Page 54 of Denied Access
“Because I ran a little intelligence operation of my own. Wanna hear a story, kid?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Shut up and listen.”
CHAPTER 28
EASTBERLIN, 1972
STANHurley watched the woman exit the apartment building.
Fashionable Western clothes were hard to find, but the fräulein could have made a paper bag look chic. Her hair fell to her shoulders in a midnight wave and her skin was so white as to be porcelain. Blue eyes sparkled behind long, thick lashes, and her sweater and pants flattered her curvy figure. The woman’s shy smile made the most self-assured of men stutter, and she exuded a sense of innocent wonder that often manifested in a bubbly laugh. She was somewhere in her twenties, glowing with youth, but delightfully absent the cynicism of her peers.
She was, in a word, lovely.
She was also something else.
A gust of wind tousled the woman’s hair. She pushed the black strands from her face as she looked up and down the street. Stan turned his back to the girl, cupping his hands as he lit a KaroLungentorpedocigarette. He inhaled and the nicotine hit his nervous system like a freight train. There was a reason the Germans nicknamed the brandlung torpedoes. The first time he’d smoked one, Hurley had beenconvinced someone had exchanged the tobacco for cocaine. He was standing in front of a department store, and the large display window allowed him to see the woman purse her lips as she searched for a taxi. In most of East Germany, this would have been a losing proposition.
Not here.
This was Strausberger Platz, home to high-level bureaucrats, ranking members of the Communist Party, and other important officials. Officials like the one whose apartment the woman had just left. A Volga sputtered to life up the street. Its anemic four-cylinder engine powered the taxi to where the woman waited. She took one last look at her surroundings while climbing into the back seat. He felt the weight of her gaze on his back as she marked his presence, but Stan wasn’t worried.
East Germany was the definition of a police state.
Here, someone was always watching.
The taxi rumbled away in a cloud of choking exhaust. Stan finished smoking his cigarette in case the woman had the Volga double back. At least that’s what he wanted to believe. In actuality, he was steeling himself for what was coming next. In the last twenty-four hours, he’d killed two KGB thugs before they could kill him and left their bodies floating in the Spree. Less than twelve hours ago, he’d paid the man who dispatched the murderers, Mikhail Ivanov, a visit in his East Berlin office. In what passed for restraint in the rough-and-tumble world of espionage, Hurley had put a gun to the KGB officer’s head and explained what would happen if any more Soviet wet-work teams plied their trade against American CIA officers.
Then he’d blindfolded Ivanov, tied him up, and pilfered his files.
Taking the files had been an afterthought. A way to further humiliate the KGB officer and keep him off balance, but after skimming through their contents, Hurley realized he’d struck gold. He’d handed the majority of the stash to a courier for transport back to West Berlin.
One page he’d kept for himself.
Tossing the cigarette to the ground, Stan made for the apartment building’s door. Unlike much of the new construction in East Berlin, thisstructure did not appear as if it were one stiff breeze from tipping over. The fourteen-story building looked out on a greenspace replete with fountains. The pedestrian area was free of trash and the entrance featured an arc of worked stone that protected residents from the elements. As with most places behind the Iron Curtain, it paid to be one of the party elite.
Without breaking stride, Hurley pulled open the glass door and stepped into the lobby. A doorman who’d been slouching behind a desk adjacent to the entrance shot to his feet.
“Kann ich Ihnen helfen?”
“Nein,” Hurley answered. “I’m here for Herr Volkov.”
The doorman’s eyes widened.
KGB officers on rotation to East Berlin preferred to keep their living arrangements shrouded. Hurley’s Berlin-accented German was perfect, but the fact that he knew the intelligence officer residing on the seventh floor by his true name rather than an alias further burnished his credentials. Only another intelligence officer would have access to that information. In the doorman’s mind, this meant the Hurley was Stasi and best left alone.
Or at least that’s what he hoped.
“If you’ll wait just a moment, I’ll ring Herr Volkov to let him know you’ve arrived.”
“You’ll do no such thing. Not that it is any of your business, but Herr Volkov left strict instructions for me to come to his apartment unannounced. I will knock on his door. If he is still indisposed, he will not answer, and I will return in one hour’s time. His instructions were abundantly clear in this regard. I’m assuming you find them equally as clear.”
The doorman swallowed. “Yes, but our procedure—”
“Perhaps I haven’t made myself plain,” Hurley said, stepping closer. “I am going to enter that elevator, take it to the seventh floor, walk down the hall to Herr Volkov’s apartment, and knock on his door precisely three times in accordance with his wishes. If you choose to deviate fromthose wishes, the repercussions will fall squarely on your shoulders. Understood?”
The doorman swallowed again.
