A Despicable Profession (20 page)

Good. I wouldn't have to stand up and make a fool of myself. I'm a spy. We do our best work offstage. And if you think I'm lousy at adlibs you oughtta hear me give a speech.

This was wishful thinking, of course. I had come here to sabotage Leonid with his handlers. That required getting up on my hind legs and addressing the group.

The charter members droned on about multiparty coalitions of coagulating interests, best I could make out. When the
chairman thanked the last speaker and asked if there were any questions I got my feet organized underneath me and stood up.

I introduced myself as a reporter for Stars'n'Stripes interested in doing a story on the Committee to Free Berlin.

Glacial silence.

I said I was a German-American who had fought against the Nazis, said I wanted to see the land of my ancestors return to the democratic ideals of the Weimar republic.

Pin drop silence.

I said I wanted to tell their story, said I was interested in interviewing any and all members of the Committee and their supporters.

The Chairman banged his gavel. Show over. The actors left the stage, the audience streamed toward the exits. I stood and watched them go. Herr Hilde's intel was accurate. This was a group no longer open to outsiders.

I returned to my aisle seat and waited, confidently. I had played my part. The NKVD had heard me. They would come calling, on orders from Major Leonid Vitinov.

No one showed.

I got up and walked toward the lobby. How was I supposed to sabotage Leonid with his handlers if I didn't get to speak to them? Had Leonid outthunk me on this? The CO dispatched me to the Committee meeting to see if Herr Hilde's allegations against it were true. Leonid heard him. Therefore, ergo, ipso facto, Leonid would dispatch one of the NKVD infiltrators to give me a face to face regarding pertinent circumstances.

Unless I was wrong about the Committee. Unless Hilde was the lying sack, not Leonid. No, Leonid was definitely a lying sack. Which didn't mean that Hilde wasn't also. Christ.

I pushed open the door to the lobby. A blond man about thirty held it open for me. He looked more like a boy scout than a Blue Cap. He needed a knife scar across those apple cheeks maybe, more squinty calculation in those bright blue eyes.

“I wanted to apologize to you on behalf of the members of the Committee,” he said in English. English with a German accent.

“Why is that?”

The man released the door and walked with me toward the exit. “My name is Gerhard Dunkel. I am a founding member.”

“Good for you,” I said and kept walking.

“We have charted a noble, yet dangerous, course.”

“Yes you have.”

“The members of the Committee are shy about publicity.”

I stood still and looked around at the gaudy Art Deco lobby of the biggest theater I had ever seen. “Hell of a spot to turn bashful.”

Gerhard's eyes followed mine. He waxed nostalgic. “I saw a show here one time, in '34. My 21
^st
birthday. It was a revue.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Naked ladies.”

“What fun.”

Maybe this guy really was German. He sure looked it. A Kraut Blue Cap? How did that work? I asked a question.

“What was it about, the Revue? Who was in it?”

Gerhard shrugged. “It was a long time ago.” I resumed walking. “If you would like I can arrange a private meeting with some of our members.”

A man in a custodian's uniform pulled a janitor's cart on the other side of the lobby, emptying ashtrays that didn't need emptying.

“That won't be necessary. And you don't have to apologize. I expected a cool reception.”

“Why is that?”

I reached the exit door and put my hand on the push bar. It budged. I would be able to drop my bomb and blow.

“Because, Gerhard, I have heard that the Committee to Free Berlin is a Communist front organization.” I stood toe to toe. “Any truth to that?”

“Of course not! Who would say such a lie?”

“I wonder.”

The blond man's breath came in little gasps. He was all kinds of upset.

“I know what you're thinking Gerhard. If I believe that why didn't I say so? Why didn't I stand up like a man and make my accusation to the group?”

“Yes indeed! Why did you not?”

I pushed open the panic bar, felt cool spring air on my face. The custodian wheeled his cart in my direction. Time for my exit line.

“Call it a professional courtesy. Comrade.”

I walked out the door and beat feet. No one followed.

