West Berlin, Tempelhof Airport.
A deep blue Gulfstream G4 sat on the VIP apron. The APU hummed steadily, keeping the cabin at a constant twenty-two degrees Celsius.
Outside the porthole, the West Berlin evening stayed gloomy.
At the conference table, Hans von Schneider sweated over a portable fax typewriter. His fingers clacked rapidly against the keys.
Satsuki sat across from him on the white leather sofa.
She'd changed out of the black trench coat from East Berlin and into a soft beige cashmere cardigan. In her hand was a gold-rimmed Sèvres tea set. Steam curled up from the black tea.
"Miss Saionji, the wording of this letter of intent…"
Hans stopped typing and pulled out the half-printed sheet. He looked pained.
"It's too harsh. Frankly, it's insulting."
Hans glanced at the German on the page.
'In view of your factory's obsolete production equipment and chaotic inventory management, this group will only consider a package acquisition under the classification of scrap metal recycling.' …If we send this to the East German Foreign Trade Ministry, they'll tear it up on the spot. Prussian pride won't let them accept terms like this.
"Prussian pride?"
Satsuki gave a soft laugh. She set down her teacup, fingertips brushing the gold rim.
"Mr. von Schneider, pride needs bread to survive. How much does their bread cost these days?"
"Keep typing. Drop the price another twenty percent. And add a clause: 'If accepted, Dr. Klaus Weber of Carl Zeiss Jena must be appointed by your side as plenipotentiary representative for the inventory of said scrap material.'"
Hans swallowed.
He didn't understand his employer's game. A trip to East Berlin, a meeting with a shabby engineer, and now she wanted to send this absurd, deliberately offensive letter of intent.
But he didn't dare disobey. He bit down and kept typing.
Clack, clack, clack…
Fujita Tsuyoshi stood beside Satsuki, watching the typewriter spit out paper.
"Young Lady," Fujita said quietly. "The Stasi had eyes on him outside the café. He's almost certainly in an interrogation room by now. If we send this fax, won't it backfire?"
Satsuki turned her head toward the gray sky beyond the porthole.
"Hounds have good noses. Once they catch a scent, they don't let go," she said softly. The cabin's air swallowed her voice.
"So we throw them a stinking bone."
She turned back to the document Hans had just finished.
"Bureaucrats believe in capitalist greed. They believe in profit above all. They will never believe we're doing charity, or acting on sentiment."
She picked up the Montblanc on the table and signed S.A. Group, European Division at the bottom.
"Send it."
"Send it to the East German Foreign Trade Ministry."
Hans took the paper and fed it into the fax machine.
Zzz—zzz—
With a harsh mechanical grind, the insulting letter of intent became electronic signals. It crossed the cold, towering Berlin Wall and flew to the other side… to the basement of an unmarked Stasi building in East Berlin.
The iron door was shoved open.
A uniformed officer walked in holding a fresh fax. His face was ashen. The corner of his mouth twitched with anger.
The two agents running the interrogation snapped to attention and saluted.
The officer ignored Weber behind the table and went straight to the agents, his voice tight with suppressed irritation.
"Step outside."
He turned and walked into the black corridor.
The agent followed, pulling the heavy iron door shut.
The corridor air was damper and colder than the interrogation room. Water dripped from cracks in the brick walls.
"Sir." The agent stood at attention, eyes on the document.
The officer handed him the fax.
"Read this. Just forwarded from the Ministry of Foreign Trade. An acquisition letter from S.A. Group."
The agent took it. His eyes scanned the German.
Scrap metal recycling. Management chaos. Defective products. Every line radiated condescension, hitting every raw nerve the East German bureaucrats had. At the bottom, Dr. Klaus Weber was explicitly named plenipotentiary representative.
"These greedy Western vampires!" the agent hissed through his teeth.
"What do they think we are? A junkyard?"
"The Ministry of Foreign Trade called the Director directly," the officer said, hands clasped behind his back, knuckles white. "Several ministers find this deeply humiliating."
The agent looked up, wary.
"Sir, isn't this too convenient? We just brought him in, and a fax from West Berlin arrives. Could they be in collusion? Maybe this is the cover for espionage."
The officer shot him a cold look.
"Convenient? You think I haven't considered that?"
He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, took one, and crushed it in his fist.
