The Cold War Swap

by Ross Thomas

  I glanced at my watch. Seventeen minutes had passed since the dark little man had been shot. While the police were looking at the body for clues or whatever they do I smoked a cigarette. By now Karl was behind the bar again and Hilde was standing near the door crumpling her apron.

  “You fixed it with Hilde?”

  Karl nodded. “She hasn’t seen him all day.”

  One of the two plainclothes men detached himself from the group that was fiddling with the body and moved to the bar.

  “You are Herr McCorkle?” he asked, giving my name a fine gutteral pronunciation.

  “That’s correct. I called just after it happened.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Wentzel.”

  We shook hands. I asked him if he would like a drink. He said he would have a brandy. We waited while Karl poured it, said prosit, and he drank. Then back to business.

  “You saw this happen?” Wentzel asked.

  “Some of it. Not all.”

  He nodded, his blue eyes direct and steady, his mouth a thin straight line that offered neither sympathy nor suspicion. He could have been asking about how the fender got dented.

  “Please, would you mind telling me what happened just as you remember it? Omit nothing, no matter how trivial.”

  I told it to him as it had happened from the time I left Berlin, leaving out only Padillo’s presence, which I suppose was something less than trivial. While I talked the technical crew came in, took pictures, dusted for fingerprints, examined the body, put it on a stretcher, threw a blanket over it, and carted it off to wherever they take dead bodies. The morgue, I suppose.

  Wentzel listened carefully but took no notes. I guessed that he had that kind of mind. He never prompted or asked a question. He merely listened, occasionally glancing at his fingernails. They were clean, and so was the white shirt whose widespread collar was plugged by a double-Windsor knot tied into a brown-and-black tie. It didn’t do much for his dark-blue suit. He had shaved sometime during the day and he smelled faintly of lotion.

  I finally ran down, but he kept on listening. The silence grew and I resisted the temptation to add a little frosting here and there. I offered him a cigarette, which he accepted.

  “Uh—this man Maas?”

  “Yes.”

  “You had never seen him before?”

  “Never.”

  “But yet he managed to meet you on the plane at Tempelhof, became friendly with you, secured a ride with you to Godesberg—in fact, to exactly the same destination—and here you observed him running from your establishment after his companion had been shot. Is this not true?”

  “That’s what happened.”

  “Of course,” Wentzel murmured, “of course. But do you not think, Herr McCorkle, do you not think it is something of a coincidence— indeed, an amazing coincidence—that this man should sit next to you, that you should offer him a ride, that he should be going to your establishment, where he was to meet a man who was to be killed?”

  “It had struck me that way,” I said.

  “Your partner, Herr Padillo, was not here?”

  “No; he’s away on a business trip.”

  “I see. If this man Maas attempts to get in touch with you by some fashion, you will notify us immediately?”

  “You’ll be the first.”

  “And tomorrow would it be possible for you to come down to our bureau to sign a statement? It will be necessary for your employees to come also. At eleven hours, shall we say?”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  He looked at me carefully. He would remember my face ten years from now.

  “No,” he said. “Not for the present.”

  I offered the other three a drink; they looked at Wentzel, who nodded. They ordered brandy and drank it at a gulp. It was just as well. Karl had not poured the best. We shook hands all around and Wentzel marched off into the afternoon. I stared at the corner table where Maas and his friend had sat. There was nothing there now. Just some tables and chairs that almost looked inviting.

  If it weren’t for money, I told myself, I would sell out and go to Santa Fe or Kalispell and open a bar where the only problem would be how to get old Jack Hudson back to the ranch of a Saturday night. But there is a lot of difference in saloon-keeping. Here in the shadow of the Siebengebirge, in the purple shadows of the seven hills where once lived Snow White and the Seven Drawfs and where Siegfried slew the fearsome dragon, I was more or less the Sherman Billingsley of the Rhine. A community fixture, friend and confidant of minister and jackanapes alike. Respected. Even admired.

