The Berlin Target

by Nick Carter

  "I'll tell you what, Lisa. I can't promise much, but I'll do what I can."

  "When?"

  "First thing in the morning."

  "Can't you speak to him this afternoon, or this evening?"

  "It's Sunday, and I'm not sure he's even in town," Ginger replied.

  And, she thought, even if he were — and agreed to let Carter help — where was N3?

  He had gotten Boris Simonov to Istanbul, and the last thing Ginger had heard, they were readying false papers to get him on to England or Paris for interrogation.

  "I promised Delaine I would get the first flight out to Frankfurt and then on to Berlin. I'm leaving tonight. If I could, I'd like to know something before I leave."

  Ginger shrugged and started the car. "As I said, I'll do what I can."

  She drove to Connecticut Avenue and turned south. In minutes they had passed out of Montgomery County and entered the District of Columbia.

  Ginger pulled the car over when she spotted a corner phone booth.

  "Sit tight."

  Lisa nervously chewed on her lip and worried the small purse in her lap as she concentrated on Ginger's face through the clear sides of the booth.

  The phone call seemed to go on for an eternity.

  When at last Ginger returned, Lisa could feel perspiration flowing down her back, making her sweater stick to her skin.

  "You're in luck. He'll see you. But beyond that, who knows?"

  "I'll be convincing," Lisa replied with a sigh.

  * * *

  She took great care building his drink, and when she finished, she stood facing him at the bar. There was something special in the way she looked at him. Her eyes dimmed, becoming smoky behind the long lashes, and her full breasts brought a catch in his throat as she took a lazy breath.

  "You're afraid."

  "Aren't you?" he replied.

  "It is too late for fear now, my darling."

  She came across the room toward him, tucking the blouse into her skirt with her free hand, making it taut over the lush curves.

  "Could I have a cigarette?" she asked, handing him the drink.

  He held out the pack, and she plucked a cigarette from it with long, crimson-tipped fingers. She put the filter tip between equally red lips and leaned over toward the flame.

  The front of her blouse fell open, and his eyes slid into the deep darkness between her breasts.

  His lip quivered and his mouth went dry.

  "He is set," she said, looking up at him with bold, appraising eyes. "Half of the money has been delivered. I have already arranged for the other half. He has the equipment. Believe me, darling, it will soon be over."

  She tugged him to his feet. She was standing so close that he could feel the faint touch of her breasts on his chest and the heat of her breath on his neck.

  "You're shaking, darling."

  He was, and he knew it. But now he didn't know if it was from fear of what they were about to do, or the nearness of her body.

  "Come, darling… into the bedroom."

  She tugged on his arm and he followed her like a robot. As he neared the bed, the fog of desire momentarily left his brain.

  "I shouldn't… they'll be waiting…"

  "Darling, after tomorrow it will be along time… this may be our last time for a long while."

  Slowly she unbuttoned the blouse and revealed the naked body beneath it. Then, deftly, she freed the zipper on the skirt and shrugged, the garments puddling at her feet.

  "God," he gasped, "you're so beautiful."

  Her breasts were heavy, yet firm and high, creamy white with coral tips that gleamed like beacons of desire. Her shoulders were firm and wide, yet capable of turning to melted butter when the right man put his arms around them. Her ribs poked excitingly against the flawless skin below her breasts, pointing like arrows to her navel, and below.

  "Tomorrow," he moaned, stripping the clothing from his own body. "Tomorrow it will all be over."

  She oozed back onto the bed and he fell between her legs.

  "No, my darling, tomorrow it will just be starting… for us."

  * * *

  Carter fixed a scotch neat and moved to the hotel balcony. The drizzle that had shrouded Paris for the last forty-eight hours had lifted. Now the lights of the city blinked invitingly under a clear, starry sky.

  Carter was weary. It had been a long day. But he was also itchy. It had been a good mission, and it had gone well, but he remembered Ludmilla, and for the last few hours he had been wondering how long she would last.

  He needed to get her out of his mind.

