Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Jack realized Marta was saying Ingrid would have needed the identification to get out of East Berlin and into West Germany, and then to get from Germany to Switzerland.

“Do you know why she was going to Switzerland?”

“She told me she had a boyfriend who immigrated there.”

“And you believed her?”

“Why not? She showed me a necklace he sent her. It was a big diamond. She didn’t even wear it. Not many East German girls wear a diamond necklace around.”

“Did she give you the name of her boyfriend?”

“No.”

“But you were friends?” Jack asked incredulously. He wasn’t trained to interrogate. He wondered if his inquisitive nature was pushing things too fast. Before he could think of another, softer line of questioning, Marta spoke on her own.

“Ingrid had never even been to Switzerland. So how is she going to go there, on her own, and start machine-gunning people and blowing up buildings? Das ist verrückt. ” She translated for herself. “That is crazy.”

“They will say she did not do it alone. They will say others in the RAF were working with her. Even you, maybe?”

Marta shook her head. “Ingrid was not RAF. And anyway, what do we care about bankers in Switzerland? There are bankers here. Industrialists here. NATO here.” She looked up at Jack, still seated above her on her little bed. “Capitalist spies… here.”

“How did the briefcase end up under the bed?”

Marta went quiet. This time, Jack answered for her.

He said, “Here’s what I think. I don’t believe you loaned your identification to this waitress for a few East German marks. I think you were ordered to give it to her by the same people who planted the evidence under your bed.”

Her laugh seemed fake, forced. “Ordered by who?”

Jack shrugged. “Stasi, maybe? Or was it KGB? I don’t know. I do know your organization works with both of them. Whoever it was told you they needed to stash something here. You must have told them about the false floor under the bed. Once you found out your place had been raided, you realized you’d been framed.”

She shook her head again. “Typical lie of the CIA.”

Ryan squeezed the scarf wrapped on his forearm; he felt the wetness from where the blood soaked through. He said, “Listen, Marta, whoever did this used Ingrid because they couldn’t get a real RAF member to go to Switzerland and plant the bomb. They got your identification and gave it to her so that your group would be blamed for the killings. Your friends died as a result of it.

“You obviously know you have been set up, because you came back over here, hoping against hope that the evidence was still under the bed and you could get it the hell out of here before you and your group of left-wing losers were implicated even deeper.”

“I have nothing more to say to you.”

“Don’t you want the world to know Red Army Faction had nothing to do with the death of all those innocent people in Switzerland? This is the worst possible thing that could have happened to your organization.”

She said nothing. She only shook her head.

“You won’t talk, so how about you just listen for a moment? In case you don’t know, your friends died because of money. This is all about a bank account. An account with two hundred million dollars in it in a Swiss bank. To hide the money, some people had to die, so the Russians decided they would use you and your friends to take the blame for killing them.”

Ryan smiled at her. “It’s nothing more than money, my dear. Your socialist ideals, your struggle for the rights of the worker, none of that bullshit has one goddamned thing to do with any of this. The Russians wanted to keep their money hidden, and the RAF made a useful stooge.”

Jack continued, “They are all dead, Marta. All your friends. There is no one to protect except the man who did this to you. If you protect him…” Jack motioned to the empty flat around him. “Then you are even more a part of what happened to them all.”

She wept openly now, her head hung, tears dripped onto the floor in front of her. But she did not say anything.

“You don’t want to talk. That’s fine. I respect that. I tell you what. If you can answer one more thing, I’ll untie you and let you go.”

She looked up. A glimmer of hope in her eyes now. “What?”

“One question only, Marta. I promise.”

Her nose ran; she couldn’t wipe it with her hands behind her back, so she just snorted loudly. “Okay. What question?”

“Why are you alive?”

She tilted her head slowly to the side. “Was meinst du?”

“These people have done an excellent job covering their tracks so far. They killed Ingrid, who was an East German girl and would not be missed over here. And they killed the men who knew about the money the Russians stashed in the bank. I am pretty sure they killed a friend of mine who was trying to expose their operation. And they made sure everyone in this apartment was dead so no one would be left to prove they weren’t involved in the attacks.”

Jack leaned closer. Not threatening but imploring.

“But you , Marta, you are the only loose end. You walking around West Berlin can cause their entire plan to fall to pieces. Do you think they are going to just sit back and let that happen?”

The muscles in her neck tightened. The look on her face melded perfectly with someone who had just lost a key tenet of her belief system.

Jack wanted to feel the schadenfreude of watching a terrorist realize her entire cause was built on a foundation of bullshit and supported by an organization of soulless killers. But instead he found himself feeling sorry for her.

The distant look in her wet eyes made her appear nearly catatonic. She said, “I am not supposed to be here. I was in the East. I came over early this morning when I heard about what happened.”

“Came over? How?”

“There is a tunnel. It is used by East German intelligence. I know of it because sometimes we help them bring things across.”

“No one knows you are here?”

She shook her head again.

He leaned closer, inches from her face, and he took a chance. “Not even your KGB control officer?”

Marta Scheuring shook her head slowly. Tears flowed. “I don’t have a control officer. The Russian who connected me to Ingrid was a stranger. I’d never met him before, but he knew others in my organization. They told me I could trust him. I assume he was KGB. I mean… how else could he know about us? He told me he would support us if I did what I was told. I could not refuse. We need the support.” She looked around, as if just remembering that all her fellow urban guerrillas were dead. “We needed the support.”

“What was his name?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t give me his name. Only a code name.”

“Which was?”

“Zenit.”

Jack said, “Zenith?”

“Do you know him?” she asked.

“No. But I think I know his work.”

The tears poured now, and mucus dripped from her nose. Her body shook. “He is going to kill me, isn’t he?”

Jack said, “If you had stayed in the East like you were supposed to, you would be dead already. This Zenith, and others like him, will be looking for you right now. You have to let us protect you.”

“But you are alone, aren’t you?”

“Right now I am, but I can take you to Clay Headquarters, and you will be protected by the entire Berlin Brigade. We’ll get you out of West Berlin and find someplace safe for you.”

“In return for what?”

Ryan realized his concern for the German woman was real. Even though she was misguided at the least, and most likely a dangerous terrorist, his instincts to protect the vulnerable were real enough.