A Despicable Profession

by John Knoerle

  Shit, what a tangle. I looked on the bright side. If Anna refused to open the door I was free to drive back to Dahlem, drag Leonid into the bathroom and shove his head in the toilet.

  A pleasant prospect.

  But not one worthy of Wild Bill Donovan’s fair-haired boy. Wild Bill’s fair-haired boy was expected to find a way to rescue Ambrose while exposing the perfidy of Leonid and the Committee to Free Berlin, thereby keeping the Soviet tank divisions that were supposedly gunning their engines on the eastern banks of the Elbe from shifting into gear and starting World War III.

  How was that fair?

  When the local bell tower tolled nine a.m. I washed up in the sink, dried my hands on the seat of my pants, waited another precautionary half hour then started up the basement steps. I listened at the door at the top of the stairs. It wouldn’t do to step out just as Leonid strode through the lobby, late for work.

  Nothing to hear. I stepped into the lobby. The coast was clear. I hurried to the rear fire stairs and started climbing.

  My late night noodling had yielded one nugget. Leonid knew, from monitoring our conversation, that Ambrose and I would pay a visit to his apartment while he was away at work. He would not have needed to inform Anna of this, not needed her to invite me in for tea. He would have known I’d post Ambrose as a street sentry, known his goons could snatch Ambrose before I made it halfway across the lobby. Anna was not necessarily a co-conspirator.

  I walked down the corridor to apartment K, passing the open door to the apartment next door. I heard a small dog yapping.

  Keep it up, Fido, give me cover. Yap your fool head off till I talk my way into the apartment.

  Fido did. He caught my scent and chased me all the way down the hall, yapping his fool head off. He was one of those fluffy rich-lady dogs. I shushed him as I knocked on the door to apartment K. He didn’t pay the least attention.

  I carried all the gear that the well-trained espionage agent is supposed to carry – counterfeit credentials, a gun, a folding knife, lock picks, a pen light. I even had an L pill stashed in my wallet somewhere. But my spy school instructor had never said anything about dog biscuits.

  I squatted down and made nice. “Hey there, buddy, what’s all the fuss?”

  Fido’s yapping intensified. I tried Deutsch. “Hallo, Kumpel, Was soll die Aufregung?”

  No go. I grabbed for the little mutt’s yapper but he jumped up, bit me right on the schnozz and didn’t let go.

  Man, that smarts. I had to employ top secret ju jitsu disabling techniques to persuade the little fiend to unlock his jaw. Then I reared back and heaved him down the hall.

  This did not go unobserved. Fido’s owner, a plump matron in a bathrobe and hairnet, shrieked in horror at the sight of her precious pooch tumbling ass-end over teakettles.

  She tried to scoop him up but damned if the little fiend didn’t scramble to his feet and race back down the hall for another go at me, his owner chasing frantically behind, her bathrobe becoming unhinged in the process.

  A bloody Yank under attack by a rabid Pomeranian and a shrieking half-naked neighbor was the charming tableaux Anna beheld when she opened the door in her painting smock.

  It wasn’t a complete disaster. I wouldn’t have to invent some clever reason for Anna to let me in. I only had to, as the little fiend tore at my ankles and his owner paused halfway down the hall to reassemble herself, turn to Anna, blood streaming down my chin, and say, drolly, “This is the last time I will ask to borrow your bathroom, I promise.”

  Anna didn’t say no. She didn’t say anything. She was at a loss for words maybe. I entered her apartment. She bent down and spoke to the little fiend, sharply, in Russian.

  He shut his yap.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Anna marched me to the bathroom matter-of-factly, pushing my chin up so I didn’t drip on her nice clean floor. It worked. The blood from the puncture wounds in my nose sluiced behind my ears and down my neck and made my shirt wet.

  She sat me down on the pot and swabbed me with gauze and isopropyl. There are few things in the life more pleasant that being ministered to by a beautiful woman, even one who was...ouch... ticked off.

  “You haf brought me much trouble,” she said, clamping a compress to my beezer with a bit more force than absolutely necessary.

