A Despicable Profession (6 page)

“You mean a foreign agent run by the Soviets.”

“No, he's a Soviet Intelligence Major.”

“How in the name of Christ you recruit him?”

“He came to us.”

Uh huh. Sure he did. Just wandered in off the street one day and leaned his elbows on the countertop. The OSS had had an entire section dedicated to that sort of thing. ‘Talent scouts' they called them.

“Who did he come to sir? Global Commerce? The CIG? Bill Donovan? You?”

“None of your business,” said the CO amiably.

“What sort of trade samples did he bring?”

Jacobson had settled into a more fluid rhythm at the wheel. We hadn't run over a pedestrian for blocks. I figured the CO was debating whether to tell me how he knew that the Soviet was the genuine article. He'd better. I wasn't working with this Leonid otherwise.

“He gave us half a dozen NKVD informers here in town. Including a clerk typist inside the Berlin Operating Base.”

“That's it? A few two bit freelancers?”

“Two of them were Soviet Intelligence Officers.”

“How do you know?”

“Leonid told us.”

“Well,” I said, “how convenient.”

“They both swallowed L pills when collared by MPs.”

I found it hard to argue with that. “And you think this Leonid guy can get us a line on Hilde?”

“He's working it. It's tricky. He's not need-to-know on Hilde's whereabouts.”

We stopped at a traffic circle where a German policeman was directing traffic. He waved us on with a curt Prussian nod.

“Maybe you think it's nuts to have a Soviet inside and maybe it is,” said Jacobson. “But we Yanks are lousy at counterintelligence, too gee whiz. The Brits are better, and the Russians, with their dark history, are better still.”

Yeah, I thought, maybe a little too good. I asked Jacobson what Leonid's NKVD cover was.

“He works for Global Commerce as a translator.”

“Doesn't the NKVD know that Global Commerce is headed by Bill Donovan?”

“Of course they do.”

“And they believe we would hire a Russian?”

The CO shrugged, his eyes on the road. “They know we're shorthanded. And they think we're stupid.”

“Let's hope they're wrong,” I said as we passed two skinny young boys attempting to pry a battery from a parked car. They had gotten it unhooked from the cables but were too weak lift it out. A short minute later Jacobson ticked his head to the left.

“Heidelberg Platz.”

A
Platz
is a square or plaza in my dictionary but this one was a shaggy green park studded with lean-tos and fire pits. Ragged kids played tag around a pale birch, which was the only surviving tree.

“Our CIG pals have commandeered Nazi villas out in Zehlendorf,” said Jacobson. “Poor thinking. I got you something low profile.”

Meaning it was a dump I supposed but that was jake. All I need is a roof and running water. Jacobson took a right turn onto a side street. A block of four story apartment buildings. He pulled to the curb.

“That's it, on the left.”

It wasn't The Pierre but my four-story building was brick and glad of it, given the stucco disaster next door. An Allied bomb had found the gangway between the two. It had knocked a few teeth loose in the side of the brick building, but had sheared the facing wall of the stucco building clean off.

The CO handed me a key for unit #12, said, “Don't answer the door,” gave me the time and place of our next meet and drove off.

I hauled my grip up three flights of the brick apartment building that teemed like an ant farm with toddlers and old folks and everything in between. I drew a lot of stares.

The fourth floor was better. No squalling brats, no sour cabbage smells. The penthouse. I keyed open #12 and understood why the CO told me not to answer the door. I found well-used pots and pans in the kitchen and an overlooked family photo above the stove. A young couple squinting at the camera, hands on the shoulders of their son and daughter. My living quarters had been requisitioned.

I settled in, hung my clothes in the empty closet, put my socks and underwear in the top dresser drawer and checked the larder for grub. Someone had provided a little taste of home, cans of Dinty Moore beef stew and Campbell's pea soup. There was even a can opener. And a box of kitchen matches on the stove. They had gas in this building? I fired a kitchen match and lit the range. Yes they did. Electricity too? I flipped a wall switch. Well, one out of two ain't bad.

