The Berlin Conspiracy (28 page)

At the wall, Kennedy would stand on a platform and peer over the concrete barrier into enemy territory. He would be exposed and vulnerable, but with armed East German guards watching over the proceedings, he’d be well protected and crowds would be kept at a distance. It wasn’t ideal, but it couldn’t be ruled out, either. The theatrics might be tempting, even raising the specter that the president had been fired on from across the border.

There were a couple of off-the-record events scheduled after that. Lunch with West Berlin’s popular mayor, Willy Brandt, and a private meeting with some relatives of men and women who’d been killed while trying to escape to the West. Even the press was banned from that one. Late in the day the president was to accept an honorary degree from Berlin’s Free University, but I thought
the moment of greatest danger would come before that, at about 1
P.M.

That was when the main event of the day, a speech from the steps of West Berlin’s city hall, was to take place. It would be the climax of Kennedy’s German tour and probably the highlight of his European trip. He’d be on the Cold War’s front line, speaking to the world, and Berliners would be there in the hundreds of thousands. I’d walked through the plaza he’d be facing. It was surrounded by buildings and there was ground cover in patches of trees and shrubs that were thick enough to conceal a sniper. Three gunmen—two firing from above, one on the ground—set up for triangulated fire. A large crowd, a stationary target, a symbolic setting. If I was in Harvey King’s shoes, that would be my moment.

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up. What I saw a few feet in front of me made the bottom of my stomach fall out….

The cabin door was halfway open and Horst’s foolish face was hanging out of it, right arm waving back and forth, trying to get my attention. I flashed a
“What the fuck are you doing?!”
look at him, then cast a quick glance up at Chase, who was on the upper deck, sitting behind the wheel with his back to me. The pilot’s seat was set forward just enough so that he and Horst couldn’t see each other.

When I looked back Horst was proudly displaying the hardware he was going to use to save the day. Goddamn Hollywood, I thought! And goddamn double 0 fucking 7, because in Horst’s Dream Factory-riddled mind he thought he could go up against a heavily armed professional killer with a speargun. … A
goddamn underwater speargun!

There could be little doubt about the outcome if I didn’t
do something. I tried to wave Horst back, but he ignored me and stepped out onto the deck, bent at the waist, spear-gun gripped tightly across his chest, like some kind of big-game hunter stalking his prey. I felt like I was in one of those terrible dreams where you’re helpless, absolutely fucking powerless to do anything—you can’t move and you can’t even call out a warning, all you can do is watch in horror as the disaster plays itself out to its inevitable conclusion.

I grabbed the Luckys out of my pocket, but Chase was a good twenty-five feet away—five feet over the pellet’s maximum range, and the forward motion of the boat was working against me. It was pointless to try. I yanked my cuffed wrist away from the railing a couple of times, trying in vain to get free. No chance.

Horst took another step into the open and spotted Chase. My heart stopped beating when I saw him raise the spear and take aim. Jesus Christ, I thought, he’s not gonna take a shot from there! Standing upright, wobbling back and forth with the movement of the boat, and out in the open with no cover! I saw his finger squeeze the trigger and I knew it would be over in seconds. …

I did the only thing I could think of doing.

“Chase!” I called out. “HEY, CHASE!”

Horst whipped his head around and looked at me like I was nuts, but I got the result I wanted—he leapt back into the doorway, out of sight as Chase swiveled around in his seat.

“What?”

“Got a light?” I said, displaying the pack of Luckys. His crack response was to take out his own pack of Marlboros, light one up, and say “fuck you” with a smile.

“For Christ’s sake,” I pleaded. “You want me to beg?”
He was amused, but after a moment of gloating he took the hook—at least partially.

“Catch,” he said, and tossed me the Zippo. But I didn’t need his lighter, I needed him standing in front of me! I made a feeble attempt at catching it, let it fall to the deck, then looked up at him with my most pathetic look.

“Come down and give me a light, will you? What the hell do you think I’m gonna do?”

He hesitated, but rose to the challenge, pulling back on the throttle and letting the boat drift while he climbed down onto the lower deck. I stole a peek at Horst, saw that he’d slipped back inside the cabin, and I started to feel like there was a chance of salvaging the situation. I’d have to kill Chase earlier than I’d wanted to, and that would leave me hanging as far as Kennedy was concerned, but I’d worry about that afterward. There was no alternative at this point.

