Ferber left with his group but stopped at the door, looking back for a second, as if he were still not sure what had been said.
“Anything else for me?” Alex asked Peter.
“That’s all the mail. It’s still light out, if you want to go for a walk.”
“A walk?”
“Have you been to the Reichstag? Many people find it interesting.”
“Your uncle?”
“No. Someone else. The best view is from the Spreebogen side. You could go there now, before it gets dark.” He nodded his head, a kind of dismissal. “Thank you for the stamps.”
Outside, the misty afternoon was thickening. One of Berlin’s winter fogs, the only thing the airlift pilots couldn’t outmaneuver. He crossed Pariser Platz in the fading light and went through the sector control at the Brandenburg Gate. They were checking cars, not as casual as that first morning, but he walked through unquestioned, then up past the back of the Reichstag.
The neck of land on the river bend was mostly open space now, littered with fallen beams and chunks of concrete, barely visible in the dense white air. He waited near the Reichstag wall, covered with Cyrillic graffiti, looking across the water to where Markovsky was lying with stones in his pockets. Unless he had somehow broken loose and floated away, his coat snagged on a piece of debris in Moabit or still drifting toward the lakes. Where he’d be found. How much time did they have? He looked around, hunching his shoulders against the damp. No one. But Peter was never wrong. There’d be a car any minute, headlights barreling across the Tiergarten.
Instead there was a workman, blue coverall and woolen cap, shuffling toward him out of the fog like a ghost.
“Been waiting long?” The voice as American as his haircut. Campbell himself.
“What’s this?” Alex said, nodding to his clothes. “Something for Halloween?”
“Very funny.”
“They’ll spot the hair a mile away.”
“In this?” Campbell said to the fog, but pulled down the hat. “Christ, look at it. Nobody flies though this.” He turned to Alex. “How are you? Dieter said it was an SOS.”
“Where do you want to start? How about Willy? I left three people dead in the street.”
“But no one saw you.”
“There was a woman. If they ever match us up, I’ll be facing a murder charge.”
Campbell drew out a cigarette and lit it, a studied casualness. “But they haven’t. Nobody knows.”
“I know. I killed a man.”
“You knew what this was.”
“No. I didn’t. You never said. Not that part.”
“You’re doing a great job. Stop worrying. Nobody knows.”
“Somebody must. Whoever tipped them off that I’d be there.”
Campbell looked at him for a minute, assessing. “That was Willy.”
“Willy?”
“It wasn’t supposed to go that way. They fucked up.” He nodded. “It had to be him, the way it was set up. This is only for you. It’s useful, looking for a mole. Keeps people on their toes. But it was Willy. We know.”
“No witnesses, he said,” Alex said, trying to piece this together.
“Against him. He couldn’t risk that.”
“But he was dying.”
“Nobody believes that until it happens.” He looked over. “It was him. But you were lucky, the way it happened. They still don’t know about you.”
“How can you be sure?”
“We have ears,” Campbell said simply. “Look, I know, it’s a test of fire, something like that, but you’re sitting pretty. You’re getting great stuff. We’ve been waiting for someone to confirm Leuna, not just rumors, and there you are. Saratov. That’s coin of the realm. You’re Dieter’s favorite person of the week. And he doesn’t have many.”
“Really,” Alex said, deadpan, but oddly pleased. “Now let’s talk about how I got it.”
“Your old friend? Well, that was lucky too.”
“No it wasn’t. You knew she’d be the target when you asked me to do this. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have come?” He dropped the cigarette, grinding it out. “You never know how people are going to react to something like that.”
“Spying on friends.”
“It’s easier when they’re in place. When they see what’s at stake.”
“When it’s too late.”
“Don’t think that. Look, your stuff is coming from Markovsky, not her. She’s just the intro. She’s a friend you haven’t seen in—what? Fifteen years? It’s not as if you’re sleeping with her or—” He looked up. “You’re not, are you? That’d be fast work. Even for a busy girl. It’s never a good idea, though. Complicates things. And now she’s a source. You don’t want to get between her and the comrade.”
“There is no more comrade. He’s gone.”
Campbell nodded. “They’re burning up the wires, down at Karlshorst. Interesting, when people panic. They say things.”
“Good. Then you don’t need Irene anymore. Or me.”
“What are you talking about? She’s the key.”
“To what?”
“Finding him first. You’re right. She’s finished as a source—unless she picks up a new friend. But he’s not. He’d have a lot of interesting things to say. If we can find him.”
Alex looked toward the river, invisible now in the fog.
“So you want to stay close. Closer.” Markus’s words, just as insinuating in English.
“I can’t. I want out.”
Campbell looked over. “That’s not possible. Not now.”
“You don’t understand. That’s why the SOS. Something’s happened.”
Campbell waited.
“You won’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
“I’ve been recruited. To work for the Germans. They want me to do what you want me to do. For them. I have to get out. Now. Before it starts.”
Campbell said nothing, turning this over.
“What Germans?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard correctly.
“They have their own service now. The old K-5. I’m a Geheimer Informator.” He looked over. “A protected source. Both ways. It’s a game of mirrors. I can’t do this.”
“Smoke and mirrors.”