14Record Match
August, 1971
Berlin, G.D.R.
IT HAD BEEN A MONTH since his eyes had opened. Some parts of him had woken quickly—his mind, his eyes were still sharp—but some parts took longer. Standing up straight was still hard work, and walking quickly put him out of breath. Sometimes his voice got lost in his throat, like a bad dream; chewing was hard, his jaw didn’t work right. He knew he ought to eat, to regain his strength, but it felt as though he’d forgotten how. He sweat too much, and got cold, and shivered in the sunlight. Sometimes, his attention wandered, and when it came back, he felt he could have forgotten his own name.
He was planning to contact his old office very soon. It would be all new staff, of course, and probably no one would know who he was. When he invoked Robert Bowen, he hoped, they would grade his message high-priority; but he wasn't counting on that. He understood life was rather cutthroat in the Raz, and he wondered whether that had actually suited Robert, after a life playing his jovially quiet con.
But he was patient. He knew how to tug at the threads. A reactivated agent with a secret to sell, who knew Bowen personally, that would pique someone’s interest, sooner or later.
And if Bowen's name didn't pique their interest, he had something else that would. He just had to retrieve it.
So he was getting his ducks in a row. He had money and a passport, recovered from where he’d cached them a decade before. He had a hotel room, close to a library, where he read up on the news. He felt like he was still in peaceful, secret stasis. He absorbed the events of the last few years with the bemused interest of a time traveler. The gears of the world had spun on without his hand for a little while—but not for much longer.
He slept long, hot nights, and could feel his strength coming back. One morning, he woke up ravenously hungry. After he ate, he took the bus to the outskirts of the city.
The only people on the pre-noon bus leaving town were tiny old women and one sweaty farmer. Outside the streaked windows, the streets and buildings turned abruptly to farmland. He disembarked at the top of a dusty hill. The sun was bright and hot; the heat wave that had woken him had not yet broken. He walked slowly down the slope, leaning on his walking stick. He passed that pub where he’d met his handler a few times, heading towards the church spire.
It was an old stone church, long disused. Pigeons and doves cooed and fluttered in the eaves of the rotting roof as he walked below. Behind it there was a cemetery, barely more than a handful of eroded gravestones. He stopped at the corner and shaded his eyes with his hand. He checked his watch. It wasn’t time yet. He wished he had a better visual memory, but at least he had forethought.
So he crossed the cemetery, stepped over the stone wall, and strolled across a cow pasture. There was a barn at the top of the slope. He saw no one about. It didn’t take long for him to find a shovel. He took it. Victor would have laughed at this, he thought. Well, I'll bring it back, he thought, replying to the man who couldn't hear him.
Since he'd woken up, his thoughts had turned often to Victor.
It was just noon when he got back to the church. The shadow of the spire fell straight back from the center of the building, perpendicular across the churchyard. Stepping over the stones in his path, his walking stick in one hand, his shovel in the other, he followed the shadow of the spire.
When he had buried this cache box, it had been winter. The ground had been hard, and he’d been in a hurry, and in the weak, oblique December sunlight, the spire shadow had reached farther. Standing in the middle of the cemetery now, eight years later, supporting himself with a walking stick and a stolen shovel, he squinted at the stone wall. The cross landed in the middle of the lush grass.
He had no idea what stone marked his spot.
“Couldn’t have slept another five months, could you?” he muttered to himself.
A warm breeze rustled across the grass and through his hair. His hairline had receded while he’d slept. But it had also grown longer, and been trimmed. They'd shaved him, too. No more mustache. A stranger shaving him while he slept—strange to think of. He lifted his arm to smooth his hair back down, and as he did so, his shadow did too.
Of course. Just like a sundial. Rennie stepped into the shadow of the cross, and the top of his shadow extended the line, past the last gravestone. He raised his stolen shovel over his head, and the tip of the shovel reached a stone at the base of the wall. There.
He could only dig a few strokes at a time before he needed to rest. Sweat beaded on the back of his neck, and evaporated quickly in the sun. Just when he was starting to get tired, and thinking he would have to take another break, his shovel hit something—something harder than wood but softer than rock. Rennie dropped to his knees and dug with his fingertips. He pried the box out of the dirt, dusted it off, set it in the grass, and opened it.
