A Despicable Profession (16 page)

“You're givin' me a headache here Chief.”

“Hilde fell in our lap awful easy. You see what I'm saying?”

Ambrose mulled it over. “You're sayin' Leonid knew in advance that we'd bag Hilde?”

“Sure looks that way.”

“But how the hell did Leonid know that we'd meet Eva and she'd tell us where to bag Hilde?”

“I'm not saying Leonid knew how. Just that he knew or suspected that the NKVD wanted Hilde found.”

Ambrose sat up, eyes blazing. “You sayin' Eva's in on it?”

“No, not at all,” I replied with more conviction than I felt. Ambrose settled down. I changed the subject.

“Here's another thing. Leonid told me that Lavrenty Beria, head of the Soviet secret police, had his mother under house arrest. That's Beria's pressure point. Leonid's mother.”

Ambrose stretched out on the musty couch. “Piss poor hole card, you're sayin'. An old woman. What happens when she croaks?”

“Yes. Correct. Very good. If Beria wanted a real hole card he would have taken Leonid's wife.”

Ambrose nodded agreement and yawned.

“Plus...”
Ambrose put his finger to his lips. I lowered my voice. “Plus, Leonid said Hilde's story about the Committee to Free Berlin was a crock, yet he didn't object to the CO sending us in.”

“Why should he?”

“Because he's an arrogant little shit! An arrogant little shit whose superior knowledge had just been ignored. He should have bitched to the CO. But he didn't. Not a groan, not a mumble.”

“We got any toothpicks?”

“I don't think so.”

“Then how'm I s'posed to keep my eyes open?”

“Ha ha.”

“I get yer drift Chief. You think Hilde's a snitch. You think Leonid's a traitor. Now what do we do about it?”

“We find out if it's true. Before we wander into that Committee meeting.”

“How?”

“I have no earthly idea.”

Ambrose rolled his eyes and shut his lids. His breathing grew heavy. I got up to make soup.

“Leonid's wife fancies you,” said Ambrose with his eyes closed.

“She does?”

“At the reception, my first day on, we shot the breeze. Name's Anna I think.” Ambrose yawned for a good ten seconds. “She fancies you.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“She does, I know it.”

“How so?”

Ambrose feigned sleep. I kicked the musty couch.

“The CO poked you in the back. You walked away. And her eyes followed you all the way out of the room.”

I struggled to dredge it up from the murky depths, conjured only a faded image. A pale slender woman who said little. And declined to shake my hand.

“You sure?” I said. But Ambrose was asleep.

Romancing another man's wife is chancy under the best of circumstances. Romancing the wife of a Soviet agent who either was or wasn't working our side of the fence and was doubtless paranoid in the extreme was - what would you say? Daunting? Risky? Nuts?

There is an old German saying,
Frauen behalten die Geheimnisse.
‘Women keep the secrets.' It never made much sense to me but maybe it's different in the Old Country. We have a different saying stateside, about the three best ways to spread the word. Telegraph, telephone and tell-a-woman. Women know the secrets, let's put it that way.

Anna would know if her husband was double dealing. It was up to me to find some way to pry it loose. Was I that charming and irresistible? Not so's you'd notice. But I had a distinct advantage. If I had things right Anna was married to a cold fish whose sole passion was the advancement of the people's revolutionary struggle against capitalist oppression of the workers. Unless she shared this passion Anna would be lonely. And bored.

Did she share his passion? Not likely. Fanatics are almost always male. Women know better somehow. Women know there's more than one answer to every question.

Finding Leonid's address was the next order of business. I wasn't going to ask the CO and I didn't picture tailing the little man home in a three ton truck. The only half-assed lead I could put my finger on was the café where I met him for the first time. Café Gestern. They knew him there, he probably lived nearby.
The stern
Grossmutter
with the pulled back hair might oblige me for a fiver.

Fat chance. She hadn't outlived the Nazi regime by disclosing privileged information at the drop of a fin. I would have to find another way.

Ambrose and I slept in late the next morning. Almost blinded myself when I snapped open the blackout shades. We had two single beds in the small bedroom. A kid's room, the boy and girl in the family photo. Where had the parents slept?

