by Nick Carter
I went over to Jungmann. His throat had been shot out, but he was still alive. Barely, but still living. I took a towel from the back of a chair and pressed it against his throat, watching it start to turn red instantly. Talking was out of the question for him, but his eyes were open and he might have the strength to nod. I leaned close to him.
"Can you hear me, Klaus?" I asked. His eyes blinked in answer.
"Who's supplying Dreissig with the money?" I questioned. "Is it the Russians?"
His head moved ever so slightly from left to right, a motion you could barely catch, but it had answered no.
"The Chinese… Are they backing him?"
Once again the faint negative movement of the head came across. The towel was almost all red now. Time and Klaus Jungmann's life were running out together.
"Somebody in Germany?" I asked anxiously. "A combine of wealthy nationalists? An old military clique?"
Again his eyes answered no. I moved back as I saw his arm start to raise, waveringly. He gestured with one finger to a corner of the room where a fire pail filled with sand rested on the floor. I followed the flick of the finger again. He was definitely gesturing to the fire pail. I frowned.
"The fire pail?" I asked. The man nodded and as he did, his eyes came together and his head fell to one side. There would be no more questions to answer for Klaus Jungmann. I heard the sound of sirens approaching. It was time to make tracks. I went out the door, stepping over the two men. They were big, German types, blondish and square bodies. Bastards, I growled. They seemed to have eyes and ears everywhere.
I raced to the roof, pushed open the tin door that led to the rooftop and heard the sirens come to a halt below. I could hear more on the way. Like rooftops everywhere, it was tar and cinders with gutter drains edging the sides. I peered down over the back and saw the man starting to hurry from the rear door, tossing the rifle away. It was perhaps a foolish gesture, but I had to do it. The bastards had done nothing but bird-dog me in a way I'd never been bird-dogged before. I just wasn't going to let him get away. It only took one shot. I watched him stumble and fall forward, twitch for a moment and then he still. The Vopos would react to the shot at once, I knew, but I was already racing across the adjoining rooftops until I had put about a dozen buildings between us. Then I stopped, slipped through one of the rooftop exit doors and went down the stairs to the street. It was a technique that had worked for uncounted hoodlums on the rooftops of New York, and now it worked for me in East Berlin. As I calmly sauntered down the street I glanced back at the activity and gathering crowds down the street. I walked to a little park not far away and sat down. I had some waiting time and I wanted to try and unravel what Klaus Jungmann had been trying to tell me.
The little bench was a small oasis of calm and peace, I let my body relax in the Yoga method of bringing about heightened mental powers through complete physical relaxation. The fire pail full of sand had me going in circles. Jungmann had said no to the Russians, the Chinese and to homegrown backers. Yet Dreissig wasn't getting money out of sand. That didn't make sense. Maybe from someone who dealt in sand? That didn't make much more sense either, but it was a possibility. It would fit in with the German industrialist theory. But then Jungmann had knocked that down. A sixth sense told me I was going up the wrong alley. I started over again.
A fire pail filled with sand. Maybe I was hung up on the wrong thing? Was it the fire pail or the sand that was the clue? I tried the fire pail angle and came up with absolutely nothing. I had to stick with the sand, but what the hell had he meant by it? I went over it again step by step. I rested my head back over the top of the bench and let my mind drift into that twilight zone of free association. Dreissig and sand… he was getting money from someone with sand… someone or something or someplace. A light suddenly flashed and began to glow. Not someone with sand, but someplace with sand. The light burned brighter. Sand… the desert… the Arab countries. Of course, I exclaimed aloud, sitting bolt upright. The oil-rich Arabs, that's what Jungmann had been trying to get across… sand and the Arabs. It was all suddenly dangerously clear and logical. All it would take was one wealthy Arab chieftan or big wheel. Maybe Dreissig had hatched the plan and sold his benefactors on it, whatever it was. I was more than certain that it had to be a two-way street. They were supplying him with money to further his plans and those plans had to include something big for the Middle East. Whatever it was, I knew it wouldn't be aimed at bringing peace and calm to the explosive area of the Middle East. You could damn well count on that much. I had the distinctly uneasy feeling that if Dreissig wasn't stopped in the early stages of whatever he was planning, he wouldn't be stopped at all. There comes a time when events and movements gather a momentum that only a collision can halt.
