A Despicable Profession Read online

  A Despicable Profession

  Book Two of the

  American Spy Trilogy

  by

  John Knoerle

  This is a work of fiction.

  Published By Blue Steel Press

  Chicago, IL

  [email protected]

  www.johnknoerle.com

  First edition – first printing 2010

  Copyright ©2010 by John Knoerle.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art and design by Katherine Bennett.

  ISBN 978-0-9820903-0-5

  Library of Congress 2010908640

  Printed in the United States.

  Also by John Knoerle:

  “A Pure Double Cross,

  Book One of the American Spy Trilogy”

  “Crystal Meth Cowboys”

  “The Violin Player”

  The author would like to thank the following for their help and support:

  Duff Kennedy

  Professor Richard Münchmeier

  Jane Knoerle

  Mark A. Ward

  Richard Procter

  Jeanne Jenkins

  Waldemar and Gabriele Unkel

  Joe and Anne Schram

  Wolfgang and Ulrike Wagner

  and Mr. Helmut Lang

  for JJ

  “You talk of honor, but you are far away.”

  -- Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, 1942

  I’m back on my well-polished barstool at The Harbor Inn. It’s July, 1946.

  I’ve been dubbed the ‘Little Deutsch Boy’ by the Cleveland Press. Is that dumb or what? So called because I kept my finger in the dike against the rising tide of Soviet Communism. The rising tide hasn’t receded. The Russians control everything east of “Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic” as Churchill said earlier this year.

  But they haven’t crossed the Elbe.

  The local newshounds say I deserve much of the credit for that but I know different. I never met the man who was primarily responsible for stemming the tide and keeping Western Europe safe for democracy. I couldn’t tell you his name to this day.

  They say that history is written by great men but that’s not strictly true in my opinion. Sometimes a little man, in the wrong place at the right time, can make all the difference.

  Chapter One

  Being a hero is a rotten job. Yeah you get a lot of free drinks and claps on the back but once John Q. Public has paid and clapped he just sits there and looks at you. And looks some more, waiting for you to rescue a kitten from a tree or bend I-beams into pretzels.

  I’m not looking for a big payday any longer. Never was, though I didn’t know it at the time. What I was really after was some recognition for what I’d done. Got that now, in a backass way. Got my picture in the paper for shooting a bank robber, a bank robber in a bank robbery I willingly took part in. I felt lousy about that.

  The paper also mentioned my behind-the-lines work for the OSS during the war. I felt good about that, till those stares started boring in.

  Americans love their heroes, in more ways than one. The only thing they love more than seeing a hero ascend to greatness is to watch him take a header off the pedestal. I didn’t intend to give them that satisfaction. And I wanted to atone for my sins. How I intended to do that by drinking beer with my pal Wally at The Harbor Inn I couldn’t tell you.

  Wally’s the mail boy at FBIHQ and he keeps me up on all the scuttlebutt since the feebs and I parted company three months ago. He was making chin music about nothing and everything one Thursday in May when I noticed the flat beer. Guy next to me hadn’t touched it, which made me nervous. He was a burly man with a shiny dome, wearing a brown suit and a blue tie. Could be one of the dear departed Schooler’s armbreakers or one of Jimmy Street’s playpals likewise, but I didn’t think so. No self-respecting mob goon wears a brown suit.

  I grabbed a shaker. “Throw some salt in there, it’ll kick the head up. Nothing worse than a flat beer.”

  The man took the salt shaker with his gun hand, the hand his beer stein handle was turned toward. That was good.

  “I’m Hal, this is Wally. What’s your name?”

  “Herbert.”

  This set Wally to giggling for some reason. “D’you ever hear that radio piece? When the announcer says the President of the United States?”

  Herbert said he had not.

  “He says - the announcer - he says, in his big radio voice, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Hoobert Heever.’”

  Wally collapsed into a puddle of beery mirth. I joined him. We were three sheets to the wind and if old Herbie wanted to talk to me, as I suspected, he would just have to wait till we came to our senses.

