Page 18 of The Nameless Ones
‘Not exactly, unless he’s received a transplant. On the one hand, he did try to warn you.’
‘Yes.’
Parker heard the doubt in Louis’s voice, and couldn’t blame him for it. Louis was right to be cautious about Ross, not least because of Louis’s own past. It wasn’t clear how much Ross knew about it, but he knew enough. Killers and FBI agents made uneasy bedfellows, and Ross probably had the word ‘expediency’ embroidered and framed above his bed.
‘But on the other,’ said Parker, ‘it’s always an exchange with Ross. If he offers assistance, it’s because he sees an advantage that can be gained – and not just a favor he can call in down the line, but a direct benefit.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning it may suit him to have you go after whoever did this.’
‘Well that’s okay,’ said Louis, ‘because it suits me too.’
The King Cole Bar at the St. Regis was quiet, with only a handful of people scattered amid the wood and brass. Ross was seated at the far end, drinking a dirty martini. Louis joined him and ordered the same. They did not exchange pleasantries, but Ross raised his glass, said ‘To De Jaager,’ and Louis did likewise.
‘I met him once,’ said Ross.
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘It was a long time ago, in Berlin, as we were witnessing the end of the Cold War – or the First Cold War, as I think we’re now obliged to call it.’
Louis had no idea how old Ross was and had never bothered finding out. He’d just assumed that the FBI man had come out of the womb already looking like a late-middle-aged man with hemorrhoids, at which point his parents had disowned him. But if Ross had already been making Europe appear grimmer by his presence at the start of the 1990s, he was probably at least in his late fifties by now.
‘De Jaager fed us some information about a group of hard-core Stasi who didn’t like the way the wind was blowing,’ Ross continued, ‘not that they were unique in that regard, but these particular cold warriors were of a mind to cause trouble. Ordinarily we might just have kept them under surveillance, or let someone else deal with them – maybe their own people, because this was in the days just after the wall had fallen, and we weren’t in a position to go chasing down every lead amid the chaos. And some of us were optimists. We thought the end of communism meant a new beginning.’
‘Were you an optimist?’ said Louis. ‘Because I have to say, that would surprise me.’
‘I might have contracted optimism once, by association,’ said Ross. ‘But I got over it.’
‘I guessed,’ said Louis.
‘I was just a young agent back then, attached to the Berlin embassy as a new legat. I wasn’t privy to all that went down, because it was an Agency operation and I only learned about most of it later. I became involved in the discussions because we were investigating the death of a young American tourist named Annie Houseman in Bautzen, and the Stasi knew more about it than they were prepared to admit, even through the back channels which we were using to communicate with them.
‘Anyway, the story we were hearing was that one of these rogue Stasi guys might have killed Houseman. He got her drunk in a bar, tried to rape her, she fought back, and it all spun out of control. He ended up crushing her head with his car to hide her injuries, although she was already dead by then. It was put down to a hit-and-run, an unfortunate accident amid the anarchy and celebrations, but De Jaager knew better. He got the story from a functionary looking to relocate to Stockholm via The Hague, who was seeking an honest broker for the documents he had to share. The smarter ones knew that it would be a seller’s market at the start, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long, so it paid to stay ahead of the competition.
‘There was no proof of the killing, of course, but De Jaager’s information was never less than cast-iron: this Stasi guy – his name was Buchner – had a lot of blood on his hands, and so did the others in his circle. They’d been around for a long time, and were the go-to crew for advice on torture and execution across the Eastern Bloc, which meant they’d helped to put a lot of our assets in the ground over the years. Letting them fade away to work against us from the shadows started to make less and less sense, particularly when we began to learn more about them.’
Old King Cole stared down at them from his Maxfield Parrish mural above the bar. Everyone in his circle – his courtiers and jesters – seemed to be having a good time, but Louis had never liked the look of him. In his black robe and white collar, he resembled a hanging judge. You could play the buffoon, and make the king laugh, but it wouldn’t stop him from killing you when you ceased to amuse.
‘The operation was farmed out,’ said Ross. ‘The Israelis were probably involved, because they had their own reasons for wanting two of these guys, but I can’t say for sure. They turned it around in three weeks, which was fast: four men dead, and no wreckage. A week after the last of them was dispatched, De Jaager joined us for dinner. His payment was five US visas, no questions asked.
‘I suppose I had scruples in those days, or more of them than I do now. The way it was done bothered me. I wanted Buchner to be arrested and face trial. I still believed in closure, or some semblance of it. De Jaager must have picked up on my unhappiness, because he took me aside as we were leaving. He could have uttered some platitudes about justice being served, but he didn’t. He just said “Sometimes, this is how it must be done. It’s wrong, and it stains the soul, but it has to be, because the other option is so much worse.”’
‘And how do you feel about that now?’ said Louis.
‘Let’s just say I’ve grown more comfortable with the concept as the years have passed.’
‘I can’t say it ever bothered me,’ said Louis.
‘I can believe it. I’ve seen your file.’
‘Don’t believe everything you read.’
‘If even half of what’s in that file is true, you earned the “Reaper” epithet. There are plagues that have killed fewer people.’
‘Did you bring me here to arrest me?’
Ross actually laughed aloud. For Louis, it was akin to watching a dead man dance.