A Despicable Profession

by John Knoerle

  Our roles were reversed in the club room. We took chairs to enjoy our snacks while Bill Donovan remained standing, and held forth.

  “The auction houses of France are suddenly flooded with valuable oil paintings. Also sterling silver, cut glass crystal, gems, gold jewelry and the like.” He shook his head. “This is what we are reduced to. Intelligence from French art house auctioneers.”

  I sought to fill in the blanks. “What is the significance General? Of the flood of contraband?”

  “The ruble’s almost as worthless as the reichmark. The Reds would need hard currency in order to mount an invasion.”

  “Which is why they’re selling all their captured German loot in France?”

  Donovan nipped at his beer. Obviously.

  The CO and Donovan moved to the wing chairs by the window for a huddled conversation. I overheard the occasional heated contraction - don’t, won’t, can’t - and decided this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to overhear.

  I looked to the Mooney brothers, seeking distraction. Sean was eyeing the piano. “You know how to play?”

  “Sure. We both do.”

  They did at that. Sean took the high keys, Patrick the low. They were halfway decent, plunking out an Irish ditty on a piano that Truman had likely set a spell at. Wild Bill hoisted his beer in salute. The boys liked that.

  Donovan’s information had been sliced thin and served sparingly. He knew much more than art house auction proceeds. He would have access to Army Intel cable intercepts and Air Force flight surveillance reports, State Department briefs and scuttlebutt too. ‘In order to mount an invasion’ he had said. That tin map in the Comm Center, the one with all the red magnets crowding the Elbe, was becoming very real.

  No wonder Donovan hadn’t gigged me for letting Col. Norwood scamper off. Good riddance to bad rubbish was his thinking. It was time for serious men to take charge.

  I was ginned up and ready to roll, half drunk on half a beer, eager to make my case for the rescue of Ambrose and all that would follow. But Jacobson and Wild Bill were still deep in conversation, Jacobson doing most of the talking, Donovan sipping beer from the bottle, answering with brief remarks. It went on like that for two beers.

  At last Donovan stood up and shook hands with Jacobson and walked over to the piano. My CO gave me a quick thumbs up.

  He had made the case for me, had, apparently, convinced Wild Bill to approve my hare-brained scheme to rescue Ambrose. I nodded my profound thanks.

  All I had to do now was work out the operational details. Figure out precisely how to infiltrate the Soviet Armory, locate, liberate and exfiltrate a heavily guarded prisoner while pausing to snap photos of the machine gun emplacements set up to mow down the Committee to Free Berlin. That’s it. That’s all I had to do.

  My cranial cavity was a whirlygig of pressing questions and concerns so I’m not really sure if Major General William J. Donovan spent the better part of an hour singing Irish ditties with the Mooney Brothers at the piano.

  But that’s the way I remember it.

  Chapter Forty-six

  A thought occurred when I climbed behind the wheel of the delivery truck after our session with Wild Bill.

  We had agreed that the operation to free Ambrose would launch tonight. The CO informed the boys and me that we wouldn’t be permitted any heavy weapons or explosives, if we were captured no one had ever heard of us and so on and so forth. Then he went to the trunk of his Horch and presented the boys with two clean Colt .38 Specials and a box of ammo. He gave me a set of handcuffs and his Kine Exakta camera with the flash attachment. Then he shook hands all around and wished us Godspeed.

  The thought that occurred was this. Sean, Patrick and myself were about to get our necks wrung doing something that Colonel Norwood said he could do with a phone call. Was it too late to bring the Colonel back in? Norwood and Sedgewick weren’t going to drive to the South Seas. They were likely at Templehof right now, waiting on a flight. We could be there in an hour. I would give Norwood his scandalous photo back as payment for the favor, tell him that General Donovan wished him a happy retirement.

  I opened the truck door and put my foot on the running board. I kept it there.

  “Are we coming?” said Sean.

  “Or going?” said Patrick.

  “I’ll let you know in a minute.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want the Colonel to have the last laugh at my expense. I didn’t but it wasn’t that. I would don a big red nose and inflatable shoes to free Ambrose from captivity.

