Chapter 5: One on a Side

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more.
--Robert Frost, "Mending Wall"

Thursday, December 7, 1989
9:15 A.M.
West Berlin
Hotel Alexander

Dawn finally seeped through the blinds of the hotel room, finding Lee sprawled on his back with Amanda's head nestled on his shoulder. He slowly came to consciousness, looking down to find her big brown eyes gazing back at him. "Morning, big fella." She craned her head forward to give him a kiss.

"Mm, morning," he replied, pulling her closer. After the shortest of briefings yesterday, they had retired to the hotel with a stack of files to review. Amanda had managed to keep her eyes open until about seven, and Lee's concentration had waned at about the same time. Their early bedtime went a long way towards reducing the inevitable jet lag, but he still felt a little groggy.

When they ended the kiss, Amanda pulled back and raised herself up on one elbow. "Rough night?" she asked, toying with his hair.

"No, not particularly." He vaguely recalled being troubled by a dream, but he couldn't remember now what it was about.

"Hm." She looked down at his chest.

He could tell something was bothering her, and he raised a finger to her chin, forcing her to look at him. "What is it? Did you sleep okay?"

"I slept fine," she reassured him. Then her eyes dropped again. "Well, except for when you woke me up. Must have been some dream you were having, Stetson."

Uh-oh. Lee knew he occasionally said things in his sleep that he would rather Amanda not hear. He knew she was fully aware of his checkered past, and she didn't hold it against him, but situations like these were still awkward. So he played with the frill of lace at the collar of her nightgown as he asked, "What woke you?"

She sighed, her fingers still fidgeting with his hair. "Look, I know it was just a dream, and you know I got over being jealous of any of your past girlfriends years ago. It shouldn't bother me, but . . ." She sighed again. "You said Yannah's name, and it sounded like you were, well . . ."

Ordinarily, he found it cute how she still refused to speak openly about sex, even after bearing two children and being happily married to him for nearly three years. But this was different. He echoed her sigh. 'This is why they don't want partners to get romantically involved,' he thought. 'No matter how hard we try, there's always the danger of it getting in the way of our job.'

"Look," she went on, as if she heard his thoughts. "I know it isn't very professional of me, and I'm not going to let it get in the way of the case. I promise. But," and she lifted a hand as he started to speak, "you promised me you'd tell me what happened when you were here before. I think it's pretty obvious you and Yannah were close, and that had something to do with what happened. We don't have to be anywhere till after noon, so I think now is as good a time as any."

He slowly nodded. "All right." He tugged at her arm so she was again half lying on top of him. "Not that there's much to tell, I suppose. I already told you the short version -- I failed at getting this Russian defector out. He and another man were killed and I was captured because Yannah Alberts turned us in."

"And you're sure it was her?"

"Yeah, it was pretty hard to mistake the woman marching me to an East German prison at gunpoint." He felt her arm tighten in a reassuring squeeze.

"After you had been . . . involved?"

He sighed. "Yeah."

There was silence for a moment. Then she said, "Tell me about her."

He looked down at the top of her head. "Really?" Amanda never asked about any of his four black books' worth of women, just a question or two about Dorothy. He always figured she didn't want to know, or felt it irrelevant because of the man he had become. But then there were only three women who really affected him before Amanda. She had been invaluable to him when Eva re-entered his life and when Dorothy seemingly returned from the dead, so it was only fair she know the whole story about Yannah as well.

Amanda raised her head to meet his gaze. "Really." The look in her eyes said more, that she trusted him, and she really wanted to know. Not just from the professional point of view, since she was going to be working with his former flame in some capacity, but because they were still best friends, after all.

He gave her a gentle smile. "Have I told you lately how much I love you?"

An answering smile graced her lips. "Don't change the subject, Scarecrow," she said, but her tone was gentle.

He leaned forward and gave her a peck on the lips. Then he grew serious. "I'd never met anyone like her." Amanda propped her chin on her fist to look into his eyes, but he was gazing into the distance of his memories. "She was so much like me. She told me her parents died when she was young and she was raised by her grandmother. They lived in the eastern half of Berlin, and when she wasn't even a teenager, the Wall went up. Her grandmother hated it, and so she grew up hating it too. I had the suspicion she joined the East German Stasi just so she could be a double agent."

Amanda's eyes widened. "How long was she a double agent?"

