A Despicable Profession (13 page)

Ambrose asked why not.

“The members of the four power
Kommandatura
that runs Berlin are required to report the capture of all fugitive Nazi officials. Our Soviet friends neglected to mention they nabbed Hilde. However, if they catch you boys nosing around, shooting snaps in a denied area you'll make the front page of
Izvestia.
And the headline will read ‘Yank sappers plot munitions blast' or somesuch.”

“So we can't spy on the Russians,” said Ambrose. “And poor old MANTIS can't round up any new recruits till he knows who the rat is and
we
can't figure out who the rat is cuz MANTIS can't round up any new recruits to get knocked off so we know if we already
have
the rat. I got that right?”

“You got that right Ambrose. Mostly,” said Jacobson. “The thing you need to understand is that spying on an enemy is simple. You get caught, you get executed. But spying on an ally is complicated. It's the reason we use émigrés.”

“So what do we
do
?”

Jacobson dredged up a weary smile. “I'm working on that. Now leave me the hell alone.”

Again with the abrupt dismissal. When was I supposed to say my long- winded piece about Herr Hilde, Col. Norwood and so forth? I puckered up my lips to speak.

“Henka's making potato dumplings in the kitchen,” said the CO. We tumbled out the door.

They were succulent. The potato dumplings. And that's what we did. Suck them down, pork broth running down our chins. I
had ideas about our next move. Could be my quick study Irish chum did too. First thing's first however. Making post-war Europe safe for democracy was an important undertaking, no question. But a distant second to inhaling a bowl of Henka the Polish cook's hot and buttery homemade dumplings.

-----

I waited until we returned to our apartment to say my piece about Hilde. We parked the delivery truck near Heidelberg Platz at dusk. Spring had finally sprung. People were out in shirt sleeves, the makeshift refugee camp on the grassy plaza teemed with squealing kids, half-starved women watching them with arms akimbo. One of them likely a former tenant of our apartment. I chose not to think about it.

Ambrose and I climbed three flights and settled in to the mildewed sofa in the living room with a bottle of French brandy we had bought for a dollar. We gazed out the window, at the play next door. That's what it looked like. The top floor apartment, the one with the sheared off outer wall, had people in it. Electric lights too. Sonofabitch.

It wasn't much of a play, an elderly couple sitting in the parlor, he reading a book, she darning socks. Every once in a while she would say something and he would nod.

“You seen them before?” asked Ambrose.

“No, never.”

“I bet I know.”

“Let's hear it Einstein.”

“They've lived there forever. Look how the old man fits that chair, like he was born in it. But winter comes, it's too cold with the open wall, they leave. Weather gets warm, they come back.”

I raised my plastic glass of brandy. “To Ambrose Mooney. To his sharp mind, his keen eye and his big mouth.”

We drank, deeply. I prepared to say my piece, Ambrose watched the old couple next door.

“Maybe they have a couple of daughters. Buxom daughters with blonde hair.”

“Sure. Probably kootch dancers who come by so Mama can stitch up their flimsy costumes.”

“You think?”

Ambrose was obviously in no condition to hear my well-reasoned analysis of the complex interconnections between our cast of suspicious characters. Another brandy and I wouldn't be in any condition to deliver it. Ambrose would like my conclusion however.

“We need to go back to the chalet on
Ernststraße.
Tonight. Any questions?”

“I got time to wash up?”

-----

I drove the obstacle course that was the Berlin street grid, Ambrose rode shotgun. Berliners were out in droves, taking the air in twos and threes. I said my long-winded piece to myself.

Klaus Hilde said something that stuck with me, something that called up a picture I had seen. The something he said was, ‘I was not a true believer.' The picture it called up was Joseph and Magda Goebbels' children - five girls, one boy - laid out in a row, dressed in white as if for First Communion, poisoned by their mother in the
Fuhrerbunker.
An act of mercy in her mind, sparing her children the misery of life without Hitler.

That's the way true believers think. True believers don't negotiate, true believers don't save secret documents just in case. Herr Hilde was no true believer, just as he said. Someone else had condemned a host of White Russian freedom fighters to their grisly deaths.

