Time of Reckoning

by Walter Wager

“Vietnam was much worse,” Allison recalled.

  “What’s his name?”

  Merlin shrugged. “Leonard Bernstein,” he offered.

  “Leonard Bernstein is short and Jewish, and he has gray hair.”

  “I dye it,” the black man confided.

  He turned to Merlin. “Can the shooters come down?” he asked. “One of them has to take a leak—real bad.”

  “There are marksmen on the roofs,” Merlin explained casually. “They’re covering number fifty-three until your demolition people get inside. There may be booby traps, or even somebody up there with a grease gun. You’d better call Grad.”

  “Scheiss,” the sergeant hissed.

  “That’s German for shit,” Allison translated.

  “No shit, Rosie? Okay, tell everybody the party’s over. The West German cavalry has arrived and we can go home.”

  The sergeant scanned the burning cars, the corpses.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is German territory. Who the hell do you think you are?”

  That was a perfectly valid question.

  “Friends of the Federal Republic. We’re crazy about the Federal Republic.” He groped in his pocket, found the scrap of paper with the local BND number and handed it to the sergeant. “Here—call Grad. He’s in town.”

  Then he took off his bulletproof jacket, sighed. “Those things make you sweat,” he complained.

  Now the sergeant noticed the sobbing woman sitting on the sidewalk.

  “The one they kidnapped, Herr Wasserman?”

  “Right. Heroically rescued by the Berlin police and BND—great bunch of men. Ought to get medals.”

  This American was unbelievable.

  “Is she well?”

  “Tip-top. It’s her birthday. Always cries on her birthday.”

  At that moment the sergeant saw four men in coveralls emerge from a truck at the end of the block. They were carrying a stretcher and kits marked with red crosses.

  “Your own medical unit, Herr Wasserman?”

  “Wouldn’t want to impose on the Berlin taxpayers. We could —you could—use a hearse or two, though…and maybe a fire truck.”

  Cavaliere wandered out of the alley, M-42 in hand.

  “Lead guitar,” Merlin announced. “Used to tour with Elton John.”

  “There’s a fat guy back there hollering about his Porsche, Merl,” he reported, “and Irv wants to know if we can leave now—Hi, Diane.”

  Merlin asked him to “keep an eye on her” while he “straightened out a few details” with the sergeant and while the two men walked back to the radio car Cavaliere sat down beside the crying woman to comfort her.

  “It’s okay, Di. The war is over. You’re safe.”

  The weeping continued.

  “Take it easy. Merlin saved you.”

  The sobbing slowed.

  “He’s crazy. He’s still crazy,” she lamented wearily.

  “Crazy about you.”

  “No, crazy about guns,” she moaned and the tears poured down her perfect ebony cheeks.

  “Crazy about you,” Cavaliere insisted and hugged her comfortingly.

  “Why didn’t he do that? Why couldn’t he put his arms around me?” she gasped.

  “ ’Cause he’s crazy—and shy. Merlin doesn’t show his private feelings in public, Di. You know that.”

  The crying began to subside, and a minute later she was drying her face on Cavaliere’s handkerchief.

  “I don’t really believe you,” she said defiantly.

  “Take a look at this street. You think Merlin would lay on a whole damn war for anyone? Listen, whether you believe it or not—and he isn’t willing to admit it either—this man needs you.”

  She was completely unconvinced, but she began to fix her hair. She looked around at the team that had rescued her, found no familiar faces.

  “Who are they, Angie?”

  “The Band—that’s the Varsity. Merlin made Lomas fly them in—just for you. Merlin forced the army to give him their best sharpshooters—those guys on the roofs—for you. Think about that.”

  She’d heard about the Band.

  No, you couldn’t believe anything Merlin said.

  You certainly couldn’t count on him.

  Grad arrived with three carloads of BND men and a look of icy fury, an expression that thawed only somewhat even after Merlin told him that the German security forces would get all the credit.

  “I don’t enjoy being tricked,” he said stiffly.

  “Who does? Name of the game, fellah,” Merlin joshed as he punched the BND executive’s arm familiarly. “Say, Karl, can you handle the rest of this?”

