‘I want to talk to you about something.’
‘My business or yours?’
‘Mine. I’ll buy you a drink.’
‘Bet your ass you will. Maybe two.’ He grinned and shrugged into his jacket. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
They went down the stairs and out through the big metal door to Eighth Avenue and up to the corner of Fifty-fifth and into the welcoming gloom of the Neutral Corner Bar and Grill. The walls were covered with framed photos of fights, fighters, managers, and handlers, some of the prints yellowing with age. Men who looked like they could have stepped from those photos drank and talked at the bar and at the tables on the floor. Tough men in a tough business.
Cassidy followed Terry Mack to a table against the wall. Cassidy asked the waiter for a Jack Daniels on the rocks, and Mack asked for a Jack neat with water back. When the waiter brought them, they clinked glasses and drank some liquor.
‘Terry, remember at the end of the war when we were supposed to be demobilized.’
‘Sure. We were stationed in Frankfurt. I haven’t had a hot dog since,’ he laughed.
‘And then you got transferred out to some special unit the day before we were supposed to go home.’
‘Yeah, because I spoke Kraut. Thanks for that, Mom. I stick around Germany while you go home to all the grateful, hero-worshipping virgins.’
‘Something about de-Nazification.’
‘Nah. That was some other outfit. I was assigned to this unit they called Alsos. You ever hear of that?’
‘No.’
‘A bunch of people looking for Hitler’s atomic research stuff, the scientists, the documents, records of tests, that stuff. But I was only with them a little while and then they turned me over to this other outfit that was looking for German rocket scientists, biological warfare experts, chemical warfare researchers, medical researchers, useful guys we could ship back to the States. The Russians were looking for the same people and hauling them off to Russia. I guess some people in Washington understood the Cold War had already started. It was like a fucking treasure hunt with guns.’
‘What happened to the guys you shipped back here?’
‘I only know about a couple or three of them. One’s up at MIT. The other works for DuPont. The third turned out to be a Nazi. The deal was that anyone who was a real Nazi couldn’t get clearance to come here. Of course if you wanted any kind of Kraut government job back before the war, you had to join the Nazi Party, so they were trying to figure out who was really gung-ho, and who just joined to get the job.’
‘And the third guy was a real Nazi?’
‘Yeah. Early party member. A real shithead.’
‘So he didn’t get to come.’ Cassidy signaled the waiter for another round.
Mack caught Cassidy’s eyes and then looked away and lit a cigarette. ‘Yeah, he came. A bunch of them came anyway, party member or not.’
‘What the hell?’
‘One day, some guys show up at our billet. A couple of jokers in uniform, but with no insignia, a couple of hard men in civilian clothes, and a general to give them some heft. There’s been a change. Some of the guys we rejected are needed in the States, and we can’t let them fall into the hands of the Reds. There’s a list of scientists they want. We’re going to change their job histories, erase their party memberships. They’re going to be our guys now, and we need them, so they’re good guys.’
‘Terry, you saw what those fuckers did.’
‘That war was done. This is the new one. I get it, even if you don’t. The Russians want to rule the world, just like Hitler did, and the only thing stopping them is this country. So these guys did some bad shit. If the Russians get them, they’re going to do some worse shit. With us they’re working for something good.’
‘You really believe that?’
‘Don’t give me that crap. We’re the good guys here. You want to compare us to the Russians? Fuck you.’
‘How can I find out who they brought over?’
‘I don’t know. It’s all classified stuff. You got a security clearance?’
Cassidy shook his head. ‘Do you remember any names?’
‘Uh-uh. I already told you too much. That’s it. No more from me. You want to come to the gym and work out, spar a couple of rounds, I’m happy to see you, but I’m done with this. I’m not talking to you or anyone else. It gets back to me, I lose my license in a second, maybe go to jail. Then what the fuck am I going to do?’ He shoved back his chair and stood up.
‘Terry—’
‘No, Mike, that’s it. No more. I don’t know nothing.’
TWELVE
Spencer Shaw watched while the whore picked up the target subject at the bar at P.J. Clarke’s. They did not know who the man was, but they had been instructed to find someone of his apparent age, size, and demographic: six feet tall, about a hundred eighty pounds, educated, white-collar worker. The whore was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student at Columbia working her way toward a Master’s degree in anthropology who had persuaded herself that her side job was fieldwork. She knew how to dress and had more class than some of the other girls they used, so they could send her into the upscale joints after targets. She called herself Maxie Lively, but that wasn’t her name. She had a good body, long dark hair, an upturned nose, and an overbite that he found sexy.
Shaw watched her slip the guy the dose when he turned to the bartender to order her a drink. She reached for his pack of cigarettes on the bar, and the dose made a small splash as her hand went over his glass. You wouldn’t see it unless you were looking for it. They had practiced the pass many times before they sent her out for her first assignment, and now the move was nearly invisible. There were bartenders in the city who took offense if someone slipped a mickey to a customer, and the last thing they needed was some sharp-eyed mixologist calling the cops. It wasn’t a mickey she had slipped him, but that wasn’t something they could explain to the local flatfoot.
