Spyfall

by John Hegenberger

  While the waiter’s back was turned, Ian snagged a salt shaker from another table and shook white powder onto the bare table top, revealing an address that had been carved there. Then he blew the salt away and we left without ordering.

  This clandestine spy stuff could be a hoot, if it weren’t so dangerous.

  We secured rooms that evening at the Lenin hotel, a six-story, wedding cake slab of glass and concrete on the north side of Unter den Linden. We followed the address from the salted table and found it to be what Ian called a “night-fight” club. The entrance to of the Fledermaus Grotto was shabby and un-swept, just as I would have expected of Bay City.

  Behind its battered and paint-peeling door, a crowd of at least twenty-five people drank dark bier and shouted encouragement at two bare-knuckle fighters who were going at it inside a ten-by-ten foot roped area in the center of the main room. The collective German voices were so loud it was almost impossible to talk.

  One of the fighters was a sumo-sized guy like the Japs I’d once seen tussle together at the Olympic arena. This sloppy, slow-mover, with rolls of body fat and Teutonic folds of flesh at the back of his neck, threw looping punches in slow-mo. His opponent was five-eight or so and much quicker.

  As we watched the mismatch, it was obvious that the smaller man scored the majority of points, no matter how this sort of entertainment was measured. The smaller guy was using his speed to avoid the giant, peppering him with rapid sets of deft punches to the big man’s forehead and neck. There was already a nasty cut over Sumo’s left eye.

  Then, through an umbrella of smoke and noise from the crowd, the fat man made an unexpected charge, grabbing the little guy’s legs and slamming both of their bodies to the mat.

  In the back of the room, at the end of the long wooden bar and under a coat of arms that looked like it had come from a page of Prince Valiant, stood our own opponent, Yuri Kaminski. Walt saw him too, and nudged me before I could shout anything above the screaming audience.

  Kaminski did not appear to have noticed us. His head was bent down and forward, his attention centered on a dark-haired, middle-aged woman in a trim, blue dress and too much eye makeup, who threw her head back laughing.

  “My god,” Fleming said over the din. “He looks nothing at all like me. Sharp bony nose. Grizzled hair and high cheekbones. Dark, penetrating eyes that do not flicker.”

  In the ring, Little Guy landed one effective punch after another into the tub of lard. Both fighters looked exhausted as a bell rang out to end the event. The crowd surged and swayed, elbows flying, while the three of us pushed past the ring and into the back of the hall, moving in on our fake Fleming.

  Ring attendants were wiping Sumo’s blood off the mat as Yuri made a quick turn, dashing through a door at the back of the bar.

  We followed Yuri through the doorway where he’d taken the woman in the blue dress. There were bathrooms to one side and an entrance to the kitchen on the other, but down a long corridor was another door just closing.

  I looked at Ian, who nodded. Walt was already moving down the hallway and through the door. We rushed down a rickety flight of wooden stairs and stopped short in a small storage area dominated by a low ceiling and a guy with a gun. The gun was a Luger and the guy was Yuri. “Up with your hands,” he ordered, moving the weapon away from me to waver between Walt and Ian.

  I tried to use one of those kenpo moves that Suzi had taught me and got it all wrong in the cramped crowded space. My head was still tender from where Yuri had struck it back in Jamaica, and someone with no imagination hit me again now from behind. I went down like a first act curtain. Ian and Walt helped me to my feet. I turned to see that my attacker was the middle-aged woman in the blue dress.

  The Noir Man said, ‘I tried to warn you,’ as the woman’s dark eyes tightened. She took a single step in my direction and slapped my face with a crack that made me see blood red constellations.

  Ian and Walt held tightly to each of my arms, keeping me from fighting forward in blind rage. I studied the woman’s face and slowly it grew more and more familiar.

  And that’s how I met Nikkita Reed.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Another she’s a he?” I asked Walt.

  He looked as surprised as I was. “News to me.”