Ambrose buried his groggy head under a pillow. I padded to the kitchen and put a pot of water on the stove. Could I get away with combat hygiene? A shave and a pit wash over the sink? Or would I have to huddle under the rusty pipe that passed for a showerhead and shrink my gonads into raisins? Buck up, Schroeder. With any luck you've got a heavy date.

I did my patriotic duty. It was worse than I expected. Brutal, bone chilling. Two years previous I would have considered it a luxury to stand under cold running water and soap off the clay dust and oil smoke. Like most of America I had gone soft in a fat hurry.

-----

Ambrose and I walked the two miles to Café Gestern on
Bundesalle
just south of the
Kurfürstendamm
in the British Sector. The block was broken but unbowed, save for an array of brick buildings across the street. A National Socialist Institute of Something or Other that the Allies had taken particular care to blow to bits.

The entry bell tinkled merrily as Ambrose and I swept in at something o'clock in the late morning or early afternoon. The gas lights flickered low and smoky, the few patrons scattered, old, alone.

We parked our hind quarters at the petite bar. It had lace doilies for coasters. We angled around for the barkeep. No target acquisition, as the fly boys like to say. We had a plan. A plan
that required the jolly bartender. Where the hell was he? I remembered him from my first visit. He reminded me of my Uncle Jorg, a beefy character with fleshy jowls that jiggled when he laughed.

I grew up with first generation Krauts. They came in two flavors. The melancholy Germans and the jolly-jolly Germans. The barkeep, like my Uncle Jorg, was a jolly-jolly German. Kind of guy who would sing the
Schnitzelbank
song at the drop of a hat and he'd drop the hat. When the barkeep was properly lubricated Ambrose and I would conclude that our pal Leonid wasn't coming, worry that he hadn't showed and wonder should we check on him? He lives right around the corner, doesn't he? At which time the jolly barkeep would set us straight.

That was the plan. Unfortunately the jolly barkeep had the day off and his fill-in was a pinch-faced old geezer who did not imbibe. He
did
enjoy a smoke now and then. Camels were his preferred brand but he would make do with Lucky Strikes. Two packs.

-----

Leonid and Anna lived one block south and two blocks east, on
Spirchenstraße.
We found the building that the barkeep described. A big pearl gray stucco structure with a high arched entryway and large apartments with balconies that faced the street. The repairs had been extensive, nary a bullet hole to be seen.

Ambrose and I camped in a doorway across the street, hoping to spot Anna coming or going and bump into her, accidental like. We burned half an afternoon that way. When the shadows of the western buildings crept halfway across the street I told Ambrose I was going in.

“You don't know the apartment number.”

“I'll think of something. Keep an eye out for Leonid. Waylay him if he shows.”

“What the feck does that mean?
Waylay
.”

“Delay, interrupt. Say you need to talk to him.”

“About what?”

“About...me. You're worried about me.”

“Why?”

“Because...I don't
feckin'
know, that's your lookout! Just don't let him in that door.”

Ambrose didn't take offense. Or didn't show it. But I came to regret the rudeness of my remarks.

There were twelve mail slots in the foyer of the pearl gray building on
Spirchenstraße.
Eleven of them had nameplates, none said Vitinov. The mailbox for apartment K was unmarked. I counted upward. Top floor, facing the street. That would be the one.

The glass paneled inner door to the lobby was locked. Jimmy it with my blade, or press the intercom button and try to talk my way in? Jimmy it. Too easy for Anna to say no to a disembodied voice.

I examined the cylinder lock in the lobby door. A pin and tumbler deadbolt. A Schlage, as in Walter Schlage, fellow Kraut American made good. Not what I wanted to see. I wouldn't be jimmying the tongue out of the latch, not with a deadbolt.

I tried raking it, sticking the tip of my knife all the way to the back of the cylinder and yanking it out hard while twisting the door handle. It bounces the pins up. Sometimes you get lucky and they stay up.

Not this time, not with a ten pin Schlage. I had a full set of lock picks thoughtfully provided by the CO but it was late afternoon, residents would be returning, and tumbling this sumbitch would take some time. I could smash one of the glass door panels but Leonid would notice that when he came home. Time for plan Z.

