Love in the Time of Spies � 10 (end)
�We will be arriving at Buenos Aires International airport in approximately two and a half hours,� the intercom on the old Boeing 707 blared almost unintelligibly in Spanish and English. Jacks� heart jumped and he pressed the overhead button for the flight attendant. There were no three seats together available, so Rachel and Micaela were seated a few rows ahead of him. Rachel was speaking to her daughter, and didn�t seem to have paid attention to the announcement.
�I thought this flight was going to Miami,� Jacks told the flight attendant who was holding onto the overhead baggage rack as she leaned down to hear him.
�We�re stopping in Buenos Aires first, se�or,� she shouted into his ear, �to pick up passengers.� And she scuttled down the aisle to other passengers who probably had the same question. Of course, Jacks thought, L.A.P. didn�t have enough passengers from Paraguay directly to Miami, so they took a long detour in the opposite direction to pick up passengers in Argentina, where they sold tickets at hefty discounts. He�d forgotten about that.
He knelt alongside Rachel and told her that they would be landing in Buenos Aires, but would be in transit, so no problem. Her eyes opened wide as this sunk in, then she just shook her head and sighed, so he went back to his seat.
The transit area at Ezeiza, Buenos Aires�s international airport, was chaotic. Hundreds of British passengers were milling around looking nervously at their watches, yelling at their kids to sit still, don�t get lost, conferring with each other in whispers. Rachel, Micaela and Jacks sat facing the window looking out to the runways so their faces couldn�t be seen by passers-by. Refuelling would take an hour. An elderly English woman passed in front of them, stopped to look out the window then turned to Jacks, apparently mistaking him for a compatriot and said, �I wonder what�s delaying it. Have you heard anything?�
�About what?�
�Do you mean you haven�t heard?�
�I guess not.�
�The Argies have invaded the Falkland Islands. Can you imagine? We�re tourists. They said we can leave, but the British Airways airplane should have been here an hour ago..� She put her hand over her mouth. �Oh! You�re not Argentineans, are you?�
�No,� Jacks said to her immense relief.
An immaculately dressed man about her own age who had been listening from the row behind them came forward and approached her. In accented English he said, �Madam, I am an Argentinean and I assure you that we have nothing against you and you have nothing to worry about. When this terrible nonsense is over I do hope you will visit us once again. You will be most welcome.� He bowed slightly and walked away. The woman, astonished, scurried back to her group with the news.
A few minutes later a man crossed Jack�s view and sat next to him. Jacks didn�t look at him until he spoke sotto-voce, in English, American accent.
�Hi, Marvin, or should I say Lt. Jacks, retired.� After Jacks looked at his profile it took a moment for recognition. He faced forward again and in the same tone, said, �Master Sergeant Jack Quinn I presume � without the stripes. What a coincidence.�
�I don�t believe in coincidences, Jacks; didn�t I ever tell you that?�
�Yes, and I�m beginning to agree. So why are we meeting again in this unlikely place?� He was keeping up the tough guy chatter, but his palms were sweating.
�I�m looking for a guy with your name who fits your description to a T, accompanied by a woman and a child who look like the two subjects on your right.� Micaela was next to Jacks, asleep with her head in Rachel�s lap, who couldn�t hear their conversation.
�Doesn�t sound like a coincidence then,� Jacks said.
�Nope.�
�Let me guess. CIA?�
�Good guess. Station chief, Rio.�
�This is Buenos Aires.�
�Also me. When I got the request to advise all Brazilian entry points to pick up your little family and you on sight, I decided to come on down and look myself, since I can identify you. Our Argentine colleagues are still checking the roads, but I happen to know that you�re a frequent flyer.�
�So you�ve finally made it to the officer class,� Jacks said.
Quinn turned his head and looked at Jacks, �You�re not makin� a very good impression, Marvin. And I think you�ll want to, under the circumstances. Goin� to Miami?�
�Yes, obviously, I hope.�
�And then.�
�She�s defecting, Jack.�
�To you?� Quinn growled. "Who the fuck are you?"
�No, to you.�
He laughed. �Good one.�
�No, I mean it, I�m really glad to see you.�
�I should turn you, them that is, over to our friends here, and get them later when its our turn.�
�S.I.D.E.?� You mean you�ll get what�s left. Give us a break, Jack.�
�How�d you get out of Asunci�n? They�re looking for you too.�
�I promise we�ll go straight to the CIA in Miami. In fact, you can give us the address.�
�Seems your girlfriend�s important, Marvin, runs the East German covert operation in Latin America.�
�Not her husband?
