Hour of the Assassins

by Andrew Kaplan

  The worlds of espionage, crime, and ordinary life intersect in the bedroom. While on a short spell of desk duty at Langley just before he left the Company, he had read a COMINT report on contacts in Eastern Europe. The Warsaw agent-in-place had sent a list of prostitutes who operated out of the major tourist hotels with the tacit approval of the secret police, called the U.B. Marysia was the only name on the list he still remembered.

  The hotel suite was furnished in the kind of overstuffed baroque fashion that tried to resurrect the Victorian era. It looked a little like a stage set, Caine thought. He half-expected the maid to come in and dramatically announce that King Edward was dead. He went over to the shuttered French doors that led to the balcony and looked out at the ochreous clouds that promised more snow. Along the Krakowskie Przedmiescie late-afternoon streetlights gave off a pale sulphurous glow as the light failed, as though the sun were truly a dying star.

  With a hideous leer, like an aging gargoyle come to life, the bellboy returned with the vodka and the woman. The leer almost turned to a smile when Caine gave him a lavish tip. The bellboy bowed and left, as Caine turned to look at the woman.

  She was a stylish blonde, thirtyish and prettier than he had expected. She was puffing a cigarette through a gold-plated holder and wore a supercilious expression, or perhaps she just wanted to raise the price. Her tight dress was red and beginning to fray as it strained at the seams. She paused for a moment to study her makeup in a round mirror surrounded by a bronze frame made up of garish metal cupids, then glanced around as though she wanted to rearrange the furniture. Caine watched her as she moved across the room with an air of studied grace. She was pretty enough, he thought. The only question was, How hungry was she?

  “What’s your name?” he asked and when she looked at him blankly, he repeated the question in German.

  “Marysia.”

  “Come over here.”

  She approached him, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, then looked at him with surprise as he removed her hand from his thigh.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Two thousand, lover,” she replied breathlessly and he somehow knew that it was more than she was used to getting.

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll give you five thousand zlotys for the name of your boyfriend in the U.B.”

  “Schwein,” she hissed, her eyes blazing with feigned anger and real fear as she started to back away. He grabbed her arm and threw her on the bed, pinning her down with his weight on top of her. She twisted desperately, then took a deep breath as though she were about to scream and Caine slapped her face hard.

  “Who do you know?” he said, his voice soft and cool.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said, her eyes beginning to brim with tears.

  “I’m talking about the man in the Policia Ubespieczenia you pay off, or give it to for free.”

  “How should I know any of the pigs in the U.B.?”—her voice quavering.

  “Shit,” he retorted sarcastically. “You know all right. You must be the biggest earner of hard currency in Poland. You’re a national asset, so don’t give me that shit. If some U.B. officials weren’t getting any, you’d be out of business.”

  She looked at him seriously, as if making up her mind. Her world was full of dangerous men, but he frightened her.

  “Let me up, bitte,” she said. “I need a cigarette.” She got up and nervously jammed a cigarette into the holder and lit it. When she turned around, she saw that he had placed five thousand zlotys on the bed. She picked up the money and tucked it into her bodice.

  “What do you want to know?”

  He poured two large glasses of vodka and for a moment they sat on the edge of the bed, drinking quietly. He felt hollow inside, wondering how he had come to this, acting like a pimp to a Polish whore in a baroque Warsaw hotel room. He felt as if he hadn’t drawn a clean breath of air in years. He downed the rest of the vodka in a sudden swallow.

  “What’s the name of your contact in the U.B.?”

  “Grzabowski,” she responded, without looking up.

  “Is he married?”

  “Yes, but—” She looked at him in confusion. So it was the badger game, he decided. Good enough for a quick snatch-and-grab.

  “When do you usually see him?”

  “It varies,” she said and her eyes lit with a bright scorn. “Whenever he feels like it.”

  “Where do you meet?”

  “My place.”

  “Can you get him there tonight?”

  “Why not?” She shrugged.

  “Good. Get him there tonight and I’ll give you another five thousand.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked nervously.

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “He’ll kill me,” she blurted out desperately, pressing her fingers against her temples.

  “No, he won’t. Believe me, he won’t.”

