A Despicable Profession

by John Knoerle

  Donovan went on to say that he was not one to pass up a punchline and that Global Commerce Limited was, of course, a viable business concern that merely employed a few former OSS operatives for their international connections and language skills and so on and so forth etcetera. He paused, then said the following:

  “Mr. Schroeder is a distinguished alumnus of the Office of Strategic Services. He served with distinction behind German lines from late ’43 to VE Day. Extremely dangerous duty.” The Ivy Leaguers eyed me with new respect.

  “Upon returning home he joined the FBI as an undercover agent.” The Ivy Leaguers eyed me with new suspicion.

  “Yes he worked for our friends at the Bureau. No shame in that. He foiled a big bank robbery as I understand it. But it was the way in which he foiled it that caught my attention.”

  Wild Bill grinned and twinkled for all to see. I struggled to find my tongue but he was on to other matters.

  He asked for sales reports from around the table. The Ivy Leaguers read them off. Donovan made a few comments on the reports and said a hearty farewell. Herbert escorted him out of the room.

  I had a head fulla bees, I did. What the hell did Donovan mean about the way I foiled the bank robbery? He liked it that I put one over on J. Edgar Hoover? Could be, guess so, beats me. I was clear about one thing. I wasn’t shipping out for another miserable Atlantic crossing without a straight answer.

  I got up and chased after Herbert and Bill Donovan. I caught up to them just as Herbert W. Merckle was closing the front door and General William J. Donovan was striding down the corridor. I followed.

  “Sir,” I said. “Sir!”

  Donovan turned on his heel. He was not happy to see me. I approached anyway. “General, I am no longer interested in being a spy.”

  Donovan gave me a blue-eyed half-second before he said, “I’m not asking you to be a spy. I have no authority to ask you to be a spy”

  With that he walked to the bank of elevators and pushed the call button. I stood and watched and tried to think of something to say. The bell sounded and the operator cranked open the door. The General looked my way and said, just before he stepped into the elevator car, “I’m just asking you to keep your eyes open.”

  Goddamn spooks, I’d forgotten how they were. Always the dance of the seven veils. I returned to the suite with Herbert Merckle and asked what was next. Wild Bill Donovan had piqued my interest.

  The bastard.

  Chapter Two

  I didn’t cross the Atlantic in the hold of a troopship this time, mate. It was a luxury liner, with a stateroom and a steward I could summon at the pull of a cord. Herbert Merckle had given me a month’s pay in advance - 500 bucks! - and a detailed itinerary. Arrangements had been made for me to catch a hop on a C-45 from Antwerp to Berlin.

  Military aircraft. I didn’t ask. I had five hundred bucks in crisp twenties and nothing at home but an empty barstool. I would give it a shot. I would keep my eyes open. What I wouldn’t do was put my neck in a noose.

  When the liner docked at Antwerp I was met by a driver who took me to Chievres Air Base. It was a very long drive. I showed my passport at the gate. The guard waved me through.

  I went to Hangar Two. A cocky little twin-tail C-45 was waiting on the macadam, props spinning, wringing water from the heavy air. We were airborne three minutes later.

  The co-pilot bent my ear when we reached altitude. He said Templehof had been the busiest airport in Europe before the war and that Lufthansa had its last commercial flight from there just ten days before the fall of Berlin. A flight to Stockholm, a dozen passengers. A dozen very happy passengers.

  We came in low over the central city. It was something to see. Row upon row of busted open buildings, roofs gone, inside chambers exposed. A great gray honeycomb is what it looked like.

  We landed at Templehof at 1:20 p.m. by the cockpit clock. The C-45 taxied toward the enormous arc-shaped terminal. It had to be a mile from end to end. Hitler designed it himself, said the co-pilot. It was supposed to resemble an eagle in flight. The terminal looked to be in halfway decent shape, the runway smooth. I asked the co-pilot how that could be.

  “Your tax dollars at work buddy boy.”

