Читать книгу Creep Around the Corner - Douglas Atwill - Страница 8

But don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden:

your Father had an accident there;

he was put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

–Beatrix Potter

CAPTAIN MCQUIRE ASKED, “DO you have a sport jacket and a pair of slacks, Bradford? Ones that you brought from stateside when you came?”

“Yes, ma’am”

“Do you have plans for the week-end?”

Even though I feared that the McQuire was asking me out for a social event, I told her no. I hoped it was not a reception at the consulate, thin-lipped functionaries in the overheated salons or a concert performance of Wagner going on past midnight. Everybody knew that McQuire loved music and missed little of importance at the concert hall.

“Splendid, then. We’ll courier some documents to Zurich, down there on Saturday, back by Sunday morning. You know about courier duty, don’t you, Bradford?”

“Somewhat, ma’am. But not all the details.”

“I’ll catch you up on the train. Be ready to leave at o-eight-hundred on Saturday. Wear your jacket and slacks, and a tie. No suitcase, no identity papers, no laundry marks.”

That sounded ominous; nothing to identify the body. What I did know about courier duty was limited. Communications in Europe in 1957 were unreliable: telephone lines to Berlin went through Russian-held East Germany and were presumed to be tapped at multiple locations. Lines south to Switzerland could not be verified past Donaueschingen and those to France went through the Black Forest, where there were many opportunities for unwitnessed splicing. Any form of radio was impossible because scrambling devices could not be trusted. Important Army documents were required by regulation to be delivered by hand, an officer and at least one enlisted aide, two aides in matters of highest security. Couriers left Schloss Issel every day in all manner of dress, like centurions on horseback with rolled parchments from Rome.

That evening at the club I asked Callard about courier duty. He said that McQuire was annoyed with him after their trip to Luxembourg, so she had been trying out replacements. I was merely the newest replacement.

“Why was she annoyed?”

“I can’t say. She’s ruthless with her favorites; like Tiberius, she throws them over with the first flicker of boredom.”

“I’ll take care that the emperor is amused, then.”

“Tread lightly near any cliff, my friend.”

The next morning the plain gray sedan met us at 0800. McQuire was in civilian attire, a checkered black and white suit with a salamander brooch, brownish stockings, a black coat over her shoulders and a shiny black hat with a feather. In her military uniform, she appeared much younger. Now, she looked like a middle-aged Nebraskan on vacation, Miss Partridge on a schoolteachers’ tour of the Swiss cantons.

She said, “Your checkered jacket and slacks are perfect. I couldn’t have found any as good in the Supply Room.”

“I guess that’s a compliment.”

“Take it that way.”

When I asked her a question about the assignment, she put her finger to her lips and pointed to the driver. We motored in silence to downtown Stuttgart to an iron-fenced house called Villa Ingrid. Very near to the Hauptbahnhof, it had survived the blanket bombings of the Allies. Gossip about Villa Ingrid lived a healthy life among the desks at the Historical Section.

We knew that it was involved with Hungarian matters, the debriefing of refugees from the revolution, training of agents, agendas for the future, but little more. Volunteers needed special clearances to work in the villa and assignment there was highly sought after. The steel driveway gate opened automatically and we drove into a bay of the garage, the driver closing the garage door before McQuire moved to get out.

A woman who resembled McQuire in stature met us at the garage door and took us to a room on the ground floor. There were two fake crocodile suitcases, medium-sized, on the center table. Without a word, McQuire took one and motioned for me to take the other. Mine was heavy. We walked through hallways with closed oak doors and out through the garden behind the villa. Unlike the front, the back garden had a large lawn, linden trees and a high wall with a gate, which buzzed open as we neared. We ducked out onto the back street, McQuire looking both ways. The street was empty and the boarded up back windows of adjacent villas were eyeless.

We walked the few blocks to the Hauptbahnhof and waited for the train to Zurich at 0935. On the bench in the large waiting hall she told me about the assignment.

“Switzerland is, on the surface, our ally, but they strongly forbid the US from covert operations or counterintelligence operations of any nature. To get secret documents to our offices in Zurich, we need to look like ordinary citizens on vacation, a mother and her son from Boston, or an aunt and her nephew, we’ll have to decide which on the way there. I have your papers in my hand-bag.”

