Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 2. Whole No. 321, August 1970

Milk Run by Robert Edward Eckels[4]

Averill, the CIA chief for southern Germany, pooh-poohed the risk; the assignment was only a milk run — all the retiring agent had to do, on his way home to the United States, was pick up a small package in Munich, catch a plane, and deliver the package 24 hours later in New York. Simple. No risk. A milk run. But, ah, “there is many a slip ’twixt the lip and the cup.”

Another of Robert Edward Eckels’ low-keyed, thoroughly convincing spy stories...

I glanced into the rearview mirror again. The headlights were still there. They’d been there for the last half hour, maybe longer. And it was past time for me to find out why. Gradually I eased up on the gas pedal. The lights in the mirror grew larger, then diminished as the car dropped back to its original distance behind me.

No question about it now — somebody was following me. And was either being very stupid or didn’t care if I knew. Probably the latter, because with only the long stretch of autobahn ahead of me there was very little I could do about it.

I cursed silently. That’s supposed to help, but of course it didn’t. Mainly, I supposed, because I had no one to blame but myself. I’d let Averill talk me into this assignment against my better judgment.

“No,” I had said when he’d broached it, “I’ve been working this area too long. Too many people know my face.” Averill was the CIA controller for southern Germany and had been my boss for five years. Five years is a long time to maintain a cover.

“But,” Averill had protested, “this is no more than a milk run. You pick up a small package in Munich, catch a plane, and deliver the package twenty-four hours later in New York. Simplicity itself.” Averill didn’t mention what the package was and I didn’t ask. In this business, lack of curiosity is a positive virtue.

“And,” he had added slyly, “you’re planning to go back to the. States anyway. Here’s your chance to let Uncle Sam pick up the tab”…

So now I found myself rolling down the night-darkened autobahn with a confident tail wagging behind me. Too confident. I’d remembered something that my tail might not have taken into account.

I speeded up. It caught my tail by surprise and his lights dropped back momentarily. Then he was back to his accustomed distance, even decreasing it slightly once or twice to let me know he could do it whenever he wanted to.

That didn’t bother me at all. I’d never thought I had a chance of outracing him in the bug that Averill had provided for me. In fact, it was even questionable whether its motor could stand the pace I was now setting much longer. But if I’d decided right it wouldn’t have to.

Luck was with me because there just ahead was what I’d remembered — a convoy of 7th U.S. Army jeeps and trucks filling the right-hand lane as far as the eye could see. I swung out into the left lane and began to pass them.

Apparently they’d been on the march for some time and road discipline had begun to slip. The rear trucks in particular were dropping farther and farther back, but throughout the length of the convoy the gaps between the trucks were far too wide. I waited until I was about halfway up the line, then cut sharply in between two trucks.

The effect was immediate. The truck behind me pulled up on my tail and began blinking its lights to tell me to get the hell out. I paid no attention and soon the driver gave up. But the one break in the convoy had alarmed the other drivers and they promptly closed up.

That left my tail out in the cold — and in something of a bind. He could either drop to the end of the column or hang on in the left lane and keep an eye on me. He chose the latter. And that was a mistake — although as with most mistakes he didn’t realize it until it was too late.

I stayed with the convoy until we rolled into Munich. Then I swung smoothly off to the right at the first promising side street, leaving my tail blocked by the continuing line of trucks.

I wondered if he swore silently to himself. And if it helped him any.

The plan called for me to leave the car at the airport where Averill would arrange for someone to pick it up. But the car was too dangerous for me to keep now. I parked it where it wouldn’t attract any attention for several days, walked to where I could catch a cab to the Bahnhof, then walked an additional three blocks to a not quite respectable commercial hotel where they wouldn’t wonder that my only luggage was a small black attaché case. And settled down for a good night’s sleep, confident that no one would track me down.

Of course, someone did.

He stood beside my breakfast table, beaming down at me.

“Ah,” he said, “it is you. Last night when I see you check in I think, perhaps. But then—” he cocked his head to one side and frowned to dramatize his bafflement — “the name on the registration card is not the one I remember from Zurich. But now,” he went on, his expansive smile back in place, “I see it is the same man behind the name.”

“Hello, Dietrich,” I said. “Or has your name changed since Zurich too?”

He sat down quickly and leaned forward on the table, spreading his hands. He was a round man with a round body and a round face on which a perpetual film of perspiration glistened. “No,” he said, “I am still Dietrich. It is my name and everyone knows who and what Dietrich is.”