Wrapped in crumpled yellowing newspaper from 1963 was a tiny little crescent-shaped metal object. With the grin of a card shark, he held it up to the light. It still glinted—no rust. Eight years, Rennie thought. Eight years of searching, and no one had found the place where he’d hidden it. Sweat beading on his forehead and neck made him shiver; he wiped it away.
He clicked the clasp. The device sprang open in his palm. All the bits and wires were still inside, and looking none the worse for wear. He knew nothing of how they functioned, and it made little difference to him. The men who wanted it, they would know. And they would pay handsomely. He felt a moment of gleaming satisfaction thinking that, if he really had died, this secret would have been buried with him. You’d need a lot longer than eight years to outwit Charles Rennie. And you’d need a lot longer to put him out of the game. It was a delicate game, this underhanded international warfare, and there was nothing Rennie had ever loved better than lighting a stick of dynamite and throwing it onto the board.
June 7th, 1973
Thursday
Newt and Hermann fought again in the morning.
Hermann wanted to tell Victor what he had found: The evidence of Orpheus’s work within Century, the erased files and transmissions. Real evidence of a mole, just like Victor had predicted. Newt said no, because then Hermann would have to explain why he had been looking, and give up Newt’s location. But Hermann insisted that coming clean now was the safest route.
“They’re framing me, Hermann,” said Newt, watching Hermann get dressed for work while he sat on the bed in unfamiliar clothes. “The Americans stole the transducer out from under the Brits ten years ago, and they want it back.”
“The transatlantic intelligence alliance is much more valuable than one single piece of technology,” Hermann said, buttoning his shirt. “Even alien technology. Our government would never jeopardize it over something like this.”
“Maybe not,” said Newt. “Maybe the whole fifth floor wouldn’t do this. But what about one man with a personal stake in this technology?”
“What do you mean?” said Hermann, knotting his tie. It was new, bought yesterday, because he didn't want anyone wondering why he was wearing the same tie twice in a row.
“Someone who, for example, was on the original mission. Someone who could have stolen the tech in 1963. Someone like Becket. He knew about Greenwich,” Newt said insistently. “He was Birch’s boss. He knows everything he would need to know in order to orchestrate this, and he was at the conference with me. It has to be him.”
And he ordered a leak check done on you, Hermann neglected to add. Because Newton would ask, Why? and Hermann couldn't think of more than one good answer.
He finished tying his tie and turned back to face Newt. “I don’t see why he would do it. Becket is a successful spy, on his way to promotion inside the Division. There's no reason he would risk everything on something as messy and risky as this operation. Your theory makes no sense, Newton.”
"Ugh!" Newt made a frustrated noise and dropped his fist onto the bedspread. “Listen! If it’s not Becket, it’s someone else who has it out for me! Hermann, I don't understand why you're not—" Abruptly, he changed tracks. Don't ask questions you don't want answers to. "You just—you can't tell Victor. If you tell him what you know, they’re going to come for me!”
“But if you didn’t do anything with malicious intent—” Hermann began, folding his arms.
“They’re not going to see it that way! Someone upstairs is trying to hang me, Hermann! Don’t give them the rope to do it!”
Hermann hesitated, unable to communicate his panic—he wanted this to stop, he wanted the hiding to be over, he wanted Newton to let him end it. And he wanted Newton to want it to end. He wanted Newton to want to come back in from the cold. Hermann was hopelessly ensnared in this, like an animal caught in a net, and there was a knot at the center of it all that he could not untie or cut through.
“If I speak to Victor, if I tell him what we know, I think he would help—”
“Help? Help? He’s champing at the bit to throw a mole in prison, and he already thinks it’s me! Have you met Victor? Have you forgotten the last ten years? He hates your guts! Okay? If you bring him all this evidence, he’s going to throw you in jail for treason before I have time to get to a border crossing!”
Hermann waved his hand furiously, turning away from Newt again. In the mirror, he saw his partner cover his face and slump backwards on the bed. “You don’t understand how any of this works!”
