The Cold War Swap (6 page)

“What did Maas say to you, McCorkle?” Hatcher asked. His voice was flat and not particularly friendly.

“I told him why I was going to boot his ass out and then he told me why I wasn’t. He said he knew where Mike was going and why and that he’d let the Bonn police know that plus the fact that Mike was here when the shooting took place unless I let him spend the night. What the hell—I let him spend the night.

“He said he had an appointment at noon today. He didn’t say where, I didn’t ask.”

“Was there anything else—anything at all?”

“He thanked me for the Scotch and I told him to go to hell. That’s all. Absolutely all.”

Hatcher started to recite. “After Padillo arrived at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhoff he had a glass of beer. Then he made a phone call. He spoke to no one in person. He then went to the Savigny Hotel, where he checked into a room. He went up in the elevator and stayed in his room for eight minutes and then came down to the bar. He sat down at the table of a couple who have been identified an American tourists. This was at eight-fifteen. At eight-thirty he excused himself and went to the men’s room, leaving his cigarette case and lighter on the table.
He never came back from the men’s room, and that’s the last trace we’ve had of him.”

“So he’s disappeared,” I said. “What am I supposed to do? Just exactly what is it you want?”

Burmser ground his cigarette out into the ash tray. He frowned, and his tanned forehead developed four deep wrinkles. “Maas is important to Padillo,” he said in the voice of the patient teacher to the mayor’s retarded son. “First, because only he—besides us—knew Padillo was to catch that plane. And, second, because Padillo did not catch the plane.”

He paused and then continued in the same patient voice. “If Maas knows of the particular assignment that Padillo is on, then we want to call it off. Padillo is of no use on it. His cover is blown.”

“I take it you’d like him back,” I said.

“Yes, Mr. McCorkle. We would like him back very much.”

“And you think Maas knows what happened?”

“We think he’s the key.”

“O.K., if Maas drops by, I’ll tell him to call you before he calls Lieutenant Wentzel. And if Padillo happens to give me a ring, I’ll tell him you’ve asked after his health.”

They both looked pained.

“If you hear from either, let us know, please,” Hatcher said.

“I’ll call you at the Embassy.”

They not only looked pained but they seemed embarrassed.

Hatcher said, “Not at the Embassy Mr. McCorkle. We’re not with the Embassy. Call us at this number.” He wrote it down on a leaf from a notebook and handed it to me.

“I’ll burn it later,” I said.

Burmser smiled faintly. Hatcher almost did. They got up and left.

I finished my coffee, lighted a cigarette to get rid of its cold taste, and tried to determine why two of the town’s top agents so suddenly had revealed their identities to me. In the years I had been operating
the bar, none had given me the time of day. Now I was an insider, almost a fellow conspirator in their efforts to unravel the mystery of the vanished American agent. McCorkle, the seemingly innocuous barkeep, whose espionage tentacles reached from Antwerp to Istanbul.

There was also the equally discomforting knowledge that I was a prime patsy. To Maas I was the lazy, easygoing lout to be used as chauffeur and innkeeper. To Burmser and Hatcher I was a sometime convenience, useful in the past in a minor sort of way, an expatriate American who had to be fed just enough line to keep him on the hook. Give the story the ring of intrigue. Throw in the mysterious disappearance of his partner, who should have been bound for Berlin, a cyanide capsule tacked onto his back molar, a flexible stainless-steel throwing knife sewn into his fly.

I opened the desk and pulled out last month’s bank statement. There was a zero or two missing, so I put the statement back. Not enough to go back to the States, not enough to retire on. Enough, maybe, for a couple of years in Paris or New York or Miami, living in a good hotel, eating well, enough for the right clothes and too much liquor. Enough for that, but not enough for anything else that would count. I ground out my cigarette and went back into the bar before I started fondling my collection of pressed flowers.

The luncheon crowd had drifted in. The press was monopolizing the bar, killing
the morning’s hangover with beer, whiskey and pink gins. Most were British, with a sprinkling of Americans and Germans and French. For lunch they usually gathered at the American Embassy Club, where the prices were low, but occasionally they descended upon us. There were no certain dates that they dropped in, but by some sense of radar they all flocked together at noon, and if someone was missing, then he was tagged as the dirty kind of a son-of-a-bitch who was out digging up a story on his own.

