A Despicable Profession

by John Knoerle

  Anna tittered at my wide-eyed panic. She hooked her thumb. “Hal is in back.” She put her cheek to her palm. “Sleeping.”

  Oh, ha. A hook and ladder truck, siren blaring, sped past. I relaxed my death grip on the steering wheel.

  “Okay, listen up.”

  I checked the side view mirror, caught a pair of headlights a block or two back. Now what?

  “We’re listening Chief,” said Sean.

  “Hard,” said Patrick.

  I curbed the truck and turned to face them and waited for the wash of headlights and the whoosh of tires. The trailing car passed without slowing.

  “Okay, once we have the booth guard in hand Patrick hides himself in a setback to the right of the booth, by the staircase door.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Ignore any routine comings and goings, which should be few at this hour. But if a buncha Russian soldiers come running, give us a shout.”

  “And what’s my assignment?” said Sean.

  “Keep your mouth shut and follow me around. Any questions?”

  None. I shoved the truck in gear and headed east. The Kudamm took us south of the Zoo Garten then swung southeast to Potsdammer Platz, where we crossed the Soviet checkpoint without incident. Nobody home. I noticed something different in the Soviet Sector. Streetlights. The Reds had round-the-clock juice.

  I turned northeast and down a hill, toward the narrow Muhlendamm Bridge over the Spree. The truck’s fuel gauge dropped from half a tank to almost empty somewhere along in there. Great.

  We crossed the bridge, drove north for a dozen blocks and turned left on a two-lane boulevard that had been recently renamed. I knew that because the street sign read Karl Marx Allee. We were north of the Armory now.

  I drove west till I found Blummenstraße and nudged the truck southward down the side street with the grassy median overgrown with shrubs. The Soviet Armory was on the other side of the block. I chugged fifty yards past the entry gate, parked the truck and killed the engine.

  “Patrick, front and center.”

  He stuck his head in the cab.

  “Go hide behind that clump of bushes back there, on the median. Watch the sentry booth. If the guard’s sleeping it off report back immediately. If he’s awake observe him for one minute to determine how alert he is. Watch for any signs of activity in the quadrangle. Repeat what I just told you.”

  Patrick did so. “Good. Now go.”

  I opened the door and stood on the running board. Patrick climbed past me and scampered to his observation point with shoulders hunched and head swiveling, just as I had done a thousand times behind enemy lines.

  I got back in and ran details with Sean. He was to snap the pictures of whatever machine gun emplacements had been put in place to welcome the Committee to Free Berlin. He wasn’t to fire his weapon unless I was dead. I showed him how to work the camera.

  A breathless Patrick appeared at my elbow. “There’s no one there.”

  “At the booth?”

  “Yes. Nobody!”

  “Probably in the can. Resume your post and report back in five”

  “Yes sir.”

  He took orders well, the tall redhead, tripping back to his clump of shrubs like a kid at scout camp. Would his brother do likewise? Patrick was dumb and reckless, which was fine. Big brother Ambrose was smart and reckless. Even better. But middle brother Sean, he was thoughtful. Not what you look for in a soldier.

  Patrick appeared at my elbow in five minutes time. “The booth’s empty, the quadrangle’s empty. Not a bleedin’ soul.”

  This wasn’t good news. The guard was more asset than liability. I wanted his key ring, I wanted him as a hostage going in.

  “Return to your post. Give it another three, give me a wave if he shows.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What’s it mean Chief?” said Sean, crouched behind my shoulder.

  “Damned if I know.”

  “You smell a trap?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Then shouldn’t we, you know, go now?”

  “I’ll do the thinking Sean.”

  Smart people are such a pain in the ass. He was right of course. I could jimmy the door while the boys kept watch, get the drop on the jailer and use his cell door key. It was better than sitting here waiting for Russian MPs to jeep by and give us a cold once over.

  Dammit all to hell, why does it never, under any circumstances, work out as planned!? I watched Patrick watching the sentry booth as two minutes ticked into three. The booth guard didn’t show.

  “Anna,” I said, wagging the steering wheel to and fro, “can you drive a truck?”

