A Despicable Profession

by John Knoerle

  Tough shit.

  “Park in that warehouse driveway, to the left, north of the road,” I said. “Back it in, shut it down. We’ll kill the lights and try to look like we belong there.”

  Ambrose backed the truck in without hitting anything. The spot provided a head on view of the bridge and the feeder road that sloped down from the south.

  Anna climbed forward and perched on the transmission hump as if she knew what I was about to ask. “Are you willing to speak to them?”

  “The Byelorussians which are coming?”

  “Yes.”

  Anna shrugged her bony shoulders. Who else can do it?

  “I want you to tell them that we work for General William Donovan. Wild Bill Donovan.”

  I tried to remember if Donovan and the OSS had collaborated with the White Russians toward war’s end. Wasn’t sure, didn’t matter. Anti-Communist freedom fighters who spied for us now got their eyes gouged out and their bodies bound to fence posts with barb wire.

  Our photos of the Armory machine gun emplacements were supposed to make our case, convince the freedom fighters to stand down. But our photos were still in the camera.

  “Never mind, Anna. There is nothing we can sprechen that they will glauben”

  Anna nodded. “What then?”

  A thought occurred. I squeezed her hand.

  “Sean! Patrick!” They scrambled forward. “Go to that corner and look north. If you see a big car with vertical high beams coming south give me the high sign. We want to ram them broadside, time your signal according to their speed of approach. Got it?”

  They nodded.

  “Go!”

  Sean and Patrick piled out and took their positions, peering around a building at the northeast corner of the intersection, Sean standing, Patrick below him, on his belly. I told Anna to take cover in the back of the truck. “Wedge yourself behind the wheel well.”

  She didn’t understand. I jumped up to show her where to brace herself then returned to the cab. Ambrose, at the wheel, wanted to know the plan.

  “The White Russians will want hard evidence. One of their members is...oh screw, I’ll explain later.”

  I hoped to present the Committee members with a crumpled Soviet Zil containing their founding member Gerhard and assorted Blue Caps. That was the plan anyway.

  A large truck crested the feeder road and sped north, downhill toward the bridge. It looked like a rubble hauler. A quick pass under a flickering streetlamp confirmed that.

  So what? They could squeeze two dozen troops into one of those long dump trucks. And what better way to cross Berlin without attracting attention?

  Didn’t scan. The Soviets had coddled their duped recruits to this point, held meetings in the swank Admiralspalast. They wouldn’t send the members of the Committee to Free Berlin off to battle in a dump truck.

  We watched the truck gear down and approach the bridge at a stately pace. The back end rattled like cup on saucer as it crossed the span paved with iron planks against the bomb damage. The rubble hauler was empty.

  I looked to the corner. Sean had wandered off but Patrick was doing jumping jacks trying to catch my eye. Apparently the Zil was southbound, and our timing was shot to hell.

  The rubble hauler proceeded slowly across the intersection, blocking our view. When the intersection cleared I saw only the brassy red tail lights of the Zil blurring across the bridge in the opposite direction.

  Shit.

  I clutched at straws. Gerhard wouldn’t interfere with the Committee members if they passed in the night, now that the Armory was poised and ready for their attack. We might still intercept and blockade the freedom fighters. They would probably mow us down and go on about their business but we might get lucky and convince them to stop and reconsider, to turn tail and retreat. It was possible. Also the moon might fall out of the sky and smash the bridge to smithereens.

  I called out the window to Patrick. “Where’s your brother?”

  “Other side of the street.”

  “Get his ass over here!”

  Sean strode up a few moments later, in no particular hurry.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “I saw the dump truck rolling down the hill, then I saw the big car coming the other direction, fast. You said to time our signal according to their speed of approach but we had an intervening vehicle. So I did a Patrick after a pub crawl.”

  “A what?”

  “I staggered across the street, singin’ songs. The limo slowed down some when they saw me. I waved at them, friendly like, stood in their way.”

  “And?”

  “They drove by me and crossed the bridge.”

  “How many in the car?”

  “Couldn’t tell, headlamps blinded me.”

