9
The Wagner Mission

IT WAS WELL PAST 7:00 when the phone finally rang. Newt, sitting in Hermann’s kitchen, bolted to his feet, grabbed the table to steady himself, then hurried into the living room. The phone had stopped ringing. He waited, counting in his head and swaying slightly on his feet. When it rang again, he jumped.

He picked up, and said nothing.

From the other end, there was a hubbub—a busy street. Not a word. Then church bells started ringing the quarter hour. Newt tried furiously to guess where he was calling from—right inside a cathedral, from the sound of it—then he heard the shriek of bus brakes and a garbled something-something-hill, Old Bailey.

Hermann tapped the mouthpiece, then inhaled, like he’d thought better of it. The bells finished tolling. St. Paul’s Cathedral, Newt’s brain announced, triangulation completed.

“Sorry for calling so late, darling,” said Hermann finally, in a tone of excruciating normalness. “Jim at work gave me tickets to the symphony tonight. I wonder if you’d like to go. They’re playing Mahler’s 9th at Henry Wood Hall. I know he isn’t your favorite,” said Hermann quickly, in an intonation completely alien to Newt, “But I think it would be good to get out.”

Newt could hear in his tone that he was not to reply. So he did not.

“I’ll wait at will call,” said Hermann. “At 8:00.”

He rang off.

Newt held the phone to his ear for another moment before hanging it up. He looked over at Laplace, who was curled self-protectively on Hermann’s armchair. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. He left the house in silence.

They should have arranged more word codes and rendezvous points. Then they wouldn’t have had to rely on the truth, and Newt wouldn’t have had to listen to Mahler.

Hermann liked Mahler, of course. They met in the lobby just as intermission ended, and trickled in with the thin crowd for the third movement. They sat in the back of the sparsely populated concert hall, in the dark cave below the balcony. Hermann spoke in a low voice, not taking his eyes off the pit. He had a handful of irises wrapped in paper; Newt had no idea why.

“In April of 1963, an aircraft crashed outside of East Berlin,” he said. “The Abteilung picked it up. The Razvedka wanted it, but the Germans got there first—there’s infighting on that side of the Wall too. They picked it up and brought it to Wagner Airbase for study.

“Our mission—my mission—was to monitor communications surrounding the base, and to spy on their research. I was made to understand that this was a very secret, very important mission. The Division wanted to know what it was that they were studying, and I believe they wanted to find a way to steal it.”

“Right,” said Newt, who knew this. “And it was an American plane?”

“No,” said Hermann. “No.”

Newt, who had lived the last ten years under that impression, frowned at Hermann. “It wasn’t?”

“No, it was not American,” Hermann said, eyes still fixed on the orchestra. He switched the inexplicable irises from his right hand to his left. “It wasn’t a plane at all. It was a craft of unknown origin.”

Newt stared at him. Hermann went on:

“I left London at the end of April. When the Blueberry wrapped up. You remember.”

Newt remembered.

“They sent me up to the Estate for two weeks, for abridged field training. Contact protocols, technical report writing, self-defense, memorization, memorization, memorization. And radio,” he added. “With Caitlin.”

Newt nodded.

“After two weeks, my papers were ready. I was dispatched to East Berlin.”

He watched the orchestra for a moment, not appearing to hear it.

“Rennie was the CO, he ran the operation. Becket was the point-man, and I was the technical help.” Becket collected surveillance on the base, Hermann explained. He had a couple of soldiers on the inside, who provided him with drafts of internal memos, microfilm photos of technical reports, and, crucially, gossip. He was working on recruiting one of the scientists. Every week, he collected this technical data and folded it into a book, which he left in a dead drop for Hermann. At first, it was a defunct postbox, but later, Rennie rented a bus station locker and made two copies of the key.

Besides coordinating hand-offs, dead drops, and debriefs, Rennie monitored radio chatter. His clerks transcribed it daily and treated the paper, then rolled it into a newspaper which was delivered to Hermann’s mailbox. Each night, Hermann read the radio transcripts and parsed any technical data that appeared.