  It took awhile. Herbert salted his beer and didn’t drink it. He waited until Wally peglegged off to the john to say his piece, quick and quiet like.

  “Mr. Schroeder I work for Hendricks and Lee Construction. We’re an international concern based in New York City.”

  “What brings you to Cleveland?”

  “You do.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well, I’m not much good with a hammer.”

  Herbert’s smile was brief. He wanted to get this said. And I wanted to hear it. It wasn’t every day that portly gentlemen from New York came calling.

  “Our company has major construction projects underway throughout most of the cities of Europe, with one exception. Berlin.”

  “And Berlin, I’m guessing, is chock full of major construction opportunities.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Again with the sir. I’m 25 years old fer Chrissakes! Wally stumped out of the whizzatorium about then. He’s got a short leg from polio. Herbert picked up the pace.

  “You served in Germany, you speak Deutsch. You’re a hero, people know your name...”

  “Not in Berlin they don’t.”

  “They will,” said Herbert. He said it with a cool certainty.

  Wally heaved himself onto his barstool with a sigh and said, as always, “You don’t buy beer, you rent it.” Then he laughed. As always.

  “So you want a front man for your construction company. A glad-hander to open some doors.”

  Herbert winced at my crudity, but nodded.

  “Why so hush-hush?”

  Herbert leaned in. “We face a great deal of competition.”

  Wally and I looked right. We looked left. We saw only late afternoon sad sacks shelling peanuts and sounding out words in the early edition of the Press. Wally’s lower lip quivered. He was ready to bust a gut provided I provided a punch line.

  I declined to do so. I was getting barstool calluses on my keester. Not to mention my bank balance was lower than a snake in snowshoes. Herbert’s proposal sounded pretty ridiculous but how does that old joke go? An out-of-work jester is nobody’s fool.

  I needed to be somebody’s fool. I said I was interested. Herbert looked pleased, Wally did not.

  “And now a bottoms up toast to seal the deal.” Herbert stared forlornly at his salty beer. Sweet Rita served up two more Carlings. We poured. Wally raised his brimming stein.

  “A faithful friend is the medicine of life.”

  “Where’d you get that from?”

  “It’s in the Bible, dumbass.”

  We clanked and chugged. Herbert raised his mug but did not partake. I shook Wally’s hand and promised to drop a postcard.

  Herbert poured me into a taxi. I told the hackie to drive up the block to Mrs. Brennan’s rooming house and sobered up quick. I was about to travel to New York with a guy I’d known for ten minutes. “You got a business card Herbert?”

  Herbert did, with raised gold lettering. Herbert W. Merckle, Vice-Pr
esident of Sales, Hendricks and Lee Construction, New York, NY.

  “What are some of your construction projects in Europe?”

  He rattled off a few. They sounded plausible.

  “How did you hear about me?” I knew I hadn’t made the New York papers. I’d checked at the library.

  “We subscribe to a news clipping service.”

  “Who am I supposed to meet with in New York?”

  “The President of the company and the Executive VP of sales.”

  Guy had answer for everything but I was still on edge. What kind of salesman doesn’t like beer?

  “You didn’t join us in our toast Herbert.”

  Herbert patted his ample gut. “Ulcers.” Yeah, beer and ulcers, the salesman’s friends.

  Mrs. Brennan would be sad to see me go, ditto assorted bartenders in the greater metropolitan area. And Jeannie, I supposed, though I hadn’t seen her since she whelped her pup. A baby girl, Margaret Ann Pappas. She called to tell me. Mother and daughter were doing fine. I asked her how it felt to be a mom.

  Overwhelming was her reply. I asked if there was anything she needed. She paused a long time before she said a sad, crisp no. I wished her all the best and hung up the phone. It was time for Hal Schroeder to move on.