  In the distance he could see the lights of Montmartre and the gleaming dome of Sacre Coeur.

  He knew a couple of little cafes around the square up there where he could easily find someone who would chase the thoughts of Ludmilla from his mind. He finished his drink and slipped a tie under his collar. The knot was barely adjusted when the telephone jangled.

  "Yeah?"

  "Nick, Carpenter at the office."

  "Yes?"

  "Home calling. They would like you to buzz them back from here."

  "I'll be right there."

  He cursed, shrugged into his jacket, and went downstairs. It took fifteen minutes to reach the Amalgamated Press and Wire Services offices.

  Inside, he punched the proper code into a rear elevator that whisked him to the top floor and the real offices: AXE, Paris branch.

  Hal Carpenter waved to him as he entered the computer room. "Use line three on the scrambler phone. It's already open all the way through."

  "To whom?"

  "To the old man himself."

  "Oh, Christ," Carter growled, "there goes my week's vacation."

  "Seven-four-seven."

  "Ginger, Nick here. What's up?"

  "That was quick."

  "I'm a slave to command."

  "Ill put you through."

  Carter waited, and then the gruff, cigar-ruined voice boomed across the sea and half of France. "N3, good job… congratulations."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "How did the interrogation go?"

  "Fine. We have all the contacts, routes, and most of the greedy bastards in the States who were ready to sell. Simonov has agreed to go hot again until the stateside boys can set up a sting."

  "Good enough. Where is he now?"

  "On his way to London. The MI6 people want to have a go at him tonight. Our boys will fly him out to Andrews in the morning."

  "That's what I like," David Hawk said and chuckled. "A neat package. I checked with Alma Control about an hour ago. You asked for a few days."

  "Yes, sir. Thought I'd hit Nice, get some sun. Is it off?"

  "Not exactly. Remember Lisa Berrington?"

  It only took two clicks of his memory bank. "I remember."

  "She's got a problem. It's personal, wants to talk to you."

  "But she's already talked to you."

  "Yes. It's nothing we can do anything about, but we do owe her something."

  "Yes, we do," Carter replied, remembering how the woman had looked on the floor of a Hong Kong hotel room with a bullet in her.

  It had been an easy mission. No one should have gotten hurt. Lisa Berrington had almost bought the farm.

  "I really can't authorize anything, and I won't. But if, after you talk to her, you want to check it out. you can. You're on vacation for a week."

  Carter thought of all the beautiful, braless bodies on the pebbly beaches of Nice, and the equally lovely scenery not far away at Cannes and St.-Tropez.

  Then he thought of Lisa Berrington.

  "You still there, N3?"

  "Yeah, I'm still here. You have a number?"

  Hawk gave him a stateside number in Alexandria just outside Washington, and he signed off.

  "Carpenter?"

  "Yeah, Nick?"

  "You got anything to drink around here?"

  "You know that's against company policy, Nick."

  "I didn't ask you abou
t company policy."

  "Last drawer down on your right."

  It was a cheap brand that Carter hated, but at that point, in that place, it was any port in a storm. At that, it was better than the vodka he'd been slugging down not too many days before.

  He poured three fingers in a foggy glass and dialed.

  "Hello?"

  The voice wasn't recognizable through the distortion on the scrambler line. "Lisa Berrington?"

  "Yes."

  "Lisa, this is Nick Carter."

  "Oh, thank God…"

  "I just talked to Washington. I hear you have a problem."

  "Lots."

  She launched into it, and hardly put a comma or a period in until she was finished. He had wiped out the three fingers by the time she finally wound down.

  "That's it in the proverbial nutshell. Not much, huh?"

  "I'm afraid not. Why me, Lisa?"

  He swore he could hear her swallow hard before she spoke again. "Because you're so damned efficient… and you seem to know so many people all over the world… and Delaine sounded so frightened… I thought you might be able to talk to Stephan and poke around…"

  "Whoa, hold it, hold it… slow down, darlin'."

  "And if there is anything wrong, I guess I figure you can work miracles. Ginger said you were in Europe. She didn't say where."

