A Despicable Profession Read online

  “Hello,” I called back, moving quickly to intercept my inquisitor. With any luck he would be a half-blind old priest.

  He wasn’t. The good father who stood at the top of the altar steps in cassock and surplice was one of those muscular see-right-through-you SOB’s we Youngstown ruffians loved and hated in equal measure. I stood at the communion rail and spoke in Deutsch.

  “Father, as you can hear, I am an American. I cannot tell you my mission but it is sanctioned at the highest levels of my government. A murder has taken place, by the enemies of freedom. I have reason to believe the victim was a parishioner of St. Bernhard’s. I would like to see that his wife receives some measure of compensation.”

  The priest surveyed my unkempt appearance and registered my lack of an overcoat in wet weather. I yanked my Tyrolean hat off my head.

  “Who was murdered?”

  I patted my pockets. Had I left Günter’s brass pendant in my topcoat? Now would not be an auspicious time to retrieve it.

  “He said his name was Günter. A middle aged man, wore a homburg, looked like he had been prosperous.”

  The priest considered for a moment then shook his head. I felt the chain of the brass pendant in my pocket. It was tangled up in my Walther. I had to remove my gun in order to extract the pendant.

  Nice, Schroeder. Classy. Drawing down on the parish priest at the altar. I stuffed my Walther back in my pocket and handed him the brass pendant.

  The priest recognized it, recognized the bright coppery spot that Günter had rubbed raw. He smiled at the recognition.

  “Henrik won this medal in the Great War, at Verdun.” He paused. “Do you wish to take confession?”

  “No Father.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Yes Father. I didn’t kill him.”

  The priest stepped down the altar steps, opened the gate in the communion rail and stuck his face in mine. He only came up to my chin but he had the neck and shoulders of Bronco Nagurski. “What is your name?” he said in English.

  “Harold Schroeder.”

  “I will take whatever alms you have to offer to the widow of Henrik Glunz, Mr. Schroeder. But she will refuse them.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She will assume that they are covered in blood.”

  “I did not kill Henrik, Father.”

  “So you said.”

  What miserable sub-basement of hell do you get sent to for cold-cocking a priest?

  It didn’t seem right. Me, putting myself at risk to do the right thing and getting the third degree for my trouble. An altar boy peeped out from the sacristy. I met his gaze, he darted off.

  A sudden wash of pink light indicated that an usher had opened the front doors for the six o’clock Mass. Time to do what well-heeled Americans do in postwar Germany. Make with the geet.

  “I don’t know who murdered Henrik, Father, even if I did I couldn’t say.”

  I removed a gold sovereign from my leather purse. And another. I chunked them in my hand, musically.

  “These are for Henrik’s widow.”

  The good father’s brow wrinkled ever so slightly. I dug out another. “And here’s one for your church.”

  “Tell me what happened to Henrik,’ he said. “I will convey to his wife only what she needs to know.”

  I ran down the grisly details. The priest took it more stoically than I gave it. It felt good to get the ugliness off my chest.

  “And where is Henrik’s body now?”

  He would ask that. “He’s in the confessional. In the priest’s booth.”

  The good father’s face cramp said he didn’t believe me. Then he did. Then he didn’t. The church was filling up with early morning worshippers. No time to check my outlandish claim. The priest gave me a damn-you-to-hell look and marched back to the sacristy.

  I showed myself out.

  Chapter Six

  I stepped down the stone stairs of St. Bernhard’s Church. The dawn was rain washed and almost warm. I set out to find the telegraph office, determined not to let the priest’s burn-in-hell-you-bastard look get to me. That was their stock in trade. Guilt. I told myself it wasn’t my fault that Henrik Glunz a.k.a. Günter had his guts yanked out. He came to me. I said it aloud.

  “He came to me.”

  It didn’t help.

  I passed an open window a short minute later, heard a radio playing Benny Goodman’s Sing Sing Sing, heard Gene Krupa pounding the tom toms.

  I walked on, new spring in my step. The hell with guilt. We had something better to offer. Krauts had been marching in cut-time lockstep for far too long. We had something better to offer. A little syncopation, a different meter. A taste of freedom.

  -----

  The telegraph office had racks of newspapers and magazines in the front, the dit-dah counter in back. Plus an old woman in a black shawl hawking homemade Kuchen. I bought a piece and ate it in two bites.

