A Despicable Profession (27 page)

But Sedgewick pivoted, took one big stride and drilled me a good one, a straight overhand shot right above the belt buckle.

Col. Norwood hooted his approval. I windmilled backward, fighting for breath. Sedgewick closed in quick, peppering me with left jabs, then loaded up a lights-out right cross.

And therein lies the problem with Western boxing – Western war-making too. An alert opponent can see what's coming. It's why spies were invented and taught ju jitsu.

I juked left and threw out my right arm just as Sedgewick unloaded, catching the crook of his elbow in mine, using his momentum to dosey-do him around in a full 360.

The Colonel found this very entertaining, Sedgewick less so. He set his jaw and rocked his head side to side. He was seriously cheesed.

Norwood piped up about then. “Leslie,” he said crossly, “you've come all undone.”

Sedgewick looked down. His bathrobe hung open, exposing his boxer shorts. They didn't have little pink hearts on them or anything so I didn't understand why Sedgewick blushed and gathered his bathrobe and tied it up tight. But mine was not to reason why.

I shot forward and did what I had been trained to do to subdue an opponent quickly. A sidewinding heel kick to the shin, followed by a quick fist to the temple as the opponent bends forward in pain, followed by an acrobatic over-the-shoulder throw that requires hoisting the subject directly overhead.

Sedgewick declined to co-operate with this last maneuver. He wrapped his arms around me and bulled me backwards, his big head in my gut. I cinched him under his belly, flopped backwards and used his momentum to flip him up and over.

Sedgewick's a big boy, this last move took every ounce of strength I could muster. He landed on his back like a ton of bricks. I rolled away. He struggled to rise then fell back, his head bouncing off a ceramic pot. A clean KO.

I climbed to my feet and dusted myself off. I looked over at the Colonel. He had a .45 caliber derringer pointed in my direction. Damnedest gun you've ever seen.

“Why Colonel,” I sniffed, “weaponry in the salon?”

He chuckled. And continued in a pleasant tone. “We are on a quiet street here, Harold. No houses nearby.”

It was true. He could grease me with his two shot derringer and no one the wiser. Norwood fought to keep his eyes in focus and his gun hand still.

“You don't want to shoot me, Colonel. It wouldn't...”

Norwood closed his eyes and fired his hand cannon, shattering a front window.

I hit the deck and spun away, digging out my Walther.

I hunkered down behind a wing chair. The second bullet didn't come. The Colonel dropped the gun to the coffee table, busting a china cup. I poked my head up to see him open a tiny drawer at the base of his pipe holder and remove something twixt thumb and forefinger. He popped it in his mouth before I could reach my feet.

He turned to me, said, “'Tis been a distinct pleasure, dear boy,” then bit down, groaned and slumped over.

Christ Almighty! I scrambled forward and sniffed the air. Bitter almonds. Cyanide!

I wondered should I flee the scene, then moved closer to Norwood and sniffed again. What I didn't smell gave me hope. Shit. I didn't smell shit. Death causes the bowels to unclench. I looked closer. Norwood's wispy nose hairs quivered.

Well, well, quite a dramatic charade the Colonel had engineered, a fake suicide with a phony L pill. Or he'd used sleight of hand. Broken a real capsule to release the odor then pretended to swallow it. Well done and executed in any case.

I'd had a little charade in mind myself. Offering to toss the scandalous photo into the fireplace if Norwood told me what I wanted to know, then substituting the other 8×10 at the last moment – the one I had snatched from Norwood's photo album - damning it to the flames while I slid the original in my coat pocket.

A clever gambit. But it was very late and I was tired of playing games. I removed my Walther eight shot and took aim at the Colonel's leaded glass display cabinet, the one that held the precious keepsakes from his long career. I targeted the bullet-riddled cavalry canteen. What was one more?

I squeezed off a round.

The leaded glass sustained a crystalline puncture wound, the canteen jumped off the shelf. Col. Norwood's eyelids flapped open like yanked pull blinds. He sat up.

“Are you quite insane?”

I sat down next to him on the couch. “I must be, I'm talking to a corpse.”

I took aim at the display cabinet again and put one smack in the middle of Col. Norwood's Citation of Merit for Honorable Service to His Majesty's Something or Other.