  “What?”

  “We’d like to split. My boys have a plane to catch in about an hour. You mind, kiddo?”

  That was when Karl Grad—one of the coolest heads in West German intelligence—blew his stack.

  “An hour? I’m giving you five minutes—not a second more—to get your men here and your snipers and your trucks—the whole damn outfit—out of this area. Is that clear?”

  “We don’t stay where we’re not wanted. See you.”

  Merlin hurried back to where Cavaliere was talking to Diane McGhee, who was looking a lot better. “Tell everyone to bug out,” he ordered. “Get the Band and the shooters, the truck and the cameras—everything—to the airport. Lomas will lay on a special flight for them.”

  He turned to his ex-wife, spoke very gently. “Would it be okay if I took you home? You could probably use a decent meal and some sack time.”

  She stood up, began walking with him—stopped. “Sack time? I hope you don’t have any funny ideas,” she warned.

  “I give you my word, hon. There’s no such thought in my mind.”

  After a hot bath, a good dinner and some wine, Diane McGhee discovered that her former husband had been lying—again. She wasn’t the least bit surprised. She was an extremely intelligent woman, and Merlin had never fooled her for a minute. He was still a fine lover, and—as every progressive female knows—that is nothing to sneeze at in today’s world.

  Yes, she thought contentedly, there was only one Merlin.

  The planet probably couldn’t handle two.

  This single evening didn’t mean anything permanent, of course. It was good to be with him again, but there were still many important things to be discussed—frankly and fully and in a mature and adult fashion—in the morning.

  She slept like a baby.

  37

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Blue Bernard complained.

  “What wasn’t?” Merlin asked.

  “Standing up my two men was bad enough, but they waited an hour and a half for you outside the Hilton and got a ticket for double-parking.”

  Merlin put down a hundred-mark note.

  “Money doesn’t cover everything,” the pornographer argued—and took the bill.

  “Bernard, it’s too early in the day to bicker.”

  It was 10:50, less than an hour after he’d left his sleeping ex-wife sprawled out in the big bed and smiling in some secret dream. A scream sounded from the next room, and the “other one”—the woman who’d delivered the madam’s message—appeared in the doorway. She was carrying a whip and wearing high boots and a vague smile—nothing more. Bernard gestured, and she walked out of sight.

  “She likes you,” Bernard reported.

  “I wouldn’t want to interrupt your picture.”

  Bernard shrugged expansively, smirked. “She’s terribly versatile.”

  “Some other time. I came to pay you the remaining thousand marks for the machine gunners—even if I didn’t use them.”

  Blue Bernard was visibly impressed. “You know,” he confided, “you may be a tricky bastard, but you aren’t cheap.”

  “Not like the Russians?”

  The affluent criminal coughed—twice.

  “Bernard, I know you sold me out to the Russians.”

  “Of course. I knew that you knew. You don�
�t think I’d have done it otherwise, do you? You wanted them to concentrate on the Hilton while you were way across town chopping up Willi Lietzen, right? Very shrewd.”

  Merlin smiled.

  You might hate Blue Bernard, but you couldn’t dislike him. His total cool, his ability to improvise effortlessly and his marvelously Levantine mind were entirely engaging. This man could have run a television network in any country on earth. Yes, Blue Bernard was a stylish survivor.

  “You knew that I knew you knew?” he asked Merlin.

  It was difficult not to laugh. “Absolutely. I never doubted you for a minute,” Merlin assured him with a straight face.

  “Listen, if you’d prefer Helga—”

  Merlin shook his head, pulled out a cigar.

  “Put that away,” Bernard ordered imperiously. “Have a Havana. That was some job you did on those scummy terrorists —some job.”

  Merlin accepted a dark Upmann corona, lit it.

  “The box is yours. Take the box. The good people of Berlin owe you plenty for getting rid of those gangsters, even if they don’t know it.”

  All the newspapers, television and radio stations had given the credit to German police, and a cabinet member had made a sincerely patriotic speech about the incident in the Bundestag.

