The Rendition

by Albert Ashforth

  After my reassignment from South America in the 1980s, Buck and I spent three months at an NSA station in the Alps before being posted as “journalists” to Radio Free Europe, which at the time occupied a compound located in a secluded corner of Munich’s English Garden. It took a while to adjust to the new situation. Germany—West and East—was the battlefield on which the Cold War was largely fought, and the way things were done in Europe was different from the way they were done in South America. But knowing the language the way my mother spoke it made life much easier—and permitted me to quickly make contacts and establish relationships that would hardly have been possible otherwise.

  While I was working at RFE, Max Peters was one of the people I got to know well.

  Unfortunately, my personal life took a turn for the worse toward the end of my tour in that part of the world—and I get a headache whenever I think about that. And the truth is I still think of it a great deal. But that’s another story. Max and Irmie had been colleagues and, naturally enough I guess, it was the personal stuff to which he immediately referred when I met him a couple of hours after my arrival.

  “You don’t look happy, Alex,” Max said only minutes after we’d shaken hands and plunked ourselves down on a bench in the English Garden, Munich’s big city park that, with its broad paths and rectangular shape, always put me in mind of New York City’s Central Park.

  “Does it show, Max?” I said, as I watched a teenager dribble a soccer ball across the broad expanse of grass.

  “I’m afraid so,” Max said. “You’re wishing you were somewhere else. I can see it in your eyes.”

  Max was right, of course. The city held too many painful memories. Despite the piles of snow and slush-covered paths, the skaters and bike riders were zooming back and forth. As I looked around, I remembered the many hand-in-hand strolls that Irmie and I used to take here, often in the evenings after work. I’d left at the wrong time and under the wrong circumstances, and that thought depressed me even further. Nevertheless, now that I was back and shooting the breeze with Max in the Bavarian-accented German that I’d learned from my mom and later picked up in these parts, I unexpectedly found myself thinking about Irmie again and wondering how she’d weathered the passing years.

  Trying to get away from the personal stuff, I asked Max about Douglas Brinkman.

  “I don’t know if I can be of much help to you on this one, Alex,” Max said. That was about what I figured Max would say.

  Max has wavy gray hair, bright blue eyes, a silvery mustache, a slightly flushed face, and a noticeable beer gut. During the Cold War, he was a Munich police detective, who spent a number of years as liaison between the city’s police force and American intelligence, and that’s how we met.

  After my arrival that morning at nine a.m., I took a quick look around the new Franz Josef Strauss Airport, then took a taxi to the address Shenlee had given me. The city seemed to have changed considerably since my last visit nine years before. One improvement was a three-lane highway that I didn’t remember having existed when I left, and in the distance I could see that the city’s skyline exhibited a number of new buildings.

  The apartment—or safe house—had a good location, on a quiet side street not far from the Hirschgarten, and I was relieved to find the keys Shenlee had given me all fit. It’s anybody’s guess how many of these setups our intelligence services have at their disposal around the world. From my experience in staying in quite a few of them, I can say they vary greatly as far as comfort and convenience go. In a couple I recall having no running water and having to sack out in a sleeping bag on a concrete floor. After looking this one over and deciding it would be more than adequate, I tossed my gear into one of the two bedrooms and tried out one of the cell phones I found on the dining room table. I called Max, then took a taxi out to the English Garden.

  When Max said that he couldn’t be of much help, I asked him what the problem was.

  “I have an uncomfortable feeling, Alex. The Vogt woman was a journalist. I don’t want to be dragged into this case if it has political implications.” Max looked somber, more somber than I remembered him. He seemed to be at loose ends. His wife, Anna, had died two years before, and I had the idea that he hadn’t gotten over losing her.

  “Whatever you can do, Max, I’d appreciate it.” I hadn’t been encouraged by the fact that when I called Max and told him what I wanted he suggested we meet on a bench in the English Garden rather than in a downtown restaurant. Or rather than in the noisy canteen in Munich’s downtown police headquarters in the Ettstrasse, a place where, in the old days, we discussed a lot of business and drank a lot of coffee.