  “I am very sorry Anna.” I sounded like Bugs Bunny. “And now, forgive me, I am here to bring you more trouble.”

  She stood back and laughed at me, a pearly little trill in the back of her throat, pretty as birdsong. “You haf more trouble?”

  “Yes I do.”

  Anna left the bathroom and went to the parlor. I followed, holding the compress to my nose. Anna stared out the window and waited for me to say what I had to say. It was another odd moment between us. Domestic, familiar. Why didn’t she just march me out?

  “Anna I believe that Leonid had my partner Ambrose kidnapped, taken prisoner. Leonid did this while you and I shared cups of tea the other day.” She turned towards me. I mimed a cup, my pinky in the air. “Is there anything that you would like to tell me?”

  Anna had a stark face, all planes and angles, nothing round. A Russian face. One seriously pissed off Russian face.

  “You think I can do such thing?”

  “I don’t want to think so Anna. But I don’t know you very well.”

  Anna gave me a defiant look and turned around and pulled her painter’s smock up to her shoulders to reveal a pale naked back pocked with deep purple bruises and a semi-circular abrasion at the base of her neck. Leonid had pressed her face to the floor while he worked her over.

  I had seen a lot worse, but it got to me. The methodic nature of it, like he’d been following one of those Arthur Murray dance floor diagrams. How miserably sick did you have to be to do that to your wife?

  Anna lowered her painting smock to its proper place and turned to face me. I had an unforgivable, burn-in-hell-for-all-eternity pang of regret when she did that - shook her smock back in place before turning around. Anna wasn’t wearing a brassiere. And I so wanted to see her breasts.

  Yeah, I know. When did I say different? And now I was going to ask Anna to betray her husband and put herself in the crosshairs.

  I couldn’t do it. Not yet.

  “Anna you must leave here. You must go away, you can’t live like this. You must leave.” Anna hugged herself and looked at me, her eyes filled with tears and resignation. “I can help you. I can, I have money. I am rich Amerikanski!”

  Anna didn’t smile. She did pucker her lips a bit, as if considering.

  “Do you have somewhere you can go? Someone who will shelter you, take you in?”

  She scraped a tear from her cheek with her fist. When she spoke she was barely audible.

  “I haf cousin, Sasha, who will take me.”

  “Great, that’s great. Where does Sasha live?” Anna inclined her head. “Where does she live, reside?” She frowned. I used the only Russian noun I knew. “Where is her dacha?”

  This brought a fleeting smile and a starry gaze and three words, whispered, as if in prayer.

  “New York City.”

  I fought to keep my encouraging smile in place. New York. How in hell was I going to pull that off?

  Anna noted my frozen smile and started in on her fingers again, strangling them. I don’t know why that bothered me so much, but I would have moved mountains to keep Anna from strangling her pale delicately-tapered fingers purple.

  “Yes Anna. Da. I will arrange for you to travel to New York City.”

  Anna’s muffled sobs and hiccupping thank you’s were gratifying, but she had ceased her violent hand wringing, that was the main thing. I approached and took those glorious digits in mine and squeezed them, gently. She squeezed back, with a ferocity that shot bolts of pain up to my shoulders.

  We were face to face now, blood pumping, untoward things begging to happen. I told myself not to misbehave and meant it and forgot it a second later. I bent down to kiss her. She
backed away. I tasted why. Salty blood was streaming down my face.

  I pressed the compress to my nose. Anna guided me to a chair, took hold of the compress and clamped down. I had to brace my feet to keep from sliding off the chair. Not a hundred pounds dripping wet yet strong as a stevedore. God only knew what horrors she had survived in wartime Russia. She was a woman to be reckoned with.

  I sat still and waited for my blood to clot. The silence between us was easy, companionable. Ivan the cat slinked over and jumped on my lap. My eyelids drooped. Time to speak up.

  “Anna I need your help now,” I said, my words echoing through the foggy chambers of my head. I stifled a yawn. “I need your help to...bring Leonid to justice, to show, to beweisen to my boss that Leonid is a schlecht Mann. Do you understand?”

