air-—Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens. I could see the straight avenues form a geometric pattern with the cross streets of Manhattan, the skyscrapers, and the monumental bridges. A weak sun was shining and, oddly enough, I felt as if I'd had enough sleep in spite of the past crazy nights.
We had caught the plane just in time after Herford's alarming call had reached us—me, while I was typing my story, and Bertie, developing his photos of Max. Leo the Magnificent had turned up as arranged and was showing Irina a collection of dresses, suits, and coats. I had called the doctor on my way back from the studio and said that my wife would like a routine examination. That was the expression for it. He recognized my voice and said he was terribly busy, but perhaps he could see Irina at around 1:30, during the midday break. He would have to examine her before the minor operation, and he would do that then. I said that would be fine, and drove home, leaving the Lamborghini in front of the entrance, and waved to the police officers in their Mercedes on the other side of the street. It was the third shift. Again new faces.
When Irina had dressed, we took the elevator down to the main floor and went out the garden entrance. This led to another street, with no police on guard. We walked a short way, then I hailed a taxi. I had the driver stop near the doctor's office, and we went the rest of the way on foot. We were not about to take any risks.
Nobody was in the waiting room. The door was opened for us by the doctor's wife. She was young and pretty and had once been his nurse. Now she assisted him when he did abortions. He looked like a film star, but he was a clever doctor just the same. And avaricious. Irina had scarcely spoken all the way there. She looked very serious and calm as she walked into the doctor's office. I stayed outside in the empty waiting room that smelled faintly of cosmetics and a delicate disinfectant.
I sat there thinking of Irina, stretched out on the examination table in the next room, in the obligatory undignified position with the doctor fumbling around inside her. To distract myself I read a long article about ants. It didn't help very much. When Irina came back into the waiting room with the doctor, she looked as serious as ever and the doctor looked cheerful. "Everything's fine," he said. "Your wife is in excellent condition, Herr Roland. I have assured her there will be no complications. But we don't want to lose any more time. Would Tuesday at six p.m. suit you?"
"Good, good," said the cheerful doctor. "You'll bring your wife here? But I'm afraid you won't be able to wait for her, you understand?"
"Yes, doctor."
"My wife will assist me. After that your wife should rest for two or three hours. But you must come for her at ten, at the latest, please. She can't spend the night here."
The girls were never allowed to spend the night there. I had always had to come and get them. "Very well, doctor," I said.
"When she gets home, she should lie down. If anything doesn't seem right, you must call at once, and I'll come immediately. But you know that."
I did. One of the girls had run a high temperature and he had come right away and attended to her, effectively.
"Thank you, Herr Doktor" said Irina. "I trust you implicidy. You are being a great help."
"One has to help wherever one can," the doctor said kindly, and took us to the door. On the way there he said softly to me that on Tuesday I should please bring a check, payable to cash, and he gave me the outrageous price. I'd expected this because I'd paid it before. I nodded. I'd always paid him like this. He was a very good and a very cautious doctor.
I went out into the street again with Irina. The sky was gray and it was very cold. Irina walked slowly, looking down at the sidewalk all the time, and when we were sitting in the taxi I had hailed, she laid her cold hand in mine and said, "Now I'm completely happy and reassured. And I have you to thank for it. I'll never be able to thank you enough, Walter."
"No," I said. "I know you won't. But in me you've got a shining example. They should print a big poster of me with the inscription 'Mothers, you can entrust your daughters to this man!"'
That made her laugh. It sounded a little hysterical and she didn't stop for quite a while—the driver looked around curiously—but at least she was laughing. That's what I'd been aiming for.
When we got back to the apartment and had just taken off our coats, the downstairs bell rang. It was Herr Leo, announcing his arrival on the intercom. I asked him to come up; he stayed for hours, during which time I sat in my room, typing "Treason," until the moment when Herford called. 482
That had been Friday afternoon; and now, as we were circling over New York, it was Saturday morning; and I hoped I'd be back in Frankfurt by Tuesday, November 19, for Irina's sake. That was the day I had to take her to the doctor and bring her home again. I hoped very much to be back in time. Herford had said on the phone, "It's terribly important, Roland. Herford has just spoken to Oswald Seerose. Oswald has news for you. You'd better sit down. Oswald, come here/'
So general manager Seerose came to the phone and greeted me in his usual formal, dignified fashion. Then he came straight to the point. "News from my friends, Herr Roland. You and Engelhardt are to proceed straight to New York. Things are going to happen there."