Hermann glanced at his own reflection, making brief eye contact. A border crossing. Where would he slip out? Ireland, maybe? A ship going west? A ship going east?
Newt had taken off his glasses and was rubbing his eyes furiously. “Becket could even be working for Victor,” Newt muttered. “Maybe they’re in it together...”
“Don’t be stupid,” Hermann snapped into the mirror. “It wasn’t either of them, because they were both in that meeting.”
“What?”
“During the conference, when you were snooping around the device. Their entry and exit times were recorded by the American Army guards, and the liaison was in that meeting too.” Hermann turned around, folding his arms, and then unfolded them, so as not to appear confrontational. "Please, Newton. Let me bring the evidence to Victor."
Newt made a wordless noise of frustration and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, muttering something Hermann couldn’t quite hear.
"What was that?" he said sharply.
"I said," said Newt furiously, opening his eyes, "'Fucking typical.' You, getting upset because a situation is out of your control and running to the nearest authority figure, without even thinking about whether that authority figure can actually handle the situation in the first place!"
Hermann straightened up, stiffening as if bracing against a physical attack—where normally he would have been livid at Newton's words, his anger skittered away, overwhelmed by his fear and uncertainty. He didn't even feel safe fighting with Newton openly, for fear that in his anger, he would betray what he was thinking—something which would destroy everything, if it was true, and which could never be taken back, if it wasn't. So he set his jaw and said nothing.
Newt clenched his fists on the bedspread. Hermann wasn't rising to the fight, and Newt had to stop before his blind slashing hit an artery. He had to rein it in, he had to stop trying to make Hermann mad. Newt took a deep breath, and looked at Hermann imploringly, instead of angrily:
"Please, Hermann. Promise you won't tell Victor. Promise me."
Hermann shook his head mutely.
"Hermann!"
"What do you want from me, Newton?" he demanded furiously. "What would you have me do?"
"I want you to prove that I'm innocent! Prove that I'm being framed!"
As Hermann left, he paused with his jacket on his arm and his hand on the door.
“Newton,” he said. “Don’t leave.”
Newt, sitting on the bed behind him, said nothing.
“Please.”
“I’m not your cat, Hermann,” Newt said coldly. “And I’m not your prisoner. You can’t lock me up in your safe deposit box and tell me to sit on my hands.”
Hermann gave him one last look, and then left. The door closed. A moment later, he heard the bolt lock. Standing there in the dark hallway, he seriously considered trying to jam the lock so that it could not be opened from inside. But how would he even do that?
And why did he want to do that? Was he really afraid that Newton would run?
No, he thought. No. He wouldn’t.
He found that his heart was thumping in his chest.
Hermann walked slowly to the elevator. His hip and his back ached from getting twisted last night. He thought of the night before. Of Newton’s dangerous testing, the way he had wanted to try it a second time. Hermann had declined out of fear—not just the fear of what would happen if Newton tried again, but also the fear of that desire.
In the elevator, Hermann leaned on the railing. He noticed that his jacket fit oddly. He put his hand in the pocket, and felt an assortment of strange objects that were not his. He had taken Newton’s by mistake.
He couldn’t go back. The jacket would keep him warm in any case.
But when he stepped out of the hotel, into the busy street, heavy sunlight and humid air bore down on him. The rain yesterday had washed the last of spring away.
Summer had come.
Weeks told him Vice Chief Victor was expecting his report on Orpheus after lunch. Hermann got to work with Wesley, robotically running the last batch of records through the IBM. In his mind he was busy organizing his story, how he would explain it all to Victor.
We didn’t find Orpheus, but we know he’s here at Century, somewhere. Someone is covering their trail and rearranging the evidence... He was at the conference... Dr. Geiszler heard him sneak in... He's after the device, but he doesn't have it yet...
Hermann was still organizing the story as he rode the elevator upstairs at 12:55. He’d been too nervous to eat lunch. He held all of the files in his arms, all of them duds. Not one match in the records.
The lift, empty but for him, reached the fifth floor. The grate closed behind him, leaving him in the ever-underwhelming heart of Division upper management. It was just a hallway, a white floor and a row of office doors with frosted glass. All were closed. It was dim and silent.