And that was the best reason I could think of for his changing his name. I’d known him for some time but had only dealt with him once. Several years before I’d bought some information from him and then had got out of Switzerland a bare jump ahead of the police he’d sold me out to. To give Dietrich his due, there was nothing personal about it; it was just a matter of business to him. All the same I trusted him about as much as I would an electric eel.

“How’d you happen to find me, Dietrich?” I said.

“By chance,” he said, slapping the table. “By chance. I had business here in the hotel last night. And there you were, checking in at the desk.”

“And that’s all there was to it?” I said. “Nothing more than chance?”

“Of course not. What else could there be?”

“Someone tried to follow me into town last night. It could have been you.”

“No,” Dietrich protested, “not me.” The denial was automatic, but I believed it. Because for just a second his eyes had been unguarded, and I could almost see his busy mind at work speculating on how this information could prove useful to him.

I picked up half a roll and began to butter it “Well,” I said, “whoever it was, he was wasting his time. I’m quitting the business. Going home.”

“Good,” Dietrich said, slapping the table again. “Good for you. I too have quit the business. I have my own now — here in Muenchen.” For proof he fished a grubby business card out of his wallet and offered it to me.

I shrugged, popped a piece of roll into my mouth and took the card. It identified Dietrich as a Private Inquiry Agent and gave an address and phone number.

“Perhaps,” Dietrich said, “you can throw a little something my way sometime.” He smiled. “In this world friends should help one another.”

“Sure,” I said. I slipped the card into my breast pocket. I figured I would find it there the next time I sent the suit to the cleaners and throw it away.

Dietrich glanced ostentatiously at his watch. “I must go,” he said. He stood up and shook my hand formally in the German manner. “Vieles Glueck,” he said.

I wished him the same good luck and watched his broad back depart. Then I went back to my breakfast.

Of course, when I left the hotel he tried to follow me. I wandered apparently aimlessly through the business district and lost him.

There is something about camera shops that fascinates spies. Perhaps it’s a case of life imitating art since all spy movies seem to have mysterious camera shops in them. Be that as it may, my contact was in a camera store on a side street not far from the Frauenkirche.

It was a small place sandwiched in between two larger buildings and identifiable only by the clutter of Agfa and Kodak displays in the windows flanking the door.

A bell set above the door tinkled as I entered. There was no one about, so I stepped up to the counter and waited. When I decided I had waited long enough, I coughed twice, waited again, then called out into the silence, “Anybody here?”

No answer. No scurrying of feet as the shopkeeper rushed in to greet a customer. No movement of the curtain screening off the doorway behind the counter.

I didn’t like it. The shopkeeper had been alerted to my coming. He would have made the contact — unless something prevented it. And the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach said that the something that prevented it wouldn’t be pleasant.

I moved around the counter intending to pull aside the curtain — and never completed the movement.

There, crumpled on the floor, was the old man who had been my contact. Someone using a small-caliber gun had shot him neatly through the forehead.

Reflexively, my eyes flicked around the room. There was no sign of its having been ransacked. Which said it had been a professional job. The package — and I had to assume the killing was tied in with the package somehow — could be disguised as anything — microdots are versatile. And no professional would waste time looking for something he wouldn’t recognize even when it lay right in front of him.

And it had lain right in front of him — or almost. A cardboard box stuffed with envelopes containing processed film sat on a shelf on the wall behind the counter. The package was an envelope made out in the name of Erich Hofstadter.

“You’ve been seeing too many bad movies,” I had told Averill when he had explained what I was to ask for. Now, considering the body at my feet, I wished I’d seen a few of those movies myself.

After a quick glance at the door and windows I stepped over the old man’s body and riffled through the envelopes. The one I sought was where it should have been — under the H’s. I pulled it out and gazed at it thoughtfully.

Question: Was this really the package I’d come for or had the old man talked before he died, leaving me to find only a red herring left by his killer?

Answer: there was no way I could tell. I would just have to proceed on the assumption the package was the right one.

I tossed the envelope in my attaché case, closed the case, and was just snapping the metal catches when the tinkling bell over the door brought my head around in what I knew could only be interpreted as a guilty start.

A small, slightly dowdy woman was standing in the doorway and staring at me with wide timorous eyes. She looked half ready to turn and run screaming from the shop. And that was the last thing I wanted to happen.

