He held up his hands again. "Ten thousand mark, yes. I pay." To show he was serious, he displayed a sheaf of hundred-mark notes. He tucked one in the soldier's pocket. "I wait one hour."

"I come back here, one hour." The soldier left the area rapidly. Keitel walked into the nearest Gasthaus and ordered a beer.

"If this were any easier," he observed to a colleague, "I'd say it was a trap."

"You heard about the tank?"

"The T-80, yes, why?"

"Willi Heydrich did that for the Americans."

"Willi?" Keitel shook his head. "What was his fee?"

"Five hundred thousand D-Mark. Damned-fool Americans. Anyone could have set that up."

"But they didn't know that at the time." The man laughed bleakly. DMs 80,000 had been enough to set the former Oberst-Leutnant Wilhelm Heydrich up in a business - a Gasthaus like this one - which made for a much better living than he'd ever gotten from the Stasi. Heydrich had been one of Keitel's most promising subordinates, and now he had sold out, quit his career, turned his back on his political heritage, and turned into one more new-German citizen. His intelligence training had merely served as a vehicle, to take one last measure of spite out on the Americans.

"What about the Russian?"

"The one who made the deal? Ha!" the man snorted. "Two million marks. He undoubtedly paid off the division commander, got his Mercedes, and banked the rest. That unit rotated back to the Union soon thereafter, and one tank more or less from a division - The inspectorate might not even have noticed."

They had one more round, while watching the TV over the bar - a disgusting habit picked up from the Americans, Keitel thought. When forty minutes had passed, he went back outside, with his colleague in visual contact. It might be a trap, after all.

The Russian sergeant was back early. He wasn't carrying anything but a smile.

"Where is it?" Keitel asked.

"Truck, around " the man gestured.

"Eckel Corner?"

"Eckel, that word, corner. Um die Ecke." The man nodded emphatically.

Keitel waved to the other man, who went to get the car. Erwin wanted to ask the soldier how much of the money was going to his lieutenant, who typically skimmed a sizable percentage of every deal for their own use, but that really was beside the point, wasn't it?

The Soviet Army GAZ-69 light truck was parked a block away. It was a simple matter of backing up the agent's car to the tailgate and popping the trunk. But first, of course, Keitel had to inspect the merchandise. There were ten camouflage battle-dress uniforms, lightweight, but of better than normal quality, because these were for officers' use. Headwear was a black beret with the red star and rather antique-looking tank badge that showed them to be for an armor officer. The shoulder boards of each uniform had the three stars of a full colonel. Also included were the uniform belts and boots.