Chase bent over, picked up the lighter, and stood there for a moment, looking at me like he was trying to figure out what I was up to.

“Catch it this time,” he said. He was standing twelve feet away from me now. I could’ve taken the shot, probably hit him, but Sam had said it would take up to twenty seconds if you didn’t get an artery and you can do a lot of damage with a .44 Magnum in twenty seconds.

“For Christ’s sake, Roy,” I said. “I’m one-handed here. Can you please light a fucking cigarette for me?”

He nervously flicked the Zippo open and shut a couple of times—some instinct seemed to be telling him that something was up, but he couldn’t figure what. Finally he smiled and took a step toward me….

I heard the
thwack
of metal exploding through flesh before I saw anything. Chase just stopped walking and calmly
looked down at his chest, where the spear had impaled him, the bloody tip protruding about four inches out of his left breast. He reached over to touch the arrow, let out a low, rumbling moan, then looked up at me. It was shock on his face at first, then confusion took over, like he was trying to figure out how I’d done it to him. Finally—and this all took about two seconds—a trickle of blood ran out of his nose and he went ape shit, reaching for the Anaconda and swinging around, the spear through his torso no more than a minor annoyance. He was ready to obliterate whatever he found behind him.

Horst was paralyzed. He couldn’t believe what he’d done and wasn’t reacting to the fact that he was about to be blown away. I yanked my manacled right arm hard, pulling away from the rail with such force that I thought I’d dislocated my elbow….

The pain hit Chase now, but he managed to raise his gun and point it at the center of Horst’s forehead. I extended myself as far as I could. There was about six or seven feet of air between me and the back of Chase’s head. The pellet exploded out of my hand with a
pfffttt!
and struck him in the neck, about three inches below the ear. The poison hit his system immediately. I don’t think he even knew he’d been hit.

Every muscle in his body seized up, including his trigger finger. The handgun exploded into the air, missing Horst’s head by a few inches. The kick threw Chase back against the portside railing. His eyes had already glazed over and I was sure that he was dead on his feet, but he just stood there for a five count before falling back, head over heels into the water.

Horst dropped the speargun and it flew across the deck, dragged by the steel cable that was fixed to the harpoon.
The gun’s shaft lodged against the rail, holding Chase’s skewered body on the surface, floating faceup, a few feet away from the boat.

“Pick it up!” I yelled to Horst, who still hadn’t moved. I had to repeat it a couple more times before he reacted, but he finally got hold of it. He looked down at Chase, bobbing in the river, an expanding pool of blood darkening the waters around him.

“I can’t believe …” He trailed off, shook his head at the sight.

“Pull him back into the boat,” I said.

Horst gave me a look. “You want me to pull him up?”

“He’s got the key to these in his pocket,” I said, displaying my cuffs. “So either he comes up or you go in.”

He nodded and got hold of the cable, gave it his best shot, but it was a big fish he had on the other end. The body bounced up against the hull and I watched with disappointment as Chase’s pistol worked its way out of his lifeless fingers. My heart sank when it did the same.

“Looks like you’re going for a swim,” I said to Horst.

He looked down at the dead man. “Yes, okay,” he said apprehensively. “In which pocket is the key?”

“Check them all and get whatever he has. And see if he’s got another gun stashed somewhere, maybe on his ankle.”

“Yes, all right, I will,” he replied as he removed his shoes and socks. “I can’t believe …” He was still shaking his head as he started down the ladder. “It’s quite cold,” he complained, sticking a toe in.

“Then jump,” I said, not feeling particularly sympathetic. He actually held his nose before stepping off the ladder, then paddled over to the body. He hesitated as he came face-to-face with Chase’s fixed stare.

“Shall I close the eyes?” he called up to me.

“If it makes you feel better,” I replied.

“I think it does,” he said, pushing the lids shut.

“Check his jacket first,” I said. “Try the inside pocket….” I couldn’t see what was happening under the surface, but Horst seemed to be taking a very long time.

“Any luck?”

“No key,” he said. “But here is an envelope….”

“Toss it up,” I called out.

“Yes, okay,” he answered, and a moment later a thick, soggy envelope dropped onto the deck.

