TWO
I stumbled onto a beer hall tucked away in a small side street not far from the rail station. It was called Stru-wwelpeter after the fairy-tale kid who never washed or trimmed his fingernails. A painting of the boy over the door brought back an image from a book my mother used to read to me. Memories of that time were pretty rare for me, so I guess Berlin was jostling something. Anyway, it made me smile.
The pub was a traditional place—high ceilings, rows of long wooden tables, large fireplace, and a warm atmosphere. About half-full with a cheery crowd. I ordered sausages and a Pilsner, found the Tribune in my pocket, and settled in. I felt like a smoke, decided what the hell, and bought a pack of HBs from a machine. It seemed to go with the scene.
I realized that I’d been sitting on the bench at the platform for well over an hour staring at the front page of the paper and hadn’t read a word of it. KENNEDY DEPARTS ON EUROPEAN TOUR was the lead item. I read the first paragraph:
London — President Kennedy’s European tour is taking place at a most inauspicious time, according to many diplomats here. In his speech at American University on June í 0, the President set as his goal an easing of rivalries with the Soviet Union. That conciliatory gesture on East-West relations is regarded here as ruling out any possibility of a strong declaration by the United States in support of West Germany, and particularly Berlin, during Mr. Kennedy’s visit. A high-ranking NATO officer said, “President Kennedy wishes to turn back the clock of warfare and stop development of nuclear weapons on earth and in space. But this cannot be done.”
It’s a trick of journalism that when a newspaper wants to put an editorial on the front page, they simply write an opinion, then go out and find someone to attribute it to. What did “according to many diplomats” mean? It meant the writer had been to a cocktail party full of junior ministers who’d spent the night second-guessing American foreign policy. That’s news? And the “high-ranking NATO officer” was bound to be one of de Gaulle’s cronies. The French president, unable to understand why the world gave Kennedy the adulation that should have been his, took potshots at the president whenever the opportunity presented itself.
I skipped to the next item, which was much more interesting. It involved sex, drugs, abuse of power, and human betrayal. Stuff you can get your teeth into. I’d been following the story since it broke in London a few weeks earlier, thought maybe I could use it in one of my many unwritten novels.
The published version went like this:
Britain’s Labour Party today demanded a full-scale investigation of War Minister John Profumo’s resignation in a sex scandal that shook the British government. The opposition party called for a parliamentary inquiry into any possible breach of security resulting from Profumo’s relations with a redheaded playgirl.
Profumo admitted that he lied to Parliament on March 22 when he said there had been no impropriety in his relations with Christine Keeler, 2í, The party leaders said they were particularly concerned about Miss Keeler’s “friendliness” with Captain Eugene Ivanov, an assistant Soviet naval attache, at a time when she was also seeing Profumo. Ivanov was recalled to Moscow last December.
Of course, there’s always more dirt if you dig a little deeper. I got the scoop from a friend at the Bureau who was keeping tabs on the case (code-named “Bowtie”) for Hoover, who claimed to be interested in U.S. citizens who might’ve been friendly with Miss Keeler, and who might’ve dropped a secret or two along the way. The London FBI office had, in fact, uncovered a couple of air-force officers based at Lockenheath who’d had ￡100 worth of “friendliness” one night, but they were cleared after an exhaustive interview. (The highly descriptive tape of the interrogation was apparently a hot item around the Bureau.)
But my guy thought the director wasn’t so much worried about the affairs of state as the other kind. The word was that maybe the current occupant of the White House had more than a passing interest in the sex scandal because one of Keeler’s cohorts, a classy Czech girl named Maria Novotny, had told the Brits that she and another girl, Suzy Chang, had together serviced the president when they were working New York. My man at the Bureau hinted that the director, no great fan of the president, was collecting information and feeding it to his friend the vice president to use if the Kennedys tried to dump him from the ticket in ‘64, as rumor had it.
Comrade Ivanov was KGB, that’s for sure. What did he take back to Moscow? Not so sure. Keeler, under interrogation, had said he wanted her to find out from Profumo if and when West Germany would be joining the nuclear club. (You’d be surprised what a responsible government official will say to a sexy redhead who has his dick in her hand.) Keeler insisted she never asked the question. Maybe so, or maybe the girl was exceptionally good under questioning. Certain interrogation techniques, well known to SIS, would’ve been ruled out in this case because of the media profile. My guess was that Ivanov didn’t go home empty-handed. And it was certainly possible that the Brits got more out of Keeler than they cared to admit. That kind of security breach would have severely limited Washington’s willingness to share sensitive information with our friends in Whitehall.