  I thanked the pilots for the ride and offered a tip. The pilots recoiled from the twenty. Had I violated some Air Force superstition? Or was it something more? The talkative co-pilot hadn’t asked me the obvious question. What are you up to in Berlin? Hadn’t asked me any questions, come to think. I was, apparently, off limits. My way had been cleared from Otto Moser’s to Templehof Airport. I was Wild Bill Donovan’s fair haired boy.

  I carried my suitcase to the terminal and looked around. Herbert said my employer would be there to greet me. He wasn’t. I found a bench and watched construction workers climb the three story scaffolding like monkey bars in a schoolyard.

  I waited. I got annoyed. You get used to the red carpet treatment real quick. I waited some more. I had no phone number to call, no address to go to. Somewhere along in there I noticed a pimpled dogface with pronated ears. He was studying me from a distance. I stood up as he approached.

  “Are you Harold Schroeder?”

  “No. I’m Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

  The kid looked me over for a long moment, decided I was pulling his leg, then jeeped me downtown.

  -----

  ‘Germania, the capital of the world’ as the Nazis styled it, had seen better days. It was almost a year since Stunde Null, hour zero, May 8th, 1945. A few streetcars were running, busses too along the main thoroughfares, flanked by ruin. I had never been to Berlin. My tour of duty was confined to southwest Germany. I told the jug-eared kid to give me the nickel tour. My employer had kept me waiting, I would return the favor. I was Bill Donovan’s fair haired boy.

  Hitler’s steel-framed Chancellery Building on Vossstraße was still standing. Its courtyard, the ‘Court of Honor’ where heroes of the Reich were greeted with fanfare, was barely touched.

  A few blocks north the Reichstag, site of a pitched battle with the Red Army, was a different story. The Reichstag was a magnificent wreck. Sandblasted and blowtorched, shell pocked and bomb cratered, blackened by smoke and speckled white where bullets gouged stone, the soaring glass cupola half gone, but the towers largely intact. Ditto the marble columns etched with the names of Russian soldiers.

  Hitler had ballyhooed his Thousand Year Reich and if you didn’t know better you might say he had made an accurate call. The Reichstag looked at least a thousand years old.

  The Brandenburg Gate was next door, blackened and busted up but still on its feet. I’d seen pictures, who hadn’t? It was Germany’s Eiffel Tower. There’d been some famous statue of a wreathed goddess on a chariot atop the Gate that was gone now. In its place was a big red flag.

  Fair enough. But where was the Stars and Stripes? The Union Jack? I had risked my neck for eighteen months behind enemy lines. I had moments when I wondered why, as the bombing runs I cleared rolled in and the civilian casualties mounted in the only war in recorded history where more civilians than soldiers died. Many, many more civilians. But the mission was clear. Destroy the enemy. So I did what I did and felt bad about it later. I felt bad about it a second time when I saw that Hammer and Sickle.

  We drove on, past a large park with sawed-off stumps where trees used to be. I knew about the Reichstag and the Chancellery and the Brandenburg Gate from watching newsreels at the Bijou. But I knew nothing about this big swatch of green in the heart of the Berlin. I gave my driver a chance to show me up.

  “What’s that park called?”

  “It’s the Tiergarten, Mr. Schroeder, and I’m sorry, real sorry I picked you up late. I went to the wrong end of the terminal I guess but that’s where they told me to go and then they sent me a whole ‘nother way and then they sent me back again and, well, I hope I don’t get gigged out of this and I’m sorry. Real sorry.”

  I assured the kid he wouldn’t get gigged and told him to quit his blubbering, I wasn’t w
orth it. I could see where this fair haired boy routine might get to be a pain.

  We drove a block south of the Tiergarten. Several streets came together. A sign said Potsdamer Platz. From its location it figured to be the heart of the central city. From its appearance it could have been the Mongolian steppes. It was covered with grass and head-high nettles, and dotted with rabbit traps.

  Another block south was a Bierstube on a corner. The blackened building looked as if it had been blown apart and put back together, brick by brick. My driver stopped at the front door. I went inside.