  “I can drive tractor.”

  “Close enough. What time do you have?” I pointed to her wristwatch. She showed me. 0355. I pointed to the six on her watch face.

  “If we have not returned by this time, four-thirty, drive to Dahlem and tell Victor Jacobson what has happened. Do you understand?”

  “Four-thirty, Dahlem” said Anna coolly, just the slightest flicker of fear in her eyes. “Victor Jacobson.”

  “That’s right, that’s good.”

  Patrick appeared at my elbow again, his face sheathed in sweat. “No one, nobody.”

  “Anna, lock the doors and hide in back. And crack open your window so the windshield doesn’t fog.”

  I demonstrated on the driver’s side window. She did the same on her side, and mustered a smile both brave and sad. It was a moment I would remember. Anna didn’t know what the hell was going on, yet she was game for what came and hang the consequence. I leaned over and kissed her on the lips. Hard.

  My kiss was welcomed. But when I puckered up to say something she put her fine fingers to my lips. She knew the rules better than I did. Tender sentiment before combat is bad luck.

  I jacked open the truck door and stepped out. “Guns in your pockets gentlemen. Walk don’t run.”

  We stopped at the clump of bushes and took a look. No sign of life. I fished out my pick set. “Make yourselves small, wait for my signal. If you spot someone coming toss a rock at me.”

  I crossed the street and checked the glass booth. A half drunk mug of tea sat on a small desk next to a spread-eagled newspaper. I surveyed the quadrangle. No one in the courtyard but all the upstairs windows were lit. The ones on the north side, the barracks windows. What the hell? Not even Marines rolled out at 0400.

  I moved to the setback and attacked the door to the staircase and the detention cells upstairs. It had a key knob lockset that surrendered without a fight. Also a rim lock, a deadbolt separate from the doorknob. The rim lock was not engaged. The door opened.

  I waved the Mooney brothers over. Patrick crossed in a hurry, Sean paused to dust himself off. I showed Patrick his spot in front of the set back door.

  “On your mush, bo.” Patrick got down on his belly to peer around the corner at the courtyard. “Sean, follow me.”

  He did so, dragging a raggedy trail of unasked questions up the dark concrete staircase. Why was the guard booth empty? Why are the barrack’s windows lit? Why wasn’t the door bolted shut? I had no answers for him.

  I stopped two steps shy of the second floor corridor. It was dimly lit. I leaned forward, put my left cheek to the gritty floor, saw no one. The jailer’s station stood at the far end of the hall – a high desk with a crook neck reading lamp, still lit. I turned my head the other direction. We were alone and unsupervised. Things were going far too well.

  I got my Walther in hand and stood up. Sean and I scuttled right, down the corridor, past the machine gun emplacements in the south-facing windows, mounts and sand bags in place, guns absent. Sean stopped to snap pictures.

  I checked the detention cells on the north side of the corridor. They wouldn’t keep Ambrose in a cell that faced the street. The first two were empty. The third held a sleeping heavyset man who stank of vomit.

  I approached the fourth and last cell on the balls of my feet, barely breathing, sick to death. I
had scarcely given Ambrose a passing thought in the mad run-up to this moment. No time, didn’t want to. There would be time enough for guilt. A lifetime of guilt and mortification of the flesh if Ambrose wasn’t alive and kicking in the next cell.

  He wasn’t.

  Or was he? I shone my penlight again. It must be a talent peculiar to the Mooney brothers, the ability to burrow into a cot and disappear. I saw only the back of a coppery head of hair.

  “Ambrose,” I hissed, my pulse thudding against my temples. “Ambrose!”

  He didn’t stir. I dug out my pick set and set to work on the cell door, which was something like trying to pry open a drawbridge with a toothpick. My folding knife didn’t work any better. Damn lock was medieval.

  “This might help,” said Sean.

  He was standing behind me, the smartass, holding the ring of keys I should have looked for at the jailer’s station.

  “Good thinking.” I took the ring of keys and got lucky on the third try.