  At the rooming house I dumped the contents of my dresser into my beat up suitcase. I took my Walther P-38 and my folding knife from the nightstand, grabbed my penlight and my lock picks, threw ‘em in my dop kit and locked up my suitcase. I shrugged into my topcoat and clumped back down the stairs to Mrs. Brennan’s kitchen.

  She wasn’t around. I left her a month’s rent and a note that said Gone fishin.’ I was now, officially, flat broke.

  Herbert was waiting in the cab. I tossed my grip into the back seat between us and closed the door. We drove down Winslow at sunset on the prettiest day I had ever seen in Cleveland, Ohio. Which is to say it was above forty and not raining. We turned south on West 25th and kept going.

  “Cabbing it to New York are we?”

  Herbert looked a question at me. I hooked my thumb at the Detroit-Superior Bridge on our left. “The train station’s thataway.”

  Mr. Merckle folded his hands atop his belly. “We’re headed to Municipal Airport.”

  I nodded as if I did this every day. Truth was I had never been to New York City. And I’d never flown on a commercial airliner. I looked forward to it. In wartime they expected you to yell Geronimo and jump out the joe hole halfway through the flight. This figured to be a big improvement.

  ----

  Commercial airliners have seats, that’s the first thing you notice. Upholstered seats with armrests and little trays that fold down. The second thing you notice are comely young women in uniforms with cute hats pinned to their perfumed hair. Actually they’re the first thing you notice. I would have stood in line to hit the silk over hostile territory if the USAF had provided such pleasant flight companions. Stewardesses they call them. When a sweet-smelling blond leaned down to take my drink order I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

  Almost came true a moment later when the DC-3 shuddered through some rough air. The cabin lights went dark, people gasped and shuddered. Then the lights winked on as the big bird shrugged its shoulders and winged east at two hundred miles per. The stewardess - Cindy by her name tag - handed me my rye rocks and smiled most fetchingly. She hadn’t spilled a drop.

  ----

  Manhattan sneered at me as I sat in the backseat of a Yellow cab. Hey there, hayseed, think you’ve seen a big city? Think the Terminal Tower is a tall building, do ya?

  I stuck my head out the window when we passed the Empire State Building on 5th Avenue.

  “Fourteen months,” said Herbert Merckle, “they put up that building up in fourteen months.”

  I didn’t argue with him, though it hardly seemed possible. I liked the idea of joining the construction biz. Show me another trade where you can put your head down, work hard for fourteen months, step back, crane your neck and say Goddamn. As an OSS operative behind German lines I had conducted surveillance and co-ordinated bomb runs. I did it, it worked, we won. But it might be nice to return as a builder not a blower-up.

  The hackie pulled to a stop. A doorman wearing more gold braid than an Italian general opened the door and greeted Herbert by name. He collected my suitcase and escorted us inside the hotel. The Pierre read gilt letters carved in stone.

  It was a swanky joint. Beyond swanky. The lobby had white marble columns and white marble floors and black vases with sprays of flowers in them and was the quietest place you’d ever seen. Or heard. It looked like the room you waited in just before you met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

  Herbert waved to the reception clerk and walked directly to the bank of elevators. No check in, Herbert already had a room. Good for him but I wasn’t keen on spending the night in a twin bed listening to him snore. I was about to say so when Herbert said, “We have a three bedroom suite with a dining room. Breakfast’s at nine.”

  Herbie didn’t say anything more after that. He let The Pierre do the talking for him.

  ----

  I woke up to sunshine through the curtains. Bright sunshine given the drawn curtains of damask or muslin or fine linen hand stitched by blind nuns in a Belgian cloister. I cleaned up quick and reported to the dining room.

  It had three windows. One looked north up 5th Avenue, the other two overlooked Central Park. An elderly Negro in a starched white tunic refilled my coffee cup for the second time and asked again if I wouldn’t like some nice fresh strawberries with cream. I said a polite no thanks and checked his wrist. He didn’t wear a wristwatch either.