I cleared my throat. “Bitte?” I said. Please — the standard greeting of a German shopkeeper to a customer. Five years of practise had smoothed most of the rough edges off my German accent, so I might just get away with it — provided she wasn’t the old man’s wife or daughter. Or an agent. Or someone who wanted a long technical discussion on cameras and photography.

“Isn’t Herr Gregorius here?” the woman said. The question was a cross between an accusation and a bleat.

I fought the impulse to look down at the body. “No,” I said. “He had to go out. Perhaps I can help you though.”

“Perhaps,” she said. Her voice was still tentative, uncertain, but the suspicion had gone from it. “Herr Gregorius thought my pictures might be ready today.”

“Pictures?” I said blankly. I followed her gaze to the cardboard box of envelopes and caught on. “Ah, yes,” I said. “What is the name, please?”

“Kallmann.”

I riffled through the envelopes swiftly, then shook my head. “Sorry. Perhaps tomorrow.”

The woman smiled sadly, like someone used to being disappointed, and left without another word. I gave her three minutes to get clear before beating it out of there myself.

Point One in favor of my having the right package: I was followed when I left the shop — and not by Dietrich. This one was a tall man in a gray suit. I let him tail me for several blocks, then shook him by the simple expedient of hopping on a street car just as the car began to pick up speed. Thirty feet behind me, the man in the gray suit didn’t have a chance of catching up and didn’t even try.

I had been shaking tails with such ease these last few days that it never occurred to me that this time it had been too easy.

I checked in at the airline ticket counter a half hour before flight time. They like you to be there even earlier for international flights. But for reasons of my own I didn’t want to be loitering around the airport for any appreciable length of time. And if the customs people had to rush me through — well, that wouldn’t displease me either. As it turned out, though, I had plenty of time.

The clerk behind the counter stamped my ticket and slipped it into an airline envelope. He glanced casually at my attaché case. “Just the one bag?”

I nodded. “I’ll carry it on,” I said.

“Very well,” the clerk said and handed back my ticket, “There will be a slight delay in boarding,” he went on. “Time and gate will be announced later.” He moved away before I had a chance to ask the reason.

“A slight mechanical difficulty,” a voice to my left said pleasantly. I turned toward it. A tall heavy-set man with a cherubic face under a Prussian haircut was smiling at me. His cheekbones were so high that his eyes seemed almost Oriental. He looked to be about 50, but could have been younger or older.

He went on, “The radio was damaged and needs to be replaced, I understand. Of course, the airline cannot tell you that. Any hint that their machines are less than perfect might worry you. So they act mysterious and leave you prey to all sorts of imagined fears.” He drew himself erect, inclined his head smartly forward, and said formally, “Otto Heinsdorf at your service.” He smiled again. “Forgive me for speaking so abruptly, but I noticed your concerned look.”

I muttered something that was meant to pass as thanks.

“Ah,” Heinsdorf said, “an American. It must be pleasant to be returning to your own country.” He moved close to me. “Perhaps,” he continued, “you will let me buy you a coffee and talk about America and your happy return there?”

I tried to step back; the German habit of speaking into your face from inches away is one I’ve never got used to. “Thank you,” I said, “but I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” Heinsdorf said admonishingly, “I think so. I think so very much. If, that is, you hope to see your homeland again.” He smiled and gestured with his hand for me to precede him to the coffee shop.

I did.

Heinsdorf sat happily at the small table, holding the silvered coffee pot in one hand and a cream pitcher in the other, and poured simultaneous streams of coffee and cream into his cup. “Tell me, my American friend,” he said, “do you know what it is that you’re carrying?”

“What I’m carrying?” I said in my best bewildered-tourist voice.

Heinsdorf smiled patiently. “Denials,” he said, “are for amateurs. But—” he sighed — “if you insist.” His voice became brisk again. “We know the old man at the camera shop had it. You were seen to visit his shop. And when you left you made no attempt to recontact your superior. Therefore, you found what you were looking for. Secondly, you made no effort to pass it on to anyone else. Therefore, you still have it.”

“Therefore,” I said, “you want it.”

Heinsdorf’s smile broadened. “Let us say that my employers do. But that doesn’t answer my first question: do you know what the package is?”

When I said nothing, he went on blandly, “Ah, as I suspected, you don’t. Well, put delicately, what you have is a list of unreliable people in positions which — shall we say — require a great deal of reliability. Such a list would be valuable to the intelligence service of any country. And quite frankly, my friend, there are enough people interested in taking it away from you to insure that you’ll never reach your destination with it. If you think you’ll be safe once you get on the plane, think again. It would be simple enough to skyjack it to Cuba.”