"Nearly her entire career. She joined the Stasi a few years before I came to the Agency, and she managed to establish contact with the West about the same time I started my training. I'd been working for the Agency for about seven years when I got the assignment. I knew it might be a trap, but from the moment I saw her, I trusted her. She just -- she reminded me of myself so strongly. I saw that same love of excitement, the same attitude that it didn't matter what happened: she was good enough to evade danger, she was one of the best. I felt she was like . . . like a kindred spirit."

"Not quite like the way we met," she teased.

"No, you had to be persuaded you're one of the best." He noticed a soft blush spreading on her cheeks. It had taken him a while to realize she had talent rather than just blind luck on her side. And it had taken him a few more years to convince her of that as well, that she fully earned the praise she now regularly received

But there was more to his story. "So I let my guard down. Not just, you know . . ." His wife's reticence on certain matters made him a little hesitant to speak of them as well. "I trusted her, and I shouldn't have. I was wondering when I would see her again after the assignment was over, even as we were starting our escape. I didn't check out the situation ahead of time because I trusted her to do it, and that was what cost me the mission."

"And what broke your heart," she said quietly.

He looked down at her. "I never really thought of it that way." He absently stroked her arm. Was that what happened? Was it a broken heart that led to the Scarecrow having a woman in every port and never really trusting any of them?

"Yeah, I know. Not a big tough guy like you," she said with an understanding smile.

The corner of his mouth turned up. "Something like that, I suppose. I mean, I'd just gotten over Eva choosing Angelo over me, and here was someone who *deliberately* sold me out without batting an eye. I guess I subconsciously vowed never to get close to a woman again." He met her steadfast gaze. "But somehow you got around that."

"Took me long enough." She caressed his cheek.

"Hey, I think it's been worth the wait, Mrs. Stetson." He leaned over to press his lips to hers.

"Mm-hm." When they drew apart, she gave him a serious look. "Did you ever find out why she did what she did?"

"I always assumed she had to keep her cover, that she found out we were going to get caught and she had to save her own skin. I just wished it hadn't meant Travnik and Sikorski lost their lives."

"And that you hadn't been traded for another agent," she said with a knowing look.

"Yeah, that too." He sighed and raised his eyes to the ceiling. "We'd just caught a pretty important East German agent in the States who had a lot of information about an upcoming revolt in Hungary. They had to let him go before they could get anything useful, and we got word a few months later that the revolt was quashed before it began. A couple dozen people were killed, and it might not have happened if I hadn't been captured and traded."

"Now, you don't know that." She raised herself on her elbow again.

He shrugged one shoulder. "It doesn't really matter."

She opened her mouth, then hesitated. He raised his eyebrows encouragingly, and she went on, "Lee, do you . . . do you think it's going to be a problem, working with Yannah? I mean, we have to trust her to some extent, and I think you have good reason not to, despite what Brian said yesterday."

He sighed. "Sweetheart, I've been asking myself that same question ever since Billy gave us the assignment." Lee noticed her little smile at his endearment. It took him a while to warm up to the idea of using a pet name for Amanda, but once he did, he found he liked it. He went on, absentmindedly stroking her upper arm, "I really don't know. I can't believe she'd be so stupid as to try the same trick twice. She must know I trust her about as far as I can throw her. And yet she says I'm the only one she can trust." He shook his head. "I just don't get it."

"Well, just remember I'm here for you. " She snuggled back against his side. "For whatever you might need."

"Oh really?" he asked in a playful tone, one hand creeping under the collar of her nightgown to caress her back. At her raised eyebrow, he gave her his most innocent expression. "But you just said . . ."

"You, Scarecrow, are going to get yourself in trouble." She belied her words by trailing a hand up and down his bare chest.

He Lee felt a grin creeping across his face. "You did say no one expects us anywhere until after noon, didn't you?"

Her smile matched his. "I did," she purred, reaching up to press her lips to his.

When the kiss ended, he murmured, "Then I'm all yours," before wrapping his arms around her and pulling her on top of him.


Wednesday, December 16, 1981
9:30 P.M.
East Berlin
7 Schoenholzer Strasse

Lee shivered and rubbed his hands together for what seemed like the twentieth time. If Travnik didn't show up soon, they were going to have to try the escape tomorrow night, making it the third night in a row after his failure to get into East Berlin on Monday. He'd been waiting since ten o'clock, and the bitter December wind combined with the increasingly deserted streets was making it unwise to wait much longer.