“But I couldn’t,” Hermann said frankly.

“Parse it?”

“No. It made no sense,” said Hermann, and paused a moment. The third movement’s fugue was in a lull.

He saw the chipped Formica-topped table that had served as his desk, and he saw Becket’s papers laid out on it. He’d had to drag the table into his bedroom from the kitchen—the flat had three tiny rooms, and only the bedroom was windowless. He smelled the tang of the chemical with which he treated the papers: acidic but off, like a rotted lemon. The report’s letters and numbers would swim to the surface under his lamp. Power outages had been frequent; sometimes brief, but sometimes lasting all night. Then, he’d worked by flashlight.

Summer had dragged by in that darkened bedroom, without windows to let in the tepid wind. Hermann hunched over the reports, shirt sticking to his back, struggling to understand, failing, every moment expecting pounding on the front door.

“The Germans had extracted some unknown form of technology from this crashed object,” Hermann said. “But their findings were incoherent. If they knew what the device did, they weren’t saying so. My suspicion was that they didn’t know, yet.”

“Yet?” said Newt.

Whatever it was, the Americans wanted it. So did the Russians. Wagner Airbase was fielding numerous information requests from the Razvedka, and declining many visitations. Rennie said that Bowen was shielding the Division’s mission from prying American requests as well. They probably had their own surveillance operation.

“The mission culminated in an operation to extract the device from the base. I wasn’t involved—I was to examine it, once Becket got it out. But he was only able to get one component.”

“So there were two parts?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the other part?”

The fugue was crescendoing. Newt felt like a rabbit pursued down a dark hillside. The drummer was going wild on the timpanis.

Abruptly, it ended. Silence fell on the hall—the tense, inter-movement silence where every audience member prays that no one else will clap. Hermann’s hands were still folding and unfolding around the stems of the flowers, white ghosts in the dark gulf between the rows.

“Newton, why do you think everyone wanted this technology so badly?” he said in an undertone.

“I don’t know,” said Newt, as the music resumed, acutely melancholy.

“The Division, the Abteilung, the Razvedka, the CIA?”

“I would know if you’d just tell me what it was.”

“I don’t know what it was,” Hermann said, not reacting to his incendiary tone. “I never knew. I still don’t.”

“Then why,” said Newt impatiently. “Why did everyone want it so bad, since you obviously want me to ask.”

“Because,” said Hermann, “it didn’t come from the Americans. It didn’t come from the British, it didn’t come from the Soviets. It didn’t come from China or Japan or Australia or South America. It didn’t come from Earth at all. It crashed here from outer space.”

✦

“The Russians are coming,” Rennie said. “The General’s been trying to keep ‘em out, but it isn’t any use. The man’s pushing water uphill with a rake.”

He turned the page of his newspaper rather ostentatiously and, from behind it, gave Hermann a 'so it goes' sort of look. He had a ruggedly lined face and a rakish mustache. People said he looked like Vice Chief Bowen, though Hermann didn’t see it. (The mustache interfered, perhaps.) He had always looked, to Hermann, too real for this secret world—too much a character. He looked like the charming con man he had never really ceased to be. He didn’t look like someone who could write a technical report or speak six languages. Seated next to him on the bench, Hermann tried to picture him getting a drink with his friend Victor. It was a bizarre image.

They sat in a remote corner of an East Berlin park. Hermann hated park rendezvous. He felt exposed and unnatural. And what was more, it was cold.

Briefings with Rennie were always terribly casual. “What do you think of the General, Professor?” Rennie asked. He called Hermann ‘Professor,’ which Hermann understood to be some joke between himself and Victor. “You read his chatter too, after all. I rather like him. Jolly optimistic fellow. I believe he thinks he’s got a handle on the situation, he really thinks he does.” He turned another page. “But the poor man has no idea, really. Works well enough for us, but when the Raz gets here, well.”

Hermann nodded. “Right, sir,” he said uncertainly, and Rennie gave a small laugh; he had given up telling Gottlieb not to call him ‘sir.’