  She looked at his cold green eyes and shivered. Then she bolted down the rest of her vodka, looking for courage in the bottom of the glass.

  “I want ten thousand,” she said defiantly. Came smiled and shrugged. “Is there anything else?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes filling with the dreamy smoke of lust. Anything to fill the sense of emptiness he felt, like an old can emptied of air and about to crumple. She smiled back nervously and with practiced fingers began to unzip his fly.

  They had dinner at the Krokodyl in the Old Town marketplace. Marysia was much more animated as she started on her fourth glass of honeyed Soplica, assuming the grand manner of the belle dame, to whom dinner at the posh Krokodyl was an everyday affair. The small jazz orchestra was synocopating its heavy-handed way through an old Beatles song. Marysia tried to lead him to the dance floor, telling him that she just loved “moderny” music. Caine bargained with her, as with a child, promising to dance with her after she telephoned Grzabowski to set up the rendezvous. She sulked a bit after the call, but was soon smiling and affectionate as they marched around the dance floor with all the grace of robots who had not quite mastered the art of movement. This was where she belonged, she felt. Or at least that was what she confided to him in a bleary, maudlin voice as he drove the Volga across the Slasko-Dabrowski Bridge to the Praga district on the east side of the river. It was all her first husband’s fault, she pronounced with drunken solemnity, swaying against him as he took a corner. When they got to her apartment, Caine took both cameras—the Hasselblad and the Polaroid—out of the trunk and walked up the dark stairs behind her, goosing her to keep her mind off the cameras. She giggled as he grabbed her, twitching her behind as though she were still a seductive young girl.

  The one-room apartment was on the second floor, with a double-glazed window that faced a brick wall. The room was shabby and bare, with a sense of desolation revealed in the pitiless glare of the unshaded overhead light bulb. Scattered around the room were little throw rugs and a few knickknacks: desperate feminine touches of color that failed to bring the room to life. There was the sound of a toilet gurgling next door and the apartment stank of cheap toilet water. A small closet, covered by a crepe curtain instead of a door, was set in a corner near the bed. Caine made some room for himself in the closet, loaded the cameras, and slipped the Bauer into his jacket pocket. He opened a bottle of Bulgarian brandy and poured them each a stiff drink. Then they sat on the edge of the rumpled bed and waited.

  The hall stairs began to creak under a heavy, slow tread. For a moment Marysia began to pale, and as he headed for the closet, Caine turned and winked at her with a sense of reassurance that he didn’t feel. Grzabowski paused at the door, breathing heavily, then loudly knocked. Marysia opened the door with a flourish, handing Grzabowski the half-finished glass Caine had just been drinking. Peering at them through a cigarette-burn hole in the curtain, Caine grinned appreciatively. The girl had a certain style after all.

  Grzabowski was an extremely large, heavyset man with wispy blond hair rapi
dly receding from a jowly red face. He wore a tight-fitting black suit and Caine could smell the musty odor of perspiration from across the room. Grzabowski swallowed the drink and demanded something of Marysia in a harsh, loud voice. Then without a preamble he reached into Marysia’s bodice and grabbed one of her breasts, kneading it in a heavy-handed way, like baker’s dough. Although she smiled, Marysia just stood there stolidly, like a cow being milked. As he pushed her toward the bed, Caine began snapping pictures with the Hasselblad. He was glad he had brought the Bauer, he thought. Grzabowski was one of those men who simply bull their way through life, trampling on feelings without even noticing. The only way to make friends with a Grzabowski, Caine mused, would be by pulling a thorn out of his paw. Marysia lay on the bed, her dress pulled up over her hips and her legs spread wide. As Grzabowski prepared to mount her, Caine snapped a Polaroid shot with the flash and stepped out from behind the curtain.

  Startled, Grzabowski turned and began to move angrily toward Caine. He stopped when he noticed the Bauer held steady in Caine’s hand. For a long moment the two men stared at each other, Grzabowski breathing heavily, rage and confusion mixed in his red face.