None of them worked too hard. In the first place they were blanketed by the wire services. Secondly, an interesting trunk murder in Chicago—or Manchester, for that matter—could reduce a careful analysis of the SPD’s chances in the forthcoming election to three paragraphs in the “News Around the World” column. They were a knowledgeable lot, however, usually writing a bit more than they knew, and never tipping a story until it was safely filed.

I signaled Karl to let the house buy a round of drinks. I said hello to a few of them, answered some questions about yesterday’s shooting, and told them I didn’t know whether or not it was a political assassination.
They asked about Padillo and I told them he was out of town on business.

I wandered away and checked on reservations with Horst, who served as the maître d’ and ran the waiters and the kitchen with rigid Teutonic discipline. The press crowd was good for another hour at the bar before they ate. Some of them would forget to. I continued to circulate, shook a few hands, counted the house, and moved back to the bar.

I spotted Fredl as she came through the door and walked over to meet her.

“Hello, Mac. Sorry I’m late.”

“You want to join your friends at the bar?”

She glanced over and shook her head. “Not today. Thanks.”

“I have a table for us in the corner.”

When we were seated and drinks and lunch were ordered, Fredl looked at me with a flat, cold stare.

“What have you been up to?” she demanded.

“Why?”

“Mike had someone call me this morning. From Berlin. A man named Weatherby.”

I took a sip of my drink and looked at the tip of my cigarette. “And?”

“He asked me to tell you that the deal has gone sour. That’s one. Secondly, he said that Mike needs some Christmas help and soon. And, thirdly, he told me to ask you to check into the Berlin Hilton. He’ll get in touch with you there. He also told me that you didn’t have to stay in your room. He’d try the bar.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all. He sounded as it he were in a hurry. Oh, yes, one more thing. He told me to tell you that you had better get this place swept. Also your apartment. He said Cook Baker would know whom you should call.”

I nodded. “I’ll get around to it after lunch. How about a brandy?”
I signaled Horst for two. One thing about owning your own restaurant: the service is excellent.

“What’s it all about, damn you?” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s no secret, I suppose. Padillo and I have been thinking about opening up another place in Berlin. Good tourist town. Lot of military. When I was up there I made a tentative deal. It looks as if it might have fallen through. So Mike wants me to come up.”

“And the Christmas help? It’s April.”

“Padillo worries.”

“You’re lying.”

I smiled. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

“You’re going, of course.”

“Why the ‘of course’? Maybe I’ll call Mike, maybe I’ll write him a letter. I had the deal all set, and if he screwed it up in one day, then he can damn well unscrew it.”

“You’re still lying.”

“Look, one of us has to be here to run the place. Padillo likes to travel more than I do. I’m sedentary. Like Mycroft Holmes, I’m devoid of energy or ambition. That’s why I run a saloon. It’s a fairly easy way to keep on eating and drinking.”

Fredl rose. “You talk too much, Mac, and you don’t lie well. You’re a rotten liar.” She opened her purse and tossed an envelope on the table. “There’s your ticket. I’ll send you a bill when you get back. The plane leaves Düsseldorf at eighteen hours. You’ve plenty of time to catch it.” She learned over and patted my cheek. “Take care of yourself,
liebchen
honey. You can tell me some more lies when you get back.”

I stood up. “Thanks for not pressing.”

She looked up at me, her brown eyes wide and frank and tender. “I’ll find out sometime. It might be at three o'clock in the morning, when you’re relaxed and feel like talking. I’ll wait till then. I have time.” She turned and walked away. Horst darted over to open the door for her.

I sat down and took a sip of the brandy. Fredl hadn’t finished hers,
so I poured it into mine. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without. Even with booze. On one of the rare occasions when Padillo had mentioned what he termed his “other calling,” he had said that one of the drawbacks was having to work with the Christmas help, which might be anything from the Army’s CID to tourists armed with two Canons and a Leica and a fascination for the photogenic qualities of Czechoslovakian armament factories. They always seemed to get caught, and they invariably listed their occupation as student.

