A Despicable Profession (12 page)

Ambrose lowered the right leg and started in on Hilde's left. The CO looked down upon the sweating and grimacing former
Abwehr
General. The OSS had used a number of creative interrogation techniques during the war but this had to be a first.

“Why are you still in Germany?” said Jacobson.

“I sent my family to Buenos Aires in '45. As you know.”

“Answer the question.”

Ambrose pushed back on Hilde's leg, hard. Hilde tried to roll over but the CO stepped on his hand. Hilde groaned, and talked in quick bursts.

“I had documents...Too many to transport...I reached out to you...I hid until my money was very small...I fled.”

“And what of all the White Russian agents that have died and disappeared since your capture, agents you worked with before war's end? Know anything about them?”

Ambrose pushed harder. Hilde shuddered and squirmed.

“I do not...My hosts never asked about them.”

“Why?”

“I can only speculate.”

“Do so,” said Leonid in his velvety baritone. Where the hell had he come from?

Jacobson removed his foot and told Ambrose to help Hilde up. Hilde dusted himself off and struggled to reclaim his dignity. He answered Leonid in clipped tones.

“Your White Russian agents are, after all,
Russian.
The Blue Caps know their identities. What they would want to know is their whereabouts at this time.”

“You had been in hiding and have no current information on their whereabouts,” said Leonid. “Is that your position?”

“It is not a position. It is the truth.”

The CO popped the question. “Where is your cache of documents now?”

“The Blue Caps have them.” Hilde tapped his head. “But I have a good memory.”

“If the Russians have them why are you still alive?”

“There are certain matters of interest that I did not commit to paper.”

“Such as?”

“Who gave me which document, and why.”

“We have a more immediate concern,” said Jacobson.

“I understand,” said Hilde.

“What can you tell me?”

“I will need a chair,” said Hilde, imperiously.

Ambrose dragged one over from the kitchen table. Hilde seated himself, stretched out his legs, straightened his trouser seams and rattled off all kinds of stuff. Stuff about Soviet military capabilities and orders of battle. He even claimed the Red Army had a well worked out plan for the seizure of all Germania, Operation LUNA, a plan they had been developing since late ‘44. He promised more details in return for an accommodation for himself and his family.

I stopped listening before he was done. This was all very important shit, but I was thinking about other things. Such as why Klaus Hilde was so easy to nab and so free with the very important shit.

It smelled. That Hilde said what we wanted to hear – Operation LUNA – made it smellier. A steaming pile of disinformation bought and paid for by the NKVD. Had to be.

And Col. Norwood? Well, there had been a lot of noise about Commies in MI6 but it was hard to figure. Norwood was an effete aristocrat with a degenerate lifestyle, a very unlikely Marxist. Of course in espionage to
seem
unlikely is entirely the point.

I asked a question when Hilde was done. “What happened to your guards?”

“I gave them a bottle when the young lady came to call.”

“That's all it took to make them go away? A bottle?”

Hilde eyeballed Leonid with a leer. “They are, after all, Russian.”

How Hilde knew Leonid was Russian I couldn't say. The little man's accent wouldn't raise an eyebrow in Omaha. But Hilde knew.

Leonid crossed to the kitchen sink and got himself a glass of water. He turned to face us and said, mildly, “There is a way to determine if Mr. Hilde is telling us the truth. A very simple way. If the extermination of our émigré agents ceases while he is in our custody we will have our answer.”

Herr Hilde's smug leer lost altitude.

So. Here we were again. At the starting line, feet in the chocks, legs cocked. Ready. Set. Wait.

“We have to act as if everything Klaus Hilde told us is true,” said Victor Jacobson to Ambrose and me.

We were seated in the parlor of the white brick mansion enjoying snifters of cognac and a roaring fire. Herr Hilde was cuffed to a bedpost upstairs, Leonid had gone home and poor Eva was still waiting in the truck.

Jacobson continued. “We can't wait to see if Hilde's the one fingering our White Russians, not after what he said about Operation LUNA.”