That was my opinion anyway. That was why we were taking a right turn on
Ernststraße,
or trying to. A city bus had stopped at the corner. A dozen soldiers piled out, tripping over themselves to get to the Colonel's bordello.

“She's not like the girls back home. She's been to Paris and knows about art and sculptures and shit like that.”

“Who's that?” I asked, as if I didn't know.

“Eva!”

“Is that so?”

“And she can cook. French.”

We watched the uniformed GIs, Tommys and Ivans troop across the street, pushing and shoving. Eva was going to be doing a lot of French cooking this evening. I parked the truck down the block. We walked back.

“You need any help up there?” said Ambrose, hiking a thumb at the Colonel's chalet.

“Nah,” I said, indicating the brothel in back. “You?”

Ambrose winked. “I think I can handle it.” Then he said something stupid. Poozle stoopid. “Somebody has to look after her.”

And off he went, head down, determined to defend the virtue of a harlot.

“Stay out of trouble!”

Ambrose answered with a wave of his hand.

The string of Chinese lanterns on Col. Norwood's chalet was unlit. I couldn't tell about the lights upstairs, the curtains were drawn. Had the Colonel retired for the evening? It was only... well, I didn't know what the hell time it was but it wasn't late.

I went to the front door and pulled the bell knocker. No answer. Norwood was probably out on the town. I pulled the clapper again and waited. And again. I took first prize once in my parish fund drive, selling candy bars door to door. I'm not easily discouraged.

Heavy footfalls on the stairs. An eyeball through the peephole. I grinned a cheesy grin. The door swung open.

Sedgewick was disheveled, ruddy-faced. “The Colonel,” he snarled with jagged teeth, “is indisposed.”

I've never been clear on what that word means. Ill? In a foul mood? On the crapper? “Sorry to hear that. I...”

“Who's
there
?” said the familiar voice from the top of the stairs.

“It's Hal Schroeder, Colonel. I have news but I can come back another time.”

“No, no, come up, dear boy, come up.”

I followed Sedgewick up the steep staircase. The Colonel had gone away. Sedgewick turned on his heel and went to the kitchen. I remained at the top of the staircase, an unclaimed parcel. I heard a toilet flush.

The Colonel appeared and greeted me in a paisley dressing gown and slippers that curled at the toe. His complexion matched his robe, swirls of pink and purple. Maybe indisposed was British for swacked.

Norwood indicated the chesterfield, the one draped with Chinese silk. We went there and sat down and looked at one another. The Colonel had washed his face and wet combed his hair. The room was very warm.

“How do you feel about Absinthe?” he said, reaching for a crystal decanter on the coffee table. “They say it drove a generation of French poets mad.”

“Then it wasn't a long drive, was it?”

It was a half-assed quip by a guy who couldn't name a French poet with a gun to his head. But Norwood laughed as if I were the second coming of Oscar Wilde. He lit his pipe. It wasn't any pipe tobacco I was familiar with.

“I hear you have captured your much-coveted fugitive.”

“That's true. With help from one of your ladies.”

“Aren't they the dearest things?”

I nodded. “I was just curious why you hadn't asked her the question yourself.”

“Whomever said I didn't?”

“Well, if you did ask your ladies about Klaus Hilde and one of them said that he...”

I gave up on my question. Norwood's dancing eyebrows told me I wasn't going to get a straight answer. But there was another question, a more important question I wanted to ask when the time was right. Soon. Before the Colonel placed his hand on my knee and I snapped his thumb. I looked at the tall glass of regret that Norwood had poured me. Absinthe, licorice in a glass. I took a pull and covered my wince with a tight-lipped smile.

“Feeling poetic, are you?” grinned Norwood.

“Not particularly.”

“Then have another.”

I drained the glass and rattled off a dirty limerick. The Colonel thought that terribly amusing. It went that way for half a bottle. Norwood thought he was getting me drunk but I'd done a
lot of barstool training the last few months. He refilled my glass and scooted closer. I let him. Now was the time.

