great-warnovel Chapter 174 Lies
Chapter 174 Lies
"jingle--"
The wind chimes on the wooden door of the Moscow café were still swaying slightly.
A cold wind, carrying the smell of lignite, blew in through the crack in the door, causing the blackened silk handkerchief on the corner of the table to flutter gently.
Dr. Klaus Weber sat stiffly in the chair.
His gaze remained fixed on the doorway. The black Mercedes with West German license plates had already rolled across the wet cobblestones and disappeared into the gray mist of Alexanderplatz.
On the table, stacks of East German marks bearing Marx's image lay scattered about. Spilled coffee dripped down the edge of the tablecloth.
"Tick-tock. Tick-tock."
Water droplets hit the wooden floor.
Weber swallowed hard. He slowly moved his right hand off the table, wanting to reach for the slip of paper with a Swiss bank account number written on it in his right pocket.
Just as his fingertips were about to touch the rough corduroy fabric.
Two enormous shadows obscured the old crystal chandelier overhead.
The heavy leather shoes, with their hard soles, slammed onto the wooden floor with a thud that sent shivers down my spine.
A large, black-gloved hand suddenly appeared from behind and slammed heavily onto the table in front of Weber with a loud bang. The edge of the hand pressed down on the corner of the stack of East German marks.
"Dr. Weber."
A cold, monotone baritone voice rang out above his head.
Weber's breathing stopped for a moment.
He slowly turned his head.
Two men in dark gray double-breasted trench coats stood behind him. Their faces were expressionless, and they showed no identification. In this country, this attire and this undisguised sense of oppression served as the best identification in themselves.
Stasi.
Agent of the Ministry of State Security.
The few tables of customers that had been sparsely occupied in the café suddenly became like deaf and blind wooden figures. They all lowered their heads, staring intently at the empty coffee cups in front of them, not daring to even breathe. The waiter behind the counter even turned around to wipe the clean glasses, his back stiff.
"Stand up. Place your hands on the table."
The gray-clad man coldly commanded, his other hand already pressed against the slightly bulging area at his waist.
Weber's mind went blank.
Extreme fear made his muscles spasm. He opened his mouth, trying to make a sound, but only a meaningless "gurgling" sound came out of his throat.
He braced himself against the edge of the table and stood up unsteadily. The chair screeched across the wooden floor.
"What...what's the matter?" Weber forced himself to keep his voice steady.
The agent on the right didn't answer. He roughly grabbed Webber's arm and slammed him against the table. His cheek was pressed against the cold coffee stain, the strong bitterness filling his nostrils.
A pair of rough hands began to quickly search his body.
Follow the ribs and waist downwards.
Webber's heart nearly leaped out of his chest when that hand reached into his right pocket.
That note! Once it's unearthed, the promise to Tokyo will become a death knell for Hornsheimer Prison (Stasi's exclusive prison).
"What is this?"
The agent pulled a piece of cloth from his left pocket.
That was the silk handkerchief with the Saionji family crest that I had just used to wipe the coffee.
The agent brought the handkerchief to his eyes for a closer look, then tossed it onto the table with disdain. His gaze then fell on the old leather briefcase stained with coffee.
He grabbed the briefcase.
"Walk."
Two agents grabbed Webber's arms, one on each side, and dragged him like a soulless shell towards the back door of the café.
Outside, a green and white Wolverhampton police car was already waiting in the rain, its exhaust pipe spewing out blue and white fumes.
The car door opened.
Webber was roughly shoved into the back seat. Two agents flanked him on either side.
The car doors slammed shut, shutting out the sound of the rain outside.
The carriage was filled with a strong smell of cheap tobacco and damp wool.
"drive."
The police car made a sharp turn on the slippery road and sped toward the gray buildings behind the red city hall.
……
Half an hour later.
An underground interrogation room without windows.
There was only one incandescent bulb overhead, emitting a faint hum. Its dim yellow light barely illuminated an iron table in the center of the room. The surrounding walls were peeling due to years of dampness and emitted a pungent musty smell.
Weber sat on a hardwood chair behind the iron table.
His legs were pressed together, his hands clasped tightly on his knees. A fine layer of sweat beaded on his forehead, sliding down his cheeks and dripping onto the faded collar of his corduroy suit. Fortunately, the note tucked in the cigarette box hadn't been found during the extremely cursory search of the car earlier.
Across the iron table sat the two agents from earlier.
One of them was fiddling with the worn-out briefcase in his hand.
"Smack."
He threw his briefcase onto the iron table. The sound echoed in the cramped interrogation room.
"Dr. Weber."
The agent pulled out a chair, leaned forward, and scanned Webber's face.
"A bulletproof Mercedes with West German license plates. Four fully armed bodyguards. An Asian woman."