“Will somebody meet us in Zurich?”

“No, we’ll take the first taxi to the museum, talking all the time about modern art. The consulate is on the next street, so after the taxi leaves we’ll walk around and leave our suitcases there. There will be identical suitcases waiting for us, packed with old clothes, which we will bring back to Bad Issel.”

“Do you expect trouble?”

“We should always expect trouble.”

I looked around at the other benches in the hall, red-cheeked Germans taking on a more sinister aspect with this new information. Germans often stared energetically at Americans, so that only added to my mistrust. It appeared that a woman all in black on a far bench was watching us without respite. Would a foreign agent not be trained to look away now and then? To stare was a dead giveaway. I was sure that McQuire had seen that danger in the black dress, but she did not deem it worth her comment.

“Don’t get too spooked, Bradford, but we will be followed. It only remains to identify which of these seated are the ones. Usually more than one.”

“Shouldn’t we be armed?”

“I am, but you should hold tight to your suitcase.”

“I thought that the Regular Army agents did this work, the ones with years of training.”

“They do, but I prefer a new man like you. Intelligent amateurs, quick to respond to new stimulus, make the best couriers. There’s something about a trained agent that gives them away. A tired nonchalance, I think, like priests who have heard too many confessions.”

“Don’t they recognize you after so many assignments?”

“I change my appearance each time.”

This did nothing to allay my fears, because the captain looked just like the captain to me, even in her distinctive dress from Omaha. Surely the trained European eye, honed by centuries of intense observations, could see through her mid-American veneer.

A new thought popped into my mind.

“Has anybody been killed doing this?” I asked.

“Not in a long time.”

Bowel-opening fear was not the proper response, so I said, “The sign-board says our train is boarding.”

“Keep your eyes peeled.”

At the gate, I looked back for the bench with the old woman in black, but she had moved forward to a few places behind us in the line. My knuckles must have been snow white on the suitcase handle. I wondered if I was really meant for courier duty. My dossier-covered desk with its green-shaded lamp seemed so homey, so safe, so far away, the monkish calligrapher’s table with scrolls awaiting the pen, shelter from the buffetings of the world, no treacherous old women in black dresses and shoe-daggers washed in nerve poison.

I followed McQuire onto a second-class car; she walked through several more until she found a compartment already occupied by four young women, apparently school-girls. They moved to allow us to sit together.

McQuire put her suitcase on the rack above her head, so I did the same. The schoolgirls watched intently as I helped McQuire position hers. Just as we were seated, the train started to move. McQuire settled in with aplomb, shaking open a copy of the Paris Herald Tribune. In a few minutes I saw the old woman go by our compartment, turn her head to see us, pause slightly and then go on. McQuire, who was deep in the news columns, had not noticed. I suddenly had to pee, but expected I ought to wait.

McQuire introduced herself in German and asked where the girls lived. München. Did they go to school there? Ja. Were they going on holiday? Ja, ja, bestimmt. Did they like to ski in Switzerland? Natürlich, Fräulein. Then followed a ten minute exchange of Teutonic chatter, McQuire and the girls nodding back and forth, smiling, laughing, in the end all turning to look at me.

“What?” I said.

“I just told the girls that you were my handsome nephew and studying to be an artist. Ein Kunstler.”

It was a four hour trip to Zurich, with a short stop at the border. The old woman came by our compartment several times, once stopping without shame to look straight in at me as the four girls and McQuire dozed. A cold winter rain devoid of compassion fell on me when she stared, her eyes near enough to mine to see their ice-blue color. Were those flecks of crimson in the blue? I wondered if she had a gun in the handbag that she clutched to her breast. Perhaps there was a special grommet hole in the leather and the gun was already aimed right at my nose. The silenced bullet would go straight through the grommet, not even scratching the weathered leather of her handbag, and slip through the window glass while my compartment companions slept. I was a dead man, I knew, but then she lowered the bag and moved on. The fear resounded in me for the next hour like a billiard ball caroming aimlessly from side to side, side to side.

