A Despicable Profession

by John Knoerle

  “I think better with my feet up,” I said, amiably.

  Leonid blinked under the bright light that came from some sort of vapor lamp behind his desk. The lamp shutters were crimped so that the glare was focused forward. He blinked again. It must have been disorienting for him, poor dear, his inner sanctum invaded by a cocky jerk twice his size.

  “Aren’t you going to offer me a libation?”

  I had never seen Leonid imbibe but he was Russian, he had a bottle somewhere. I asked for a drink to distract him while I keyed on the intercom. And to give my false bravado a little boost. Yeah, Leonid’s small, but so’s a pit viper.

  The intercom was a small keyboard of toggle switches. I pushed down the switch labeled CC while Leonid rummaged in a steel cabinet on the wall behind him. The switch popped back up when I released it. I cast about for a way to pin it open.

  Leonid found what he was looking for. A dusty bottle of clear liquid.

  I did too. A pencil thick as a forefinger. I depressed the switch and wedged the pencil stub between the keys on either side. Leonid returned to the desk. The pencil rolled out.

  “I’m not a complete savage Leonid. I use a glass.”

  Leonid muttered something vile in his native language, Russian being well suited to that sort of thing, and returned to the steel cabinet. I crammed the pencil back into place and gave it a stern look. It held.

  Leonid plunked the bottle and a glass down on his desk, stepped back and crossed his arms. He looked like a cheap hood in a B movie.

  I poured two fingers of Russian vodka into the glass and down my gullet. I looked up and x-rayed the little man.

  “Aren’t you s’posed to say something tough and hardbitten here Leonid? Something like, This had better be good mister?”

  I held my look. Leonid returned it, his deep, liquid peepers frosted over, flat as buttons.

  When I figured the CO had had enough time to get to the intercom, I started in with, “How’s your sister?” That backed Leonid up a step.

  “I do not have a sister.”

  “No? I thought you did.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, things I’ve heard. Here and there.”

  “I do not have a sister.”

  “Okay. Glad we cleared that up.” I tossed back another shot. Leonid no longer looked angry, just very, very alert. I asked another question.

  “Any idea where Ambrose might be?”

  Leonid waved me off, dismissively.

  “No? Because I’m pretty sure you had him kidnapped.”

  A contemptuous snort from the little man.

  “It was just a coincidence Ambrose got snatched outside your building?”

  I laid off the ‘while I was romancing your wife’ part because I didn’t want a knife fight just yet. Leonid wasn’t heeled that I could see but he had a neck slicer tucked in the pocket of trimly tailored pants.

  “My building is under constant surveillance, by many parties.”

  “Yeah, so you’ve said. I remember that now. I guess I owe you an apology for what I did.”

  Leonid’s eyes got slim. I ground my back molars to a halt. He would have to ask if he wanted to know. And he wanted to know. I knew that the moment he didn’t knock my legs off his desk.

  It burned his ass but Leonid managed it. “What did you do?”

  “I told Gerhard Dunkel, the friendly founding member of the Committee to Free Berlin, that I knew his group was a Commie front.”

  Leonid kept his cool. Not a peep, not a frown. Not good. I kept at it. “It’s what we in the spy game call a mirror read. That’s when you...”

  “I know what a mirror read is,” snapped Leonid.

  The gritted teeth were good. But I was still a long way from home. A thought occurred.

  “I have a question for you Leonid.” I leaned back in the leather chair and waggled my feet on his desk. No reaction. Buster Keaton could take lessons from this guy.

  “We Yanks were blessed with great Generals in the war. Eisenhower, MacArthur, Patton. Superb leaders, brilliant strategists. We lost 300,000 on our way to VE Day while single-handedly defeating the Empire of Japan. Your side lost twenty million. So my question to you is, who were the great Russian generals of World War Two? Were there any?”

  I paused. Leonid’s deep, liquid eyeballs had defrosted, his pretty purple lips were squeezed thin. I was rounding third and headed for home.

  “Leonid, Lenny, if I may call you that - we Yanks are crazy for nicknames - I have a follow-up question, something I’ve been puzzling on. Why would a smart operator like yourself, given the opportunity to work for the greatest and most powerful country in the world, choose to throw in with a bunch of dumbshit Commie Unter Menschen?”

