A Despicable Profession (23 page)

I studied the map. Red magnets were arrayed all along the eastern bank of the
Elbe,
from Hamburg in the north to the Czech border in the south. No wonder Bill Donovan was coming to call.

Now, where the hell was Leonid? There wasn't any big desk in a corner that he wasn't sitting at. There wouldn't be. Leonid wasn't a big desk in a corner kinda guy. He'd want privacy, with a way to keep an eye out. An adjoining office, with a peephole.

The far wall. A pane of smoked glass in a wall of cheap wainscoting that didn't go with the rest of the room. That would be Leonid's office. Where the hell was the door? And what in the hell was I going to say to the little creep when I found it?

The red-headed receptionist gave me a nod and a smile when I approached her at the phone bank. I returned the nod and waited till she completed her call.

“Busy day,” I said.

“Very.”

“Will you please tell Leonid that Hal Schroeder is here to see him?”

“Certainly Mr. Schroeder,” she replied in a Scottish burr. “Though I must tell you, he is not one who takes kindly to interruptions.”

I assured her it was important. She pressed an intercom key and did my bidding. Leonid replied with an obscenity.

I scanned the wall for a door hinge or handle. No sign. Must be a pocket door.

It was. Leonid appeared in the doorway, in silhouette, backlit by some kind of superwhite light. He saw me and gestured, hand open, palm up.
What
?

I gave him a merry wave and held my ground.

Yeah, I know. I'd sworn off winging it at the last minute in favor of dutiful preparation. But there's one drawback to dutiful preparation. Just ask French Defense Minister Andre Maginot,
Saint Patron
of the Maginot Line. You can get locked into a plan that doesn't fit the shifting circumstance.

Red Army divisions were crowding the
Elbe,
Wild Bill was flying in for an emergency consultation, my appearance at the Committee to Free Berlin had not gone according to Leonid's plan.
I wasn't going to lure the little man to the Café Gestern. He would smell a rat. It was here and now, or never.

I bent down and huddled with the redhead. She didn't like Leonid any more than I did apparently because she agreed to my muttered request to get Jacobson up here, and have him eavesdrop via the intercom.

I squeezed her arm in thanks and approached Leonid at a deliberate pace. I entered his office. He slid the door shut.

The room was long and narrow, not six feet side to side. The smoked window was one way glass, offering a clear view of the Comm Center. A large window on the opposite wall looked out on the backyard and the garage. And the door to the CO's office. A perfect perch. I would have to command Leonid's attention to insure he didn't spy Jacobson hurrying out of his office. And find a way to get my mitts on the intercom key.

There was only one chair in the room. His. One of those fancy leather jobs that wheel and swivel. I took it, and put my feet up on his desk for good measure.

“What...do you think...you are doing?”

“I think better with my feet up,” I said, amiably.

Leonid blinked under the bright light that came from some sort of vapor lamp behind his desk. The lamp shutters were crimped so that the glare was focused forward. He blinked again. It must have been disorienting for him, poor dear, his inner sanctum invaded by a cocky jerk twice his size.

“Aren't you going to offer me a libation?”

I had never seen Leonid imbibe but he was Russian, he had a bottle somewhere. I asked for a drink to distract him while I keyed on the intercom. And to give my false bravado a little boost. Yeah, Leonid's small, but so's a pit viper.

The intercom was a small keyboard of toggle switches. I pushed down the switch labeled
CC
while Leonid rummaged in a steel cabinet on the wall behind him. The switch popped back up when I released it. I cast about for a way to pin it open.

Leonid found what he was looking for. A dusty bottle of clear liquid.

I did too. A pencil thick as a forefinger. I depressed the switch and wedged the pencil stub between the keys on either side. Leonid returned to the desk. The pencil rolled out.

“I'm not a complete savage Leonid. I use a glass.”

Leonid muttered something vile in his native language, Russian being well suited to that sort of thing, and returned to the steel cabinet. I crammed the pencil back into place and gave it a stern look. It held.

Leonid plunked the bottle and a glass down on his desk, stepped back and crossed his arms. He looked like a cheap hood in a B movie.