“So what do we
do?”
said Ambrose.

The CO addressed himself to me. “Contact the leader of our network, code name MANTIS. We have a twice weekly blind drop, next one tomorrow, 1100 hours. If he's still alive he'll collect this note, instructing him to meet you at the
Lustgarten
at noon.”

The CO handed me the sealed note along with a diagram of where to place it. A loose flagstone behind a bench in the City Hall plaza. He gave us an ask and answer code.

“What do we want to know?”

“Damage assessment, what is left of the network. Any new thoughts on the identity of the snitch. And any signs of mobilization by the Red Army. Anything at all.”

“What about this Hilde fella?” said Ambrose. “We know anything about him?”

“No,” said the CO and stood up.

Ambrose and I gulped our brandies. Jacobson escorted us to the door. I considered confiding my suspicions about Col. Norwood to the CO but I didn't have anything nailed down. Besides, the door was already closed behind us.

-----

Ambrose and I drove to the
Rathaus
the next morning. The snow had turned to slush and a daylight moon followed us down the street. Must have been earlier than I figured. We needed to get a damn clock.

I parked a block away and we walked back to the City Hall. Yes,
Rathaus
is German for City Hall,
Fahrt
means journey and a
Schmuck Galerie
is a jewelry store. What can I tell you, it's a goofy language.

We hunted up the loose flagstone behind the park bench, I slipped the note underneath when no one was watching. Ambrose asked what we were doing here.

“We're here to contact MANTIS.”

“You sure about that Chief?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, did the old man chew you out? For going after Hilde without his OK?”

“He never mentioned it.”

“Why?”

“Because we tossed him the most sought after fugitive in Europe'd be my guess.”

“And one upped him pretty good. I don't know much, but I know that big shots don't like getting shown up by little shits like us.”

“And you're thinking that Jacobson set us up here?”

“You're the spy Schroeder,” said Ambrose, gesturing at the
Rathaus
plaza crowded with pedestrians and bicyclists. “This look right to you?”

I assured the goddamn bright-eyed Mick that Victor Jacobson would never sell us out. He took my word for it. But he was right about one thing.

A dead drop is supposed to take place in an out-of-the-way place where it can be deposited and retrieved in secret. A brush drop, where both parties know the appointed time and place, is usually conducted in a public place so both parties can enjoy the
relative security of a crowd. The CO needed a spy school refresher course. This was a dead drop in a very public place.

-----

The
Lustgarten
sat in the shadow of the blackened Berlin Cathedral. It was more of a parade ground than a park but it did have benches. A bell tower tolled the noon hour. We waited. And, no,
Lust
isn't lust. It's joy, delight. Same diff, Ambrose would say.

I was beginning to think MANTIS was another casualty of the NKVD when he strode purposefully towards our appointed bench. It was our guy, had to be. Broad shoulders above a gaunt frame, wild haunted eyes, long gray hair spilling down a long dark cloak, a bright purple scar on his forehead. A deposed count, or a cavalry officer sporting an old saber wound. He was as hard to miss as a house fire.

“That him?” whispered Ambrose.

“I dunno.”

The man blew by us without a look. Our instructions were to wait until contacted. We waited. An old man with a black watch cap pulled down over his ears sat down on the bench a couple minutes later and crossed his legs.

“Would you know the time of day?” he said in an asthmatic wheeze.

“My wristwatch was stolen in Dusseldorf”

MANTIS stood up. “Let's walk.”

He was a nimble old gent, poling himself along the parade ground on his cane. Ambrose and I had to lengthen our strides to keep pace. He answered my questions before I asked them.

“Our network is a ruin...Those still alive have fled west...or burrowed deep...I cannot say and do not know...the identity of our traitor...It matters little...I am all that remains.”

He stopped and gulped air and gave us a dour look with rheumy eyes. I felt oafish, a well-fed American who doesn't know how good he's got it.

“The tree of freedom...is watered by the blood of martyrs,” croaked the old man bitterly, reciting the popular Communist slogan. He poled on. We followed.

