A Despicable Profession (33 page)

“You say something, mama's boy?”

Sean buried his head in his brother's chest. Ambrose ruffled his hair. I spoiled the moment. “Time to go gentlemen.”

Ambrose shuffled his feet into a pair of cardboard slippers. He was wearing filthy drawstring pants and a baggy gray
workshirt that smelled like old cheese. Sean doffed his coat and draped it over his brother's shoulders. I rumpled the blanket and wadded up the pillow to make it look like the bed was still occupied.

I locked the cell. We made our way down the corridor, Ambrose limping along gamely, leaning on his brother. The bastards had worked him over good. Sean had to pick Ambrose up and carry him down the dark concrete stairs. I replaced the ring of keys at the jailer's station.

We found Patrick right where we left him, on his belly, keeping lookout.

“What's the report?”

Patrick did not look up. “No activity in the quadrangle, no traffic in or out.”

“Any sign of movement in the barracks?”

“No sir.”

“Well done. Now stand up and hug your brother.”

My eyes swept the quadrangle as the Mooney brothers threw their arms around one another. Patrick was correct, there were no silhouettes in the barrack windows, no figures moving about. So where were they, the Red Army troops rousted out before the crack of dawn?

We had done everything we had come to do, in twenty minutes time. I should take yes for an answer maybe and get the hell out. But my neck itched.

“Go to the truck. Wait five minutes. If I don't show drive to Dahlem and get Victor Jacobson out of bed.”

“And tell him what?” said Ambrose, all business in a blink.

Should I say this? I had nothing to go on, less than nothing. Which was precisely the point. We didn't have zero guards in an armory that was expecting an armed assault. We had a negative number. Minus two.

“Tell Victor Jacobson that Hal Schroeder thinks Operation LUNA is underway.”

Ambrose nodded his understanding and extended his hand. I kept mine in my gun pocket. “We'll do that later. Beat it.”

The Mooney Brothers ran across the street. I crouched down in the setback, doing what I do best.

The absence of the booth guard and the jailer might simply mean they knew the assault wasn't coming tonight. I'd estimated it would take 72 hours to get the go ahead from Moscow. We were only at hour 36. So why were the barracks lit up? With no one moving around?

My gaze drifted downward. The first floor of the north wing had doors but no windows. A muster room where the troops assembled to receive orders. That's where they figured to be.

I waited three long minutes and saw nothing. Time to go. I checked the street before I crossed, saw fast-approaching high beams two blocks south. I got down on all fours and rolled myself across the street, hid behind the clump of bushes on the median.

The high beams belonged to a big car, a limousine, a brand new Soviet Zil right off the assembly line. It pulled into the Armory's entryway and sounded its horn. A man in a black leather coat climbed out of the back seat and stalked angrily to the guard booth. He reached in and pushed something. The gate opened and the Zil entered the quadrangle.

I recognized the man in the leather coat. It was Gerhard, the blond-haired apple-cheeked founding member of the Committee to Free Berlin. The tumblers clicked.

The White Russian freedom fighters had seen their ranks decimated during their collaboration with us bumbling Yanks. My visit to the Committee had spooked them, prompting an emergency meeting where, rather than voting to cancel or postpone their attack on the Armory, they voted to advance the date. Advance it more than Gerhard and his Soviet bosses had in mind. Gerhard would have argued strenuously, saying it was premature. He would have been shouted down. Democracy is messy that way.

Gerhard would have phoned the Armory Commander and instructed him to call an assembly of all personnel for an urgent briefing with a big announcement.

The Committee to Free Berlin is on the march!

It didn't make sense for the booth guard and the jailer to abandon their posts to join the briefing. but it didn't have to. Not in the military.

I briefly considered sneaking back upstairs to lay in wait for the machine gunners. But that was plain suicide and I wasn't in the mood.

My Teutonic clock struck midnight. Five minutes had elapsed. I had missed my own deadline.