  But it wouldn’t work. Sean, Patrick and I were going to have to do it ourselves, for a little reason and a big one. The little reason was that I had to gain entrance to the Armory in order to take snaps of the machine gun emplacements, thereby alerting the Committee to the trap and averting World War III.

  The big reason was that I owed it to Ambrose to do it myself. If the Soviets said no to Norwood, which was likely given what they had brewing, they would then know we were zeroed in on Ambrose and would redouble his guard. Or ship him off to the Lubyanka. We had one shot to rescue Ambrose and it was ours alone.

  “We’re going,” I said and fired up the truck.

  I talked the Mooney boys through the layout of the Armory as I drove east through Babelsberg at dusk, the delivery truck thrumming happily. Sean sat in the passenger’s seat, Patrick took the transmission hump.

  “It’s a quadrangle. Barracks on the north side, detention cells upstairs on the south, best I can figure. Entry gate’s on the west.”

  “What’s on the east side? said Sean

  “That’s the armory part.”

  “How do you know?” said Patrick.

  “It’s a one-story vault with no windows and a ribbed steel door.”

  “How do you know the detention cells are on the south side?” said Sean.

  “Upstairs,” said Patrick.

  “Barred windows on both sides. There’s a guard at the entry gate. He’s the key. We get hold of him and we’ve got a key ring and a hostage going in.”

  “How do we plan to?” “Get hold of him?” said Sean and Patrick.

  “He sits in a glass booth with an alarm button or a klaxon horn. We can’t risk swarming him, and the old hey pal, got a match routine’s not gonna fly. We need something unexpected to lure him out of that booth.”

  “A damsel in distress,” said Sean.

  “Beat up, clothes ripped,” said Patrick.

  “Yeah.”

  “Says she’s been raped by a Russian soldier.”

  “Unexpected gentlemen. That probably happens twice a week. But I like the damsel in distress angle. How else can we work that?”

  Pursed lips and head scratching from the Mooney’s. But I had a ridiculous idea.

  “Howzabout a tearful woman with a babe in arms, presenting the Russian love child she can’t care for?”

  “I like it, I do,” said Sean.

  “Where we gonna get a babbie?” said Patrick.

  I shrugged. “Who says it’s real?”

  “Doll wrapped in a blanket?” said Sean.

  “Mummy sobs, lays her bundle down and runs away,” said Patrick.

  “Luring the sentry out of his booth!”

  “What do you think Chief?”

  I drove down bomb-pocked Grossbeerenstraße, the setting sun showing off, painting the scudding clouds gaudy colors. “I think that I am fortunate to have you devious young hooligans on my side. Now shut up and let me think.” They did so. “And stop staring at me.”

  The boys turned away and pretended to admire the scenery. I considered the babe in arms ploy. It was just ridiculous enough to work. But who played mummy? Eva came to mind, but she had done enough.

  It would have to be Anna. Anna had a stake. Me. I was her ticket to New York.

  I looked over at Sean in the passenger’s seat. He was biting his cuticles. Patrick was in the back, stretched out on an Army blanket. “What you chewing on over there young man?”

 
; “My fingernails”

  “I can see that. I meant what’s eating you?”

  “Well, you’ve got a gun, right?”

  “Of course. Walther P-38.”

  “So we got three pistols against an armory. Bit of a mismatch, in’it?”

  “The number doesn’t matter, Sean. If we have to fire a shot inside the Armory we’re dead and buried.”

  Sean nodded and looked out the window. I drove north to Berlin.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  I stopped at the butcher shop when we got back to town, bribed my way in after closing time again. Life was good in the American sector. Miguel directed my attention to several thick T-bones in the glass case. I bought four, damned if our last supper was going to be beef stew from a can.

  We crossed the street to a Spirituosengeschäft, which is Kraut for hooch hut. I bought a fifth of Jameson’s for the boys and a bottle of fancy French Bordeaux for myself. And Anna. It was time to ride to the rescue. Rescue her from her safe house in Kopenick, embrace her warmly, then inform her that she had been drafted to join us in a suicide mission.

