Code Peking Duck

Max Claro learned and practiced more than ten professions, garnering experience in all of them. Among other occupations, he has worked as a postman, sleeping-car conductor, nurse, paramedic, journalist, and helicopter pilot. In the 1970s and 1980s, Claro worked for the CIA and the German Foreign Intelligence Service in the former Eastern Bloc countries as well as in the Middle East and Central America, generally using one of his occupations to go undercover.

Contents
Prologue
1. Motherly Love
2. Uncle Sam Wants You!
3. The Longest Day
4. An Unwilling Agent
5. A Cry for Help—from Teheran
6. Shots Fired in Istanbul
7. Death in the Sleeping Car
8. Code Peking Duck
9. The Oil Minister
10. German Hostages in Bushehr
11. All Power to the People!
12. The Biggest Coup
13. How Everything Turned Out
Glossary

Today, in the era of Julian Paul Assange and Edward Joseph Snowden—two men whose activities have cost the lives of countless unnamed agents and caused many more to forfeit their freedom—nothing could motivate me to reenter the world of the intelligence community. All the same: I regret nothing. And I would do it all again, exactly as before. Everything I did, I reconciled with my conscience. Even today, I’m occasionally agonized by uncertainty about whether—as a result or consequence of my actions—people might have come into harm’s way. But to the extent that any human being’s life can even be offset against that of another, one thing is certain: I saved far more lives—lives that were confronted with the utmost peril—than I ever jeopardized or destroyed. The events in this novel took place between 1971 and 1979. They are based on true occurrences. In the Vietnam War, a proxy war among three superpowers—the United States, the Soviet Union and China—millions of people lost their lives. The Vietnam conflict ended in 1975 with the victory of the Communist Viet Cong. Mohammed Zahir Shah peaceably ruled the Kingdom of Afghanistan for nearly forty years, until 1973. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi autocratically ruled Persia—Iran—until he was expelled by his people in January 1979. A month later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini installed the regime of the mullahs and proclaimed the Islamic Republic of Iran on 1 April 1979. At this time, a Siemens subsidiary, Kraftwerk Union AG, had been constructing a nuclear power plant in Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf. Block 1 was 85% complete; Block 2 was half finished. In those days, things were different than they are today; some were simpler, others more difficult. It was commonplace and legal for companies to bribe foreign politicians and to deduct the bribe payments from their taxes. You could still take fluids, scissors, and knives aboard commercial airliners, and smoking during the flight was allowed. The digital age still lay in the distant future. We had neither the internet nor emails, nor cellphones, apps, GPS, nor DNA analysis. From a technological perspective, video surveillance of train stations, airports, border crossings, public spaces, and dwellings was no more feasible than a worldwide data exchange. Cameras still had to be loaded with emulsion film; the most popular spy camera was the Minox C, a masterpiece of German engineering. It was an easy matter to forge passports by swapping the photographs and making the official seal look genuine using a hand-cut rubber stamp. In most countries, including Germany and the United States, a caller’s telephone number was never displayed, and you could place anonymous phone calls from any telephone booth. As for the calls themselves, it was a breeze to eavesdrop on them using swapped-out mouthpiece microphones or induction coils, or by tapping the lines. Vehicles, regardless of make, manufacturer, and size, could be easily repaired, manipulated, and hotwired using simple tools. Door locks could be opened with a master key, and safety locks could be picked using two staples or hairpins. The most greatly feared alarm system was a dog. The Cold War prevailed between the Western powers, led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union. The Iron Curtain, as Churchill famously called it, divided Germany and separated the West from the Soviet Union and its satellite Eastern Bloc countries—Poland, Czechoslovakia (then a single country), Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Citizens of the Western powers were allowed to travel to the Eastern Bloc, but citizens of the latter were not permitted to travel to the West. Borders were secured with live ammunition and appeared simply impenetrable. Nevertheless, thousands of people succeeded, for political, personal, or economic reasons, in fleeing to the West. Assisting and aiding escapes proved a lucrative business. Intelligence services also participated in it, primarily whenever they were able to extract strategic, scientific, or technological know-how from the opposing side. This might happen, for instance, if a highly decorated general or a brilliant nuclear scientist were to switch sides, or if the life of one’s own agents operating on hostile territory was in jeopardy. Nowadays, borders are open; hence, a virus was able to rapidly spread worldwide, claiming many times more victims in the first year of the pandemic than did the Iron Curtain in the several decades of its existence. © HELLER VERLAG / HELLER PUBLISHING Co.

Yet I had passed the exam, and with it, I obtained the official license to lie, cheat, steal, and kill. Only one thing, under any circumstances, was strictly forbidden: getting caught! If that happened, the license I had labored so mightily to earn would be forfeited immediately, and every agency would disavow any knowledge of my mission—or of me. CIA Director Richard Helms made a brief farewell speech ... © HELLER VERLAG / HELLER PUBLISHING Co.