Hour of the Assassins (15 page)

“
Prosit
,” he toasted, sniffing the cheap vodka and drinking. It smelled like diesel fuel and tasted worse.

“
Prosit
,” the old man's voice bleakly echoing Caine. The old man lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long drink, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed. When he looked back at Caine, his red-rimmed eyes were wet, whether from the icy wind or the vodka, Caine couldn't tell. The wooden cabin creaked in the wind, like a sailboat. The sound made their isolation even more complete. They could have been alone in the middle of the ocean.

“Why do you stay here?” Caine asked.

The old man shrugged.

“My whole family is here. Everyone I ever knew.”

“Are you a Jew? Is that it?”

“No, I'm a Gypsy. The last Gypsy.”

“I thought that Gypsies wandered.”

“They do,” the old man cackled, exposing the stumps of his teeth. “I'm a Gypsy who doesn't wander. Where is there to go?”

The old man dug in his pocket and brought out the cigarettes. He took out two, handed one to Caine, and they both lit up. Caine took out his wallet, peeled off a hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to the old man, who stuffed it in his pocket without expression.

“I stay here to remind people that once there were Gypsies,” the old man said.

Caine stood up to leave. The old man walked him to the door. Then the old man shrugged.

“I knew about the Jews, but not about the Gypsies,” Caine said.

“Everyone knows about the Jews.” The old man smiled sadly. “But who remembers the Gypsies?”

CHAPTER 7

In Berlin the pattern changed. It wasn't so much a change in content as in perspective, Came reflected; like one of those ink-blot optical illusions that looks like a duck's head until it's turned sideways and then appears to be a rabbit.

Caine flew in on the afternoon LOT flight to East Berlin. As the Viscount entered the landing pattern for Schönefeld Airport, he could see the vast flat expanse of the Marx Engels Platz below, like a giant concrete lake that drained the river of concrete that was the Unter den Linden. Dominating the skyline was the Brobdingnagian statue of a Russian soldier in Treptower Park, looking as if with his next giant stride he would be stubbing his toe on the wedding-cake facade of the reconstructed Reichstag. The outsize statue looked big enough to scoop up the Statue of Liberty like a football and run with it. Beyond the statue the monotonous vista of Stalinist gingerbread apartment buildings stretched all the way to the Spreewald. On the western side of the wall he could see the Funkturm Tower in the Messengelände, standing like a modernistic beacon for the glories of capitalism. The Viscount landed in a small series of bounces, like a stone skipped across a lake. After going through Customs, he caught a taxi to the Potsdamer Platz.

As the taxi turned down Friedrichstrasse, Caine took in the furtive air of pedestrians scurrying in the cold wind, like faceless human ants dwarfed by the immense monuments. Hulking over the eastern approach to Potsdamer Platz were the ruins of the
Führerbunker
, where the dying Third Reich had tried to play the last scene of the war as though it were the final reel of
The Phantom of the Opera
. The taxi slowed as it bumped over the tram tracks on Zimmerstrasse and neared the cinder block wall that bisected the city. The apartment blocks near the wall were bricked up and a cleared area twice the length of a football field and filled with tank traps and land mines and barbed wire ran parallel to the wall. At intervals along the barbed wire, skull-and-crossbone signs announced
Achtung, Meinen
, just in case the locals didn't get the idea that wall climbing wasn't an encouraged sport for the
Spartakia
.

The taxi stopped at Checkpoint Charlie, and as soon as Caine paid him, the driver took off with a roar, as though to forestall any objections to having carried an American tourist foolish enough to abandon the glories of democratic socialism. A young Vopo, a Kalatchnikov slung over his shoulder, impassively watched Caine enter the low concrete
Passkontrolle
. A Grepo, resplendent in a blue uniform that made him look like a U.S. Air Force general, mechanically held out his hand for Caine's passport. If it had been a contest of uniforms, the Germans would have won the war, Caine reflected as he handed over the passport.

“What is your name?”

“William Foster.”

The official glanced suspiciously up at him. Or perhaps he just looked at everyone that way, Caine thought. He stared at a large wall poster behind the official. On it a sprinter crouched at the starting line, his social realism muscles bulging, as he prepared to run for, “Sport and Health in the G.D.R.,” according to the title.

“And your destination?”

“The Berlin Hilton.”

