by John Knoerle
“Von Mann zu Mann.”
She nodded her consent. Martin and I walked toward the lonely birch tree draped in drying laundry. I waited till he finished eating. Our conversation went as follows. In Deutsch.
“Martin, you came to the apartment yesterday, asking for the lid to the pot. And then you ran away before I could give it to you. Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do know. Did you see something that frightened you?”
Martin took my measure and stated his terms. “I want a cigarette.”
I looked left and saw why. His pals were watching from atop the rubble mound. He wanted to show off.
“I can’t give you a cigarette in front of your mum. But I’ll slip you an entire pack of Lucky Strikes once we’re done.”
Martin’s dirty mug lit up like Christmas Eve. We stopped beneath the birch tree. The clothes hanging from its branches weren’t fit for dusting rags. He answered my question.
“I ran away because I saw him.”
“Who?”
“The little man. I saw before.”
“When?”
“Two days before.”
“At the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was coming to knock.”
“What did you see?”
“The little man. Coming out of the door.”
“Did he see you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do when he saw you?”
“He grabbed me and asked who I was.”
“What did you say?”
“I was a beggar boy and could I have a cigarette.”
“What did he do then?”
“He said that I must not come here,” said Martin and stared at his shoes, if you could call them that. The leather uppers were shredded into strips. Call them sandals.
“Is that all he did? The little man?”
“No,” said Martin, watching his toes wiggle.
“What else did he do?”
“He slapped me in my face and knocked me down.”
Nice, Leonid, classy. Jimmy Streets beating the crap out of a cop tied to a chair, Hitler sending Panzer tanks against the Polish cavalry. They’re always like that, the wrong numbers. They never pick on anyone their own size.
I thanked Martin for answering my questions. He put his hand out for his pack of butts. I shook it, and imparted some fatherly wisdom. “Always get your payment up front.”
Martin went from crestfallen to awestruck when he saw what I had placed in his palm. He turned it over and ran his grubby fingers across its raised surface. A shiny gold sovereign bearing the likeness of George V.
“Tell your mum to find a place far away from here. Do you understand me Martin?”
Martin nodded and ran off to show his mom. I walked back toward the apartment, feeling pretty good about myself. I had confirmed my suspicion about Leonid and done a good deed in the bargain. Yes, I was walking tall. A dapper little Russian would soon have to deal with someone his own size and then some. I was looking forward to that encounter when Martin chased me down.
I was about to tell the little moneygrubber to buzz off when he did the strangest thing. He fell to his knees and kissed my hand, like I was Pius the XII or something!
I retrieved my mitt from this embarrassment and walked on, feeling pretty lousy about myself.
Chapter Twenty-eight
I didn’t find what I was looking for when I got back to the apartment. The hidden microphone that would explain how Leonid knew we would be paying a call on his wife.
I’m not a complete idiot, just a lazy one. I hadn’t searched the apartment for a bug when I moved in because audio surveillance requires round-the-clock engineers and I wasn’t anywhere near that important. But maybe a round-the-clock crew wasn’t necessary. Could be the eavesdropper knew when we would be home and when he wanted to listen in.
What I found was a ventilation box, in the parlor, on the far wall next to the radiator. I unscrewed the perforated cover. The box was a phony. No duct pipe, just a tiny wire-sized hole. And something else. A wad of spirit gum that plugged the hole. I pried it loose and rolled the gum between my thumb and forefinger. It was still fresh, pliable.
Cute. Leonid had heard all he needed to hear and removed the microphone. The wad of gum was his little taunt, his thumb in the eye to prod me to make wild accusations, accusations the CO wouldn’t buy. Not without something more solid than a wad of gum. Turning NKVD Major Leonid Vitinov was the CO’s one unqualified success in Berlin. I point the finger at Leonid Vitinov now and I was on my way back to the States in steerage.
Well screw Leonid, I wasn’t going to play that way. I wasn’t going to make wild accusations just yet. I would convince the little man that I didn’t suspect him of kidnapping Ambrose.