It was late November. For months, the German general in charge of Wagner Airbase had been keeping the Russians at bay. The Raz had been having one of their purging seasons, but now they were sending a delegation at last. They would requisition the device, most likely, and take it back to Moscow, and the General, bless him, would be powerless to stop it.

“It’s our last chance to get our hands on this device before it gets whisked away. But really, I don’t know about this plan of young Becket’s,” said Rennie, scanning the football column. “I met his inside man, the one Becket’s paying to do the deed. The private. He seems awfully green. Trust a child to pick an even smaller child to do the dirty work.”

Herman nodded, fiddling with the handle of his cane. He was watching a distant man in an overcoat, walking his small dog over the rise.

Rennie saw his face and followed his gaze without moving his head. He flicked his eyes back to his paper, apparently seeing no threat.

“Has he told you about it?”

“His plan? Not in any detail,” Hermann said.

“Well, I’ve got my doubts. Told him as much.” He turned another page. “But he won’t get anywhere if I’m breathing down his neck. If it works, it works. And if it fails, it fails. And we’re all fired!” He folded the newspaper suddenly into his lap. “Or worse.”

“Quite,” said Hermann nervously. Rennie leaned back on the bench, slinging his elbow over the back. He stretched his long legs and gazed across the empty field of dead grass.

Hermann’s breath rose in front of him. He watched the man and the dog disappear into a copse of bare trees.

“So, Professor,” said Rennie. “Let’s talk about where you fit into this plan.”

Hermann’s stomach reeled with dread and excitement. “Yes sir.”

“Once Becket gets it out, he’s going to leave it for you—not in the locker, but in dead drop C, that one’s more secluded. That spot should give you enough privacy. Take it out, take a look, make some notes, then put it back. I’ll come collect it that night.”

Hermann considered this with a frown.

“But sir...” he began faintly.

“What’s that?”

Rennie was deaf in one ear from a wartime injury.

“But sir,” he said more clearly, sitting forward. “I’m meant to examine this device... on the spot? That seems quite risky. And it would have to be quite a cursory examination. I mean, I’d hardly learn enough to write a report of any substance.”

“Substance? No, that’s not the idea,” said Rennie, crossing his legs. “That’s for the London boys. No, no. I know. Think of it this way: I don’t expect this to come off. Becket’s too smart for his own good. There isn’t any way he’ll get that thing out. But if he does,” he said, and tapped Hermann’s arm with his knuckles, “You are the insurance. I need a second pair of eyes on this thing. This operation has been six months in the making. We get it tomorrow, we could lose it the next day. I need your notes on this before it gets couriered off to London.”

“Oh,” said Hermann, trying and failing to hide his disappointment.

“Ah,” said Rennie. “You did want a closer look, didn’t you?”

Hermann glanced at him.

More than almost anything else, he wanted to examine that device.

“Well...”

Rennie grinned. That conspiratorial smile was the closest he ever got to mentioning what they never acknowledged. What he was impossibly, reassuringly blasé about.

Alien technology.

“I know,” said Rennie. “But if this works, maybe they’ll send us home, and you can get a real look.”

Hermann doubted it, but nodded. “All right.”

Rennie stood up suddenly, dropped the newspaper onto the bench, then stretched, facing Hermann. “Christ, it’s cold,” he said. “You seen that fellow before?”

A young man in nondescript clothing was making his way along the path, approaching from behind Rennie.

“Just look, tell me if you know his face,” Rennie said, still stretching his arms above his head, facing towards Hermann. Hermann looked. The man was studiously avoiding his eyes. Hermann looked back at Rennie and shook his head.

Rennie dropped his arms.

“Boy’s been following me, I think,” Rennie said in a low voice, but not low enough, Hermann thought—he was nearly on them—then Rennie turned quickly round and the man collided with his shoulder.

“Ah!”

“Pardon me,” said Rennie in easy German. “So sorry, sir.”

The man shook his head and hurried on. Rennie walked quickly away, and Hermann watched him go, certain he had taken the man’s wallet.

