The Proxy Assassin

by John Knoerle

  I showed myself out.

  -----

  Wisner’s driver was a pleasant young fellow who hailed from Twinsburg, Ohio just west of Cleveland. We talked about the Browns’ terrific season – eight wins, no losses – as he drove across town. I suggested he drop me off behind the hotel in order to duck the newsies.

  “I’ve got that covered, Mr. Schroeder.”

  Indeed he had. He drove down a steep ramp on the western side of the hotel and punched in a security code on a mounted keypad. A ribbed steel door rolled up, admitting us to the Mayflower’s sub-basement. He parked by an elevator shaft, got out and keyed in another code. I heard an elevator car descending.

  The young man watched my perplexity with a grin. The elevator car settled with a ding.

  “They call this the King’s Lift,” he said as the door opened on an elevator operator in white and gold livery.

  Wisner’s driver waited until I climbed onboard, kept waiting till the door closed. The elevator operator cranked us skyward.

  “I’m on the sixth floor,” I said. “Why do they call this the King’s Lift?”

  “The concierge will explain sir.”

  We blew by the sixth floor and kept climbing to the top of the building. The door opened to reveal a small lobby with an inlaid marble floor and a soaring glass skylight.

  A dark man in an expensive suit said, “Welcome to the Penthouse Floor, Mr. Schroeder. Mr. Wisner instructed us to relocate you for reasons of security. This floor is designed for use by heads of state, it is not accessible by the lower floors.”

  “Sure, of course.” We heads of state need our privacy.

  He showed me to the Woodrow Wilson Suite, a dazzling three room job with a wet bar, original oil paintings on the walls, Steuben glass bowls on the end tables and a private terrace overlooking the Capitol dome. What in the world had I done to make Frank Wisner like me this much?

  “We took the liberty of hanging your clothes in the bedroom closet and placing your toiletries in the bathroom.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is there anything else you require, sir? Anything at all?”

  I wanted nothing more than to take the world’s longest shower and hit the sack but the concierge looked so eager to please that it seemed a shame to disappoint him.

  “I could eat something.”

  “Certainly sir, we have an extensive room service menu.”

  “No doubt, but for some reason I’m dying for a corned beef sandwich on Jewish rye, brown mustard, not yellow. Can you do that?”

  He nodded. Actually it was more like a bow. “Would you care for a beverage?”

  “A glass of beer.”

  “What brand do you prefer?”

  “I’m not fussy about beer.”

  “Pilsner glass or a chilled mug?”

  “I’m not fussy about beer glasses either,” I said, stripping off my vile-smelling topcoat.

  The concierge managed to not look surprised, though I figured to be the first guest in the history of the Woodrow Wilson Suite attired in a brown maintenance man’s uniform with a name patch.

  “Shall we have your coat dry cleaned, Mr. Schroeder?”

  “That’d be swell. But I’ll need it by tomorrow morning.”

  “Very good sir. If you would like us to launder your …uniform, simply leave it in the bedroom hamper,” he said, gathering up my smelly coat. “You will find a terrycloth robe in the bathroom.”

  I would and did.

  -----

  The corned beef was first rate, the beer cold, the bed so comfy I figured to sleep for a week. As I drifted off I tried to make sense of why I was ensconced on the Penthouse Floor of the Mayflower Hotel, my head swathed in downy pillows.

  I didn’t make much progress. I was asking a hard question of good fortune, true. But I wasn’t all that interested in the answer.

  Chapter Forty-two

  They say that people who rise to great wealth from humble roots quickly become accustomed to the trappings of the good life.

  No shit. You wake up at three a.m. with a taste for a ham and cheese omelet and a Bloody Mary and it’s on a bedside tray in fifteen minutes and you’re wondering why it took so long. After two nights in the Woodrow Wilson Suite of the Mayflower Hotel my humble roots were a distant memory.

  I listened to the radio and visited the wet bar and sat on my private terrace and watched the sun set behind the Capitol dome.