  Time to deliver the bad news. I had the CO’s designated address, had the cipher code inside my head. I took a blank telegram and set to work at a wobbly stand-up writing table.

  And stopped. I was using a cipher based on the transposition of letters, A means K and so on. Dumb. I wasn’t a lone wolf lugging a J-E transmitter around the hinterlands any longer. An operator would transmit this message. The NKVD was already in Karlsruhe. Telegraph operators would be high on their recruit list. I couldn’t very well hand the operator a coded telegram.

  Time to make shit up. I crumpled up my telegram and grabbed a blank. I thought and pondered, pondered and thought. I put pencil to paper.

  Auntie Anne not here Stop Neighbors say she went away Stop Left no forwarding address

  No. Not clear. It could mean Herr Hilde just disappeared down the Rat Line. How to say it without saying it? I scratched out the last line and added a new one.

  Send mail to home address

  Better. ‘Home’ meant ‘home base’ which meant Berlin which meant that Herr Hilde was headed back up the Rat Line which he would only do if he were caught and captured by the NKVD. The CO would figure it out.

  But I didn’t have a current code name and no self-respecting agent signs his own. I knew the CO enjoyed the classics. I would sign myself as a famous character in literature. Just as soon as I thought of one.

  I wrote Best regards, Ahab and handed my telegram across the counter to a matronly woman whose left arm ended at her elbow. It felt strange to let someone else pound the brass. On the pretext of writing another telegram I hung around and listened to the transmission. It was slow, but accurate. Morse code, the universal language. Of the Roman alphabet anyway. What did the Russians use?

  I turned to go. I hadn’t checked the Reply Requested box because I had no intention of waiting for instructions. I knew what I had to do. Get my heine back to Berlin and get about finding Klaus Hilde before the NKVD shipped him off to Moscow. If they hadn’t already done so.

  I noticed a crudely printed newspaper on top of the rack of periodicals. The Sued Kurrier, a French propaganda rag by the headline: de Gaulle Sprache! My eyes registered the date, printed in bold above the headline.

  May 8, 1946.

  I scanned the front page for a story, looked out the window for a parade.

  Could be there were Allied motorcades down the Unter den Linden and speeches under the Brandenburg Gate. But here in Karlsruhe the first anniversary of VE Day was a big dud.

  Chapter Seven

  Not all churches had been as fortunate as St. Bernhard’s. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church stood just outside the Berlin train station. A black stone medieval structure, pink dawn peeping through its shattered stained glass, its bell tower burnt low like a guttered candle. I craned my neck to take it in. It got to me.

  We had previously agreed to meet at the Potsdam Conference Memorial upon my return, Victor Jacobson and me. On Charlottenburger Chausse, the broad boulevard that bisected the Tiergarten. I hadn’t indicated my arrival time on the telegram of course but I wagered that t
he CO could read a train schedule.

  Die Trummerfrauen were already at work. Rubble women, hauling debris with wheelbarrows and bucket brigades, kerchiefs in place against the brick dust. I passed a young woman pushing a baby carriage. A pleasant sight, new life amid the ruins.

  I stopped, set down my suitcase and doffed my Tyrolean hat. The woman was perspiring for some reason. I took a peek in her pram with a mind to cluck and coo. The baby carriage was filled with broken bricks.

  I headed west toward the boulevard.

  Potsdam is a suburb southwest of Berlin. The Potsdam Conference was held there in July of ’45. It was the first Big Three post-war powwow. Why the Potsdam Memorial wasn’t located in Potsdam I couldn’t tell you but everyone stateside had seen it as a backdrop for their son’s or husband’s or brother’s arms-around-their-dogface-buddies snapshots. It was impressive in real life. Large color portraits of Truman, Stalin and Churchill hung upon three marble pillars.

  I got closer, read the names of the war dead inscribed on brass plaques above the portraits. I read them all.

  Funny joke on Tony, Pete and Hymie, getting their pictures took in front of a monument to Allied Co-operation in the Great Victory Against Fascism. All the names of the war dead were Russian.

  The Soviets took Berlin six weeks ahead of the U.S., though both armies had been poised to strike at the German capital in April of ’45. Ike decided that the casualty estimates were not worth the capture of a mere ‘prestige objective.’ This made General Patton very unhappy. Churchill too. In any event it was plain that the Soviet Union had taken those six weeks to put their stamp on things.

