The Proxy Assassin

by John Knoerle

  “Hal Schroeder,” I replied, snootily. “The hero of Muhlendamm Bridge.”

  I fought my way back into the fray, looking to make a quick exit. My hosts stood in a corner to my right, by a table that had been pushed against the wall. On the table were three silver chafing dishes wafting meaty aromas that made my nose twitch and my mouth water.

  The Conklin’s were chatting with Allen Dulles and a ruddy man with a mane of white hair who had Chief Justice or Treasury Secretary written all over him. I sidled up to the chafing dishes while I waited for a lull in their conversation.

  The third dish looked promising. Swedish meatballs swimming in a dark tomato sauce. I tried to spear one with a toothpick but they were tough little buggers. I’m not a man who’s easily discouraged when it comes to meatballs, however.

  I was about to enjoy the fruits of my labor when I noticed that I had attracted the attention of the august group in the corner.

  I hoisted my meatball in salute and popped it in my mouth. It didn’t taste right, but damned if I was going to spit it out in front of Allen Dulles and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It took a good deal of chewing but I managed to get it down, then ankled over to say goodnight.

  “Did you enjoy Danny’s legendary concoction?” said Dulles from behind his spectacles.

  “Delicious.”

  “Most people prefer them fried,” said Mrs. Conklin, “but the Senator likes them stewed.”

  “Them?”

  “Sheep testicles,” smiled Senator Conklin.

  I cringed, tasting the spongy texture on the back of my tongue, feeling the eyes of my betters upon me. They were awaiting a snappy comeback.

  “I suppose it’s customary to eat two.”

  My poor quip drew hearty laughter. Which must have caught the attention of Guy Burgess because he stumbled up and flung his arm around my shoulder.

  “Is this our debutante’s coming out party? I feel so underdressed!”

  Burgess wasn’t wearing a jacket with his navy whites and his tunic looked like a crime scene.

  “Not that Harold ever seemed to mind,” he leered.

  I slipped my finger inside his belt and gave him a quick backward tug as I twisted out from under his arm.

  Guy Burgess fell flat on his back and stayed there. We stood around and looked at him, his eyelids fluttering like moth wings. Mrs. Conklin wondered if we oughn’t do something.

  “Don’t concern yourself,” I said, “he does this all the time.”

  I thanked my hosts for their hospitality and, with the briefest possible nod to Allen Dulles, walked out the front door and down the steps. I waited at the northwest corner, across the street, behind a street lamp. Out of habit. Guy Burgess would get the heave-ho soon enough. It wouldn’t hurt to know where he went next.

  Imagine my surprise when, a short time later, prim and proper Kim Philby helped the drunken Burgess down the steps, and walked east with him on P Street. I followed.

  They walked a long while, not stopping to hail a cab on busy Wisconsin Ave. Drunk or sober the Brits love their constitutionals.

  They turned south on a quiet residential street. I crossed to the far side and darted from one parked car to the next, startling a young couple who were steaming up the windows of a Studebaker.

  I scurried down the sidewalk, wishing I was that lucky bastard in the back seat of the car, burying my face in perfumed mounds of…oh, can it, Schroeder. Your surveillance targets just disappeared!

  I beat feet down the sidewalk, head low. I almost raced past them as I scanned the intersection ahead.

  Philby and Burgess had climbed the stoop of a four flat across the street and were standing by the first floor unit on the right. The light-reflecting marker was easy to read. 4001 Nebraska Avenue.

  Guy Burgess was a happy drunk, honking with laughter at his botched attempts to fit his key in the lock.

  Philby showed no reaction. Was this the elder statesman frog marching his misbehaving subordinate home? Or a homosexual tryst?

  I was pretty sure Kim Philby was married, not that it mattered. Being married hadn’t bothered Col. Norwood much.

  I had my answer in short order, down on my knees behind a Dodge coupe, squinting across a waxed hood that splintered the light from the streetlamp. Philby elbowed Burgess aside and opened the door with his own key. They went inside and shut the door.

  Kim Philby and Guy Burgess were roomies.