  And had plenty of laughs. I already had the feeling that on this trip there wouldn’t be too much to laugh about.

  “Things aren’t like they once were, Alex.” Max was referring to the fact that German-American relations had noticeably cooled in the years since the Wall came down and the Cold War ended. Germany, these days, seemed to be cozying up to Russia, its former enemy, while distancing itself from the United States, its former friend and protector. Because of quite a few harrowing East Bloc experiences, I knew I would always have problems thinking of Stasi and KGB types as dependable friends.

  I wondered whether this might be a matter on which Max and I did not exactly see eye to eye—quite possibly, one of many such matters.

  “Sure, Max. I read the papers too.”

  “We don’t need you to protect us from those big, bad Russians anymore. And we’re still mad about the way your GIs were constantly taking our women back to America.”

  “Could it be possible that we treat women better in the States? And maybe us Yanks deserve some credit for pumping up the German economy for all those years.”

  Max smiled, then nodded in the direction of the restaurant adjacent to the Chinese Tower, one of the English Garden’s landmarks. “I’ll buy you a beer. Then we’ll be even.”

  With the weather having turned cool, I was glad to go indoors.

  After we’d found a table, Max said, “You’re looking good, Alex. You haven’t changed much since the last time I saw you.”

  Max was being kind. My face still showed some signs from the banging around I got in Kosovo. There were a couple of small scars, one long scar, quite a large indentation in my forehead, and my nose now leaned slightly to the starboard. The emotional scars were invisible, at least I hoped they were.

  I lowered my voice. “Like I said, Max, anything you can tell me about Brinkman would be helpful.”

  “Do you have any kind of official status, Alex?”

  I made a sour face. Jerry Shenlee had made a point of saying I’d be traveling as a tourist. As we watched the waitress set down two half-liter glasses of beer, I said, “I’m a concerned citizen. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Concerned citizen? What are you concerned about?” It was Max’s turn to look serious.

  “Cheers, Max. Prosit.”

  “Prosit.” Max put down his glass, wiped his lips. “After you called, I talked to one of the homicide detectives who handled the case.”

  “A good cop? Dependable?”

  “He’s not one of my favorite people. But that’s neither here nor there. I got along better with his partner, but he’s left the force.” Max’s face clouded over. “Dropped out of sight, actually. He might be dead. No one knows for sure.”

  “What did the detective say?”

  “According to him, Brinkman and Miss Vogt were friendly, and spending a lot of time together. He’s a former member of Special Forces, and he met her in Afghanistan, where he was stationed and where she was working as a correspondent for Welt-Bericht. According to the guy I spoke with, Brinkman’s a violent guy with a short fuse.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I looked up his arrest record.”

  “Brinkman was a Green Beret. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “He was arrested some years back for fighting in a bar.”

  I didn’t
say anything, recalling a few of the restaurants I’d broken up before I’d become at least partially socialized. Max saw that I was far from convinced.

  Gazing at me over the beer glass with his cold blue eyes, he said, “Maybe Miss Vogt was about to give him the gate. He blew his stack.” He paused. “From what I understand, she was a looker.”

  “You think that’s the way it happened, Max? That sounds a little too pat.” I’m sensitive to the way the police, no matter what country they belong to, like to make the facts and circumstances of a situation fit whatever case they’re trying to make.

  “Alex, the woman had a dozen knife wounds in her. Then she was shot. Someone was very mad about something. Who else would it be but Brinkman? And there were other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “There was lining from an army field jacket under her fingernails. She was trying to defend herself. She must have ripped whatever the guy was wearing.”

  Max got to his feet and came back a couple of minutes later with a pair of sausages on rolls. After smearing mine with mustard, I said, “There are a lot of military field jackets around. From a lot of countries.”