He couldn't even leave his doorway to pace around and keep warm; the sentries in the guard tower a block away would wonder what a man was doing loitering in this neighborhood on such a cold night. Last night when he'd passed by this corner, he'd been warned off by a pre-arranged signal in the window across the street. Now it looked like tonight was going to be a bust as well, and he wasn't sure how many more chances they'd have. The longer Travnik's "visit" to East Berlin went, the more suspicious his KGB superiors were likely to be, and the less likely it was he'd be able to get away.

A movement caught his eye, and he looked to his left to see a man in a shapeless black coat hurrying down the empty street. Lee shrank back against the cold brick of the doorway as the man approached, pulling something from his pocket.

A few steps away, the man paused. "Scarecrow?" he asked softly in a Russian accent.

"Here," Lee whispered from the shadows.

Pyotr Travnik came forward and used the key from his pocket to open the door next to Lee. "My apologies, *komrad,*" he said in a low tone. "I had some difficulty getting away unseen."

"No problem," Lee muttered, slipping inside just ahead of him. 'It shouldn't take more than half an hour before I feel my fingers again,' he thought, pausing to let the warmth of the building flow into him.

Once inside the apartment building, they headed down the narrow stairs, where Lee produced his own key to unlock the basement door. The two men paused, one on either side of the door. "Ready?" Lee asked, reaching behind him for his gun.

The Russian nodded. "I have been waiting for this moment a long time." He drew a revolver as well and jerked his head, indicating Lee should go first.

Lee took a deep breath. This was the part of the plan he was most nervous about, not having checked the interior of the building ahead of time. It was immediately adjacent to the Wall, and though the windows on that side had long since been bricked over to prevent a literal leap to freedom, it was still a prime location for tunnel digging. Any unnecessary visits on his part would have jeopardized not only the inhabitants of the building, but anyone who was aware of this particular escape route. More than one escape to West Berlin had been foiled by the East German police taking notice of large numbers of visitors to a particular building, especially after dark. He had been . . . otherwise occupied while the building's inhabitants were returning home from work tonight, when he would have been able to safely check the building. Yannah had assured him, however, that this route was unknown to the authorities, and it would get them safely under the Wall. Tightening his grip on his weapon, he opened the door and stepped inside.

By the light from the bare bulb in the stairwell behind them, he saw a relatively small storage area, filled with boxes. Lee looked around before finding a light switch next to the door and flicking it on. The light revealed an empty bookshelf to his right, the only object resting against that wall. After pausing to orient himself, he jerked his head towards the bookshelf. "That's the direction of West Berlin."

"The direction of freedom." Travnik smiled as he gestured towards the bookshelf. "Please. I am afraid I injured my back recently and can not bear even the weight of a simple bookcase."

"All right." Lee stowed his gun and took hold of the bookcase, finding it wasn't as heavy as it looked. He easily pushed it along the wall, revealing a two-foot hole in the wall, leading into darkness. As he cocked his head towards the tunnel, he listened for a moment, but heard nothing. Brushing the dust off his hands, he smiled encouragingly at Travnik. "After you." He stepped back and motioned towards the tunnel. Sikorski would be waiting at the other end to help Travnik with his literal as well as figurative passage to the West. The end was in sight.

There was a noise from upstairs, and Lee and Pyotr looked at each other. The door to the outside was creaking open, and he could hear the footsteps of at least two people. Lee didn't know how normal it was for the basement light to be on in this building, but he didn't want to take the chance any curious residents would discover them there. "Come on, let's go!" he hissed, drawing his gun and looking over his left shoulder at the door. He'd need to pull the bookcase back over the opening as soon as they were inside and hope the overhead light wouldn't arouse any suspicions.

He didn't hear Travnik moving towards the tunnel, and he impatiently turned his head to see why. His heart sank when he saw an East German military officer taking his final step out of the tunnel. His revolver was pointed at the Russian, who had his hands in the air. "Your weapon, please," he said coldly, holding out a hand to Lee.

While Lee was debating the possibility of shooting the East German before Travnik was shot, the sound of footsteps on the stairs caught his attention. The officer in front of them allowed a small smile to creep onto his face, and as Lee turned to see two more East Germans entering the room, guns drawn, he knew why.

Lee closed his eyes, jaw angrily clenching in defeat. How had the East Germans known? Damn it, now Pyotr was as good as dead when they sent him back. He had a bad feeling about Sikorski as well, since the first man had come out of the tunnel where Dmitri was supposed to be waiting. And once the soldiers discovered they had the American spy, Scarecrow, his prospects weren't too good, either. He tossed his gun to the floor, moving next to Travnik as his captor commanded, facing the dark aperture of the tunnel.

