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“Even if that was betraying Freddy’s trust in me? Even if that means you will no longer trust him?”
“Pay attention. Freddy didn’t tell me about the bugs because if he got caught, he could pass a lie-detector test saying I knew nothing about the bugs. And he told you not to let me know you were listening to the bugs because he had a good idea, was worried about, Derwin’s interest in me. And he really didn’t want me to know you heard either what Derwin asked me, or what my answers were.”
“You mean you were fooling around with Colonel Schumann’s wife?”
And here we are at decision time. Do I tell her everything, or not?
I don’t have any choice.
She’s either part of this team, or she’s not.
And I can’t send her back to the ASA because (a) she’s already learned too much about Freddy, and now about me, and (b) I believe what they say about hell having no fury like a pissed-off female, and (c) she would have every right to be thoroughly pissed off because she’s done nothing wrong.
So once again, it’s fuck Ludwig Mannberg’s firm belief that if you really want to trust your intuition, don’t.
“Turn that around, Dette. Rachel Schumann was fooling around with me. More accurately, she was making a three-star fool of me.”
“She was into the erotic attraction of your innocence and naïveté, is that what you’re saying?”
“In hindsight, I don’t think she liked me at all. I think she held me in great contempt . . . and, from her viewpoint, rightly so. She was playing me like a violin, to coin a phrase.”
“Her viewpoint?”
“That of an NKGB operative. And for all I know, an NKGB officer. Probably an NKGB officer.”
“You’re telling me this colonel’s wife was a Russian spy?”
“Him, too.”
“My God!”
“Welcome to the wonderful world of intelligence.”
“What information did she want from you?”
“Whatever she could get about Kloster Grünau and Operation Ost generally, and whatever she could get about Likharev specifically.”
“You’re implying she got it. From you.”
“She got what she wanted to know about Likharev. From me.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that he wasn’t buried in an unmarked grave at Kloster Grünau, despite an elaborate burial we conducted for him in the middle of the night. That he was in fact on his way to Argentina. And because I gave her that information, people died and were seriously wounded—Americans and Argentines—in Argentina, and the NKGB damned near managed to take out Likharev.”
“You’re sure about all this?”
“I’m sure about all this.”
“Then there was something fishy about the explosion that killed this woman? Her and her husband?”
“Listen carefully. The only thing I know is that there was an explosion. That said explosion was investigated by everybody and his brother, including Major Wallace, who thought, still thinks, which we had better not forget, that Schumann was a fine officer and a good friend—and nothing fishy was uncovered.”
“But you have your suspicions, right?”
“Next question?”
“So what do I do with my Gregg notes?”