"How do you know?"
"They're no idiots, our friends over there. Since the business in Hamburg, they're in a state of alarm. Radio experts have intercepted communications between a short-wave transmitter in New York and a Soviet trawler in the Atlantic. In code, of course. Can't break the code. But it concerns the films. My friends are positive about that."
"How can they be?"
'They didn't tell me. They'll tell you when you get there. The thing can't wait. It's to take place tomorrow. They'll explain everything to you in New York. When you get there, go to the Lufthansa counter. They'll be expecting you. The man's name is Cooley. Marvin Cooley. He'll fill you in."
"OK, Herr Seerose," I said. Then I told Irina that I had to fly off somewhere—not for long—and that she wasn't to let anyone into the apartment, nor should she go out or answer the phone. Suddenly her arms were around me. "What's the matter?"
"YouTl really come back soon, Walter? Please, please, come back soon!"
"Of course I will," I said. "As quickly as I can. In the meantime, be a good girl. Promise?"
She was smiling and crying at the same time—
At last we got permission to land. At the Lufthansa counter a tall, lanky man who reminded me of Jimmy Stewart spoke to us. He was wearing a gray coat and carrying a gray hat. "Mr. Engelhardt and Mr. Roland?"
"Yes."
"Pleased to meet you. My name is Marvin Cooley. Please
come with me. I see you have your baggage already. My car is parked outside."
His car was a silvery-gray Chevrolet. Cooley drove, I sat beside him, Bertie in the back. Cooley filled us in. "Our people have been especially interested in all radio communications during the last two days and night, ever since we found out that one of the transmitters is on a Soviet trawler. WeVe tried to locate the transmitter. Not easy. Luckily, there was a lot of communication going on..." Cooley drove past Aqueduct Raceway under the IND subway, and approached Brooklyn. He went on talking. "Well, our boys were lucky. They found the block. And the house. In Flatbush. Near the Holy Cross Cemetery. Troy Avenue."
Spring Creek Park next, its trees already bare. The parkway passed through it. To the left I could see water and the islands of Jamaica Bay. Small children were still playing in the weak sunshine, and people were walking.
"We sent two men to the house, into every apartment. Said they were from the telephone company, checking out the phones. They worked their way from floor to floor. In the end it was quite simple. A certain Floyd Turner has a radio shop on the ground floor. Radios and record players. Lives in the house. Fourth floor. He has his workshop in his apartment. Our boys didn't have to look long before they found the transmitter. Very modern, very sensitive. Turner said he was a ham operator. Showed us his license."
"Maybe he's really only a
ham operator," said Bertie, "and the man you're looking for has found a better way to hide his transmitter."
"I doubt it," said Cooley.
At the end of Spring Creek Park there was another cloverleaf. Here Cooley left the parkway and took Pennsylvania Avenue north, crossing one street after the other—Schroeders, Vandalia, and broad Flatlands Avenue. "After our boys had been there, Turner's radio activity became hectic, and for tonight, 2:00 a.m., he has reserved a seat on a plane to Los Angeles. In his own name. Our people have his phone tapped, of course. We're using an empty apartment in an old house across the street."
Linden Boulevard. Cooley turned left and drove quite a long way west. The Chevy had a two-way radio, and Cooley kept calling in his position and asking if there was any news. There wasn't, his colleagues in the apartment told him. The radio
technician was in his workshop upstairs, and he hadn't left the house. We passed Kings Highway, Rockaway and Utica Avenues, and at last reached Troy Avenue. The block that lay between Linden Boulevard and Church Avenue was long. Cooley parked two blocks away. We went back to Troy on foot. We saw Turner's radio shop, also two employees waiting on customers. It was Saturday afternoon.