✦

It was a warmer evening, 600 miles and ten years away. The June dusk was bright, and they were walking down the blue-shadowed street slowly. They moved north, towards the river. They made a noticeably asymmetrical couple—Newt listing to the side, Hermann leaning heavily on his cane. He had done a lot of walking today, and there was still more ahead. Every few minutes, Newt would put his hand on Hermann’s elbow and look fixedly forward. When the horizon realigned, he would let go again.

“The Razvedka was coming, and Becket wanted to get the device out before they arrived,” Hermann explained in the low monotone voice he had adopted.

“You mean devices?”

“Becket's inside man only managed to get half. One component of the two.”

“He—wow,” said Newt, taking Hermann’s arm again. “He pulled it off? It worked?”

Hermann nodded. “Yes. By half.”

“Impressive,” he said, letting go of Hermann’s arm. Hermann felt surprisingly bereft when he did. They were in public, and it wouldn’t be proper, but he wished Newton would keep hold.

“We can sit down,” Hermann said, again.

“No, let’s keep walking. It’s easier to walk and talk.”

They crossed a busy street. They had almost reached the Thames. Newton was a surprisingly attentive audience. He had taken the revelation of extraterrestrial technology with impressive equanimity—so far.

“He left it for me in dead drop C, as planned.”

“When was this?”

Hermann inhaled. “December 5th,” he said. “Thursday.”

“Oh...” said Newton, touching Hermann’s arm again, but not for balance. “Oh, no.”

“He got it out,” Hermann said grimly, “And the Bowen scandal broke 48 hours later.”

“Christ,” said Newt.

Hermann nodded.

They crossed the last street that ran parallel to the Thames, and turned to continue walking along it. Newt ran a hand along the railing; the river ran silently on the other side.

“Becket extracted it on the 5th, and left it in dead drop C that night. I came the next morning, Friday the 6th. But it was gone. The drop was empty.”

The device had gone missing. He’d emergency called Becket for a crash meeting. They had met on a canal bridge that evening. Becket had no idea who could have taken it. He swore he had left it there. Hermann didn’t know whether to believe him.

He signaled Rennie, requesting another crash meeting. Had Becket stolen it? Someone else? Had he lied about securing it in the first place?

It was the morning of December 7th. (Newt winced.) Hermann left his flat and took his usual route to the university, which took him past Rennie’s office, so he could check the window for any signal.

Today, the potted plant was in the window. That was a code red.

Hermann had gotten no other signal or warning. Feeling panicked, he hurried onward. Were they in danger? Were they blown? What was the emergency? At a newsstand on a corner, he found out:

High-Ranking British Intelligence Official Missing, Wanted for Treason.

Below, a photo of Robert Bowen. An ID photo, suit and tie, one drooping eyelid, no smile.

“I panicked,” Hermann said.

They were sitting on a bench in a small park next to the river. It was late.

“I would have too, I’m sure,” Newt said fairly.

“No, I... I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t trained for this. I needed help, I needed... orders. So I broke protocol. I went back to the field office.”

“Rennie’s office was disguised as a law firm. I smelled smoke as soon as I walked in. All the drawers and file cabinets were open, and gutted. The file clerk—the last one left, apparently—was burning papers in the grate. He looked at me, didn’t stop, just told me to ‘Lock that fucking door’ behind me.

“Rennie was upstairs in his office. He jumped when I came in, then saw who I was, and asked what the hell I was doing there.

“His office was in total chaos too. He was packing a bag full of files.

“I asked him why his clerk was burning everything. He said, ‘If Robert’s corrupted, then our whole operation is too. He’ll have told them all about it. We’re blown, and so are most of our European outfits, I should think. You’ve got to get out, Professor.’”

They were sitting on a bench facing away from the river. Hermann was folding and unfolding his symphony ticket between his fingers, the same creases over and over. His eyes were fixed on the lamp post across the street.