  I pushed in, eager to rouse Ambrose and get him down the stairs. But Sean put a finger to his lips and crept closer to his brother, who was snugged down into the mattress like a hot dog in a bun. Sean sat a haunch on the cot’s thin railing and smiled down at the sleeping figure.

  “Get your lazy arse down to the sacristy!” he said in a lilting high-pitched voice. “Father Macahey can’t celebrate Mass all by himself, now can he?”

  No response. Sean shook his shoulder. “Ambey? You okay?”

  Ambrose didn’t move. Sean turned to me, his face ashen. I played along, looked stricken. When Sean turned back his brother was sitting up. He was pale and hollow-cheeked but his eyes were bright.

  “You say something, mama’s boy?”

  Sean buried his head in his brother’s chest. Ambrose ruffled his hair. I spoiled the moment. “Time to go gentlemen.”

  Ambrose shuffled his feet into a pair of cardboard slippers. He was wearing filthy drawstring pants and a baggy gray workshirt that smelled like old cheese. Sean doffed his coat and draped it over his brother’s shoulders. I rumpled the blanket and wadded up the pillow to make it look like the bed was still occupied.

  I locked the cell. We made our way down the corridor, Ambrose limping along gamely, leaning on his brother. The bastards had worked him over good. Sean had to pick Ambrose up and carry him down the dark concrete stairs. I replaced the ring of keys at the jailer’s station.

  We found Patrick right where we left him, on his belly, keeping lookout.

  “What’s the report?”

  Patrick did not look up. “No activity in the quadrangle, no traffic in or out.”

  “Any sign of movement in the barracks?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well done. Now stand up and hug your brother.”

  My eyes swept the quadrangle as the Mooney brothers threw their arms around one another. Patrick was correct, there were no silhouettes in the barrack windows, no figures moving about. So where were they, the Red Army troops rousted out before the crack of dawn?

  We had done everything we had come to do, in twenty minutes time. I should take yes for an answer maybe and get the hell out. But my neck itched.

  “Go to the truck. Wait five minutes. If I don’t show drive to Dahlem and get Victor Jacobson out of bed.”

  “And tell him what?” said Ambrose, all business in a blink.

  Should I say this? I had nothing to go on, less than nothing. Which was precisely the point. We didn’t have zero guards in an armory that was expecting an armed assault. We had a negative number. Minus two.

  “Tell Victor Jacobson that Hal Schroeder thinks Operation LUNA is underway.”

  Ambrose nodded his understanding and extended his hand. I kept mine in my gun pocket. “We’ll do that later. Beat it.”

  The Mooney Brothers ran across the street. I crouched down in the setback, doing what I do best.

  The absence of the booth guard and the jailer might simply mean they knew the assault wasn’t coming tonight. I’d estimated it would take 72 hours to get the go ahead from Moscow. We were only at hour 36. So why were the barracks lit up? With no one moving around?

  My gaze drifted downward. The first floor of the north wing had doors but no windows. A muster room where the troops assembled to receive orders. That’s where they figured to be.

  I waited three long minutes and saw nothing. Time to go. I checked the street before I crossed, saw fast-approaching high beams two blocks south. I got down on all fours and rolled myself across the street, hid behind the clump of bushes on the median.

  The high beams belonged to a big car, a limousine, a brand new Soviet Zil right off the assembly line. It pulled into the Armory’s entryway and sounded its horn. A man in a black leather coat climbed out of the back seat and stalked angrily to the guard booth. He reached in and pushed something. The gate opened and the Zil entered the quadrangle.

  I recognized the man in the leather coat. It was Gerhard, the blond-haired apple-cheeked founding member of the Committee to Free Berlin. The tumblers clicked.

  The White Russian freedom fighters had seen their ranks decimated during their collaboration with us bumbling Yanks. My visit to the Committee had spooked them, prompting an emergency meeting where, rather than voting to cancel or postpone their attack on the Armory, they voted to advance the date. Advance it more than Gerhard and his Soviet bosses had in mind. Gerhard would have argued strenuously, saying it was premature. He would have been shouted down. Democracy is messy that way.

  Gerhard would have phoned the Armory Commander and instructed him to call an assembly of all personnel for an urgent briefing with a big announcement.