  Chapter Ten

  I’m a Kraut, I’m supposed to be good at directions. But it took me almost an hour of wandering downtown Washington’s circular maze to find my way back to the Mayflower. I washed up in the men’s room and made a beeline for the Towne and Country Lounge. I was in luck, Winston was in residence.

  “And what will you have this fine evening, Mistah Schroeder?”

  “Oh, I think you know, Winston.”

  He flashed his blazing grin and got busy with the cocktail shaker. I suppose it’s a courtesy to recognize hotel guests by name but it made me twitchy. Why was I so all-fired important all of a sudden?

  Winston served me a perfect Manhattan. My mood improved. I was about to order another when a young lady took the stool to my left. We made a show of ignoring one another.

  She asked Winston for a glass of rosé. He grabbed a bottle from the cooler. She asked me a question.

  “Did you have a good time at the Conklin’s party?”

  “Why? Were you there?”

  She nodded. I hadn’t seen her. I would have remembered a tall shapely girl with auburn hair and Betty Boop eyes.

  “My name’s Julia Hammond. I’m what they call a ‘stringer’.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A freelance reporter. I sell items to papers and wire services.”

  “That pay well?”

  “Five bucks a pop.”

  “You make five bucks at the Conklin party?”

  She shook her head. “Just another G-town shindy. You were the only one I didn’t recognize.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?”

  She sipped her wine and didn’t answer. I wasn’t going to give her a five buck item but it was pleasant to have company. Washington D.C. is a lonesome town.

  “I heard you introduced as the ‘hero of Muhlendamm Bridge.’”

  “But my so-called heroics were more than two years ago. Why now?”

  Miss Julia regarded me as if I had said something very stupid. “We’re in the final weeks of a fierce campaign, the Red Menace is issue number one. And you’re the blue ribbon hog at the County Fair that every pol wants to pat on the haunches while he gets his picture took.”

  “I didn’t get my picture took.”

  “And how do you feel about having your haunches patted?”

  I lowered my voice. “That depends?”

  She lowered hers. “On what?”

  “By who and how hard.”

  She laughed. I asked a question. “Any particular reason Allen Dulles was at the party?”

  Julia hesitated. She was not in the business of giving away free information. “Winston, Miss Hammond is on my tab. Bring her another glass of wine when you get a chance.”

  “Yessuh.”

  Winston took his sweet time. Ten seconds.

  Julia plucked a Salem from her purse. Winston leaned over to light it with a gold Ronson. She appreciated the attentive service. I could tell by the contented little sound she made as she feathered her hand through her long hair. Did I mention it was auburn?

  “That was a Dewey crowd,” she said. “Allen Dulles wants Senator Conklin to head the National Security Council in the Dewey Administration.”

  “Why? Conklin’s an old man, just hanging on.”

  “That’s why.”

  We kicked it around for a while. She was a farm girl from southern Virginia who lost her mother to cancer. She fled to the big bad city because her daddy and three younger brothers expected her to cook, clean, do the wash and milk the cows.

  “I
didn’t fancy being Ma Kettle.”

  I sat back and surveyed her, north to south. “Not the least resemblance.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Miss Julia kept her notepad in her purse. I liked her for that. Hell, I plain liked her. She was smart and good lookin’, kicking her slender strapped ankle under the bar and smelling like a hay ride through heaven.

  A burst of rowdy laughter broke the spell. I looked around.

  “That’s the men only bar.”

  “Men only?”

  Julia ticked her head to the left. “Over yonder. There’s a sign above the mirror.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “You don’t have men only bars where you come from?”

  “Sure, we have men only bars in Cleveland. But we don’t need a sign.” I hesitated. Would she laugh at a crude joke? “Green cigars and beer farts work just fine.”

  She would.

  I asked Winston for a second Manhattan. We watched him work. Two jiggers of Jack, a half jigger of sweet vermouth, dash of bitters. Shaken in ice and served in a chilled martini glass with a maraschino cherry.