  I should have seen it coming, but first I’d been told that the combined US/UK espionage forces weren’t aware that August Reed had a brother, right? Then I’d learned that they didn’t know for sure where this person was, right? Now, I learned that the brother was really a sister and that Nicolas Reed was actually Nikkita Reed, grand-daughter of John Reed, the turn of the century American reporter and Communist sympathizer. All of this had been wrong, right?

  I was royally pissed by this discovery, because, as far as I could see, grand espionage intel hadn’t been based on anything certain. It was all just blind guesswork and dumb luck.

  One thing for certain, this woman had to be the person who killed Max and tried to kill me.

  ‘Find a way to kill her, back,’ the Noir Man said.

  I struggled to control my hate, as we all raised our hands above our heads in the dank room.

  Ian attempted to act like he knew what was going on. “The great Nikkita Reed at last,” he said.

  I tried to draw her attention. “Nikkita? She’s the commie bigwig we’ve been after?”

  She had high, wide cheek bones, almost Asiatic, and a strong jaw that balanced her smirking features. “Take away the letter ‘K’ from my first name,” she said in a silky voice, “and it spells that of our beloved Premier Khrushchev.”

  Yuri said, “The exposure of your country’s spying efforts while making Ben Hur is only our minor goal. When presented to the world, it will be another example of the trashy efforts of the West to control the people’s minds.”

  Nikkita agreed, “With Sputnik and the symmetry of Communism, it will be clear that the Communists are winning the Cold War.”

  “Where is Agent Poole?” Walt asked.

  “We have your old woman carefully secluded,” she said, “at the rehearsal annex of the Opera House.”

  I noticed for the first time under her dark eye makeup the sickle-shaped scar that started under her right cheekbone, circled the orbit, and disappeared into the eyebrow. All it needed was a hammer, but that would have pierced her eye.

  “We now know that Poole has details of your county’s secret high-altitude U-2 flyovers into Russia.”

  “The game changes again,” Fleming said, looking at Walt. “It was only a matter of time before they found out about your spyplanes photographing behind their borders.”

  I think my jaw must have hit my chin.

  “Yes,” The film-maker sighed. “But they have no proof.”

  “Proof?” I said, almost gasping. “Is that why you’re really here, Walt? To stop the Soviets from getting proof of our illegal aerial surveillance? Is that the ‘ya two’ that Molly heard you discussing last night? Did you plan for us to get captured, too?”

  Nikkita answered for him. “We’ll go public about the flights when we have details of the listening post in Germany that receives signals and processes film. And I assure you, we will get those vital details from your Agent Poole. Especially now, since we have you hostage.”

  “The Cold War will now have peace,” Yuri proclaimed. “Peace the way we like it.”

  “You’ve been reading too many of your own posters,” I said. “That’s no way to ensure peace.”

  “Peace through intimidation and strength,” Yuri predicted, as the woman began to search us for weapons.

  This time, the Beretta was discovered and taken away.

  I watched through hate-filled eyes, while Nikkita reached down and caught the hem of her skirt, raising it to access her lower left leg. She tapped the back of her calf and opened a compartment there.

  I felt my jaw drop again.

  “I always carry trade-tools,” she said. “Another reason why we’ll win.”

  “That
’s ingenious,” Ian said.

  “In every game, there is always a hidden gambit.” She shoved my small gun into a hinged drawer of flesh-colored plastic.

  “You’re a cripple,” Walt taunted.

  Yuri laughed, still training the Luger on us.

  The dark-eyed woman tilted her head up and gave us a gloating smile. “Border guards never bother with a woman or a prosthetic limb. They never suspect.” She lifted a pair of handcuffs from a shelf in the wall next to a rusted electrical box.

  “I may want to use that in my next thriller,” Fleming said, hands still elevated. “Except villains are always rabidly insane and die near the last chapter.”

  “Not this time,” Nikkita said, going behind us.

  “You planned this all along,” I said.

  “Lured us here with that fake contact man at the café,” Walt added.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled Fleming’s hands down behind his back and snapped on the cuffs.