“I'm grateful to you Colonel, rescuing us and all. I feel the need to show my gratitude.” Norwood liked that. He didn't like my clarification. “Especially my gratitude to the young lady who tipped you to our bigmouthed Gestapo Captain. I'd like to buy her a dozen roses.”

I needed to know if there was any such lady. If not Norwood had learned of our sorry plight elsewhere, from the NKVD or Herr Hilde. Or the CO or Leonid or Eva or MANTIS for all I knew. Berlin's fluid network of allegiances made me pine for the clarity of war.

Norwood leaned in. “And what of the brave Colonel who saved your bacon? What does he get?”

I didn't flinch, didn't rear back, just met his gaze and said, “A hearty hand clasp.”

Norwood made with his jolly laugh and sat back. Sedgewick was in the kitchen, washing dishes, loudly.

“Just having you off, dear boy. I'll see that the young lady is properly thanked.”

“I'd rather do it myself.”

“I understand, but we discourage gifts to the ladies. Stirs up jealousies.”

“I could meet with her someplace else.”

“Ah yes, but don't you see? She would just
have
to tell the other girls how the handsome young hero presented her with a beautiful bouquet.”

Norwood was good, his made-up excuses made sense. I swabbed my forehead with my handkerchief and belched. Norwood thought me a shitfaced rube. Let him. There are three phases of drunkenness. I was only at phase one. Relaxation. I wanted to move on to phase two. Revelation. And I wanted the Colonel along for the ride.

I poured the rest of the decanter into two glasses and proposed a bottoms up toast. “To the eternal friendship of the Brits and Yanks.”

We drank up. Why is it Europeans crave sugary booze? Hadn't they suffered enough? I chased this thought around my brain box for a minute or three.

Hey. Schroeder. You'd better get this done before you leap ahead to phase three. Regurgitation.

“Colonel, I'm all confused, just plain...bumfuzzled about Klaus Hilde.”

“How so?”

“He claims he's a Clean Gene but Jacobson suspects he's the finger man, guy who peached out our White Russians and...and...those other guys we use.”

“Ukrainians.”

“Yeah. Them. Hilde says he couldn't have been the rat cuz he's been in a hidey-hole for a year and how's he gonna know?”

“Know what?” said the Colonel.

“Where the White Russians are hangin' their hats!”

I sighed. I hung my head. The Absinthe was burning a hole in my gut and the clanking heat made me woozy. TS. I would stay until Norwood took the bait.

The Colonel set his pipe down on its gnarled wooden holder and steepled his fingers. “You say Klaus Hilde claims to have lived in Berlin since the end of the war. Do I have that right?”

“Yes sir.”

“Which would mean he was here from May to July when the Red Army had the run of the place, when they were dragging any Nazi they could find into the streets and executing them - soldiers, government clerks, young boys from the Home Guard. Yet Klaus Hilde, a German General, second in command of the Abwehr, survived?”

“You're sayin' Hilde's been in bed with the Rooskies the whole time?”

“I'm saying,” said the Colonel, leaning on the g, “that Herr Hilde has either been very fortunate or very accommodating.”

Well, crap. I had expected Norwood to point the finger at Hilde to deflect suspicion from himself. I hadn't expected his accusation to make so much sense.

“Then riddle me this Colonel. If Hilde's their boy, bought and paid for, why does he take off down the Rat Line?”

C'mon, you smug bastard, do your part! Say it was all a ruse to snooker us into believing him so Hilde could feed bad intel to Pentagon desk jockeys and State Department cookie pushers for the next ten years.

The Colonel shrugged, flicked his gold Ronson and lit his pipe. I took this to mean that there were any number of reasons for Herr Hilde to flee the NKVD and it was up to me to determine the right one. Christ Almighty. I was reading deep meaning into shrugs and pipe lightings, a bad sign. I hadn't gathered anything worth a damn and I was just this side of regurgitation. Time to go.

In a minute. One more try. I couldn't very well ask Norwood if he was a Commie but I might tease out a statement of his sympathies before I covered my shoes in puke.

“You said the Brits were defeated in victory, defeated by victory, somethin' like that. Makes no sense when you think about it but us too. And we won the damn war!”

I looked over to see Norwood's eyes at half mast. I spoke louder.