  It was very peaceful. There’s a statue atop the Capitol that you don’t really notice from street level. It looked like it might be an Indian brave.

  I liked that you couldn’t tell for sure. They fought a world war over what fiery totem got planted atop Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Better to leave ‘em guessing.

  The FBI had come to call on Tuesday morning. They were oddly formal, and brief. On a short leash by J. Edgar, or intimidated by the surroundings. I answered their questions about the bloody demise of Leonid Vitinov, repeating what I had told the PD. They wrote down my answers, thanked me and left. Life in the Woodrow Wilson Suite was another world entirely.

  I had been expecting a call from Frank Wisner once the election results came in. But the election was too close to call on Tuesday night.

  Frank Wisner woke me up on Wednesday morning, by proxy. A young man, pale as his starched Mayflower tunic, apologized for the interruption. He was holding what looked like a walkie talkie that was plugged into the wall. He presented it with a bow.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Schroeder.”

  “And a good morning to you sir.” I looked up. The young man in the white tunic had vanished.

  “Have you seen the election results?”

  “Last I heard Dewey had a slim lead.”

  “That didn’t hold. Harry Truman has won.”

  I listened to spitting static on the scrambled line and kept my yap shut.

  “We will have to mend some fences,” said Wisner. “I believe you can provide us a valuable service in the present circumstance.”

  I kept my yap shut.

  “I would like you to consider being OPC’s congressional liaison. I’m no good at that sort of thing, lobbying, testifying in closed session. I get flustered and lapse into lawerly mumbo jumbo.”

  Somehow I couldn’t picture brawny Frank Wisner being unnerved by a committee of porculent windbags. “Sir, I am not a gifted speaker. I barely managed ten words at the Dewey rally.”

  “Americans like their heroes taciturn,” said Wisner. “And congressmen prefer listening to themselves.”

  “Good one sir.”

  By rights I should have jumped at the opportunity, I didn’t have any other hot prospects lined up. It would be nice to have a grown-up job, I might even get to ask Miss Julia out to dinner and pick up the tab. But I wasn’t keen to be the Captain Candybar of the OPC. I asked for a day to think it over.

  Wisner blew his nose.

  “How are your accommodations?”

  “Quite splendid, sir. Any chance I could live here?”

  Frank Wisner chuckled and rang off. He thought I was kidding.

  I ordered breakfast from room service. I read election coverage from the stack of newspapers the staff left at my door. I took a long soak in a hot tub. The day dragged on.

  I was sorely tempted to sneak down to the T&C for one of Winston’s perfect Manhattans. I could order one from room service of course but drinking a perfect Manhattan alone in your room is just plain sad. And the prospect of facing a mob of reporters shouting questions was unpleasant in the extreme.

  I was reading Li’l Abner and the Katzenjammer Kids for the second time when the telephone shattered the plush quiet.

  The front desk explained they had a Julia Hammond on the line, that she had been told, repeatedly, that Mr. Schroeder was not to be disturbed but that she had insisted, repeatedly, that I would want to speak to her. I told the front desk to patch her through.

  I didn’t care what bad-news-from-the-front Miss Julia was
about to deliver. I just wanted to hear her voice.

  “How are you getting along?”

  “I’m a kept man at the moment, confined in splendid isolation.”

  “Would you like some company?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I sure would.”

  “I could stop by for a cocktail.”

  “Be still my beating heart.”

  Julia giggled, I grinned. I missed her.

  “Though I must tell you,” she said, “I have an ulterior motive.”

  “Hey, join the club!” No girlish giggle this time. “What’s this about, Julia?”

  “My editor is after me to do a follow-up story on you.”

  Oh crap. “What sort of story?”

  “What they call a ‘feature.’ A personality profile.”

  “I’ve already gotten a ration of shit for being called a CIA hero.”

  “Hal, I’ve got my foot in the door. This is my chance to bust it wide open.”

  “I understand, but if I’m seen to be buffing my own backside on this I’ll be excommunicated.”

  “From what?”

  “From the dark and devious priesthood of espionage.”