At one time I would’ve seen all this as a big win for Moscow, necessitating some sort of countermeasure. Now I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what difference it made whether the Soviets knew if West Germany would go nuclear. For Christ’s sake, they already had something like twenty-two hundred warheads pointed at Western Europe. So what if they decided to point a few more? But that was the game. If West Germany was going to install warheads, Moscow had to be ready to put them into East Germany.
The guy who intrigued me was an osteopath named Stephen Ward, the guy who’d put Keeler together with both Profumo and Ivanov. Ward, who palmed himself off as an artist, was being accused by the press of all sorts of depravity. Stories of uninhibited orgies, wife swapping, marijuana, pills, whips, and chains were good grist for the paper mill and, no doubt, most of it was true. But it was all smoke, meant to obscure the obvious. The kind of “public relations” campaign I’d run many times.
What neither side wanted to say was that the good doctor and his orgies were bait. Nothing special or unusual about it; there were dozens like him in every capital around the world, set up by both sides to see what kind of fish they could hook. But the big news was that the good doctor was our bait. MI5 had put him in business with the hope of getting Ivanov on film in a compromising position, then turning him. But putting a dabbler like Ward up against the Russian was like putting Fred Astaire in the ring with Joe Louis. He can dance around for a while, but sooner or later he’s gonna find himself trapped in a corner and it’s a pretty good bet who’s gonna leave on a stretcher.
The good doctor wouldn’t have fully understood his position until it was too late. A guy like him goes along for the ride, so taken with the thrill of it all that he can’t see where it’s taking him until it’s too late. When he finally realized they owned him, he ran for cover, forgetting that the guys he was running to were on the other side now, because he put them there. In fact, Ward had no side, and no future. Not important enough to get a ticket to Moscow, but clued in enough to make him a liability to both sides. He was used up and was about to be discarded. Chumps like him always end up dead, one way or another.
I thought about ordering another drink, lit a second HB to help me decide. My throat still ached from Andy Johnson’s Green Beret move, but I convinced myself that the smoke was soothing it.
“May I use a match from you?”
I looked up and was greeted by the widest, silliest grin I’d ever seen, beaming down at me from a tall and skinny bag of bones in a loose-fitting suit. Leaning over the table pointing at his Camel, he was young, early twenties, and more than a bit wobbly.
“Sure,” I said, and lit him up.
“America,” he winked, blowing smoke.
“Are my stars and stripes showing?”
“All Americans read this newspaper and stay at the Kempinski,” he smiled proudly, indicating the hotel matchbook. He held out his hand. “Horst Schneider.”
“Jack,” I responded in kind. “Jack Teller.”
“It’s a pleasure to get your acquaintance,” he said, holding the handshake a beat too long. Then, noting my amused smile: “Is it not correct?”
“Happy to make your acquaintance would be better, but you could just say, ‘Glad to meet you.’ It’s less formal.”
“Yes, of course. Much better. Glad to meet you. Jack, yes? May I sit with you?”
He did before I could answer, but I would’ve said yes anyway. He looked a little unstable and I was already starting to like him.
“We must have a schnapps together. Let me buy you one.” He signaled the waitress and turned quickly back to me. “Have you seen Berlin before?”
“Not lately,” I answered.
“It’s quite unique. One of a kind, really. An island surrounded by no water. From which parts of America do you come? New York? Or is it Los Angeles?”
“Florida.”
“Ah!” He closed his eyes, recited, “Miami Beach, Daytona Beach, Palm Beach …” then got stuck.
“Pompano Beach.”
“Key Largo!” he exclaimed, ignoring me. “How could I forget! Humphrey Bogart is the war hero—by killing lots of Germans, of course—but wants only a quiet life now. In Key Largo lives the father of his good friend who was killed in the war, and the beautiful young wife, of course, who is Lauren Bacall, the wife of Bogie. Not in the film, but in life. Then comes the gangster, who is Edward G. Robinson, of course, Johnny Rocco, from Cuba, where is he—verbann … ?”
