From the minute he hailed a Mercedes cab from the taxi stand on Freidrichstrasse, he was dirty. It seemed so improbable that he had the driver circle the Brandenburger Tor twice, just to make sure that the black Opel wasn’t simply part of the traffic pattern. For a moment he stared at the triumphal arch surmounted by a warrior’s chariot drawn by four bronze horses, while he ran the possibilities through his mind. The last time victorious troops had paraded under the arch was at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. It had remained a symbol of Prussian might until the Red Army had used it for target practice.
Perhaps the Opel simply contained locals with standing orders to tail anyone interesting who crossed the checkpoint. After all, this was Berlin, where you couldn’t throw away an empty pack of cigarettes without someone tearing it apart for a drop. Or perhaps someone had made him from his Company days. Or maybe it was Wasserman again. Or maybe—and this was his real worry—it was something else.
The bright neon of the Kurfürstendamm was already lit to dispel the gathering gloom of late afternoon, the sky darkening with gray clouds, as though bundling up for the winter. The electric light flickering over the parade of smart shops and cafés lent an air of forced gaiety to the city. He told the driver to take him to the American consulate on Clay-Allee. As for the tail, he mentally shrugged, let them think he was official.
The consulate was a calculated risk, but he knew he would need some kind of official authorization to gain access to the American Document Center in Zehlendorf. As he had originally noted in the Wasserman dossier, the center contained the only complete set of records on the SS, as well as the best information available on all wanted Nazis.
While he was explaining to the slow-moving Marine sergeant at the front desk that he wasn’t feeling well and needed a list of English-speaking doctors, the pattern shifted. As the sergeant reached for a file to hand him a Xeroxed list, Caine caught a glimpse of a trim blond American civilian, a folder in his hand, entering the elevator. For a second their glances met and moved away without recognition, but Caine could feel the prickle of sweat starting down his spine.
“Say, isn’t that old Charlie Connors from USC?” Caine asked, gesturing at the closing elevator. The sergeant flicked a heavy-lidded glance to the elevator, then turned back to Caine, his drawl stretching all the way back to Birmingham.
“You mean the blond fella?”
Caine nodded.
“That’s Mr. Jennings. He’s a trade assistant.”
They exchanged a bit of small talk about how Caine must be mistaken and how everyone in the world probably has a double somewhere. Then Caine thanked the sergeant and got back in his taxi, telling the driver to take him to the Hilton. His mind raced as they drove back to the electric brightness of the Kurfürstendamm, because the pattern had shifted and he didn’t even know what game he was in. It explained the tail, of course, but not much else because the blond man wasn’t Jennings any more than he was the mythical Charlie Connors. He was Bob Harris, who had put Wasserman onto him in the first place.
Once he had checked into his room at the Hilton, Caine locked the door and turned on the television. Then he set to work checking for bugs. The TV program was one of those American action imports that Europeans decry and then snap up like blue jeans. On the screen jiggly girls from the Screen Actors Guild were using choreographed karate chops on overweight villains wearing black shirts and white ties, just in case the audience might forget who the bad guys were. He found the bug fairly quickly in the base of the telephone. With a sigh he lit a cigarette and stretched out on the bed.
Of course, Harris being in Berlin could have just been coincidence. Sure, he told himself. And you could improve your cash flow with the help of the Good Tooth Fairy. He remembered the lecture Koenig had given them at the Farm after they had completed their paramilitary training or, as the trainees called it, the “boom-boom course.” Koenig was a short stocky man with a crew cut surmounting an ungainly triangular face that might have been a slice cut from a lumpy pie. Caine had once seen Koenig take apart a burly ex-Green Beret named O’Hearn on the unarmed combat course without getting his shirt wrinkled. Koenig had stood before them in the Quonset hut classroom, lightly tapping a ruler against his palm. He balanced on the balls of his feet, as he paused for effect.