No, that wasn’t right. Ambrose had disappeared outside Leonid’s apartment building. I had to suspect Leonid, while somehow convincing him I didn’t know about the hidden mike, didn’t know for certain that he was guilty as sin.
I wasn’t sure how to pull that off but I knew that Leonid already thought me one lamb chop short of a mixed grill. I would do my best to confirm that opinion.
I put the wad of spirit gum back where I found it, replaced the cover to the ventilation box and had a terrible thought. I had something more solid than a wad of gum. I had a phony ventilation box that hid a wire hole. I had Ambrose getting snatched outside Leonid’s building. Why was I so reluctant to make my case to the CO? Victor Jacobson was a dour rigid s.o.b. but no one could question his patriotism. He was as gung ho as they come. Wasn’t he?
I thought about it for a minute. Yes, everything I knew about the CO said he was a straight shooting Clean Gene. And everything I knew about post-war Berlin said there was no such animal.
I went to the musty couch and stretched out, tried to get comfortable. I sat up, lied down, squeezed my head between my hands. It was 1944 all over again. Behind enemy lines. On my own and devil take the hindmost.
With one key difference. This time I had more than my own hide to worry over. I had a comrade in arms under hostile guard.
-----
I had a lousy night. Fitful sleep and dark dreams. Wide awake at the slightest sound, hoping to see Ambrose stumbling home drunk. He didn’t oblige.
I cooked up a can of Campbell’s pea soup in the morning and ate it from the pot, wishing I had been a little less generous with the bockwurst. Pig and pea soup are made for each other. I washed out the pot, filled it with water, heated it on the stove and hauled it to the bathroom for a shave and a pit wash. I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, put on a clean shirt and set sail, a man with a plan.
First stop was the sweet-smelling Konditorei for some coffee and a phone call. There was one last tiny remaining shred of a possibility. Fevered thoughts of Eva had driven Ambrose to abandon his post. I sincerely hoped he had been that stoopid. I drank a cup of coffee. It was so bad I drank another.
I wondered if Eva could be working the other side of the street. She had led us to Herr Hilde awful quick. I slurped some mud. There wasn’t enough time on the clock or Nescafe in the jar to answer that question.
I borrowed the phone for a buck and called the number I had committed to memory. Could Eva’s phone be tapped? Not likely, didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to say anything the other side didn’t already know. I got a groggy hello on the fifth ring.
“Eva it’s Hal. Sorry to wake you.” Drowsy noises on the other end of the line. “I seem to have lost track of Ambrose. Have you seen him?”
Eva was instantly alert. “No. What has happened?”
I spilled it. “I think he’s been kidnapped, captured. By the Soviet secret police.”
“Mein Gott,” she said in a voice that conjured images I had kept at bay. Ambrose strapped to a chair. Two goons taking turns. I shook it off. Not now.
“I would like to hire you Eva. I will pay whate
ver you like to help me find him.”
A moment’s silence, then a hearty “Screw you” echoed down the line.
“I don’t understand, Eva, don’t you...”
“I sell my body, not my heart,” she said angrily. “My heart comes free.”
Well. Okay then. I said a muted thanks and asked her to ask around about Ambrose. She agreed. I lowered my voice and cupped my hand around the mouthpiece, as if that would keep a phone tapper from overhearing.
“None of my business Eva but do you have any customers that work for the secret police, the NKVD?”
“No, no.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Why they would come to us? We are costing them money!”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
I could almost feel the spray on my ear as Eva blurped her lips contemptuously. “I am saying, Mister Hal, that Blue Caps have their own place where to go.”
I thanked Eva, told her I would call her tomorrow morning and rang off.
Capitalists take note. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is fully committed to the cause of world domination. The NKVD has their own brothel.
-----
I drove the delivery truck to Dahlem. The trees had grown leaves all of a sudden and scattered yellow and red tulips stood to attention along the way. Also daffodils and some purple flower I didn’t know the name of. Bulbs, buried deep. Can’t keep ‘em down.
