A Despicable Profession (24 page)

“Where is Ambrose being held?”

Leonid didn't respond. Possibly because I had my forearm jammed against his windpipe. Could that be why? I pondered this question for a good thirty seconds as Leonid tore desperately at my arm.

Yes, my forearm was indeed the problem. I relaxed it enough for our kidnapper to suck a straw's worth of air.

“Tell me what I want to hear, Lenny,” I said, “tell me now!”

“The Soviet Armory,” he croaked, “on
Blummenstraße.”

I removed my arm and stood up. Leonid slumped to his chair and sucked wind. The CO grimaced.

Leonid had said a very bad word.
Armory.
Dollars to donuts the Soviet Armory that held Ambrose Mooney was also the target of the ill-fated freedom fighters of the Committee to Free Berlin. It would be teeming with well-armed troops.

“Watch him, I'll be right back.” The CO went to the outer office and closed the door behind him.

I stood behind Leonid in the chair and felt oddly hopeful. We had a way forward, we just had to work out the tedious death-defying details. Leonid wasn't an all-knowing, all-powerful superspy after all. I wouldn't have to turn Commie.

He was a handful though, give him that. Leonid had used his bent over gasping as cover to retrieve a nasty little Exacto knife snugged in his sock garter. He was drunk, disoriented. I had the tactical advantage, standing above and behind him. How then did I have to jump back at the last moment to avoid a swiveling knife thrust aimed at my temple?

It was that goddamn chair is what it was. The little prick was using it as a shield now, wheeling it side to side.

“Hey, Lenny, I'm not going to shoot you. Not here. So why not come out and play?”

Leonid shoved the chair aside and smiled all the way up to his ghoulish gums. He extended the blade another two inches.

I frowned.

“Four inches? Christ, Lenny, is four inches the best you can do?” I reached into my coat pocket and held up the severed gold monogram from his red blazer. I waved it at him.

“No wonder your wife was so glad to see me.”

Leonid bolted forward with blood in his eyes. I had fraternized with his wife in the privacy of their apartment. Worse, I had violated his finery!

He held the knife low, in between his legs, blade up. He would. A knife thrust from below is far more perilous than a thrust from above. If the attacker misses your noggin on the way down he is shit outta luck. If he misses your gonads on the way up, however, he still has a shot at your neck and chin.

So I was happy to see Victor Jacobson return to the office about then, take stock of the situation, and shoot Leonid in the back.

Victor Jacobson shot Leonid Vitinov in the back with a dart gun. Leonid would hate that. It broke his ‘no gadgets' rule. I bent down and cleared his airway and turned his head sideways. He had much more he could tell us. With any luck I would get to ask the questions.

The CO nodded approvingly at the state of affairs. He looked a new man, all doubt and anxiety washed away. I was surprised to see him so chipper, what with a major career embarrassment sprawled on the hardwood floor and General Bill Donovan inbound tomorrow. Victor Jacobson would have some Fancy Dan explaining to do. He returned to the outer office, leaving me alone to guard the prisoner. And chew my cud.

I sat down in the fancy leather chair. I was hell bent to spring Ambrose now that I knew where he was being held. But Wild Bill and the CO would have other concerns. Like how to keep the Committee to Free Berlin from assaulting the Soviet Armory and starting World War III. They had a point. I didn't want World War III on my resume either.

It went contrary to my most deeply-held beliefs but I would risk getting my head blown off to short circuit the NKVD's plan. They say that soldiers don't crawl out of their foxholes to assault an enemy pillbox in pursuit of an abstract ideal, they do it to save their buddies.

They're right. I would risk getting my head blown off, I was right, ready and gung ho. So long as springing Ambrose was part of the plan.

And quick. The Blue Caps would be cranked up after Anna's quick exit and the apartment fire. When Leonid didn't return home that evening they would know he'd been blown. They
would know that we knew the Committee to Free Berlin was a Commie front.

The NKVD would assume we knew the Committee was planning an assault on a Soviet target, assume we knew the time and place. They would assume we knew everything. Edict one in the spy biz. Assume the worst and work backwards.

