Free Checkpoint Charlie by Brian Garfield

loose any more than you do but I still don’t see what it’s got to do with me.”
    He smiled again. I fought the impulse to flinch. “How’s your broken-field running these days, fat man?”
    I saw it coming. His smugness made me gag. He said, “You’re going to intercept the pass, Charlie.”
    â€œBefore or after he crosses the wall?”
    â€œAfter.”
    â€œLovely.”
    â€œWe can’t recapture him until after the hijack has been dealt with, can we. The hostages have to be turned loose before we can lay a finger on Stossel.”
    â€œIn other words you want to deliver him to the East Germans and wait for the hijack to end and then afterward you expect me to get him back and put him back in Leaven-worth to finish out his sentence.”
    â€œRight. After all, we can’t have the world think we’ve gone soft, can we. We’ve got to prove they can’t get away with it. Carry a big stick and all that.”
    â€œWe could kill him,” I said. “It’s a lot easier to assassinate him in East Germany than it is to bring him out alive. No, never mind, don’t say it. I know. We won’t be stampeded into committing public murder, especially on hostile soil. We have to bring him back alive because that’s the best way to rub their noses in it.”
    â€œYou have the picture, I’m happy to see.”
    I said, “It’s impossible.”
    â€œOf course it is. They’ll be expecting it. They’ll leave no openings at all.” He smiled slowly, deliciously. “Charlie, it’s the kind of job you do best. You get bored with anything less.”
    â€œEver since that caper with von Schnee I’ve been persona non grata in the Eastern sector. If they catch me on their side of the wall they’ll lock me up for a hundred and fifty years. In thumbscrews. On German peasant food.”
    â€œYes. I know. Adds a bit of spice to the challenge, doesn’t it.” And he smiled more broadly than ever.
    *   *   *
    E MIL S TOSSEL had cut his eyeteeth on Abwehr duplicity and he’d run a string of successful agents in the United States for the Eastern bloc intelligence services. The FBI hadn’t been able to crack him and I’d been assigned to him about twelve years ago before we all got dumped into a fishbowl where we were no longer permitted to do that sort of thing domestically. It took time and patience but in the end we were ready to go in after him. His HQ was in Arlington not far from the Pentagon — Stossel had nerve and a sense of humor.
    The actual bust was an FBI caper and as usual they muffed it. Stossel got away long enough to barricade himself in the nearby high school and before it was finished he’d killed several of his teen-age hostages. It had led to five life sentences, to be served consecutively, and even the Red diplomats had been wise enough not to put up more than token objection. But Stossel remained one of the cleverist operatives the DDR had ever fielded. He was an embarrassment to them but they wouldn’t mind having him back; he could be of use to them: They’d use his skills. He’d soon be directing clandestine operations again for them, I had no doubt of it; they’d keep him out of sight but they’d use him and we’d feel the results before long. It was another excellent reason to get him back.
    Stossel’s callous annihilation of the teen-age innocents in the high school naturally had endeared him to the verminous terrorists who infested the world of “liberation” movements. He was a hero to them; it didn’t matter whether he was a professional or an asinine leftist incompetent — it was his brutality that made him a hero to the Quito hijackers. At the same time the East Germans, to whom Stossel was undoubtedly a public embarrassment, could not disown him now without offending their Marxist disciples in Latin