  “Przepraszam.” Sorry, Caine said. It was one of the few words in Polish he knew. He pulled the positive from the Polaroid and tossed it over to Grzabowski, who studied it briefly and muttered something in Polish. Although Caine didn’t understand the words, it sounded like a threat. After all, a U.B. officer had the power to make even high-ranking Party officials tremble. The only power he need ever fear was that of his own superiors. Caine smiled as he approached Grzabowski, whose eyes never wavered from the Bauer. Once you’ve taken the offensive you must never give them a chance to think, Caine remembered Koenig saying. Caine was still smiling when with a sudden twisting motion, he brought his right leg into a slicing side kick, catching Grzabowski in the groin. The Pole crumpled to the floor with a high-pitched animal scream. Holding himself, he began to retch, as Caine sat down on the edge of the bed. Marysia’s eyes were wide with fear, like a cornered animal.

  “Now we’re ready to talk, Herr Grzabowski,” Caine said in German.

  “Who are you?” Grzabowski managed to gasp, his hands clasped tightly between his legs.

  “Your enemy,” Caine replied calmly.

  Marysia was staring at him with hypnotic fascination, like a mouse cornered by a snake. She couldn’t take her eyes from his, that glowed green as radium with an inner life. Shudders of fear coursed through her body like shocks of alternating current.

  “You’d better take a shower,” Caine advised her dryly. “This Schwein has made you dirty.”

  Without a word she began to back away from him. In a moment she had gathered her things and was gone. He listened to her footsteps as she tore down the stairs. He heard the front door slam and the sounds of running were lost in the Arctic night.

  “She’s gone,” Grzabowski said. He had struggled to a sitting position on the floor.

  “Better for her. Better for us,” Caine replied. He lit a cigarette and passed it to Grzabowski, feeling strangely drained.

  “What do you want?” Grzabowski snarled, a harsh edge coming back into his German. Caine stuck the muzzle of the Bauer into Grzabowski’s ear, as though to remind him of the situation. Then he picked up the Polaroid picture and studied it ironically.

  “Not exactly your best side, but still recognizable,” he remarked conversationally. From somewhere in the building came the sound of someone with a racking cough.

  “Yup tvayu mat,” Grzabowski cursed.

  “That won’t get us anywhere,” Caine sighed. He felt tired and dirty, like a child after a long day’s play in the mud.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” Grzabowski demanded, a spark of animal cunning in his face. Caine didn’t seem to want him dead at the moment.

  “I’m a colleague of yours. Interpol,” Caine replied, flashing him the bronze badge he had picked up in Las Vegas. Grzabowski looked at his badge as if Caine had gotten it by sending in cereal box tops. “I want some information.”

  “Why all this?” Grzabowski gestured at the photograph. “Why not just send a Blue?”

  “Let’s just say that there are too many leaks through our own official channels. German and Austrian leaks, understand?”

  Grzabowski nodded knowledgeably. It was commonly known in the intelligence community that the Interpol office in Vienna held secrets the way a sieve holds water.

  “If it’s not through channels, why should I help you?”

  “Because of what will happen to you if you don’t,” Caine replied ominously. “First of all I’ll make the pictures available to everyone from your chief and your wife to the Zycie Warszawy,” he said, gesturing at the Hasselblad. “Then, I’ll implicate you in the worst spy scandal since Maclean hit Istanbul. If anything happens to the girl or to me, I’ll lay everything that’s gone wrong in Moscow since Prague in ’68 right at your doorstep.”

  “The Russians won’t buy it,” Grzabowski replied hoarsely.

  “You know them better than I do. You tell me if Moscow won’t find something they will buy,” Caine replied, gambling that a U.B. official taking advantage of hookers was bound to have something he’d want to keep hidden.

  “And if I get you the information, what then?” Grzabowski replied, nervously licking his lips like a snake testing the air.

  “You get the pictures and the negatives. You never see me again. And all this just for some information that won’t compromise your patriotism at all. At the very worst you’ll be helping an Interpol agent in an old case that is truly in Poland’s best interest. Oh, yes, I’ll pay you one thousand cash, in dollars, for your trouble and any inconvenience,” Caine added persuasively. It was a standard Company ploy, Caine thought. First the stick, then the carrot, thrown out like a lifeline to a desperate man, sugar-coated with greed. It always worked.

