The Berlin Conspiracy (7 page)

“My brother is fascinated with your country.”

“I noticed that.”

“He thinks everything about America must be good.”

“He’s never been there,” I shrugged.

She nodded her agreement, then said, “You seem very American.”

“What’s ‘very American’?”

“You are,” she laughed.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Horst doesn’t seem to think so.”

“What do you think?”

She hesitated, looked at me again in that intense way. “I think you look very tired.”

We weren’t close but we were looking directly into each other’s eyes. Maybe it wasn’t so tough to see that I was exhausted, but she’d hit something else, too. It wasn’t just lack of sleep she was talking about.

“You’re right,” I said. “I am tired.”

“Then you must have a nap!” Horst boomed out as he entered the room. “The sofa is quite comfortable, I sleep there every night.”

“He can sleep in my bed,” Hanna said, her eyes reaching across the room, sending me an unambiguous message. “I’ll get it ready for you.”

She skittered past Horst and he gave me a look of undisguised astonishment. “This is not like my sister,” he said.

Normally, I would’ve lay there in her bed thinking about her, but I fell asleep the moment I hit the fragrant, soft pillow.

I came to in the darkness, only half-awake, and realized I’d had the dream again. Damn. I hated that dream. It hadn’t been around for ages, why was it showing up now? I replayed it in my head, hoping if I moved it into consciousness, it would leave my subconscious alone. It was the same every time.

And that’s when I wake up.

It wouldn’t take Sigmund Freud to figure it out, but I wasn’t interested in that. I just wanted the damn thing to quit.

Then it hit me—what the hell time was it! I leapt off the bed and found a wall switch. A warm, dim light came on over Hanna’s bed. My watch confirmed what I already knew—9:22. Fuck me! I was supposed to meet the Colonel at nine!

Horst was lying on the sofa watching a news report about Kennedy’s arrival in Bonn. “Ah! The dead have risen!” he announced as I entered. I could hear Hanna moving around
in the kitchen and saw my pants neatly folded on a side table. I quickly pulled them on and stepped into my shoes.

Horst hauled himself up and turned the volume down on the set. “You’ve slept well,” he grinned, checking his watch. “More than six hours. And we have waited dinner for you,” he chided.

“I’m sorry, Horst, but I’m late for a very important meeting.” I asked where I could find a taxi and was halfway out the door before Hanna came into the room. But there was no time to say anything.

As the taxi pulled up I realized that I was still broke. The driver didn’t look like the kind of guy I could intimidate and the last thing I needed was a loud argument with a fat man, so I gave him my four-hundred-dollar Rolex to cover the six-dollar fare. He was happy enough with that.

It was dark, almost pitch-black after the car drove off. The nearest working streetlight was a block away and I could barely make out the silhouette of the gloomy structure that was supposed to be our meeting place. If anyone was in there, it sure as hell wasn’t obvious.

I found an old iron gate that took me up an overgrown path toward the front of the building. Once I got closer I could see the place was an even worse mess than it looked from the road. A large town house that had probably been deserted since the end of the war; the windows were broken, the brickwork was crumbling, and it didn’t look like there was much left of the roof. In better days it could’ve passed for the Addams Family home, including a medieval-style turret that rose out of the middle of the property.

A short flight of steps led to a gabled porch dominated by a massive weather-beaten hardwood door. I gave it a push
and it moved, but not much. When I put my shoulder to it I was able to slip inside.

Even with the door ajar I couldn’t make out my own two feet. I could feel that the floor was covered with debris, probably pieces of plaster from the ceiling and walls, some broken roof tiles, who knows what else. Glass crunched under my feet when I took a few steps into the void. The place was goddamned eerie and I had no intention of going on a blind sightseeing tour, so I stayed put. If the Colonel was still there he’d know where to find me.

I waited. Maybe ten minutes, probably not that long. There was a scratching sound a few feet in front of me. Rats. More than one. And the stench was getting to me.

“DID SOMEBODY ORDER A PIZZA …?!”

My voice bounced off the walls, carried up through the building, and came back to me. I must’ve been standing in a huge entrance hall. I waited another minute. Nothing but me and the rats. The Colonel was long gone and Powell was going to nail my ass to the wall.

“FUCK YOU, THEN, I’M GOING HOME!”

And I meant all the way home, to my beach house, where I’d pack my fishhooks and my typewriter, get in my boat, and get really lost this time. Maybe the Gulf Coast. Or Mexico. As long as it was warm and there were no spooks, I didn’t give a damn.

I was about to take my first step in that direction when I heard a Zippo flip open a few feet in front of me, followed by a spark and a flame illuminating his face. The fire went out, leaving the Colonel’s features bathed in the red glow of cigarette ash.

“How long have you been standing there?” I asked.

“Since you came in.”

“I mistook you for a rat.”

He smiled stiffly and turned a small flashlight on the
floor. We were standing in the middle of a rat convention. Hundreds of them. They didn’t seem to worry about us, but why would they?

“You’re among friends,” I said.

“Lucky for you I’m still here.”

“Yeah, I’m catching all the breaks.” He turned the flashlight off so all I could see was the lit end of his cigarette moving around. “Very dramatic,” I noted. “Did you go to the Boris Karloff School of Espionage?”

He brushed by me and pushed the big door shut. “How did you get here?”

“Three taxis, four trains, and a couple of mules,” I replied. He didn’t think it was funny, and I guess it wasn’t. “Nobody followed me,” I assured him.