The official raised his eyebrows barely perceptibly. Caine was obviously a hopeless capitalist. He stamped the passport as if it were an execution order, then gave Caine one last suspicious glance just to let Caine know that he couldn't be fooled.

“Go through that door to the Customs.”

“
Ja, danke
,” Caine said, retrieving his passport.

At the customs tables a Western tour group crowded uncertainly like a nervous herd. Midwestern husbands in checked coats glanced cautionary daggers at their wives, who surveyed the guards with satisfied eyes under lacquered gray hair, as though to silently remind them that they were (whisper it) crossing the Iron Curtain. Near the front of the group a longhaired hippie wearing a brown leather jacket bearing a Canadian flag and on the back a painted fist with the inscription, “Che lives!” paced impatiently, as though he expected to be met by a brass band. A wan blonde in jeans sitting on a suitcase anxiously watched him pace.

Caine waited patiently for his turn. For a moment his eyes met the glance of one of the Vopos and then they both looked away. Maybe neither of them wanted to be there. The busy customs officer barely glanced at the Hasselblad and after he wrinkled all the clothes in Caine's suitcase to conform with the approved border-crossing disorder, Caine was able to walk past the gate and go through the whole procedure again for the American MP's.

From the minute he hailed a Mercedes cab from the taxi stand on Freidrichstrasse, he was dirty. It seemed so improbable that he had the driver circle the Brandenburger Tor twice, just to make sure that the black Opel wasn't simply part of the traffic pattern. For a moment he stared at the triumphal arch surmounted by a warrior's chariot drawn by four bronze horses, while he ran the possibilities through his mind. The last time victorious troops had paraded under the arch was at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. It had remained a symbol of Prussian might until the Red Army had used it for target practice.

Perhaps the Opel simply contained locals with standing orders to tail anyone interesting who crossed the checkpoint. After all, this was Berlin, where you couldn't throw away an empty pack of cigarettes without someone tearing it apart for a drop. Or perhaps someone had made him from his Company days. Or maybe it was Wasserman again. Or maybe—and this was his real worry—it was something else.

The bright neon of the Kurfürstendamm was already lit to dispel the gathering gloom of late afternoon, the sky darkening with gray clouds, as though bundling up for the winter. The electric light flickering over the parade of smart shops and cafés lent an air of forced gaiety to the city. He told the driver to take him to the American consulate on Clay-Allee. As for the tail, he mentally shrugged, let them think he was official.

The consulate was a calculated risk, but he knew he would need some kind of official authorization to gain access to the American Document Center in Zehlendorf. As he had originally noted in the Wasserman dossier, the center contained the only complete set of records on the SS, as well as the best information available on all wanted Nazis.

While he was explaining to the slow-moving Marine sergeant at the front desk that he wasn't feeling well and needed a list of English-speaking doctors, the pattern shifted. As the sergeant reached for a file to hand him a Xeroxed list, Caine caught a glimpse of a trim blond American civilian, a folder in his hand, entering the elevator. For a second their glances met and moved away without recognition, but Caine could feel the prickle of sweat starting down his spine.

“Say, isn't that old Charlie Connors from USC?” Caine asked, gesturing at the closing elevator. The sergeant flicked a heavy-lidded glance to the elevator, then turned back to Caine, his drawl stretching all the way back to Birmingham.

“You mean the blond fella?”

Caine nodded.

“That's Mr. Jennings. He's a trade assistant.”

They exchanged a bit of small talk about how Caine must be mistaken and how everyone in the world probably has a double somewhere. Then Caine thanked the sergeant and got back in his taxi, telling the driver to take him to the Hilton. His mind raced as they drove back to the electric brightness of the Kurfürstendamm, because the pattern had shifted and he didn't even know what game he was in. It explained the tail, of course, but not much else because the blond man wasn't Jennings any more than he was the mythical Charlie Connors. He was Bob Harris, who had put Wasserman onto him in the first place.

Once he had checked into his room at the Hilton, Caine locked the door and turned on the television. Then he set to work checking for bugs. The TV program was one of those American action imports that Europeans decry and then snap up like blue jeans. On the screen jiggly girls from the Screen Actors Guild were using choreographed karate chops on overweight villains wearing black shirts and white ties, just in case the audience might forget who the bad guys were. He found the bug fairly quickly in the base of the telephone. With a sigh he lit a cigarette and stretched out on the bed.