  I was also making a great deal of money and could probably retire at forty-five. The fact that my partner was a spook for busybodies who flitted about looking under God knows what rocks for the blueprints of the Russians’ next spaceship to Saturn was incidental—even trifling. And the fact that my place was actually our place—the spooks and I—and the fact that they used it, for all I knew, as an international message center with the secret codes imbedded in the Gibson onions—all this would only serve as cocktail conversation over a couple of tall cold ones at the Top of the Mark in the good days to come.

  And the fact that two masked desperadoes burst into the saloon, shot some little man dead, and then walked out followed by a fat stranger I met on a plane would only serve to lend an air of international glamour and intrigue: a decided asset. It was like postwar Vienna in the movies, where Orson Welles went around muttering so low and fast you couldn’t understand what he was saying except that he was up to no good.

  There was the money. And the good cars. And the imported clothes, the thick steaks, and the choice wines that came gratis to my table, the gifts of friendly cellars from the Moselle, the Ahr and the Rhine. And then there was the fact that Bonn abounded in women. With that cheery thought I took down my mental “for sale” sign, told Karl to watch the cash register, checked to see that the chef was sober, and went out into the street, bound for the apartment of an interesting young lady who went by the name of Fredl Arndt.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was around six-thirty when I arrived at Fräulein Doktor Arndt’s apartment, which was on the top floor of a ten-story hochaus that commanded a splendid view of the Rhine, the Seven Hills, and the red crumbling ruins of the castle called Drachenfels.

  I rang her bell, told her who it was over the almost inaudible intercommunication system, and pushed open the thick glass door as she rang the unlocking buzzer. She was waiting for me at her door as I stepped out of the elevator, which happened to be working that day,

  “Guten Abend, Fräulein Doktor,” I murmured, bending low over her hand, a continental touch that had taken me a few rainy afternoons to perfect under the watchful eye of an old Hungarian countess who had taken a shine to me when she had learned I ran a saloon. I had brushed up on my manners while the countess had run up a sizeable bar bill. We had parted, mutually satisfied.

  Fredl smiled. “What brings you around, Mac? Sober, I mean.”

  “There’s a cure for that,” I said, handing her a bottle of Chivas Regal.

  “You’re in time for the early show. I was going to wash my hair. After that I was going to bed.”

  “You already have an engagement then?”

  “Solo. For a girl on the wrong side of thirty in this town it’s the usual way.”

  While it was true that the female population greatly outnumbered the tired but happy male population of Bonn that year, Fredl wasn’t one of those who sat by the phone hoping that it would ring so she could go to the junior prom. She was distinctively pretty in that European way that seems to wear almost forever and then changes slowly into beauty. And she was smart. The Fräulein Doktor title was real. She covered politics for one of the Frankfurt papers, the intellectual one, and she had spent a year in Washington, most of the time on the White House assignment.

  “Fix us a drink. It makes the years slough away. You’ll feel like sixteen.”

  “I was sixteen in ‘forty-nine and part of a teenage gang th
at played the black market with GI cigarettes to work our way through school.”

  “At least you weren’t a loner.”

  She retired with the bottle into the kitchenette. The apartment was a large one-room affair that boasted a small balcony for the sunwor-shipers. One wall was lined with books from floor to ceiling. In front of them stood a huge antique desk that I had thought of marrying the girl for. There were also a pale-beige carpet, two sofa beds, some good Swedish chairs and a small dining table. The wall along the balcony was all glass and the other two walls were hung with some good prints and some outspoken originals. It wasn’t a place just to hang your hat. Somebody lived there.

  Fredl placed the drinks on a low ebony cocktail table that seemed to float in the air because of its cleverly concealed legs. She sat next to me on the couch and kissed me on the temple.

  “You’re getting grayer and grayer, Mac. You’re getting old.”

  “Nothing soon but memories. When all of us old geezers gather around the corner bar in a few years to spend our Social Security checks and start wheezing and drooling to each other about all the girls we’ve laid, I’ll just let that film of memory descend and mutter, ‘Bonn, lovely, lovely Bonn.’ ”

  “Whom do you know in the States, Mac?”