“There are no coincidences in this business,” Koenig had said. “None. The moment you spot anything that even smells like a coincidence, you’ve been blown. That means you’re as wide open as a whore’s legs. And once that happens, you’ve got only three choices: get out, get dead, or get them”—punctuating each get with a slap of the ruler against his palm.
For an instant Caine felt a stab of anguish. The bastards wouldn’t let him quit. Then he brushed the thought away, because if Harris was running a Company mission, then the sooner he learned the rules of the game, the better his chances of survival would be. He wasn’t going to fool himself about how expendable ex-agents were. Right now he knew he was about as welcome as a rent-increase notice.
With a shrug he stabbed out his cigarette and got up. He felt the old familiar tightening sensation just below his solar plexus. It hits everyone differently. With some it’s wet palms or shaking hands. Some get shivers down the spine. Some break out in hives. With others it’s stomach cramps. In Indochina he had seen men get the shakes, and just before action, he had seen some lose control of their sphincters and piss and shit in their pants. But it hit all of them one way or another. With Caine it was a tightening in his stomach, like a lump of food that had lodged in his esophagus and just wouldn’t move or digest. Well, he thought, they can kill you but they can’t eat you, using the stock bravado phrase they had used in combat to exorcise the fear. It never really worked, but they used it anyway.
He was going to do the one thing he hadn’t wanted to do. He was potentially alerting the Company that he was on a run. Unless—and this was even worse—the Company already knew. He went downstairs to the lobby phone and called the consulate.
“Department one-oh-six, Jennings here,” Harris answered.
Normally Caine would have done a number permutation that varied daily. Based on the 106 prompt, he would have responded with the appropriate counter number, like, “Sorry, I was trying to reach the Intershop at Frankfurter Allee ninety-three.” Except that he wasn’t in the Company anymore and had no idea what the day’s sequence was, so he said, “This is an open line and don’t tell me you weren’t as surprised as I was.”
“This is the American consulate. What number do you want?”
“Do you know the Ballhaus Resi?”
“Hasenheide, corner of Gräfestrasse, but I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. You must have the wrong number,” Harris replied and hung up. Caine was grinning as he hung up the receiver, knowing that the call must have sent Harris up the wall at all the procedures he had broken. Serve the little twerp right, he thought as he went outside and stepped into a taxi. Although the Ritz was nearby, he had the driver double back by way of the Gedächtniskirche, to check for tails. The church’s spotlighted spires made it look a little like the Enchanted Castle at Disneyland. He was clean, of course. After all, they knew where he was and where he was going, so they could afford to leave him alone. After a leisurely dinner of roast goose with dumplings, he took a tram outside the Ritz to the Resi.
By the time he got to the Ballhaus Resi, probably the biggest nightclub in town, close to a thousand noisy representatives of the New Germany were crammed around a dance floor no bigger than a throw rug. Thanks to a lavish tip to the headwaiter, Caine was able to share a tiny table from which he could survey the entrance and the stage. On the stage a rock band did a passable imitation of the Rolling Stones. The shirtless lead singer chosen more for his resemblance to Mick Jagger than his voice, screamed that he was sexy while he grabbed the microphone like a steel phallus. Behind the band colored strobe lights flickered across a gushing water display synchronized to the beat, while girls in see-through plastic dis
co outfits wriggled in ecstasy. The only things missing, he mused, were fireworks and The 1812 Overture complete with cannons. But the real attractions of the Resi were the brightly lit numbers and telephones on each table, so that you could dial any member of either sex who caught your fancy, Caine noted, as he sipped his Scotch-flavored ice cubes at ten marks a shot.
He took time to examine his table companion out of the corner of his eye, a chunky dark-haired man in his mid-twenties who kept ostentatiously glancing at his Rolex as if he had something to do tonight besides checking out the girls. He was the new European man, riding the economic boom like a surfer. His watch was Swiss, his jeans French, his disco shirt and jacket Italian, and his slang came from American TV. He nervously jiggled his knees against Caine’s and winked at him, conspirators in the eternal quest for the one-night stand. While Caine checked the crowd for Harris, his table partner researched the club for girls.