We entered the old house opposite and walked up some dirty stairs to the fourth floor. Cooley knocked in a certain rhythm against a dilapidated door. It was opened. The apartment beyond it was unfurnished, the paper was peeling off the walls. Two young men were on duty here. They were sitting in the apartment's biggest room, looking out at the street, and greeted us when Cooley explained who we were. They were seated at a table with two field telephones beside them. Wires led from the phones all the way to the ceiling. There was a third, normal phone and a large tape recorder, connected to the field phone that was tapped into Turner's. A gray metal box was a short-wave transmitter, with which the men could call cruising cars. Every now and then calls came in. Quite a lot of cars were apparently on duty, certainly most of them unmarked, like Cooley's. I saw thermos bottles and sandwiches, and against a wall, two army cots. The men also had binoculars, one a special instrument for use at night. "What's Turner doing?" asked Cooley.
"Repairing a television set," said one of the men, and gave Cooley his binoculars. Cooley handed them to Bertie, who gave them to me. I could see into Turner's workshop. The window of the empty apartment we were in had a thin curtain over it. You could see out, but not in. Floyd Turner was in his workshop, doing something to a television set. He had a very big head, a large nose, short black hair, and very fine hands. The hands fascinated me. Beautiful—woman's hands.
"Of course it is possible," said Cooley, "that we're on the wrong track." He sat down and put his feet on the table.
"It is that," said Bertie, and smiled his boyish smile. "Entirely possible. You never know."
Well, yes And after that we waited for eleven goddamned
hours for Turner to leave the house. But he didn't do us the favor. He worked, then he walked into the next room and stretched out on the couch and slept, then he worked again and when it got dark he turned on every light in the place and went on working on a TV set. The two young men had, meanwhile, been replaced
by two others; Cooley had left and come back; only Bertie and I sat on two old chairs like idiots, waiting for something to happen. But nothing happened. Turner didn't use the phone once, nor did anyone call him. At eight a third young man brought us sandwiches and hot coffee, and we ate and drank in the dark, and then Bertie said he was going to take a nap. He'd taken pictures of Turner through the window on arrival. Now he lay down on one of the army cots and next moment was asleep. And then, at last, at 10:05 p.m., something happened.
One of the field telephones rang. The tape began to roll automatically; one of the men at the window picked up the receiver. Nobody was in the brightly lit rooms of Turner's apartment at the time. The telephone conversation was short. The man hung up and said, "Turner's called a taxi. Troy Avenue. In front of his house."
"Let's go," said Cooley.
We grabbed our coats—Bertie, his cameras...I, my binoculars—and tore down the steps. We left the house by a back entrance that led to a dirty yard and from there to a side street. We ran to Cooley's Chevy and jumped in. Cooley turned on the two-way radio, took an automatic pistol from under his seat, and tossed it to the back, where I was sitting now. "Are you armed?" he asked.
"No," I said. "They wouldn't have let us through customs if we had been."
"Then stay in the background as much as possible," said Cooley. "I have another gun, but I need that myself." He reported to control that he was ready. We heard other cars reporting, at least a dozen. Now the radio was working nonstop. The men in the upstairs apartment could see the taxi drive up. "Yellow Cab just drew up. Suspect is getting in. Driving away. Turning into Linden Boulevard, west. Car 12 follow first. OK?"
"Roger," said Cooley. As he said it, we saw the yellow taxi pass by.
The traffic wasn't heavy. We followed at a discreet distance.
Now Cooley began to direct the other cars by reporting constantly where Turner's Yellow Cab was heading, at first the entire length of Linden Boulevard to Flatbush Avenue. Here it turned right into Flatbush and proceeded north.
Flatbush Avenue veers northwest and passes through Prospect Park, pitch dark now. I knew from a former visit to New York that a branch of the BMT subway ran under it, and on our right were the Botanical Gardens, lit up by very few lights and barely visible in the dark. After we passed the big central library building at the end of the park, there was a rotary around Grand Army Plaza. The Yellow Cab drove almost all the way around it and proceeded south past Prospect Park again. "Now why the hell did he do that?" said Cooley. "He's making a detour. He could have crossed the park at the south end."
