved back under the umbrella’s shelter. "You’re right," he said.
"It’s stupid to take chances."
"You’re right," Gideon said again.
When they reached the modern Theodore Heuss Brucke, they turned back. The rain had stopped, and blue sky was visible.
"John," Gideon said after a while, "it just occurred to me that there’s someone else from USOC who was at Sigonella. Does Bureau Four know that?"
"Who?"
"Do you know Eric Bozzini?"
"I think so. Middle-aged surfer type?"
"Yes. When I telephoned him from Sigonella, he told me that he’d been there a few days before. Friday, I think he said. That’d be the day after I was ambushed."
"Do you know why he was there?" It was a professional question. John wasn’t impressed.
"Can’t remember. Whatever it was, it sounded legitimate at the time."
"It probably was. He’s Logistics. Has to visit a lot of bases. So do some of the other administrators: Dr. Rufus, Mrs. Swinnerton-"
"Still, it seems worth getting the information to Bureau Four, doesn’t it?"
"All right," John said without enthusiasm. "I’ll mention it to my contact, and they’ll hear about it if they don’t already know. But I can’t just go up to Bureau Four and say, ‘Here’s some information I have on this super-secret case I’m not supposed to know about.’ I wouldn’t even know who to talk to, and I don’t want to know."
Fine. If John didn’t think it was worth fighting the bureaucracy, then Gideon would follow it up with Eric himself. In a way he was pleased. It gave him a direction, a place to start. Not that he believed Eric could be a spy or- appalling word-a traitor. But then, could Bruce Danzig, or Janet, or Dr. Rufus, or anyone else he’d met at USOC?
"I’m still a little puzzled," Gideon said.
"Only a little? Then you’re in better shape than I am. What’s your problem?"
"I can’t figure out what a USOC’r’s role would be. We just have low-level clearance; we wouldn’t have access to secret materials or high-security areas. What could any of us do for the Russians?"
"That’s true," John said. "Hmm."
They had reached the Alte Brucke again and began to walk back across it to the Old Town. Now that the weather had cleared, cars were zipping down the narrow center, so they had to keep to the walkway along one side.
"Hmm," said John again.
Gratified to have come up with a question that hadn’t occurred to the policeman, Gideon tried to answer it. "Is it possible that the USOC’r is a go-between? That somebody who works on the base gets the information and passes it on to him, and he passes it on to a KGB agent?"
It seemed absurd to Gideon as he said it. Talking about KGB agents so matter-of-factly was preposterous, like play-acting.
But John was excited by the idea. "Yeah, yeah! That’s right! Maybe." As always when he was excited, his speech turned vehement, ejaculatory. "Somebody on the base gets the information. He gives it to the USOC’r. A live drop, they call it. The USOC’r leaves whenever he wants, and passes it on, probably in another country. Sure! Makes sense. Hey, good thinking!"
He banged Gideon on the back so hard that he almost propelled him off the curb into the oncoming traffic, then pulled him back with the same motion. They both laughed.
"I’m glad you think it’s so brilliant," Gideon said, "but it’s full of holes. If a base employee can get the stuff, whatever it is, why doesn’t he just pass it on to the KGB agent himself? Why complicate things with a middleman?"
"Because a Russian agent would try to avoid having direct contact with someone with access to secret NATO information. It would make it too easy for us to figure things out. But what’s suspicious about some Sigonella employee- who works with computer flight-planning programs, say- talking to a USOC instructor or counselor? And why should NSD be suspicious when the same USOC’r happens to share a table with a stranger in Vienna a month later? Why would NSD even be watching him?"
"I suppose so," Gideon said doubtfully. "But-"
"In fact," John said, chopping at the air with his hand, "they wouldn’t have to meet at all! They could use dead drops! The base employee just leaves the information at some predetermined place on the base, and the USOC’r picks it up later. Then the USOC’r uses another drop to get it to the KGB, maybe a thousand miles away. What’s wrong with that?"