Norwood cringed, he fumed. He reached for the two shot derringer but I snagged his wrist. “Not tonight, Colonel. Tonight's my night.”

The Colonel sat back and examined me intently, as if seeing me for the first time. “What the devil do you want?”

I took aim at the Colonel's cut glass crystal bowl, the one that sat on the purple pillow, the one inscribed with the royal seal. “I'm a spy. I want to know stuff.”

“Yes, of course.
What
?”

“Two things. The photo I've got tucked away doesn't prove anything. It's not evidence of treason.”

Norwood winced at my choice of words. Disgrace was one thing, treason quite another. The penalty under British law was death by hanging. The Colonel wasn't going to admit treason unless I offered him a back door. I shattered his crystal bowl with two 9 mm. slugs to get his attention.

“Think of it this way,” I said, off his horrified look. “It's one less thing to pack.”

Norwood liked the sound of that. Leastwise he didn't try to strangle me.

“You're a smart guy Colonel. You'd have a place to go and a way to get there if and when this day came. Some sun-drenched former colony where they speak the King's English and have good tea.”

I glanced at Sedgewick's supine figure. Out like a light. I continued.

“I will drive home and sleep it off and not sound the general alarm till tomorrow afternoon if you answer two questions. I'll even keep that photo in my coat pocket if what you tell me proves out.”

Col. Norwood's scorched patches came together as his face turned bright purple and he erupted, volcano-like. “So ask your two bloody fucking questions already and be done with it!”

I enjoyed that.

“Okay. First question. What is the name and address of your Soviet Case Officer?”

Norwood seemed almost relieved to tell me. I committed it to memory. I let the tension build for a moment. And trained my Walther on the Colonel's prized possession. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill's gold-plated cedar humidor.

“And what is the second question?” said Norwood, a nervous eye on his prize.

I shrugged. “Why did you betray your country?”

Col. Norwood laughed heartily and picked up his pipe. He laughed some more as he fired it up and sucked smoke. It was my turn to wait. The Colonel grinned. With his purple skin and the graygreen smoke leaking from his teeth he looked scary. He looked like a tribal war mask.

“I will tell you, dear boy, why I betrayed my country,” he said, enunciating crisply. “Their checks bounced.”

“That's it?”

“Precisely. I do not believe in Communism. I meant what I said about Great Britain needing you cheeky Yanks. But I am sixty-four years old and very tired.”

I felt a pang for the old guy, though I never would have pegged him for 64.

The Colonel surveyed the ruins of his display cabinet. “Go ahead. Put a round through Winnie's humidor. I won't need it where I'm going,” he said, eyes dark, nostrils flaring. “And I hate the pompous bastard.”

I couldn't bring myself to do it. I got up from the silk dragon couch and back walked to the rear door. The Colonel sat motionless.

I grabbed some contraband from the kitchen, stuffed it in a paper bag, slipped out the back door and waited at the top of the stairs.

When I heard the loud report of the .45 derringer and the sound of breaking glass I clomped down the stairs.

I felt pretty frothy at the top of the stairs. I had achieved results. I had the goods on Colonel Norwood and blackmail material to keep him in line. But I was all fizzed out by the time I reached the bottom landing. The anti-Communist members of the Committee to Free Berlin were a couple hours closer to being mowed down. And Ambrose was still in stir.

I had put aside my personal concerns, my desire to free Ambrose, in order to collect intelligence on a traitor. And yet I knew I was in Dutch, knew that the CO and Wild Bill would not be happy to hear my report. I had been a bull in the china shop of international diplomacy and achieved results without prior approval. And they never like that.

Yeah, it was trickier now. We didn't need a spat with the Brits over their Berlin Bureau Chief, what with the Red Army gunning their engines. I shun't have chased Norwood out of town maybe. He wasn't some Bolshie true believer, just an old sot with a drawer full of rubber paychecks.

And the best network in town. Why hadn't he come to the US with his hand out? Because he knew we wouldn't pay and the Soviets would. Which made the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics the true capitalists.

Lewis Carroll would have loved this town.

