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"Down the hole," echoed Hale, though he had already guessed what the phrase meant. For the first time since stepping into the sanctuary of the British Embassy in Lisbon three years ago, he had the sensation of having left his heart and lungs and guts somewhere behind, replaced by a durable emptiness, and his hearing and vision seemed more acute.
"Down the Helmstedt-Berlin Autobahn, a hundred and four miles to Berlin. You're a London-based scout for an American chemical fertilizers manufacturer, you see, I've got a couple of Yank government pamphlets on the subject you can swot up on. In a nutshell, the Berliners are using plain shit to fertilize their fields-all the nitrogen factories were converted to wartime use for explosives manufacture and then properly bombed. The Yanks are making some nitrate fertilizers, but they need to import ammonia from the French Zone, and coal from ours, which we haven't got any of to spare anyway. The thing is, you've got a contract with an American company in an industry the Russians need. They'll let you pass, into the American sector; we don't want to trouble our own people with this."
"This," said Hale.
"Surveying work, actually. The Soviets are going to be installing a bench mark somewhere in the city tomorrow night at midnight-June twenty-second and twenty-third, the summer solstice, when the plane of the ecliptic will be at its northernmost point for the year, and the eventual noon sun will be directly over the Jabrin oasis in Saudi Arabia. The Soviets are going to put down a sort of reference point in Berlin, a cornerstone for a wall they might build one day. It's a heavy stone, and we've tracked the lorry carrying it all the way from Moscow, and it was in Warsaw yesterday, trundling steadily west." Theodora was nodding as he stared out through the windscreen. "The Crown needs you to note with precision exactly where they plant the stone."
Hale's breath was shallow. "Is it-by any chance-a big, rough, rectangular stone, with a loop carved at one end?"
"Ah, good lad, you've done your prep this time, unlike the job with the radio magazines back in our youths. Yes, and you won't by any means be the only man in town observing this...undertaking. Some will be acting as security for it, some trying to impede it. You just note, and be careful not to be seen noting. When it appears to be starting up, you instantly go into total evasion procedures, am I understood?"
"Total evasion procedures when it starts up," said Hale obediently. "Understood."
The safe house was one of a row of apartments across a gravel yard from the road. The building had not been bombed, but a hole had been cut into the stucco wall to fit a stovepipe through, and when they had got inside and locked the door, Hale saw that a wood-burning stove had been moved in to replace the prewar central heating. An unshaded electric lamp threw stark shadows on the grimy white walls.
Theodora pointed at one of two cots by the boarded-over window. "That's yours. I'm turning in right now, but I'll give you your reading material and show you where the Scotch is. The alarm is set for six."
At seven the next morning, Hale sat in the driver's seat of the Renault, fluttering the throttle pedal to keep the cold engine from stalling. Two cups of hot coffee and a couple of biscuits sat heavily in his stomach, and he was acutely aware of the German automatic pistol that was fitted up among the springs of the passenger-side seat.
Theodora was leaning against the driver's-side window frame and breathing a sour smell of coffee at him. "Your passport and travel order are solid," the older man said. "You've got nothing to worry about at the checkpoints. Now on the autobahn?-remember, don't stop, and don't take any less than two hours covering the hundred miles-the guards at the first checkpoint will radio ahead, and if you go too fast you'll be in trouble. If you break down, stay by the car, and you're not allowed to go more than fifteen feet off the pavement in any case. If you haven't arrived in Berlin in four hours, I'll hear from my SHAEF chum, and I'll-send someone looking for you, if possible." The gravel crunched as Theodora stepped back. "Gute Fahrt," he said dryly.
It was German for Have a good trip. "Oh, the same to you," said Hale, letting out the clutch and then steering the car toward the road that led to the border. The sky was blue behind the smokeless factory chimneys, with only a few clouds mounting in the east.
As Theodora had predicted, Hale had no difficulties with the border checkpoint guards. They waved him to a halt with submachine guns, but when he had got out of the car and gone into their shack, they simply wrote down his name and stamped his American travel orders. "Okay," one of them said in English, pulling the lever that lifted the bar outside.