  Leonid put his hands on his hips, leaned over the desk and spat his reply.

  “We will destroy you Yankee.”

  I held my position, feet up, smile on. “That’s not much to brag about Lenny” I said, hoisting another shot, “I’m half-destroyed already.”

  I drank it down, and belched loudly for emphasis.

  That’s what did it. It was the belch, the crude insult to his sense of his Old World decorum that got Leonid’s neck-slicer out of his pants pocket.

  I guess they call it blind rage for a reason. Leonid darted around the desk and took a wicked cut at my goozle with his folding knife. He got real close, I felt the wind on my neck.

  Fortunately for me, unfortunately for him, he had neglected to extend the blade. Leonid realized his mistake and stopped to flick it open about the time I pushed back, jumped up, cocked my arm and put my fist in his right ear and about halfway through his head.

  It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime Joe Louis haymakers where everything lines up just so and you’re very impressed with yourself for a minute until you think, Shit, did I just kill someone?

  Leonid crumpled to the hardwood floor and stayed there.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Victor Jacobson opened the pocket door and stood there like black doom. The redheaded receptionist and the green eyeshade boys formed a neck-craning chorus behind him. Good scene for an opera. I went to one once, as my mother’s date. The old man refused to go. It was one of those dark Germanic jobs where the head man discovers his trusted confidante has betrayed him and sings a mournful aria in a thunderous baritone.

  Victor Jacobson didn’t burst into song. He just slid the door closed behind him and surveyed the carnage, eyes lingering on the open knife that lay on the hardwood floor two feet from Leonid’s outstretched arm.

  A pronoun had saved me. Had Leonid said, ‘I will destroy you’ instead of ‘We will destroy you’ the CO might have concluded that Leonid was simply defending his honor. Leonid’s confession had been a very near thing.

  I hadn’t killed the little man. He was snoring peacefully on the hardwood floor. I hooked him under the armpits, hauled him backwards and dumped him in his leather chair. He didn’t resist. I wheeled his chair away from the desk in case he had a gun stashed in a drawer. And I removed the pencil from the intercom keys.

  Leonid muttered a Russian curse when he saw me do that. He was back with us.

  “What a sad little group we are,” said Victor Jacobson. “A traitor, a hothead and a dupe. Of the three, I believe I am most disappointed in myself.”

  Leonid tried to speak, coughed, tried again, croaking out something that sounded like what do you want?

  Jacobson spoke with quiet menace. “I ask, Leonid, you answer.”

  Leonid rubbed his ear, gingerly.

  “As you know, Leonid, we do not trade. Not for Ambrose or anyone else. What I can offer you is the life of your sister.”

  This remark cleared away all the cobwebs for the little man.

  “You have no cause to threaten her! She is an innocent. You betray your own ideals!”

  “We will not threaten her, harm her or imprison her,” said the CO. “What we will do if you don’t co-operate is make it known that you have crossed over, and le
t the NKVD take their vengeance where they will.”

  “They would take my wife, not my sister.”

  I declined to tell Leonid that his wife was no longer available. The poor guy had suffered enough for one day. But the CO got in a good lick.

  “Your handlers know you better than I do, Leonid. And even I know you don’t love your wife.”

  Leonid hoisted himself up off the chair, wobbled, sat back down. He didn’t speak.

  “You know me to be a man of my word,” said Jacobson. “I will not place your sister in jeopardy if you instruct your handlers to release Ambrose.”

  “They will not. Not unless I instruct them in person.”

  The CO shook his head. He wasn’t going to risk that. “Then you will tell us where Ambrose is being held.”

  “I do not know.”

  “I believe that you do.”

  “On my sister’s life I do not.”

  The CO stepped closer and picked up the vodka bottle from the desk. “Dovgan. This used to be your poison, didn’t it Leonid? Quart a day or so?” Jacobson unscrewed the cap. “As I understand it cirrhosis is a chronic disease. Once you’ve got it, it’s yours to keep. No more booze, ever. Isn’t that right?”

