The Berlin Conspiracy

by Tom Gabbay

  “Yeah, we see it,” I got back from Johnson.

  My heart picked up a beat.

  The figure stopped, maybe fifteen feet short of the bench. I stole a look and saw it was a woman holding a closed umbrella. Mid- to late thirties, with dark hair falling out of a cream-colored nylon scarf with faded red roses around the edge. She looked tired, kind of used up. I noticed a small run in her stocking along her right calf that she had mended with nail polish. She became aware of my look, glanced back over her shoulder, and opened the umbrella.

  There was no reason that our mystery man couldn’t be a mystery woman. Of course, an umbrella wasn’t a cane but that could’ve been a glitch in translation. (It wasn’t that unusual. I once saw a description of an especially tall Venezuelan contact translated as “he is unusually high.” The meeting never came off because our guys were looking for somebody who was stoned out of his mind. It really happened.)

  I went back to the newspaper, but kept one eye on her. She was doing the same with me, but not very subtly. I could tell that she was going to make a move and after a few more peeks she did, faking interest in a movie poster to move closer to the bench. I waited, thinking we were wasting our time—this was strictly Amateur Hour.

  Finally she turned to me and, in German, said, “You’re getting wet.”

  My German was pretty rusty, but I tried anyway, saying something like, “Are you offering to share your umbrella?”

  She paused for a beat, looked me over, then, in English, said, “Would you like to have some company?”

  I couldn’t help laughing, which took her by surprise. She turned away, looking more embarrassed than offended, which she had every right to be. I was about to apologize when I got Powell in my ear.

  “For Christ’s sake, Teller, get rid of the whore,” in that weary Ivy League way. Fuck you, I thought, she’s just trying to earn a living, probably a more honorable one than you earn. I removed the earpiece, put it in my jacket pocket, and got off the bench.

  “Hey, I wasn’t laughing at you.” She looked at me, dubious. “I just thought it was funny that you switched to English. Is my German that bad?”

  She smiled. “Terrible.” It was a nice, natural smile. She had nice eyes, too. Light brown. Too bad they were massacred with mascara.

  “I don’t do this all the time,” she said after an awkward pause. “I’m a nurse.” She didn’t need to explain anything to me, but if it made her feel better that was fine.

  I said that in fact I wouldn’t mind sharing her umbrella, and as soon as I was under she started to tell me about how she needed the money to pay for her sick mother’s medical bills and how little a nurse made and how she only went with nice men. I asked her how she could tell if they were nice and she said she could just tell, like she did with me. I thought she probably said that to all her potential customers, but I didn’t mind listening. At least I was dry.

  I heard the door of the sedan slam and a minute later Powell was storming the platform with Baby Bear Johnson in tow. They stopped about ten feet away, like they were staking me out.

  “What the hell are you doing, Teller!” A vein was throbbing violently in Powell’s right temple and his head looked like it could explode any minute. He really needed to loosen his tie.

  “I was just talking to—” I turned to the lady. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  “Rita,” she responded, looking kind of apprehensive.

  “I’m Jack,” I smiled. “Jack Teller.”

  “Hello.” She nodded warily.

  “Zip it up, Jack. Fun’s over,” Powell barked.

  I started to say that I hadn’t actually had a lot of laughs so far, that maybe Rita and I would try to salvage the evening, but I stopped short because that’s when I saw him—standing under a street lamp on the road below was our man, watching the whole scene with an expression of utter contempt on his face. He didn’t move, just stood there like a statue, one hand in the pocket of his raincoat, the other holding the cane, rain splashing off his fedora, waiting patiently for us to spot him.

  “Looks like we all got caught with our pants down.” I nodded toward the street.

  He waited for Powell to see him, then turned and disappeared into the darkness. Powell signaled Chase on the opposite platform and he took off after him, hoping to get some kind of ID—a car, a face, anything, but I knew he’d come up empty. This guy wasn’t your run-of-the-mill East German bureaucrat building a retirement fund. He was for real, you could tell.