“Very interesting,” I said drily. “But why tell me all this? Why not just let me find out about it when I got off at Havana airport?”

Heinsdorf shook his he a d vigorously. “You misunderstand me. I didn’t say that I had arranged to have your plane sky-jacked. No, my employers would regard a landing in Cuba as much of a tragedy as you would.”

“Just who are your ‘employers’?”

Heinsdorf shrugged. “Why don’t we just say that they are the people who are prepared to pay you ten thousand dollars for the package.”

Point Two in favor of my having the right package: Nobody would offer that kind of money for the wrong envelope.

Heinsdorf resumed: “If you’re concerned about what your employers would think, they need never know. All you would have to do is report that you found nothing at the camera shop. And who is there to contradict you? Certainly not the old man. He was very dead when I left him.”

“You killed him?” I asked, almost casually.

Heinsdorf spread his hands in a classic gesture of helplessness. “What was I to do?” he said. “He was a witness.” He saw my face and added quickly, “But surely he meant nothing to you?”

“No,” I said, “I’d never met him. I was just thinking that I’d be a witness too.”

Heinsdorf shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, “you will be either an accomplice — or dead.” He stood up, pulled an old-fashioned watch from his vest pocket and studied its dial. “You have,” he said, “until your plane leaves to decide which. I shouldn’t imagine that would be very long now.” He snapped the watch lid shut and slipped it back in his pocket. “By the way,” he said as an afterthought, “I trust you aren’t foolish enough to think you can leave this airport. You wouldn’t get ten steps beyond the entrance.”

“I could yell copper,” I said, “and leave with a police escort.”

Heinsdorf let out a great guffaw. “And turn your package over to the West Germans for nothing? I know your allies, but surely there are limits to even the closest friendship between countries. Especially since there may be American names on that list.” He shook his head again. “No, my friend, I don’t think you will do that.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “When you want me — and you will want me — I will be on the Observation Deck.” He was still laughing as he walked out the door.

I was beginning to resent the way first Dietrich and now Heinsdorf had promoted me to the status of friend on the least provocation.

Dietrich.

I sat at the table for a few moments, biting lightly on my knuckle. Then I went to a phone booth.

I waited for Dietrich in the coffee shop, ignoring the preliminary announcement of my flight. Things shouldn’t get really critical until the final call was sounded, but just the same I was beginning to sweat when Dietrich finally arrived.

Following instructions, he ignored me and sat down at a table slightly to my rear. I let him get settled, then drained the last of my coffee and stood up. He followed me out and across the lobby to the Observation Deck, keeping a good twenty feet behind me.

Heinsdorf was standing at the railing, watching a huge jet, its wingtips trembling, lumber by on its way to the takeoff point. He glanced at me briefly as I came up, then turned back to the jet.

“These machines fascinate me,” he said. “So massive and yet so fragile.”

“If you say so,” I said. “Look,” I went on, “I’ve been thinking over your offer. And the money’s not enough. I want fifty thousand — U.S. dollars.”

Heinsdorf frowned. “I have no authority to go beyond ten thousand,” he said slowly.

“Then do what you have to and get that authority,” I said harshly. “Otherwise I destroy the package. And I don’t think your employers would like that.”

Heinsdorf pursed his lips and thought that one over. “I’ll have to make a phone call,” he said. “Will you wait for me here?”

I shook my head. “It’s a little too open out here to suit me. I’ll wait back in the coffee shop.”

He nodded and left the platform. I waited a minute, then left, still trailed by Dietrich. Instead of going straight back to the coffee shop, though, I cut over to the public washroom. Dietrich followed me in a couple of seconds later.

“All right,” I said as soon as I was sure we were alone, “that man I was just talking to — who is he and who does he work for?” Dietrich would know if anybody did. A freelance operator’s survival depended on his keeping an accurate Who’s Who of Spies in his head.

He shrugged. “Like you,” he said, “he uses many names. One I heard recently was Heinsdorf. It may have changed, though.”

“It hasn’t,” I said. “Now, who does he work for? The highest bidder?”

“No.” Dietrich’s voice reflected his distaste. “He’s a fanatic. A Maoist.” Fanatic was the worst epithet Dietrich could use. It meant someone who acted out of ideology rather than selfish interest. And who was, therefore, even for this business in which everyone was a liar and a cheat, particularly untrustworthy.

“Such nice people I’m meeting these days,” I said. “See anybody else you know around the airport?”