Of course, Harris being in Berlin could have just been coincidence. Sure, he told himself. And you could improve your cash flow with the help of the Good Tooth Fairy. He remembered the lecture Koenig had given them at the Farm after they had completed their paramilitary training or, as the trainees called it, the “boom-boom course.” Koenig was a short stocky man with a crew cut surmounting an ungainly triangular face that might have been a slice cut from a lumpy pie. Caine had once seen Koenig take apart a burly ex-Green Beret named O'Hearn on the unarmed combat course without getting his shirt wrinkled. Koenig had stood before them in the Quonset hut classroom, lightly tapping a ruler against his palm. He balanced on the balls of his feet, as he paused for effect.

“There are no coincidences in this business,” Koenig had said. “None. The moment you spot anything that even smells like a coincidence, you've been blown. That means you're as wide open as a whore's legs. And once that happens, you've got only three choices: get out, get dead, or get them”—punctuating each
get
with a slap of the ruler against his palm.

For an instant Caine felt a stab of anguish. The bastards wouldn't let him quit. Then he brushed the thought away, because if Harris was running a Company mission, then the sooner he learned the rules of the game, the better his chances of survival would be. He wasn't going to fool himself about how expendable ex-agents were. Right now he knew he was about as welcome as a rent-increase notice.

With a shrug he stabbed out his cigarette and got up. He felt the old familiar tightening sensation just below his solar plexus. It hits everyone differently. With some it's wet palms or shaking hands. Some get shivers down the spine. Some break out in hives. With others it's stomach cramps. In Indochina he had seen men get the shakes, and just before action, he had seen some lose control of their sphincters and piss and shit in their pants. But it hit all of them one way or another. With Caine it was a tightening in his stomach, like a lump of food that had lodged in his esophagus and just wouldn't move or digest. Well, he thought, they can kill you but they can't eat you, using the stock bravado phrase they had used in combat to exorcise the fear. It never really worked, but they used it anyway.

He was going to do the one thing he hadn't wanted to do. He was potentially alerting the Company that he was on a run. Unless—and this was even worse—the Company already knew. He went downstairs to the lobby phone and called the consulate.

“Department one-oh-six, Jennings here,” Harris answered.

Normally Caine would have done a number permutation that varied daily. Based on the 106 prompt, he would have responded with the appropriate counter number, like, “Sorry, I was trying to reach the Intershop at Frankfurter Allee ninety-three.” Except that he wasn't in the Company anymore and had no idea what the day's sequence was, so he said, “This is an open line and don't tell me you weren't as surprised as I was.”

“This is the American consulate. What number do you want?”

“Do you know the Ballhaus Resi?”

“Hasenheide, corner of Gräfestrasse, but I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. You must have the wrong number,” Harris replied and hung up. Caine was grinning as he hung up the receiver, knowing that the call must have sent Harris up the wall at all the procedures he had broken. Serve the little twerp right, he thought as he went outside and stepped into a taxi. Although the Ritz was nearby, he had the driver double back by way of the Gedächtniskirche, to check for tails. The church's spotlighted spires made it look a little like the Enchanted Castle at Disneyland. He was clean, of course. After all, they knew where he was and where he was going, so they could afford to leave him alone. After a leisurely dinner of roast goose with dumplings, he took a tram outside the Ritz to the Resi.

By the time he got to the Ballhaus Resi, probably the biggest nightclub in town, close to a thousand noisy representatives of the New Germany were crammed around a dance floor no bigger than a throw rug. Thanks to a lavish tip to the headwaiter, Caine was able to share a tiny table from which he could survey the entrance and the stage. On the stage a rock band did a passable imitation of the Rolling Stones. The shirtless lead singer chosen more for his resemblance to Mick Jagger than his voice, screamed that he was sexy while he grabbed the microphone like a steel phallus. Behind the band colored strobe lights flickered across a gushing water display synchronized to the beat, while girls in see-through plastic disco outfits wriggled in ecstasy. The only things missing, he mused, were fireworks and
The 1812 Overture
complete with cannons. But the real attractions of the Resi were the brightly lit numbers and telephones on each table, so that you could dial any member of either sex who caught your fancy, Caine noted, as he sipped his Scotch-flavored ice cubes at ten marks a shot.