“What about the key?” I had a quick look around, concerned that we were pressing our luck. It was just a matter of time before someone came along.

“I haven’t found one. …”

“Try his pants. …”

“If I must,” he said.

“You must.” Horst ducked underwater. He seemed to stay there far too long, but finally surfaced with a gasp.

“Here is a wallet,” he said, holding it aloft. I told him to throw it up, too, and it came over the side.

“Ah … I have found a key!” he called out happily. “It was in the shirt pocket.”

“Don’t drop it!” I said.

“I’ll come up.”

“Did you check for a gun?”

“Wait a moment,” he said, going under again, resurfacing more quickly this time. “No … no gun.”

“Okay,” I said. “Come on out.”

He climbed out of the water looking like a drowned rat, handed me the key, then plopped onto a bench. He sat there in shock while I released myself, then unlocked the other half of the cuffs and dropped them into my jacket pocket. You never know what’ll come in handy.

“Go up to the bow and detach the anchor,” I said. “Bring it back here.”

“Why?”

“Just do it, Horst!” I snapped, then added more coolly: “We can’t just leave him floating like that. We’ll have to sink the bastard.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, then scrambled up the ladder to the upper deck. I secured the speargun to the rail, then picked up Chase’s wallet and the envelope. There was a stack of hundred-dollar bills in the envelope that I didn’t bother to count. I stuffed them into my breast pocket and turned to the wallet. It contained eighty-five marks and change and a Polaroid of an Oriental girl in what you might call a compromising position. You might also call it physically impossible, which I suppose is why he carried the photo. I didn’t know much about Chase, but I knew enough not to be surprised. The wallet had been stripped of everything else—no ID, receipts, nothing.

Horst returned with the anchor and I went to work attaching it to the cable as close to the body as possible without sending Horst back into the water. I wanted to get moving.

“I can’t believe I have killed somebody,” Horst said as I removed the cable from the speargun and threaded it through the anchor’s eye.

“What you did was almost get yourself killed….” I said, knotting the cable back onto itself. “And me along with you.”

“You must admit, though, that it was quite resourceful.”

“It was quite dumb, that’s what it was.” I picked the anchor up and tossed it overboard. “I needed him alive, for the moment anyway.”

“Oh,” he said, deflated. “Have I made a bad error?”

I didn’t see any point in rubbing salt in his wound. “Forget it,” I said. “Maybe it’ll work out.”

We
stood at the rail and watched Chase disappear below the surface on his way to the bottom of the river. He’d pop up in a day or two, but that didn’t matter.

“Amazing,” Horst said philosophically. “To be alive one minute, and the next …”

“Don’t feel too bad,” I said. “He wasn’t a real human.”

I eased up on the throttle
after putting some quick distance between us and Chase’s watery grave. The wooded shoreline had given way to a belt of leafy suburban homes, then clusters of concrete apartment blocks, finally succumbing to the industrial zone surrounding Tegel Airport. I had guessed right about our location.

“Take over,” I said to Horst, who was sitting on a bench behind me wrapped in a blanket.

“In which direction?” he asked, slipping into the pilot’s seat.

“No direction,” I said grumpily. “Just stay afloat and don’t hit anything.” I grabbed the black briefcase that Chase had stowed under the control panel and climbed down to the lower deck, where I could investigate its contents without Horst looking over my shoulder.

I located a screwdriver and a large wrench in the cabin
and knocked the locks off the case. Inside I found a walkie-talkie and a stopwatch along with a Canadian passport, driver’s license, and $250 in traveler’s checks in the name of Ian Howe. My own passport, which I hadn’t seen since Johnson relieved me of it three days earlier, was also there, but two entry visas to the Soviet Union had been added. The only other item was a small medical kit that contained a loaded hypodermic needle, presumably another Cosmic Cocktail meant for yours truly. It was a return trip I’d happily miss out on.

With a little luck—and I thought I must be due some—the walkie-talkie meant that Chase would’ve been operating independently, in contact with the rest of the team solely by radio. Keeping me isolated made sense, of course. The last thing they needed was for the accused assassin to be connected to the actual assassins. Chase, the only direct link to me, would’ve been on his way back to Saigon within minutes of the action, and anybody who went looking for Mr. Ian Howe of Toronto would find themselves chasing thin air.