LITMIR.BIZ

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clear pretty quickly that I’m not going to be able to open the door. From this side it looks like an ordinary door, one I should be able to kick down, or at least shoot my way through. But as my aching foot and the bullets lodged in the wood prove, this isn’t the case. This door has been designed to keep anyone from getting through it. Whoever installed it meant business.

      Berlin is riddled with former safe houses, places where people who might have reason to hide could hole up and wait until the coast was clear. My line has a safe house here as well. I’m supposed to take Sauer to it and await extraction instructions. Now, unless I can get through this door and catch up to him, I’ll be waiting in that house alone, trying to figure out how to explain to my council how I let a girl get away with my prize. An amazingly smart girl, and one who was able to knock me out, but nobody’s going to care about that part. All they’ll care about is that she took what should be mine.

      I stare at the door, trying to figure out a way through it, my frustration growing. Then I hear my trainer’s voice in my head. If you can’t go through, then go around, go under, or go over. He used to put me in seemingly impossible situations and make me figure a way out. A nine-foot wall I had to scale. A rushing river to get across. A trap to get out of. Anything to force me to think differently. There’s always a way. Always.

      I start by asking myself what’s behind the door. While it’s possible that the door leads to just another room, it’s more likely that it leads to some kind of an exit. And if there’s an exit, I should be able to find it. But I’ve already lost a lot of time trying to get through. I have to hurry.

      The kitchen has another door leading to the backyard, but it’s boarded up, and there’s no time to pry the boards off. So I run back down the hallway and out of the house, a cloud of flour flying around me. I have to admit, the girl’s trick was pretty clever, even if she has made me look like a fool twice now. And I still don’t know who she is or what she’s doing here. She’s become a mystery that I’m determined to solve. First, I have to catch her.

      Getting into the backyard of Sauer’s house is as simple as running through the downstairs of the deserted house next door and climbing over a fence into the small yard. I stop and survey, sketching a map in my head. There is a set of steps leading down to a cellar, but I know this isn’t where the secret passage comes out. The whole point is to get as far away from the house as possible before you have to come up into the open. Most likely, it runs the length of the yard, then opens up into a sewer system or some other network of already-established tunnels.

      I cross the yard and climb over yet another fence. This street looks much like the one I’ve just left, a row of town houses, many of them bombed out and empty. The tunnel could lead to, or pass under, any of them. With each second taking Sauer farther away from me, I run in one direction, hoping to find something that will provide a clue.

      I find it in the form of a garden. It appears as a small break in the line of houses, really just an empty space where normally another building would have been. Instead, there’s a gated fence behind that sits on a lot that contains a small fountain, a bench, and a toolshed.

      It’s the shed that interests me. It’s the perfect spot for an underground tunnel to come out. Then, as I peer through the bars, I see something else: footprints coming out of the shed. Everything in the garden is covered in snow, so the footsteps are easy to see. And there’s more than one set of them. They lead to the opposite side of the lot, where another gate opens onto another street. The gate is open, and the footsteps continue through it. My guess is that the girl has recently passed through there with Sauer and Lottie.

      The gate on my side is locked, but it’s easy enough to scale the fence and get inside the garden. I run to the other side and follow the footprints. The street is deserted, so it’s easy to see them. But then they turn onto another street filled with people and disappear into the crowd. I scan the block for the mystery girl, Sauer, or Lottie, but there are too many bodies, and everyone seems to be wearing heavy coats that look the same. Between that, the dark, and the snow, my chances of finding them are almost nonexistent.

      Then something crunches under my foot. Curious, I bend down to see what it is. It’s a candy. A toffee, wrapped in cellophane. I think back to the gift that Sauer gave the girl. It can’t be a coincidence. Candy is heavily rationed, and it’s unlikely someone would just drop one by accident.

      I start walking and find another about 20 feet farther on, then another. Now I’m certain that they weren’t dropped by accident. Someone has left me a trail to follow.

      It’s not easy searching for them in the snow, and I’d look crazy shining my flashlight around, but the light from the streetlamps helps. I see a sparkle and find another candy. I pick it up and add it to the growing lump in my coat pocket. Approximately every 20 feet, I find another one, although sometimes there are gaps where either the candy has been kicked away or perhaps picked up by somebody else.

      The trail of toffees leads down the street and around a corner, where it comes to an end. Then I notice a child, a little boy of about four or five. He and his mother are standing together. He’s holding something in his hand. As I watch, he unwraps it and puts it into his mouth.

      “What is that?” his mother asks.

      The boy shrugs. “Candy?” he says doubtfully.

      His mother, clearly alarmed, snatches the wrapper from his hand and looks at it. “Where did you get this?”

      The boy points. “A man gave it to me,” he said. “As he was getting on that streetcar.”

      I turn my head just in time to see a streetcar rounding a corner at the end of the street, tethered to the electric line above it. I run to the boy and his mother. “Where does that streetcar go?”

      The woman puts her arm around the boy and draws him closer to her. “To the Soviet sector.”

      I thank her and take off after the streetcar. It’s not going very fast, but it’s difficult to keep pace running on the slippery pavement. Also, if the mystery girl is keeping an eye out for me, I don’t want her to see me running behind the streetcar like a madman. I still don’t know if she’s caught up with Sauer and Lottie, or if she’s trying to follow them too. Until I can figure out which of them—or any of them—is on the streetcar, I need to be careful.

      Fortunately, the streetcar makes frequent stops to let people on and off, which gives me a chance both to rest and to try to get a glimpse inside. Unfortunately, the cold has made the windows frosty, and I can’t see through them. And if the girl is with Sauer and Lottie, I don’t want to get on and risk a confrontation in front of so many people. So I watch to see if Sauer or either woman gets off, but they don’t. I can only hope that I’m right about them being on it.

      Once again I wonder who the girl is. Twice now I’ve had the chance to kill her, and twice I haven’t. I can’t explain why, except that, for reasons I don’t entirely understand, I want to know who she is. And it’s not just that she’s undeniably beautiful. It’s more than that. There’s something about her that at the same time feels both very familiar and completely foreign. For one thing, she also could have killed me but didn’t. And I know she has no problem killing. She took down the two MGB agents without blinking. No ordinary soldier would do that—or even be able to. You have to be a certain kind of person to kill so easily, or at least to make it look so easy.

      Someone like a Player, I think.

      Maybe my line isn’t the only one that’s after Sauer. Maybe the girl is Playing too.

      She’s the right age. Also, she’s a, well, she. Most militaries don’t train women to fight. They’re mainly nurses or some other kind of noncombat personnel. Yet she fights like a soldier—a highly trained soldier. She had to learn it somewhere, and despite her remark about street fighting, there’s no way she got this good from a couple of brawls on a playground.

      If she is Playing, then the question is: for which line? She said she was Greek, so if she wasn’t lying, she’s a Minoan. If another line wants Sauer badly enough to kill for him, then what he knows has to have some bearing on Endgame.

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