"I checked the informant's report. Contact lasted under ten minutes. Sending a cross-border fax through West Berlin's lines takes time. The timeline doesn't fit."
"More importantly, Intelligence verified the woman's identity. Saionji Family. Top-tier Japanese zaibatsu. Capitalists at that level care about profit. To forge a diplomatic-grade business fax with a corporate seal and get it into the Ministry's secure room in thirty minutes would take an intelligence network beyond belief."
The officer pointed at the iron door.
"The old man in there has a clean record for twenty years. No passport. Never left the country. You think he can conduct a multinational zaibatsu to play backup for him?"
The agent went quiet.
Reason said no. An optics nerd couldn't orchestrate this in ten minutes.
"Even if there's a one-in-ten-thousand chance it's a disguise," the officer said, his voice heavy with exhaustion, "we have to treat it as legitimate business."
"Why?" the agent asked.
"Because the state is out of money."
The officer dropped his voice. The words sounded bleak in the empty corridor.
"The Soviet situation… isn't good. Aid has stopped. Foreign currency reserves are at rock bottom. Those bureaucrats at the Foreign Trade Ministry see West German marks and their eyes go red. This letter is insulting, yes. But it promises hard currency."
The officer tapped Weber's name on the fax.
"The Ministry's instructions are clear. No matter how humiliating, if it brings dollars, the negotiations proceed."
"The other side named Weber as plenipotentiary. If we keep him locked in a basement, this deal—and the foreign exchange it brings—dies. If that happens, sabotaging national economic construction lands on the Stasi. The Director can't eat that. Neither can you or I."
Cold sweat ran down the agent's back.
He understood now.
Under economic collapse, suspicion had to yield to foreign exchange. They needed money. They couldn't risk the political fallout of killing the deal.
So they had no choice but to believe this was a farce between an arrogant capitalist and a greedy engineer.
"Understood, Sir."
The agent lowered his head and handed the fax back.
"Capitalist greed explains everything. He's cleared."
"Go in," the officer said, straightening his collar. "Give him some dignity. We need him to sell that scrap metal for a good price."
They pushed open the iron door and re-entered.
Weber glanced up as they came in.
The officer walked to the table and slapped the fax down.
"Look at this."
Weber's heart jumped when he saw the German.
It was the Defective Optical Equipment Acquisition Letter of Intent from S.A. Group. The language was arrogant. The price was insultingly low.
At the bottom, it explicitly requested him—Dr. Klaus Weber—as the contact.
The loop closed.
The lie he'd told ten minutes ago to save himself was now backed by an official document from West Berlin.
The officer stepped up to Weber. His tone softened a fraction.
"Dr. Weber. It seems you really were dealing with these barbarians for the good of the state."
"You're cleared of suspicion."
The agent stepped forward and pushed the stack of East German marks and the briefcase back to Weber.
"Not just cleared."
The officer pointed at the fax.
"The Ministry of Foreign Trade and the factory have decided to formally appoint you as plenipotentiary technical representative for this inventory clearance project."
"Your job is simple: squeeze as much foreign exchange out of that arrogant Japanese woman as you can."
Weber sat on the hard chair, gripping the briefcase handle.
He lowered his head, hiding the shock in his eyes.
Cleared of suspicion. Given official authorization. Legal contact with Western capital.
All of it, exactly as that girl had planned. The timing was surgical. She had calculated the interrogation, the East German bureaucrats' wounded pride, and their desperate thirst for hard currency.
"I understand," he said, standing. His voice was still hoarse.
"I'll do my best."
"Go home, Doctor. The factory will send a car for you tomorrow," the officer said, waving a hand.
Weber picked up his briefcase, turned, and walked to the iron door.
When he stepped out of the gray building, night had fallen completely.
East Berlin's night was bone-cold. The lignite smell was stronger than in daylight. Streetlights were dim. A few old Trabants sputtered past on potholed roads, exhaust coughing blue-white smoke.
Weber stood in the wind and took a deep breath.
He reached into his right pocket.
His fingertips found a thin slip of paper. A Swiss bank account number. And a promise that would change his life.
He looked back at the gray building.
Suspect to official envoy in under an hour.
He looked up at the black sky.
Searchlights from the Berlin Wall swept slowly across low clouds, cutting pale tracks through the dark. Wind moved through the empty square, pushing an old newspaper across the cobblestones with a dry rustle.
He was safe… for now.