The Cold War Swap

by Ross Thomas

  “A long story?”

  “Long enough. I’ll tell you about it while I get dressed.”

  “For what? Your funeral?”

  “No. To go out. Into the world. To take care of things. Earn a living. Run a saloon.”

  Fredl rose from the chair and walked across the room to the dresser, where she opened a drawer and took out a shirt. She turned, holding the shirt against her breasts, and looked at me strangely.

  “It’s not there anymore.”

  “What’s not there?”

  “Your place. They blew it up the day before yesterday.”

  I threw the covers back and tried to swing my legs over the side. They refused to obey and I grew weak and a little giddy. I finally learned what that word meant. I closed my eyes and sank back into the bed and the pillow. It was all coming apart too soon. A nice comfortable, quiet, easy world was breaking up and McCorkle wasn’t tough enough for any other world.

  “Who blew it up?” I said carefully, keeping my eyes closed.

  “I don’t think they’ve found out yet. But it was early in the mornmg.

  “What time early in the morning?”

  “Around three.”

  “How did they blow it up? With a firecracker?”

  “Dynamite. They seemed to have all the time in the world. They placed it in several areas where it would do the most damage. Herr Wentzel said that he thinks it was because of the man who was killed there the other day. Someone blamed you and Padillo for it, Wentzel said. He said he’s looking for you both.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “No. It was in the papers.”

  “They should tell him to try the river,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For Padillo. That’s where he is: dead in the Rhine.”

  I opened my eyes and Fredl still stood there, the shirt held tightly against her. She put it down carefully on the bed and came around it and sat down next to me. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. It was all in her eyes and the way her hands moved and the way her teeth caught her lower lip and held it.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  I thought about that for a moment and I knew then that there would be only one time that I would tell it honestly, the way I saw it happen, leaving out nothing. And so I told her and in the telling it grew easier and when I came to the part at the end about Padillo there was no reason to hold back the tears.

  Afterward we sat there in the dim room, not talking. I asked for a cigarette and she lighted one for me. It tasted all right, so I wondered out loud if I could have some coffee and some brandy. While she went to get them I lay in the darkened room and thought about what I had to do and if I had the strength to do it.

  Fredl came back with the coffee and I drank it and sipped on the brandy and then had another one.

  “Are they awake?” I asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Why don’t you give them some of my clothes? They could use them.”

  “I already have. They’re presentable.”

  “Then help me get dressed.”

  It was an effort, but I managed to get into some slacks and a shirt. I left the shorts off. Fredl knelt and worked my feet into a pair of socks and loafers. I ran my hand through her hair. She looked up and smiled.

  “Marry me?” I asked.

  “Aren’t you rather on the rebound from a lot of things?”

  “Maybe, but there’s nothing else I want.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll marry you.”

  I got up shakily. “Let’s go in and post the banns.”

  We walked into the living room. Symmes was sitting up on the divan.

  “You’d better get Burchwood,” I told him. “There’re some things that have to be settled.”

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I feel all right.”

  “You look positively ghastly—like death warmed over.” He left and went into the den to get Burchwood. They both came out and sat on the couch. My clothes looked all right on Symmes. He was tall enough, even if he didn’t have the breadth—or fat. But they draped around Burchwood. The two sat close together on the couch, not touching, and they looked very much as they had when they were in the loft in Berlin.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Fredl asked. They nodded. She was going to be a help, I decided. I’d never have thought to ask.

  Reminded of my manners, I offered them a cigarette even though I knew they didn’t smoke. “I want to thank you,” I said formally, “for getting me off the barge. You didn’t have to, especially after what you had been through.”

  “We had a deal with you and Padillo—remember?” Burchwood said.

  “That’s what I want to talk about. You can also talk in front of Miss Arndt. She could be part of your insurance. It all depends.”

  “On what?” Symmes asked.

  “On what you do. You can walk out that door with my blessing and go any place you take a notion to. Or you can turn yourself in and I’ll make the deal for you that Padillo promised.”

  “Can you?” Symmes asked.

  “If I can’t, you can still go out that door.”

  They were silent for a moment. Fredl brought in the coffee and placed it on the low table in front of them. Then she sat in a chair near me.

  “We’ve talked it over,” Symmes said slowly, “and we’ve decided to go back. We still think we were right,” he added hastily. “We’re not two repentant sinners. Don’t take that attitude.”

  “I don’t take any attitude at all,” I said. “I don’t know what I would do in your place.”

  “You see, Mr. McCorkle, we have no place to go but back. We speak nothing but English; we have no money, no friends; and I doubt that we have any families any more. The thought of going back to Moscow—just the effort alone—is …, well, we just can’t do it. But we don’t want to go back to the U.S. just to get killed. And life has grown very cheap these last few days.”