“Exiled.”
“Yes! … Ah, sprechen sie deutsch!”
“Just a little.”
“Good—and here is our schnapps. Of course, Bogie kills the bad guy and wins the girl. To your good health.” He raised his glass.
“Down the hatch.”
“Very good! Down the hatch!” We knocked them back, chased with fresh Pilsner.
“Italy,” I said.
“Sorry—?”
“Bogie’s character in Key Largo. He was in Italy, so he didn’t necessarily kill lots of Germans. He might have killed lots of Italians.”
Horst wrinkled his forehead, then rocked his head back and forth a couple of times, acknowledging the possibility that maybe I was right. “It doesn’t matter for the story. It matters only that Bogie has stopped believing in the fight against evil and must regain his principles in order to kill the gangsters.”
“The reluctant hero.” I stubbed out my cigarette, lit another almost immediately. Horst dug out another Camel.
“I’ve never been to America. Someday I will go.” He leaned across the table and picked up the matchbook. “Where dreams come true.”
“Don’t get your hopes up too high.”
“I know quite a lot about it already.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t believe everything you see in the movies.”
He studied me while he sipped his beer, then took a drag off the Camel and blew smoke rings.
“You see, the problem in Germany is that everyone wants to be the same as their neighbor. It’s a nation of conformists. Not like America, which is the opposite, a country of freethinkers.”
“America has more than its share of followers.”
“I don’t mean as in the films, with cowboys and gangsters.”
“Oh, there are plenty of cowboys and gangsters. But we were talking about freethinkers.” A dissatisfied expression crept onto Horst’s face, so I suggested we have another schnapps, which brightened him up right away.
It went on like that for a while, Horst reciting the plots to Shane, High Noon, Rebel Without a Cause, and Little Caesar, to name just a few, in an attempt to help me understand the true nature of the American spirit. I was patriotic enough, and still am, but I’ve seen the American spirit from top to bottom and nothing is pretty from every angle.
We ended up—I don’t know how many hours later—the last two drunken souls in the place, him trying to convince me that Bogart was the best actor of all time, me championing Henry Fonda, who I’d never given a second thought to until my fifth schnapps. The waitress, a big round lady with a mustache, whose initial good humor had evaporated with the crowd, told us they were about to close, so this would have to be the last round.
Horst saluted her with his drink. “You have served us well! Down the gate!”
“Hatch,” I corrected him.
“Yes, hatch!” As he tossed the drink back a strange look came over him—a bizarre smile frozen onto his face. He stood up very slowly, eyes locked onto a nonexistent horizon, placed his hat on his head, bowed to the waitress, and said, “I bid you a good night.” One step toward the door and the bottom fell out. He went down hard, breaking the fall with his face.
Feeling a bit light-headed myself, I reacted slowly, pushing away from the table and methodically walking around to where Horst had landed. I steadied myself with hands on my knees and took a good long look at him—he wasn’t moving.
“Do you know where he lives?” I asked the waitress.
“Kirchstrasse,” came from Horst, still glued to the floor.
I leaned over, asked him if he could move.
“I think not,” he responded, one eye opening.
I asked the waitress to call a taxi, but she said none would come at this hour. (Not quick enough for her, anyway.) Behind the bar a big bald guy, who I presumed was her husband, was shaking his head while he wiped out beer glasses. I was on my own.
“Is it far to Kirchstrasse?”
Horst answered again. “Very near. I can show you.”
I took a deep breath, pulled Horst up to a sitting position, and hoisted him onto my shoulder, facing backward. He didn’t weigh much, but he was all over the place, arms and legs everywhere. The waitress was happy to hold the door open for us and I heard the lock as soon as we stepped onto the street. I regretted leaving her such a large tip.
“I thought you said it was close.” After walking for twenty minutes, I was starting to sober up and Horst was getting a lot heavier.
“It is,” his voice echoed off the empty pavement. He picked his head up to see where we were—or at least where we’d been, as he was facing backward. “Very close.”
“Which way?” I turned in a circle so he could see each street in the intersection.
“To the left… My left, not yours.”
“Are you sure this time?”
“Quite sure!”
I started walking, but the noises coming from above were sounding ominous.
“You all right up there?” I asked.