  “Okay, nice try. Return to your post and fetch Patrick.”

  This was my small favor to Mrs. Mooney, posting Sean at the corner where he would look north for further pursuit vehicles that wouldn’t come. Patrick would throw himself into the fray no matter what. But if we intercepted the troop truck and things got ugly Sean could flee on foot. He was too smart to sacrifice himself in a hopeless cause.

  Good for him. Someone needed to live to tell the tale.

  I looked up the hill to see high beams bearing down at a furious pace. Vertically stacked high beams.

  “Crank it Ambrose.”

  The engine turned over nicely. Patrick reported to my window.

  “You’re wantin’ to see me?”

  I reached out and hauled him in through the window by the back of his belt. Could be that Gerhard had got to thinking about that drunk stumbling across the street with no open Bierstubes nearby and had decided to bang a U and take another look.

  I told Ambrose to put the truck in gear but he had already done so. Patrick sat himself on the transmission hump and braced his arms against the dash. The Zil slowed some as it approached the bridge, slowed some more as it rattled over the iron planks. The limo came to a stop. Best I could tell they hadn’t spied us. But they saw Sean.

  I had misjudged the thoughtful middle brother. Sean took off running, sure, but only to lure the limousine into pursuit, into making the slight left turn necessary to continue north, which exposed their flank to our front bumper. I’m pretty sure I told Ambrose to ram those Commie bastards at that point but could be he floored it before I got the words out.

  I do know we smacked the right rear of the Zil very hard, causing it to spin around and slam up against us, head to tail.

  I looked down at the back end of the limo. It sat flush on the pavement, the rear axle snapped in two. Two dark clad men in the back seat were shaking off the cobwebs. I couldn’t see the driver.

  Ambrose backed up the truck and swung around while the men in the back seat tumbled out the far side door. We rammed the limo amidships just before the dark clad men sprang to their feet and opened fire with what looked like MP-43 automatic assault rifles. God help us.

  I bit my shoes as the windshield dissolved. Patrick dived in back. Ambrose ducked below the dash while keeping the steering wheel to the left and the gas pedal down, bulldozing the Zil west toward the river.

  The gunners must have fanned out, the better to rake the delivery truck with eight millimeter rounds that didn’t penetrate the truck’s double-walled hull, God love this old bucket o’ bolts. But in the absence of return fire the gunners would jump up on the running boards and fill the cab with molten lead. They would do this very soon.

  I got my Walther in hand and popped my head up to peek a look.

  A burst from the gunner to my right was high. Best he did was part my hair, shatter the window frame and spray my cheek with hot metal shavings. I slumped back and played dead.

  Every shooter takes a moment after he fires, whether it’s a single shot from a hunting rifle or a burst from a machine gun, to see what he’s done. This guy was no different. I took his moment of appraisal to empty my Walther eight shot in his direction.

  I’m pretty sure I
greased him on round three but I had another clip in my pocket so I kept at it to make sure. He was reeling backward by round five, shooting skyward as if celebrating New Years. And he was splayed out on the pavement by round eight, staring up at nothing.

  The gunner to the left was wasting ammo on the hood of the truck, trying to kill the engine that was bulldozing the black limo sideways. The Zil yawed over on its side as the truck plowed forward.

  That’s when we ran out of gas.

  The gunner got a wide grin and stepped forward to finish us off, hesitated when Gerhard jack-in-the-boxed out of the limo’s side window with a bloody face and a dazed expression. And me with an empty gun. Gerhard shouted something at the gunner.

  “Patrick!”

  “Right here Chief.”

  “Target your weapon, ten o’clock!”

  He didn’t know the lingo maybe. I elaborated as I searched my pockets for the spare clip. “Shoot the asshole with the machine gun.”

  Patrick tried. He sent a hail of bullets out the blown up windshield, over the crouched down body of his eldest brother. Sean, back at his post on the corner, joined in.

  They were terrible shots. So bad they were good. The machine gunner cranked his head around furiously, searching for the source of all the ricochets. I found my spare clip and jacked it in.