  “You want me to set it up, then?”

  They nodded.

  “Is now all right?”

  They looked at each other. Now was far sooner than tomorrow or the next day. They telegraphed each other their answers and Symmes did their nodding. I picked up the phone and dialed a number that had been given to me a long time ago. A man’s voice said hello.

  “Mr. Burmser,” I said.

  “Speaking.”

  “This is McCorkle. I have a message from Padillo for you.”

  There was a silence on the other end. He must have been switching on the tape recorder. “Where are you, McCorkle?”

  “Padillo said to tell you he was dead.”

  I hung up.

  It took them fifteen minutes to get to my house, which was pretty fair time. There was a knock on the door and Fredl answered it. I wasn’t getting up for anybody.

  Hatcher, the man I had met at the saloon, was with Burmser. They came in quickly, wearing nice gray suits and black shoes and carrying their hats. They stopped when they saw Symmes and Burchwood, who just looked at them and then looked away.

  “This is Gerald R. Symmes and Russell C Burchwood,” I said. “This man is Mr. Burmser and the other one is Mr. Hatcher. If you want, they’ll show you their little black books that tell you who they work for.”

  Burmser started toward Symmes and Burchwood. “What are you going to do—put the cuffs on?” He stopped and looked at Hatcher.

  “Would you like some coffee—or perhaps a drink?” Fredl asked.

  “This is Miss Arndt, my fiancée,” I said. “Mr. Burmser and Mr. Hatcher.”

  “I’ll take the drink,” Burmser said.

  Hatcher nodded. “Please,” he said.

  “Where’s Padillo?” Burmser demanded.

  “As I said, he’s dead. You can fish in the Rhine for what’s left of him. Along with a man named Jimmy Ku and a man named Maas. They’re all dead, and there are a couple more that are dead on a Dutch barge that’s tied up about a mile
up the river.”

  “Did you say Ku?”

  “Yes. Ku.”

  Hatcher reached for the telephone and dialed a number. He started talking into it in a low voice. I didn’t pay any attention to what he said.

  “Now we come to the problem that Mr. Symmes and Mr. Burchwood face,” I said. “Padillo offered them a deal. I intend to see that it’s carried out.”

  “We make no deals, McCorkle,” Burmser said. “I’m sorry about Padillo, but he wasn’t acting on our authority.”

  “You’re a goddamned liar, Burmser,” I said. “Padillo’s job was to get Symmes and Burchwood here into West Berlin. Isn’t that what you told him? Didn’t you tell him that it was just a run-of-the-mill job, that all he would have to do would be to shepherd them through Checkpoint Charlie and they’d be carrying all the necessary papers and passes in their nice new suits? And didn’t you work a deal with the KGB to trade Padillo for Symmes and Burchwood—and didn’t you do it without getting clearance on it? It was going to be your own coup. Christ, Burmser, you know what a crummy deal you pulled. And Padillo got out of it, or tried to, using whatever method he could get his hands on. He wanted out. He wanted to run a bar somewhere in Los Angeles, but in the end he would have settled for just being left alone. Yet you couldn’t let him have that; you had to set him up for the prize-patsy award, and in the end he got killed and you killed him just as if you had put the gun up against his back and pulled the trigger three times, just to make sure he was dead.”

  Fredl came in with the drinks. Burmser’s tight expression didn’t change. He accepted the drink but offered no thanks. He took a long pull and set it down. It could have been Pepsi-Cola for all he knew.

  “Some of these things, these operations, you don’t understand, McCorkle. You couldn’t possibly, because even Padillo didn’t. I told you in Berlin to keep out of it—that it was a delicately planned thing and depended on exact timing. But you came blundering in—”

  “I didn’t blunder in; I was asked in by my partner. And, by the way, have you checked out Cook Baker recently? He’s dead, you know. Padillo killed him in East Berlin. He killed him when he found out that Baker had shot a man named Weatherby. He also killed him after he found out that Baker was working for the opposition, but I don’t think that bothered Padillo too much.”

  Hatcher grabbed for the phone again and started dialing. He was having a busy day.

  “And remember your Berlin spiv—Bill-Wilhelm? Maas and Baker fingered him and somebody shot him and dumped him in front of me just in front of the Café Budapest. Was all that part of your delicate operation?”

  Burmser glanced at Hatcher, who signaled that he had heard that morsel, too, and would check it out.

  “Now then. Let’s get down to the polite blackmail.”

  “We don’t pay blackmail, McCorkle.”

  “You’ll pay this or you’ll find this whole sweet mess reported in a Frankfurt paper under Miss Arndt’s by-line. She knows it all—every last detail.”

