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Story Notes:
Klaus goes under deep cover on a mission in central Africa.

PREFACE

–Africa? I can’t spare a senior officer for a long-term mission in Africa! We’re under pressure here as it is.”

–May I remind you that this mission is a joint operation? Under the terms of our inter-agency agreement, you’re obliged to provide us with resources.”

The Chief sat stewing silently. Why should the CIA, with their bloated budget and seemingly unlimited resources, expect him to lend them his personnel? Outrageous! He wished he could refuse, tell the CIA where to go.


To Hell with joint operations.

–All right, then,” he said aloud. –You’ll get your man. Experienced, good judgement, hard negotiator - that’s what you said you wanted, isn’t it? He’ll be in Bora Nafasi in five days.”

He ended the call, and buzzed his secretary. –Get von dem Eberbach up here, will you?”






CHAPTER ONE

The alarm clock on the bedside cabinet shrilled. The bed’s occupant was already awake, lying on his back watching the ceiling fan turn slowly. Although the sun still lay low above the eastern horizon, the temperature was already oppressive. Small wonder life crawled along at a lazy pace here.

Klaus rose from bed and went automatically through his morning routine. The shower’s cool water refreshed him a little, in the way sleep hadn’t. Padding out into the kitchen on bare feet, he poured a long glass of water and set the coffee to brew on the stove top.

In the corner, the kerosene-powered refrigerator gurgled and groaned. He’d have to service it again soon. No point waiting for the company’s odd-jobs man to come around to do it - you’d wait forever for jobs to get done if you didn’t do them yourself. Bloody fridge didn’t work effectively in this climate anyway. Just like most people here. H’mph.

The calendar on the wall caught his eye. It was the first of the month. He’d been here six months.

Six months without decent German food. Without decent German efficiency, too. Bloody place. At least you could get German beer at the social club bar, and their fridges worked better than his own. Like everyone else living here in the West Equatorial Mining and Exploration Company compound, Klaus had learned to value whatever small slivers of the familiar he could find.

The previous day’s mail delivery lay on the table. He picked up the envelope on top: Herr Volker Berendt, West Equatorial Mining and Exploration, Central Road, Bora Nafasi, Democratic Republic of Husuni.

He’d gotten used to this chameleon existence long ago: the ability to become another person living another life, for as long as a mission lasted; to create a new truth, and to deny other truths. Pretence and denial: a way of life. ‘Volker Berendt’ had become real to him; ‘Klaus von dem Eberbach’ had receded into the background, like an old overcoat hanging up in the backmost part of the closet, waiting for the day that identity was needed again.

To tell the truth, he’d been glad to leave Klaus von dem Eberbach behind in Bonn for a while. The other layers of pretence and denial he’d built up around his private life had started to wear thin.

Things had begun to go wrong when that damned thief started to show up on his missions. Eroica, Prince of Thieves - that’s how the man liked to see himself. The first couple of times, Klaus had put it down to coincidence, but after that, it was plain enough that he was being stalked.

One of the things that nettled Klaus about Eroica was that the thief seemed to be able to see through the protective shields he’d built around his own life. But he’d kept up the performance expected of him: Iron Klaus - straightforward, and straight.

Klaus was glad to be out of Eroica’s reach. He’d always told his men to avoid distractions, to be alert to things that could compromise them. –If it can distract you, it can kill you; or if it doesn’t kill you, someone can use it against you,” he’d always said. That had been his own creed for years. Eroica was a distraction. A distraction of a kind Klaus could never let on to anyone - couldn’t allow anyone to see.

A long mission under deep cover meant being able to get away from all that. The fop wouldn’t know where he was, and wouldn’t be able to find out. A joint CIA-NATO operation with a highly sensitive objective, the mission was being kept under wraps. Very few people in NATO knew about it. Klaus’s own men didn’t know where he was. If the worst happened, and he didn’t make it home, Klaus’s death wouldn’t be recorded and his last mission would never be acknowledged. Here in Husuni, he was safe from Eroica - safe from the temptation Eroica represented - and, unless he made it home, as good as dead to everyone who knew him back in Bonn.

Klaus poured a mugful of steaming black coffee, and sat down at the end of the table where a cooling draft drifted in through the flyscreen door.





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