A Despicable Profession (15 page)

Leonid paused long enough for Ambrose and me to grope around in the murk and come up empty. He continued, with great forbearance.

“If the NKVD was supporting the Committee to Free Berlin, they would have instructed me to monitor and intercept any communications that pertained to the Committee in order to determine if we suspected that the Committee was a front.” Leonid concluded with a smug tick of the eyebrow. “The NKVD has not so instructed me.”

Ambrose said what I was thinking. In a roundabout way.

“I'm just an Irish eejit, I don't know about espionage and all that. But this, what I just heard, sounds to me like Sunday Mass. The priest always wants us to take his word for it, take things on faith, doncha know. How is this any different?”

Leonid looked droll, unoffended. “Such a mistrusting young man.”

I asked the Irishman's favorite question. “So what do we
do
?”

“There is a meeting of the Committee to Free Berlin in two days time,” said Jacobson. “You'll go as reporters for Stars'n'Stripes. If they're a political group they will welcome you. If they have a more sinister agenda they'll keep their distance.”

I liked it. Ambrose too from the look of him. We looked to the slight, silent Russian, waiting for his curt dismissal of this plan as a waste of time. Leonid did not oblige. I wondered why.

Came a small knock at the door.

“Don't answer it,” said the CO. The small knocking became small thumping, heel of the hand or sole of the shoe. Jacobson drilled me with a look.

“I think it's the boy who used to live here.”

Jacobson glowered. He had given me explicit instructions not to open the door. The thumping continued. Not loud, but it built up a great tension in the room. Jacobson seemed unsure, not wanting to break his own rule.

“Wer ist da
?” I said through the door. Who is there?

“Der Junge mit dem Topf.”
The boy with the pot.

“Was willst Du
?” What do you want?

“Der Deckel für den Topf”
The lid to the pot.

“Hold the artillery,” I said as I unlatched the door.

He was leaner and more foul-smelling than I remembered him. More dog than boy. I told Ambrose to fetch the lid to the cooking pot. He went to the kitchen and clattered through cabinets.

I crowded the little bugger but he bunged around trying to catch a glimpse of the men behind me. He saw the person to my right and bunged left. He saw the person to my left and froze. Dead. I turned to see who that person was. Leonid.

Ambrose returned with the lid to the cooking pot. I took it and turned to face the kid but he was halfway down the stairs.

-----

The CO gave me the time and place of the Committee to Free Berlin meeting. Then he and Leonid went away. Ambrose and I nipped at the brandy bottle and ate Zwieback crackers.

Ambrose kept his manner light but I could tell what was on his mind. So I apologized for having sex with a prostitute.

I could've told Ambrose that Eva called him a boy and insisted that I jump in the rack with her but I'm not that kind of heel. I said I was weak and I said I was sorry and both were true. Ambrose growled, called me a motherhumping son of Satan, drained his brandy and said, “What's next?”

“Eva agreed to canvas the ladies, see if anyone got an earful about Yankee gunrunners from our Gestapo Captain. If there ain't no such lady we'll know the Colonel got his information elsewhere.”

“Where elsewhere?”

“The Soviets. Where else?”

“How'd they know we were gonna be there at the loading dock? The Soviets.”

“From Horst Schultouer I guess.”

“The Gestapo Captain? Why he tell ‘em? Isn't he s'posed to be a Commie hater?”

“Supposed to be. But in the spy game there's sometimes a long stretch of road between what's supposed to be and what is.”

Ambrose chewed, swallowed and digested this pearl of wisdom along with a Zwieback cracker. “Why did the kid run away like that?”

“He recognized Leonid, was afraid of him.”

“Why? What's it mean?”

“I don't know.”

Ambrose poured himself another slug of brandy. “You're not very good at this are ya?”

I laughed. What could I say? The intemperate young son of the Old Sod was right.

“What's on the slate if Eva finds that Horst didn't blab to the ladies?”

I smiled, I grinned. I had a plan!

“We return to Col. Norwood's late night salon and play a bit of nick and nack.”