  I looked around. My Case Officer wasn’t here. I tried acting like a spy for a change, walking down a side street, ducking down an alley, hiding behind an ash can and looking to see who followed. No one ‘cept an alley cat, mewling for a handout.

  I humped my beat-up suitcase back to the Memorial and sat on it and 360’d the plaza. No CO, no suspicious characters. My eyelids grew heavy. I stood up and stretched, did neck rolls and arms extensions. Then I sat down and fell asleep.

  I woke up from a dark dream to see a tall figure towering over me, his hands vice gripping my right wrist, saying, “It’s me, Schroeder, it’s me!”

  I released the grip on the Walther in my pants pocket and shook myself awake. I gave the CO a full report of my pursuit of Klaus Hilde and the grisly death of Henrik Glunz.

  Jacobson listened without comment. When I was done he asked a question.

  “Where did you get that ridiculous hat?”

  We walked south down the boulevard. It was dotted with street vendors. Women selling flowers, shoe shine boys, a man and wife on accordion and violin, and one grizzled old coot renting the use of his bathroom scale. The price was one American cigarette. I weighed in at 84 kilos, fighting trim. I think.

  Victor Jacobson suffered this foolishness patiently, then detoured us through the treeless park.

  “I’m not surprised at your report. We figured the Blue Caps had Hilde.”

  “Blue Caps?”

  “People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs. The NKVD.

  “Why do they call them Blue Caps?”

  “Our only reliable sources are White Russian émigrés, with the occasional Ukrainian. Passionately anti-Communist, some worked with the Abwehr during the last year of the war. In hopes of keeping the Soviets out of Germany.”

  “Meaning they used to work with Klaus Hilde.”

  “Yes indeed,” said Jacobson grimly. “Two of our White Russians have turned up in the last twelve hours. Killed in the most gruesome ways imaginable.”

  The CO stopped to observe a wild hare in a box trap. He studied the frantic animal for a long moment, as if it were a warning. Or a metaphor. We ankled on.

  “There will be more killing. Our sources will scatter or go silent. And we’ll be out of business. The émigrés are our eyes and ears out there,” said Jacobson, gesturing toward the vast gray ruined city. “Without them we’re the Helen Keller of spy agencies.”

  I laughed. Then repeated my stupid question. “Why do they call them Blue Caps?”

  “Because that was part of their uniform. In the ‘30s.”

  “Blue caps?”

  “Yes, Schroeder. Blue caps.”

  Like I said it was a stupid question. We walked on. A determined young woman, skinny as a matchstick, attacked a tree stump with a hatchet, harvesting chips of bark for kindling. Or soup.

  “So you want me to track down Herr Hilde before the Blue Caps put the pipe to all our White Russians.”

  “Eventually,” said the CO.

  “I thought this was a crisis?”

  “It is.”

  “Then why wait?”

  “Because we have nothing to go on. Not yet. And you need a place to park that suitcase.”

  With that Victor Jacobson picked up the pace. Our meanderings had a destination. A sedan parked by a bridge that spanned the Spree. The car was sharp two tone job in dark green and light gray with a side-mounted spare. A Horch V-8 Cabriolet, I was quickly informed. Probably cost the old man ten cartons.

  We got in. Jacobson was a lousy driver for a big deal intelligence officer. Hell, he was a lousy driver for a blind cripple. We clipped a couple curbs and just missed an old woman caning herself across the street. We drove a long time, detouring around steam shovels and narrow gauge train tracks laid down on top of the pavement, hopper cars filled with building remains hitched to little locomotives like you’d see at a kiddie park.

  The CO turned the wrong way down a one way street, hitched a left down an alley, a quick right, then a left on Hildegardstraße. No one cared.

  I spoke up. “You said ‘not yet.’ What’s in the works?”

  We do have one trick up our sleeve.” Jacobson looked at me as he drove. I braced myself for a collision. “Our counterintelligence officer, Leonid Vitinov.”

  A CI officer. I was impressed. I knew enough about the game to recognize the importance of defensive intelligence in a nest of vipers like Berlin. The CI was in charge of security and spycatching. The in-house paranoid.

  “Where’d you find him?”

  “He’s a Soviet Intelligence Officer.”

  “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.

  Chapter Eight

  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.