The Proxy Assassin

by John Knoerle

  I pulled on my clothes, shoes and socks and followed the aroma of strong coffee down the hall. I saw an odd tableau in the living room. Maria the housekeeper was down on all fours wrassling with young Vlad, who fought her playful advances with grim determination.

  Stela stood by a bay window in her slip and, the late morning sun made clear, nothing else. She had one high-arched foot planted on the sill, and was bending over to embrace her knee.

  I wanted to question her further in order to make sense of the odd sequence of events that had brought us here. But now was not the time. Watching the Princess do ballet exercises in her underwear would be, shall we say, unhelpful to my concentration.

  I went to the kitchen, poured some mud and returned to my room, unnoticed.

  The coffee, as in Romania, was strong. How is it that hard charging, high achieving Yanks drink coffee so weak you can see the bottom of the cup while Italians and Romanians down pitch-black jet fuel all day long and never get anything done?

  They oughtta do a study. In the meantime I had a bigger bone to chew on.

  I had assumed the traitor who compromised the operation was Guy Burgess or one of Wisner’s poorly-vetted new hires. But the U.S. had invaded sovereign territory on a covert mission. The Reds could have blown the plane to bits and we couldn’t say boo. Why didn’t they?

  Who wanted on that plane as much as I did?

  Princess Stela Varadja.

  Was her heated confrontation with the Blue Caps playacting for my benefit?

  I mulled it over. Stela was a survivor, sure, but a cutthroat killer? I couldn’t picture it.

  If betraying the operation was her only ticket out, maybe. Mothers will do most anything to save their kids. But the operation was her means of escape. Her only other motive to betray us that I could think of was a fanatical devotion to the cause of World Communism. And that didn’t make a lick of sense.

  Could be the NKVD kill squad didn’t attack the C-45 because they knew they didn’t have to, because they knew they could let it be. The rules of engagement for the C-45 crew would have been the same as the OPC mission briefers had instructed me. ‘Do not fire unless fired upon.’

  If the Blue Caps knew that going in, they would know the C-45 crew wouldn’t use their weapons even when the kill squad took down the truck. They would know they could ignore the plane and concentrate on getting what they wanted – the cargo. Let the plane crew return home in defeat.

  No one in Romania, Stela included, knew the OPC rules of engagement. The rat, therefore, was in D.C.

  That was where my black coffee logic led me anyway.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon in less seemly pursuits. Picturing the Princess and me at the bay window together, the basilica of St. Peter’s rimmed in scarlet, our cheeks pink with wine, performing strenuous and acrobatic ballet exercises.

  -----

  Maria served us a late dinner that evening. Vitello piccata, which was tart with lemon and sweet with wine, and orcchiette pasta, which looked like tiny ears. It was delicious though I couldn’t say why. It didn’t have a speck of tomato sauce.

  We sat at a small round table squeezed into the back of the kitchen, the only dining area in the big apartment. It really was a bachelor pad.

  Little Vlad, who sat propped up on a pillow across from me, looked vexed by these strange vittles. Maria had cut his veal into bite-sized pieces but the boy king wasn’t interested.

  His mother gently prompted him to eat his food. Nothing doing. She picked him up and put him on her lap. He squirmed. She tried to feed him a spoonful of the orcchiette. He turned his head away. She tried again. He pushed her hand away, hard, scattering pasta shells all down his front.

  Stela gave a little shriek. The boy slithered out of her grasp, hit the floor and scuttled madly toward freedom between chair legs and crossed ankles.

  Stela jumped up, ready to give chase, but Maria scooped up the boy as he crawled out from under. She scolded him in rapid fire Italian while she rocked him like an infant. He stopped squirming, and began to cry.

  Maria looked a question to Stela, who paused, then nodded briskly and resumed her seat. Maria carried the sobbing boy king off to bed.

  The Princess and I finished our meal in silence. I assumed she was stewing about her son but resisted the urge to say something soothingly stupid. I cleared the plates when we were done. Stela took the bottle of Chianti and our two glasses to the living room. She set them down on the cut glass coffee table and filled them full.

