The Cold War Swap

Chapter 17

I hauled myself out of the tunnel and blundered into a thicket of branches and leaves that scratched my face and stung my hands. The leaves felt soft and scaly. I could hear Maas stumbling behind me. When I broke out of the foliage I could see the wall, 150 feet or so away, where the park met it with the tip of its triangle. The wall seemed to squat, ugly and black and damp-looking against the beginning of a dawn. A hand touched my arm and I jumped. It was Max Vess.

“Where are the rest?” he asked.

“On their way.”

“So it did exist.”

“Yes.”

Maas broke out of the arborvitae wiping his face and hands and brushing off his raincoat. Behind him came Symmes, Burchwood and Padillo.

“The truck is this way,” Max said, gesturing to his right.

Maas turned to Padillo. “I will leave you now, Herr Padillo,” he said. “I am confident that your associates will be able to transport you and your charges to Bonn. But if you run into difficulty... you may reach me at this number.” He handed Padillo a slip of paper. “I will be there part of today only. Tomorrow I will drop by your café to settle our account.”

“Cash,” Padillo said.

“Ten thousand.”

“I’ll have it for you.”

Maas nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I am sure that you will. Auf wiedersehen.” He walked away and was lost in the dark and the mist.

The truck was a Volkswagen panel. We followed Max to it and climbed in through a side door. Before he closed it, Max said, “You won’t be able to see out, but nobody can see in either.”

“How far?” Padillo asked.

“Fifteen minutes.”

It took seventeen minutes actually. Symmes and Burchwood sat on one side of the panel, their heads cushioned on their arms, which they rested against raised knees. Padillo and I sat on the other side and smoked the last of the East German cigarettes.

The panel stopped and we could hear Max getting out of the driver’s seat. He opened the door and Padillo and I jumped out. Symmes and Burchwood followed, not speaking either to us or to each other. They looked pale in the dim light and Burchwood needed a shave.

I looked around. We were in a courtyard of some kind. A tall red brick wall covered with dusty ivy made three sides of the court, with a gate built of rough gray lumber providing the entrance. The pavement was of irregular slate slabs. The wall joined a four-story building stuccoed with gray plaster that had recessed windows. The ones on the ground floor had iron bars over them.

Max led the way into a doorless corridor that ended at a steel panel that had no hinges and no handle. Above it was a round hole covered with fine wire mesh. Max stood in front of the panel and the rest of us lined up behind him. We must have waited fifteen seconds before the panel slid silently open. I could see that it was two inches thick, and it looked as if it were made of solid steel.

Max led on down another corridor. At its end stood a small elevator, it’s door open, just large enough for five persons. We entered it, the door closed, and there were no buttons to push if you wanted off on the mezzanine. It rose quickly and I judged that it went to the top floor of the building. When it stopped the door opened again automatically and soundlessly and we stepped out into what seemed to be a reception room whose walls were of plaster that was painted a pastel green. The plaster looked as if it had been brushed with a comb when it was wet. Pictures, oils and pen-and-ink sketches of Berlin, covered the walls above the furniture. There were a couple of matching orangered sofas, two or three casual chairs with eager Scandinavian lines, and a severe coffee or cocktail table adorned with a thick mottled-green glass ash tray shaped like a kidney. The rug was deep-piled and made up of squares of brown and black and green. It wasn’t a restful room and it spoke of money, but its tone was neither restrained nor cultivated.

Directly opposite the elevator door was another door that was covered with the kind of wallpaper that pretends to be wood paneling but never succeeds in bringing it off. Max stood in front of that door for a while and it slid open just like the one downstairs. It also had the round aperture above it covered with the fine wire mesh. I guessed that it shielded a television camera. We went through, walked down a hall and turned left into a long, oblong room that had a fireplace burning at its far end. A man stood before the fireplace warming his back. He held a cup and saucer. I could smell coffee and saw a sideboard along the left-hand wall that held an electric percolator that looked as if it could handle eighteen cups or more. Some other dishes were on the sideboard, resting on a thick white pad that I took to be a warming unit. The room was paneled in a dark wood, and there was a library table with a lamp; some beige drapes; a couple of leather couches; some leather armchairs, two of them wing-backed; a dark-green rug; and a full bookcase. I thought I could smell toast and bacon as well as coffee. The man smiled when he saw Padillo, set his cup and saucer down on a table, and walked toward us. He shook hands with Padillo. “Hello, Mike,” he said in English; “it’s good to see you again.”

“Hello, Kurt.” Padillo introduced me to Kurt Wolgemuth, who shook hands with me as if he thought it were the pleasure he said it was. He was in his early fifties and he carried them nicely. His long hair was only touched with gray and it lay brushed and shining and cared for on his well-shaped head. He had dark-brown eyes, a good straight nose, and a small firm chin below a mouth that seemed to have all of its teeth and not too much gum when he smiled. He was wearing a maroon dressing gown with a white silk scarf above dark-gray or black trousers. He stood straight and kept his stomach in most of the time.