  From the corner of my eye, I could see her reach for two more pairs of handcuffs. We were under a gun collectively and about to be handcuffed individually.

  “This is such a cockup,” the writer said. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”

  Without hesitation, she struck him a blow at the base of his skull and he folded up like a wet tent.

  “What are you doing?” Walt’s voice was almost as high as Mickey’s.

  “Why not kill them now?” Yuri said.

  “We must first attend the meeting with the Head of the HVA and MVD to report on our success and Project Goldenherz.”

  “Tell them nothing,” Yuri spat. “Your ambition will ruin everything.”

  “Herr Mielke and General Serov can wait,” Nikkita ordered through clinched teeth.

  “Which one of you Einstein’s is in command here anyway?” I asked, trying to get under their skin.

  Neither of them showed signs of itching.

  “These three will wait for us here--” the woman said and Yuri remained silent as she finished with, “--and sleep.”

  Fear grew within me.

  I had seen guys knocked unconscious a thousand times in the movies, but I knew that in real life, you could be slammed in the brainpan once too often and go into a coma. One more slug, thud, or pounding might cause me to lose my memories, if not my life. If I knew any top secrets, I felt that I’d have given them up right then.

  Walt looked at me sternly and saw that, in a small way, I’d been broken, or was about to be. “I’ve got one for you,” he said.

  I swallowed. “W--what?”

  Nikkita paused. She must have thought he was going to tell her something important.

  But instead, he began to sing in an off-key voice: “The way you wear your hat. The way you sip your tea. The memory of all that...” Amazingly, he was doing the lyric game that he’d seen Norm and I play.

  My mouth was still dry, but I responded, “No, no. They can’t take that away from me.”

  He nodded with a slight smile. “Grace under pressure.”

  Clearly frustrated, Nikkita snapped the cuffs shut behind him and struck him solidly in the head. He dropped to his knees and fell quietly on his side.

  Then she came for me.

  I stared into the dark muzzle of Yuri’s gun. She yanked my arms into place, just as she had done with Ian and Walt. I held my fear under control, knowing and dreading what came next. There was a small knife blade taped to the back of my brother’s wristwatch, but it would be of no use against the cold steel cuffs that clamped tightly onto my wrists.

  “This is partial payment for my brother’s death,” she breathed into my ear. “Izvineetye.”

  I was pounded into oblivion.

  CHAPTER 17

  Someone was singing, “The moon belongs to everyone. The best things in life are free, free, free.” The voice was a little flat and in the wrong key.

  My serenader was the black-and-white clown. I didn’t know he could talk, let alone sing.

  “Zippity do-da. They can’t take that away from me, bibbity bobbity boo, boo, boo.” He toddled over to where I lay surrounded by bunnies, squirrels, and a baby deer. They all seemed to want me to go somewhere.

  I twisted up into a sitting position and looked around through blurred eyes like that mole character in The Wind and the Willows.

  But I wasn’t free, free. I was still handcuffed and underground. The little animals had scampered away, replaced by the slumped and inert bodies of Walt and Ian. We were still in the restaurant’s windowless vault. The door at the top of the stairs was shut. The room was otherwise empty and the future bleak.

  Trapped and trussed up in the basement of the Fledermaus--a sort of German batcave. I chuckled at the thought, which made my head hurt. Also my shoulder from an old injury and my leg from a new one. Pretty soon, I’d be drooling.

  Walt came back to consciousness a few seconds later, slowly sat up, and quickly threw up. These two guys were older than me and not used to a lot of physical punishment. Somewhere along the line, pain had become my familiar friend and that worried me.

  “Hey, you all right?” I asked, trying to pull and squeeze my wrists free from the cuffs behind my back. Nothing doing.

  I shifted my weight and got up on my knees.

  Walt reached for his head and must have realized that his own set of bracelets confined him firmly like a hog-tied calf. “Where am I?” he asked stupidly.

  “You’re in the happiest place on earth, or under it,” I said, tasting something like sarcasm. “Damn. I must have bitten my lip when I fell.”