  Except that it hadn’t bought him anything, Caine mused as he drove from Krakow to Oswieçim. He wanted to think about it, about anything, as a way of taking his mind off the driving. And it wasn’t just because being bounced around in a springless Volga while driving across Poland in winter was an interesting way of rearranging his internal organs. The truth was that he didn’t know why he was going to Oswieçim.

  Large wet flakes of snow splattered the windshield for an instant before being wiped away by the monotonous slap of the windshield wipers. It had begun falling as he left Krakow that morning, coating the green cupolas of the Town Hall Tower with a soft white topping, like whipped cream on pistachio ice cream cones. The wind swept the snow across the endless plain, deadening all sound except for the metronome stropping of the wipers and the soft rumble of the tire chains. Everywhere there was nothing but the pale vista of white and gray in an empty world. There was no sign of any life. Dreamlike, the Volga slithered down the icy road. He could have been driving across the Antarctic plateau, an ice planet, forever dead, where no life had ever crawled out of warm primordial seas.

  By rights he should have taken a plane from Okecie immediately after his r.d.v. with Grzabowski. They met in the Plac Zamkowy near the statue of King Sigismund. Caine had stood with his back to the rail that overlooked the open expanse of the Vistula, watching Grzabowski approach. Grzabowski had tramped awkwardly across the snow, with a weary, reluctant tread, as though he were a member of the Grande Armée retreating from Moscow. Caine’s eyes rapidly quartered the area toward Jerozolimskie, but there were no tails. They both carried copies of the Zycie Warszawy to make the switch. A pale cloud of exhaled air formed around Grzabowski’s face as Caine examined a low-quality photocopy of the Mengele file. The wind whipped the pages as he quickly leafed through it. The file contained the Interpol report and the bill of indictment from Freiburg that he had already seen in Wasserman’s dossier. There was also a bill of indictment from a Moscow court. But as Caine laboriously picked his way through the Cyrillic script, he realized that it was just a listing of specific murder counts. Th
ere were dozens more than in the Freiburg indictment, but no reference to Mengele’s whereabouts. It was a dead end.

  Without a word Caine placed the file back into the newspaper and handed it back to Grzabowski.

  “Why?” Grzabowski wanted to know, his breath rapid and nervous. “Why did you want to see this?”

  Caine glanced at Grzabowski’s watery blue eyes, wondering if there was anything more than professional curiosity in the question. There was really nothing to say. He shrugged and walked away, the snow creaking under his feet like an old floor.

  That should have been it, he thought as he drove. Of course Mengele never headed east; the Communists didn’t know anything, or even care. He knew he should have gone directly to the airport before Grzabowski had a chance to think about it. Instead he had checked out of the Europejski and driven to Krakow. And all for no reason at all. Except that he had to. Some instinct, some thought below the conscious level was driving him to Oswieçim and the only rational reason he could give himself was that that was where it all began. That and the knowledge that, as every good agent knew, when you get a hunch like that you follow it. It comes from some part of the brain that thinks more profoundly than the conscious mind. Sometimes it’s called “instinct,” or “mission feel”; the name really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t reason, so you have to rationalize what you’re doing, Caine thought. It just tells you what you have to do.

  The snowstorm had emptied the small village of any sign of life as he drove slowly through Oswieçim. A single streetlamp cast a pale yellow light that failed to brighten the drab row of houses along the road. On an impulse Caine made a U-turn and parked in front of a kawiarnia, its smoky light spilling ineffectually through the frosted window. He went in and sat down at the counter. The restaurant was empty except for the counterman wiping his hands on a dirty, threadbare apron and two workmen morosely drinking vodka at a corner table. The counterman glanced at Caine without interest. Caine ordered bigos and herbata tea, then glanced around but no one paid any attention to him. It surprised him, because the Poles usually have a lively interest in strangers, especially foreigners. But in this strange, bleak landscape nothing seemed to matter, as though they were all trapped in some limbo beyond the grave. Caine ate the bigos slowly, the sauerkraut soggy and wilted. But at least the herbata was hot. He wasn’t really hungry, he realized. It was just that he had an uncanny dread of what he was about to do and had decided to have lunch as a way of putting it off for a while. At last he took one more sip of tea and paid the dour counterman, leaving the bigos half-finished. When he stepped outside, he saw that it had stopped snowing.