A Despicable Profession (35 page)

“Present and accounted for!”

I tried to laugh. I combed debris from my hair and looked down at my hand in surprise. It was covered in blood.

I don't remember anything after that.

And that's how I became the Little Deutsch Boy.

I'm back on my barstool at the Harbor Inn, Wally at my side. He's as full of fermented carbonation as ever. Keeps me humble, Wally does. He listens to my stories, nods in the right places and then goes on for twenty minutes about how I think my life is so godblamed difficult I should try hauling four bags of groceries up three flights of stairs on a shriveled leg, slaving over a hot stove for hours, chopping boiled turnips and fried chops into weensy bits because Mama's store-bought choppers don't fit right and keep falling out on her plate!

I laugh, and order another round of Carlings from sweet Rita behind the bar.

I spent two weeks in a U.S. military hospital in Heidelberg where they specialize in head trauma. Seems there was an eight mil machine gun round that I hadn't accounted for. One that carved a quarter inch groove in the back of my skull.

Funny what you don't notice in the heat of battle.

They took good care of me in the hospital, dressed my wound twice a day, drained a lot of pus. Ugh.

I didn't sustain any permanent brain damage. Not so's you'd notice anyway. I was in and out of consciousness the first week, mostly out. The CO stopped by for a brief visit somewhere in there.

He said that Bill Donovan had broken precedent and leaked an edited version of our story to the international press in hopes it would open some eyes to the serious nature of the Soviet threat. This blew what little cover we had left so Global Commerce, Berlin, was shut down. Victor Jacobson didn't seem too busted up about it.

I asked about the Mooney brothers. The CO said they were safe at home in County Cork. Saints be praised.

Jacobson said he had squeezed everything he could from Leonid Vitinov before releasing him to his Soviet case officer. What he'd done was dispose of his major career embarrassment and left it to Laventia Beria to take proper care of the dapper little shit.

I had thought that well done and executed at the time. I'm not so sure now. We ad hoc operatives were a group without adult supervision. We were on the honor system, we had to enforce the rules ourselves. What the rules were with regard to a midlevel officer repatriating a blown Soviet double agent without informing his superiors I couldn't tell you.

Victor Jacobson shook my hand and thanked me for my service before he ankled off. I wasn't expecting a tickertape parade you understand but I was a bit cheesed at the perfunctory pat on the head. Until Becky my day nurse handed me a sealed envelope the CO had left behind. It contained twenty crisp cecils and a stateroom ticket on the R.M.S Queen Mary, Antwerp to London to New York City. I recuperated in a hurry after that.

But on to more important matters.

I lied when I said I couldn't see Anna well enough to read her expression. I saw her face quite clearly. I see it every ten seconds, waking and sleeping.

What I saw -what I still see - are three expressions.

Blank-faced shock as Anna hears me yell
incoming.

Wide-eyed fear as she looks down at the tumbling grenade.

Furrowed confusion as she turns to flee and looks at me over her shoulder, through the blown up windshield.

That's the part that keeps coming back, that last look, Anna's lips half open as if to ask
why would you do this
?

When I came to in the hospital I asked Nurse Becky a woozy question. Would you happen to know the kill zone of a pineapple?

She humored me, said she didn't know right off the top but would find out. Not two hours later Nurse Becky gave me the grim report.

The effective kill radius of an Mk 2 pineapple is five yards.

Anna was dead, she had to be. The reason I didn't ask Jacobson about her when he came to call is that I didn't want to know it for a fact.

Anna didn't betray us, I understand that now. Her long winded harangue of Fyodor was sincere. She wasn't staging a distraction so the troops could close in for a clean shot. That is she was, but she didn't know it.

Fyodor needed only one brief answer from Anna before giving the order to open fire.
Are there any explosives in the truck
?

I should have doped that out at the time but I was otherwise occupied and assuming the worst and working backward and...
Goddamn it all to fucking hell.

Anna had survived World War II. She was married to an NKVD agent. She should have known better than to leave the truck!!

I have one keepsake. It came in the envelope Victor Jacobson left for me. He had developed the film in the Kine Exakta, the camera Sean used to photograph gun emplacements in the Armory. I had forgotten about the first pic on the roll. Anna in the kitchen before dawn, holding her wet hair in place with a pot holder as she searched for a towel to dry off.

I had intended a lighthearted snapshot. But Anna's pinched expression was an echo of her over-the-shoulder look as she fled the grenade.
Why would you do this to me
?

I hated the damn thing.

Wally clears his throat and offers me a shelled peanut for my thoughts. I hoist my beer mug and offer a bottoms up toast to the Red Army and World Communism. Wally says I should lower my voice. I do that, and offer my explanation.

The thing that saved us was a little man.

All armed forces have a top down command structure, but the Reds are ridiculous about it. When Gerhard made his frantic phone call to the Armory Commander and ordered him to assemble all personnel for an important briefing he didn't mean it literally He didn't mean the booth guard and the upstairs jailer should abandon their posts.

But the little man - Gerhard's subordinate - took him at his word. Which is what you do to survive in a system that permits no individual initiative. His blind obedience allowed us to get in and out of the Armory undetected, foil the plot and tell the tale.

You see? A little man changed the course of history!

Wally says his shoulder hurts from holding the mug up and could we please drain our beers now.

We do. I'm out of practice. Wally beats me by a good two seconds.

And that's the full report.

Yes, Mrs. Brennan kept my room vacant at her boarding house and, no, I didn't forget my promise. I sent a one pound sampler of Godiva chocolates to the unwitting neighbor who buzzed me in to Anna's building. Frau G. Unkel, Apt. H, 1832
Spirchenstraße,
Berlin, Germany.

I had to call Godiva's New York office to place the order, then wire them the money. I included a message to be sent with the package.

Hier sind Ihre versprochenen Schokoladen, gnädige Frau. Ich bedauere die Verspätung.

Here are your promised chocolates, dear lady. Sorry for the delay.

Could be I am brain damaged but that note put a smile on my mug all day.

John Knoerle began his creative endeavors in the early 70s as a member of the DeLuxe Radio Theatre, a comedy troupe in Santa Barbara. He then moved to LA and did stand-up comedy, opening for the likes of Jay Leno and Robin Williams.

Knoerle wrote the screenplay
Quiet Fire
, which starred Karen Black, and the stage play
The He-Man Woman Hater's Club
, an LA Time's Critic's Choice. He also worked as staff writer for Garrison Keillor's
A Prairie Home Companion
.

Knoerle moved to Chicago in 1996 with his wife Judie. His first novel, “Crystal Meth Cowboys,” was optioned by Fox TV. His second novel, “The Violin Player,” won the Mayhaven Award for Fiction.

John Knoerle's novel, “A Pure Double Cross,” was the first volume of a 1940s spy trilogy featuring former OSS agent Hal Schroeder. The second volume, “A Despicable Profession,” was published in 2010. John has now completed the American Spy Trilogy with “The Proxy Assassin.”

You can learn more about John Knoerle's novels at
http://JohnKnoerle.com