And there’s something else you should know, sir...
No one had caught it two years earlier when the message came through. But Hermann had. If he was the one to bring that message to Victor, maybe, after all these years, Victor would forgive him.
Sir, you should know... Charles Rennie is alive.
Hermann walked down the corridor towards the office that had once belonged to Vice Chief Robert Bowen. His blood was pumping like he was standing on top of a skyscraper. He turned the corner. Preston the bulldog was waiting for him outside Victor's door.
Neither of them greeted the other. “They’re ready for you,” Preston said. He rapped on the glass.
“‘They’?” said Hermann.
Preston, mouth twitching, took the armful of files from Hermann as a voice behind the door said, “Come in.”
Vice Chief Victor was standing at the window, looking out at the streets below. Sunlight blanketed the city, but the Vice Chief’s office faced north, so Century’s shadow fell beneath him. His hands were in his pockets. For one second, his casual stance filled Hermann with relief—he was going to tell him everything, the nightmare was about to end—
And then the two men sitting opposite his desk turned to look at Hermann, and he saw the others standing against the wall, smoking with their elbows on a cabinet. He was surrounded.
“Dr. Gottlieb,” said Victor, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. “Thank you for coming upstairs to give your report on our man.”
Hermann had no time to panic.
“Please,” Victor was saying, gesturing to the remaining empty chair.
“Thank you.”
Hermann sat.
The man next to him, a wispy older gentleman with a white tuft of hair, offered him a cigarette.
“He doesn’t smoke,” said Victor.
“Thank you,” Hermann said again.
“Hermann, this is Mr. Hardwicke, and this is—”
“Oscar,” said the other man, who was young, with chapped lips.
“Good to meet you both,” Hermann said, shaking Hardwicke’s hand and nodding to Oscar, who nodded back.
Hermann looked uneasily at the other men standing against the wall, but they offered no introductions. One was tall and bald and of indeterminate age. The other was medium-height, late middle age, unremarkable. Everyone had him at a disadvantage, except, somehow, Victor. Victor followed his uneasy glance at the silent men, and looked at Hermann for a second before continuing.
“I was hoping for your Orpheus report, Dr. Gottlieb, but I can see your hands are empty,” he said.
“Yes, sir, we just finished processing the files you gave us. I wish I had better news.”
“Or perhaps this is good news,” said Victor. “Perhaps this was a false alarm.”
It wasn’t! Hermann wanted to scream. But who the hell were these people? What were they doing here? What about their "confidential internal investigation"?
“Perhaps,” Hermann managed. Suddenly he had an idea: “Signals analysis proved unsuccessful, but I would be willing to spend some time deciphering the messages—if they’re still graded high priority, that is.”
Victor shook his head. “There isn’t enough time.”
“Sir, the Blueberry has all the matching protocols and precedent codes up to ‘65. If you don’t want the Orpheus messages disseminated to the coding bay, or even GCHQ, I understand. But I could try, myself—it would only take me a few days—”
“No, no. Not now. We haven't the time. We meet with the Americans on Saturday. And we’re reasonably certain that the ‘Orpheus’ mole is the same person responsible for the—” He glanced at the spectators— “thefts this past weekend.”
Hermann tried to betray no feelings about this suggestion. “Because of the signal sent out?” he said.
“That’s right.” Victor snubbed out his cigarette. “We’re focusing our efforts on catching the thief. We need this cleared up by Saturday. Preferably sooner.”
“Two birds, as they say,” Hardwicke offered.
“Of course,” said Hermann nervously. “Then am I... off this case?” Why are you telling me this? he thought, throwing another glance at the silent spectators.
“Hardwicke and Oscar here are from Surveillance,” Victor said, standing up straighter and putting his hands into his pockets. Hermann wished he would sit down.
“Oh.”
“I’m in charge of the Gophers,” Hardwicke clarified with an apologetic smile. The 'Gophers' in the Surveillance section were responsible for placing and monitoring listening devices. “Many thanks to your lab for making our jobs easier and easier over the years. Hard to believe we’ve never met—I’d have thanked you sooner.”