  “Nice cigar,” Merlin judged as he glanced at his watch. “Before I go, I want to thank you again for your crowd’s help in finding their hideout. Never could have done it without you, Bernard.”

  For a moment, the pimp/pornographer/cocaine dealer was choked with emotion. This kind of appreciation, this old-fashioned courtesy, was all too rare in Berlin these days. Bernard swallowed, dabbed at his right eye with a lavender-scented handkerchief of the best French lace.

  “Everything’s okay,” Merlin assured him.

  “No hard feelings?”

  “Course not. Gotta split. Meeting your pal Duslov in forty-five minutes, and he gets nasty when I’m late.”

  Bernard tensed, shoved the box of cigars at the American. “You know, those Russians are—well—you know.”

  “Cheap?” Merlin tickled.

  “For sure, but also—sort of hot-tempered.”

  “Bernard, I won’t tell him a thing. I’m your friend, remember?”

  Merlin didn’t start chuckling until he got into his car.

  “What’s so funny?” Cavaliere asked as Merlin slid behind the wheel.

  “The Heerstrasse Cemetery,” Merlin thought aloud.

  “You’ve got a weird sense of humor.”

  “That’s not a joke, Angie. That’s where we’re going, now.”

  Located close to the historic 95,000-seat Olympic Stadium where Hitler capered obscenely for the world’s newsreel cameras in 1936, the Heerstrasse Cemetery lies near the banks of the Havel in the western part of the city. One might say the western part of the western part, which isn’t the Communist eastern part—known as East Berlin. If you’re crazy about landscaping, you’ll love the Heerstrasse Cemetery.

  “Scenic, isn’t it?” said Duslov when Merlin met him just inside the main gate.

  “Creepy. I think I preferred the crapper in that restaurant.”

  They walked on among the graves, hundreds and hundreds set gracefully in the greenery. They talked about the ambush, and they speculated on whether any fragments of the Lietzen-Stoller organization might have survived.

  “I don’t know,” Merlin said truthfully. “We blew up everyone we could—even some damn Arab we never heard of before. They were all crazy, I guess.”

  “There are always plenty of crazies,” Duslov brooded.

  A philosophical KGB officer.

  That’s all I need, Merlin thought.

  “We’ll burn them too,” he promised irritably.

  “All over the world?”

  “Right—just like the Israelis. They don’t take any crap from anybody. They learned the hard way, and now they’re teaching us all.”

  “Education with a nine-millimeter?” Duslov speculated.

  “It beats finger-painting and U.N. speeches. Anyway, I’m not much of an orator.”

  They strolled on in silence for ten seconds before the Russian, selecting his words carefully, sighed and spoke.

  “So there’s no end to it? The killing goes on until all the fanatics are dead?”

  “Until the killers are killed, or locked up in a damp place with bad food and scratchy sheets—for a long time. Even in the workers’ paradise, you don’t let homicidal maniacs run loose.”

  They turned, started back toward the gate.

  “Maybe we should have met at the museum again,” Duslov said. “Not the Dahlem, the Egyptian Museum in Charlotten-burg. I’d like you to see the bust of Nefertiti.”

  “Thirteen seventy B.C.,” Merlin recalled to Duslov’s amazement. “Great chiek, but dead a long time.”

  The KGB officer lost his temper. “You will be too. As a matter of fact, until an hour and a half ago I was under orders to kill you. Bury you—those were the exact words. Fortunately for you, the man who gave those instructions was relieved of his command last night—and the orders canceled.”

  Merlin looked ahead, saw the KGB trio in the Red Army staff car parked only twenty yards from Cavaliere’s sedan.

  “Fortunately for you, Andrei,” Merlin said.

  The Russian smiled sadly for just a moment. “We cannot be friends, American, but I like you. You’re a man of spirit, not just a cog. Tell me, why must you be so macho—so savage? Even in our brutal business, you are—well, ferocious.”

  They were at the gate.

  Cavaliere drove the car up, and Merlin sat down beside him.

  “You don’t fool me,” Duslov said good-humoredly through the open window. “You may be tough, but you’re not the worst American agent I ever met.”