  “Too bad it wasn’t your tongue,” Walt grumbled.

  And that’s how I knew he was coherent and okay.

  Fleming’s condition was another matter, however. We called to him, but he didn’t answer. I tried to get around to where he lay, so I could check his pulse. I fumbled my fat fingers behind my back and pushed down on the side of his neck. I thought I felt a heartbeat, but couldn’t be sure.

  “We have to get out of here,” Walt suggested.

  ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ the Noir Man said.

  I began to wonder if I was ever going to see the real Walt. “What was that talk about U-2 flights over the USSR? Is that the real reason we came all this way? Did you plan to have us captured so we could draw out those commies?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Walt answered. “Yes, the high-altitude flights are real, have been for some time. But I didn’t plan for us to get caught.” He adjusted his shoulders. “We’re here to keep the East hand from knowing what the West hand is doing.”

  ‘Don’t trust him,’ the Noir Man said.

  But despite my growing suspicions of his duplicity and my own confusion, I felt we were on the verge of something even more important. It was like when I read a murder mystery and had a flash of inspiration of a plot twist, but still didn’t know what it meant.

  “Buried alive,” Walt said.

  I scanned around for something, anything that would address our immediate need to get out of here.

  The room was like a crude fall-out shelter--probably had been during the war--dug out of the dark and crumbling German soil, but empty now. No tables, chairs, or other furniture. A single, bare electric bulb hung a few feet above our heads, connected to a power box fixed to wall studs across from the entrance we’d used minutes--hours?--before to enter this hell hole.

  The floor was uneven rough cement poured over ancient bricks that lay exposed in the corners of the room. The ceiling was stout wooden boards shored up by posts and crossbeams made into empty shelving.

  Ian went, “Uh...” and began to move his legs. Walt went over to study him.

  I had been fooled once before by a false Fleming. Could it happen again? Either one or both of these men could still be some sort of double agent or traitor to their country.

  ‘Get out while you’ve still got your skin,’ the Noir Man commanded.

  Ian moaned again.

  I gingerly went up the old wood
en stairs, that must have been built when God was two, and tried the door. It gave a little and I thought I could do a dance and kick it open, but then where would we be? We had to get these cuffs off first, somehow.

  I went back down the steps and said to Walt, “Shouldn’t one of you two have a ring that contains poison or some other spy stuff we could use to get out of here? Like a knife in the heel of your dress shoe?”

  Walt cocked his head and gave me a half smile. “Actually, my fountain pen does double as a tiny flashlight,” he offered.

  “Oh, that’ll help a lot--once the sun goes down.”

  Fleming said something I didn’t catch.

  “He’s coming around,” Walt announced. “We’re a tad older than you, Stan.”

  “And more experienced in all this, I hope.”

  Ian sat up. “My wife is thinking of leaving me,” he mumbled.

  I looked at Walt’s somber, questioning eyes. “Oh, which reminds me. Thanks for the new car. Very thoughtful of you.”

  I saw that I’d stunned and worried him. I felt good about that.

  His straight, sandy brows arched. “We have got to get out of here,” he insisted, “before we all go nuts.”

  “Or worse,” I countered. “I’ve got two of the most creative and secretive guys in the world here with me. Let’s come up with something. Now.”

  “Can one of you chaps get inside my coat pocket?” Ian asked. “I need my cigarette holder.”

  “Take it easy, old chap,” I replied. “You’re still loopy.”

  “I hope we don’t run out of air,” Walt said, focusing his attention on the door. “Those bastards.”

  “No,” Ian answered. “I think I can unlock these restraints with a broken section of the metal tubing in my holder. Saw it done once during the war.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said, coming over to where he sat.

  “If we can work it into the keyhole, we should be able to jiggle and release the locking mechanism.”

  “You are kidding, right?” Walt asked.

  “Planned to use it in one of my novels,” the writer grunted. “But I never had the right circumstances. Until now.” He came to his feet. “What is that awful smell?”