I heated up a can of stew and searched the larder some more, came up with a pack of Zwieback. Would have to do, though a crusty heel of rye bread is the perfect complement to canned beef stew. Trust me, I'm an expert on canned grub.

I dug up a tin spoon and stirred the pot and remembered something I had said to the CO at the Bierstube. ‘What a sideways setup.' A group of Russian émigrés as field agents, an NKVD Major as counterintelligence officer and our CIG liaisons cozily clipping newspaper articles ‘out in Zehlendorf wherever that was. Looked like Jacobson and I were all alone
here in central Berlin, our Doctor Denton's unbuttoned and our fannies flapping in the breeze.

I crumbled the crackers into the pot and ate the stew standing up.

Gas. The building had gas. Meaning hot running water, if it had running water, meaning I could shave. I went to the dank bathroom and turned the spigot. Pipes groaned, coughing out brown water that got clear after a time. Clear but cold. I tried the tub. Same deal. Kitchen too. Puzzled, I opened a closet next to the stove and saw the tank of propane. The building didn't have gas, I did.

I gave the stew pot a quick wash, filled it with water, boiled it up and hauled it to the bathroom. I grabbed my blue blade and shave mug and made myself presentable for my noon meet. I washed up and gave myself the once over in the pitted mirror above the sink. Handsome as a hog, though I should've cleaned the pot better. My mush smelled of beef stew.

I no longer wear a wristwatch. My constant time checking got me into trouble in Cleveland, and helped The Schooler get dead. So I took the pledge. But this was no way to run a railroad. It felt well shy of noon but I changed my shirt, locked up, tripped down three flights and left by the back door.

The Berlin street grid was worse than Cleveland. Streets on the bias, dead end alleys,
Straßes
that bent one way and became
Allees
when they bent the other. I spent half an hour winding my way to
Konstanzerstraße,
a north-south thoroughfare. All of the building damage in this section of
Westen
Berlin had come from above. The facades of the buildings had been spared the Red Army tank rounds and machine gun fire visited on Ost Berlin.

The facades with their caved in roofs reminded me of something, reminded me of the expression of a baggy pants comic - goofy, grinning, wide eyed - in the split second after his partner smacks him on the head with a pig bladder.

I smiled at the image despite myself. Okay, I laughed. I laughed in the face of the tide of solemn silent pedestrians
moving along the sidewalk as if every step were an effort, their eyes turned inward, or outward in the thousand yard stare. Anywhere but here and now.

Yeah, I know. I am a completely degenerate human being. When did I say different?

----

A bell tower tolled noon shortly before I did a quick 360 and pushed open the stout door of the Café Gestern, tinkling its entry bell. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the gas lit dim. I saw why they called it Café Yesterday. Hummel figurines along a ledge, lace curtains with tablecloths to match, sprays of edelweiss in crystal cruets. And a Victrola playing a scratchy recording of, for some reason, French songbird Edith Piaf.

I sought the spy table, far wall, left hand corner. No CO. But a small, very well dressed man acknowledged me with a glance. Leonid, the Soviet Major? The CO said we had a noon meet with our CI. We, as in you and me. Where was Jacobson?

The dapper little man did not stand up when I approached. Or did he? Hard to tell, guy was a midget. And almost pretty. Not what you'd expect a Soviet Major to look like. He nodded toward the chair facing him. I knew instantly that he thought me a rube, knew instantly that we would be adversaries. So I sat with my back to the front door, confirming his opinion.

“Victor will be along shortly,” he said in lightly accented English.

“And you are...?”

“Leonid Vitinov.”

“Hal Schroeder, pleased to meetcha.”

I held out a paw. Leonid did likewise. I wiped my palm on my pants leg when we were done.

“I thought it best that we make each other's acquaintance, man to man,” said Leonid, permitting himself a taut smile at the American idiom.

I nodded and said what young men say to older men when they want to polish the apple. And have a couple hours to spare. “I'm here to learn.”

A waitress appeared, a stern
Grossmutter
with pulled back hair. She poured Leonid more black coffee, I ordered a beer.

“What is your experience?”

