Black Rose

CHAPTER 37

Stephanie stretched her arms out to the side and yawned and rubbed her eyes. She'd been searching through the archived files of the East German secret police for more than three hours. Even with the high level translation program she was using, it was tough going wading through the stilted prose of the East German bureaucratic mind. She'd found nothing about Joseph Connor. She decided to give it another half hour before she quit for the day.

Ten minutes later, she got a hit. The first reference led to another and then another, and soon she was looking at the STASI file on Selena's father. The first entry was dated from 1985. Connor had been posing as a businessman interested in taking advantage of cheap East German labor. In the beginning there was only routine surveillance, automatically kept on any Western foreigner. About six months after the first entry, everything changed.

Someone in the West had betrayed him. Connor was identified as a high-level CIA agent.

The East Germans decided to compromise him. If they succeeded, Connor would be given the option of cooperation or a bullet. They decided on a classic plan used by every intelligence agency in history. A female operative was assigned to seduce him.

Stephanie's tiredness was forgotten. The file read like a novel written by Frederick Forsyth. But it wasn't a novel. It was the story of a man being drawn into a trap baited with his own weakness.

Stephanie came across the first mention of the KGB. The East Germans knew who their masters were. Because Connor was a potential high level asset, the Russians took over the operation.

Stephanie nodded to herself. She was on the right track, she could feel it.

The KGB chose an experienced agent named Sofia Antipov for the seduction. Antipov was inserted into West Berlin and introduced to Connor by a deep cover East German who was a member of the West German Parliament. Within a month, Selena's father and Antipov were sleeping together. Two months after that, the KGB dropped the hammer.

Joseph Connor was well and truly hooked. He began feeding information back to the Germans and their Russian bosses. It was described in the file as being of significant value. From time to time, deposits of American dollars were transferred into an offshore account in Connor's name. Regular reports were forwarded directly to the chairman of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov.

That's unusual, Stephanie thought. Shows how important they thought Connor was. It's beginning to look like he really was a traitor.

Abruptly, Sofia Antipov was taken out of the picture. Shortly after that, Connor went back to the United States.

I wonder what happened? Stephanie asked herself.

She found out in the next section of the file. Sofia Antipov had gone back to Moscow under a cloud, pregnant with Connor's child. Six months later she'd given birth to a child named Valentina.

Holy shit. Stephanie sat up straight in her chair. Selena has a half-sister.