  “Yes, but they’re made out of different material. This kind of lining is from an American military field jacket. Granted there are plenty of people walking around the city wearing field jackets, but there aren’t too many wearing American field jackets. Not anymore.” It’s true that the U.S. military, which except for bases in Vilseck and Grafenwöhr, has pretty much pulled out of Bavaria.

  Before Max could buy a second beer, I suggested we ride out to the house. I needed to see it for myself.

  Max’s face clouded over and he looked at his watch. Finally, he nodded. Maybe I was overreacting, but I had the feeling he wasn’t too anxious to see me again or to give me any kind of help in this case. But we’d worked together for a lot of years, and in the course of that time done each other more favors than either of us could count. At Christmastime, the German cops threw great parties to which we were always invited, the fanciest being the annual shindig on one of the upper floors of the Police Presidium and hosted by the police president himself. I had met Irmie at one of those Christmas parties. For our part, we saw that Max and his crew got invites to our blasts, and I always made sure Max went home with an American turkey from the PX and a large bottle of bourbon, the kind of things that, because of EU tariffs and trade barriers, you just can’t get in Europe.

  We took the Ring, the highway that circles Munich, and as I looked at the passing sights, I found it difficult to believe that, after all these years, I was really back in this city. In the distance on the right was the Funkturm, the tower from which television and radio signals are broadcast and one of Munich’s landmarks. On the left we went by the Olympic Stadium, the massive hanging Plexiglas roof that no one thought would last a year still very much intact. The fact that every car on the road seemed to be a snazzy new model served to remind me that Germany, like the other countries of the EU, is enjoying a period of mild prosperity.

  As we drove, Max said, “I have to admit, I’m surprised to see you, Alex. I mean, I just never thought you’d come back.”

  I knew what Max was talking about. “That makes two of us, Max.”

  “Have you been in contact with Irmie at all?”

  “Not for a while.”

  The truth was, I’d written one letter while she was in the hospital. When she didn’t respond, there wasn’t any more contact between us. That was a long time ago.

  I was curious about Irmie, but I decided not to ask any more questions.

  Ursula Vogt’s house was in Munich’s northwest corner, a neighborhood called Obermenzing, a place of upper-middle-class respectability. Max turned off the Verdistrasse, the main drag leading out to the autobahn going west, then on to a curving street along a narrow sidewalk. Driving slowly, we went a few blocks until we reached a wider street called Karwinskistrasse. We then made a left onto a tree-shaded street of comfortable looking homes, all with well-kept gardens, many with secure fences. We parked in front of a house that was behind a high hedge. “That’s it, Alex, that’s where Ursula Vogt lived.”

  It was a nice piece of property, but all that was visible was a thick eight-foot-high hedge, at one end of which was a steel gate. When I tried the gate, it was locked.

  “I guess she liked privacy,” I said.

  “I guess so,” Max agreed.

  Peering through the gate, I could barely glimpse a two-story building with white walls set back fifty feet from the sidewalk.

  After we’d spent a couple of minutes looking things over, I said, “I’d like to go inside, Max. Take a look around.”

  “Sure you would, Alex, but I don’t think that can be arranged.”

  “Maybe you can talk with someone downtown.” When he shook his head, I said, “You sure, Max?”

  Years ago, Max hadn’t been above carrying out a “black-bag” entry when the circumstances called for it, and when the interests of our respective governments harmonized, we’d even collaborated on a couple. To be honest, I never thought of those illegal entries as a very big deal. We always had good reasons for the break-ins, and we were always careful to make sure no one was any the wiser. On one of them, we found and photographed evidence used in a case against a member of the Bundestag, an elected representative who was being paid to funnel information to East Berlin. On another, while I was installing a bug in a suspected agent’s telephone receiver, I heard a key being inserted in the downstairs door—and to avoid detection, Max and I ended up spending a below-freezing night on the guy’s terrace. But that was then, and this was now. Our personal relationship had changed—“cooled” might be a better word. As I stood looking things over, I concluded that this house might be a tough nut to crack.