“No one I know,” Dietrich said. “But there were two KGB types resting in your flight lounge.” He shook his head. “Some day they will learn, perhaps, not to go to the same Stalinist tailor.”

That at least bore out Heinsdorf s allegation that he wasn’t the only one after the package. It was beginning to look too as if he’d also been right when he said I didn’t stand a chance.

I took five 100-DM notes from my wallet and handed them to Dietrich. “Go back to your office,” I said. “If I want you again, I’ll call you there.”

Dietrich folded the bills lengthwise and wrapped them carefully around the first two fingers of his left hand. “It puzzles me, though,” he said slowly, “what all these people are doing here, in this airport, at this time.”

“Keep that up,” I said, “and you may find out what happens to curious people. You wouldn’t like it. Now,” I went on, “we’d better not be seen leaving together. You first.” I turned and bent over the washstand to scrub my hands.

Five minutes later a machinery salesman from Dusseldorf pushed open the door and was the first to discover me sprawled on the floor, the attaché case open and empty beside me. There was a strong odor of chloroform still hanging in the air.

Being a good German, he ran yelling for Authority. And within seconds an airport policeman was there, bringing behind him the inevitable crowd of the morbidly curious.

By now I was sitting up and the policeman knelt beside me. “What happened here?” he said.

I grabbed the attaché case and stared into it. “My God!” I cried. I swallowed hard and shook my head as if to clear it. “This is too important a matter,” I said. “I want to see someone from the Verfassungsschutz immediately.”

The policeman stared at me blankly. Then he did what every policeman does when faced with an unfamiliar situation — he fell back on routine. He took out his notebook and poised his pencil over it. “Your name, please?” he said.

Over his shoulder I could see Heinsdorf at the rear of the small crowd turn and whisper something to the man next to him. Then they both were gone.

“There’s no time,” I said to the policeman.

“Your name?” he insisted.

In the end I was taken to a police station where I was allowed to tell my story to a series of officials of ascending rank until finally I was brought before one who made only a token pretense of not being connected with the Security Police.

“So,” he said, “you admit to being an espionage courier operating on the soil of the Federal Republic.”

“Yes,” I said. “It would be senseless to deny it, because I need your help in keeping that list out of the wrong hands. You’ve got to stop Dietrich and Heinsdorf from getting away.”

He picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser end idly on the desk he was sitting behind. “No one is going to get away — or go anywhere for that matter,” he said, “except you.” His voice was cold and professionally unsympathetic. “You’re worse than a spy. You’re a spy who has failed. You’ve compromised yourself, your country, and the Federal Republic in such a manner that the affair cannot be hushed up. However, to avoid further embarrassment to an allied power, we will give you the option of leaving the country immediately without contacting anyone.”

He stopped tapping and looked up at me. “The alternative is prosecution in the Federal courts for an infringement of German sovereignty.”

I chose the plane.

As I was being hustled out of the police station I caught a glimpse of Dietrich being brought in. His face was pale and frightened. I almost felt sorry for him. The police are never gentle with his kind. Still, better the police than Heinsdorf.

My regular contact was waiting for me at Kennedy International. His name was Kiefer and he was a tall gangling man with a prominent Adam’s apple and a nervous habit of blinking his eyes every two or three seconds.

“I wasn’t sure whether or not you’d be here to meet me,” I said.

Kiefer blushed. He’d obviously been told to give me the boot and he didn’t relish the job. “Oh,” he said, “there was no question of not meeting you. But, well, under the circumstances, this will have to be our last contact. Your usefulness to the Agency is, well, seriously compromised and—”

“Fine with me,” I said. “I was planning to retire and write my memoirs anyway. So if we can go some place where we can make the transfer safely, I’ll give you the package and be on my merry way.”

Kiefer stopped short in mid-stride. His mouth dropped open and for once he forgot to blink. “The package?” he finally managed to gasp out. “But that was stolen.”

I took his arm and started him moving again. “There’s an old saying, Kiefer,” I said, “that you should bear in mind as long as you stay in this business: Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see. There was no robbery. I faked the whole thing by emptying a bottle of chloroform down a drain and then lying down on the floor. It was the only way I could think of to get out of Germany in one piece.”

It had been a lousy trick to play on Dietrich, though. Nobody with half a brain could have missed him following me like a puppy dog from the coffee shop to the Observation Deck to the washroom. And then coming out first and alone. It was a short and logical step from there to the conclusion that he’d grabbed the package and run. But then, I’d owed him one for Zurich.