I didn't need to hear Hawk's words. I knew what they'd be: Get in there and find out what they're up to. The first step in that was to get back to West Berlin. The second was still up for grabs. I leaned toward the idea of a meeting with Dreissig himself. I could pose as an admirer, a wealthy American admirer. Perhaps I could get into his confidence. I'd check it out with Hawk, but the idea had its appeal.
I got up and started to walk back to where I was to meet Hugo Schmidt. Dreissig's operation was neither small-time nor amateur any longer. The way his boys kept nailing me wherever I went was sure proof of that. They certainly were the cleverest bunch I'd run into in many a year, or they were just plain lucky. Maybe it was a combination of the two. I paused to pick up a newspaper and, leaning against a lamppost, I waited for the little panel truck to appear.
The afternoon traffic back into West Berlin was growing heavier. Hugo Schmidt was not as punctual as he'd been this morning. Four o'clock came and went. At four-thirty I folded the newspaper and stood waiting. At five o'clock I tossed the paper away and began pacing back and forth, anxiously scanning every panel truck that turned the corner. At six o'clock I felt a cold hand gripping my chest. The truck hadn't even come by. It hadn't appeared because there was no reason for it to appear. I wasn't expected here at four o'clock. I wasn't expected to be here at all, at any time. I was supposed to be dead with Klaus Jungmann.
It was a chilling thought, but an undeniably clear one. Suddenly a helluva lot of bits and pieces were fitting together to explain a number of previously unrelated things. Dreissig's bully-boys, for example. They were neither omnipotent nor extra efficient. I had been fingered for them right from the start, and the finger belonged to one Helga Ruten. Eager, earthy, blonde Helga. She was the only one who knew I was entering East Berlin this morning and where, when and how. She had set it all up for me, only it wasn't for me. And yesterday, when they tried to tail me to AXE headquarters, Helga was the only one who knew I'd arrived in the city. Obviously, she had phoned from the castle and had them set and waiting when I drove her up to her place. It was no wonder they latched onto me with such ease. And today they had Waited for me to contact Jungmann, then moved in to kill two birds with one stone. But this bird was very much alive and very angry. Mad as hell, in fact.
It was so goddamned obvious now, that I felt like kicking myself. It also explained the look of shocked astonishment on her face when I appeared at her place last night. They had no doubt phoned her and told her I'd been done in by the Berlin-Hamburg Express. The call to her cousin, Schmidt, had been a call to Dreissig's men, of course, setting me up right in front of me. That took nerve and a kind of insolence I was determined to pay back. But one thing, one big fat thought, kept intruding on my conclusions. Helga and the Rhine boat explosion; it didn't fit in right. If she were one of Dreissig's crew how did it happen that she was aboard the boat and almost killed in the explosion. There was no faking about that bit when I pulled her out of the Rhine She'd had it. Her near-shock and the torrent of tears afterward were the real thing, as real as those hours in bed with me. I could probably come up with an explanation for that reality, but the excursion boat was a jarring note. The only way to get at the absolute truth was to get at Helga. She could be a g
ood start at Dreissig, too, if she were what I thought.
I walked to where I could see the tall, gray concrete wall. It was not only forbidding enough, but the Russians had decorated it with electrified wire and barbed wire. It ran in an unbroken line in either direction, truly, as the Berliners had come to call it, a concrete curtain.
Nick Carter, I told myself, you have a problem.