The autobahn beyond was a wide, two-lane highway, and the cherry and pine and birch trees on either side were soon a blur of varying shades of green as Hale shifted up to the prescribed eighty kilometers per hour. Long stretches of the median between the eastbound and westbound lanes had been cemented over, but it wasn't until Hale noticed heavy black skid-marks on one stretch of it that he realized that these paved expanses had been the makeshift, last-resort airstrips of the Third Reich.
German-language signs stood on posts on the roadside shoulder and hung from the overpasses, but they all appeared to be pro-Soviet propaganda-ONE BERLIN, and AMERICANS GO HOME, and one in English: ORDER THE INVESTIGATORS OF WAR TO PUT A STOP TO!
Hear hear, thought Hale.
At the Gleinecker Bridge over the Havel, in the southwest suburbs of Berlin, he slowed for the second Soviet checkpoint and braked to a stop while two guards pointed submachine guns at the grille of his car; but the soldier in the guard shack had clearly been expecting Hale, and only glanced at his papers before waving the bar up. Nevertheless Hale felt by now like a visitor to a high-security prison, nervous about doing anything that might make it hard to get out again.
Directly ahead was a stark black-on-white sign announcing the border of the United States Sector, and it was with relief that Hale put the car into first gear and drove toward it. The American soldiers wore khaki uniforms with white helmets and belts and holsters, and one of them waved Hale to a shed like a toll booth.
"Where you headed, Mr. Conway?" he asked after looking at Hale's travel order and handing it back through the rolled-down window.
"I'm supposed to-" Hale's voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat before trying again. "I'm supposed to meet a Hubert Flannery, of the SHAEF, at the U.S. Sector Headquarters." SHAEF was the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
"That's on the Zehlendorf, straight ahead and turn left on Onkel Tom Strasse, no joke. Don't turn right at all, and if you go more than six miles, stop, you've missed it. Don't drive around the city without looking at a map-most of the streets lead into the Soviet Sector. They're not all barricaded and patrolled, and if you drift across with any incriminating items on you, like a newspaper or money, you'll have a very bad time getting back out. Enjoy your stay."
"Jesus. You too."
Many of the brick buildings he drove slowly past were hollowed and roofless and missing walls, with stairs leading nowhere anymore and windows that opened on the sky from any angle. The center lanes of the streets were clear pavement, but where gutters and sidewalks must once have been were shoulder-high piles of broken masonry, from which old women were picking up bricks two at a time and loading them into horse-drawn wagons. Hale was careful to watch his odometer and to avoid any right turns, and he wondered if Elena, who had disappeared into the world that crowded so close here, was still alive.
Flannery was a big, red-faced man who smelled of juniper berries; and when he closed the door to his office after Hale had stepped inside, he intensified the juniper smell by pouring Gordon's gin into two fragile china teacups, one of which had not been dry.
"Drink up," he said cheerfully. "Mithridates principle, right? Accustom yourself to the poison in advance, and after that nobody can harm you with it."
Hale nodded and drank half of the cup in one gulp.
"Oh, you're bound for immortality," Flannery said. "So Jimmie says your cover is fertilizers-chemistry and agriculture. I'll make an appointment for you with Sandy Bennett, that's Sanford Bennett on our agricultural staff. He's safely out of town until after the weekend, and tomorrow I'll erase it from his calendar, but for these twenty-four hours you can mention the appointment and his secretary will back you up. Your boss was already onto her today to get some fly-spray. And say you intend to talk to Fred Cavanaugh-he's in charge of repatriation and refugees. You can claim to want to hire Displaced Persons from the Fluchtlingstelle refugee center at Marienfelde, it's in this sector."
"Good Lord, I don't want forced labor!"
"For the fertilizer factory you're not even going to start up, right-live your cover. It'd be seen as a mercy, though, if you wanted Soviets who've been German prisoners of war. We've been repatriating them, by force-we had a crowd of Russian soldiers who were captured by the Germans in '42, and we had to tear-gas 'em to get them into the eastbound train cars to go back home. Eleven of them actually managed to kill themselves, rather than return. I gather Moscow doesn't look kindly on Communists who've been too long in the West, even if the time was spent in prison camps."
Again Hale thought of Elena. The gin was suddenly as sour as varnish in his mouth, and he put the teacup down on the desk.