I wasn't going to march back up the stairs to re-negotiate. I just wasn't. So now what? Could be Eva was working late next door and knew someone who worked at the Armory. Why not? I'd been lucky so far this evening.

I walked back to the two-story brothel. The wind had died down and the night was still and fine. The lacy curtains downstairs were dimly lit as I approached the side door. I had
my knuckles poised to knock when I realized I was flat broke. I had burned through my stash of Lucky Strikes and gold doubloons and hadn't replenished my wallet from my payday roll of twenties.

It was after hours, Madam Sofie would exact a heavy toll. Ah, but I hadn't left Col. Norwood's empty handed. I carried a paper bag containing two tins of liberated duck pate, a bottle of Porto Fino and something more precious than gold.

Easy come, easy go. I knocked. A little tin peekhole door swung open and an eyeball appeared.

“We're closed,” said a deep voice.

“I understand. But do me a favor. Tell Sofie that Mr. Hal is here. With a special treat.”

“What's so special?” said the eyeball.

I reached into my bag, secured a scoop of coffee beans and held them up to the peekhole. “Take a whiff.”

A nose appeared and did as instructed. The door swung open. The joint was mine.

I ankled in. Sofie was in a mellow mood. Stewed to the gills. She gave me a big hug and made a grab for the paper bag.

“Not so fast, Sofie my sweet,” I said, holding the bag up high, like a drug dealer making his late night rounds. “I have whole bean coffee from distant lands, which is yours for the taking if I can...”

Eva skittered down the stairs about then. She looked as awful as it was possible for a beautiful woman to look. Washed out, exhausted, her long blond hair wet and stringy.

“You promised me. You say, said, I will call tomorrow!”

I surrendered my bag of contraband to Madam Sofie and met Eva at the foot of the stairs. “You don't look so good.”

“What I do is a hard job. Some nights.”

“Did someone hurt you?”

Eva shook her head. It wasn't a no exactly, more of a I don't want to talk about it.

I didn't pry. Nothing I could do about it. I led her to a table to the right of the stairs, next to the piano. The keys were dusted with cigarette ashes. The one-armed piano player had gone home.

“I know where Ambrose is being held,” I said and looked to see if Eva cared. She seemed distracted, darting her eyes about, tugging at her soggy hair. “Ambrose is being held at the Armory in the Soviet Sector. I was hoping you might know someone who works there. In the Soviet Armory. Eva? Hello?”

She turned to me with an astonished grin, new color in her cheeks. “Is that what I am smelling?
Kaffee
?”

I nodded. She jumped up, planted a kiss on my noggin and went off to get a cup. I understood. News of Ambrose's grim imprisonment could wait. What couldn't wait in post-war Berlin was a cup of real coffee.

-----

My luck held. Eva knew Fritz, a trash hauler who worked the part of the Soviet Sector where the Armory was located, would come in after shift on paydays, stinking to high heaven.

I told Eva I wanted to talk to Fritz. That's when I crapped out. Eva said she didn't know where Fritz lived, had no way to contact him and that he wasn't due to visit for several days. I needed solid intel on Ambrose by this afternoon.

I thanked Eva, drank a cup of coffee and drove to the Soviet Sector, smiling at something Eva had said.

I had asked her, with a mind to securing Fritz's co-operation, what he liked, what his weakness was. I repeated the question because Eva had looked confused. But it was the stupidity of my question that baffled her.

She answered by putting her hands to her luscious breasts and saying, simply, “Me.”

She was a survivor, that one. She'd outlive us all.

-----

There was no one on duty when I drove past the Soviet checkpoint. No sign of life in the city at all. My Teutonic clock
told me that dawn was near but the moonless sky was black. Leonid had said ‘the Soviet Armory on
Blummenstraße.'
Wherever that was. You'd think a highly-trained espionage agent would keep a street map in his vehicle but you'd be wrong.

I drove the empty streets to the first flush of day before I found
Blummenstraße
off a four lane boulevard. It was a side street with an unkempt grassy median down the middle. The Armory was one block south and impossible to miss. A grim concrete quadrangle around an inner courtyard, with slits for windows on the lower floor and barred windows above. It looked new. A building that said, in Russian, we are here to stay.