The agent took out a pack of cigarettes without any brand name, pulled one out, put it in his mouth, and lit a match.
"According to our records, Carl Zeiss Jena's senior engineers did not have the authority to contact foreign capitalists of this level."
The agent exhaled a puff of bluish-gray smoke, which swirled under the incandescent light.
"What did she give you in the coffee shop? What deal did you make? Is she a spy sent by the West?"
The three questions were like three heavy hammer blows.
Weber's breathing became rapid. His fingers dug tightly into the fabric of his knees, his nails digging into his flesh, as he forced himself to stay conscious.
He remembered the look in the girl's eyes in the coffee shop.
That condescending gaze, treating everything as mere merchandise. That arrogant disdain for simply tossing down thousands of marks, as if dismissing a beggar.
Sudden.
Weber stopped trembling.
A crazy idea took shape in his mind.
He abruptly raised his head, his bloodshot eyes staring directly at the agent opposite him. He forcefully suppressed his inner fear, clenched his teeth, and contorted his facial muscles with a furious expression born of extreme humiliation.
"spy?"
Weber's voice was hoarse, filled with barely suppressed anger. He slammed his fist on the iron table, making his briefcase bounce.
"If all spies were as foolish and arrogant as her, our counter-espionage work would be too easy!"
The agent narrowed his eyes, his hand holding the cigarette frozen in mid-air.
"What do you mean?"
"That woman is a damn vampire! A nouveau riche who knows absolutely nothing about optics!"
Weber gasped for breath, his cheeks flushed red with "anger." He perfectly replicated the frustration he felt as an old intellectual being slapped in the face by a capitalist's money when he faced Satsuki in the coffee shop.
"She came to me and said she was interested in the old optical lenses that were piling up in our warehouse. I thought she was a big customer and wanted to take this opportunity to help the factory earn more foreign exchange."
Weber pointed to the coffee-stained briefcase on the table, his voice cracking with excitement.
"Do you know what price she offered?"
"She wants to buy our precision instruments by the ton at scrap metal prices! She's treating half a century of Carl Zeiss's technological achievements like garbage!"
"I tried to explain the value of the coating process to her, but she thought I was being long-winded and even accidentally spilled her coffee, getting my bag dirty."
Weber leaned back in his chair, his chest heaving violently.
"I'm still trying to swindle more foreign exchange deposits from her. I'm sitting there enduring humiliation for the sake of the country! And you've arrested me here as a spy!"
The interrogation room fell silent.
The two agents exchanged a glance.
Weber's anger seemed all too real. The resentment of an old intellectual humiliated by capitalists almost spilled from his worn-out suit. In a time of extreme scarcity of hard currency, when every industry was desperately trying to generate foreign exchange, the logic of an engineer attempting to fraudulently obtain foreign currency was perfectly plausible.
However, this is not enough to convince them. After all, this is only Weber's side of the story.
The agent sitting opposite him, cigarette dangling from his lips, scrutinized Webber's face, which was flushed with anger, while his mind raced, processing everything that had just happened.
The informant outside the café reported clearly that the entire encounter lasted less than ten minutes. Ten minutes is barely enough time to finish half a cup of cheap coffee. Two complete strangers, under close surveillance, could not possibly concoct a complex and flawless lie out of thin air.
The agent recalled the old man's secret file in his mind. As a core technical staff member at Carl Zeiss, Weber had always been under close surveillance. His resume was impeccable; he was law-abiding and dutiful. He had long been immersed in the laboratory, achieving numerous optical breakthroughs for the country, and in the factory, he had always obeyed orders and had never made any mistakes that overstepped his bounds.
A completely honest man, a timid and cowardly intellectual.
He knew that most of these intellectuals were somewhat aloof. They could endure poverty, but they couldn't bear the thought of their technological achievements being treated as scrap metal.
For decades, East Germany's propaganda machine relentlessly portrayed capitalists as greedy, arrogant, and profit-driven vampires. The arrogant Japanese zaibatsu heiress's attempt to buy up scrap metal at rock-bottom prices perfectly aligned with the spies' preconceived notions about capitalists. When faced with things that conform to one's own preconceived notions, the brain's defense mechanisms naturally weaken.
The greed and folly of capitalists seem to fully explain this brief and farcical meeting.
"Do you have any evidence for what you're saying?" the agent asked, still somewhat skeptical.
"She left a stack of deposits."
Without hesitation, Weber pointed to the evidence bag that the agent had placed to the side.
"It's in there. That's what she gave me. A few thousand East German marks. Money for a beggar."
The agent glanced at the banknotes in the evidence bag.
Just then, the heavy iron door of the interrogation room was knocked on from the outside.