“I’m afraid I can’t take credit for most of that,” Hermann said, and then immediately regretted the allusion to his partner.
“The radio delay jammer, in particular,” Hardwicke added. “Inspired.”
“The what?” said Oscar.
“The short-range signal delay jammer,” said Hardwicke, turning to his subordinate. “Delays the radio signals within a certain radius, makes them arrive a few minutes late. Oscar’s a bit green,” Hardwicke added to Hermann. “Marvelous little thing. Just a couple minutes can really make a difference.”
Victor cleared his throat, silencing Hardwicke. “We have another set of names for you to run,” he said to Hermann. “A shorter list.”
“Sir?”
“Suspects,” said Victor, with another glance at their spectators. “You haven’t heard from Dr. Geiszler yet, I take it?”
Hermann swallowed, his mouth having gone dry, and shook his head.
“I’m afraid he’s on this list,” said Victor. “As well as everyone else who was at the conference. Anyone who was at the conference last weekend is now a suspect.”
“Ah.”
“But,” said Victor.
Hardwicke’s voice took Hermann by surprise. “But I’m afraid Oscar here has some additional testimony for us.”
Hermann turned. The boy’s ears were bright red.
“I’m in street surveillance,” Oscar said, eyes fixed on Victor’s ashtray. “Sometimes I’m assigned to watch... ex-employees.” Oscar glanced at Victor. “This is confidential policy, sir,” he added, to Hermann, as if resentful that he had to own up to it. “Well as it happened, I was out and about yesterday, off duty, and I saw an ex-employee I recognized. She was speaking with a… missing employee.” Oscar twisted his hands together. “Caitlin Lightcap, Research, terminated 1963. Newton Geiszler was meeting with her in a back alley.”
Hermann’s blood ran cold. And we saw you there too. You’ve been lying to us. These men are here to arrest you.
“And what did you do, Oscar?” said Hardwicke encouragingly.
“R—reported, sir,” managed Oscar. “Ran to the phone booth. Even though I was off duty. Geiszler, he’s graded high-priority. By the time I got back, she was alone again. Then she went into a bar and played a show with her rock band.”
“I—” Hermann was in total confusion—he had lost any concept of strategy—“The two of them are friends. They have been for many years. They play in that band together regularly.”
He turned to Victor.
“If he’s still in the country, that’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
“Unless he’s working with Lightcap,” said Victor, and he actually looked pained.
“But she isn’t under suspicion too, is—?”
“Not your concern.”
Hermann turned. The nondescript man had spoken.
He didn't elaborate.
Hermann turned back to Victor.
Victor stared at him in a way that said, Don’t.
“It is of paramount importance that we catch him—the thief—before the Americans arrive,” said Victor. “We haven’t much time left.”
He put his hand down on the stack of files on his desk. The name on top was Becket, Raleigh.
“Is Becket a suspect—sir?”
Victor nodded.
“Everyone who was at the conference,” he repeated. “We need you to run them all. Hermann,” he said, and Hermann's stomach turned over. “I’m sorry. I’ve taken a preliminary glance, and I can tell you... There’s an Orpheus message from Washington D.C., fall of 1971. Of the people on this list, Dr. Geiszler is the only one who was on that trip. I was on it with him. As far as our records are concerned, I don’t know that anyone else could have sent that message.”
Victor was looking at him, his expression terribly sad.
This wasn’t a trap, Hermann realized. It was a enlistment.
“I’m sorry,” Victor said. “I didn’t want to see things turn out this way.”
This wasn't a trap for Hermann—if they wanted him, they could have arrested him on any charge they invented. But they wanted him on their side. They wanted to use him to get to Newt.
They would do that if they were certain. Certain that he was the mole.
“The best thing you can do for Dr. Geiszler now is to tell us all you know.”
“But I don’t know anything,” Hermann said, willing himself to look at no one but Victor. “I’m sorry.”
Wesley was already in the computer bay when Hermann entered. “Weeks said we had more names to run,” he said. “I wanted to help.”
Wesley looked at Hermann’s face more closely than he ever had before. Hermann wondered what he saw there. He found he didn’t want to turn away or tell Wesley to leave. The switch in his feelings towards the man had been complete.