  I wondered again why I would be of such interest. I’d been turning it over since I was briefed, thinking about operations I’d been involved in that might have attracted his attention. Iran, Guatemala, Mexico, or even Cuba—nothing connected. I’d been active in all that stuff and knew a lot, but nothing a lot of other guys didn’t know, too. The most reasonable explanation was that I looked like a candidate for recruitment because of the way I walked out, but that didn’t work, either. If they wanted to try me they’d have used a discreet approach, at the beach maybe, with a well-stuffed bikini as bait, not a letter that alerted the entire intelligence community to their intentions. No, it had to be something else that hooked him. But now it looked like I’d never know—it was highly unlikely that he’d give us a second shot.

  “We won’t see him again,” I said.

  “If that’s true, you’re in big fucking trouble,” Powell flashed. “Hell, you’re in big fucking trouble anyway.”

  “Really?” I answered as coolly as I could. “I’m the only one who’s supposed to be standing on this platform. Besides, I’m here on a guest pass, so if anyone’s in big fucking trouble it’s you, Chief.”

  Powell signaled Johnson with a nod. The kid reached out to take hold of my arm, and without really meaning to, I laid him out pretty cleanly with a simple left hook. To be fair, he wasn’t expecting it, but it felt good anyway. Powell sighed like a frustrated headmistress.

  “For Christ’s sake, Teller, was that really necessary?”

  I shrugged, offered Johnson a hand up, and pulled him onto his feet. “Sorry, kid, you took me by surprise.”

  “No problem,” he drawled, dabbing at a tiny spot of blood on his lip. “Would I be taking you by surprise now?”

  My throat was firmly in his grasp before he finished the sentence. I knew the move, but I’d never been on this side of it. It’s kind of like having your trachea in a vise—the slightest pressure will collapse the thin wall of membrane that runs from the larynx to the bronchi, blocking the only air passage to the lungs, causing the subject to suffocate within seconds. Of course, conversation is out of the question in these circumstances, so I never got a chance to say good-bye to Rita.

  We adjourned to the Company car, where I massaged my throat while we waited for Chase. He finally climbed into the front seat beside Powell and reported that our man had disappeared into thin air. I was about to make a comment, but decided to shut up for once.

  “Langley wants a report tonight,” Powell fretted. “How the fuck do I write this up?”

  “Chase got too close, let the subject make us,” Johnson said matter-of-factly. “It was clumsy.”

  Chase turned, gave the kid an icy stare. Even in the dark you could see that this one was dangerous—the kind of guy who could snap at any moment, but you’d never be able to predict when or why. The kid didn’t flinch, though. I was starting to like him, in spite of my sore throat.

  “How about I say the target walked because Jack was hitting on a chick?” Powell looked to me for a reaction.

  “A chick?” I forced a laugh through the bruises on my vocal cords. “Do you know how silly you sound when you say that?”

  “We can’t all be as cool as you, Jack.”

  “I guess that’s right.” I opened the door to get out. “Tell Washington whatever you want. Tell them I was getting a blow job. I didn’t ask for this shit, you guys came to me.”

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “To
get some fresh air. Don’t bother waiting up.”

  Johnson asked if he should stop me, but Powell was smart enough to know it would only make his report that much harder to write.

  TWO

  I stumbled onto a beer hall tucked away in a small side street not far from the rail station. It was called Stru-wwelpeter after the fairy-tale kid who never washed or trimmed his fingernails. A painting of the boy over the door brought back an image from a book my mother used to read to me. Memories of that time were pretty rare for me, so I guess Berlin was jostling something. Anyway, it made me smile.

  The pub was a traditional place—high ceilings, rows of long wooden tables, large fireplace, and a warm atmosphere. About half-full with a cheery crowd. I ordered sausages and a Pilsner, found the Tribune in my pocket, and settled in. I felt like a smoke, decided what the hell, and bought a pack of HBs from a machine. It seemed to go with the scene.