I arrived about noon, parked down the block. I hadn’t so much as looked in the side view mirror on the drive over. Why bother? My life was an open book. I hiked to the white brick mansion, down a block hung with fragrant blossoms on knobby-limbed trees, a lucky man in an unlucky world.
The jug-eared GI who’d picked me up at the airport answered the door. He wore civvies but had an Army-issue .45 holstered on his hip. He greeted me by name. I said I needed to see Victor Jacobson. He asked me to wait in the parlor.
Was Jug Ears a real GI on loan from the Berlin Operating Base, here to stand guard on Herr Hilde? Or was he a Global Commerce operative with a khaki uniform in his closet, next to his Navy dress whites and his Army Air Force bomber jacket? Maybe a penguin suit in case he had to impersonate a waiter.
I waited in the parlor. The swinging door to the kitchen was closed but Henka the Polish cook was up to her elbows in dumplings again. I smelled chicken fat, and a pungent smell that carried me back to the tiny kitchen of a row house in Youngstown. Liver. Henka was cooking up a batch of liver dumplings. The heartless witch.
I held my position. I have my pride. I wasn’t going to barge in, my tongue hanging out like a big slobbery dog. I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to all the way across the parlor to the swinging door, which banged open, knocking me back.
“Look what the cat dragged in” said the CO, in a jolly mood for once. Liver dumplings will do that to you.
I paused, wanting Leonid present when I delivered the bad news. Doubtless he felt the same way. I sensed movement behind me and turned to look. Sure enough, there he was, standing in the hall by the front door, hands folded at his crotch.
I backed up to triangulate the situation. “I haven’t seen Ambrose in twenty-four hours. I believe he’s been taken hostage.”
“Where? By whom? How in the hell?” demanded Jacobson.
“It happened outside Leonid’s apartment building,” I said, watching the little man to see if this brought any reaction. A minor wrinkling of the brow was all.
“We had a beer at the Café Gestern. The bartender recognized me from my meet with Leonid, which struck me as a little too observant. So Ambrose and I had a couple, pretending to be waiting on Leonid. When he didn’t show we asked the barkeep if Leonid didn’t live nearby. As a matter of fact he did. One block south, two blocks east.”
“And then?”
“As a career snoop I felt duty bound to drag Ambrose over there to reconnoiter. That’s when the beer caught up to me, I went off to find a pissoir. When I came back Ambrose was gone. And, yes, I’ve checked everywhere.”
The point of telling this lame ass story was to bait Leonid, see if he would chastise me for making a public scene with the barkeep about Leonid’s place of residence. This was unprofessional behavior. As our counterintelligence officer Leonid should take me to task. Unless he didn’t want to ask the real reason I went looking for his building.
“You should never have gone there,” said Leonid. “The building is under constant surveillance.”
“Who by?”
“Interested parties.”
“Who’s interested?”
“Who is not?”
Answering questions with questions. The Napoleonic little prick wasn’t going to call me out.
“Leonid, forgive me, but I’m the suspicious type. That Ambrose got himself got outside your building has me thinking all kinds of terrible thoughts.”
I let that stinkeroo hang in the air for a moment. “Like, for instance, Leonid knows we’re loitering around his living quarters so he calls in an NKVD snatch of Ambrose to teach us wisenheimers a thing or two.”
“How would I know such a thing? That you and your friend were outside my building?”
This was it then, my cue, my let me show you this wad of spirit gum moment.
I let it pass. I shook my head, slowly, sorrowfully. “I don’t know Leonid, I’m sorry. I guess I just don’t want Ambrose’s disappearance to be my fault.”
The CO took the floor, said stuff about how we’re all in the same boat on rough seas and need to pull together and so on and so forth.
I nodded, watching Leonid. He was a difficult read, his face never betrayed him. I couldn’t tell if I’d put it over. Leonid would have preferred wild accusations that got me sent home in steerage but I was offering him another way to go. A manageable truce with a bumbling hick. Question was, did he buy the act, think me too stupid to search the apartment for a hidden mike?