VI
Darkness covered East Berlin, and the headlights of vehicles lined up at the crossing mingled in with the bright floodlights illuminating the square. I walked along the Berlin wall and contemplated trying to scale it despite the barbed and electrified wire. I saw a couple of spots where I felt I could pick my way around the wire. That idea went up in smoke when I saw the floodlights go on as night fell. They illuminated the entire lower half of the wall. Anyone trying to scale it would be as conspicuous as a horsefly on an ice cream cone. I even walked over to where the river Spree ambled its way from East Berlin into West Berlin. It was a possibility, but a slim one. The Vopos were patrolling the sector by the wall with very large and efficient German shepherds. They also floodlighted that section of the river so anyone swimming across wouldn't have the advantage of the dark and the water.
I returned to a corner near the large square and watched the vehicles queue up, recalling how I had heard that the Russians and the East German police had gone to great lengths to halt the steady stream of fugitives fleeing the glories of the peoples' democracy. They had indeed done a thorough job, I'd found out. Getting back to Helga was rapidly becoming a major problem, one I hadn't figured on. I could come to one conclusion from what I saw. The only way out was the same way everyone else was taking, through the checkpoint and the gate. It was a short enough distance and with any luck I could run it. But first I had to find a vehicle.
The streets of East Berlin, I quickly learned, grow deserted soon after dark falls. Night life is confined to Stalinallee off to the east and even that is tame. There were few people and fewer cars except for those on their way to the checkpoint. Finally I spotted one, a small Mini-Cooper standing outside an all-night diner. It had been converted into a plumber's utility vehicle with the top rack carrying an assortment of toolbags, acetylene torches and short pieces of pipe. The one word, "Klempner," was lettered across the door. The plumber, I saw peering through the diner window, was just finishing a cup of coffee. I stayed in the shadows till he came out. He was opening the car door when I came up behind him. This had to be fast and noiseless. He tried to whirl as I clamped an arm around his neck. I applied the pressure quickly, just enough, and felt him go limp. It was a dangerous hold, fatal if the least little bit too much pressure was applied. He'd be all right and awake in fifteen minutes or so. I dragged him into a hallway and gave him a pat on the cheek.
"Sorry, pal," I murmured. "It's all in a good cause, though. You won't know it, but you'll be one of those unsung heroes."
The Mini-Cooper was hardly a very reassuring vehicle to use for gate-crashing. I felt as though I were on a tricycle as I drove the little car up and down the streets, watching for a break in the line waiting at the gate. I'd need a running start, with all the speed I could get out of this little chariot. I slowed down as two buses moved on through the checkpoint. It was open with no one on line. I turned, pressed the accelerator to the floor and headed straight for the wooden gate marking the east side of the Brandenburg Gate. There were a few unfortunate little details I hadn't counted on though. The first one was the fact that there had been so many past attempts to crash the gate that a special detail had been posted to watch for any vehicle speeding into the square.
As soon as I hit the edge of the square, alarm bells sounded and the raucous hoot of a klaxon screamed. Directly ahead of me I saw heavy, spiked steel bars rise up out of the pavement. Too late, I remembered that a number of enterprising Germans had crashed the gate using tanks and the Russians had special tank barriers installed to rip up the treads. The pointed, spiked steel bars would go through the Mini-Cooper like a bayonet through a straw man. I swerved as the first of the barriers loomed up in front of me. The little car went over on two wheels and I heard the tearing of metal as it scraped alongside the bars. I managed to keep her from going over and aimed at four Vopos who were on their knees, drawing a bead on me with their rifles. They leaped for safety as I barrelled into them.
I was running parallel to the wall now, and I heard the shots zonk into the rear fenders. They were aiming at the tires. I swerved again, heading back across the square toward one of the streets leading from it. As I reached it, I saw a big halftrack pull out of the cross-street ahead of me and come to a halt, blocking off the street. The four Vopos in the half-track had leaped out the far side and were aiming their rifles at me from behind the truck, expecting I'd either ram myself against their heavy vehicle or sensibly come to a stop.