  I thought a minute. “Nobody, really. Nobody I want to see. A couple of reporters and embassy types perhaps, but I met them over here. I had a doting and dotty great aunt I was fond of, but she died years ago. That’s where I got the money to open the saloon. Or part of it.”

  “Then where’s your home now?”

  I shrugged. “I was born in San Francisco, but, hell, that’s nobody’s home town. I like New York and Chicago. I like Denver. I even like Washington and London and Paris. Padillo thinks Los Angeles is Paradise-west. If he had his way he’d have the Autobahn run right through the heart of Bonn and plant palm trees along the verge.”

  “How is Mike?”

  “Fine. Off on a trip.”

  “And how was Berlin, rat? You knew I had a couple of days off.”

  “A pure and unsuccessful business venture, laced with too many Martinis—and an assassination waiting for me when I got back.”

  Fredl had nestled her head on my shoulder. Her blond hair tickled my ear. It smelled clean and feminine and fresh. I didn’t see why it needed washing. I let the comment sink in and she sat up with a jerk. I almost spilled my drink.

  “You’re kidding me again.”

  “Well, it happened like this. Two men came in and shot another one. Dead.” I sat back and drew on my cigarette. Suddenly Fredl was all reporter. She fired questions and didn’t take any notes either, and I had a hard time deciding whether Fräulein Doktor Arndt or Lieutenant Wentzel knew more about the killing. It was probably a draw.

  “Does Mike know?” she asked.

  “I haven’t seen him today,” I lied. “He’ll probably think it’s good for business. And God knows the correspondents will descend on us tomorrow at lunch. By the time they stagger out there’ll be a dozen theories and inside stories ranging from a political assassination to a grudge killing by a couple of superannuated SS members.”

  “It depends upon the paper they work for,” Fredl said.

  “And the number of drinks they’ve had.”

  “It might be interesting at that. Buy me lunch tomorrow?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now you can kiss me again.”

  “I haven’t kissed you for the first time yet.”

  “I’m too proud to admit it.”

  I kissed her and, like always, it was as if I were kissing her for the first time—as if everything were new and we both were very, very young but had been born into the world with a postgraduate degree in technique.

  “Get the light, darling,” Fredl whispered.

  “Both of them?”

  “Just the one. You know I like to see what I’m doing.”

  I left Fredl reluctantly at four A.M. She was sleeping, a slight smile on her lips, her face slightly flushed but relaxed. The bed looked warm and inviting. For a long moment I was tempted to lie down again. Instead I padded barefooted and buck-naked into the kitchen, groped for the Scotch bottle, took a long drink, and moved back into the living room, where I dressed quietly. I leaned over and kissed Fredl gently on the forehead. She didn’t stir. That irritated me, so I kissed her again, this time on the lips. She wriggled and opened her eyes and smiled.

  “I just wanted you to know what you’re missing,” I said.

  “Are you leaving, darling?”

  “I must.”

  “Come back to bed. Please.”

  “Can’t. I have to see the police again. Don’t forget lunch.”

  She smiled and I kissed her again. “Go back to sleep,” I said. She smiled again, drowsy and content. I let myself out, rode the elevator down, and got into the car.

  At four in the morning Bonn seems like an abandoned Hollywood set. In fact, most of the good burghers have bolted the doors by ten, unmindful of—even indifferent to—the fact that theirs is one of the world’s most important capitals. In some respects, Bonn is very much like Washington. So I made it from Fredl’s place to mine in something less than ten minutes, a new kind of record, considering that we lived a good six miles apart. I parked the car in the garage, closed and locked the overhead door, and walked up the steps to my apartment.