The telephone rang and before Caine could move, his partner grabbed the receiver like he was a racetrack tout waiting for results of the Kentucky Derby. But it was for Caine. A busty blonde with the heft of a Wagnerian singer at Table 43 waved at him and invited him to dance. At Caine’s “Nein, danke” she shrugged in an exaggerated manner to show off the low-cut bosom he had turned down and hung up. Caine noted with satisfaction that with the band blaring the telephone was almost completely private, in the midst of the huge crowd.
The second call was also for Caine. This time his partner handed the phone over with a touch of annoyance. It was a pretty dark-haired girl with a sweet gentle smile a few tables away. She had on a tight pink cashmere turtleneck that seemed to glow like neon in the dim light. Caine felt his groin stir as he reluctantly turned down her offer to buy him a drink. He looked at her and thought, another time, another place, another life, and hung up. His table partner looked at him curiously, probably figuring him for a queer, and moved his chair a fraction of an inch away from Caine, not wanting to be guilty by association.
There was a loud series of cheers and catcalls and Caine glanced back at the stage, where the lead singer was working himself into an erotic frenzy. The phone rang again. This time it was Harris. Caine’s table partner smiled broadly as he handed over the receiver. The call from a man had confirmed his suspicion. He knew Caine was a queer for sure.
“I’m at table thirty-one. Do you come here often?” Harris said. Except that Caine wasn’t playing.
“Only during the mating season,” Caine replied, spotting Harris lounging indifferently, his legs crossed, at a table near the door. With his blow-dryed blond hair, black pin-striped Cardin suit, and cocktail in hand, Harris looked like he belonged in an expensive whiskey ad.
“I bet you only come here for the classy acts,” Harris said, using a code identification. On stage the lead singer was gyrating his hips to the music while the band blasted a hard rock version of Beethoven’s Fifth.
“Cut the shit, Bob. I left my Junior Secret Agent kit at home.”
“Is that the one with the plastic mask and the water gun that looks, like a Luger?”
“Yeah, and fifty snappy sayings to keep the KGB in stitches.”
The strobe lights flickered madly and the dancers writhed uncontrollably as the band and the audience went wild.
“What’s it all about, Alfie?” Harris asked.
“You tell me. You’re the one dealing the cards.”
“I think we have a communication problem. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“You say that so sincerely, Mr. Jennings. Why don’t I believe you?”
Harris shrugged and sipped his drink as the audience exploded into applause and stamped their feet like a giant beast with two thousand legs.
“Then we’re even,” Harris taunted. “Your passport says William Foster, but I’m not holding it against you.”
“That’s big of you. Look, let’s stop fencing, sweetie. The applause is dying down and my table partner has already got me marked for a queer.”
“That’s because you look so cute in your three-piece suit. What about lunch tomorrow?”
“I love you too, you sexy thing,” he replied. His table partner overheard him and smiled broadly.
“In the Tiergarten, by the elephant cage.”
“Just the two of us, lover,” Caine said and hung up, suppressing an impulse to plant a cross-bottom fist between his table partner’s teeth. He waited till the music started again and the aisles were filled with couples making contact and crowding their way to the dance floor, before getting up and leaving his table partner smirking over the telephone.
It was in the Tiergarten that the teen-aged werewolves and cripples of the Home Guard made a last pathetic stand against the Red Army. The few old trees that managed to survive the Battle of Berlin were cut down for fuel during the frigid postwar winter of ’45. During the fifties the ground was reseeded, saplings were planted, and rose gardens once again replaced potato patches. As he walked down the path to the zoo, the only evidences of the war Caine could see were the strange mounds several hundred feet high that dotted the park. The mounds had been constructed of rubble, then covered with soil and seeded with grass. Under the leaden winter sky they looked like tells from a long-lost civilization. Caine wondered what some archeologist from the distant future might make of them. He checked his watch and decided he had enough time for a bite before his r.d.v. with Harris. He stopped at a stand and bought a bockwurst dipped in mustard, which he ate as he walked through the zoo. Harris had used the code phrase “What about lunch …” which meant fourteen minutes after twelve.