  That’s about the time it all opened up, like a widescreen shot in a Hollywood epic. Gerhard struggling to squirm out of his tipped over limo, the machine gunner taking cover behind the Zil, and the big tarp-covered troop truck cresting the rise and bearing down on the bridge with its headlamps blaring.

  The troop truck slowed at the improbable sight before it, slowed down and crept forward across the bridge in fits and starts, like a great hulking beast sniffing the ground for prey.

  I squinted my eyeballs for all they were worth, glimmed two men in the cab. They held a brief animated conversation and stopped the truck. On the bridge, about fifty yards distant. They killed the headlights.

  I told Patrick to reload, give his .38 to Ambrose and take cover in the back of the truck. He obeyed without protest. Ambrose sat up behind the wheel. I wiped blood from my face with my coat sleeve and tried to think it through. The back of my head hurt.

  The two men in the truck cab figured to be NKVD. The remaining members of the Committee to Free Berlin, the White Russian cannon fodder, would be in back. The men in the cab would know who was in that overturned Zil, wouldn’t want the troops to see their founding member squirming out of a Soviet limo. That’s why they killed the headlights. They would have to wait for Gerhard to squeeze his frame through the jagged window and make his escape. It was my job to make sure that didn’t happen.

  “Cover the machine gunner,” I said to Ambrose and took aim at Gerhard with scorched eyeballs and a wobbly arm. He was a stationary target not ten feet away and I missed him. Four times. Gerhard wrangled himself out of the busted window and ran off to my right, almost stumbling over the dead gunner on the pavement. I missed him some more.

  The machine gunner to our left popped up from behind the Zil. Ambrose squeezed off two before the gunner shredded the roof of the cab with a wild burst. Ambrose and I ducked down amid a shower of rust.

  When we resurfaced the machine gunner was sprinting east along the river, in the opposite direction. I grabbed Ambrose’s wrist. “Save your ammo.”

  Someone rang up the tarpaulin of the troop truck, revealing a full company clad in battle fatigues.

  I took a closer look. I couldn’t see much in the pre-dawn dim washed by a sputtering street lamp but it looked like the poor dumb White Russian freedom fighters had been issued American M-l carbines. There was no mistaking those big-notched muzzles. Christ. Izvestia would have a field day.

  The NKVD man in the passenger’s seat of the troop truck jumped out. He shouted orders. The troops deployed behind him, M-ls at present arms. The driver turned on the high beams. The war party started towards us.

  “Try the headlights.”

  “Fat chance,” said Ambrose.

  But they blinked on, freezing the advancing party for the moment. I wanted to see who I was dealing with.

  I didn’t recognize the man who gave the orders. He had not been on the stage of der Admiralspalast, I would have remembered. He was tall and reedy, had thin hair pasted down in greasy strands, wore little round spectacles with black rims and made my skin crawl at fifty paces.

  Three pistol shots rang out. At a distance, to my right. From the direction that Gerhard had fled. Where the hell was Sean?

  Spectacles barked another order. The troops fanned out in a semi-circle behind him and brought their American-made carbines to bear. Gerhard was long gone, their way to the Armory was cleared, save for an unknown number of individuals in a bullet-riddled delivery truck. Time to speak up. I stuck my head out the passenger’s window.

  “Gentlemen such rude behavior! I am your American friend Hal Schroeder, from Stars and Stripes!”

  Spectacles understood every word but he wasn’t the one I was trying to reach. I raised my voice. That always helps when people don’t speak your language.

  “We met at der Admiralspalast!”

  Spectacles led his war party closer. Big-notched muzzles zeroed in on my forehead but didn’t fire. Spectacles was unsure about something. Could be he knew we’d been passing ourselves off as gunrunners. Could be we were sitting on crates of American-made pineapples. Concentrated M1 fire risked an explosion that would crater the bridge.

  Anna appeared at my side. “I will talk for you now.”

  I ducked back inside the cab. “Please. Tell the troops that their mission has been sabotaged by the NKVD.”

  Anna squinted. She didn’t understand. I pointed to the overturned Zil. “Tell them that Gerhard Dunkel was in that car. Gerhard Dunkel.”