"It’s too complicated, that’s what," Gideon said. "If they use… dead drops, then they don’t need the USOC’r, do they? You’re always telling me that the fewer people there are involved, the better. Why couldn’t the base employee just drop it off in Vienna himself? No one would ever see him meet the KGB man."
"He couldn’t do that, because he’d never get off the base with it in the first place," said John. "Somebody who works in a top-secret area of the base gets pretty thoroughly shaken down when he leaves. At least I think he does. But a guy like you just gets waved through, right?"
"Well, yes, but now look; if all this is so important, why don’t they just check out everyone who leaves the base? They do it when they have alerts."
"A brilliant question," said John. "I asked it myself. And the answer is that we don’t want the Russians to know that we know they’re up to something. If we put the bases on alert, they’d know we were onto them, and that might precipitate whatever it is that they’re planning to do. Which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. Simple, yes?"
Gideon shook his head. "My God, this is like listening to someone read an IRS tax manual."
They were back in the vicinity of the Marktplatz. John gestured at a gray Volkswagen. "Going back to USOC Administration? Can I give you a lift? You look too confused to use the strassenbahn."
They didn’t speak while John concentrated on driving through the narrow, busy streets of the Old Town. Even a Volkswagen beetle has difficulty with two-way streets designed to permit the passage of a single horse-drawn coach. John drove expertly, however, as quickly and confidently as the Germans themselves. Within a few minutes they were on the fast Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage, and then heading smoothly out on Rohrstrasse.
"John," Gideon said. "No offense, but do you really know what you’re talking about? Or are you making all this up?"
John threw back his head and laughed delightedly. "The answers are ‘no’ and ‘no.’ I’m not making any of it up, but I don’t know what I’m talking about, either." He paused, looking hesitant. "Look, Doc," he said slowly, staring at his hands on the wheel, "I understand why you’re going through with this Torrejon thing, and I admire you for it, but, well…"
"John, if you were in my place, you’d do the same thing," Gideon said with sudden heat. "I can’t just walk away from it as if it never happened to me. I need to find out what it’s about."
"Sure, but what are you going to do? "
"What do you mean, ‘do’?"
"What do you mean, what do I mean? I mean do." John was excited, too, chopping at the air again. " How are you going to find out what it’s about? Wait for somebody to try to kill you again?"
"No. I’m going to check and see if any other USOC’rs show up, or if any have been there recently, and uh…I don’t exactly have a plan, do I?"
"You sure as hell don’t."
"Okay, so what would you do?"
"Me? If I were you, I’d ask me to come down and help you out."
"Are you serious? Would you really come? Why didn’t you say so before?"
"I was waiting for you to ask me. You’re kind of funny about this; I thought maybe you wanted to do it all by yourself."
"Heck, no. I’d love to have you down there, John."
"Good. I can’t do this officially, you understand, but I have lots of leave time and nothing else doing right now. If I get a military flight to Torrejon tomorrow afternoon, I’ll get there a few hours after you."
"Great, and who knows? Maybe I’ll get knifed or shot or run off the road, and then you can stay down there officially and wrap it up."
"Sure," John said. "We can always hope." They both laughed.
"I’ve gotta go, Doc. I’ll see you down there tomorrow." Awkwardly, he put out his hand. Gideon took it. "It’s been a good day, Doc. I think we’re getting someplace."
Returning John’s wave as the big policeman drove off, Gideon wasn’t sure he agreed. Certainly, it was marvelous about John’s coming down, and it was nice to have some cogent if convoluted ideas about what the Russians were up to, but he didn’t feel any closer to answering the most compelling questions of all: What did it all have to do with him? Why was anybody trying to kill him? Why had his room been broken into three times-at least three times- in two weeks? What did anyone want with three pairs of his socks? And why was he being stalked by the ferret-faced man?
Just possibly, Eric Bozzini might provide some answers.