  I dropped Sean and Patrick off at the apartment, gave them the key, the hooch and the beef and said I’d be back in an hour or so.

  The boys wanted to know where I was headed. “Off to get mummy and her bundle of joy.”

  I wound my way southeast on Berlin’s meandering thoroughfares. The neighborhood took a turn for the worse when I entered the Soviet Sector, the shops and apartment buildings beat to hell during the Red Army’s ferocious siege of the city. A siege that on Dorpheldstraße in Kopenick looked as if it had just finished up last week. I drove past a blackened Wehrmacht Tiger tank sitting in an empty lot, a Soviet flag stuffed in its gun turret.

  I turned left and hunted the address Eva had given me. The tidy bungalows on the cobbled side streets were largely intact. And to look at 178 Gloriastraße with its striped awnings and white and purple lilacs was to conclude that World War II had never taken place.

  I dragged Anna’s two ton suitcase out of the truck and knocked at the front door. And again. I walked around and knocked at the back door. I peered in a window hung with a small square of tatted lace. A kerosene lamp smoked and guttered on a bedroom dresser. Where the hell was she?

  I dug out my knife and eyeballed the double-hung window. It was secured with a simple turn clasp but I had to punch a hole in the glass with my knife butt to get at it. I slid the window open and listened. I couldn’t identify what I heard but I heard something.

  “Hello? Anna?” No answer. What did she say her friend’s name was? Tanya? Tattia?

  “Tattia? It’s Hal Schroeder, Anna’s Freund.”

  I sensed movement but didn’t see it, heard another faint something, different than the first. A quick skittering sound. I stuck my head inside the window and sneezed. Cat dander. Ivan the Terrible was near.

  I hauled myself in through the window and did a room to room, gat in hand. It didn’t take long, the house had only five rooms. I found a pot of oatmeal on the stove, still warm. A kitchen drawer sat open. One that held knives. There was someone here, unless they had run out the back.

  Dummkopf, you should have identified yourself when you first knocked. I made another circuit and looked harder. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  I found someone hiding under the bed. Ivan the cat. I asked him where Anna had got to. He hissed and darted away. He didn’t like me anymore and who could blame him? I had promised to ride to the rescue at first light. No telling what dark imaginings Ivan and his mistress had endured in my absence.

  I searched the bedroom closet, the coat closet, even the kitchen pantry. I searched the backyard, the tool shed and the detached one-car garage piled high with stacks of yellowed newspapers and political fliers, tinder for the fireplace. There was no one to be found. Yet there had to be. Anna would know better than to leave the premises. She and Tattia might have been dragged off by enemy agents but I didn’t think so. The NKVD had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

  I went back inside and looked again. The house had no cellar but it had an attic. All tidy bungalows have an attic. I searched the ceiling in all five rooms, found no entry point. This was now, officially, ridiculous.

  I heard the first sound again, the one I’d heard outside the window. Closer now, but muffled. A long low sound, a moan maybe. Where the hell was it coming from?

  I checked the closets again, found a ceiling panel in the bedroom closet. It was just big enough to squeeze through. I grabbed a table chair from the kitchen, carried it to the closet, climbed up on it, removed the ceiling panel, lit my penlight and decided to announce myself before I thrust my head into the dark hole.

  “Anna? It’s Hal Schroeder.”

  Smart move on my part. Anna’s face came into view. She looked half mad, eyes wide, pupils dilated, cheeks smudged with soot. She held a carving knife the size of a wheat scythe.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said. Stupidly.

  Anna dropped the carving knife to the floor and burst into tears. I helped her down from the attic. She wept convulsively as I held her up, salting my shirt with her tears.

  “I knew...I knew...I knew you were dead...I knew.”

  “And yet here I am. Big as life and twice as ugly.”

  Anna hiccupped snot from her nose. I got out my hankie and cleaned her up. I told her not to worry, that Leonid would not hurt her anymore.

  “You do not know.”

  “What don’t I know Anna?”

  “What they do, how they are.”

  “How are they?”

  Anna didn’t answer my question, just hugged me like a tree trunk in a hurricane. I picked her up and carried her to the kitchen. It was my turn to make tea.

