It wasn’t a perfect meet, but none of them are.  It is the nature of our world, though, that the agent chooses the place of the meet, someplace he feels secure.  The officer—me, in this case—just arranges to get there while losing any tail that might be on him. As I looked around, I began to understand why he had chosen this place for the meet.  The bartender sat on a stool behind the bar, bleary-eyed.  Probably he had been sampling his own wares. On the far side of the bar a miniature black-and-white television set sat on a shelf, playing the local news, Berliners tearing at the Wall with hand tools.  At one of the tables sat two women, local prostitutes from their dress, watching the television.  None of them would be reliable witnesses.

            He was there, sitting in one of the snugs with a beer, and a second beer across from him, waiting for me.  He was dressed in East German laborer drag, and smoking Marlboro cigarettes.  The past few years everyone in Eastern Europe was smoking Marlboros.  His face looked older than I thought it would, more drawn, paler.  It had only been about five years since I had last seen him, but he had aged quite a bit. I slid into the seat across from him and raised my beer.

“Cheers,” I said as he looked at me, then raised his glass to touch mine.  His hair was beginning to grey, but his eyes were still that piercing, chrome brown that made men break under interrogation.  I took a sip then put the glass down, dragging my fingers down the body to smear any potential fingerprints. 

            “In the event we meet someone I know, who are you tonight?”  He asked.

            “Dennis Lewellyn, Canadian businessman here to take advantage of the new political climate.”  He nodded, snubbed out his cigarette and lit another. 

            “It’s good to see you,” he commented.” I was half afraid you wouldn’t show.”

            “Please, you know I wouldn’t have missed this. Why did you call for me?”

            “Getting down to business so quickly?”

            “Old habits die hard.” I shrugged.     

            His shoulders slumped slightly. It was a movement I had seen people make just before they broke under interrogation. That slump was when I knew I was getting the truth.  “Things are going to hell here, Lefty,” he said.  “Defectors are now an embarrassment to the locals.  Don’t quite know what to do, to tell the truth.”

            “I heard Moscow had offered a clean passport and a couple of million dollars if you left.  Why didn’t you take them up on it?”

            He snorted.  “A clean passport?   The way Moscow is leaking these days, it wouldn’t be clean for long.”

“Still, why not find yourself a nice place on a Caribbean Island and disappear into the crowd.  Be a nonentity.  Drink and chase the local women for the rest of your life. You wouldn’t be the first defector to live his life that way.”  

“Got to admit, I considered it. The money would work, but not the passport.  Moscow can’t keep its secrets these days.  So, I’d just be another fugitive, always looking over my shoulder until the day the local law kicked in my door and dragged my ass off to the nearest prison.  Or, for that matter, someplace worse, like the local American Consulate.  No future in that offer, really.”

            He took another sip of beer, another drag of his cigarette.  “How are the boys?”

            He was deflecting, something people do, at least in my experience, when shying away from the truth. “Busy, what with all the changes going on over here.”

            “How did you get the time to be here if everyone is working so hard?”

            “I’m supposed to be on my way to watch the Soviet unit at Jena.  The bosses are afraid the Sov’s will send troops in to put all this down.” I said, nodding toward the television. “So, I flew into Prague, bought a train ticket for Jena, then put myself on the wrong train and ended up here in Karl Marx Stadt.  Whoops.”

            He smiled.  “Mistakes were made.  Others will be blamed. How many years did we live our lives by that rule? Sometimes I miss those days.”

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            “What’s your life like these days?  Being wined and dined by the locals?”

            He snorted.  “Hardly.  They have me at an institute in Kiev, translating articles.  Hardly a glamorous life.”      

            “Then why did you defect?”  I asked. God, I wish, in looking back, that I hadn’t asked that. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit a new one.

            “Remember Lebanon?  Remember Shatilla?”

            My shoulders tightened.  I took a couple of deep breaths to try to calm myself.  Usually that helps, but not this time.  Then again, not much helps me when the subject of Shatilla comes up.

            “You remember that girl?” he continued.  “Maybe sixteen or seventeen, judging from her size?  With her arms tied behind her with concertina wire and shot in the back of her head?”