"Perhaps he's noticed you." A voice from control. "Fall back. Let Car 18 take over."
We drove slower, quite a few cars passed us, then, after a while, control again: "Attention! Yellow Cab turning into Prospect Avenue, direction northwest to Fifth."
To our left, behind a block or two of houses, lay the vast Greenwood Cemetery. I could see the wall and some trees behind it. We passed Avenues Five and Four. Control reported that the Yellow Cab was traveling southwest now, on Third Avenue. We crossed beneath the Gowanus Expressway, turned left on its service road, and continued south, paralleling the highway.
"Yellow taxi turning into Second Avenue. Seems headed for the harbor."
The harbor, in this case, was the Brooklyn pier, warehouse, and dock area in the Upper Bay of New York Harbor. "Proceed south, direction Bush Terminal Docks. Don't follow too closely. Surround the block. Cars 1, 2, 3, and 7 approach from the playground; Cars 5, 9, 10, and 11 proceed to Sanitation Department and Brooklyn Union Gas Company. Car 12 follow Yellow Cab cautiously. Yellow Cab slowing down near Pier 3."
Cooley drove slowly through a maze of bad or totally unlit streets, down to the harbor. There was a smell of water and oil. Suddenly the huge piers lay ahead of us, with their ships, cranes, freighters, and warehouses. There were barricades in front of the piers. Turner evidently wasn't headed for the ships. We saw the yellow taxi drive past Pier 3, the docking area and storage houses of American Hemisphere, Marine Agencies, and American Star Line. The street narrowed. Railroad tracks ran into the Bush
Terminal. Here gigantic trucks were parked, fortunately also several cars. The Yellow Cab stopped in front of what looked like a seaman's dive. Light from it fell out onto the street and we could hear a radio. Turner got out and went into the place. He was wearing a dark raincoat and a hat. Cooley reported that Turner had gone into the pub.
"When he comes out," said the voice from control, "follow him, cautiously."
"Will do," said Cooley.
Five minutes later Turner came out of the pub. He was carrying two bottles of liquor and was about to get back into the taxi when the driver stuck his head out of the window and talked to Turner and gestured behind him, at us. He had evidently noticed that we were watching him, and
was apparently refusing to take Turner on again. We saw Turner toss the bottles in the back of the taxi, then he had a gun in his hand, with which he hit the taxi driver over the head. The man collapsed. Turner dragged him out of the car and let him drop on the sidewalk, then he jumped behind the wheel and began to drive away. Bertie was taking pictures, Cooley was informing control about what was going on.
"Follow him! Turner's got to be stopped. Take him in!" The voice at control was raised to a shout. "Cars 1, 2, 3, move two blocks closer— Cars 8,4,5,6—" We didn't hear the rest because Cooley let the motor race and we shot forward. I was thrown back.
We raced over the narrow, cobblestoned street past the unconscious taxi driver and alongside the warehouses, when suddenly Turner, just ahead of us, turned around, still driving, and shot. The bullet hit the Chevy's left headlight. Cooley swore. He took his gun, stuck his arm out of the window, and shot at the taxi. He hit a tire—or that's what it looked like, because the taxi swerved wildly, turned around and almost tipped over, but a cement pillar stopped it, after which it skidded into an alleyway between two warehouses.
Suddenly there were cars—from the Brooklyn Union Gas Company and from elsewhere—and the sound of sirens howling. Cooley's Chevy had a strong spotlight. He turned it on and up. Other spotlights on other cars flared up. Now the whole area was brightly lit. Men came running out of the pub and from the pier, but they kept their distance. Cooley drove the Chevy up to the alley between two high red-brick warehouses. When the taxi had skidded into it, it had rammed into a row of open crates, toppling
them. Pieces of wood and wood shavings obstructed the entrance.
Sirens howled, spotlights and headlights blazed, and the first cars slowly approached the devastated driveway. The front of our Chevy was just inching forward into the entrance when a second shot was fired, hitting our second headlight. Cooley stopped the car, grabbed his gun, and jumped out. "You stay here," he told Bertie. "It's much too dangerous without a weapon."
The Traitor Blitz Page 53