The Blue Caps would be hard pressed to change the location. There was only one Soviet Armory in Berlin. But they would sure as hell move up the go date, try to hit quick before we could make a plan. The only silver lining I could glim was that modifying an operation of this importance would need clearance from on high, from Stalin himself. If the Soviets planned to use the attack on the Armory as a pretext to seize Berlin all the pieces had to be in place.

72 hours? That sounded about right. We had 72 hours to head off the Committee to Free Berlin and rescue Ambrose. And save the world. I sat down in the fancy chair and didn't think about it.

Ring ring.

Brainstorm for Mr. Harold Schroeder, plee-ase hold.

I held, waiting for the no-nonsense PBX operator who resides in the upper reaches of my cranium to patch the lines together at her plugboard. I haven't mentioned her before because I was afraid you would think me nuts but she does exist. Her name is Gertie.

Here is your party.

I waited, I listened. A faint watery echo down the line. It sounded like reverse the order.

Thanks a lot, Gert. Some brainstorm. Reverse the order of what?

Oh.

Yeah.

We didn't have 72 hours to head off the Committee and then rescue Ambrose. It was the other way round. I could no longer march into a Committee meeting and present my case. MANTIS wouldn't expose himself in such a public forum. Ditto the CO.
Only one sad sack Yank could turn the tide of history with grim details about what awaited the Committee members at the Soviet Armory. Ambrose Mooney.

Excellent. Now all I had to figure was a way to bust him out. They do it all the time in Westerns, it's easy as pie. You just tie a rope around the bars and yell giddyap! The bars rip loose every time.

-----

“Good news, bad news,” said the CO when he returned to Leonid's office. The little man remained on the floor, sawing logs. Jacobson looked down at him. “The tranq dart lasts about three hours.”

I asked him what the good news was.

“I get to get shed of Hilde. He's been a pain in the ass.”

“Where will you send him?”

“Now that he's proved his worth General Donovan will carry him off to the Pentagon.”

“What's the bad news?”

“I'll have to install Leonid in Hilde's room upstairs.”

“Why? Hilde's old news. Leonid knows field agents, current ops, codes, drop points.”

“Hilde's a former second in command of the Abwehr, a big-map guy. The Puzzle Palace will love him. Leonid's just a low level operative. That's the way we play it.”

“Play it? To Wild Bill Donovan?”

“Yes Schroeder. If you're thinking I'd rather not have General Donovan know how badly I screwed up on Leonid, you're right. But I'll tell him when the time comes. We hand out truth on a need to know basis. Donovan and the Whiskey Colonels are too far removed to make good use of what Leonid knows. That's my job for now.”

“I'm happy to comply sir, provided you consider my proposal to short circuit the Committee to Free Berlin.”

“I'm listening.”

“It needs Ambrose.”

“Why?”

“He's been there, the Armory. He can give them the birds-eye lowdown.”

“Why would they believe him?”

“Because, before I free Ambrose from his cell, I will snap photos of the Armory fortifications, which photos will be developed and enlarged and circulated among the members of the Committee by Ambrose at their meeting tomorrow night.”

The CO sighted down his nose. “Got any thoughts on how to gain entry?”

“Not a one sir. I was hoping you'd tell me we have a mole in the Soviet Sector.”

Jacobson gave out with a bitter snort. “Leonid Vitinov was our mole.”

“What about Colonel Norwood? I'll wager he has Soviet contacts.”

“I thought you considered him a snitch?”

“I changed my mind,” I said without further explanation. The CO would have heard all about our embarrassment at the chalet. “But he hates me now.”

The CO coughed a laugh out his nose. “The only person John Norwood hates is Winston Churchill, who declined to tender his name for knighthood following the Colonel's wartime service in the Balkans, no explanation given.”

I remembered the humidor in Norwood's display cabinet, the one with Churchill's initials. What was that? A consolation prize?

“Norwood will love it if you come crawling back. Just be prepared to eat some shit.”

“Yes sir.” Jacobson's pinched look indicated he might like to serve up an extra portion. I stood ready, I had it coming. My tip off to the Committee's founding member was insubordinate in the extreme.

But the CO said only, “The NKVD knows we suspect the Committee by now, so it wouldn't hurt to talk dirty about them at Norwood's, get the word out.”