  Anna shook her head, then nodded just as quickly. “I know what you say, not what you ask.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Leonid tells me nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “I do not, even, to meet his family.”

  Family? “I thought that Leonid’s only living relative, his only family, was his Mutter.”

  Anna looked down at me with a curious intensity, then crossed to a dresser drawer and dug deep. She returned with a framed photograph, a professional portrait of two young children dressed in their Sunday best. A young boy with fine features holding his lace-swaddled kid sister on his lap. Their love for each other was unmistakable.

  “Leonid’s sister? Schwester?”

  Anna nodded. Leonid had told me he was an only child, doubtless told the CO the same. Not a big lie but one I could prove.

  “Is she still alive?”

  “Yes, yes. She is living closely.”

  “Do you know where? Her address? Ansprache?”

  Anna pouted, sorry to disappoint me. “But she is not so far. They meet on some evening.”

  “Leonid tells you this?”

  “No. But he is happy after. And he is never happy.”

  Well. Here we all were again. Hal, Anna and Ivan the Terrible. I had done well, the pieces had fallen nicely into place. Which made me nervous. Was there any possible way in hell I was being played here? Could Leonid have somehow anticipated my intent to pay a second visit to Anna and ordered his beaten submissive wife to play along with whatever I proposed? Could Leonid be that good?

  There was the slightest glimmer of half a chance he could be. And it didn’t matter. If Leonid was that good I may as well turn Commie because the Soviets would overrun all of Continental Europe while we poor dumb Yanks took a victory lap.

  I’m not sure if I thought this or dreamed it.

  I woke to the sound of a shrill scream. I was on my feet before my eyes opened, digging for my gun, stumbling forward, ready to do battle. Anna laughed at me. And took the whistling tea kettle off the stove.

  I slumped back in the chair and tried to wake up. The cup of black tea helped. I had no idea how long I’d been asleep. Fast asleep in the apartment of my mortal enemy.

  Anna had been busy. A big leather-strapped suitcase sat by the front door next to a wicker basket. I was wondering what was in the basket when a trapped angry mewl answered my question.

  I stood up. “We can’t leave the building together.”

  Anna nodded her understanding. Now what? My good intentions had outraced my planning once again. I had no safe house to send her to. But Anna was a step ahead. She wrote down an address in Kopenick, southeast of the Central City, in the Soviet Sector.

  “Tattia, she is my friend, gut friend.”

  “Does Leonid know her?”

  “No, no.”

  Which didn’t mean he didn’t know about her or where she lived. What the hell. I didn’t have any better ideas.

  “How will you get there, to Kopenick?”

  “der Straffenbahn,” she said. The streetcar.

  “Okay. But you might be followed. Be careful, keep watch. Do you understand?”

  Anna gave me a droll look. “I am wife of spy.”

  “Right, of course,” I said and pointed toward the door. “But you can’t take the suitcase.” Anna pretended not to understand. “Der Kaffen is verboten.”

  “Aber ich werde es brauchen!” she replied. But I will need it!

  “Nein, es ist zu gefährlich!” No, it is too dangerous!

  Anna glared at me. I glared back. We hadn’t set foot out the door and we were already spatting like an old married couple. An old German couple!

  I stepped forward and stood close. “Take the damn cat if you must, take Ivan, but the suitcase stays put! Stays here. Does-not-leave.”

  Anna’s stark glacial face remained that way. Mulish to a fault, just like Jeannie. Why are all the best gals the world over so goddamn stubborn?

  “Okay,” I sighed, “I will smuggle your suitcase out of here somehow. Take your damn cat in a basket and go.”

  Anna smiled up at me, then wrapped me up in a steaming hug that squeezed every ounce of air from my lungs. It felt good. I looked about the room, at Anna’s vivid watercolors on the walls, surprised she hadn’t crated them up too.

  Anna caught my look and answered with a shrug. “I will make more.”

  “Attagirl!”

  “I am sorry?”

