and he keeps looking up here." Drew quickly rose from the couch and started for Witkowski's bedroom door.
"Turn off the lamp before you go in there, you damn fool," Witkowski barked.
"You can't allow any light to bleed through that window." Karin reached over and switched off the single floor lamp above her.
"Good girl," the intelligence officer went on.
"The eye-red binoculars are on the sill and stay low, away from the glass. It's the sedan across the street at the corner."
"Right." Latham disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Witkowski and De Vries alone in the relative darkness, only the spill of the streetlights below providing what illumination there was.
"You're really worried, aren't you?" asked Karin.
"I've been around long enough to be worried," replied the colonel, still standing.
"So have you."
"It could be a jealous lover, or a husband too intoxicated to go home."
"It could also be the tooth fairy trying to find the right pillow."
"I wasn't being facetious, and I don't think it's fair for you to be."
"I'm sorry. I mean that. To repeat what my old acquaintance-friend would be misleading, I'm not in his leagueSorenson said in Washington, "Things are moving too fast and getting far too complicated." He's right. We think we're prepared, but we're not. The Nazi movement is coming out of the dirt like white slugs in a garbage heap, many real, many not, merely specks of light-colored refuse. Who is and who isn't? And how do we find out without accusing everybody, forcing the innocent to prove they're not guilty?"
"Which would be too late once the accusations are made."
"You couldn't be more accurate, young lady. I lived through it.
We lost dozens of deep- and middle-level agents. Our own people blew their covers, sucking up to politicians and so-called investigative journalists, none of whom knew the truth."
"It must have been very difficult for you-"
"The standard resignations included such Ohrases as "I don't need this, Captain," or Major, or whatever I was at the time. And "Who the hell are you to ruin my life?" and most terribly, "You clean my slate, you son of a bitch, or I go ballistic and blow your whole operation out of the water." I must have signed fifty or sixty 'confidential memorandums' stating that the individuals involved were extraordinary intelligence operatives, an awful lot of them far more flattering than they deserved."
"Not after what had been done to them, certainly."
"Maybe not, but a lot of those clowns are in the private sector now, making twenty times what I make due to the mystique of their past employment. Several of the lesser ones, who couldn't decipher a cereal box code, are heading up the security of big corporations."
"That sounds 'nuts," an American expression, I believe."
"Of course it is. We're all nuts. It's not what we do, it's what we did-on paper, that is, no matter how ridiculous. Blackmail is the order of the day, from top to bottom, my dear."
"Why haven't you resigned yourself, Colonel?"
"Why?" Witkowski sat in the nearest chair, his eyes on the bedroom door.
"Let me put it this way, as archaic as it may sound. Because I'm very good at what I do, which doesn't say much for my character-being serpentine and suspicious are not exactly admirable traits-but if they refined and applied to the work I do, they can be assets. The American entertainer Will Rogers once said, "I never met a man I didn't like." I say, I never met a man in my business I didn't suspect. Perhaps it's the European in me, my heritage. I'm Polish by descent; actually it was my first language."
"And Poland, which has given more to the arts and sciences than most other countries, has been betrayed more than most countries," said De Vries, nodding.
suppose .-..a+'s part oil it. I guess you could say it's ingrained."
"Freddie trusted you."
"I wish I could return the compliment. I never trusted your husband. He was a burning fuse I couldn't control, couldn't stamp out. His death at the hands of the Stasi was inevitable."
"He was right," said Karin, her voice rising.
"The Stasi and their ilk are now the core of the Nazis."
"His methods were wrong, his rage misplaced. Both betrayed his cover and he was killed for it. He wouldn't listen to us, to me."
"I know, I know. He wouldn't listen to me either.. .. By then, however, it didn't really matter."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Freddie became violent, not only to me but to anyone who disagreed with him. He was enormously strong trained by your commando