“And Ambrose? The Armory?”

“Norwood might know a way in. But keep that discussion private.”

“And I keep mum about Leonid?”

“Have you?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Kept mum about Leonid?”

I cast my mind backward. I knew what the CO was after, a cross check of who told what to whom so he could have all loose ends tied up when Wild Bill came to call. I told him what I remembered to the best of my ability, addled as I was by vodka and exhaustion. “I have no idea.”

The CO grumbled, extended his hand and hauled me out of the fancy chair. “Get some sleep. Stay patient, and stay sober. The Colonel has a form of interrogation uniquely his own.”

As if I didn't know.

“This is critical stuff, Schroeder,” said Victor Jacobson, quietly. “We're counting on you.”

“Yes sir.”

I drove to the French Sector after a home cooked supper of Zwieback and Dinty Moore stew. The weather was raw, a tin sky venting gusts of jagged wind. I cruised past the chalet on
Ernststraße.
The Chinese lanterns burned brightly and the gravel driveway was jammed with cars. Excellent.

I hadn't arrived empty-handed this time. I had stopped to buy a bottle of champagne. A big one, a jeroboam they call it. A peace offering.

I parked down the block, in front of a car repair shop. A skinny brown mutt prowled a yard full of rusted heaps next door. He snarled and threw himself against the chain link as I passed by. I like dogs and don't like cats. Odd they held the opposite opinion of me.

I slung my gallon of bubbly over my shoulder and walked down the block and up the front walk of the chalet, the entryway for uninvited guests. I was well scrubbed and well dressed, the dog bites on my beezer scabbing over nicely. My champagne wasn't chilled but the Colonel would have one of those sterling silver ice buckets. The kind I'd seen at Mushie Wexler's Theatrical in Cleveland, where the waiter turned the bottle every two minutes, rattling ice and whetting appetites.

I stopped at the door to the steep staircase and pulled the knocker. I recalled Victor Jacobson's advice as I waited my turn to join the tumult. ‘Stay patient, stay sober'.

The Colonel probably didn't glean many deep dark secrets at these jamborees but there are other confidences that can be had in the proper setting. Not a human made who doesn't want to be considered in the know. In Berlin especially. Not sure how the
Colonel worked it but if it was me I'd bait the source with a false statement of fact and wait for a smug correction.

Now there was an idea. Why not use it on Colonel Norwood and his merry band of men? Might work, you never know.

Sedgwick answered the door wearing white tie and tails. I was crashing a hoity toite party this evening. I held up my carbonated peace offering. Sedgewick took it from me.

“I will ask the Colonel if he wishes to receive you,” he said and trooped up the stairs.

I waited a long minute. Then another, wondering what sort of assortment the Colonel had gathered this time. The Victrola was playing chamber music.

And who was I supposed to be? I had neglected that little detail. I had posed as a salesman on a previous visit. Nobody cared. But I was poised to ask impertinent questions this time around. Why? Who was I? A reporter for Stars'n'Stripes? A conversation stopper if ever there was.

Heckfire, I was who I was. Personal adjutant to General William Donovan, sent to Berlin on a fact-finding mission. The enemy was mobilizing. It was time to show the flag.

Past time. Hard to know without a wristwatch but it felt like ten minutes past time. Screw it. I climbed the long steep staircase and stood in the entryway. Sedgewick ignored me from the kitchen. Colonel Norwood was in the parlor, showing off Churchill's humidor. I cleared my throat, loudly.

“There you are dear boy. Come join the fray.”

Some fray. It looked like a congress of church deacons. The men wore rumpled old-fashioned suits and bowties and the two women guests were even drabbier. They didn't laugh when Norwood crooked me around the arm and introduced me as his illegitimate son.

He was working hard tonight, the Colonel, wearing a dress blue uniform he had outgrown, beaded sweat on his temples, his jolly booming voice laboring to find the right pitch. I shook hands with the guests and let Norwood do the talking.

The visitors were deposed dignitaries by my guess. Former legislators or cabinet ministers or somesuch. One white haired old gent wore a clerical collar. A somber bunch. My bottle of bubbly sat unopened and un-iced on the coffee table.