Vidich The Matchmaker

A Spy in Berlin
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-0-85730-450-6
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

Berlin, 1989. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door. Nothing about her marriage is as it seems. Anne had been targeted by the Matchmaker - a high level East German counterintelligence officer - who runs a network of Stasi agents. These agents are his 'Romeos' who marry vulnerable women in West Berlin to provide them with cover as they report back to the Matchmaker. Anne has been married to a spy, and now he has disappeared, and is presumably dead. The CIA are desperate to find the Matchmaker because of his close ties to the KGB. They believe he can establish the truth about a high-ranking Soviet defector. They need Anne because she's the only person who has seen his face - from a photograph that her husband mistakenly left out in his office - and she is the CIA's best chance to identify him before the Matchmaker escapes to Moscow. Time is running out as the Berlin Wall falls and chaos engulfs East Germany. But what if Anne's husband is not dead? And what if Anne has her own motives for finding the Matchmaker to deliver a different type of justice?

Paul Vidich has had a distinguished career in music and media. Most recently, he served as Special Advisor to AOL and was Executive Vice President at the Warner Music Group, in charge of technology and global strategy. He serves on the Board of Directors of Poets & Writers and The New School for Social Research. A founder and publisher of the Storyville App, Vidich is also an award-winning author of short fiction. His novels, An Honorable Man, The Good Assassin, The Coldest Warrior and The Mercenary,are available from No Exit Press.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vidich, Paul

Leseproben

1

Kreuzberg, West Berlin

1989

Peril came early to the apartment on Bethaniendamm, overtaking the changes that were sweeping through the streets and alleys of a divided Cold War Berlin.

Anne Simpson stood at the ironing board in her kitchen doing one of the chores that were a part of her morning routine, when she heard cries in the street. For a moment she thought it might be her husband. A premonition darkened her face, but she put it aside and held onto the idea that his tardiness was the oversight of a forgetful partner. She tried to concentrate on the blue jeans’ stubborn wrinkle, but her mind was elsewhere, and hot iron grazed her wrist. A curse burst from her lips. At the sink, she ran cold water over the burn.

She always became restless waiting for her husband to return from one of his Central European business trips, but this time there was an added complication. They had argued terribly the night before he left and then he was gone at dawn. She had awakened feeling alone and resentful. It started with her suspicions about his work, but it became the disagreement that was a frequent part of their young marriage – she wanted a child and he said that it wasn’t the right time.

As she was storing the ironing board the apartment’s doorbell chimed. She glanced at the wall clock as if, by some unconscious association, knowing the time would better prepare her to confront him when he walked in. She vigorously wiped her hands on a dish towel.

The jeans were still warm when she slipped her legs into the pants, fingers fumbling with the zipper. On her way across the living room, she glanced in the beveled wall mirror, thinking that it was best to look cheerful. She shook her hair to give it body and shaped it. As an afterthought, she undid the blouse’s top button, revealing the pearl necklace on her pale breasts. It had always been their agreement that when he returned from a long business trip, he rang the lobby buzzer – to warn her, he liked to joke, in case she’d taken a lover while he was away.

She glanced out the window to see if he’d stepped back and was waving. There was only tobacco haze from the Turkish café next door and a gaggle of children hanging on their mothers’ jilbabs, pointing at a couple of guys with orange cockfighting hair and steel-studded leather jackets. The neighborhood had become just that. Streets bleeding into streets of the old Berlin now taken over by immigrants and young squatters. Store windows burst with boxed fruit shaded by overhanging balconies and everywhere rude political graffiti. It was a lively cosmopolitan city with a thriving punk music scene but always conscious that it was a walled-in enclave surrounded by Soviet armed forces.

Again, the chime.

‘Coming!’ She grabbed the yellow rose she had bought as a peace offering and pressed the buzzer twice to open the unreliable lobby door lock.

Leaning over the hall’s railing, she looked down four flights into the dark stairwell. She listened for his enthusiastic run up the stairs, taking two at a time. There was only silence.

‘Stefan?’

Behind her, the elevator suddenly opened and a man she didn’t recognize stepped out.

‘Anne Simpson?’

‘Yes. Can I help you?’

‘I’m James Cooper, American embassy. I’ve come about your husband. Is he here?’

‘No.’

‘We thought you might know where he is.’

She took Cooper in all at once. A man in his early forties with a grave face and an exaggerated expression of concern that he didn’t try to mask with a polite smile. He removed his hat and held it solicitously in one hand, using the other to brush back hair that had fallen to his forehead.