  I told Anna I would see her in Kopenick tomorrow morning and pushed her out the door.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  They had separate bedrooms, Leonid and Anna. His the spacious master with French windows that opened onto the street. Hers a small windowless maid’s quarters, walls cluttered with watercolors, pencil sketches and oil portraits in that modern style where the heads look like they’d been chopped to pieces with a meat cleaver then wedged back together.

  I tossed the joint. I searched behind the wall hangings for a wall safe and inside them for documents stashed in the matting. I did this in each room. I pulled up rugs and looked for a floor safe or a trap door or a loose floorboard. I checked the furniture for hollow legs and secret panels and docs taped to seat bottoms. I looked in the bathroom and kitchen cabinets. I yanked the cushions from the couch and flipped it over and dumped out every bureau and kitchen and desk drawer I could find.

  This netted me nothing of interest. Okay. Due diligence done. Now the fun part.

  I went to Leonid’s clothes closet and pulled open the folding doors. Dozens of custom-tailored suits hung in a precise seasonal progression from black and navy blue wool, to brown and tan tweed, to pale linen. Silk ties hung light to dark on a yard-long tie rack. The shirts, starched and cardboard-collared, were tucked away in the drawers of a built-in cedar cabinet at the end of the closet. Heckuva wardrobe for a selfless champion of the proletariat.

  I didn’t bother the shirts. But Leonid’s suits would need a thorough going over. I waded back down the long closet, through the forest of topcoats and sports jackets and the hanging vines of silk until I came to the summer linen. I flicked open my folding knife and did to Leonid’s pretty suits what I wanted to do to him. Sliced them up one side and down the other. Methodically.

  I took hold of a blood red cashmere blazer. It had a gold monogram on the breast pocket, LAV. I sliced it off and stuck it in my pocket for future reference. Then I tore the coat off the hangar and stepped on it and grabbed the back vent and pulled with all my might. The suit coat split all the way to the collar.

  Good, Schroeder. Well done and executed. You’ve shown Leonid’s wardrobe who’s boss. Now, how do you exit the building in a stealthy manner while carrying a suitcase the size of a hay bale? The Blue Caps would have their tails down and their ears up. You’ll be scooped up the moment you step outside.

  I told my brain to shut its yap. I knew what to do next. Start a fire. One with a lot of smoke. A swank joint like this had to have a fire alarm. Yank it and race down the fire stairs and out the back door with the rest of the tenants, their hastily-packed suitcases in hand.

  But I needed a hat, a snap brim I could pull low across my brow. Just like
the one I had recently purchased and left in the truck. Leonid had hats on the top shelf, plus a little step stool to reach them. I selected a gray felt number. It perched atop my melon like a Girl Scout beanie. I sliced a vent in the back of the hat band and tried again. It would have to do.

  What to torch? Something dense, something that would burn a long time and throw off a lot of smoke. A red cashmere blazer for instance. I snatched up the coat from the floor of the closet, went to the kitchen, grabbed the largest pot I could find and took a bottle of Drambuie from the liquor locker. I crammed the blazer into the pot, doused it with booze and lit it with a kitchen match.

  Drambuie’s good for something. The coat caught fire.

  I waited until the kitchen filled with smoke, threw open the front door and fanned smoke into the hallway with a kitchen towel. I pounded on doors and yelled Feuer as I hauled Anna’s two-ton grip down the hallway.

  The fire alarm was halfway down the corridor. I busted the glass with the little hammer on a chain and yanked the handle. A great clanging commenced.

  The neighbor lady threw open her door. She had changed into a housedress since our last meeting. She had Fido clutched to her bosom and wet panic in her eyes.

  I offered to escort her down the stairs. The neighbor lady accepted. We fled down the carpeted fire stairs, our ranks swelling at every landing until we spilled out the back door, a tumbling cascade of terrified refugees.

  That’s the way it was supposed to work anyway. Unfortunately the back door didn’t open. I kicked it and slammed a shoulder against it and it didn’t budge. The door had been barred or shimmed shut, a bad sign. It meant the Blue Caps would be waiting as we funneled out the front. I could join the panicked tenants streaming out the entryway and take my chances on getting lost in the crush. Or I could try to blast my way out the back door with my Walther.