  It was a pleasant moment between us. A bit of unspoken teamwork you might expect from a couple who had been together awhile. I joined her on the white linen sofa, a dangerous combination. White linen and red wine.

  “I never thanked you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “You took big risk to save us. Your CIA does not want us, we are worth more to them if dead.”

  “Three-year-old boys should not be martyrs.”

  Stela patted my hand.

  She spun tales of life in the Palace during the war as we drank our wine. Expecting a dreary picture of life under enemy occupation, she talked instead of the months when Frank Wisner ran the OSS station in late ’44. How they conspired to rescue downed Allied flyers right under the nose of the Wehrmacht, and how the Palace briefly returned to the glory and elegance of the pre-war years when Bucharest was the Paris of the Balkans.

  “We were doing important work, in fine style. It was so satisfying,” she trilled, raising her glass, “so intoxicating.”

  Her English, I noticed, improved when she got tipsy. We clanked and drank, huddled closely together on the divan.

  She slid off her shoes, set her slender ankles on the coffee table and flexed her toes, the nails freshly manicured and painted with clear polish. I admired Princess Stela’s dainty white feet for a time.

  I knew where this was headed, had been anticipating it all day. But now that the train was about to leave the station I hesitated. And not just because I didn’t want to lie to Frank Wisner.

  He was on his way to Rome, that would explain why I hadn’t been debriefed. This had been Wisner’s operation top to tail and it was obvious he wasn’t going to trust some tweedy goof like Stanley to ask the questions for him.

  And it wasn’t that I didn’t trust Stela. I didn’t but it wasn’t that.

  What I really had doubts about were me and her together. I’m a man who enjoys a stiff drink or two or three. Four is where you get into trouble. I figured Princess Stela and me together were nine, maybe ten. I was afraid that after one night with her and I’d end up a wretched stewbum wandering back alleys in the Bowery, filtering shots of Sterno through scraps of moldy bread.

  Metaphorically speaking.

  So I asked Princess Stela a question she wasn’t used to hearing. “Shouldn’t you be looking after your son?”

  That concluded our night of passion. Stela grabbed her glass of wine and stalked down the hall. I watched her go with some regret, surprised at myself for making the right decision.

  I poured myself another splash and thought about the report I was going to have to make to Frank Wisner.

  He wasn’t going to like the airstrip part but it wasn’t all bad news. I had witnessed the locals’ fury at the puppet government and seen a Romanian Army garrison surrender without a firing a shot. That the mission was blown by some D.C. pinko wasn’t my fault.

  My only unauthorized walk in the park was snatching Stela and her son out from under Captain Dragomir. Which made me feel fortunate that my grilling would come from Wisner himself. Anyone else might question the wisdom of bringing a known NKVD field hand into U.S. protection. But Frank Wisner knew Princess Stela and would understand.

  Sure he would. What devoted career man and loving husband doesn’t enjoy a surprise visit from his former mistress and bastard son?

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Stela and I avoided each other for most of the following day. We both knew who was coming to visit tonight.
Maria had prepared an enormous tray of appetizers instead of dinner.

  I holed up in my room, reading an old LIFE magazine. The cover was a photo of the hero of the Berlin Air Lift, ‘Captain Candybar,’ a USAF pilot who came up with the idea of dropping candy to the kids of that ravaged city, using hankies as parachutes. Cute.

  Frank Wisner arrived that evening about seven. He looked beat from his long trip but he greeted Stela and me heartily. “And who is this handsome young lad?”

  Man, was he in for a big surprise.

  Wisner asked Maria for a glass of ice water. “And no gas.” He asked Stela and me if we were enjoying our stay. We said that we were.

  “Good,” said Wisner and turned to me. “Where can we talk?”

  Frank took a glass of ice water from Maria and followed me down the hall to my room. He plunked himself down on the plump red cushion of the room’s only chair. I closed the door and sat on the foot of the bed.

  Wisner paid no mind to my goofy duds, just studied my face.

  “They really went to town on you, the Magyars.”