  “That’s good. Can I use that?”

  I sighed, I grumbled. “Knock yourself out.”

  “You sound angry. You mind telling me why?”

  “Not so long as you’re jotting quotes in your reporter’s notebook, no.”

  “Then we’re off the record.”

  “Off the record? What am I, Secretary of State?”

  “At the moment you’re far more newsworthy than the Secretary of State.”

  “And that’s my doing?”

  “Hal, we’re talking about good publicity.”

  “I’m not a politician, Julia, I’m a spy.”

  This was a ridiculous statement of course. At this point in the proceedings I was a secret agent like Kate Smith is a toe dancer.

  “I should never have let you talk me into…you know.”

  “I didn’t have to try very hard,” said Julia.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I wanted to write the story, not be the story.”

  “You explained that.” A phone rang in the background. I heard typewriters clacking. She was at the office.

  “And what did Hal want?”

  Miss Julia had a point. I’d told her I was sick of playing hero and that was true. But playing a hero who got outmaneuvered by a Soviet agent and had to be rescued by a girl reporter figured to be a lot worse.

  I sighed, I grumbled. “Talk to Frank Wisner at OPC. If he clears it we can talk.”

  “Frank Wisner, at O…”

  “OPC. Office of Policy Co-ordination.”

  “OPC, got it,” she said, sweetly. “Do you have Frank Wisner’s private line?”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  So much for cocktails for two in a secluded rendezvous. Far above the avenue.

  I felt bad for the intrepid girl reporter. There was little chance Wisner would give her the go ahead.

  I plain felt bad. I’m a Catholic boy, I’d felt the black dog of guilt nipping at my heels ever since I agreed to take credit for dispatching Leonid. For some inexplicable reason I had felt it most acutely when I was repeating made-up details to the oh-so-polite FBI agents in my palatial suite.

  I had sold myself a bill of goods, told myself I had mended my ways and now proudly trod the straight and narrow.

  But that wasn’t strictly true.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Being a hero can be annoying, as I’ve said many times. I didn’t enjoy it except when I did. Free drinks, fancy hotel suites, thunderous ovations.

  But I was now at another annoyance level entirely. The concierge had delivered the afternoon papers to my door. My picture was on the front page of the Evening Star in a story reported by Julia Hammond for the Associated Press.

  I shared the page with Harry Truman. He was above the fold, holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune and grinning ear to ear. The Tribune headline read Dewey Defeats Truman.

  My photo was squeezed into the lower left corner. Just my mug, a caption and a ‘story on page 3.’ I was also on the front page of the Washington Post, the Washington Times-Herald and the Washington Daily News.

  Miss Julia had stepped up in class. My picture figured to be in every paper in the country.

  The photo looked about five years old. I’d never seen it before. I looked like a sap, a smirky half-smile on my face, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the caption.

  Hal the Hero.

  Hero with a capital ‘H’, like I was a professional wrestler. Jake the Snake, Manny the Mauler, Hal the Hero.

  Dammit to hell, Julia. Maybe you couldn’t keep my dopey mush off the front page but you should never have written that caption.

  I studied the photo. I was dressed in civvies, standing in front of a chalkboard. It looked like the photo had been cropped but I could make out the numbers 06/0 above my left shoulder and below that the letter H.

  Think, Schroeder. You’re standing in front of a chalkboard. 06/0 is a strange number.

  Oh yeah. That’s the way they write out the month and day in the military, because every box on every form has to be filled in. The photo was taken at Camp X, on my first day at spy school.

  06/0 was part of the date. 06/09/1943. H was the first letter of my name.

  The photo should have been classified. How had Julia’s editor gotten his grimy mitts on it? My mind got to wondering.

  I turned the page and skimmed the article on page three. Miss Julia had done a good job with the timeline of my career. OSS spy behind German lines, undercover agent for the Cleveland feds and ‘extralegal’ operative in post-war Berlin. Good one Jules.

  The next paragraph had the subhead ‘The man who saved my life.’ I read the quote from Jeanne Pappas of Cleveland, Ohio.