I poured two fingers of Russian vodka into the glass and down my gullet. I looked up and x-rayed the little man.

“Aren't you s'posed to say something tough and hardbitten here Leonid? Something like,
This had better be good mister
?”

I held my look. Leonid returned it, his deep, liquid peepers frosted over, flat as buttons.

When I figured the CO had had enough time to get to the intercom, I started in with, “How's your sister?” That backed Leonid up a step.

“I do not have a sister.”

“No? I thought you did.”

“Why?”

“Oh, things I've heard. Here and there.”

“I do not have a sister.”

“Okay. Glad we cleared that up.” I tossed back another shot. Leonid no longer looked angry, just very, very alert. I asked another question.

“Any idea where Ambrose might be?”

Leonid waved me off, dismissively.

“No? Because I'm pretty sure you had him kidnapped.”

A contemptuous snort from the little man.

“It was just a coincidence Ambrose got snatched outside your building?”

I laid off the ‘while I was romancing your wife' part because I didn't want a knife fight just yet. Leonid wasn't heeled that I could see but he had a neck slicer tucked in the pocket of trimly tailored pants.

“My building is under constant surveillance, by many parties.”

“Yeah, so you've said. I remember that now. I guess I owe you an apology for what I did.”

Leonid's eyes got slim. I ground my back molars to a halt. He would have to ask if he wanted to know. And he wanted to know. I knew that the moment he didn't knock my legs off his desk.

It burned his ass but Leonid managed it. “What did you do?”

“I told Gerhard Dunkel, the friendly founding member of the Committee to Free Berlin, that I knew his group was a Commie front.”

Leonid kept his cool. Not a peep, not a frown. Not good. I kept at it. “It's what we in the spy game call a mirror read. That's when you...”

“I know what a mirror read is,” snapped Leonid.

The gritted teeth were good. But I was still a long way from home. A thought occurred.

“I have a question for you Leonid.” I leaned back in the leather chair and waggled my feet on his desk. No reaction. Buster Keaton could take lessons from this guy.

“We Yanks were blessed with great Generals in the war. Eisenhower, MacArthur, Patton. Superb leaders, brilliant strategists. We lost 300,000 on our way to VE Day while single-handedly defeating the Empire of Japan. Your side lost twenty million. So my question to you is, who were the great Russian generals of World War Two?
Were
there any?”

I paused. Leonid's deep, liquid eyeballs had defrosted, his pretty purple lips were squeezed thin. I was rounding third and headed for home.

“Leonid, Lenny, if I may call you that - we Yanks are crazy for nicknames - I have a follow-up question, something I've been puzzling on. Why would a smart operator like yourself, given the opportunity to work for the greatest and most powerful country in the world, choose to throw in with a bunch of dumbshit Commie
Unter Menschen?”

Leonid put his hands on his hips, leaned over the desk and spat his reply.

“We will
destroy
you Yankee.”

I held my position, feet up, smile on. “That's not much to brag about Lenny” I said, hoisting another shot, “I'm half-destroyed already.”

I drank it down, and belched loudly for emphasis.

That's what did it. It was the belch, the crude insult to his sense of his Old World decorum that got Leonid's neck-slicer out of his pants pocket.

I guess they call it blind rage for a reason. Leonid darted around the desk and took a wicked cut at my goozle with his folding knife. He got real close, I felt the wind on my neck.

Fortunately for me, unfortunately for him, he had neglected to extend the blade. Leonid realized his mistake and stopped to flick it open about the time I pushed back, jumped up, cocked my arm and put my fist in his right ear and about halfway through his head.

It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime Joe Louis haymakers where everything lines up just so and you're very impressed with yourself for a minute until you think,
Shit, did I just kill someone
?

Leonid crumpled to the hardwood floor and stayed there.

Victor Jacobson opened the pocket door and stood there like black doom. The redheaded receptionist and the green eyeshade boys formed a neck-craning chorus behind him. Good scene for an opera. I went to one once, as my mother's date. The old man refused to go. It was one of those dark Germanic jobs where the head man discovers his trusted confidante has betrayed him and sings a mournful aria in a thunderous baritone.