  I realized that I’d been sitting on the bench at the platform for well over an hour staring at the front page of the paper and hadn’t read a word of it. KENNEDY DEPARTS ON EUROPEAN TOUR was the lead item. I read the first paragraph:

  London — President Kennedy’s European tour is taking place at a most inauspicious time, according to many diplomats here. In his speech at American University on June í 0, the President set as his goal an easing of rivalries with the Soviet Union. That conciliatory gesture on East-West relations is regarded here as ruling out any possibility of a strong declaration by the United States in support of West Germany, and particularly Berlin, during Mr. Kennedy’s visit. A high-ranking NATO officer said, “President Kennedy wishes to turn back the clock of warfare and stop development of nuclear weapons on earth and in space. But this cannot be done.”

  It’s a trick of journalism that when a newspaper wants to put an editorial on the front page, they simply write an opinion, then go out and find someone to attribute it to. What did “according to many diplomats” mean? It meant the writer had been to a cocktail party full of junior ministers who’d spent the night second-guessing American foreign policy. That’s news? And the “high-ranking NATO officer” was bound to be one of de Gaulle’s cronies. The French president, unable to understand why the world gave Kennedy the adulation that should have been his, took potshots at the president whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  I skipped to the next item, which was much more interesting. It involved sex, drugs, abuse of power, and human betrayal. Stuff you can get your teeth into. I’d been following the story since it broke in London a few weeks earlier, thought maybe I could use it in one of my many unwritten novels.

  The published version went like this:

  Britain’s Labour Party today demanded a full-scale investigation of War Minister John Profumo’s resignation in a sex scandal that shook the British government. The opposition party called for a parliamentary inquiry into any possible breach of security resulting from Profumo’s relations with a redheaded playgirl.

  Profumo admitted that he lied to Parliament on March 22 when he said there had been no impropriety in his relations with Christine Keeler, 2Í, The party leaders said they were particularly concerned about Miss Keeler’s “friendliness” with Captain Eugene Ivanov, an assistant Soviet naval attache, at a time when she was also seeing Profumo. Ivanov was recalled to Moscow last December.

  Of course, there’s always more dirt if you dig a little deeper. I got the scoop from a friend at the Bureau who was keeping tabs on the case (code-named “Bowtie”) for Hoover, who claimed to be interested in U.S. citizens who might’ve been friendly with Miss Keeler, and who might’ve dropped a secret or two along the way. The London FBI office had, in fact, uncovered a couple of air-force officers based at Lockenheath who’d had £100 worth of “friendliness” one night, but they were cleared after an exhaustive interview. (The highly descriptive tape of the interrogation was apparently a hot item around the Bureau.)

  But my guy thought the director wasn’t so much worried about the affairs of state as the other kind. The word was that maybe the current occupant of the White House had more than a passing interest in the sex scandal because one of Keeler’s cohorts, a classy Czech girl named Maria Novotny, had told the Brits that she and another girl, Suzy Chang, had together serviced the president when they were working New York. My man at the Bureau hinted that the director, no great fan of the president, was collecting information and feeding it to his friend the vice president to use if the Kennedys tried to dump him from the ticket in ‘64, as rumor had it.

  Comrade Ivanov was KGB, that’s for sure. What did he take back to Moscow? Not so sure. Keeler, under interrogation, had said he wanted her to find out from Profumo if and when West Germany would be joining the nuclear club. (You’d be surprised what a responsible government official will say to a sexy redhead who has his dick in her hand.) Keeler insisted she never asked the question. Maybe so, or maybe the girl was exceptionally good under questioning. Certain interrogation techniques, well known to SIS, would’ve been ruled out in this case because of the media profile. My guess was that Ivanov didn’t go home empty-handed. And it was certainly possible that the Brits got more out of Keeler than they cared to admit. That kind of security breach would have severely limited Washington’s willingness to share sensitive information with our friends in Whitehall.

  At one time I would’ve seen all this as a big win for Moscow, necessitating some sort of countermeasure. Now I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what difference it made whether the Soviets knew if West Germany would go nuclear. For Christ’s sake, they already had something like twenty-two hundred warheads pointed at Western Europe. So what if they decided to point a few more? But that was the game. If West Germany was going to install warheads, Moscow had to be ready to put them into East Germany.