“I feel somewhat ill,” Horst confessed.
“Maybe you should walk now.”
“I’m afraid I don’t feel my legs. If you are tired perhaps we should stop for a rest.”
“If I stop now you sleep in the street.”
“It’s not far at all. Very close.”
We eventually located Horst’s building—a nondescript six-story walk-up, the kind that appeared all over Berlin after the war. I leaned against the cold concrete while Horst, still slung over my shoulder, rummaged around in his jacket pockets.
“Can you feel inside my pants, please, Jack?”
“Not on the first date, Horst.”
“I seem to have lost my keys. Perhaps they are in the pocket of my pants.”
I reluctantly groped Horst’s pockets and came up empty. “When was the last time you saw them?” I asked.
“All the time I keep them in the pocket of my jacket. They must have fallen out while I have been on your back.”
“Well, sleeping in the gutter isn’t as bad as it sounds.” I started to unload him.
“Wait—you can ring the bell.”
It was something just short of 3 A.M., SO whoever Horst was planning to roust was not going to be overly thankful to me for delivering him. But that was his problem. I was just being a good citizen.
“It’s the fourth bell from the top,” he said. “I think.”
I counted four from the top. “Vogel?”
“No!” he sputtered. “Vogel will murder me if I wake him. Perhaps it’s the fifth. Turn me around.” I did a one-eighty and faced the street while Horst tried to make sense of the doorbells. “Yes, I was right, it’s the fifth.” He pressed the button, waited ten seconds, then pressed it again.
“I hope that’s your mother up there,” I remarked.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to believe that you’re dumb enough to do that to your wife.”
After a minute I heard footsteps inside followed by a female’s muffled voice: “Horst? … Bist du das?”
“Can you open the door please!” he bellowed.
“Shhh,” she whispered as the door creaked open. “Ihr weckt alle!” I couldn’t see her face, but she had a good voice—rich, like honey, but not too sweet. And positively not his mother’s.
“I’ve lost my keys!” Horst whispered loudly.
She asked if he was injured: “Bist du verletzt?”
“I can’t feel my legs,” he smiled.
“Und wer ist das?”
“This is my good friend Jack Teller, of Pompano Beach, Florida. Turn around, Jack, so you can meet my sister.”
She had pale blue eyes—soft and sympathetic, but wary—and silky blond hair, still mussed from her pillow. A white cotton nightshirt, open at the neck, was visible underneath a frayed light blue bathrobe that she pulled tighter when I looked at her. I noticed the long arc of her neck as she cocked her head sideways, trying to figure out if I was to be trusted. She pursed her lips, flattening the lovely curve of her mouth, and said, “Hmm.” There was something serene and graceful about her—a quiet, soulful beauty.
“Her name is Hanna,” Horst added.
“Sorry about this,” I said. “Where would you like me to put your brother?”
“Come in,” she answered, with an air of resignation, but also with unexpected warmth.
I navigated the entrance without knocking Horst’s head too hard against the frame and found myself facing a flight of narrow stairs.
I looked to Hanna. “Up?”
“The top floor,” she confirmed.
I nodded and she followed us up. Horst said, “I feel sick” in German and Hanna responded with, “It serves you right.”
The place was small and pretty basic, but neat and clean. The furniture seemed to come from a secondhand shop and the faded wallpaper was peeling away at the edges. I dumped Horst on a worn-out sofa and he stayed where he landed, eyes shut tight. “You must be quite strong to carry me so far,” he said.
“You said it was close.”
He peeked up at me and smiled like a kid. “It’s not so far.”
Hanna reappeared from the kitchen with a glass of water and two Bayer. She sat Horst up, gave him the tablets, and let him fall back with a groan, pretty much unconscious.
“He’s gonna have a tough morning,” I said.
“It’s morning already.” She looked away quickly, moved toward the door.
“I guess it is,” I answered.
“He’ll have a tough afternoon, but he deserves it.” I finally got a half smile. It was nice. “Thank you for seeing him home.”
I hesitated at the door, waiting to see if there was anything else to say. There wasn’t, so I just said good-bye.
I headed back to the hotel feeling surprisingly good. The sun was up by the time I saw my pillow, so I pulled the drapes and put the “Do Not Disturb” sign outside the door, figuring I would sleep all day.