Victor Jacobson didn't burst into song. He just slid the door closed behind him and surveyed the carnage, eyes lingering on the open knife that lay on the hardwood floor two feet from Leonid's outstretched arm.

A pronoun had saved me. Had Leonid said, ‘
I
will destroy you' instead of
‘We
will destroy you' the CO might have concluded that Leonid was simply defending his honor. Leonid's confession had been a very near thing.

I hadn't killed the little man. He was snoring peacefully on the hardwood floor. I hooked him under the armpits, hauled him backwards and dumped him in his leather chair. He didn't resist. I wheeled his chair away from the desk in case he had a gun stashed in a drawer. And I removed the pencil from the intercom keys.

Leonid muttered a Russian curse when he saw me do that. He was back with us.

“What a sad little group we are,” said Victor Jacobson. “A traitor, a hothead and a dupe. Of the three, I believe I am most disappointed in myself.”

Leonid tried to speak, coughed, tried again, croaking out something that sounded like what do you want?

Jacobson spoke with quiet menace. “I ask, Leonid, you answer.”

Leonid rubbed his ear, gingerly.

“As you know, Leonid, we do not trade. Not for Ambrose or anyone else. What I can offer you is the life of your sister.”

This remark cleared away all the cobwebs for the little man.

“You have no cause to threaten her! She is an innocent. You betray your own ideals!”

“We will not threaten her, harm her or imprison her,” said the CO. “What we will do if you don't co-operate is make it known that you have crossed over, and let the NKVD take their vengeance where they will.”

“They would take my wife, not my sister.”

I declined to tell Leonid that his wife was no longer available. The poor guy had suffered enough for one day. But the CO got in a good lick.

“Your handlers know you better than I do, Leonid. And even I know you don't love your wife.”

Leonid hoisted himself up off the chair, wobbled, sat back down. He didn't speak.

“You know me to be a man of my word,” said Jacobson. “I will not place your sister in jeopardy if you instruct your handlers to release Ambrose.”

“They will not. Not unless I instruct them in person.”

The CO shook his head. He wasn't going to risk that. “Then you will tell us where Ambrose is being held.”

“I do not know.”

“I believe that you do.”

“On my sister's life I do not.”

The CO stepped closer and picked up the vodka bottle from the desk. “Dovgan. This used to be your poison, didn't it Leonid? Quart a day or so?” Jacobson unscrewed the cap. “As I understand it cirrhosis is a chronic disease. Once you've got it, it's yours to keep. No more booze, ever. Isn't that right?”

Leonid didn't say. Jacobson set the bottle down gently on the desk and then - BAM - stunned the little man with a vicious slap to the face.

Leonid rocked back and struggled upward. I jumped forward and snagged his wrists, pinning his arms behind the chair. The CO grabbed the bottle and waded in.

“Where is Ambrose being held?”

“On my sister's life I don't know.”

The CO clamped a big mitt below Leonid's jaw and strangled his mouth open.

Being force fed premium vodka was not a form of interrogation I would have found particularly unpleasant but Leonid sure didn't go for it. Jacobson forced almost half a bottle down Leonid's throat as the little man squirmed and writhed and hacked and hawed.

“Where is he weasel?”

Leonid spit bile at the CO by way of answer. Jacobson scraped it off his cheek and stood up. He set down the vodka bottle, replaced the cap, then picked up the bottle. By the neck.

This was a fight that was about more than it was about, a long-simmering conflict between bitter rivals. Time for ref Hal to intervene. I dragged Leonid's chair back out of bottle-clonking range and stood him up. I applied a one-wing choke hold from behind, his neck in the crook of my left elbow, my right hand hooked inside the back of his shirt collar. I tightened my elbow and hauled Leonid six inches off the floor and held him there.

He clawed at my arm. There are countermeasures to a one-wing choke hold of course – a thumb to the eye, a punch to the groin – but even trained veterans tend to forget the finer points when they can't breathe.

I returned Leonid to his chair and loosened my elbow. I let him have one lungful and cinched him up again.