Leonid plucked a plump oval cigarette from his gold case and said, “Do not blame yourself Harold. We will find your friend.”
Yes he did.
I made a pious face and thanked him for his kind solicitude. I was over. He thought me stupid. And in the spy game being thought stupid is a wonderful thing.
Leonid promised to check with his NKVD handlers to see if Ambrose had been swept up ‘by mistake.’ The CO pledged to alert the proper authorities, whoever they might be. This was all gas and no flame of course. I would have to locate, and rescue, Ambrose by myself.
Leonid left the room. The CO slumped in an upholstered chair. “He better not be shacked up with some Fräulein.”
“He’s not.”
“You know the Committee to Free Berlin meeting is tonight. Twenty hundred hours, der Admiralspalast, Soviet Sector.”
“But isn’t that where...”
“That’s where it is Schroeder.”
“Then I’ll be there. With bells on.”
“Good. Because we still have Hilde, upstairs.”
“I understand.”
“Your report will go a long way toward determining his future.”
I snapped a snappy salute. “I’m on it sir.”
Jacobson chuckled. “Get the hell out of here.” I marched myself toward the front door.
“Not that way.” The CO pointed his chin toward the kitchen. I stopped. I sniffed. “Yes sir!”
Chapter Twenty-nine
I climbed into the delivery truck and cranked the ignition. The engine coughed and sputtered. I feathered the accelerator until it settled into a happy thrum. They say an army marches on its stomach and now that I had a belly full of liver dumplings I was ready to engage the enemy. The question was how.
Why not measure for measure? Swap Leonid for Ambrose.
Not bloody likely. The NKVD would wash their hands of the little man once they knew his cover was blown. It would have to be personal. I would have to kidnap Anna.
I’d do it in a blink to save Ambrose. But Leonid wouldn’t care. Not e
nough to compromise his precious all-important principles. True believers don’t compromise. Ask the murdered children of Joseph and Magda Goebbels. Ask Leonid’s parents, come to that. Denouncing a family member was a sure way to curry favor with the Party. It would explain why Leonid’s father was dead and his mother in custody. And why Lavrenty Beria trusted a White Russian. There was no way short of death to defeat a true believer.
Unless I could turn Leonid’s handlers, turn the Communist Party, against him. Leonid’s mission was to disinform the US about Soviet plans and capabilities, not difficult since the US didn’t know squat. But Herr Hilde, he knew plenty.
The NKVD was counting on Leonid to discredit Hilde. The Soviets installed Hilde in the American Sector with two stumblebum guards. They wanted us to capture Hilde after they’d finished their purge of the freedom fighters, so he could take the blame and deflect suspicion from Leonid. More than that. The Blue Caps knew Hilde had reached out to us, that he would tell us secrets he would keep from them.
God, it was brilliant. The NKVD wanted us to conduct the interrogation of Brigadeführer Hilde for them, with Leonid acting as their stenographer.
Hilde couldn’t have known the precise whereabouts of our émigré informers. But Leonid could have. As our CI officer he would have had reason to meet with them in order to determine their credibility. And as a fellow White Russian he would have won their confidence. Which meant, it seemed to me, that Leonid was the Judas, not Hilde. Leonid was the one who targeted our freedom fighters for death.
I glanced down at the fuel gauge. It was just above L which is Kraut for empty. Leer. I pulled away from the curb and thought deep thoughts as I drove the rumbling delivery truck north towards downtown.
If Leonid could not discredit Hilde, if the Amerikanskis were to begin to act upon Hilde’s intelligence, or give that appearance anyway, Leonid might become expendable to the NKVD. Which might make our True Believer into a Doubting Thomas. At which time he might agree to divulge Ambrose’s location.
Christ Almighty, it was a long way from here to there. What I really wanted was to grab the dapper little shit by the scruff of the neck and snap his digits one by one till he came clean. It’s what I would have done in 1944. But things were more complicated in 1946.
