floor of a converted nineteenth-century mansion, one that had survived two world wars with only minor reconstruction. It was a largish place, particularly for a man whose wife and kids had departed the previous month for Maryland: a high-ceilinged living room filled with antiques gathered in postings to Moscow and Budapest; equally antique plumbing; a couple of deserted bedrooms that echoed when his polished shoes clicked down the parquet-covered corridor. The CIA’s station chief in Berlin was a major player—a linchpin in the delicate business of liaison with German intelligence—and he merited the kind of expansive accommodation State Department officers coveted. But Wally was unusual in choosing to live in the Scheunenviertel, the old Jewish Quarter of Berlin, rather than the expat ghetto of leafy Charlottenburg. He liked the food he found in the Quarter—it reminded him sometimes of Queens—and he liked the feel of the old walls leaning toward one another across the narrow streets. Only the black swastikas sprayed on the nearby synagogue had the power to trouble him.
He rose early by embassy standards and walked out in search of the morning papers, German- and English-language both. He bought fresh soft doughnuts and steaming Turkish coffee and consumed them while he read the papers. The loneliness Brenda had left behind felt less weighty then, as he sniffed the Berlinerluft —the light, soft air that was the pride of the city, but which Wally always thought smelled dampeningly of the soft brown coal burned throughout Central Europe. He could imagine himself the spy with a thousand faces, haunting the no-man’s-land of the Cold War as le Carré had done. He was a good case officer—Caroline Carmichael had said once that Wally was born to hold somebody’s hand in a rundown bar and pay them for the privilege—and he’d risen fast through the covert world. Wally was spare, short, and kindly-faced with a graying goatee and a waspish sense of humor. His father had been a successful salesman. Which in fact was what Wally had become: a dealer in souls and morals. Your secrets for our dreams. Your hopes for solid cash. With a cyanide pill on the side.
Chief of Station—COS, as it was known among Agency people—was primarily a managerial role. Wally sat in on embassy meetings and trained up the kids fresh off the Farm and reviewed cables before they were sent home, chafing all the while at the ops he no longer got to run. He was not so far removed from the street, however, that he’d lost his tradecraft. And so, even before he had a chance to turn around, he felt the man following him back from the newsstand this morning. Wally, Caroline once remarked, had eyes in his ass.
He was intrigued by the surveillance. Was it his old friends the Russians? The North Koreans, perhaps, operating in Berlin? A training run for the German service, which had picked him out like a familiar landmark, Wally the Chief of Scheunenviertel? He strolled casually past the entrance to his apartment building, sipping his coffee, and dropped into one of his surveillance detection routes.
It was possible, of course, that a more sinister construction could be placed on this watcher. It was barely a week since Sophie Payne’s body had been recovered; her funeral would take place back home in a matter of hours. Thirty April might be blasted to smithereens by his good friend Caroline, but revenge was ripe for the taking. It’d be a terrorist coup to snuff the CIA’s man in Berlin; Berlin was 30 April’s backyard. He made a play of dropping one of his newspapers and, as he bent to retrieve it, glanced casually back the way he’d come.
The paving was empty.
Vaguely irritated—disappointed, if the truth were known—he wandered on for a few hundred more yards. Checking, surreptitiously, to see if the tail had reappeared. By this time he’d left the Scheunenviertel behind—had crossed the Spree near Mon Bijou Park—had the buildings of
He rose early by embassy standards and walked out in search of the morning papers, German- and English-language both. He bought fresh soft doughnuts and steaming Turkish coffee and consumed them while he read the papers. The loneliness Brenda had left behind felt less weighty then, as he sniffed the Berlinerluft —the light, soft air that was the pride of the city, but which Wally always thought smelled dampeningly of the soft brown coal burned throughout Central Europe. He could imagine himself the spy with a thousand faces, haunting the no-man’s-land of the Cold War as le Carré had done. He was a good case officer—Caroline Carmichael had said once that Wally was born to hold somebody’s hand in a rundown bar and pay them for the privilege—and he’d risen fast through the covert world. Wally was spare, short, and kindly-faced with a graying goatee and a waspish sense of humor. His father had been a successful salesman. Which in fact was what Wally had become: a dealer in souls and morals. Your secrets for our dreams. Your hopes for solid cash. With a cyanide pill on the side.
Chief of Station—COS, as it was known among Agency people—was primarily a managerial role. Wally sat in on embassy meetings and trained up the kids fresh off the Farm and reviewed cables before they were sent home, chafing all the while at the ops he no longer got to run. He was not so far removed from the street, however, that he’d lost his tradecraft. And so, even before he had a chance to turn around, he felt the man following him back from the newsstand this morning. Wally, Caroline once remarked, had eyes in his ass.
He was intrigued by the surveillance. Was it his old friends the Russians? The North Koreans, perhaps, operating in Berlin? A training run for the German service, which had picked him out like a familiar landmark, Wally the Chief of Scheunenviertel? He strolled casually past the entrance to his apartment building, sipping his coffee, and dropped into one of his surveillance detection routes.
It was possible, of course, that a more sinister construction could be placed on this watcher. It was barely a week since Sophie Payne’s body had been recovered; her funeral would take place back home in a matter of hours. Thirty April might be blasted to smithereens by his good friend Caroline, but revenge was ripe for the taking. It’d be a terrorist coup to snuff the CIA’s man in Berlin; Berlin was 30 April’s backyard. He made a play of dropping one of his newspapers and, as he bent to retrieve it, glanced casually back the way he’d come.
The paving was empty.
Vaguely irritated—disappointed, if the truth were known—he wandered on for a few hundred more yards. Checking, surreptitiously, to see if the tail had reappeared. By this time he’d left the Scheunenviertel behind—had crossed the Spree near Mon Bijou Park—had the buildings of
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