‘I’m sorry. Who are you?’

‘Jim Cooper.’ He presented a business card with two hands, nodding slightly. ‘Consular officer.’

‘He’s not here. I’m expecting him.’ She knew his type from her job – foreign service officers in tailored suits and Oxford wingtips who were equally good at seeming confident or naïve. They were always holding ad hoc meetings in the courtyard, talking in whispers and keeping the mystery of who they worked for.

Cooper’s eyes were sympathetic and somber. ‘We believe he may be missing.’

Missing? The word hung in the silence that followed. Without being aware of the sensation until it gripped her, she felt cold. This was a mistake, she thought. He was looking for a different man, perhaps one with the same name. Her mind grasped for reasons to doubt the claim. But one question led to another, the end of one becoming the beginning of the next and her thoughts became clouded.

‘I don’t understand.’

A neighbor’s door suddenly opened, a pleasant-looking middle-aged man in a collarless shirt emerged, and upon seeing two people in the hallway, he quickly descended the stairs. In the open door, stood a startled young drag queen in pink slippers and a sheer peignoir under a kimono, which she abruptly closed. Dark eye shadow graced her face and her short black hair was slicked back. She cocked her head at Cooper and turned to Anne, speaking over the soft jazz coming through her door. ‘Do you need help?’

‘Can we go inside?’ Cooper said.

Anne acknowledged her neighbor, ‘I’m okay.’

Cooper entered the bright living room and stopped at the wall mirror, taking in the apartment’s eclectic furnishings like a realtor evaluating a new listing. The original splendor of old Berlin remained in the elaborate ceiling plasterwork, parquet floors, and several graceful casement windows with views across the Wall into East Berlin. But the original Beaux Arts details suffered neglect. Repeated coats of paint obscured the craftsmanship and a naked light bulb was in a ceiling fixture designed for a chandelier. Parquet tiles had loosened in spots, or were missing. Sunlight coming through venetian blinds illuminated the black lacquered finish of a Steinway piano.

Anne looked at his card again. ‘I don’t understand. Missing? What does that mean?’

‘We don’t know where he is. We thought he might be here. My job is to help Americans who find themselves in trouble or in need of help to deal with local police matters.’ Cooper removed his coat and laid it across his arm.

She thought hostilely that she hadn’t invited him to stay.

‘The Polizei found his wallet. I was told to come here before they arrive to be the first to inform you. And to speak with you. To see if he was here, or if you knew where he was. To help you through this.’

She stopped listening when she heard the word wallet. ‘Found where?’

‘Landwehr Canal.’

She was confused. ‘He’s been in Vienna.’

‘They confirmed it’s his.’

‘I see. Which part of the canal?’

‘The Polizei will know. They’re searching the water.’

Her hand went to her forehead, dimly aware in the moment that she was short of breath, and then her heart started to race and a sudden lightheadedness overcame her. Without knowing it, she had backed up against the wall and was slowly sliding down to the floor. Her hand went to her mouth realizing all that she didn’t know, knocking her glasses off.

‘Mrs Simpson!’ Cooper knelt at her side, retrieving the lenses.

She smiled. ‘I’m okay. Thank you.’ She went to stand, but her left knee buckled. He caught her arm and helped her to the sofa.

‘Sit here.’

She looked at him. ‘Is he dead?’

‘He’s missing. There is no reason to jump to conclusions.’

She nodded. He seemed nice enough, like a therapist paid to listen, and she thought his job must have trained him to provide comforting lies. Her mind had jumped to the worst thing, but she allowed herself to be open to his opinion. He explained again what he knew and bit by bit she stopped giving into fear. She projected optimism. She nodded at his reassuring composure and listened politely to what he had to say. Slowly, her urge to ask him to leave became gratitude that he’d come.

‘The Polizei will have more information. They’ll be here in an hour, maybe less.’

‘I see.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Will you be staying until they arrive?’

‘I can do that, yes. I have an idea what they’ll ask. And what you should say.’

‘What I should say?’

‘What you know.’

She paused. ‘I don’t know anything.’

‘Then that’s what you’ll tell them.’

She nodded. ‘Can I offer you tea, coffee? There’s fresh pastry.’ She had bought it for Stefan, but now it would go to waste.

‘Why don’t you sit,’ Cooper said. ‘I can serve you. What would you...