  Spectacles and his war party were twenty paces away now. Anna poked her head out the blown up windshield. If Spectacles recognized her as Leonid’s wife he gave no sign. Anna gave out with a torrent of Russian that went on for a longer time than a literal translation of my remarks would require. I didn’t mind. She seemed to be putting her point across.

  But the troops didn’t lower their weapons.

  Spectacles stepped forward, ahead of his troops. He leaned an arm on the side of the tipped over limo, glared fiercely and spat something vile in Russian.

  Anna laughed at this remark, and got louder. She said the name of her husband, Leonid Vitinov! She said it more than once. This made me nervous. We were supposed to be friendlies. Then Anna called the reedy man by name. Fyodor.

  Ah ha, that would do it. Fyodor. Why would the wife of a Blue Cap know the head freedom fighter? This would make it clear to the troops that their anti-Communist operation was being run by a stinking son of Stalin.

  But the troops did not waver. Fyodor had trained them well. Or I’d gone poozle stoopid.

  Anna clambered over Ambrose, jacked open the door and stepped out of the truck before I could grab her.

  Sonofabitch!

  I had been the beneficiary of entirely too much good fortune in this screwy town. I’d eluded Blue Cap sentries after setting a fire in Anna’s apartment, survived a suicide assault on a Soviet armory without a shot fired, and the wife of an NKVD Major had admitted me to her boudoir. Twice.

  But it looked like my luck had just run out.

  Anna marched around the overturned Zil and continued to hector Fyodor but that no longer mattered. She addressed herself to the troops, and that didn’t matter either. Not now. What mattered was her stepping out. War is simple. You’re on one side of the barricades or the other.

  Could be the CO was right. The Russians, with their dark history, are best of all.

  Fyodor and Anna jawboned away in Russian on the other side of the limo. Maybe Anna didn’t understand what her stepping out of the truck would signify, maybe she was simply doing her damndest to keep us alive. Which didn’t explain why Fyodor was playing along, wasting precious time.

/>   It seemed to me that Anna and Fyodor were staging a distraction for our amusement as their troops crept closer for a quick clean kill.

  The three far off pistol shots meant that Sean was likely dead. Anna’s stepping out of the truck meant that we were about to join him.

  But not quietly. We would do our bit to stop the assault on the Armory and prevent World War III.

  I told Ambrose to shoot Fyodor in the head.

  Ambrose didn’t do as instructed. He was looking out my window with a twisty grin. “Well feck me all to hell.”

  I followed his look. Everyone did. What we saw was most unexpected. Gerhard Dunkel, hobbling toward the bridge, a bloody stain down one leg. Sean Mooney walking behind, prodding the founding member of the Committee to Free Berlin with his .38.

  “Oh Jayz,” said Ambrose happily, “I won’t never hear the end of this.”

  I eyeballed Fyodor. He wore an expression of acid contempt as he watched Gerhard approach, and who could blame him? No spy worth his salt gets captured alive.

  I eyeballed the White Russians as Sean marched Gerhard back to his Soviet Zil. The troops turned to one another in shock and confusion. And lowered their M-1s. The jig, as they say, was up.

  I blew out a breath and relaxed for half a second.

  Half a second.

  That’s all it took for Fyodor to slip the grenade from his coat pocket, pull the pin and pitch it through the blown up windshield.

  I made a two-handed grab for it in midair. Had it for a split second, then dropped it to the floorboard at my feet. I groped around feverishly.

  “By your right foot, in the corner,” said Ambrose calmly.

  I grabbed it, felt the deep grooves in the cast iron shell. A pineapple. A gift from Leonid no doubt.

  They were smart, the NKVD. Smart about subversion, counterintelligence and false flag recruitment. Not so swift about weaponry.

  The Red Army grenade they call the limonka has a quick fuse. You pull the pin, you toss the lemon.

  The US Army pineapple has a considerably longer fuse time. The head Commie in Charge should’ve watched a few Hollywood war flicks maybe, noticed how the plucky dogface always counts to three after he pulls the pin.