I decided against both. There was just enough scraping room between the end of the half-track and the building fine. I swung the Mini-Cooper up onto the sidewalk and careered past them. I swung sharply and cut down another cross-street just as a polizei cruiser took up the chase, roaring after me with siren screaming. I knew I was playing a losing game if I stuck with the Mini-Cooper. I took the first corner on two wheels and braked to a halt just around the curve. I got out and started running. The pursuing police car did just what I'd figured it would do, careering around the corner to plow right into the Mini-Cooper. I heard the roar as both cars went up in flames. It would keep everybody busy for a little while.
I ran through the nearest building, cut back and mingled with the crowd that had gathered. More army jeeps and cars had come up, and I casually sauntered away. It had been a good try, but they don't pay off on good tries. I was still in East Berlin and that damned wall was looking even more unassailable.
I could see why an air of resignation and discouragement permeated the East Berliner's life. After the crowds dispersed, I holed up again in a doorway where I could watch the traffic line at the checkpoint. I was racking my brain and coming up with nothing, except that I didn't dare try the same stunt again. They were on full alert now and had put on added men. As the hours crept by I saw that it was mostly heavy-duty truck traffic that passed into West Berlin during the late hours. I was feeling more frustrated and it was nearing midnight when I saw the four big tractor-trailers pull up to the checkpoint. The last one extended back almost to where I was standing in the dark doorway. I watched the Vopos make a thorough check of each trailer, examining the driver's papers first and then having him open up the doors of each trailer. It was routine procedure but very thorough, and as I watched, the glimmer of an idea caught fire.
The small pair of wheels tucked up under the forward part of the trailer had caught my eye. A crossbar arrangement beneath a small axle supported the two wheels which were used only when the trailer was detached from its cab. I watched the Vopos walk back to their positions at the gate and heard the first of the four-truck convoy come to life. One by one the other engines thundered, and as the first tractor-trailer started to move through the exit gate, I was a dark figure, crouched over, racing for the last trailer in fine. Diving underneath, I pulled myself up on the undercarriage wheels, using the cross-bars to cling to while I squeezed my legs in between the small axle and the underside of the trailer. Flattening myself up against the bottom of the trailer, I held my breath as the truck started to move. I could see the uniformed legs of the Vopos go by as we gathered speed, then the black-and-white stripes on the gates. We were across, in West Berlin. I clung to my precarious position until the truck finally halted for a light. Slipping my legs out, I dropped to the ground and rolled from under the trailer as the huge wheels started to roll again. My legs were somewhat cramped, but they worked themselves out quickly as I hurried along the night streets.
Unlike the drab and dreary atmosphere of the Eastern sector, West Berlin was alive and bright and I quickly got a taxi. On the way to Helga's place, I used the time to reload Wilhelmina and secure
d the Luger back in the shoulder holster under my shirt. The key Helga had given me was in my pocket. It would be used this time.
A sliver of light creeping out from under the door told me that Helga was still up. I opened the door with one quick motion. She was in the bedroom, the door open, and she whirled as she heard me enter. I didn't need to say anything. Her eyes widened and she stood there transfixed, wearing a dark skirt and a light-green sleeveless blouse. Her spell of astonishment shattered as she suddenly made a dive for the tall dresser that stood against the bedroom wall. She yanked open the top drawer and reached inside. She almost had the gun out when I slammed the drawer shut on her wrist. She cried out in pain. I grabbed her arm, twisted and pulled open the drawer. Her fingers opened and the gun dropped back into the drawer. I slammed it shut and flung Helga onto the bed. A small overnight bag she had been packing was knocked to the floor. She was still bouncing on the bed as I grabbed a shock of her blonde hair and yanked her head around. She gasped in pain and wrapped her arms around my waist, partially raising herself on one knee.
"Please don't hurt me," she emplored. "I… I'm glad you're alive. Really, I am."
"Of course," I said. "You're ecstatic over it. I could tell that by the way you went for the gun. It was a touching gesture."