Spirited back-patting propelled me down the sidewalk for about two blocks. I had done what I came to do, with a touch of style if I do say so. Gerhard the phony Kraut would now tell his NKVD superiors that Leonid wasn't doing what he was paid to do – debunk and defang Herr Hilde's intelligence. Gerhard would do this right away.

And he wouldn't risk a phone call.

Crap on toast, Schroeder. The man can lead you right to the target, right to the top secret NKVD hideout where Ambrose, for all you know, is being held in chains. Tail him!

I ran the two blocks to the delivery truck, kicking myself all the way. I jumped in and drove back to the theater.

der Admiralspalast
had an underground parking garage, the exit next to the front door. I parked half a block shy and watched and waited. I waited and hoped and waited some more.

God did not smile. Gerhard was already gone. I had screwed up.

I told myself all was not lost. I told myself that so long as we had Leonid we had a way to find Ambrose and set him free. I told myself all kinds of crap, even believed some of it.

I drove south down
Friedrichstraße
and fought back urges. The urge to get stinking drunk. The urge to blast my way into the pearl gray apartment building, kick the door to Leonid's
apartment and beat him to a clotted pulp. These were good solid All American urges, don't get me wrong. But they would have to wait. I had a late night date with a coal bin.

The coal chute was shut tight. It didn't have a handle or any way short of a crowbar to pry it open. And there's never a crowbar around when you need one.

I was huddled in the dark alley north of Leonid and Anna's apartment building, unfollowed and unobserved, best I could tell. I groped around for a lock cylinder, found it on the side of the chute cover. A crude contraption fit for a skeleton key. The coal chute was locked, not sealed. I whipped out my folding knife and poked and prodded. It was the simplest lock imaginable and it took me a sweaty ten minutes and a busted blade tip to tumble it.

I opened the cover slowly. It creaked. It creaked like Dracula's coffin lid.

I listened for approaching footsteps, heard none. I studied the coal chute in the moonlit dim. It was narrow and it didn't plunge straight down. The chute had a bend in it. A twist. Like everything else in this town.

I weighed my options. It had to be after midnight by now. No one had come running at the sound of the creaky cover. Odds were slim that the front and back doors of the building were still under active surveillance.

Tough shit. The chute was big enough to accommodate me, provided I stripped down and covered myself with hog grease. Jimmying my way in the front or back entailed an extra measure of risk. Not just to me, the hell with me. The risk was to Ambrose. And to whatever noble half-baked enterprise we were embarked on here in post-war Berlin.

I shrugged off my new coat and stuffed it down the coal chute. I braced myself with my right hand and held the chute
cover with my left as I stuck my legs inside and questioned my sanity. I pushed off with my right hand and swung the cover shut with my left as I plunged downward.

I made it through the bend in the chute with a great deal of wriggling and muffled curses, then dropped like a rock into an empty coal bin. My topcoat cushioned the fall. Sort of. The chute cover was creaky because no one used it. The apartment building on
Spirchenstraße,
I noted as I climbed out of the coal bin, slowly, in stages, had acquired a shiny new gas furnace.

I shook the coal dust from my coat and searched out a utility sink. I was gritty as a ranch hand and wanted to wash up. Which risked the groan of old pipes. I had made enough racket for one evening. I found an empty crate, turned it over and sat there all night long.

I killed time by asking myself questions for which I had no answers. How to talk my way into apartment K this time? How to determine if Anna was a co-conspirator? If she wasn't a co-conspirator how to convince her to give me something tangible to prove to the CO that Leonid was dirty? And, if she did that, how to give her a way to flee and where to?

Shit, what a tangle. I looked on the bright side. If Anna refused to open the door I was free to drive back to Dahlem, drag Leonid into the bathroom and shove his head in the toilet.

A pleasant prospect.

But not one worthy of Wild Bill Donovan's fair-haired boy. Wild Bill's fair-haired boy was expected to find a way to rescue Ambrose while exposing the perfidy of Leonid and the Committee to Free Berlin, thereby keeping the Soviet tank divisions that were supposedly gunning their engines on the eastern banks of the Elbe from shifting into gear and starting World War III.

How was that fair?