Then it became apparent he didn't have long to wonder what was in his future. "On your knees." The harsh words were accompanied by a hand grasping Lee's shoulder and shoving him down to the cold concrete. Next to him, Travnik was being forced down in the same fashion by the other man who had come down the stairs. Lee felt the barrel of a silencer pressing against his skull and swallowed down panic. Things had gone bad so quickly, he hadn't even had time to think about what went wrong, much less come up with any sort of escape plan. Now it was looking increasingly unlikely he ever would.

The man who had come out of the tunnel stood before them, hands clasped behind his back. The insignia on his uniform identified him as a lieutenant, and the look on his face was cold and satisfied. "I wish I could say, gentlemen, that at least your three names will be preserved for posterity among those who have attempted to infiltrate the GDR by breaching the Wall. But I'm sure you understand that can not happen in this case."

Lee's hopes were completely dashed. If Sikorski had already been killed, he and Travnik weren't likely to be hauled away for interrogation. Dmitri had made it clear he would be the only one waiting for them, so Lee couldn't expect the cavalry to come charging through the tunnel.

The lieutenant looked at them a second longer, then said, "*Dos vidanya, komrad*," nodding to the man behind Travnik. An instant later, there was a muffled report as the silenced gun went off, and Travnik slumped forward to the floor, blood pouring from the back of his head. Lee's head whipped up to meet the lieutenant's gaze, wondering if pleading for his life would do him any good.

The officer met his gaze with no expression. Then he raised his eyes to the man behind Lee. Lee tensed his muscles and wondered if he would hear the noise of the gun before the bullet ended his life.

"Halt!" came a woman's voice. Lee turned his head to see yet another person coming down the stairs. As she reached the bottom step and entered the room, he was amazed and relieved to see Yannah. He briefly closed his eyes. Never in his life had he been so glad to see someone.

As she came forward, the soldier behind him struck his gun against the side of Lee's head, forcing him to turn away. Lee raised a hand to his face, feeling the fresh cut on his cheek.

"What is going on?" Yannah asked in clipped tones, coming to stand behind Lee and to his left. "What is the meaning of this?" He saw the shadow of her arm on the wall as she pointed to Travnik's body.

"We were only following orders, Fraulein Alberts," the lieutenant replied. "With your information, we apprehended these two men and one other attempting infiltration through this tunnel. Our standing orders are to eliminate anyone trying to cross the Wall."

Lee felt his stomach twist in even worse knots than when he was about to be executed. Had he understood the lieutenant's German correctly? Did he say they were acting on Yannah's orders?

"Then you apparently did not understand the rest of your instructions," she continued coldly. "They were to be brought to headquarters for interrogation. This one in particular," and she gave Lee an energetic kick in the side with her boot, sending him sprawling onto Travnik, "is an American. A spy. He is of much more use to us alive than dead. Even the Russians would have been of some value."

Oh, God. Lee closed his eyes again and tuned out the pain in his side as he tried to comprehend the implications of what he just heard. What had he done? All his warnings to himself about not trusting a double agent, and here she had led him right into enemy hands. His jaw clenched. He had even been entertaining the possibility he was falling for her. What the hell had he been thinking?

He raised himself off Travnik's body and looked up to see her coolly staring back at him. The bare light bulb was behind her head, making it difficult to see her features. But the gun she had drawn and was pointing at him was perfectly visible. "The Scarecrow, I believe?" she asked sardonically.

Lee made his face expressionless, not willing to let her see his inner turmoil. "So it's a habit of yours not to know the names of the men you invite to your bed?"

He had been expecting to feel the lieutenant's boot in his ribs for that comment, but that didn't make it hurt any less. Groaning, he straightened up and met her eyes again. Her gaze flickered over him before she retorted, "Apparently American men think with the same parts of their bodies German men do." She let that comment sink in, then snapped her fingers. "Up!"

The two enlisted men came forward and hauled Lee to his feet. "Let's go," she said in that same cold tone, motioning with her pistol. "We have accommodations waiting for you."

Lee lifted his chin, ignoring the trickle of blood from his cheek making its way under his collar. He might have made some of the stupidest moves of his life in the past few days, but he was still a damned good agent. Whatever Alberts and the East Germans had in mind for him, he had to be ready for it. Any self-recrimination or guilt was going to have to wait until he was back home. He shut off the corner of his mind that was wondering if he would, in fact, make it home, as he was handcuffed and marched up the stairs into the cold, dark night.