“You will want battle plans...something is afoot.” We covered ten yards before I realized he was waiting for the question.

“How do you know?” We covered another ten yards before he answered.

“My military sources...were the first to die.”

“Do you know the plans? Is the Red Army mobilizing?”

The old man shook his head and spat.

“No, they're not mobilizing? Or, no, you don't know?”

“I don't...” He stopped and leaned on his cane. “One question at a time!”

His cane slipped on the wet cement. Ambrose grabbed his elbow and held him up. MANTIS shook him off and stood erect.

“I have told you all I know.” He turned around and started back the way we came. We followed.

“What will you do now sir?” said Ambrose.

“I will do...what I do...Search the camps for recruits.”

“Is that difficult?”

“The new arrivals are farmers...conscripts...shopkeepers who lost all...They make poor spies...Still,” he said, whistled, wheezed, “they harbor much hatred for the dam-ned Georgians.”

We walked on in silence. The
Lustgarten
was almost empty. Had this been a downtown park in an American city the benches would have been crowded with old folks tossing bread crumbs to pigeons. But breadcrumbs were a valuable commodity in post-war Berlin. So were pigeons, come to think.

We returned to our initial contact point and sat down. The old man lit a Chesterfield, smoked it halfway down in two drags and coughed for the better part of a minute. He said he needed some money.

The CO hadn't said anything about a payment but the MANTIS looked like he could use a little extra. I slid my wallet across the bench. He could take what he needed.

The old man plucked out one bill with bony fingers and smoothed it on his knee. “President Jackson...Stonewall Jackson...This is correct?”

“Yes sir,” said Ambrose.

The old man tucked the bill into his coat cuff and nodded. “You need such a President again.”

And with that he was gone, poling himself across the wet parade ground in the shadow of the smoke-blackened cathedral.

“Georgians,” said Ambrose with a furrowed look. “Why would they hate Georgians?”

“Its not our Georgia,
Dummkopf,
it's their Georgia. Part of Russia.”

“Which part?”

“The part that Stalin and Beria are from.”

We watched the old man's progress. His stride was more labored now. He kept his head down, as if he no longer cared if he was under surveillance. Or knew the NKVD no longer cared about him. The CO had summed it up succinctly, at our meeting in the
Bierstube,
when I asked him why he didn't think the CIG had been penetrated by the Soviets.

Why bother
?

Ambrose and I returned to the white brick mansion in Dahlem, met the CO in his cold damp garage and gave him our report. The émigré network no longer functioned, MANTIS didn't know who the rat was and something was up with the Red Army, exactly what he couldn't say.

Victor Jacobson digested our laundry list of bad tidings while sitting motionless at his desk. “They're
all
gone?”

I nodded.

“Which means we have no check on Hilde.”

“How do you figure?”

The CO parked his chin on his fist and gave me a look that said I'm too tired to explain, you figure it out.

“Well, uh, let me see – according to Leonid, if the killings stop once Hilde's in our custody, he's the rat. But no more agents left to kill means we have no way to determine if Hilde's dirty.”

Ambrose gave me an attaboy dig in the ribs.

“I have to decide about him,” said Jacobson. “Without Hilde's cache of documents it's just his say so. And he's slick enough to have those rookies at CIG chasing their tails for years.”

I was about to haul up my slacks and say my piece about Herr Hilde and Col. Norwood and so forth but Ambrose was vibrating next to me like a one man band, foot tapping, fingers drumming against his leg. The CO noticed. I suspected Victor Jacobson didn't much care for my wing man but desperate times require desperate measures. The CO asked him a question.

“What do you suggest Ambrose?”

“Well, you think the Russians are up to no good. You try to get the scoop but no go. The network is all balled up. Am I on track so far?”

The CO nodded. Ambrose continued.

“Hell, we're spies, right? Send us in, see what we come up with.”

“The Soviets won't attempt to roll tanks without some excuse, some provocation. They can't use our snatch of Hilde.”