  Carter thought for a moment, and decided that it didn't matter… now. "I'm in Paris. You said you were coming over?"

  "Yes. I'm on Pan Am out of Kennedy at nine forty-five tonight. I was just leaving the apartment to catch the shuttle at National when you called."

  "Frankfurt?"

  "Yes, with one stop in London. My flight gets into Frankfurt at ten-thirty. I change planes there and arrive in Berlin at one-thirty. Stephan is speaking to an antinuclear convention at one, so I told Delaine I would meet her at the hotel at three."

  "All right. What's your Berlin flight number?"

  "Nine-two-two."

  "I'll be on it."

  "Thank you, Nick, so much."

  "But if nothing's up, I demand four days of wild night life in Berlin."

  "You've got it," she said, managing a laugh at last.

  "See you."

  "Until tomorrow, then. And thank you again, Nick," she replied, and the line went dead.

  "Carpenter!"

  "Jesus, Nick, what is it now? I've got four more reports to file before I can eat, and it's almost midnight already."

  "Sorry, old buddy. Can you get me out of here to Frankfurt in the morning in time to catch Flight Nine-two-two Pan Am into Berlin?"

  "Hold on, I'll check."

  Carter sipped another scotch. Minutes later, Carpenter was back.

  "You're set. I'll have the tickets messengered to your hotel early tomorrow morning. They'll be at the desk, is that it?"

  "That's it."

  "What's in Berlin?"

  "An old flame," Carter said, and walked out into the Paris night, all thoughts of the two cafes in Montmartre pushed from his mind.

  Four

  Fräulein Gertrude Klammer held her right wrist with her left to stop it from shaking as she applied lipstick to her thin lips.

  She was rather pretty, in a stem, aging way, with light brown hair that she always wore pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head. The skirt and full blouse she wore were just as severe. Over the blouse she wore a baggy cardigan sweater. She had the nervous habit of pulling the cardigan together, as if her primness could hide her quite remarkable figure.

  The severity and the primness were acquired characteristics. The remarkable figure had been acquired at the age of twelve, and it was on it that she blamed most of her troubled life.

  From the age of thirteen, men had been attracted to Gertrude, and she found it impossible to resist them. And all she ever got from men was a child… and a police record from the prostitution and petty thievery she had engaged in to feed her son.

  Now the boy was seventeen and was enrolled in the Hauptdort Academy in Leipzig. He was a gentleman, and he didn't know that his mother ran a back-street dive that catered to pimps and whores, and a small hotel above it that charged for its rooms by the hour.

  It was a good job, reliable and secure, even though it did not pay well enough. And for that reason, Gertrude was not above doing a little moonlighting now and then.

  The messages, always folded around a five-hundred-mark note, had started arriving three weeks before. It wasn't the first time her mysterious employer had requested her services in such a way.

  There were three altogether, simple and typewritten on plain paper and slipped under her door.

  We will be requiring your services very soon, read the first one.

  A week later the second arrived: A white Mercedes sedan has been reserved for you at Europa car rental. Claim the car at Tegel Airport on Friday afternoon at three o'clock sharp.

  Gertrude had picked up the car and returned to the hotel, where she had parked it in an all-night garage just off the Kurfürsten Damm nearby.

  She had awakened that Sunday morning in a cold sweat, and it got worse when she spotted the white envelope by her front door.

  The message was much longer, but equally as terse in its demands. There was also a key in the envelope.

  Tonight, at exactly midnight, you will deliver the car to Number 9 Wiebe Strasse. It is off Moabit Allee in the south of the Wedding section. The house is vacant. The key is to the padlock on the garage door. Park the car inside and leave the padlock key and the car keys on the seat. Beneath two bricks to your left of the door is one half of your bonus, 1000 marks. Lock the door when you leave.

  You will receive another message on Tuesday telling you where to pick up the car. When you deliver it back to Tegel, the deposit will be delivered to you in cash. You may keep it as the rest of your bonus.