I ran for all I was worth, down the block, waving my arm frantically as the delivery truck pulled away from the curb and rumbled south down
Blummenstraße.
The truck found a higher gear and I slowed to a walk, lungs burning. I had no one to blame but myself. Anna and Ambrose had followed my instructions to the letter.

The delivery truck swung a clumsy left turn at a cross street two blocks away, stopped in the intersection, backed up, turned left, stopped, backed up, turned some more. They were coming back for me!

I crossed the grassy median to intercept them. Ambrose was at the wheel. Guess his brothers didn't know how to drive. Or big brother wouldn't let them.

Big brother skidded to a stop when he saw me standing in the street. I jumped into the cab and flopped in the passenger's seat.

“You disobeyed a direct order.”

“Yeah,” said Ambrose, “I'm like that.”

I stuck my head out the window. No headlights behind. Ahead was an Armory on full alert. “How are you at backing up?”

“Watch me.”

I tried not to. The parked cars along the curb bore the brunt as Ambrose gouged his way rearward in a trail of sparks and
snapped off sideview mirrors. But he got it done, swinging the truck's rear end into the cross street and lurching south down
Blummenstraße,
grinding the clutch like a butcher making ham salad.

I ran it down. “Some of our White Russian friends, members of the Committee to Free Berlin, plan to attack the Soviet Armory sometime before dawn. Which gives us about thirty minutes to intercept them and prevent a massacre that might start a new world war.”

I paused to let that sink in. And catch my breath.

“I figure the Russian limousine that just pulled into the Armory came north across the Spree, ahead of the freedom fighters. That's our pinch point.”

“What is?” said Ambrose, gamely, weakly.

I squinted at him. “You okay to drive?”

He grinned. “Never better.”

“The Muhlendamm Bridge, just south of here. It's narrow. We park sideways near the northbound exit and roll out to block the lane if we see a truck coming. Anyone got a better idea I'm all ears.”

Anyone didn't. Ambrose asked a rude question.

“How do we convince them to turn around?”

“I don't know.”

“Ah, you'll think of something.”

I had better. They would be coming hard, the members of the Committee, the smell of blood in their nostrils. They would need some convincing. More than that. What they would need was an immediate reason not to cut us to ribbons.

I thought about it. Well, they weren't likely to open fire on a woman. I could put Anna out front and let her try to calm the wild-eyed freedom fighters. She spoke Russian. She stood a better chance of success than the rest of us.

Like I say it's a despicable profession.

“Remind you of anything?” said Ambrose.

“What's that?”

“Driving to a big showdown at a narrow bridge, a good lookin' Mick at the wheel.”

“I might remember something about it.”

“Seems a long time ago, don't it?”

“Yes it do.”

I guided Ambrose to the bridge, keeping my eyes peeled front and back. We hadn't approached the Armory by this route but I'm a Kraut, I have a good sense of direction and a keen sense of time. The direction we needed to go was south-southwest and the time we had to get there was somewhere between now and never. The Armory jailer would discover the empty cell any time now. Gerhard and heavily-armed NKVD would come hunting. We had to find the members of the Committee before Gerhard found us.

“This heap's on empty, Boss.”

“Then speed up before we run out.”

“Sure ting.”

I found the bridge right where I left it. A two lane road with scant cover ran alongside the river's northern bank. Nowhere to hide.

Gerhard and his thugs would make a beeline for this spot. There were other bridges across the Spree, I could instruct Ambrose to drive down the road to the next one. He had been starved and tortured on my watch, he didn't deserve to die thirty minutes after gaining his freedom.

Tough shit.

“Park in that warehouse driveway, to the left, north of the road,” I said. “Back it in, shut it down. We'll kill the lights and try to look like we belong there.”

Ambrose backed the truck in without hitting anything. The spot provided a head on view of the bridge and the feeder road that sloped down from the south.

Anna climbed forward and perched on the transmission hump as if she knew what I was about to ask. “Are you willing to speak to them?”

“The Byelorussians which are coming?”

“Yes.”

Anna shrugged her bony shoulders.
Who else can do it
?