  Julia was one dogged newshound. It was Jeannie, my Jeannie!

  “Hal was a crazy kid, all over the place. Sure of himself one minute, shy and nervous the next. Like most kids. What set him apart, I think, was that he was absolutely fearless.”

  Me? Jeannie came to my rescue on Kelleys Island knowing it was a million to one. Jeannie was the fearless one.

  No, that wasn’t right. Fearless is another word for stupid. Jeannie was brave, I was fearless.

  In my wayward youth anyway. I felt like an old man now, making my way down an icy sidewalk with short slow steps. A little youthful brio might be in order.

  I had done my duty, I wasn’t going out again. But there had to be a better way to join the fight than trading on my phony hero rep on Capitol Hill, a better way to put what I had learned in the field to good use. A way that didn’t involve cavorting with Mata Hari’s or sending eager young freedom fighters off to slaughter.

  I needed a serious sitdown with William King Harvey.

  -----

  I had hoped to wow Harvey with my palatial digs but the deep pile carpeting betrayed me.

  “Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” he said when the concierge presented him at my doorstep at the appointed hour of seven p.m. “Albert Einstein?”

  The concierge looked up at me and darted a quick finger at his head.

  I invited Harvey in and checked my appearance in the full length mirror on the back of the door, a last chance for Royals and Prime Ministers to adjust their finery before they ventured out.

  I had been padding around the thick carpeting in my stocking feet. My hair was standing straight up.

  I went to the bathroom and slicked it down. When I returned to the living room Harvey was nowhere to be seen. I found him on the terrace, peering down at the Capitol rotunda.

  “Be a sweet perch for an assassin.”

  “Sure. But who’s gonna waste a bullet on a congressman?”

  Harvey gave me one clipped laugh. “Where’s my drink?”

  “It’s on its way,” I said with a sly smile. Bill Harvey had a treat i
n store.

  We went back inside. Harvey flopped in an overstuffed, floral print chair and looked cross and out-of-place. “Good work on Leonid. He had it coming.”

  I mumbled my thanks and changed the subject. “Frank Wisner offered me a job this morning. Congressional liaison.”

  “Nice. How much?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “What else did you talk about?”

  “Don’t you want to know if I’m going to take the job?”

  “Are you?”

  “I don’t think Wisner wants to hire me.”

  “Why’d he ask you then?”

  “Me, he doesn’t want to hire me. He chewed me out for chasing headlines but now he wants to hire that grinning idiot on the front page.”

  “The poor hero in the penthouse suite?”

  “Yeah. I hate that bastard.”

  “I’d drink to that,” harrumphed Harvey, “but I’m empty handed.”

  I picked up the phone to call the T&C Lounge just about the time the doorbell bing-bonged. Winston wheeled in a linen-covered cart bearing a bowl of mixed nuts, an ice bucket, a cocktail shaker, glasses, assorted mixers and what looked like a dark brown apothecary bottle. Try as he might Harvey couldn’t keep the astonishment off his face.

  I had Winston, mixing cocktails, in my private suite.

  “You gennemens are partial to a Jack Daniels’ Manhattan so far as I recollect. But if you might allow me…” Winston picked up the brown bottle and showed us the hand-lettered label.

  BN /127.

  “We had a gennemen guest from Kentucky, from a family whose name you know, he was kind enough to leave us this gift.” Winston uncorked the almost-full bottle and poured a tiny dram in a shot glass. “It’s what they call single-barrel bourbon, uncut, unfiltered. Hol’ that glass up to yo’ nose.”

  I did. It smelled of vanilla beans and smoke. “Umm hmm.”

  I passed it over to Harvey who slugged it down. “Tastes good too.”

  I asked Winston what BN stood for.

  “Those are the gennemen’s initials,” said Winston, discreetly.

  “And the 127?”

  “That’s the proof.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No suh.”

  Harvey gave me a caustic look, as if he expected me to put my hand to my bosom and exclaim, Oh dear me, no, that’s far too strong!