  Leonid didn’t say. Jacobson set the bottle down gently on the desk and then - BAM - stunned the little man with a vicious slap to the face.

  Leonid rocked back and struggled upward. I jumped forward and snagged his wrists, pinning his arms behind the chair. The CO grabbed the bottle and waded in.

  “Where is Ambrose being held?”

  “On my sister’s life I don’t know.”

  The CO clamped a big mitt below Leonid’s jaw and strangled his mouth open.

  Being force fed premium vodka was not a form of interrogation I would have found particularly unpleasant but Leonid sure didn’t go for it. Jacobson forced almost half a bottle down Leonid’s throat as the little man squirmed and writhed and hacked and hawed.

  “Where is he weasel?”

  Leonid spit bile at the CO by way of answer. Jacobson scraped it off his cheek and stood up. He set down the vodka bottle, replaced the cap, then picked up the bottle. By the neck.

  This was a fight that was about more than it was about, a long-simmering conflict between bitter rivals. Time for ref Hal to intervene. I dragged Leonid’s chair back out of bottle-clonking range and stood him up. I applied a one-wing choke hold from behind, his neck in the crook of my left elbow, my right hand hooked inside the back of his shirt collar. I tightened my elbow and hauled Leonid six inches off the floor and held him there.

  He clawed at my arm. There are countermeasures to a one-wing choke hold of course – a thumb to the eye, a punch to the groin – but even trained veterans tend to forget the finer points when they can’t breathe.

  I returned Leonid to his chair and loosened my elbow. I let him have one lungful and cinched him up again.

  “Where is Ambrose being held?”

  Leonid didn’t respond. Possibly because I had my forearm jammed against his windpipe. Could that be why? I pondered this question for a good thirty seconds as Leonid tore desperately at my arm.

  Yes, my forearm was indeed the problem. I relaxed it enough for our kidnapper to suck a straw’s worth of air.

  “Tell me what I want to hear, Lenny,” I said, “tell me now!”

  “The Soviet Armory,” he croaked, “on Blummenstraße.”

  I removed my arm and stood up. Leonid slumped to his chair and sucked wind. The CO grimaced.

  Leonid had said a very bad word. Armory. Dollars to donuts the Soviet Armory that held Ambrose Mooney was also the target of the ill-fated freedom fighters of the Committee to Free Berlin. It would be teeming with well-armed troops.

  “Watch him, I’ll be right back.” The CO went to the outer office and closed the door behind him.

  I stood behind Leonid in the chair and felt oddly hopeful. We had a way forward, we just had to work out the tedious death-defying details. Leonid wasn’t an all-knowing, all-powerful superspy after all. I wouldn’t have to turn Commie.

  He was a handful though, give him that. Leonid had used his bent over gasping as cover to retrieve a nasty little Exacto knife snugged in his sock garter. He was drunk, disoriented. I had the tactical advantage, standing above and behind him. How then did I have to jump back at the last moment to avoid a swiveling knife thrust aimed at my temple?

  It was that goddamn chair is what it was. The little prick was using it as a shield now, wheeling it side to side.

  “Hey, Lenny, I’m not going to shoot you. Not here. So why not come out and play?”

  Leonid shoved the chair aside and smiled all the way up to his ghoulish gums. He extended the blade another two inches.

  I frowned.

  “Four inches? Christ, Lenny, is four inches the best you can do?” I reached into my coat pocket and held up the severed gold monogram from his red blazer. I waved it at him.

  “No wonder your wife was so glad to see me.”

  Leonid bolted forward with blood in his eyes. I had fraternized with his wife in the privacy of their apartment. Worse, I had violated his finery!

  He held the knife low, in between his legs, blade up. He would. A knife thrust from below is far more perilous than a thrust from above. If the attacker misses your noggin on the way down he is shit outta luck. If he misses your gonads on the way up, however, he still has a shot at your neck and chin.

  So I was happy to see Victor Jacobson return to the office about then, take stock of the situation, and shoot Leonid in the back.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Victor Jacobson shot Leonid Vitinov in the back with a dart gun. Leonid would hate that. It broke his ‘no gadgets’ rule. I bent down and cleared his airway and turned his head sideways. He had much more he could tell us. With any luck I would get to ask the questions.

  The CO nodded approvingly at the state of affairs. He looked a new man, all doubt and anxiety washed away. I was surprised to see him so chipper, what with a major career embarrassment sprawled on the hardwood floor and General Bill Donovan inbound tomorrow. Victor Jacobson would have some Fancy Dan explaining to do. He returned to the outer office, leaving me alone to guard the prisoner. And chew my cud.

  I sat down in the fancy leather chair. I was hell bent to spring Ambrose now that I knew where he was being held. But Wild Bill and the CO would have other concerns. Like how to keep the Committee to Free Berlin from assaulting the Soviet Armory and starting World War III. They had a point. I didn’t want World War III on my resume either.

  It went contrary to my most deeply-held beliefs but I would risk getting my head blown off to short circuit the NKVD’s plan. They say that soldiers don’t crawl out of their foxholes to assault an enemy pillbox in pursuit of an abstract ideal, they do it to save their buddies.

  They’re right. I would risk getting my head blown off, I was right, ready and gung ho. So long as springing Ambrose was part of the plan.

  And quick. The Blue Caps would be cranked up after Anna’s quick exit and the apartment fire. When Leonid didn’t return home that evening they would know he’d been blown. They would know that we knew the Committee to Free Berlin was a Commie front.

  The NKVD would assume we knew the Committee was planning an assault on a Soviet target, assume we knew the time and place. They would assume we knew everything. Edict one in the spy biz. Assume the worst and work backwards.

  The Blue Caps would be hard pressed to change the location. There was only one Soviet Armory in Berlin. But they would sure as hell move up the go date, try to hit quick before we could make a plan. The only silver lining I could glim was that modifying an operation of this importance would need clearance from on high, from Stalin himself. If the Soviets planned to use the attack on the Armory as a pretext to seize Berlin all the pieces had to be in place.

  72 hours? That sounded about right. We had 72 hours to head off the Committee to Free Berlin and rescue Ambrose. And save the world. I sat down in t
he fancy chair and didn’t think about it.

  Ring ring.

  Brainstorm for Mr. Harold Schroeder, plee-ase hold.

  I held, waiting for the no-nonsense PBX operator who resides in the upper reaches of my cranium to patch the lines together at her plugboard. I haven’t mentioned her before because I was afraid you would think me nuts but she does exist. Her name is Gertie.

  Here is your party.

  I waited, I listened. A faint watery echo down the line. It sounded like reverse the order.

  Thanks a lot, Gert. Some brainstorm. Reverse the order of what?

  Oh.

  Yeah.

  We didn’t have 72 hours to head off the Committee and then rescue Ambrose. It was the other way round. I could no longer march into a Committee meeting and present my case. MANTIS wouldn’t expose himself in such a public forum. Ditto the CO. Only one sad sack Yank could turn the tide of history with grim details about what awaited the Committee members at the Soviet Armory. Ambrose Mooney.

  Excellent. Now all I had to figure was a way to bust him out. They do it all the time in Westerns, it’s easy as pie. You just tie a rope around the bars and yell giddyap! The bars rip loose every time.

  -----

  “Good news, bad news,” said the CO when he returned to Leonid’s office. The little man remained on the floor, sawing logs. Jacobson looked down at him. “The tranq dart lasts about three hours.”

  I asked him what the good news was.

  “I get to get shed of Hilde. He’s been a pain in the ass.”

  “Where will you send him?”

  “Now that he’s proved his worth General Donovan will carry him off to the Pentagon.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “I’ll have to install Leonid in Hilde’s room upstairs.”

  “Why? Hilde’s old news. Leonid knows field agents, current ops, codes, drop points.”

  “Hilde’s a former second in command of the Abwehr, a big-map guy. The Puzzle Palace will love him. Leonid’s just a low level operative. That’s the way we play it.”

  “Play it? To Wild Bill Donovan?”

  “Yes Schroeder. If you’re thinking I’d rather not have General Donovan know how badly I screwed up on Leonid, you’re right. But I’ll tell him when the time comes. We hand out truth on a need to know basis. Donovan and the Whiskey Colonels are too far removed to make good use of what Leonid knows. That’s my job for now.”