At the border, the Swiss Customs men walked the car inspecting each passport in turn. McQuire produced ours from her bag and they nodded, asked her something in German, but she replied in English.

“I don’t speak good German. My nephew and I will be staying in Zurich only long enough for the museum. Thank you.” The girls looked at her strangely as they offered their papers, because the Fraülein spoke acceptable German. They knew something was amiss. I remembered a caveat from intelligence school: never speak a foreign language at borders, only English, even if you were multi-fluent. McQuire must have hundreds of these guidelines available for instant use, ready to wend our way through difficulties.

The customs men considered what she said, looked back at our passports, stamped them and closed our compartment door. In Zurich, everything went as planned. After being deposited at the Kunstmuseum, we strolled along an avenue with horse-chestnut trees and turned into a side street. There was a Marine at the consulate gate; he looked at McQuire’s passports, let us in immediately.

After the exchange of suitcases, McQuire led us to the Grand Hotel au Lac for a late lunch. The Stuttgart train did not depart until 1700. I could feel my knuckles more relaxed on the lighter replacement suitcase full of somebody’s shirts and socks. We were seated at a table with a view of the lake, where small steamboats arrived and departed, tight squadrons of black swans moving in and out of their way.

“Bradford, it went well.”

“I was sure that old woman had a gun in her purse.”

“What old woman?”

“The one who kept looking into our compartment. All in black.”

“Don’t let your artist’s imagination get the better of you.”

“I’m sure she wasn’t just another old lady.”

“Europe is full of old ladies in black.”

“But this one had the eyes of a killer. Flecks of crimson, I’m sure.”

“What nonsense. Let’s order our lunch.”

Perhaps she was right. I was too suggestive, too easy to unnerve. She ordered for us both while I tried to translate the menu. Lendenschnitte mit Anana. Mixed vegetables and Bratkartofflen. Coffee and thin slices of Munster Cheese for dessert. The knot that had been tying and retying itself behind my ear loosened a bit and gave me the first sense of well-being since we left Schloss Issel. Then I looked over McQuire’s shoulder to see the same woman in black at a far table, looking our way.

“Captain . . .” I started.

“Call me Aunty, Bradford.”

“Aunty, there’s the woman I told you about right at a table behind you. The woman in black.”

“Can I turn around? Is she looking?”

“She’s always looking.”

“Well, then it won’t matter.” She put on her glasses and turned around as only another woman can, moving her focus from table to table, slightly forward to an earlier table, then backwards, slowly backwards, not missing a single face, appearing to be propelled merely by a simple, sociable curiosity, until it landed on the old woman, almost directly behind McQuire. Some of the other women at tables in the restaurant secretly observed McQuire’s sweep with admiration. No man could have executed that circular camera movement with such bravura. McQuire nodded to the old woman. The old woman nodded back.

“Bradford, she’s one of ours. Works downtown as an analyst in the Villa Ingrid, but a killer in her own right.”

“You didn’t tell me. What’s her name?”

“There’s no need for you to know.”

“So, she followed us?”

“Our back-up. Those papers in the suitcases must have been really important.”

“Is that a machine gun in her purse?”

“Something very like it. Let’s see if we can get some more coffee.”

I lost sight of the Villa Ingrid woman on the return. No doubt it was not so urgent to protect our suitcases on this trip, so she would be sleeping with her feet up in another compartment, snoring with the machine-gunned purse under her elbows on her lap. Europe was a much more dangerous place than most people imagined. The gray car met us at the Stuttgart station and drove us without conversation to Schloss Issel.

As it departed, McQuire said, “You’re tightly wired, Bradford. Not a bad quality overall for courier duty.”

“Thanks, ma’am. I won’t be so nervous on the next assignment.”

“Good, because there will be more, I can assure you.” So Tiberius had picked a new favorite. Me. I made a note to be careful where I walked.

I said, “It would be nice if it weren’t on a weekend every time, though.”

She looked at me without expression, but did not answer me. Had I already displeased her?

“Just a thought, ma’am.”

Did my days as the favorite, luncheons by the lake with stemmed glasses of white wine and Lendenschnitte, promise to be short or had I built a rapport with the captain, partners in the shepherding of secrets across a malevolent Europe?