The hard-working Miss Eva was doing okay for herself. She had a private telephone line. Ambrose had the number. We stumbled out at something o'clock the next morning to locate a working phone box.

No such thing. So we ducked into a sweet-smelling
Konditorei
where all the customers spoke English and all the prices were in dollars. We borrowed their blower for a buck. Ambrose called Eva while I ogled a tray of apple
Kuchen.
It was a thing of beauty but not what I needed at the moment. I was overhung. I needed a big hunk of
Schwarzwurstl
dipped in Tabasco sauce. I settled for a cup of black coffee, straight from the jar.

We ankled out. Ambrose ran it down.

“She talked to all the girls. Not a one of them knows Horst whatzisname and nobody heard nuttin' about any Yankee gunrunners.”

“She's sure?”

“One hundred per cent.”

“That's it then. Colonel Norwood's a lying sack.” Ambrose shrugged. Aren't they all?

“Seems like everyone and his uncle knew we were going to be at that loading dock in the Soviet Sector,” I said. “We were on the Lubyanka Express till Norwood rode to the rescue. And now we're going to a meeting of a possible Soviet front organization with fake credentials. The NKVD might be there to greet us.”

“How they gonna know we're comin'?”

“I don't know. I don't know shit from Shinola as you've pointed out many times.”

“I only count one.”

We stopped at a street corner. “I was in the war, funny boy. World War II, maybe you heard of it. It was horrible, bloody and everything in between. But it had one thing going for it. You knew who was on your side and who was not.
This...”,
I said gesturing around at the jumble of caved-in buildings hard by bustling cafes, “This is...”

“Bloody confusing?”

“Yes!” I said, shouted, abusing my parched brain casing. A young girl standing nearby clapped her hands to her ears in fright. We crossed the street. “Now let's find some goddamn sausage before I die of hunger.”

Ambrose accompanied me down the sidewalk. “Got another question for ya Chief.”

“Okay.”

“If we know the Colonel's a lying sack, why tell him? Why not keep it under our hat?”

The Irishman had a point. We had superior knowledge on the old queen.

“Because I need to know just how dirty he is,” I said after a moment. “If he's peddling a little gossip to keep himself in fine wine and Darjeeling that's one thing. If he's a Soviet double agent it's another.”

“And you think our little song and dance in front of a room full of people is going to tell you that?”

Once more with feeling. “I don't know.”

-----

The plan was for me and Ambrose to crash Col. Norwood's late night salon and tag team him about his ride to the rescue. How he knew to be there, the real story this time. I'd be the soft spoken diplomat, Ambrose the loudmouth Mick. The theory was that Norwood loved to hold court, prized his salon above all else and would fess up to a bit of fun-loving subterfuge with the Rooskies in order to make these embarrassing questions go
away. The more polished his story, the less likely it was to be true.

That was the plan as Ambrose and I waded into a jam-packed jamboree that evening in the chalet on
Ernststraße.
We had to bide our time, wait for things to quiet down to a dull roar. The Colonel was in top form, working the crowd like a ringmaster, clad in a double breasted white dinner jacket and a necklace of beaded shells where the black tie should have been. The hooch and the groaning sideboard of good eats took their toll eventually.

People flopped down to sip and mumble. Ambrose and I did our song and dance.

The plan didn't work out as planned. Col. Norwood purpled with rage at our impertinence and instructed Sedgewick to toss us down the stairs. Ambrose got his Irish up. Fisticuffs were about to commence when a wan young man spoke up.

“I was the one that Horst Schultouer told his secret to.”

I asked him what secret.

“He said that he was a freedom fighter. A freedom fighter who was meeting some arms merchants from America the next morning.”

I asked why Horst Schultouer would tell him that.

The young man got all kinds of embarrassed. “I believe he was trying to win my affections.”

I thanked him, apologized to the Colonel and pulled Ambrose down the long steep staircase. He wanted to know what the hell that was all about. He didn't understand. I was surprised I did. I was a long, long way from Youngstown, Ohio.

“The young man is a male prostitute.”

Ambrose shook his head as we pushed through the front door. “Bloody wankin' Anglicans.”