Circumstances, not will, determine action. I could ignore the airline ticket and Padillo’s distress signal and sit there, cozy in my own little saloon, and get unpleasantly drunk. Or I could call Horst over, give him the keys to the cashbox, go home and pack, and then drive to Düsseldorf. I left the brandy and went over to the bar. The customers had gone and Karl was reading
Time
. He thought it was a funny magazine. I tended to agree.

“Where’s Horst?”

“Out back.”

“Call him.”

He stuck his head through the door and yelled for Horst. The thin, ascetic little man marched sharply around the bar and up to me. I thought he was going to click his heels. Our relationship during the five years he had worked for us continued on a completely formal basis.

“Yes, Herr McCorkle?”

“You’re going to have to take over for a few days. I’m going out of town.”

“Yes, Herr McCorkle.”

“How come?” Karl asked.

“None of your goddamned business,” I snapped. Horst shot him a look of disapproval. We had given Horst five percent of the net, and he felt a certain proprietary regard toward the decisions of management.

“Anything else, Herr McCorkle?” Horst asked.

“Call up that firm that patches the carpet and see how much it will cost to get the cigarette burns out. If it’s not too much, tell them to go ahead. Use your own judgment.”

Horst beamed. “Yes, Herr McCorkle. May I ask how long you will be away?”

“A few days; maybe a week. Neither Mr. Padllio nor I will be here, so you’ll have to run the place.”

Horst almost saluted.

Karl said, “Christ, the way you guys run a business. What about the Continental, anyway?”

“When I get back.”

“Sure. Swell.”

I turned to Horst. “There will be a man, perhaps two who will be checking the telephones, probably tomorrow. Give them every cooperation.”

“Of course, Herr McCorkle.”

“Good.
Auf wiedersehen
.”

“
Auf wiedersehen
, Herr McCorkle,” Horst said.

“See you around,” Karl said.

I got in the car and drove six blocks to a twin of the apartment that Fredl lived in. I parked in an empty slot across the street and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. I knocked on 614, and after a few moments the door opened cautiously. An inch. A panel of a long lean pallid face peered at me.

“Come on in and have a drink.” The voice was deep and mellow.

The door opened wide and I went into the apartment of Cook G. Baker, Bonn correspondent for an international radio news service called Global Reports, Inc. Baker was the one and only professed member of Alcoholics Anonymous in Bonn, and he was a backslider.

“Hello, Cooky. How’s the booze barrier?”

“I just got up. Care to join me in an eye opener?”

“I think I’ll pass.”

The apartment was furnished in a haphazard manner. A rumpled day bed. A table or two and an enormous wingback chair that had a telephone built into one arm and a portable typewriter attached to a stand that swung like a gate. It was Cooky’s office.

Around the room were carefully placed bottles of Ballantine’s Scotch. Some were half full, others nearly so. It was Cooky’s theory that when he wanted a drink he should only have to reach out and there it would be.

“Sometimes when I’m on the floor it’s a hell of a long crawl to the kitchen,” he once explained to me.

Cooky was thirty-three years old that year, and according to Fredl he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. He was a couple of inches over six feet, lean as a whippet, with a high forehead, a perfect nose and a wide mouth that seemed continually to be fighting a smile over some private joke. And he was immaculate. He wore a dark-blue sport shirt, a blue and yellow Paisley ascot, a pair of gray flannels that must have cost sixty bucks, and black loafers.

“Sit down, Mac. Coffee?”

“That’ll do.”

“Sugar?”

“If you have it.”

He picked up one of the bottles of Scotch and disappeared into the kitchen. A couple of minutes later he handed me my coffee and then went back for his drink: a half-tumbler of Scotch with a milk chaser.

“Breakfast. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

He took a long gulp of the Scotch and quickly washed it down with the milk.

“I fell off a week ago,” he said.

“You’ll make it.”

He shook his head sadly and smiled. “Maybe.”

“What do you hear from New York?” I asked.

“They’re billing more than thirty-seven million a year now and the money is still being banked for me.”

At twenty-six Cooky had been the boy wonder of Madison Avenue public-relations circles, a founder of Baker, Brickhill and Hillsman.