  Merlin looked up with a pleasant expression of utter candor. “Yes, I am,” he answered truthfully, and then Cavaliere put the car in gear and they sped away.

  38

  “Fifty thousand marks?”

  “Fifty thousand marks,” Merlin replied as he speared a final tidbit of creamed eel.

  It was 1:35 P.M. and Merlin and Lomas were lunching in the charming restaurant that now fills the 158-year-old Nikolskoe Blockhaus, an historic log “cabin” with a superior view of the Havel River.

  “I promised fifty thousand for a good tip on Lietzen,” Merlin reminded, “and the Frau Admiral delivered his head on a plate.”

  Lomas scooped more potato onto his plate, grunted. “You’re a big tipper, Merlin.”

  “I keep my word.”

  “To whorehouse madams?” the fat man jeered as he refilled his face.

  “Especially whorehouse madams. I wouldn’t want to lose my credit rating, George. It was a bargain at fifty, and you know it.”

  Lomas swallowed almost half a glass of beer. “Maybe we could get up twenty-five,” he bargained.

  “Don’t get me angry, George. If I get mad, I’ll break all your Wedgwood and set your mother on fire.”

  “Want some dessert?” Lomas asked hopefully.

  “Fifty thousand marks—by four this afternoon. You want people to think we’re cheap like the KGB?”

  That stung.

  “How do you want it?”

  “Nice. No stunts. Used fifties and hundreds, no counterfeits. If there are any tricks, it’ll be your ass, George.”

  Lomas finished his beer. “Strudel looks good,” he volunteered.

  “On you, not me. One more thing.”

  “Yes?” asked Lomas, who’d always expected to pay the fifty thousand.

  “Leave a decent tip.”

  Merlin was halfway to the door before the counter-espionage executive realized that he was being stuck with the check, an event that was hardly surprising since Merlin made a habit of sticking other people with bills, bodies and assorted burdens. Grad had been most unpleasant about all the corpses and other debris left in the street after the ambush.

  It was 2:10 when Merlin rea
ched the apartment house where Ms. McGhee lived, and he was pleased to see two CIA operatives seated in a car nearby. He recognized them as part of the team Cavaliere had sent to Amerika Haus after the kidnapping, and he walked up to exchange professional greetings.

  “Everything cool?” he asked.

  “Like ice.”

  “You got the back covered too?”

  “What do you think?” the sentry replied contemptuously.

  The man had a submachine gun and terrible diction, so Merlin broke off relations and went up to the flat, where Diane McGhee was looking rested and marvelous.

  “Terrific,” Merlin judged—and they kissed.

  “I’m going to forgive you for bugging my room,” he announced, “provided you’ve got a decent cup of coffee. I left Lomas at lunch before the coffee came.”

  “He was here.”

  “When?”

  “Just before noon. Very nice. They’re reassigning me to Washington. Promotion, too.”

  Merlin computed.

  Lomas wanted his own man in to run the deception of Victor. Nice? Shit, Lomas couldn’t spell the word.

  “More money?”

  “Four thousand more a year. I’ll be making more money than you,” she laughed.

  “You deserve it. How about that coffee?”

  As soon as she was out of the room, he telephoned Cavaliere.

  “Don’t talk, listen,” he said. This isn’t a secure line. The Godfather will have a green package for you at four o’clock. Give it to the admiral’s widow, with my compliments.”

  “Right. Anything else?”

  “Yeah, the doctor. The guy whose phone I used?”

  “What about him?”

  “Out. I want him on a bird to the States within three hours. He’s hot.”

  Cavaliere understood. If the Sovs got to speak to Margolis, he might innocently mention the sodium pentothal.

  “What do I tell him, Merl?”

  “National security, birdbrain. Call my pal in Heidelberg. He’ll fix it. You got it?”

  “I’m on the case.”

  Merlin put down the phone, lit a cigar as she walked back into the room.

  “Water’ll be boiling in a minute,” she reported.

  “Good. Sit down here, hon,” he invited, tapping the couch cushion beside him.