“Why were you late? Did you have trouble?”

“I overslept.” I could feel him looking at me from behind, through the darkness, like he had bat eyes. “Look,” I insisted. “I was exhausted and I overslept. Everything’s fine.” I turned to face him, but all I got was a shadow.

He was silent for a moment while he took a long draw of smoke, making up, I guess, for the nicotine-free minutes he had endured while standing across from me in the dark, making some kind of pointless point. He finally threw the butt on the floor, immediately lit another.

“What I have to tell you is extremely sensitive,” he rasped. “It must not be compromised.”

“If you don’t want it to be compromised, don’t tell me.”

“I’d like to believe I can trust you,” he said almost sincerely. Up until now he hadn’t treated me like a jerk. If I didn’t set him straight, it would only get worse.

“Let’s skip the bullshit, Colonel,” I said sharply. “If you really are a colonel, that is.”

Hostile silence, so I kept going.

“I’m sorry to be blunt, but if you think there’s any way
you can trust me, then you’re not what you claim to be. Now I’ve got some fairly heavy people very pissed off with me because, so far anyway, I’ve played this thing by your rules. And the only way I get out of it with my head still attached to the rest of me is for you to give me something so juicy that these guys can’t carve me up and ship me off to the four corners of the earth, which is what they really want to do. But you know all that, you set it up that way, so you must also know there’s no way in hell I’m not going to use what you give me to save my ass. … And that’s why I say let’s skip the bullshit.”

He grunted, possibly a STASI version of a laugh. Then he took a deep breath and exhaled. A sigh almost.

“The information was uncovered quite by accident, in the course of our normal intelligence activities,” he began. “However, we are unable to take appropriate action, which is why you have been called upon. Unfortunately, you won’t have much time to act.”

“Act? I don’t think you have the right idea about me, Colonel. I don’t act.”

“Perhaps you will feel compelled to when you hear what I have to say.”

“I’m all ears,” I said.

He took a moment, then spit it out without any frills.

“There’s a plan to assassinate your president.”

Of all the crazy, unlikely stories I had prepared myself to hear, this sure wasn’t one of them. It was
too
crazy. I mean, there were always assassination threats, the Secret Service dealt with them all day long, but here was a fucking colonel in the goddamned East German secret police threatening the president. … Or was he threatening? What the hell
was
he doing?

“Tell me about it,” I managed.

“It’s planned to take place here, in Berlin.”

I waited for more, but it didn’t come. I laughed reflexively, even though I knew he wasn’t joking. “Come on, Colonel,” I said. “Even you guys aren’t that crazy.”

“It’s not our operation,” he answered coolly.

“Who then?”

“You’ll have to find out.”

He didn’t move, just kept looking at me through the darkness and puffing on his weed.

“That’s it?” I asked incredulously. “Somebody has a plan to knock off the president of the United States while he’s in Berlin. You have no other information—no clues, no leads, no hints—nothing except there’s a plan out here, somewhere.”

“That’s correct,” he replied.

I was feeling claustrophobic, had to get some air. I turned to where I thought the door was, but couldn’t find it. “Give me some fucking light,” I demanded, and he obliged, shining the flashlight into my eyes.

“I don’t have to tell you what the consequences might be should this happen. If you choose to leave now, there’s nothing more I can do.” He moved the light from my face onto the door. “There is your exit,” he said.

I pulled the door open and stepped onto the porch. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere and the Colonel probably did, too. After a couple of minutes, he stepped out and offered me one of his cigarettes. I accepted. It seemed bright outside after the blackness on the other side.

“Look, if you want me to buy this, you’re going to have to give me more.” I could see his face now, but it wasn’t going to reveal anything.

“I don’t have more to give.”

“How did you come across it?”

“As I said, in the course of our normal intelligence activities …”

“Come on, Colonel. …”

He shrugged, like he agreed but could do nothing about it.

“Is it KGB?”

“No,” he said quickly.

“There are a hundred threats a week on the president’s life,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up, but it’s not exactly gonna make headlines.” The cigarette tasted worse than it smelled, but I smoked it anyway.

The Colonel looked up into the sky, searching as if there was something to see. “This threat comes from inside your government,” he said softly.

“What… ?”

“They’ll try to make it look like it was our side. … But it will be your side.” He looked at me, ready to gauge my reaction. I drew a breath, took in too much smoke, and choked.

“For Christ’s sake,” I coughed. “You expect me to believe—”

“No,” he interrupted. “I don’t expect you to believe. I expect you to find out.” I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. He tossed his cigarette onto the ground, crushed it with his foot, and walked away, leaving me standing speechless, alone in the dark.

I met John F. Kennedy once,
the result of another one of Sam Clay’s surprise phone calls. I was spending Christmas Day of 1962 laid out on my backyard lounger, soaking up sun and tequila, trying to ignore the Season of Joy (it’d been a long time since I believed in Santa Claus), when the telephone started ringing and wouldn’t quit. I was able to ignore it for a while, but curiosity finally got the better of me and I staggered inside.

“I hope you’re having as shit of a day as I am,” Sam’s voice cheerfully greeted me.

I told him I was having the time of my life and he spent a few minutes grumbling about his ex-wife, how he had to spend every Christmas at her place in order to keep peace with the kids and grandkids. “It’s a goddamned misery,” he concluded. “I’d rather spend the holiday with Attila the Hun.”