  But Anna didn’t want any tea. I tried. I set her down on her own two feet and grabbed for the kettle but Anna wouldn’t let go.

  So we held each other. For a long time. I had forgotten how it felt. To hold a woman I cared about in a crushing hug, hearts thudding against one another until our pulse and our breathing became one. Then we let go and stepped back.

  Anna wrapped her glorious mitts around the nape of my neck, feathered my hair with her fingertips and kissed me lightly on the cheek.

  I returned the favor. Her skin was sticky with tears, taut and soft as the whisper she dropped in my ear. “I am want you now.”

  We started slowly, tenderly, bending back over the sink, sliding our clothes off. Then we gave in to the hunger, let our bodies tear into one another, mouths sucking, hips thrusting. Minds racing. Anna wrapped her skinny legs around me and climaxed with a feral scream. I gave out with a knee-buckling groan a moment later. Anna tightened her legs to hold me up.

  We disengaged and pulled our clothes back on.

  I did anyway. Anna pulled up her skirt and panties but kept her pale blue sweater hiked up behind her. Her breasts were beautiful, girlish and innocent. Upturned, blue-veined. A bead of sweat clung to an erect nipple. Anna followed my look and pulled my head down. I caught the quivering drop on the tip of my tongue before it fell. Anna moaned, and pulled her sweater back into place.

  We backed up a step, flushed and a little embarrassed. I asked what became of her friend.

  “She was in fear, when I came. I had to...How to say?”

  “Beg? Plead?”

  “Yes. Beg to stay.”

  “Where is she now?” Anna shook her head. “She left you, she went away?” Anna nodded. “When? When did she go away?”

  “After I came. Gestern.”

  Yesterday, that was good. If Tattia was a plant installed by Leonid to keep watch on his wife Anna would have been snatched by now. But Tattia wasn’t working for Leonid. Of course she wasn’t. It would never have occurred to the arrogant little shit that his wife needed watching.

  “Anna I have friend, gut friend, from America. He was kidnapped.” Anna shook her head at the word. “Taken, nehmen, by Leonid. He is being held in the Soviet Armory.” Anna didn’t understand
.

  “He is in jail.” I held imaginary bars. “His brothers, zwei Bruders, have come here to help me free him.” I swung open the cell door. “And we need your help.”

  “How I can? Help.”

  I explained our plan and the part that she would play. This took a while. When Anna understood she said, “This is not joke?”

  “No. I wish that it were.”

  “It seems to me...dumm.”

  “It is dumm. It’s a dumm job I have, dressing up and playing pretend, playing make believe.” I did a bit of flouncing around to illustrate.

  Anna laughed at me. “I know this, what you say. I know how to do this...make believe.”

  I’ll bet she did at that. “So you will help us?”

  Anna gave me a sideways look. “You haf brought to me my Handkoffer?”

  “Yes Anna, I haf brought your suitcase.”

  She grinned, and said the American word everyone in the world loves best. “Okay.”

  “Go find Ivan,” I said and went off to ransack the house for props. Tattia didn’t have any dolls or stuffed animals to hand so I grabbed a crocheted comforter off the sofa and looked around for something to stuff inside. A cracked flower vase on the sideboard filled out the blanket nicely, but our precious bundle needed a head.

  Anna stood at the front door, overcoat buttoned and cat hauling basket at her side. She followed me to the kitchen.

  A basket on the counter by the ice box held a cabbage and two onions. Too big and too small. I looked behind the basket, found a fat turnip that had rolled off the pile. I wedged it into the neck of the flower vase and handed the bundle to Anna. She cradled it in her arms. We had another odd domestic moment just then as she rocked the bundle ever-so-gently.

  “What can we call him?” she said, looking up at me, eyes bright.

  I thought about it. How to properly name a cracked flower vase with a turnip for a head?

  “We’ll call him Hal Jr.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  I carried Anna’s two ton suitcase up the three flights of stairs to the apartment, stopping to gasp for air on each landing. Anna carried Ivan in his wicker basket. When we reached the door I used our top secret knock to announce my presence. Shave and a haircut, two bits.