“I need some food and a bed and a shower for these two,” Padillo said, indicating Symmes and Burchwood. Wolgemuth’s dark eyes flicked over them. He smiled again and stepped back to the fireplace and pushed an inset ivory-colored button. The door opened a moment later and two men came in. They had the air of quiet competency that big men often have. “These two gentlemen,” Wolgemuth said. “They need to clean up, have some food and some rest. Take care of it, please.” The two big men looked at Symmes and Burchwood carefully. One of them nodded toward the door. Symmes and Burchwood walked through it. The big men followed.

“You’ve prospered, Kurt,” Padillo said, glancing around.

The man shrugged and walked to the sideboard. “Let’s have some coffee — and let me apologize for what happened the other night at the wall. We slipped up.”

“Somebody did,” Padillo said.

Wolgemuth paused by the sideboard, a cup and saucer in one hand, the large percolator in the other. “I have a complete report for you, Mike. You may wish to read it after breakfast.”

Max announced that he was worn out and would get some sleep. “I’ll be up and around in about four hours,” he said, and left.

Padillo and I loaded our plates with scrambled eggs, bacon, cheese and sausage. We ate from small tables that Wolgemuth had placed in front of the two wing-back leather chairs that flanked the fireplace. We gobbled the food without conversation, and when I was on my third cup of coffee I accepted an American cigarette from Wolgemuth with gratitude.

“Could you get all the items we need?” Padillo asked, borrowing a cigarette for himself.

Wolgemuth nodded and waved some of the smoke away with a cared-for hand. “Uniforms per your request, the necessary travel orders, the tickets, and I’ve laid on transport to Tempelhof for this afternoon. Also a car — a fast one — will meet you at Frankfurt.” He paused, smiled delicately, and said: “Since my report indicates that you seem to be free-lancing, Mike, whom shall I send the bill to?”

“To me,” he said. “Max can give you a small down payment.”

Wolgemuth smiled. “I always had the feeling that you were too sensitive for this business. You can send me a check when you get back to Bonn — if you get back.”

“They’ve really turned it on, huh?”

Wolgemuth picked up two blue file folders from the mantel. He gave one to Padillo and one to me. For your bedtime reading,” he said. “It’s a rundown of everything we’ve found out — with a few conjectures thrown in for good measure. But to answer your question, yes, they have indeed turned it on. Even the British are making unpleasant noises because of Weatherby. The only ones you haven’t offended are the French.”

Padillo leafed through his file. “We’ll have to think of something. Right now we need some sleep.”

Wolgemuth rang the ivory button again. One of the big men appeared. “Herr Padillo and Herr McCorkle are special guests,” he said. “Show them to their rooms. Were they prepared as I instructed?”

The big man nodded. Wolgemuth looked at his watch. “It’s six-fifteen now. I’ll have you called at noon.”

I nodded wearily and got up to follow the outsized guide. Padillo followed me. We walked down the hall and turned right. The big man opened a door, walked into a bedroom, checked the windows to see that they were open, turned on the bathroom light, pointed to a bottle of Scotch and two packs of Pall Malls, and handed me the key. I almost tipped him. I went into the bathroom when he left and looked at the tub. It was white and shiny and inviting. I turned on the water, sat down on the john, and opened the report. I had a carbon copy. It was single-spaced and written in German, and it was three pages long.

I turned off the water in the tub and walked back into the bedroom. I put the report down and picked up the bottle of Scotch, uncapped it, and poured a drink. I took a long, deep swallow and stood there in the clean little bedroom with the turned-down bed and the picture of a café scene on the wall and let the liquor spread from the stomach to the cortex. I topped up the drink and opened the closet door. A Class-A Army uniform, complete with tech-sergeant’s stripes, combat infantry badge, and some ribbons indicating that the wearer had gone through a couple of battles in the Pacific, hung neatly in the closet. I closed the door and went back into the bathroom and set the glass down on the toilet lid within handy reach of the bath. I went back into the bedroom and fetched a package of the cigarettes and an ash tray and set them next to the glass of Scotch. Then I stripped off my clothes and threw them into a corner of the bathroom. I eased myself down into the water, which was a little short of scalding, and lay there staring up at the ceiling and letting the muscles unkink themselves.

I soaked in the bathtub, drinking the Scotch and smoking the cigarettes and thinking, but not too hard, until the water grew cool. I ran some more of the hot and then used the soap and rinsed myself off with a shower. I shaved and brushed my teeth and smoked a final cigarette. Then I got into bed.

Beds like that are too good for the common people.