�Her! the hubby�s a hit man. You seem to be attracted to female spies. I remember something similar happening in Germany way back then.�
�It�s the same one.�
Quinn looked over at Rachel. �No shit? See what I mean? No coincidences.�
�Give us a break, Jack.�
�You got no problem,� he said. �Just a stupid American bystander.�
�It�s more complicated than that.�
�Okay, let�s have it.�
�We�re travelling with false documents.�
Quinn nodded. �So that�s how you got out of Paraguay.�
Jacks reached into his carry-on and pulled out the envelope the Paraguayan forger had given him. �That�s right, and here are forged passports for two East German couriers, with their address in Madrid. And in a minute I�ll give you the name and address of the forger in Asunci�n.� Rachel was tapping on her armrest nervously. Quinn glanced at the passports, put them in his pocket, and said, �Let�s change seats.� They switched seats and Quinn said to Rachel, in German, �Are you defecting to the United States of America?� She didn�t bother to look at Jacks for confirmation, just said, �Jawohl.�
�Trust me, Jack,� Jacks said, �we�ll check in at the CIA on arrival.�
�I trust you, Marvin, so much so that I�m gonna leave you alone here for a few minutes while I go downstairs to buy a ticket on this flight. Here�s my card. If anyone bothers you � this place is crawling with S.I.D.E. looking for the British spies they're imagining � tell them you�re with me.� He stood up and started to walk away, then stopped and sat again on Jack�s side away from Rachel. �Are you sticking with her, I mean for good?�
�I guess so,� an answer that surprised even Jacks by its lack of enthusiasm.
During the long flight to Miami Marvin Jacks had another revelation. He had been in love with Anneliese Cornelius a long tme ago, who wasn�t real then, and was even less real now as Frau Marie Clement. He didn�t know her very well and wasn't sure if he wanted to know Rachel Baumgartner, super spy, all that well either. Oh he�d stick with her all right, through her CIA interrogation hell, which would be a hell of a lot more comfortable than a S.I.D.E. one. A defector is treated much better than a captured spy; one is a repentant friend and the other a recalcitrant enemy. He was confident that his old buddy, ex-Master Sergeant Jack Quinn, would see to it that she was a defector. Although he said a few words to her and she responded with only one, the gleam in his eye when he looked at her indicated that he would much prefer to have her as a friend. She�d have a secret identity in the U.S. for a while, until the German Democratic Republic and its obscene Berlin Wall collapsed, which wasn�t so far in the future, Jacks assumed, and then she�d want to go back to Germany, which wasn�t his cup of tea.
Afterword
In1989, a few days after the fall of the Wall, Marvin Jacks read about her in a syndicated newspaper column. A young reporter in Madison, Wisconsin had learned about her years before that, but the CIA convinced his paper to hold the story, not only for national security reasons but also for her safety. But when the German Democratic Republic ceased to exist for all practical purposes, there was no reason to hold the story any longer. The problem was that so long after the facts it was no longer a hot story. The reporter had moved on and had become nationally syndicated, so he ran it as human interest directly connected with the fall of the Wall, which was covering the front pages of the world.
Rachel Baumgartner had been living in Madison with her daughter in a defector protection program, working as a German teacher in a Steiner school, where her daughter was a pupil. The Stasi somehow found out who and where she was and sent a hit man to eliminate her. They were pissed off. As an experienced spy, when she defected she was able to give the CIA information about the Stasi infrastructure, modus operandi, names, etc. The hit man (let�s call him Hans as the reporter unimaginatively did), was on his first job and wasn�t really a hit man. They�d sent him because their experienced assassins, knowing that the regime was wobbly, were either disappearing into West Germany or were afraid of getting caught trying to enter the U.S. so late in the game. Hans, however, had entered the U.S. on several previous occasions on minor missions with a genuine Spanish passport. His father was a Spanish communist and his mother a German one. He was born in East Germany and had never been to Spain, but his Spanish (as well as his English) was fluent, so he easily passed for the real thing.
Hans wasn�t stupid. When he got to Madison, instead of killing Rachel he telephoned (from a public phone far from his motel), and told her who he was and what his mission was and that he had never killed anyone in his life and preferred to join her rather than kill her. She figured that if she refused to help him he might feel forced to carry out his mission. So she said Ja � and told him to call her the next day. She got in touch with her old buddy Jack Quinn, now a section head (to a large extent thanks to her defection) at Langley. Quinn flew to Madison, something he did frequently when off duty because of an illicit relationship with her. So when Hans rang her doorbell Quinn was sitting there on the couch with a big smile and another agent was behind a curtain with a rifle pointed at the door. A third agent was behind a bush in the garden ready to plug Hans if he were to take out a weapon when she opened the door. It was all unnecessary though. Hans was unarmed and wanted nothing more than to throw himself into the arms of the CIA with defector status.
Until he read the story not even Marvin Jacks knew where she was. At the time of her defection he had passed up the opportunity to continue as her lover because�well, maybe this was one too many identities for him to swallow. Life is complicated enough, he told himself. He knew that Quinn had also been hot for her, but that kind of relationship between an agent and a defector is definitely frowned on by the CIA. Now, having just separated from another partner who, though beautiful and rich, was dull and bourgeois boring, Jacks felt that perhaps he had made a mistake. So he called Jack Quinn and asked him about Rachel.
��She�s leaving for Germany tomorrow, Marvin,� he said.
�Ah.� (It didn�t surprise him.) �For good?�
�Looks like it.�
Quinn obviously wasn�t in the mood for chitchat and neither was he, so that was pretty well that.
Or not.
Despite the demise of the Soviet Union, spying has not lost its allure, nor, as far as we know, has love.���������������������������
