by John Knoerle
“I’m happy to comply sir, provided you consider my proposal to short circuit the Committee to Free Berlin.”
“I’m listening.”
“It needs Ambrose.”
“Why?”
“He’s been there, the Armory. He can give them the birds-eye lowdown.”
“Why would they believe him?”
“Because, before I free Ambrose from his cell, I will snap photos of the Armory fortifications, which photos will be developed and enlarged and circulated among the members of the Committee by Ambrose at their meeting tomorrow night.”
The CO sighted down his nose. “Got any thoughts on how to gain entry?”
“Not a one sir. I was hoping you’d tell me we have a mole in the Soviet Sector.”
Jacobson gave out with a bitter snort. “Leonid Vitinov was our mole.”
“What about Colonel Norwood? I’ll wager he has Soviet contacts.”
“I thought you considered him a snitch?”
“I changed my mind,” I said without further explanation. The CO would have heard all about our embarrassment at the chalet. “But he hates me now.”
The CO coughed a laugh out his nose. “The only person John Norwood hates is Winston Churchill, who declined to tender his name for knighthood following the Colonel’s wartime service in the Balkans, no explanation given.”
I remembered the humidor in Norwood’s display cabinet, the one with Churchill’s initials. What was that? A consolation prize?
“Norwood will love it if you come crawling back. Just be prepared to eat some shit.”
“Yes sir.” Jacobson’s pinched look indicated he might like to serve up an extra portion. I stood ready, I had it coming. My tip off to the Committee’s founding member was insubordinate in the extreme.
But the CO said only, “The NKVD knows we suspect the Committee by now, so it wouldn’t hurt to talk dirty about them at Norwood’s, get the word out.”
“And Ambrose? The Armory?”
“Norwood might know a way in. But keep that discussion private.”
“And I keep mum about Leonid?”
“Have you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Kept mum about Leonid?”
I cast my mind backward. I knew what the CO was after, a cross check of who told what to whom so he could have all loose ends tied up when Wild Bill came to call. I told him what I remembered to the best of my ability, addled as I was by vodka and exhaustion. “I have no idea.”
The CO grumbled, extended his hand and hauled me out of the fancy chair. “Get some sleep. Stay patient, and stay sober. The Colonel has a form of interrogation uniquely his own.”
As if I didn’t know.
“This is critical stuff, Schroeder,” said Victor Jacobson, quietly. “We’re counting on you.”
“Yes sir.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
I drove to the French Sector after a home cooked supper of Zwieback and Dinty Moore stew. The weather was raw, a tin sky venting gusts of jagged wind. I cruised past the chalet on Ernststraße. The Chinese lanterns burned brightly and the gravel driveway was jammed with cars. Excellent.
I hadn’t arrived empty-handed this time. I had stopped to buy a bottle of champagne. A big one, a jeroboam they call it. A peace offering.
I parked down the block, in front of a car repair shop. A skinny brown mutt prowled a yard full of rusted heaps next door. He snarled and threw himself against the chain link as I passed by. I like dogs and don’t like cats. Odd they held the opposite opinion of me.
I slung my gallon of bubbly over my shoulder and walked down the block and up the front walk of the chalet, the entryway for uninvited guests. I was well scrubbed and well dressed, the dog bites on my beezer scabbing over nicely. My champagne wasn’t chilled but the Colonel would have one of those sterling silver ice buckets. The kind I’d seen at Mushie Wexler’s Theatrical in Cleveland, where the waiter turned the bottle every two minutes, rattling ice and whetting appetites.
I stopped at the door to the steep staircase and pulled the knocker. I recalled Victor Jacobson’s advice as I waited my turn to join the tumult. ‘Stay patient, stay sober’.
The Colonel probably didn’t glean many deep dark secrets at these jamborees but there are other confidences that can be had in the proper setting. Not a human made who doesn’t want to be considered in the know. In Berlin especially. Not sure how the Colonel worked it but if it was me I’d bait the source with a false statement of fact and wait for a smug correction.
Now there was an idea. Why not use it on Colonel Norwood and his merry band of men? Might work, you never know.
Sedgwick answered the door wearing white tie and tails. I was crashing a hoity toite party this evening. I held up my carbonated peace offering. Sedgewick took it from me.
“I will ask the Colonel if he wishes to receive you,” he said and trooped up the stairs.
I waited a long minute. Then another, wondering what sort of assortment the Colonel had gathered this time. The Victrola was playing chamber music.
And who was I supposed to be? I had neglected that little detail. I had posed as a salesman on a previous visit. Nobody cared. But I was poised to ask impertinent questions this time around. Why? Who was I? A reporter for Stars’n’Stripes? A conversation stopper if ever there was.
Heckfire, I was who I was. Personal adjutant to General William Donovan, sent to Berlin on a fact-finding mission. The enemy was mobilizing. It was time to show the flag.
Past time. Hard to know without a wristwatch but it felt like ten minutes past time. Screw it. I climbed the long steep staircase and stood in the entryway. Sedgewick ignored me from the kitchen. Colonel Norwood was in the parlor, showing off Churchill’s humidor. I cleared my throat, loudly.
“There you are dear boy. Come join the fray.”
Some fray. It looked like a congress of church deacons. The men wore rumpled old-fashioned suits and bowties and the two women guests were even drabbier. They didn’t laugh when Norwood crooked me around the arm and introduced me as his illegitimate son.
He was working hard tonight, the Colonel, wearing a dress blue uniform he had outgrown, beaded sweat on his temples, his jolly booming voice laboring to find the right pitch. I shook hands with the guests and let Norwood do the talking.
The visitors were deposed dignitaries by my guess. Former legislators or cabinet ministers or somesuch. One white haired old gent wore a clerical collar. A somber bunch. My bottle of bubbly sat unopened and un-iced on the coffee table.
When we had finished making the rounds I apologized to the Colonel for my rude behavior on the previous visit.
“Gone and forgotten dear boy. And I do appreciate the giggle water.”
“Least I could do Colonel. What’s the occasion this evening?”
“No occasion,” said Norwood, surveying the crowd with a jaundiced eye. “Just a group of self-important expats who expect us to drive the Red Army back to Minsk so they can reclaim their positions of power and privilege.”
“Ah. Is that all.”
I tried my bait and switch idea. “Colonel, Klaus Hilde suggests the Red Army is about to head in the other direction.” Norwood hiked one considerable eyebrow half an inch. “I think it’s a crock, a cheap ploy to keep us interested. But Hilde says the Committee to Free Berlin is a Soviet front.”
I stopped there. The Colonel waved me on without comment.
“A Soviet front planning an assault on a military target in the Soviet Sector, which the Red Army will use as a pretext to seize the city.”
“First I’ve heard of it,” said Norwood, “though it does sound like Beria. Devious little bastard, to the cloak and dagger born.” He gave me a brusque once over. “What do you intend to do about it?”
I shrugged, surprised the Colonel hadn’t dismissed Hilde’s theory. Maybe I could trust the old queen. “We don’t have much leverage. The White Russians on the Committee don’t trust us for some reason.”
I wa
nted to do as the CO suggested, throw open the discussion, get the word out to the dignitaries. They were Eastern European anti-Communists. They had to know somebody who knew somebody on the Committee. Better if Col. Norwood delivered the message, however. The White Russians had a perfectly good reason not to trust us. Most all of their Yankee collaborators had been murdered.
I said it again, louder this time. “I just don’t understand why the White Russian freedom fighters don’t trust us!”
Heads turned, conversation quieted. The Colonel was off like a shot.
“It’s quite a good reason act-tu-ally. You bloody Yanks hold yourselves aloof. We Brits like to jump in up to our nellies, mix it up with the natives and all that. Which is why, as any of these good people can tell you, that we are so universally revered!”
This brought a titter from the starchy group.
“You Americans suffer, if I may say so, from ‘top down’ thinking,” said the Colonel with a saucy wink.
“How so?”
“Well, dear fellow, there’s a reason the MI6 call American agents bat boys.”
“I assumed it was a baseball reference. You Brits are the sluggers, we Yanks just hand you the bats.”
“It’s worse than that I’m afraid.”
I nodded for the Colonel to continue, not that he needed any encouragement.
“It seems that General William Donovan, wartime head of the OSS, once proposed a peculiar plan of sabotage.”
Col. Norwood paused. One of the dignitaries had the bad taste to cough. Norwood paused until order had been restored.
“The General had been informed, incorrectly as it turns out, that the Japanese populace were deathly afraid...of bats. Based on this misinformation the General – they call him Wild Bill – conceived a plan. A plan to sow panic and chaos amongst the enemy. A plan to drop thousands of live bats on the Empire of Japan!”
Uneasy mirth from the dignitaries.
“A test run was arranged. How and where the bats were gathered I am not at liberty to say.”
The Colonel mugged at his guests to indicate that this was a laugh line. They obliged.
“Comes the day. A B-24 holding steady at 20,000 feet above the Arizona Territories, Army Air Force cargo monkeys scrambling to drag the crates into position, the bats keening against the light as the bomb bay doors are breached, the top of their crates prized open with crowbars, then yanked free by fifty foot lanyards when the crates are pitched into the wild blue yonder!”
The Colonel had done a good deal of physical business during this speech, dragging crates, yanking lanyards and such. The dignitaries were right there with him, in the cargo hold of the B-29 high above the Arizona desert. Heck, me too, though I knew that Wild Bill’s silly bat scheme never made it past the talking stage.
“The crates are ripped apart, and the captive bats spread their wings in newfound freedom above the parched landscape far below!” The Colonel threw out his arms. “And promptly freeze to death at the high altitude and drop like rocks.”
The dignitaries groaned. They didn’t like the sad conclusion to this amusing anecdote. I didn’t much care for it myself.
The Colonel changed the subject. “Ladies and gentlemen, our American friend brings word that the Committee to Free Berlin is a Soviet front bent on mischief. Can anyone confirm this?” Shrugs and head shakes all around. “Well, pass it along if you have a mind to.”
I got the distinct impression I was being screwed with. As in, Anyone care to do the bidding of these balmy Yanks?
The Colonel kept at it, grabbing a copy of Collier’s from the coffee table. “Allen Dulles proposes, in this issue, that Berlin be left for dead as fitting tribute to the Nazi horrors.” Norwoood shook the magazine at me and grinned. “This is wrong thinking! We need you cheeky Yanks to stem the tide of Communist domination.”
“I agree Colonel,” I said loudly, then leaned in. “Is that why you let us grab Herr Hilde instead of taking him for yourself?”
The Colonel bulled ahead at full volume. “I set you a task old thing! To see if you could track Hilde down, to see if you were worthy. We pitifully outnumbered Brits didn’t amass the greatest empire in history by doing all the scutwork ourselves. We selected our allies carefully, then tested them in battle.”
The Colonel turned to the crowd and boomed, “Our friend Hal, you’ll be glad to know, passed with flying colors.”
The dignitaries weren’t. Glad to know. They were miffed that their concerns were being ignored. The Colonel seemed not to notice, seemed, in fact, pleased as punch. I would have chalked up his erratic behavior to too much Absinthe but he had no scorched purple patches on his cheeks, had nothing showing but plain toothy malevolence.
What the hell?
Sedgewick entered the parlor from the kitchen holding a silver serving tray with both hands. The Colonel made the announcement.
“Fresh picked Spargel, ladies and gentlemen. Steamed, chilled and served with lemon and hand-whisked mayonnaise.”
The dignitaries crowded round the tray. I joined them. I was cheesed off nine ways to Sunday but I wasn’t about to pass up home-cooked grub.
Spargel is Kraut for asparagus, that much I knew. It’s considered a German delicacy, served up from cans at Christmas and Easter. Why then were the long spears on Sedgewick’s silver serving platter white? I grabbed one and slurped it down.