“I was paralyzed. And I didn’t believe it—didn’t want to believe it,” he corrected himself. “I said, maybe the papers were wrong. Maybe it was a false flag, or, or a—a mistake—and Rennie just laughed. He believed it. I hardly even knew Bowen, and I couldn’t accept that he was a traitor. But Bowen was his friend, and he accepted it, and acted right away.”

Hermann started tearing the ticket carefully in half along the crease lines. Newt stayed silent, chewing his lip in sympathetic anxiety. He was struck by the level of detail with which Hermann recalled this scene, and braced himself for worse.

“I asked—if he had heard from London, directly. A dispatch. I said, ‘Can I see it?’ He said no. I said I didn’t believe him. I wanted proof, concrete proof. Maybe this wasn’t true at all! I was on the verge of—I don’t know, genuine hysterics—then he stopped packing, and asked if I smelled smoke.

“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Your clerk is down there burning your bloody files.’

“He went to the window, and looked down at the street.

“Then he asked whether I had been followed.”

Hermann balled up the bits of paper in his fist and threw them onto the sidewalk, then leaned forward and covered his eyes with his hands.

"I had not taken the proper precautions when coming to the field office. I shouldn't have come at all. I led them right to Rennie's front door.

“Someone started pounding on the door, downstairs. Yelling. They said they were the police.

“Rennie pointed at me and told me to get out, now, down the fire escape.

“I could really smell smoke now. I think that the clerk’s fire had gotten out of control—I could hear him downstairs, shouting at the police. Then the door burst open and we heard two gunshots.

“Rennie rounded on me and yelled ‘Go!’ I went. Out the back door to the fire escape. The adrenaline was starting to do its job. And I didn’t want Rennie’s protection. I had led the police right to him—and I didn’t even trust him to begin with. None of it was right.”

Hermann opened his eyes and sat up. He tipped his head back.

“I got out onto the fire escape, then I hesitated. There was a window. I... waited. I shouldn’t have. I should have just run. The police came into Rennie’s office, guns in hand. Rennie was yelling at them. It was the Stasi, not the Abteilung. They were looking for a man with a cane. They were looking for me. Rennie, he kept saying this word over and over, but I couldn’t make it out—a code word?—Whatever it was, it was to no avail. The Stasi agent shot him in the chest. He went down. Then I ran.

“Hobbled, rather. I heard one of them yell to search the building for der Mann mit dem Stock, but I was already halfway down the fire escape. I came out in the back alley. I ran out to some street, and I got onto a tram. I rode to the railway station without stopping at my flat—I thought they would be searching it already.”

As the tram had sped away, he had turned around and looked out the rear window. A column of smoke was rising from the field office. A firetruck whooshed by, then an ambulance.

“How did you get out?”

“Out?”

Newt nodded. “Of East Germany?”

“Oh—oh,” said Hermann, looking away again. “I got lucky, really. I only had my German passport with me, so I couldn’t go by air. I took the train north, to Rostock. I took the water route to Copenhagen, and went to that airport. That was Sunday. When I called you.”

“Stop, stop,” said Newt, holding up his hands. “The ‘water route’? What the hell is that?”

“A boat, Newton,” said Hermann, his tone rising to match Newt’s. “They travel across water to transport humans and cargo.”

“But how did you—”

“Rennie had told me about the route previously. It was a backdoor solution, a shipping company we sometimes did business with—or he did—not strictly our outfit, more of a contractor—it was risky, but—”

“I’ll say!” Newt interrupted.

“—but I had no other choice—”

“If he was compromised, and you were compromised, how could you use his route, Hermann, that is so incredibly dangerous—”

“This? This is what you find outrageous?” Hermann hissed.

“That was crazy! That was craziness!”

“Will you please settle down?”

“What did you do, ride in the cargo hold with the crates of bootleg liquor?”

“I made it to Denmark and flew back to London,” Hermann finished, talking over him. “You picked me up. That was it.”

“That was it?”

“Yes.”

It clearly was not. Newt cursed himself mentally. He had slipped up—after a long night of delicately letting Hermann lead him where he needed to go, Newt had let his anxiety out of the box. Now this too-blunt question had severed their dialogue into a dead end. Hermann was tired, he thought to himself. He needed help him relax.