A plaque on the outside railing of the elephant enclosure identified the elephant as “Shanti.” The massive gray animal ambled near the rail, her long trunk searching the concrete lip of the moat for peanuts. Like the rest of her breed, she was a survivor. She had come through the Allied bombings and the Russian onslaught to become something of a local institution. The irony of her name was not lost on Caine, with his linguistic background. It meant “peace” in Sanskrit.
Two small children, their long blond hair tousled by the wind, were throwing peanuts at each other. The little boy chased the girl around the massive bulk of their mother, who watched them with an air of stolid patience. The little girl’s shrieks of excitement sounded thin and high-pitched in the air, like the calls of a bird in distress. Caine watched Harris approach and rechecked the large open area. It was secure; Harris was alone. He turned back to the enclosure and watched the elephant until he felt Harris lean against the railing beside him.
“You’re looking well, Herr Foster,” Harris said, his lopsided grin giving him the boyish charm of a street urchin that women found irresistible. He wore a well-cut camel’s hair overcoat that seemed to match his trim blond hair. His blue eyes twinkled with sincerity and as always Caine had the feeling that Harris wanted to sell him something he would be better off without.
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
“How’s civilian life treating you?”
“I wouldn’t know. It looks to me like you bastards are trying to run me without the benefit of a salary.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“What are you doing in Berlin, Bob?”
Harris pulled away from him for a moment and looked at him curiously. Perhaps he was remembering some of the things Caine had said when he quit. He reached into his pocket, brought out a handful of peanuts, and tossed them over the moat at the elephant.
“Do you really expect me to answer that? Come on, you know better than that. You were a Company man yourself once, or have you forgotten?”
“No,” Caine said. “I haven’t forgotten.”
For a moment the two men were silent. They watched Shanti’s powerful trunk pick up a peanut and put it into her mouth.
“What makes you think we’re running you?”
“Not ‘we,’ you. You’re the one who put Wasserman onto me in the first place. Then I run into you here in Berlin, t
he one place someone interested in Nazis would have to come to eventually. Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
“Is that what Wasserman wanted you for? Jesus, that’s funny.”
“Then why aren’t I laughing, Bob?”
“For Chrissakes, Johnny,” Harris said, smiling his sincere boyish grin for all it was worth. “I thought I was doing you a favor and picking up a little change on the side. I didn’t know you were going to go all paranoid on me. Until you walked into the consulate I had no idea you were in Berlin.”
“If you were running a mission, would you tell me?”
“Sure.” Harris grinned. “Would you believe me?”
“Of course not.”
The two men smiled. Harris handed Caine a few peanuts and cracked one open for himself. He spit out a speck of shell and wiped his mouth.
“I was tailed to the consulate,” Caine said, his eyes an icy green, like shallow Arctic water.
“Of course you were tailed, marching through Checkpoint Charlie like Napoleon,” Harris retorted irritably. “It has nothing to do with you. The Gehlen Bureau has a runner coming across and we want to get our hands on him before they bring him around the corner”—using the German intelligence slang phrase for killing. “As soon as I saw you, I figured those junior G-men had snafu’d and called them off.”
Caine lit a cigarette, cupping his hand against the chill breeze. The wind whipped the smoke away as fast as he could exhale it, the pale whiff swirling into the gray air.
“So Berlin is just a coincidence, it that it?”
Harris grabbed Caine’s lapel to emphasize his point. Caine let him, knowing how vulnerable that made Harris, since he could snap Harris’s elbow by locking the grip and using a base palm blow against the outside upper arm. It was the kind of amateurish mistake that not even a rookie operative would make. But then, Harris was a senior case officer. The kind who moved pins around on a map and never got his hands dirty unless he spilled a drink at an embassy party.
Hour of the Assassins Page 12
