Olen Steinhauer - The Nearest Exit

He’d seen Pavle Ðorð-ević in the unheated entrance when he and ten others were dragged in to join the crowd of young men that now numbered about two hundred. He’d known Pavle in high school, though to call them friends would have been a stretch. He’d punched Pavle’s face when both were fourteen, and the policeman’s long nose still made a slight detour halfway down to his lips. But it was the only name he knew.

The cop pretended to ignore his request, and after he left some of the Bosnians began to hassle him-who was he planning to give up? He stood his ground and told them that a well-known Novi Beograd gangster was his boss. It was enough for them to give him breathing room.

Hours later, around six thirty, he was led to an interview room, where Pavle sat smoking a Marlboro and scratching his broken nose. He ignored Radovan’s attempts at reminiscing and pocketed his cigarettes when Radovan made a move for them. He spoke as if he’d been awake for a week straight. “I don’t have time for your bullshit, Radovan. Get to the point.”

“I’ve got information. Let’s make a deal.”

“What kind of information?”

“The good kind. The kind that gets you a promotion. You agree to let me go, and it’s yours.”

“You’re going to tell me who organized the burning of the American embassy?” Pavle grinned. “That information won’t get me promoted. It might just get me a bullet in the head.”

“It’s got nothing to do with that. Nothing to do with Belgrade. No one gets in trouble except some foreigners.” He paused. “In particular, an American.”

Pavle exhaled smoke, then after a moment placed his Marlboros back on the table. Radovan took one and waited for Pavle to light it. “Go on,” said the cop.

“Do we have a deal? I’ve got to get out. Family business.”

“If it’s as good as you say, then sure.”

“It is, Pavle. Believe me.”

The request came in the form of a morning e-mail with a red priority flag, asking her to please come to Conference Room S on the second floor for a 10:00 A.M. meeting. It had been sent by Teddi Wartmüller’s secretary.

The second floor was a rarity for Erika. She kept to her office on the ground floor, and when the directors of the various departments wanted to talk, they came to her. There had always been a silent understanding in this, since the second floor was where they stocked the French wines and the ten-year-old single malts for serious intelligence bureaucrats poring over policy dictates and making serious decisions. Such important people required their meals be delivered and their drinks poured; it was a place Erika Schwartz did not belong.

She’d been invited not merely to the second floor but to the most esteemed and contentious of the conference rooms. Each department had been tapped to pay for S’s renovation more than two years ago. They paid for the Spanish leather upholstery, the Italian cabinets, and the long conference table made of Finnish oak and fitted out with its own laptops and cameras for conference calls displayed on an enormous plasma television at the end of the room; at the other end, windows with electric blinds surveyed the grounds. The inevitable argument over funding this monstrosity had finally uncovered the true purpose of S, which was to impress the Americans. This, of course, was before the CIA’s Afghan heroin scandal shut down most of their joint operations, but construction had continued anyway. Since the room’s completion last year, not a single American had entered Conference Room S, nor had Erika.

The irony was deeper, because Room S was only a stopgap before the entire building moved to the new headquarters in Berlin, which, according to recent estimates, would be finished by 2011. Even though the move was still at least three years off, the arguments and deals over who would get corner offices had been going on ever since Gerhard Schröder’s security cabinet decided five years ago to centralize the BND in Berlin. This, too, was a debate Erika had been left out of.

As she prepared for the trip upstairs, her suspicions running in various unproven directions but self-consciously dwelling on those two empty wine bottles from Friday night, Oskar wandered in, his eye looking only a little better. “Any word on the face recognition?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I can call down.”

“Don’t rush them.” She used the edge of the desk to pull herself up, then took a few steps forward. Her feet were sore from the weekend, and she wondered miserably if she was going to have to buy a cane. That, really, would be the end.

She went alone to the elevator, and on the second floor young assistants with folders sped past her to their important duties. Room S, on her right, was locked, but through the blinds she saw four people positioned around a hectare of oak. The laptops were packed away.

Her heart sank. Standing around the head of the table, sipping coffee from a china cup, Brigit Deutsch and Franz Teufel were laughing at one of Teddi Wartmüller’s bad jokes, while Berndt Hesse, the one friendly but unexpected face in the room, sat nursing his cup as if no one were there. She knocked, and Berndt looked up and said something to Brigit, who pressed a button on the table to unlock the door.

“Erika!” Wartmüller announced as she came in. His cheeks were unusually red today, belying a long-lost youth that had been crushed by his rigorous climb to the top of Berlin’s intelligence apparatus. Not that his wild ways had disappeared entirely, though-the world of rumor had a special corner for stories of Theodor Wartmüller’s sexual escapades. A devout bachelor since a late-seventies divorce, he’d over the years let slip innuendoes about key parties, exotic clubs, and boys, though no one ever knew if they were true or only to embarrass guests.

“Please,” said Wartmüller, waving his hands around. “Sit down and I’ll have Jan bring some croissants.”

“Just coffee, please,” she said as she shut the door and gradually made it to a seat on Berndt’s side-he gave her a clandestine wink.

Wartmüller pressed another button and ordered a fresh round of coffees, then clapped his hands together. “We’re all here, then.”

Brigit and Franz took seats on either side of Wartmüller like, Erika thought, synchronized dancers. They were his twin acolytes-Wartmüller always kept two young apprentices to play off one another-and between them, in the middle of the table, was a single yellow file. Yellow-a departmental work order.

Jan, an elegantly attired Pole who’d come with Room S, arrived carrying a tray. He collected the empty cups and replaced them with steaming coffees, then left. With a twinkle in her eye, Brigit went to a cabinet at the end of the room. She took out an untouched bottle of Asbach brandy and said, “I’m going to spice mine up. Anyone else?”

A trick, Erika thought. She covered her cup with a hand, wondering if they’d actually gone over security footage just to find out how much she was drinking. Had things really become that petty? “Straight for me, thanks,” she said.

Brigit, unfazed, cracked open the bottle and poured a healthy dose into her own cup.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” Wartmüller said, giving Brigit a mock glare, “we can get to it. Erika has had a busy weekend.”

Talking as if she weren’t in the room was another Wartmüller technique, a very effective one.

“Perhaps she can tell us what she’s been up to?”

She saw no reason to lie, so she didn’t. As she talked, though, another part of her wondered how they’d learned about her activities-from their faces, none of what she said was news. She was confident enough of Oskar’s loyalty not to question it now, but perhaps poor, emotional Hans Kuhn had been cornered.