When the local bell tower tolled nine a.m. I washed up in the sink, dried my hands on the seat of my pants, waited another precautionary half hour then started up the basement steps. I
listened at the door at the top of the stairs. It wouldn't do to step out just as Leonid strode through the lobby, late for work.

Nothing to hear. I stepped into the lobby. The coast was clear. I hurried to the rear fire stairs and started climbing.

My late night noodling had yielded one nugget. Leonid knew, from monitoring our conversation, that Ambrose and I would pay a visit to his apartment while he was away at work. He would not have needed to inform Anna of this, not needed her to invite me in for tea. He would have known I'd post Ambrose as a street sentry, known his goons could snatch Ambrose before I made it halfway across the lobby. Anna was not necessarily a co-conspirator.

I walked down the corridor to apartment K, passing the open door to the apartment next door. I heard a small dog yapping.

Keep it up, Fido, give me cover. Yap your fool head off till I talk my way into the apartment.

Fido did. He caught my scent and chased me all the way down the hall, yapping his fool head off. He was one of those fluffy rich-lady dogs. I shushed him as I knocked on the door to apartment K. He didn't pay the least attention.

I carried all the gear that the well-trained espionage agent is supposed to carry – counterfeit credentials, a gun, a folding knife, lock picks, a pen light. I even had an L pill stashed in my wallet somewhere. But my spy school instructor had never said anything about dog biscuits.

I squatted down and made nice. “Hey there, buddy, what's all the fuss?”

Fido's yapping intensified. I tried Deutsch.
“Hallo, Kumpel, Was soll die Aufregung
?”

No go. I grabbed for the little mutt's yapper but he jumped up, bit me right on the schnozz and didn't let go.

Man, that smarts. I had to employ top secret ju jitsu disabling techniques to persuade the little fiend to unlock his jaw. Then I reared back and heaved him down the hall.

This did not go unobserved. Fido's owner, a plump matron in a bathrobe and hairnet, shrieked in horror at the sight of her precious pooch tumbling ass-end over teakettles.

She tried to scoop him up but damned if the little fiend didn't scramble to his feet and race back down the hall for another go at me, his owner chasing frantically behind, her bathrobe becoming unhinged in the process.

A bloody Yank under attack by a rabid Pomeranian and a shrieking half-naked neighbor was the charming tableaux Anna beheld when she opened the door in her painting smock.

It wasn't a complete disaster. I wouldn't have to invent some clever reason for Anna to let me in. I only had to, as the little fiend tore at my ankles and his owner paused halfway down the hall to reassemble herself, turn to Anna, blood streaming down my chin, and say, drolly, “This is the last time I will ask to borrow your bathroom, I promise.”

Anna didn't say no. She didn't say anything. She was at a loss for words maybe. I entered her apartment. She bent down and spoke to the little fiend, sharply, in Russian.

He shut his yap.

Anna marched me to the bathroom matter-of-factly, pushing my chin up so I didn't drip on her nice clean floor. It worked. The blood from the puncture wounds in my nose sluiced behind my ears and down my neck and made my shirt wet.

She sat me down on the pot and swabbed me with gauze and isopropyl. There are few things in the life more pleasant that being ministered to by a beautiful woman, even one who was...
ouch...
ticked off.

“You haf brought me much trouble,” she said, clamping a compress to my beezer with a bit more force than absolutely necessary.

“I am very sorry Anna.” I sounded like Bugs Bunny. “And now, forgive me, I am here to bring you more trouble.”

She stood back and laughed at me, a pearly little trill in the back of her throat, pretty as birdsong. “You haf
more
trouble?”

“Yes I do.”

Anna left the bathroom and went to the parlor. I followed, holding the compress to my nose. Anna stared out the window and waited for me to say what I had to say. It was another odd moment between us. Domestic, familiar. Why didn't she just march me out?

“Anna I believe that Leonid had my partner Ambrose kidnapped, taken prisoner. Leonid did this while you and I shared cups of tea the other day.” She turned towards me. I mimed a cup, my pinky in the air. “Is there anything that you would like to tell me?”

Anna had a stark face, all planes and angles, nothing round. A Russian face. One seriously pissed off Russian face.