“Hermann, it’s late. Let’s go home.”

“Home?” Hermann was looking at the lamp post again. “We can’t go home.”

“To your place?”

“No. No, it’s not safe. It might not be safe. We can’t be sure.” He looked back at Newt. “We need to go to a hotel.”

“But—” said Newt. “We could stay with someone...” Hermann was shaking his head.

They felt a shared homesick disappointment, the loss of a promised rest.

“Did you feed the cat?” Hermann asked.

Newt nodded.

Hermann hailed a cab.

While Hermann showered, Newt went to the shop in the lobby of their seedy hotel. It was relatively clean, but far enough from the beaten path to allow two men with no luggage to rent one room. Hermann said they would find a better place the next day. In the lobby shop, Newt bought a pack of cigarettes, took one out, asked the clerk for a light, went outside to smoke it, then cursed, threw the whole pack out, and went back into the shop. He bought toothbrushes instead, and a sewing kit.

When he returned to their room, Hermann was sitting on the bed in his undershirt, his unbuttoned shirt over it. He was calmly dismantling the room’s telephone.

“Dude,” said Newt. He threw his purchases onto the bed and went to wash his mouth out.

When he emerged, Hermann was sitting on the edge of the bed, hands folded, telephone in pieces on the bedside table. The room was small, with lurid green wallpaper above wainscoting that was painted to look like hardwood. There was one dim lamp. Most of their light was borrowed from the streetlamps outside.

“You have more questions,” Hermann said, looking up at him.

“About a million,” he said, approaching, “but most of them, you don’t have answers to.”

Newt sank onto the floor and leaned back against the side of the bed. He began unlacing his shoes, and glanced at the clock on the table.

“It’s only 11.”

"Mm," said Hermann vaguely.

Newt tilted his head and rested it against Hermann’s knee. Hermann sighed and ran a hand through Newt’s disorderly hair.

“You ought to shower, too.”

Newt snorted. “No need to be rude," he said.

Hermann exhaled what passed for a laugh. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Newt patted his knee. “Why were you so suspicious of Rennie?”

Hermann sighed. “There were... a few reasons. Everyone knew about his ties to the, I suppose, ‘criminal elements.’ Someone has to deal with them; but I suspected his ties were mutually beneficial in a manner inconsistent with the Division charter.”

Newt laughed at this exceptionally circumspect casting of aspersions.

“Of more concern to me, still, was this: why was he packing up files he should have been burning? What was the code word he was trying to use with the Stasi? And who stole the device from the dead drop? The only people who had access were Becket and Rennie. It had to have been one of them.”

“Or you,” Newt added.

“Or me,” said Hermann ruefully.

“So, what then: did you think Rennie was just selling secrets—just a little corrupt? Or did you think he was a double agent, like Bowen?”

Hermann’s silence lasted longer than Newt thought it should have.

“There was something else. It was in... late July, I believe. I arrived to a meeting with Rennie in the park. But instead of Charles Rennie, a stranger sat down next to me.”

Newt tipped his head back on the mattress and looked up at Hermann.

“I’d never seen him before. He was—nondescript. German. Sport coat. Gave me an oblique sort of speech. But he was offering me something. He was vague, but he made it... understood.”

“Offering what?”

Hermann looked at Newt’s upside-down green eyes.

“He seemed to think I’d be interested in the arenas of research and... freedom of domestic arrangements that a life further on the other side of the Iron Curtain might afford me.”

Newt’s frown spread into wide-eyed shock. He sat up, putting his arm on the bed and facing Hermann.

“He was trying to recruit you? As a—as a—”

“Yes.”

“And he knew who you were?”

“Yes.”

“And he knew you were—”

“Yes.”

“But how? Rennie?”

“I think so.”

Newt turned away in affront. “Holy shit,” he said. “But you turned him down.”

Hermann was silent.

Newt turned back around. “Hermann?” he said shrilly.

Hermann closed his eyes, then opened them again. “I agreed to consider it, and to meet him again.”