I went to the buzz board and pressed buttons for the second floor, got an answer from apartment H. One Frau G. Unkel.

“Lieferung für Frau Unkel.”
Delivery for Mrs. Unkel.

She wanted to know what it was.

“Es ist ein Paket, meine Dame.”
It's a package, ma'am.

“Woher ist das Paket
?” Where is the package from?

How the hell did I know? Think, genius. What package would any and every woman in the Western world open the door to receive? Oh, yeah. I had dug deep one time and made a big hit with Jeannie on her birthday.

“Von Godiva Schokoladen in Brüssel.
” From Godiva Chocolates in Brussels.

Frau Unkel buzzed me in post haste. I crossed the marble floor, passed the brass-trimmed elevator and hunted the fire stairs, saying a silent apology to Frau G. Unkel, Apt. H, 1832
Spirchenstraße.
I would send her a box of Godiva chocolates when all this was done. I would!

I found the stairwell in the back right corner of the lobby, next to the fire door. Now there's something you don't see every day. Carpeted fire stairs. Leonid had himself a swank scatter.

I climbed two flights of stairs and walked down the corridor to apartment K, wondering what the hell I was doing with every step. If Anna told me to take a hike I would be in deep Dutch with Leonid. I knocked anyway.

No answer. I knocked some more. The door opened against a chain lock. A woman said something in a soft voice, something in Russian. I looked through the crack in the door, saw no one.

“It's Hal Schroeder Mrs. Vitinov. We met before. I work with your husband.”

No response. Did Anna speak English? I couldn't remember, couldn't recall if we had exchanged a single word. I tried Deutsch.

No response, no face in the door crack. But the door didn't close. I said the only word I knew that Anna would recognize.

“Leonid.”

A pale frowning face in the crack of the door. “No Leonid here.”

I nodded. “I know, I understand.”

“What is he?”

Good question. She meant ‘where is he' maybe. Or ‘Has something happened to him?'

“Leonid is fine. O-kay.
Fein.”

Anna understood. Leastwise she smiled, a quick mechanical curl of the lips seen through a crack in the door. A sad smile.

“Why here are you?”

Another good question. Anna moved closer to the door, peered at me with one pale gray worried eye. She was a wounded bird, this one.

“I was nearby, close by. Café Gestern.”

The pale gray eye watched me.

“I wanted to apologize, to say I'm sorry.” I bowed my head in penance. “When we met,” I said, pointing to her, pointing to me, “at the party, in Dahlem, I was rude to you.”

I made a mean face. No sign of comprehension from behind the door. I droned on, with a lot of gestures.

“We talked, we had pleasant con-ver-sa-tion. And then I turned away, walked away without saying goodbye. So long,
auf Wiedersehen.”

Anna understood the last part. I know because she said “Goodbye” and shut the door in my face.

It was the way she said it that kept me standing there. Softly, reluctantly. And the way she closed the door. With a click, not a slam.

Ambrose and I had a date with the Committee to Free Berlin the following evening. A date or an ambush. We would show up either way, two gobs on a job as the swabbies like to say. Would be nice, however, to know what we were in for and up against. Nice to have a chance to prepare.

I knocked again, gentle but insistent.

The door opened against the chain. I got both eyes this time. They were angry. I put my hand against the door jamb and met her look and smiled. Easy like, not too cocky.

We had an odd moment just then. A back and forth with eyes and eyebrows and unsaid words. Ambrose was right. She liked me for some reason. She also feared me. How to tip the balance?

Act human, act stupid.
Speak.

“I just had a long lunch at the Café Gestern with a friend of mine. Ambrose, you met him at the party. And we had a couple steins of
Bier
and now, well, I need to go to the bathroom,” I said, mincing about. “Water closet.
Toilette.”

No response, no reaction. I pulled a face and raised my hands in prayer. “Please?”

This coaxed a tiny smile and an opened door.

I said thanks in several languages and followed her through the parlor to the head. The apartment was spare, stark. The only touch of warmth were several framed watercolors. I closed the bathroom door and tapped a kidney.