  Needless to say. Fräulein Klammer, you never received any of these messages.

  Fräulein Klammer adjusted her sweater, grabbed a purse, and left her top-floor apartment. Halfway down the stairs, she ran into the night chambermaid.

  "Guten Tag, Fräulein Klammer," the old woman said, ambling on by her, shoulders bent forward with the load of linen she carried.

  "And good morning to you, Marie. Busy?"

  "Ja, ja… such sin on the sabbath! This is what we have come to!"

  Marie was right. The desk on the floor above the street was crowded. Four girls were standing in line waiting for room keys. Their customers stood shyly in the shadows against the far wall.

  "Georg?"

  "Ja, Fräulein?"

  "I'm going out for a while. I shouldn't be over an hour or so."

  "Ja, ja."

  She looked into the hotel bar on the street floor. It was crowded, and the air was filled with deafening American rock music as well as the scent of stale beer and cloying, cheap perfume. Holding her breath and pulling her sweater together as she always did, she moved through the smoky room and stepped out onto Roscher Strasse.

  To her left, the night sounds of the Ku'Damm blasted at her. She moved quickly toward the sound and the garish neons. Once on the Ku'Damm, she walked past peep shows, all-night strip clubs, and sex movies to the garage.

  I know nothing, she thought as she climbed behind the wheel of the Mercedes. I am guilty of nothing but picking up the car and taking it back. What it is used for has nothing to do with me. I am guilty of nothing.

  But as Fräulein Gertrude Klammer pulled out onto the Ku'Damm and turned north toward the Wedding section of West Berlin, she vowed that this would be the last time she would accept one of the envelopes and its shady commands.

  * * *

  Dieter Klauswitz throttled the big, powerful BMW back and leaned it left. Skillfully he eluded oncoming traffic on the See Strasse and glided into the Volkspark Rehberge.

  Ahead of him stretched the wide motorway that split the park from east to west. To his right was the Plotzensee. About a hundred yards inside the entrance he darted the powerful mo
torcycle into the trees onto a pedestrian walk and bicycle lane.

  There were several strollers who dodged out of his way, but none of them screamed abuses at him. Pedestrians were used to the ill-mannered long-haired youths who rode their powerful machines anywhere they chose.

  They only shook their heads and continued their evening stroll as Klauswitz roared around the lake.

  But beneath the black leather and helmet with its dark visor was no raw youth with long hair and greasy beard.

  Dieter Klauswitz was clean-shaven with cold, intense blue eyes and chiseled Aryan features. His hair was strikingly blond and carefully trimmed. And beneath the leather jacket and leather pants was a toned and athletic body.

  Dieter Klauswitz was thirty-eight years old, and an accomplished thief.

  As a youth he had honed his body to perfection. His desire, while he was growing up in Bavaria, was to be a great downhill skier.

  That had failed.

  In place of it he had trained himself in the cross-country biathlon. He schooled himself on every make of rifle known to man and became an expert. His instructors eventually deemed him one of the best marksmen they had ever seen. They also deemed him one of the worst skiers.

  And Klauswitz had another flaw. He loved nice things… clothes, food, the best wines, the most beautiful women.

  He became a thief, and a good one. His athletic body allowed him to scale walls like a human fly, and his alert mind and nimble fingers enabled him to open safes whenever he chose.

  But Klauswitz got caught. He went to prison, was released, and got caught again.

  Now he was awaiting trial, and his old ability with a rifle was going to save him. He had no compunction about killing someone, anyone, if he could secure a new identity, a great deal of money, and avoid another prison term.

  That was why he was in the Volkspark Rehberge, and doing business with Herr Oskar Hessling.

  At the westernmost part of the park was a walled cemetery. The walkway ended abruptly in the trees that separated the lake from the cemetery.

  Klauswitz drove the BMW off into the trees until he was completely enshrouded in darkness. He killed the engine and sat for several seconds. When he was sure no one had seen and become curious about his maneuver, he put the bike on its stand and moved soundlessly through the trees.