  The Committee to Free Berlin is on the march!

  It didn’t make sense for the booth guard and the jailer to abandon their posts to join the briefing. but it didn’t have to. Not in the military.

  I briefly considered sneaking back upstairs to lay in wait for the machine gunners. But that was plain suicide and I wasn’t in the mood.

  My Teutonic clock struck midnight. Five minutes had elapsed. I had missed my own deadline.

  I ran for all I was worth, down the block, waving my arm frantically as the delivery truck pulled away from the curb and rumbled south down Blummenstraße. The truck found a higher gear and I slowed to a walk, lungs burning. I had no one to blame but myself. Anna and Ambrose had followed my instructions to the letter.

  The delivery truck swung a clumsy left turn at a cross street two blocks away, stopped in the intersection, backed up, turned left, stopped, backed up, turned some more. They were coming back for me!

  I crossed the grassy median to intercept them. Ambrose was at the wheel. Guess his brothers didn’t know how to drive. Or big brother wouldn’t let them.

  Big brother skidded to a stop when he saw me standing in the street. I jumped into the cab and flopped in the passenger’s seat.

  “You disobeyed a direct order.”

  “Yeah,” said Ambrose, “I’m like that.”

  I stuck my head out the window. No headlights behind. Ahead was an Armory on full alert. “How are you at backing up?”

  “Watch me.”

  I tried not to. The parked cars along the curb bore the brunt as Ambrose gouged his way rearward in a trail of sparks and snapped off sideview mirrors. But he got it done, swinging the truck’s rear end into the cross street and lurching south down Blummenstraße, grinding the clutch like a butcher making ham salad.

  I ran it down. “Some of our White Russian friends, members of the Committee to Free Berlin, plan to attack the Soviet Armory sometime before dawn. Which gives us about thirty minutes to intercept them and prevent a massacre that might start a new world war.”

  I paused to let that sink in. And catch my breath.

  “I figure the Russian limousine that just pulled into the Armory came north across the Spree, ahead of the freedom fighters. That’s our pinch point.”

  “What is?” said Ambrose, gamely, weakly.

  I squinted
at him. “You okay to drive?”

  He grinned. “Never better.”

  “The Muhlendamm Bridge, just south of here. It’s narrow. We park sideways near the northbound exit and roll out to block the lane if we see a truck coming. Anyone got a better idea I’m all ears.”

  Anyone didn’t. Ambrose asked a rude question.

  “How do we convince them to turn around?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ah, you’ll think of something.”

  I had better. They would be coming hard, the members of the Committee, the smell of blood in their nostrils. They would need some convincing. More than that. What they would need was an immediate reason not to cut us to ribbons.

  I thought about it. Well, they weren’t likely to open fire on a woman. I could put Anna out front and let her try to calm the wild-eyed freedom fighters. She spoke Russian. She stood a better chance of success than the rest of us.

  Like I say it’s a despicable profession.

  “Remind you of anything?” said Ambrose.

  “What’s that?”

  “Driving to a big showdown at a narrow bridge, a good lookin’ Mick at the wheel.”

  “I might remember something about it.”

  “Seems a long time ago, don’t it?”

  “Yes it do.”

  I guided Ambrose to the bridge, keeping my eyes peeled front and back. We hadn’t approached the Armory by this route but I’m a Kraut, I have a good sense of direction and a keen sense of time. The direction we needed to go was south-southwest and the time we had to get there was somewhere between now and never. The Armory jailer would discover the empty cell any time now. Gerhard and heavily-armed NKVD would come hunting. We had to find the members of the Committee before Gerhard found us.

  “This heap’s on empty, Boss.”

  “Then speed up before we run out.”

  “Sure ting.”

  I found the bridge right where I left it. A two lane road with scant cover ran alongside the river’s northern bank. Nowhere to hide.

  Gerhard and his thugs would make a beeline for this spot. There were other bridges across the Spree, I could instruct Ambrose to drive down the road to the next one. He had been starved and tortured on my watch, he didn’t deserve to die thirty minutes after gaining his freedom.