  The guy who intrigued me was an osteopath named Stephen Ward, the guy who’d put Keeler together with both Profumo and Ivanov. Ward, who palmed himself off as an artist, was being accused by the press of all sorts of depravity. Stories of uninhibited orgies, wife swapping, marijuana, pills, whips, and chains were good grist for the paper mill and, no doubt, most of it was true. But it was all smoke, meant to obscure the obvious. The kind of “public relations” campaign I’d run many times.

  What neither side wanted to say was that the good doctor and his orgies were bait. Nothing special or unusual about it; there were dozens like him in every capital around the world, set up by both sides to see what kind of fish they could hook. But the big news was that the good doctor was our bait. MI5 had put him in business with the hope of getting Ivanov on film in a compromising position, then turning him. But putting a dabbler like Ward up against the Russian was like putting Fred Astaire in the ring with Joe Louis. He can dance around for a while, but sooner or later he’s gonna find himself trapped in a corner and it’s a pretty good bet who’s gonna leave on a stretcher.

  The good doctor wouldn’t have fully understood his position until it was too late. A guy like him goes along for the ride, so taken with the thrill of it all that he can’t see where it’s taking him until it’s too late. When he finally realized they owned him, he ran for cover, forgetting that the guys he was running to were on the other side now, because he put them there. In fact, Ward had no side, and no future. Not important enough to get a ticket to Moscow, but clued in enough to make him a liability to both sides. He was used up and was about to be discarded. Chumps like him always end up dead, one way or another.

  I thought about ordering another drink, lit a second HB to help me decide. My throat still ached from Andy Johnson’s Green Beret move, but I convinced myself that the smoke was soothing it.

  “May I use a match from you?”

  I looked up and was greeted by the widest, silliest grin I’d ever seen, beaming down at me from a tall and skinny bag of bones in a loose-fitting suit. Leaning over the table pointing at his Camel, he was young, early twenties, and more than a bit wobbly.

  “Sure,” I said, and lit him up.
/>
  “America,” he winked, blowing smoke.

  “Are my stars and stripes showing?”

  “All Americans read this newspaper and stay at the Kempinski,” he smiled proudly, indicating the hotel matchbook. He held out his hand. “Horst Schneider.”

  “Jack,” I responded in kind. “Jack Teller.”

  “It’s a pleasure to get your acquaintance,” he said, holding the handshake a beat too long. Then, noting my amused smile: “Is it not correct?”

  “Happy to make your acquaintance would be better, but you could just say, ‘Glad to meet you.’ It’s less formal.”

  “Yes, of course. Much better. Glad to meet you. Jack, yes? May I sit with you?”

  He did before I could answer, but I would’ve said yes anyway. He looked a little unstable and I was already starting to like him.

  “We must have a schnapps together. Let me buy you one.” He signaled the waitress and turned quickly back to me. “Have you seen Berlin before?”

  “Not lately,” I answered.

  “It’s quite unique. One of a kind, really. An island surrounded by no water. From which parts of America do you come? New York? Or is it Los Angeles?”

  “Florida.”

  “Ah!” He closed his eyes, recited, “Miami Beach, Daytona Beach, Palm Beach …” then got stuck.

  “Pompano Beach.”

  “Key Largo!” he exclaimed, ignoring me. “How could I forget! Humphrey Bogart is the war hero—by killing lots of Germans, of course—but wants only a quiet life now. In Key Largo lives the father of his good friend who was killed in the war, and the beautiful young wife, of course, who is Lauren Bacall, the wife of Bogie. Not in the film, but in life. Then comes the gangster, who is Edward G. Robinson, of course, Johnny Rocco, from Cuba, where is he—verbann … ?”

  “Exiled.”

  “Yes! … Ah, sprechen sie deutsch!”

  “Just a little.”

  “Good—and here is our schnapps. Of course, Bogie kills the bad guy and wins the girl. To your good health.” He raised his glass.