  We made pleasant conversation as I made Winston’s Manhattan go away. She didn’t talk too much or laugh too loud. I was in a mellow mood when she asked me who I liked for President.

  “Not Truman.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Truman disbanded the OSS in late ’45, with ten days notice. He thought spying was un-American. And we’ve been at the back of the parade marching through horse flop ever since.”

  “So we’re losing the Cold War?”

  I told myself to shut my yap. But I was drunk and smitten enough to tell the truth.

  “If this were a prizefight the ref would’ve stopped it two rounds ago.”

  -----

  Room service woke me the next morning at an ungodly hour.

  “I didn’t order room service,” I croaked.

  “Roomey service, Meester Schroeder, roomey service!” insisted the high-pitched voice.

  I got up and padded to the door, expecting my Jack Daniel’s hangover to catch up to me. But Winston, bless him, had let my ill-advised third Manhattan mellow in the ice of the cocktail shaker.

  I threw open the door. “I did not…oh shit.”

  Bill Harvey bulled his way past me carrying a white bag and a folded up newspaper. He handed me the bag. “Heller’s Bakery, best doughnuts in town.”

  I grabbed a warm cruller from the sack and took a bite. Delicious, but no coffee. Who eats doughnuts without coffee?

  “I hope you’re good with a dueling pistol, Schroeder, because you just spit a wad of tobacco juice in the eye of a Southern gentleman by the name of Frank Wisner.”

  He handed me the newspaper, folded to page three. Uncle Sam a Punch-drunk Pug, says Cold War Hero.

  Byline, Julia Hammond. Five buck item my ass.

  “Why would Wisner give a shit what I say?”

  “Because he’s Cold Warrior Number One,” said Harvey. “And he’s paying for your hotel room.”

  Bill parked his rear end on the side of the bed and bit off half a sugar doughnut. When he was done chewing he said, “There are only two men in this town with hard power.”

  I had to wait another half a doughnut to find out who they were.

  “J. Edgar Hoover and Frank Wisner.”

  “Not the President?”

  Harvey snortled, which is somewhere between a chortle and a snort. “The President’s naked to the world – photographers, stenographers, biographers. He tries to have you clipped and it comes back to bite him.”

  “Clipped? Frank Wisner’s going to have me killed?”

  “Unlikely. But the thing to remember about the Director of OPC is that, even more than Hoover, he’s unsupervised. The higher-ups don’t want to know. We’ve never had a government official that powerful in the history of the United States.”

  True enough. I had done my due diligence in the back stacks of the Cleveland Library after I accepted Frank Wisner’s invite to D.C. I read the charter of his new Office of Policy Co-ordination and remembered one chilling line in particular.

  It said OPC operations must be conducted so that the President and the executive branch could plausibly disclaim any responsibility.

  Harvey stood up and brushed powdered sugar off his front. “Lay low, don’t answer the phone, don’t call room service. I’ll try to smooth out the wrinkles.”

  “And what do I do for food and drink?”

  “You got doughnuts and a water faucet.”

  “Very funny,” I said, moving to block the door. “Fork it over, I know you’re packin’.”

  Harvey grumbled and reached inside his coat. He handed me a shiny silver flask.

  “I am eternally in your debt,” I said, “but one last question. Why all this room service? What makes me so goddamn special?”

  Harvey looked out the window. The dawn was pink and gray with fog. “Though it pains me to say so, Schroeder, you’re my hero.”

  “Good one Bill.”

  “No, it’s true,” said Harvey, nodding his great bovine head. “You made that sonofabitch Hoover look stupid two years ago and you have lived to tell the tale. So far.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I got hungry and bored hiding in my room at the Mayflower. It was 5 p.m. on a Tuesday, who was gonna know? I took the service elevator to the lobby. I saw no sign of newshounds, just a few well-fed gents bellied up to the Towne and Country Bar. Their name badges read ‘Iowa City Chamber of Commerce.’

  I was pleasantly surprised to see Winston behind the bar. I ordered dinner and a beer. I didn’t need any more hard stuff after nipping at Harvey’s flask all afternoon.