  I had pictured my employer at Hendricks and Lee Construction as an older version of Herbert Merckle. A big-bellied guy with a bull neck and poor taste in clothes. But he wasn’t like that. He was tall and well-dressed, with a high forehead and close cropped dark hair flecked with more gray than I remembered. He was Victor Jacobson, my Case Officer from the OSS.

  Jacobson remained seated at the spy table - far wall, left hand corner. I stood just inside the door, profoundly confused.

  I figured the job offer was something of a sham, a cover for gentlemanly snooping. But Victor Jacobson was a commissioned espionage officer who didn’t like me one bit. Was this some sort of payback for my wartime failure to get myself killed? I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to work for this jerk again.

  I pushed through the door and looked around for the jeep. No joy. I started to cross the street when the familiar voice said, “Schroeder, come inside. Let me buy you a beer.”

  I should’ve kept walking but I didn’t have anywhere else to go and was so parched I would have drunk a Shirley Temple.

  I went back inside and sat down. Jacobson let me take his seat, facing the door at an angle. A skinny young Fräulein plunked down two liter steins. I eyeballed the heady brew with lust in my heart but this was Victor Jacobson’s tea party. If he expected me to clink and drink he would have to do some very smooth talking.

  He knew this of course. Jacobson was both hell bent for leather and very smart. Much like The Schooler, without the charm and the human decency.

  “I’m the reason you’re here Schroeder. I asked for you personally.” Jacobson let me chew on that for a moment. “You were the only wartime agent I ran who survived. That took a special kind of cunning. A kind of cunning I have come to respect.”

  Cripes almighty, respect from the high priest. I gripped my stein and, through a lifetime of the practice of mortification of the flesh, managed not to raise it to my lips.

  “I’ll drink up when I hear what you have to say.”

  Victor Jacobson wet his whistle. “Bill Donovan recruited me a few months after the OSS was dissolved. He saw what was coming, the gutting of US postwar intelligence capability. The current incarnation, the CIG - Central Intelligence Group - is understaffed and poorly funded. And toothless.”

  “How so?”

  “The CIG is chartered for intelligence gathering only, debriefing refugees, clipping newspaper articles. They can open mail if it’s truly dire. What they can’t do is anything operational, anything covert. The Berlin Detachment is particularly weak. Not a single Russian-speaker on staff. It’s December 6th, 1941 all over again. Poor intelligence and little to no co-ordination between State, FBI and the War Department at a time of great danger.”

  I didn’t bite. If we were facing another Pearl Harbor Jacobson would have to say how before I got myself all hot and bothered. “What do you and Bill Donovan plan to do about it?”

  “What little we can.”

  “How black, how wet? What are we talking about?”

  Jacobson took another pull of beer. “We’re talking about keeping the Red Army from rolling tank divisions across the Elbe and seizing all of Germany while we have our backs turned.”

  Huh? The papers were full of heartwarming stories about Yanks, Brits and Reds working together to rebuild Germany.

  “You think our Russian allies are planning an invasion?”

  “Some of our White Russian émigré friends think so” said Jacobson. “I only know one thing for certain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If Stalin is planning to seize Germany he couldn’t pick a better time.”

  This got my attention. A serious mission. I eyed my beer, it was going flat. Tough shit.

  “Who does Global work for? Who’s their customer?”

  “POTUS.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The President of the United States.”

  “Oh. Directly?”

  “Donovan has a back channel.”

  “So CIG knows about Global.”

  “I have a relationship with the Chief of the Berlin Detachment if we need to co-ordinate.”

  “Sheesh, what a sideways setup.”

  “Ad hoc espionage. Best we can do.”

  “What’s the chain of command?”

  “You would report to me.”

  “And if I needed to take it upstairs?”

  “You talk to Bill Donovan.”

  “And if I’m captured?”

  “We never heard of you.”

  I grinned, or grimaced. Just like old times. “And my first assignment would be?”

  Jacobson leaned in. “Track down Klaus Hilde.”

  “Who he?”

  “A former Abwehr General with encyclopedic knowledge of Soviet orders of battle. He reached out to us before war’s end. Word is he tried again recently but OMGUS screwed up.”

  “OMGUS?”

  “Office of the Military Government of Germany, US.”