Shaw was on the sidewalk when they came out of Clarke’s. The guy had his hand on the whore’s hip, and she was laughing at something he said. Shaw didn’t think of her by her name, either her real one or the one she had made up. He liked to think of her as ‘the whore.’ It kept it simple and defined her place in things, and he liked that with women. What man didn’t, he wondered. He watched them get into a taxi and then waved up his car and driver and followed them to the safe house on West 4th Street.
His driver, Stefan Horvath, was a Slovak, one of those people washed out of place by the tide of war and deposited in the States by a series of fortunate accidents beginning with his recruitment by an OSS agent in Yugoslavia in 1944 who was in the market for a sniper. The war had given him skills that were useful in war but frowned upon in peacetime, except in the shadows where Shaw worked. Shaw liked him because he did what he was asked to do, and he rarely spoke.
By the time the whore got the john up to the viewing room on the third floor of the safe house, the guy was feeling the drug. He stood in the middle of the room neither helping nor hindering her as she took off his clothes. He looked around with delight as if he had never before seen a room like the one he was in. There was not much to see. A machine-made oriental rug covered the floor. The wallpaper pattern was pale yellow-and-red flowers on an off-white background. The bed was covered with a red velvet spread. There were two cheap easy chairs with a table between them. The one-way window looked like a mirror to the man in the other room, and he stuck his tongue out at it and made a face.
The whore led the guy to the bed and stripped quickly. Shaw watched them critically as they screwed, but there was nothing unusual going on, so he checked to see that the tape recorder was running. The microphones that fed it were hidden in the lamps, and in the hollowed-out corners of the headboard and footboard of the bed. The idea was that the whore would talk to him after they screwed. Most men who paid to get laid knew the girl would leave quickly afterwards to maximize her time, and they had discovered that many men were fla
ttered if the girl wanted to stay and talk. It made it almost like a date. Her job was to get the john to open up, to spill secrets, to see if the drug made him more susceptible to telling things he shouldn’t tell: infidelities, sexual peculiarities, business or industrial secrets. It didn’t matter what as long he gave up information he would normally hide.
Shaw, satisfied that the equipment was working, went downstairs.
Sebastian Ambrose, and Karl and Magda Brandt were at a round table in the kitchen at the rear of the ground floor. Karl and Magda sat close to each other and faced Ambrose across the table. Karl Brandt wore a soft, dark blue flannel shirt, heavy tobacco-colored corduroy trousers, and polished half boots, the picture of a well-off man of leisure. His hammered silver cigarette case was on the table within easy reach. Magda Brandt wore high-waist gabardine trousers like those Marlene Dietrich had made popular, a dark green silk blouse, and a tweed jacket. Diamond earrings glittered when she turned her head. She wore a necklace of thin gold rounds. Her black hair was smooth and glossy. She was as neat and fashionable as Ambrose was not. Ambrose wore the same clothes Shaw had last seen him wearing in the garden behind his house, or maybe he just had multiple versions to avoid making decisions.
The three doctors had designed the experiments that took place in the house on West 4th Street. They had explained the purposes to Shaw with pride. The boundaries of chemical manipulation of the human brain would be pushed back. Breakthroughs were certain. Interrogations would become more efficient. People in the know spoke with high anticipation of mind control, of enemy operatives unmasked, re-educated, and turned back into enemy territory, but now under the control of the forces of democracy. Think of the efficiencies. Think of the lives saved by the information gained. It was a matter of national security. It was well known that the Chinese and the Russians were working overtime on mind-control experiments. The brainwashing of captured American soldiers in Korea was only the tip of that iceberg. It was understood in the corridors of power that this area would be crucial in the growing contest between the forces of freedom and democracy and those of Godless Communism. The race to understand and control the mind was thought by some to be as important as the missile race.
Karl and Magda Brandt were in charge of the chemistry. Ambrose designed the psychological applications. There were, of course, minor malfunctions, the occasional glitch. It was a new field. The chemistry was difficult. The psychology was still imprecise. But, they assured Shaw, they were very close to an optimized, controllable drug, one that would have useful, lucrative applications in the world of mental health as well as in the clandestine world. Very close.
Shaw’s role was pragmatic. He was there to guard, monitor, assist, and to deal with the real-world problems that might arise. He was like the superintendent in the apartment building where he had grown up. The super was always on call by the residents to change a light bulb, fix a leaking faucet, remove a worn-out sofa, or clean up something ugly that had spilled on the floor.
Shaw detoured to the Frigidaire and took a pint of Gilbey’s gin from the freezer and a lemon from a refrigerator shelf. He put the bottle and the lemon on the table at the empty seat and got a glass from the cupboard next to the sink before sitting down. The Brandts and Ambrose watched as he took a small silver-cased knife from his pocket, sliced peel from the lemon, twisted it into the glass and then filled the glass from the bottle. He raised the glass in toast. ‘The premade martini. A shot of vermouth in a pint of gin, and then bang it into the freezer, a time saver for the working drinker. I should go into the business, make a fortune.’ He took a sip and savored it. ‘Would you care for one, Doctor? It’ll put hair on your chest.’