  With the slightest twitch of an eyebrow Winston indicated I had company. A large man wearing a floppy black hat took the barstool to my left. He wore an expensive pinstriped suit.

  “You are Mr. Harold Schroeder?” lisped the man. He was about forty, with a flat pale face and a wide clownish mouth. He spoke with a Russian accent. “You are heem?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I am heem.” I asked how he knew where to find me.

  “Everyone says you are here.”

  And here I was, parked on my barstool in the Towne and Country Lounge, the Harold Schroeder anti-Communist Command Center.

  I leaned over and grabbed the Russian’s wrist, hard, felt his pulse hammering. I suppose it was rude of me to be so rude but I have a checkered history with Russians in Savile Row suits.

  “And who are you, comrade?”

  He said his name was Nikolai Savayenko, that he was an attaché to the Russian Ambassador here in Washington.

  I released his wrist. He slid a photograph my way – a little girl sitting on a woman’s lap – as his eyes searched the mirror behind the bar.

  “Who is this?”

  “My wife Maria and my daughter Tina. We want to defect to your country.”

  This got my attention. “Why come to me, Mr. Savayenko? Why not go…”

  “My wife is ill with heart condition, very rare. There is surgeon, at the Georgetown Hospital, who can help her.”

  “Why not just check her in?”

  “She is in Leningrad.”

  Well it’s never easy, is it? This was a lot to chew and digest on short notice. I didn’t know who or what this guy was. With the Reds you never know where the real power lies. The Ambassador’s chauffeur might outrank the Ambassador.

  “I’m not a government official, Nikolai.”

  “This is why I come! You are a man of action, not talk! The others I know, the diplomats, I cannot trust their indecision.”

  I took a closer look at the photo, my eyes drawn to little Tina, a bright-eyed cutie with ringlets shooting off in all directions. I could act as an intermediary with Wisner I suppose. But…

  “We still use the barter system over her, Nikolai. You give me something of value, I give you something back.”

  “I will give you a complete lisstt of Soviet agents opera
ting in USA,” said Nikolai, leaning in, spraying saliva.

  “Legals?” I said. “Or illegals?”

  The CIA knew who the legal Soviet agents were. Anyone who worked for the Soviet Embassy. Illegal agents posing as everyday citizens did the real damage – the clerk in the State Department mail room, the typist in the DoD secretarial pool, the lab tech at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

  “The illegals,” said Nikolai, just like that.

  Good God, the motherload! We studied the mirror behind the bar. No one was paying us the least attention.

  I gave Winston the nod. He stepped forward to take Nikolai’s order. Shot of Smirnoff. And again.

  The preferred method of exfiltration of foreign assets was submarine. Not possible in the northern Baltic this time of year. Nikolai’s wife and daughter couldn’t escape overland through a thousand miles of Soviet checkpoints and we wouldn’t violate Soviet airspace to snatch them. There was a slim chance Wisner could engineer a swap, but first things first.

  “We need to get you out of here, Nikolai. Too public. Let’s go up to my room and…”

  He shook his head. “I need first to speak to your Mr. Vizner.”

  “Fine. We’ll go up to my room and call him.”

  But Nikolai was eyeing the mirror again. I followed his look. A familiar face, wearing a rumpled suit, straggled up to the other end of the bar as if climbing a steep hill. Damned if it wasn’t Guy Burgess.

  Nikolai turned his face away. He had recognized Kim Philby’s friend.

  I caught Winston’s eye and inclined my head.

  A good bartender is a rare and glorious thing. Winston quick stepped down the bar and greeted the disheveled Brit like a long lost friend, giving me a moment to issue instructions.

  “Tomorrow, Lincoln Memorial, nine a.m.”

  Nikolai Savayenko squeezed my hand before he turned and hurried off, the brim of his floppy black hat pulled low.

  Chapter Twelve

  Abe Lincoln drew the short straw in the monument derby if you ask me. The Washington Monument soars high above the D.C. skyline. A bronze Jefferson towers above the visitors to his memorial dome. Only the rawboned rail-splitter sits on his marble keester, deep in shadow.