I told him I was good at hiding in hedgerows and counting truck convoys, not so up-to-speed on the polite skullduggery practiced at embassy cocktail parties. Leonid nodded his understanding, then spent time tutoring me in the fine art of espionage. Here are the highlights:

- The job description of a spy is contradictory - a person of impeccable integrity who is an accomplished liar.

- Do not use gadgets - dart guns, mini-cameras and such. If you are detained with them they cannot be explained.

- Never pry, let the conversation come to you. If a secret is revealed act dubious, and wait for more.

- Valuable information should be sliced very thin, and served sparingly.

I found this all very instructive. Especially the last part about info being sliced thin. Leonid didn't elaborate and I didn't ask but I took it to mean that...well, I'm not sure what I took it to mean but it sounded right.

His lecture concluded, Leonid leaned back and plucked a cigarette from a gold case. He offered me one. It was plump, oval. Turkish. Probably worth 100 marks on the black market. I declined. Leonid tapped his cigarette against the table, turned it over, tapped some more.

I had only one question. Why had Leonid Vitinov volunteered his services to the cause of freedom? I used his own words.

“So, Leonid, how did you become an accomplished liar?”

Leonid plucked a string of tobacco from his lip and examined it. I drained half my beer and suppressed a belch. No sense overdoing the rube routine. He kept one eye on me and one on
the front door as he spoke. They were dark and liquid, his eyes. Deeply set with long lashes. Women would go for this guy.

“I am an only child, from a privileged Moscow family. We were what they call the White Russians though we never used those words. We were Russian, that is all. Russian. My father worked in the Ministry of Trade and we revered the Tsar. When the Bolsheviks took power we tried to flee to Germany. We were captured in Minsk. My father was taken away, he is long dead. My mother and I were permitted to return to our home, which now housed three families. Three families which hated us. We had to pretend happiness and contentment at the triumph of the proletariat. I was able to do this,” said Leonid, his fat British cigarette sitting unsmoked between thumb and forefinger. “My mother was not.”

“What happened to her?”

“Beria took her. To the Lubyanka. That is why he trusts me. If he thinks I am a traitor my mother will be executed.”

“Then why are you? A traitor?”

Leonid's piercing stare softened, his eyes shone, his smooth voice roughened.

“Because she would want me to be.”

I'll tell you one thing for certain. They should never recruit undercover agents from the Midwest. We're too damn trusting. Leonid Vitinov was an NKVD officer who was either a double agent for Bill Donovan and Global Commerce or a re-doubled agent who was playing us like a violin and yet here I was practically blubbering into my hankie.

“That's an amazing story.”

Leonid looked up as the entry bell tinkled. Victor Jacobson entered the Café and didn't look at us. He ordered something at the bar and carried it to the rear of the building. Leonid lit his cigarette and paid the bill. He stood up.

Okay, he wasn't a midget. With stacked heels he might have cleared five foot. He patted my arm, pretending to make a congenial farewell as he instructed me to ask the barkeep for
directions to the men's room, then enter the left-facing door at the end of the hall. He left by the front entrance.

I asked the big jolly bartender for directions and wondered why. Was this standard procedure, or had der sheisse haben der fannen gehitten? I stopped at the left-facing door and did a quick over the shoulder. All clear. I ducked in.

Leonid entered the small windowless room a minute later. The stern Grossmutter came in to take our drink orders, leaving the door open behind her. She left the same way. I got up and closed the door. Christ. This was poor tradecraft even by my standards. The CO read my mind.

“We need to change our routine. You two get along okay?” he said. To me.

“Yes sir. We're thick as thieves.”

“That's good. Because, for the moment, we comprise the entire front line staff of Global Commerce, Berlin.”

“Is there an office someplace?”

“One desk, one phone. In the Charlottenburg district.”

And the CO said the CIG was undermanned. At least we had them beat in one department. We had a Russian-speaker on staff.

“What have you been able to determine?” said Jacobson to Leonid.

“I do not know Herr Hilde's location but he is held by the NKVD.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they have not asked if he is held by us.”

“Is he on his way to Moscow?”

“No. Our Berlin Bureau Chief is a rival to Beria. He would desire to hold Hilde close so long as possible. To strip him clean.”