‘No, thank you.’ Magda Brandt looked at him coldly. He knew she did not like him, that she found him unserious, a deadly sin to this woman, and he enjoyed poking her to see if he could make her flinch. He also wanted to fuck her, but he hadn’t yet figured out how to make that happen. She was in her forties, older than the women who usually attracted him, but she was taut and fit, and there was something about her imperious disdain that attracted him.
‘Doctor, how about you?’ This to Ambrose, who, he noticed, had bits of food in his beard.
‘I prefer wine.’
‘Dr Brandt?’
‘Yes, please,’ Karl said. He smiled his bland smile. ‘I like a martini. A civilized drink.’
‘Tell me about tonight’s subject,’ Ambrose demanded. He was impatient with small talk unless it was his own.
Shaw took a notebook from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and flipped the pages till he found the one he wanted. ‘Chris Collins, age twenty-eight, height six feet one inch, weight one eighty-eight.’ He looked up. ‘She slipped me his wallet. This is off his driver’s license. We’ve got his address, and he’s got a business card that says he’s a copywriter for an ad agency. He belongs to the New York Athletic Club. He’s easy to find if we want to run him through it again.’
‘What dosage?’ Magda Brandt asked.
‘Seven hundred mics.’
‘That is too much.’
‘It’s what I was told.’
‘Too much.’ She took a cigarette from a gold case and screwed it into a short silver holder with an ebony bite.
‘I don’t set the dosages.’
She dismissed him with a look, and lit the cigarette with a small gold lighter.
‘Sebastian,’ Karl said in a mild tone stripped of all confrontation. ‘We decided after Williger that we would reduce the dosage until we had a better idea of the controllable effects.’
‘No,’ Ambrose said. ‘You suggested that course. I decided against it.’ He took a sip of his wine, swished it around in his mouth and swallowed it. When he smiled, his teeth were stained with wine.
Karl was not intimidated. ‘The chemistry is our responsibility. We have had a good deal of experience with experiments like this.’
‘Yes, we are aware of your experiences,’ Ambrose said. He did not like to be challenged.
‘Then you would do well to listen to us,’ Magda said, ignoring her husband’s look of warning.
‘Liked the war, did you?’ Shaw asked.
‘What?’
‘I asked if you liked the war,’ Shaw said and took another sip of his martini.
She stiffened. ‘No, I did not like the war. What a ridiculous thing to say. Nobody liked the war.’
‘All those lovely experiments with all those willing volunteers?’
‘Everything we did was sanctioned by our laws.’
Shaw laughed. ‘The laws of a criminal government. A bunch of madmen and deviates.’ He began to sing in a surprisingly good baritone. ‘Hitler only had one ball. Goering had two, but they were small. Himmler had something similar. And Goebbels had no balls at all.’ He toasted them with his martini.
Magda bristled. Karl, knowing her, tried to intercede. ‘Nein, nein, liebling. Let it go.’
She did not know how. ‘The work we did saved the lives of many of our soldiers, and we treated our subjects with care and dignity. They were taken off work detail. They were fed a nutritious diet. Many of them benefitted from our experiments.’
‘Right. It was a health resort. Come to sunny Auschwitz and all your troubles will go up in smoke under the gentle ministrations of Doctors Karl and Magda Von Brandt. The Jews were dying to work with you.’
‘That’s enough, Shaw,’ Ambrose said.
But Shaw was having too much fun. ‘It’s the fucking hypocrisy that gets me. You loved it. You got to do things in the war you never could have done otherwise. Nazi Germany was the best thing that ever happened to you.’
‘We were never Nazis,’ Karl Brandt said. ‘Not willingly. We joined the Party because people in our position had to. There was no choice.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. I read your files. I was one of the guys who brought you over. You and a bunch of others like you. A little rewriting, a few out and out lies, a little whitewash, and you passed muster, but I kn
ow who you are and what you did.’
The Brandts looked at him stonily.
‘Ah, come on. I don’t hold it against you. The war was great,’ Shaw said cheerfully. ‘I admit it. I loved it. Fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, cheat, steal, rape, pillage, and kill with the encouragement and blessings of his superiors and his government? Here’s to war. I wish it had never ended.’ He raised his glass.
‘It hasn’t,’ Ambrose said. ‘We just have different enemies. And that’s the point. The past is past. We are allies now. We work together. This conversation is over. Shaw, if you continue, I will report you.’
Before Shaw could reply, footsteps clattered in the hall, and Maxie burst into the room. She wore a thin robe and her high heels. She gripped a clipboard, forgotten, in one hand. ‘Somebody better get up there fast. Something’s really gone wrong with this guy.’
Magda took the clipboard and thumbed through the pages. ‘You did not complete the questions.’
Maxie was too agitated to hear her. ‘Doctor, you better get up there,’ she said to Ambrose. ‘He’s acting really strange. I haven’t seen anyone like this.’
‘Why did you not complete the questions?’ Magda was a dog with a bone.
‘He stopped talking. He just stopped. Then he began scratching himself, and he wouldn’t answer me, okay? It’s not my fault. He just stopped.’
Ambrose patted her on the arm. ‘We’ll go see. You’ll come along. He knows you.’
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