  “It was an enthusiastic interrogation, sir, but I count myself lucky,” I said. “I’m surprised you know about that.”

  “We didn’t drop you in blind, we had sources in place.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Though we lost track when you and Stela fled the stone cottage.”

  Huh?

  “That was a smart move on your part, to send up a J/E flare from the airstrip.”

  “Thank you. But that was Captain Dragomir’s idea.”

  That the OPC had lost track Stela and me after we fled the stone cottage suggested that one of Stela’s Soviet minders was a source and that Sorin Dragomir wasn’t. Which made no sense whatsoever.

  Supposition and speculation, Schroeder. Noise. Tell the boss man what you know and shut your yap.

  I ran it down. From my capture by the Magyars to my transfer to the stone cottage and our subsequent escape to Sibiu, to Stela chewing out Dragomir for the kidnap of her son to the Captain’s successful uprising in Sibiu. I told him what the Princess was up to in the cottage with her NKVD minders. If Wisner was surprised he didn’t show it.

  I didn’t mention how PS managed to get herself on the plane despite the objections of the Soviet secret police because I still wasn’t sure what went on there. I would let Wisner know as soon as I did.

  I also left out the grisly scene in the quadrangle of the Army garrison, out of respect for Sorin Dragomir’s memory. I didn’t believe he had anything to do with that though we never discussed it. I chose to believe he was innocent of that atrocity.

  The C-45 crew had already been debriefed so Wisner knew about the kill squad disaster at the airstrip. He didn’t know how Captain Dragomir met his end however. I described his heroics in detail.

  Frank Wisner hung his head when I was done. “Son of a bitch.”

  “He was the genuine article sir.”

  Wisner nodded solemnly and shifted gears. “What the hell happened?”

  “Someone blew the whistle on us.”

  “I know that! Who?”

  “I might have a possible but I need to ask a question. What were the rules of engagement for the plane crew?”

  “The usual.”

  “‘Don’t fire unless fired upon.’ Which the plane wasn’t, even though the kill squad had plenty of firepower.”

  “You’re suggesting the mission was compromised stateside.”

  “Yes sir. By someone who knew our rules of engagement and instructed the Blue Caps to concentrate on securing the cargo and not waste ammo on the C-45.”

  Wisner grunted. “Who’s your candidate?”

  “Guy Burgess sir. I was thinking of Guy Burgess.”

  “I’ve heard the rumors, Schroeder, but this mission was self contained. We didn’t brief MI6.”

  So much for that theory.

  Wisner paused to glug down half his glass of water. “How’d you come to be captured by the Magyars?”

  “My fault. I sent the Captain and his platoon back home after we took some hostile fire on our recon mission.”

  “And you proceeded alone?” said Wisner, chin down, eyebrows up.

  “No sir. Two of his men accompanied me.”

  “And?”

  I hesitated. It felt like I was squealing on Dragomir.

  “Unfortunately one of the Captain’s men shot the other one in the back and knocked me out.” I continued before Wisner could interrupt. “In the man’s defense the Magyars had kidnapped his daughter.”

  “Ah,” said Wisner with a bitter, wizened smile, “Romania.”

  I wanted to dispute his obvious conclusion that the traitor was one of Captain Dragomir’s inner circle, those dark fierce men who had followed the Captain through hell and high water. But I had nothing to say that was worth hearing.

  “I knew it,” said Wisner after a time, looking oddly pleased. “There is a living, breathing anti-Communist underground out there. We’ll just have to do better job of counterintelligence. Save for one nigger in the woodpile the operation might well have been a success.”

  “But isn’t that the thing about top secret operations, sir?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It only takes one.”

  We walked back down the hall. Maria had set her platter of appetizers on the marble counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. She was stirring up a pitcher of martinis.

  “Tanqueray,” smiled Stela to Wisner. “And Cinzano.”

  “Excellent.”

  Maria poured three martinis from the kitchen and set them on the marble counter, not about to sashay around with a tray like some cheap cocktail waitress.