“Thank you,” he said, voice hoarse.
Becket’s file was first, and a disappointment. Most of the Orpheus messages were from London, and Becket had been in Vienna on many of those dates. But there was one hopeful sign—he had been on the Langley trip with Newton. Why hadn’t Victor mentioned that? Had he forgotten? Or overlooked it? Hermann marked Becket down as indeterminate.
After a string of mismatches, they reached 'Geiszler, Newton'.
Wesley looked at Hermann.
“No point delaying, is there?” said Wesley bravely.
Hermann shook his head.
“I can do it,” Wesley offered.
“It’s all right,” Hermann said. "I'll do it." He entered Newton's personnel ID number.
The IBM hummed smoothly. The dot matrix began to print.
Wesley hurried down the computer bay, and Hermann stayed standing stock-still.
It wasn’t a match, of course. They were all wrong. It wasn’t Newton.
“But it’s a match!”
Wesley looked back at Hermann in horror.
“But it can’t be!” said Wesley.
Hermann unfroze. He limped over, and took the papers from Wesley’s hands.
“There must be a mistake,” Wesley said as Hermann scanned the records. Travel records. Each matching entry was highlighted in gray.
June, 1973: Newton was at the Estate the weekend of the Orpheus message from East Anglia.
May, 1973: Newton was in London, Orpheus was in London.
April, 1973: Newton was in London, Orpheus was in London.
April, 1973: Newton was at a workshop in Yorkshire. So was Orpheus.
London, February, 1973. Oxford, December, 1972. London, October, 1972. Glasgow, August, 1972. London, June, 1972. London, May, 1972. Oxford, February, 1972. January, 1972. December, 1971.
October, 1971: He was in Langley the same weekend that Orpheus signaled from Virginia.
September, 1971: He was at home, in London, when the first Orpheus message was sent out.
Every Orpheus entry was a match.
“No...” Hermann muttered. It was impossible.
“It must be a mistake,” Wesley said again.
“Look,” said Hermann, finding something. The relief was thrilling. “Look at this.” The IBM had printed Newt’s full travel records for all time. “These records say Newton was at the Estate the weekend of the Bowen affair. In East Anglia. But he wasn’t. He was in London.” Or so he told me. “His record is inaccurate.”
“Or it’s been altered,” Wesley said.
Hermann nodded quickly. Mostly to himself.
“Wesley, I’ve got to make a phone call.”
In a phone booth five blocks from the office, Hermann called the hotel. He was sweating in Newton’s ill-fitting jacket. It was hotter than a greenhouse in the little glass box.
The hotel put him through to his room.
The phone rang and rang. There was no reply.
Frantically, Hermann hung up and redialed. He dialed the extension of their second room.
No answer.
He slammed the phone down and cursed. “Dammit. God dammit!”
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Where was he? Had he fled?
But it was impossible. Even if—even if. Even if, Newton was in no state to travel.
No, Hermann realized with sudden hope. Newton was far too unwell to go anywhere. And he didn’t even have his wallet. Hermann had it. He couldn’t go anywhere even if he wanted to.
Hermann was out of coins. On a last ditch hope, he made a collect call to Newton’s flat. There was no reply there either.
He returned to Century drenched in sweat. He took the Orpheus file from the IBM bay and went back to the lab. He took his keys from his desk, walked out the back of the lab, through two locked doors, and into a dark, dusty room. He turned on the light. It had been a while since he’d visited the Blueberry.
They had originally built the computer to detect OTP matches. Later on, they had added other code-and-cipher-matching protocols. Orpheus’s cipher was not an OTP. There was a small chance the cipher, whatever it was, had been used before in a previous Razvedka transmission. If the Blueberry had that transmission in its databanks, it would tell Hermann. It wouldn’t decipher it for him, but it would be a place to start.
To hell with Victor and Weeks telling him no. His design of clearing Newton's name was fading rapidly to a fantasy. Hermann needed to know—not for his superiors, or for Newton, or his career—for himself. He needed to know for certain.
If he could identify the encryption, he would be able to determine beyond a doubt whether Newton was really Orpheus.
He shut the door behind him and began to enter the data.