He didn’t look away from Newton’s wide, shocked eyes, but his expression was pained.

“Hermann...”

“Please—don’t. I said I would consider it. We were meant to meet two weeks later. The next weekend, I went home to London, for debriefing. August.”

“Oh,” said Newt quietly.

Hermann frowned slightly, less with disapproval and more like he was trying not to cry.

“When that agent approached me... I was alone. The mission was getting nowhere; I saw no future for myself in the Division, and I had no future at home. You and I had... cut ties. As far as I could see, no one would care if I... disappeared.” He exhaled. “I didn’t want to defect, but it was... a new possibility.”

Newt’s hand was resting on the bedspread. Hermann put his hand over it.

“When I returned to East Berlin from London, after our reconciliation, I felt... better, but I was still confused. I still didn’t know if I would go to that meeting. Then, the morning of, I got a letter from you. The first one in eight months.”

His voice shook, but didn’t break. He squeezed Newt’s hand. Newt felt like his stomach was being strangled. He turned his hand upward so that Hermann could thread his fingers through.

“So I stayed home,” Hermann said simply.

Newt nodded slowly, and rested his chin on the bed.

“And that’s why you think Rennie was working for the other side? You think he tipped them off that you were... volatile?”

Hermann had let go of his hand and was wiping his eyes with dignity. “I take issue with your choice of adjective, but yes.”

“Did you ever tell anyone about this?”

“Only one person.”

Hermann swallowed. Newt folded his arms on the edge of the bed and rested his chin on them.

“When I got home to London,” said Hermann, “it was several days before I was able to speak with anyone... But eventually, I got ahold of Victor.

“He wanted to know where Rennie was. ‘Charles.’ He’d had no word from him. Did I know where he was? And how was I able to get out, if Charles was not? He was... quite frantic. I had never seen him in that state—or any state, for that matter.

“I was so relieved to finally have someone to tell that I told him everything. I told him about the recruiter, the device, Becket, the police, and... and Rennie’s death.”

Hermann trailed off, remembering the terrible look that had come into Victor’s eyes then, and never left them.

“I told him everything,” he said again, “except for agreeing to a second meeting with the recruiter. But I did tell him my suspicions about Rennie. He didn’t like that at all—he didn’t like hearing that I doubted his... that I doubted Rennie. It was insensitive, I suppose, after Bowen had just stabbed him in the back, to suggest that he should check for two knives.”

Hermann glanced nervously at the door.

“He was very angry. And I don’t think he ever forgave me.”

“For what? For Rennie’s death, or for casting aspersions?”

Hermann shrugged. “Both. Either. For surviving at all. It was my fault he died like that. And I got out alive, through dumb luck. He and Rennie were... they were very close. ”

Newt made a face.

Seeing no reason to delay beginning repairs on this decade-old psychological damage, he said, “It wasn’t actually your fault, you know.”

Hermann frowned. “What?”

“You obviously feel guilty about Rennie's death. You shouldn’t. You were out of your depth. And anyway, Rennie would have probably bit it during the purge, regardless of what you did.”

Hermann squinted at him, his feelings so far removed from Newton’s blunt diagnosis that he could muster no actual offense. Guilty? That didn’t even begin to cover it. But how could he explain the inescapable knowledge that he had led the executioners to a man's door, or the price of an un-re-payable debt to someone he had not even trusted—and still did not? And the interest on that debt, extracted from him for ten years with Victor’s every cold look, brimming with the blame he knew he deserved?

The knowledge that he had almost been one of them? A traitor, a defector, a promise-breaker?

“So that was the end of the Wagner operation,” said Hermann. “I was debriefed. Becket showed up later, told Victor some story, and the case was closed. I suspect the Americans swooped into the space we left. And I think they had more success, because they must have stolen the second component.”

“The transducer?” said Newt.

Hermann nodded.

“And now, some descendant of the original is in your ear.”

“So where’s the transmitter?”

“In my safe deposit box.”

“Ha, ha. I mean the original.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know whether it was Becket or Rennie who originally stole it, but it resurfaced in Germany two years ago.”