“I want you to tell them that we work for General William Donovan. Wild Bill Donovan.”

I tried to remember if Donovan and the OSS had collaborated with the White Russians toward war's end. Wasn't sure, didn't matter. Anti-Communist freedom fighters who spied for us now got their eyes gouged out and their bodies bound to fence posts with barb wire.

Our photos of the Armory machine gun emplacements were supposed to make our case, convince the freedom fighters to stand down. But our photos were still in the camera.

“Never mind, Anna. There is nothing we can
sprechen
that they will
glauben”

Anna nodded. “What then?”

A thought occurred. I squeezed her hand.

“Sean! Patrick!” They scrambled forward. “Go to that corner and look north. If you see a big car with vertical high beams coming south give me the high sign. We want to ram them broadside, time your signal according to their speed of approach. Got it?”

They nodded.

“Go!”

Sean and Patrick piled out and took their positions, peering around a building at the northeast corner of the intersection, Sean standing, Patrick below him, on his belly. I told Anna to take cover in the back of the truck. “Wedge yourself behind the wheel well.”

She didn't understand. I jumped up to show her where to brace herself then returned to the cab. Ambrose, at the wheel, wanted to know the plan.

“The White Russians will want hard evidence. One of their members is...oh screw, I'll explain later.”

I hoped to present the Committee members with a crumpled Soviet Zil containing their founding member Gerhard and assorted Blue Caps. That was the plan anyway.

A large truck crested the feeder road and sped north, downhill toward the bridge. It looked like a rubble hauler. A quick pass under a flickering streetlamp confirmed that.

So what? They could squeeze two dozen troops into one of those long dump trucks. And what better way to cross Berlin without attracting attention?

Didn't scan. The Soviets had coddled their duped recruits to this point, held meetings in the swank
Admiralspalast.
They wouldn't send the members of the Committee to Free Berlin off to battle in a dump truck.

We watched the truck gear down and approach the bridge at a stately pace. The back end rattled like cup on saucer as it crossed the span paved with iron planks against the bomb damage. The rubble hauler was empty.

I looked to the corner. Sean had wandered off but Patrick was doing jumping jacks trying to catch my eye. Apparently the Zil was southbound, and our timing was shot to hell.

The rubble hauler proceeded slowly across the intersection, blocking our view. When the intersection cleared I saw only the brassy red tail lights of the Zil blurring across the bridge in the opposite direction.

Shit.

I clutched at straws. Gerhard wouldn't interfere with the Committee members if they passed in the night, now that the Armory was poised and ready for their attack. We might still intercept and blockade the freedom fighters. They would probably mow us down and go on about their business but we might get lucky and convince them to stop and reconsider, to turn tail and retreat. It was possible. Also the moon might fall out of the sky and smash the bridge to smithereens.

I called out the window to Patrick. “Where's your brother?”

“Other side of the street.”

“Get his ass over here!”

Sean strode up a few moments later, in no particular hurry.

“Where'd you go?”

“I saw the dump truck rolling down the hill, then I saw the big car coming the other direction, fast. You said to time our signal according to their speed of approach but we had an intervening vehicle. So I did a Patrick after a pub crawl.”

“A what?”

“I staggered across the street, singin' songs. The limo slowed down some when they saw me. I waved at them, friendly like, stood in their way.”

“And?”

“They drove by me and crossed the bridge.”

“How many in the car?”

“Couldn't tell, headlamps blinded me.”

“Okay, nice try. Return to your post and fetch Patrick.”

This was my small favor to Mrs. Mooney, posting Sean at the corner where he would look north for further pursuit vehicles that wouldn't come. Patrick would throw himself into the fray no matter what. But if we intercepted the troop truck and things got ugly Sean could flee on foot. He was too smart to sacrifice himself in a hopeless cause.

Good for him. Someone needed to live to tell the tale.

I looked up the hill to see high beams bearing down at a furious pace. Vertically stacked high beams.

“Crank it Ambrose.”

The engine turned over nicely. Patrick reported to my window.