  After five moves in eight years I finally had an apartment that suited. Up in the hills outside Muffendorf, it was a duplex built by a bicycle manufacturer from Essen who had struck it rich in the early 1950s, when bicycles were the major form of personal transportation in postwar Germany. He had a penchant for contemporary architecture, but as a widower he spent most of his time following the girls and the sun. I think he was in Florida then, or it may have been Mexico. His frequent and prolonged absences gave me the privacy I wanted, and even when he was in Germany he spent a great portion of his time gossiping with cronies in the cafés of Düsseldorf—or just watching the girls walk by. He was a Social Democrat, and sometimes we would sit around, drink beer, and speculate on how long it would be before Willy Brandt was Chancellor.

  The house was a two-level affair, built of dark-red stone with a shake-shingle shed roof, and it had what my parents would have called a veranda running the full length of two sides. The owner had the smaller, lower flat; I had the upper one, which consisted of a bedroom, a small study, a kitchen and a large living room with a fireplace. I had to walk up twelve steps to reach my front door. I climbed the steps and put the key in the lock and turned. The voice came from the deep shadows to my left.

  “Good morning, Herr McCorkle. I’ve been waiting for you for quite some time.”

  It was Maas.

  I shoved the door open. “The cops are looking for you.”

  He moved out of the shadows. In one hand he carried his familiar briefcase, in the other he held the Luger. It wasn’t pointed at me. He just held it loosely at his side.

  “I know. A regrettable affair. I’m afraid that I must invite myself in.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “The bath’s on the right and there are fresh towels in the linen closet. Breakfast is at ten, and if there’s anything special you want, just tell the maid.”

  Maas sighed. “Your English is very fast, Herr McCorkle, but it seems you are making a joke. I think it is a joke, ja?”

  “I guess so.”

  Maas sighed again. “Shall we go in? You first, if you do not mind.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  We went in—me first. I walked over to the bar and poured myself a drink. Maas watched with a disapproving manner. Perhaps it was because I didn’t offer him one. To hell with him. It was my booze.

  I drank the first one and then poured another. Then I sat down in an easy chair, put one leg over the arm, and lighted a cigarette. I thought I was putting on a very good show. Calm, nonchalant. The epitome of the sophisticated barkeep. Maas stood in the middle of the room, fat, middle-aged and tired.
The briefcase was clutched in one hand, the Luger still dangled from the other. The brown suit was rumpled; his hat was gone. I said: “Oh, hell. Put the gun down and go fix yourself a drink.” He looked at the gun as if he had just grown a second thumb and tucked it away in his shoulder holster. He fixed himself a drink.

  “Please, may I sit down?”

  “Put your feet up. Make yourself at home.”

  “You have a very nice apartment, Herr McCorkle.”

  “Thank you. I chose it for its privacy.”

  He sipped his drink. His gaze wandered around the room. “I suppose you’re wondering at my presence.”

  That didn’t seem to call for an answer.

  “The police are searching for me, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “That unfortunate occurrence of the afternoon.”

  “It was especially unfortunate because it happened in my bar. Just for the sake of curiosity, who selected the rendezvous—you or your late friend?”

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “This is excellent whiskey, Herr McCorkle.”

  I noticed his glass was empty. “Help yourself.”

  He walked over to the bar and turned his back on me as he poured. I looked at it and thought it would make a fine target for a knife, if I had a knife and could remember how to throw it. Or I could slug him with the poker. Or throw a hammer lock on him. There were a lot of things I could do, but I kept sitting in the chair, sipping the Scotch, smoking the cigarette, the perfect picture of inaction stemming from indecision. Maas turned; glass in hand, and walked wearily across the room to sink back into the easy chair. He took a sip of his drink and sighed his appreciation. He seemed to be full of sighs that evening.

  “It has been such a long day,” he said.

  “Now that you bring it up, I must agree. I’m also sorry to pull the ‘here’s your hat, what’s your hurry’ routine, but I’m tired. I’ve got a date downtown this morning with the police, who want to ask me some questions. Then there’s the question of running the saloon. That’s how I make my living. So if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it very much—you don’t know how much—if you would just kind of bug off.”