  A mildly overweight neighbor who’d been raking the lawn of the adjoining property took our arrival as an excuse to take a breather. He paused, wiped his face with a handkerchief, and stood watching. When Max walked over and flashed some ID left over from his years as a cop, the guy said, “My name is Thiemann, Ludwig Thiemann. My God, it was a terrible thing. I still can’t believe it. She was a nice woman.”

  Thiemann’s dialect was thick, and because Bavarians sometimes exhibit a bunker mentality, dealing with the locals on this kind of assignment can be a challenge. Along with talking like them, you need to think like them. Looking at Thiemann, I figured he enjoyed his quota of sausage and beer.

  “How well did you know her?” I asked.

  “Pretty well. But she did a lot of traveling. She’d be gone sometimes for weeks or even months.” He sighed, wiped more perspiration from his face. “I guess that’s the way it is when you work for a newspaper.”

  Max pushed open his gate. A path of flagstones wound around a flower bed and ran alongside the hedge separating his property from Ursula Vogt’s. With his practiced cop’s eye, Max gave the property a quick once-over.

  “Anything else you can tell us?” he asked.

  “Not really. I spoke with the detectives the day after it happened. They were all over the neighborhood, asking questions. It was a Friday afternoon. Funny, I was home at the time.” He shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything. Whoever did it came and went without anybody seeing them.”

  While Max talked, I took a stroll. At a point some fifty feet back from the sidewalk, the hedge gave way to a five-foot metal fence. From this point, I could see the rear of Ursula Vogt’s home. There were two glass doors looking onto a stone veranda with some garden furniture strewn chaotically and a grill lying on its side. It looked as if the Munich police hadn’t picked up after themselves.

  Which, I suppose, made them no different from the police everywhere.

  I strolled back. “I guess you know they arrested a guy for the murder.”

  He nodded. “The American. I’ve been following it in the newspapers.”

  “Did you know him at all?” I asked.

  “Sure. I used to see him. Tall, broad
-shouldered. Spoke with him a few times. He knew some German. Said at one time he’d been stationed down in Bad Tölz. That was the Green Beret headquarters. He told me about the training, skiing around in the mountains and all. That was before they closed the base.” When I asked if there was anything special about Brinkman, Thiemann said, “Not really. He seemed friendly enough.”

  “How often would he come around?”

  “I couldn’t say. My wife would know. She keeps track of things like that.” When I wondered whether he could ask her, Thiemann said, “Sorry. She’s up in Frankfurt, visiting her mother. You know, the guy I would have looked at was the other guy who used to come around.”

  “Who was that?” Max asked.

  “The handyman.”

  “What can you tell us about him?”

  “Not much. To be honest, he always seemed suspicious to me. I think he repaired stuff for her and did some gardening. He wasn’t around all that long. If I was her, I wouldn’t have let him in the house. Cops questioned him. But they let him go.” He paused. “But there was something about him I never liked. Couldn’t put my finger on it exactly.”

  I said, “Could you try?”

  “He’d say he was going to come but he wouldn’t show. A lousy work ethic.”

  “How would you know that?” I asked.

  “She told me.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’d kill someone,” Max said. “Just because he has a lousy work ethic.” When Thiemann agreed, Max threw me an impatient glance. It was obvious we weren’t going to get much more out of this guy, and he wanted to get moving.

  “A lot of these Balkan people are like that, I guess,” Thiemann said.

  I halted when he said that. “Where in the Balkans was he from? Do you know?”

  “Bosnia, Macedonia, Croatia. Who knows? All those countries are the same to me.” After wiping away some more perspiration, he jammed the handkerchief in his back pocket.

  “You ever been down there?” I said.

  “We were planning to go to Sarajevo back eleven or twelve years ago, but then the civil war started. I told my wife to forget about it.”