  We helped ourselves to the food and drink. Maria went to the living room where young Vlad was perched in a chair ignoring the picture book in his lap, his eyes on Frank Wisner and Princess Stela. Maria tried to carry him off to bed but he fussed and fought.

  “Let him be,” said Stela. “He will not know what we say, he does not speak engleză.”

  “Yes I do,” said the boy king, drawing laughter from Frank. “Cosmina taught me.”

  Stela flinched at the mention of Vlad’s nanny, the only mother her son had ever known.

  She and Wisner took their drinks over to the sofa. Maria entertained young Vlad. I remained at the marble counter, enjoying a chunk of cheese wrapped in shaved ham. I chewed, I pondered.

  A forgotten detail had been dredged up in my debriefing. How the kill squad hooted and hollered when they discovered the truck’s secret cargo. Gold. They had not expected to find gold.

  A rat in D.C. would have told them about the gold. A rat in Romania wouldn’t have known about it. Dragomir would not have shared that news with anyone.

  I had been right the first time. Stela was the traitor. She’d hit the Daily Double – made her escape with her son while getting revenge on his kidnapper.

  Maybe. But it was weak tea. More speculation and supposition. I needed something concrete to convince myself. I ate and drank and cast my mind back, looking for stuff that didn’t fit.

  It didn’t take long.

  Lucian, PS’s supposed rescuer. She said herself he was a coward. Why then would she rely on him to stage the all-important rescue of herself and her son? It didn’t read right, but I still had bupkis. Think, you dink!

  No, don’t! Open your eyes and shut your yap. Wait for the ball to drop.

  I studied Stela, hoping to spark a memory. She was all things gracious and demure in the presence of Frank Wisner, much as she had been with me during our sumptuous dinner in the stone cottage. That thought got chased by another thought that disappeared around a corner.

  No doubt Stela wanted to reveal to Wisner that Vlad was his son but Maria and the boy king kept upstaging her. PS didn’t want to make her big announcement, I assumed, while young Vlad chased a rubber ball across the room on all fours, barking like a dog.

  Princess Stela conveyed her displeasure to the h
ousekeeper with an expression that would have stopped a clock. An expression I remembered well.

  It was during our dinner at the cottage, after the Princess excused herself from the table to freshen up and instead slipped into the bedroom of Ilinca, Dmitri’s Soviet comrade. Stela had worn that same expression of grim and angry purpose when she returned from Ilinca’s bedroom

  When I’d asked what she’d been doing, Stela said she was making sure that the sedative with which she’d dosed Ilinca was doing its job.

  But nothing that Stela did that night after she returned from Ilinca’s bedroom made sense. From her rushing me out to the carriage house and then rushing back to the cottage to collect her things and change clothes, to her violently retching at the side of the road.

  I take that back. Her retching made sense.

  Stela should have changed her clothes while I was still inside the cottage in case Dmitri or Ilinca came to. I had been too busy ogling the GAZ-61 to realize that at the time.

  Best I could figure Stela saw that Ilinca was stirring when she visited her bedroom and decided she would have to kill both her and Dmitri to make certain they wouldn’t rouse themselves and sound the alarm. Stela did that when she returned to the cottage to collect her things.

  Slitting throats is a messy business, the carotid artery being so close to the pump. That’s why she waited to change clothes.

  And still I had nothing.

  Unless she still carried that beaded purse, the one that held the sap I’d used to crown Dmitri. Dollars to doughnuts she’d kept it, and it held a straight razor. It’s comforting to have a weapon in enemy territory.

  It was my turn to excuse myself to freshen up. Not that Frank and Stela would notice my absence. They were reminiscing happily on the white linen couch, heads down, voices low.

  I slipped into Mussolini’s bedroom and closed the door. It was a teen boy’s wet dream. Floor to ceiling mirrors along one wall, ankle-high gold carpeting, a life-size marble reproduction of Venus de Milo and a bed the size of a hockey rink.

  I found Stela’s beaded purse in the top bureau drawer and dumped the contents out on the bed. No razor. I turned the purse inside out, looking for spots of dried blood. No joy. I examined the purse’s contents. Same deal.