The Colonel appeared at my elbow. “Delightful, aren’t they?”
“Very. But I thought asparagus were green.”
“They are. German Spargel, however, are white. The master race of asparagi you might say.”
This was some sort of an insult to my Kraut heritage I supposed. The Colonel’s flaring brows and licking lips said he was waiting on my response. I stayed patient, stayed sober. Entirely too sober.
“Colonel Norwood,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, “I think we need a drink.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” said the Colonel and pulled me through the throng of dignitaries. “Sherry drinkers,” he said under his breath. We shuddered in unison.
Norwood walked me to his bedroom and pushed through the door. Its hydraulic pump pulled it back into place. When the door clicked shut Norwood turned on his heel and backed me up against it. His voice was low, his breath foul.
“I know why you are here Schroeder. You expect me to say the word and set your odious Irishman free from his captivity.”
“Actually I...”
“Shut up!” I did so. The Colonel continued, so close I could count his nose hairs. “I cannot. And I will not.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I replied without pointing out the obvious. If you can’t, it doesn’t much matter what you won’t.
“I have already saved your miserable hides once this month, that should be sufficient largesse on my part.”
“You’re coming through loud and clear Colonel. Now, didn’t I hear something about a drink?”
“Of course,” said Norwood, instantly the genial host.
He was all over the place this evening. Hail fellow, sarcastic wag, snarling attack dog and back again. The Colonel crossed to a black ceramic end table next to the bed. He pushed a button. The top of the table parted like a two-span drawbridge and a spring-loaded cocktail tray rose up and presented itself. Impressive. Very.
“I have gin, vodka and Scotch,” he said, tinkling around in the joy jumble. “And a bottle of that American rot the Whiskey Colonels drink.”
The Colonel held up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee sippin’ whiskey. Holy cats. “A double, on the rocks.”
The Colonel poured mine with great care, using ice tongs to add four cubes, a crystal jigger to measure out three fluid ounces. Then he glugged a big splash of gin into a highball glass, no ice, no tonic, rimmed the glass with a wedge of lime, placed the wedge in his mouth and noisily sucked it dry.
I hadn’t spent much time with aristocrats. Were they all this goofy?
We drank, I noodled. Norwood said he’d
already saved our miserable hides once this month. True enough. It was the second part, the ‘that should be sufficient largesse’ part that kept burping up like the taste of Dinty Moore stew. Real allies don’t ration their largesse when a life is at stake.
When our glasses were empty and Norwood was refilling them I asked a question that I shouldn’t have, not if I was here to recruit the Colonel to help free Ambrose. Norwood had made it plain he wasn’t in a co-operative frame of mind, but we were knocking back cocktails in his boudoir. His mood figured to improve. So I should have kept my yap shut maybe, done what I had to do to save Ambrose. But a spy’s first allegiance is to the truth.
“How did you make the Russian platoon go away that time you drove up in your Rolls?”
Norwood sipped gin and looked offended. “Winston Churchill has a fond adage that you might find instructive.”
“I’m all ears.”
“No one asks hard questions of good fortune.”
I nodded and smiled and kept my powder dry. If Churchill did say that saying the Colonel had misunderstood it. Churchill wasn’t saying one shouldn’t ask hard questions of good fortune, just that no one bothered to.
I asked my question again. Norwood answered, grudgingly.
“Sheer luck. I knew their commanding officer. Knew him, and his vices, rather better than he cared me to, if you take my meaning. If it had been another squad, or the Blue Caps, you and your Hibernian would now be dead. Or worse.”
I offered my thanks and gathered my wits about me. Col. Norwood had already rung up two coincidences to his account. One of his ladies just happened to know Herr Hilde’s address. And Norwood just happened to have that male prostitute handy when Ambrose and I confronted him about how he knew we’d be at the loading dock. Two coincidences are suspicious, three are a conspiracy. I now had three. Col. Norwood just happened to know the big Russian commander.