            Yes, I remembered her.  For whatever reason, of all the dead I saw that day, she was the one who haunts me the most. I didn’t turn her over.  I knew damn well what the exit wound of a modern bullet looked like.  Probably the smartest thing I have ever done.  The nightmares are bad enough without including that vision.

            “That was the Christian Phalange who did that,” he commented, though I certainly didn’t need to be reminded.  “Our allies.  The people we trained. Not just ‘we’ as in the unit.  You and me.  Us. We passed out rifles and we trained them to use them. Our hands are covered in innocent blood.”

            “The Israelis could have stopped them,” I muttered. The professional in me rolled his eyes.  I was the one trying to deflect now.

            “Yeah, they could have.  But you knew as well as I did that they wouldn’t.  So, there we were in the Shatilla camp, surrounded by dead Palestinians, and what was our job?  To find who had done it?  To find someone to punish? No, we were sent in to make sure there was no evidence that we were involved.”

            “Which explains why you defected.”  I really needed to change the subject before the memories made me start drinking.

“Yeah. I did.  And you beat the hell out of Israeli major.  Hell, you probably would have killed him if I hadn’t been there to drag your sorry ass away.  How was any of that serving some greater good? Wasn’t that what we always claimed to be doing?  Protecting the free world?”

            I thought of the weeks after he defected, of too many nights waiting for agents who never arrived, of trying to get to their apartments to warn them, only to find the black vans already parked outside.  “What about the costs?  What about the people you gave up? Remember the Rostock network?  The Schmidt family?  Used to keep track of military movements through the city for us?  You know they were all executed, don’t you? And then there was the Weiss family. Did those deaths make up for Shatilla?”

            He closed his eyes, and for the first time in the decades I had known him I saw a tear roll down his cheek. Time seemed to stand still. Finally, “Please, Lefty,” he said, opening his eyes to look into mine. “I know.  It may not have been the right choice, but it was the choice I made.  My conscience is not clean.  But let’s not fight, not tonight of all nights.  I’m not seeking absolution here.”

            “I understand,” I said, which was in no way, shape or form true, but I needed to end this conversation.  I was just too damn personally involved.  I tried rolling my shoulders.  I needed to calm down if tonight was going to happen.  After a moment I felt my shoulders relax. Not fully, but enough. I really needed a drink, though.  Just not here, and certainly not before tonight was done.

“Well, now’s as good a time as any,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette and sliding out of the snug. I suspected he felt the same about this conversation as I did. I waited a moment then followed.

It went quickly, all things considered.  Then again, if properly planned these things happen quickly, or not at all.  As I left, I reminded myself, don’t give in to the adrenalin, be Goldilocks.  Don’t walk too slow, nor too fast.  Act normal.  Don’t make eye contact, and don’t gesture. I left the bar unnoticed as the two whores and the bartender watched the television and Pat lay on the floor of the bathroom, appearing to a casual observer to have passed out.  Until, of course, one noticed the awkward angle of his neck.  I was out the door, into the night.

            There would, of course, be questions.  When the East Germans found him and realized who he was, the West Germans would be notified.  The Polizei knew our history, so they would know exactly who had been with him in that snug that night.  Law and his partner Order would certainly bring me in to have a friendly chat, or maybe a hostile chat, depending on their mood. But they would get nowhere.  After all, I had been through plenty of hostile interrogations, and while they knew, they couldn’t prove, and in their world, only proof matters.  As for Dennis Lewellyn, the Polizei might get the name, but as they told us in the entry course, and I quote, a name ain’t shit without a face.  Besides, my people would never give up an identity.  Thank God and inter-service rivalry.

So, I will wait, I don’t know how long.  Weeks? Months? Years? Eventually the entire incident will pass into the realm of lore and nostalgia.  Committees will be formed; blame will be shifted, additional training advised. It always happens, sooner or later, and the quicker the more embarrassing the incident.  Then I can visit your grave and answer the questions I was most afraid to ask: Why did you ask that of me? And, Why did I do it?

Because you were my friend.