“Resurfaced?”

Hermann rubbed his eyes as Newt climbed onto the bed.

“Yes. I read the Greenwich file today...” But suddenly he felt so tired.

“Yeah? So that’s what Greenwich was working on?”

Hermann nodded, eyes closed.

“Okay, so, if I’ve got this timeline straight,” said Newton, sitting up with the air of someone starting a speech. “In 1963...”

Hermann sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“...A UFO crashes in Germany,” said Newton, driving on despite what Hermann considered obvious cease-and-desist signals. “Fine. Totally. I accept it.”

“Do you?” said Hermann with unexpected force, dropping his hand and looking up at Newt. “You’ve certainly taken it with an unusual level of credulity.”

“What—should I not believe you? Did you want me to be more shocked? Ooh, aah, aliens! I saw a UFO as a kid, you know. I’ve told you that. In Cambridge. My roommate was all, ‘It’s just a plane, Geiszler,’ but hello—”

“Newton—stop, please, just stop,” said Hermann. “I’m exhausted. I’ve got to sleep.”

“Oh,” said Newt. “Sorry.”

He fell silent with abrupt shame. Hermann left to brush his teeth. Newt watched him go. After ten years, did he still not know how to handle his partner’s worst emotions? Or, worse—had this confession revealed some unknown, insensitive facet of Hermann’s character? Someone who lashed out in shame?

If Newt Geiszler had possessed accessing skills to match his memory banks, he would have recognized the person who had lashed out as the cornered, frightened mathematician he had met eleven years before, the one who had accepted his Blueberry designs and rejected him. After all, that was the Hermann who had gone to East Berlin, and so he was bound to appear now to give his testimony. Newt had forgotten the way Hermann had once made him feel—excessive and overwrought and ashamed—because he’d forgiven him for it so long ago.

“We can talk more in the morning,” Hermann said when he returned. “I’ll set the alarm early.”

“Are you going to the office tomorrow?” Newt asked, looking up at him as he took off his shirt.

“Yes,” said Hermann. “Could you put the clothing out to be laundered?”

Newt nodded, accepting the clothes surrendered to him. Hermann climbed into bed and was asleep in minutes. Newt, still sitting at the end of the bed, stared for a few minutes at Hermann’s sleeping face. His foot pressed lightly into Newt’s leg. He wished he could hear what Hermann was thinking, what he was really thinking. Not because he suspected that Hermann harbored other secrets—Newt’s mind didn't work that way. He just didn't understand Hermann's distress, and was in the habit of blaming all their fractious moments on Hermann’s emotional reticence.

After a few minutes, Newt stood up carefully, gathered the pieces of the telephone, and switched off the light. He brought the pieces into the bathroom, threaded the cord under the door, and shut it. He laid everything out on the bathmat. As he put the phone back together, he examined each piece. He wasn’t really expecting to find a bug or wire. And he didn't.

When it was reassembled, he considered it for a moment. Then with the tension of a question, he got to his feet and shut off the bathroom light. He let the darkness settle around him and sharpen his other senses. A faint orange strip glowed under the door. He heard the furnace below, the pipes above. Distantly, the traffic. And below it all, the quiet ring that had persisted all day in his left ear.

He had tried several ways of amplifying that tone, while alone in Hermann’s flat. He had put a glass over his ear to create a resonating chamber; he had pressed his ear against the radio and turned the dial. But he had found no difference, no amplification. Not until he’d answered Hermann’s phone call.

Newt lifted the receiver to his left ear and listened to the empty dial tone in the dark. Nothing. He pressed 1. The dial tone stopped. The ringing in his ear was still faint. He tried 2, 3, 4, all the way to 8. He stopped, and pressed 8 again. The 8 tone made a resonance. The ringing in his ear seemed to widen, like it was a tuning fork and the 8 tone was the right note at last. Newt pressed it again and again, tapping out the rhythm of Good Vibrations and humming it under his breath, listening to the standing wave ring through his skull like a church bell tolling.