  A thin film of sweat popped out on Burmser’s forehead. He chewed on his upper lip, remembered that he had a drink, and took a big swallow as if he were thirsty.

  “What about Symmes and Burchwood?”

  “These two young men, against impossible odds, outwitted their fiendish Communist captors and, with a remarkable display of determination and daring, escaped over, under or through the Berlin wall to safety.”

  Symmes giggled. Burmser had his drink to his mouth again and choked.

  “They’d never buy that.”

  “Why not? They’d have them under lock and key. And it’s going to come out. Too many people know about them now. I can name a half dozen who might peddle the story this afternoon for the price of a drink.”

  “You want us to make them into heroes?”

  Symmes giggled again. Burchwood tittered.

  “You made their escape possible. You’ll get all the kudos you can use.”

  Burmser’s tight expression relaxed. “Possibly something could be developed along the lines you just mentioned—”

  “Don’t get cute, Burmser. I want to hear from them every three months. I might even insist on visiting rights. The story—the whole story—will be good for years. Especially if you make that phony announcement.”

  Burmser sighed. He turned to Hatcher. “You understand.”

  “It could be done,” Hatcher said. “We could leak it here and there.”

  “Call them,” Burmser said.

  “A few more items,” I said. “You might save a telephone call or two. First, this whole thing was expensive. It cost me a lot. And I’ve a few items hanging over me in Berlin—like Weatherby being found dead in my room. I want that cleared up. And then there’s the matter of financing this operation. Somebody blew up my saloon, and with only a little effort I could make a good case against you, but I won’t. We were overinsured anyway. Padillo saw to that. But cash out of hand amounts to—” I paused and grabbed a figure out of the air. “Fifteen thousand dollars. Cash. Small bills.”

  Burmser gasped. “Where do you think I can get that kind of money?”

  “That’s your problem.”

  He thought a moment. “All right. Fifteen thousand. What else?”

  I looked at him for a full fifteen seconds. “Remember this: I’m going to be around for a long time and, one way or another, I’ll keep track of you. And someday I may change my mind, just to do Padillo a favor. It’ll be on impulse, an idle whim maybe. But it’s something for you to think about at night or when you’re thinking about how nicely the career’s going and what the chances are for you to make GS 17 or bird colonel—whatever the grade is in your outfit. And especially when you stumble onto a real cute one that might cost somebody more than he wants to pay. Just think of me, the friendly saloon keeper, and wonder how much longer I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  Burmser got up stiffly. “Is that all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “They should come with us,” he said, motioning toward Symmes and Burchwood.

  “That’s up to them. If you think about it, they don’t have to unless they want to.”

  He thought about it and turned toward them. “Well?”

  They got up together. I managed to raise myself out of the chair. They nodded shyly at me and at Fredl. I nodded back. We didn’t shake hands. They looked very young and tired and I almost felt sorry for them.

  I never saw them again.

  CHAPTER 22

  You can probably find a couple of thousand spots like Mac’s Place in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. They are dark and quiet with the furniture growing just a little shabby, the carpet stained to an indeterminate shade by spilled drinks and cigarette ashes, and the bartender friendly and fast but tactful enough to let it ride if you walk in with someone else’s wife. The drinks are cold, generous and somewhat expensive; the service is efficient; and the menu, although usually limited to chicken and steaks, affords very good chicken and steaks indeed.

  In Washington you can walk up Connecticut from K Street and turn left after a couple of blocks or so and find Mac’s Place. It might have a slight aura of sauerkraut, but the head bartender speaks a very bright line of chatter and cruises around town in a prewar Lincoln Continental. The maître d’ is of the old school and runs the place with the firm hand of a Prussian martinet, which he used to be.

  The owner, a little grayer and spreading a bit in the paunch, usually arrives around ten-thirty or eleven, and his eyes dart toward the bar, and he has been told that there is a slight look of disappointment in them because whoever he’s looking for is never there. And sometimes, on rainy days, he goes to the bar and pulls down the Pinch bottle and has a couple by himself, waiting for the luncheon trade. He usually has lunch with a blonde who looks something like a younger Dietrich and who, he says, is his wife. But they seem to like each other too much for that.

  If you went to the bother, you could check the liquor license and learn that it’s made out to
the owner, whose name is McCorkle, and to a man named Michael Padillo, whose address is listed as a suite in the Mayflower Hotel; but if you call there they’ll tell you that Mr. Padillo is out of town.

  Once the owner got a postcard from Dahomey in West Africa. All it said was “Well,” and it was signed with a “P.” After that the same advertisement started to appear in the Personal Columns of the Times of London every Tuesday. It reads:

  MIKE: AD is forgiven. Come

  home. The Christmas Help.