-----

We returned to the delivery truck, tails between our legs. “You drive,” I said, tossing Ambrose the keys. I wanted to think.

“Bloody shame, that,” said Ambrose with a tick of his head as we drove past the chalet and its brightly-lit Chinese lanterns. Raucous laughter spilled from upstairs windows opened to the warm night. I pictured Col. Norwood holding forth, sending up the bumbling Yanks.

“Feckin' Brits are worthless in every way but one.”

“What's that?”

“Roast beef. They were carvin' up a rib roast back there, nice and bloody like. And I didn't get a lick.”

“We've got a can of pea soup at home. Some Zwieback left.”

I was preoccupied, I didn't intend my remark to be funny. I guess it was. Ambrose certainly thought so.

-----

Ambrose and I trudged up the three flights of stairs to our apartment with all the enthusiasm you'd expect of two humiliated men about to share a dinner of crackers and canned soup. I kept an eye out for the German boy, hoping to ask him why he ran away. But the hour was late and the stairs and corridors were empty.

“I'm all in,” said Ambrose when I keyed open the door.

“No soup?”

“Nah.”

Had I said good night this story may have had a different ending, but I eyed the brandy bottle on the coffee table. Four fingers left.

“Have a quick snort with me. I want to kick it around a minute.”

“Sure ‘nuff, Chief,” said Ambrose gamely, plopping down on the musty couch. I took the wobbly chair across from him.

“The brandy's yours,” he said, pulling a sterling silver flask from inside his coat. “I'll have a nip of Bushmills.” He unscrewed the flask and poured a dram in the cap. “Gift from me brothers on me 21
^st
. Says so right here.” He showed me the engraving across the front.

“Very handsome.”

“They're good lads.”

We clinked. The almost empty bottle to the silver flask. The brandy went down quick. I felt a pang of guilt for dragging Ambrose away from his family. Felt a pang of envy too, him with two brothers and me with none.

“I keep coming back to it, not sure why,” I said. “The difference between a traitor and a snitch.”

“Which is?”

“A snitch snitches for money or advantage. A traitor acts from conviction.”

“I dunno. People do all kinds of lousy things for money.”

“You're right, no question. You and I robbed a bank. What did we do afterwards?”

Ambrose looked away. He didn't like it that, now that we were semi-respectable espionage agents, I had dredged up our sordid past. “We ran like hell.”

“Yes we did. The person who ratted out the émigrés did not. He hung around and guided the NKVD to their moving targets over a period of many days. Which doesn't sound like Herr Hilde to me. It's not that he
wouldn't
sell out innocents for money - he admitted the Blue Caps spared him because he told ‘em who gave him which document and why - but Hilde's like a skiff, tacking with the winds. Winds that blew him from the Third Reich to the Soviets to the US of A. Hilde's not a true believer. Lying to the us about a phony NKVD plot buys him nothing but a jail cell when it doesn't come true.”

“You say something Chief?”

“You heard me. Shithead.”

Ambrose sniggered and poured himself another dram. “What if Hilde doesn't
know
it's a phony plot? Meant to keep us from backing this Committee. What if the NKVD didn't tell him?”

“That's the only way they
would
tell him.”

“What is?”

“The only way the NKVD would tell Hilde about the Committee is if it
is
a phony plot. So he could pass it along, as disinformation.”

“Okay, say the NKVD
didn't
tell Hilde about the Committee. How's he find out it's a front?”

I shrugged, I mumbled. “He's a career intelligence officer, must have a few contacts left.”

“Whasamatter Chief? You look funny.”

“I just said something I should have known.”

“Whuzzat?”

“I said
so he could pass it on.
Hilde. Pass on the disinformation. Leonid pissed all over Hilde's story about the Committee being a front, said it was a fairy tale
that the NKVD told Hilde to recite to us.”

I hiked my eyebrows. Ambrose spun his hand.

“Why would
Leonid
assume - that the
Soviets
assumed - that Herr Hilde would have a
chance
to pass it on to us? Hilde was in Soviet custody.”