  “Where’s Hilde now?”

  “Headed south most likely, down the Rat Line to Lisbon and South America. Find him before the NKVD does. Take this.”

  My former Case Officer was acting like my future Case Officer. He handed me a small leather purse with a drawstring. It was heavy. “What’s in it?”

  “Gold sovereigns.”

  I fondled the purse. There had to be a dozen half-dollar-sized coins in there. A king’s ransom.

  “Okay, say I find this Hilde, what then? We turn him over to CIG?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  “OMGUS wants us to work together with our Russian allies. They think gathering military intelligence on the Red Army would be provocative. Brigadeführer Hilde is a treasure trove of Soviet military intelligence.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s more. The Chief of the Berlin Detachment of the CIG describes his group as semi-covert.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Have they been penetrated?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “Why bother?”

  Jacobson had my motor running I will admit. A chance to be a hero, an opportunity to atone for my sins. And a bag of loot to pave the way.

  “Why me?”

  “I said why.”

  “Why really?”

  “We’re shorthanded. And you’re a lifer.”

  Me? A lifer? No way, no how. I said so.

  “Settled down in a cozy cottage with a doting wife are you?”

  “Up yours!”

  “And yours as well.”

  I giggled. I was dingy with travel and surprise and too much information. And so parched I was tempted to lick the beer rings off the table.

  “Say I run this Nazi to ground, dangle these sovereigns under his nose and he still says no?”

  “You’re a very creative young man.”

  I was at that, good at one thing. Backing myself into a corner and then improvising my way out. And I liked the CO’s proposal. It was the antithesis of the bureaucratic by-the-numbers FBI.

  “Sir, my special kind of cunning is real simple,” I said, leaning forward. “I was doing a decent job in Freiburg and Ulm and Karlsruhe logging troop movements and transmitting weather reports for bomber runs. I figured if I was dead my effectiveness might suffer. And wh
y get croaked carrying out suicide missions dictated by some asshole Case Officer who was snug as a bug in Bern drinking Allen Dulles’ wine cellar dry?”

  “I wasn’t,” said Jacobson, “but please continue.”

  Please continue? They were shorthanded.

  “I have only one job requirement sir. Survival.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” said Jacobson, drier than my swollen tongue.

  My liter of beer had fizzed down to nothing. I pushed it away. Nothing worse than a flat brew. I flagged our skinny Biermaid for another. It was quick in coming. I raised my stein. My old-new CO did likewise.

  We clanked and drank.

  Chapter Three

  I was on the first leg of the Rat Line - the Berlin to Lisbon to Buenos Aires escape route favored by Nazi war criminals - watching the German countryside speed by from the comfort of a first class train compartment. The countryside reminded me of the Ohio Valley, rolling and green. Vegetable gardens were terraced against the hills, fields of barley held forth where the terrain smoothed out and every once in a while you got an eye-smacking acre of the bright yellow flowers they call Raps. They grind ‘em up for cooking oil or something.

  Krauts were still Krauts. We rattled past a partially flattened farmhouse, a burnt out barn and a freshly-plowed field with furrows so true they could’ve been drawn with a straight edge.

  I was stretched out in splendid isolation in my compartment, my legs draped over my suitcase. I had the full kit. A drawstring purse full of gold sovereigns, travel documents proclaiming me a reporter for the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes, and three cartons of Lucky Strikes, the local currency at fifteen Reichmarks per. And that’s not per carton, cousin, that’s per cigarette.

  I was already twenty cigs low from stops at Frankfurt and Mannheim. I was going to have to stop playing Santa Claus or my bag of goodies would be empty long before Lisbon. You would think that blocks of cheese or canned hams would be the currency of exchange in food-strapped Deutschland but it was cigarettes people wanted, coffee a close second.

  Coffee and cigarettes, the building blocks of a better tomorrow.

  My Luckies netted me nothing more than a series of head shakes at the photo of Klaus Hilde that the CO had given me. I’m not a gumshoe but showing a five year old photo of a fugitive who had the means to completely remake his appearance is what we in the espionage game call using your dick for a flashlight.