  The three-bedroom suite had a crystal chandelier, antiques older than Abraham and overstuffed chairs that made you dozy just to look at them. What it didn’t have was a damn clock. It had to be well past nine a.m.

  I was about to ask the old gent if he carried a pocket watch when the front door opened and a gaggle of Ivy Leaguers spilled in. I don’t know how I knew they were Ivy Leaguers exactly, their couldn’t-care-less attire maybe. Oxford cloth shirts pocked with cigarette burns, navy blazers shiny with age, club ties loosely cinched.

  They introduced themselves and shook my hand. But Herbert W. Merckle was not among them when we sat down to breakfast. I got those strawberries and cream, a glass of grapefruit juice and a soft-boiled egg. Slim pickin’s for a growing boy.

  We seemed to be waiting for someone. Presumably the President of Hendricks and Lee Construction.

  A skinny guy in tortoise shell glasses held a leather-bound legal pad upright as he read some notes. The cover was embossed in gold letters. Global Commerce Ltd. The room got quiet when I asked him what Global Commerce was.

  “Global Commerce?”

  “Yes. Global Commerce.”

  “Well, it’s...in point of fact I am not the person to answer that question.”

  Hmm. The Office of Strategic Services had Ivy League bloodlines. Director William Donovan and right hand man Allen Dulles were Wall Street attorneys who staffed OSS headquarters with members of their exclusive law firms. We low-level slugs called them yachtsmen. They were young men very much like the one’s arrayed around this dining room table, sucking down coffee and soft-boiled eggs.

  I hadn’t been whisked across the country and installed in this high-priced mausoleum because of my international renown. I was a hick from the sticks to these guys. A hick from the sticks who wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty.

  So. Who were we waiting for?

  Could’ve knocked me over with a feather when he strode in a minute later, Herbert trailing along behind. I shot to my feet, drawing a jaunty smile from the blue-eyed ruddy-faced man with a shock of white hair. The legendary commander of “The Fighting 69th” in WWI and the Office of Strategic Services in WWII. Major General Wild Bill Donovan himself.

  He crossed to my side of the table, shook my hand and said my name like he knew me. Then he worked the table, mauling the Ivy Leaguers with hi
s big mitts, pounding their backs as Herbert gave me a sheepish look that was half apology, half boast. By the time my rear end found my chair I was steamed.

  The OSS had been disbanded right after the war despite Wild Bill’s efforts to make it a permanent agency. President Truman thought that spying was un-American and Congress went along.

  Dumb. Our espionage shortened the war and saved the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers. Our counter-espionage prevented the D-day invasion from becoming the bloodiest rout in military history. But the war was over. I had done my duty to God and country. It was somebody else’s turn.

  Bill Donovan walked to the head of the table and leaned his weight on his hands. “Mr. Schroeder, I understand you want to know about Global Commerce Limited.” Wild Bill didn’t wait for my reply. “We are an international trading company dealing in commodities - gums, spices, oils and such. Hendricks and Lee is one of our subsidiaries.”

  I just looked at him. Was I supposed to believe this? Bill Donovan, who made a handsome living as a Wall Street lawyer in between shaping world events, would waste his time trading gums and spices?

  I guess I was. He hadn’t winked or grinned when he said it. He did have a twinkle in his eye but he’s Irish, he can’t help it.

  “Permission to speak freely sir.”

  “Granted,” said Donovan with a wave.

  Coffee cups returned to saucers, mouthfuls of strawberries were quickly swallowed, all eyes were mine. How the hell to say this? Hurry up numbskull, the Great Man is waiting.

  “Sir, the OSS taught me one ironclad rule. A spy’s first allegiance is not to career, colleagues, not even country. A spy’s first allegiance is to the truth.”

  Bill Donovan nodded approvingly. I said the truth as I saw it.

  “Sir, my OSS training and experience leads me to suspect that Global Commerce is a commercial front for espionage.”

  “Well, of course it is!” said Wild Bill, tripping an eruption of snooty merriment around the table.