The Cold War Swap

radio news service called Global Reports, Inc. Baker was the one and only professed member of Alcoholics Anonymous in Bonn, and he was a backslider.

“Hello, Cooky. How’s the booze barrier?”

“I just got up. Care to join me in an eye opener?”

“I think I’ll pass.”

The apartment was furnished in a haphazard manner. A rumpled day bed. A table or two and an enormous wingback chair that had a telephone built into one arm and a portable typewriter attached to a stand that swung like a gate. It was Cooky’s office.

Around the room were carefully placed bottles of Ballantine’s Scotch. Some were half full, others nearly so. It was Cooky’s theory that when he wanted a drink he should only have to reach out and there it would be.

“Sometimes when I’m on the floor it’s a hell of a long crawl to the kitchen,” he once explained to me.

Cooky was thirty-three years old that year, and according to Fredl he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. He was a couple of inches over six feet, lean as a whippet, with a high forehead, a perfect nose and a wide mouth that seemed continually to be fighting a smile over some private joke. And he was immaculate. He wore a dark-blue sport shirt, a blue and yellow Paisley ascot, a pair of gray flannels that must have cost sixty bucks, and black loafers.

“Sit down, Mac. Coffee?”

“That’ll do.”

“Sugar?”

“If you have it.”

He picked up one of the bottles of Scotch and disappeared into the kitchen. A couple of minutes later he handed me my coffee and then went back for his drink: a half-tumbler of Scotch with a milk chaser.

“Breakfast. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

He took a long gulp of the Scotch and quickly washed it down with the milk.

“I fell off a week ago,” he said.

“You’ll make it.”

He shook his head sadly and smiled. “Maybe.”

“What do you hear from New York?” I asked.

“They’re billing more than thirty-seven million a year now and the money is still being banked for me.”

At twenty-six Cooky had been the boy wonder of Madison Avenue public-relations circles, a founder of Baker, Brickhill and Hillsman.

“I got on the flit and just couldn’t get off,” he had explained to me one gloomy night. “They wanted to buy out my interest, but in a moment of sobriety I listened to my lawyers and refused to sell. I’ve got a third of the stock. The more lushed I got, the more stubborn I became. Finally I made a deal. I would get out and they would bank my share of the profits for me. My attorneys handled the whole thing. I’m very rich and I’m very drunk and I know I’m never going to quit drinking and I know I’m never going to write a book.”

Cooky had been in Bonn for three years. Despite Berlitz and a series of private tutors, he could not learn German. “Mental block,” he had said. “I don’t like the goddamn language and I don’t want to learn it.”

His job was to fill one two-minute news spot a day and occasionally do a live show. His sources were the private secretaries of anyone in town who might have a story. In methodical fashion he had seduced those who were young enough and completely charmed those who were over the edge. I had once spent an afternoon with him while he had gathered his news. He had sat in the big chair, the private-joke smile fighting to break through. “Wait,” he had said. “In three minutes the phone will ring.”

It had. First there had been the girl from the Presse Dienst. Then it was one who worked as a stringer for the London Daily Express: when her boss had a story, she made sure that Cooky had it too. The phone had continued to ring. To all Cooky had been charming, grateful and sincere.

By eight o’clock the calls had ended and Cooky had gone over his notes. Between us we had managed to finish a fifth. Cooky had glanced around and found a fresh bottle conveniently placed by his chair on the floor. He had tossed it to me. “Mix us a couple more, Mac, while I write this crap.”

He had swung the typewriter toward him, inserted a sheet of paper, and talked the story as he typed. “Chancellor Ludwig Erhard said today that …” He had had two minutes that night, and it had taken him five to write it. “You want to go to the studio?” he had asked.

More than mellow, I had agreed. Cooky had stuck a fifth of Scotch into his mackintosh and we had made the dash to the Deutsche Rundfunk station. The engineer had been waiting at the door.

“You have ten minutes, Herr Baker. They have already called you from New York.”

“Plenty of time,” Cooky had said, producing the bottle. The engineer had had a drink, I had had a drink, and Cooky had had a drink. I had been getting drunk, but Cooky had seemed as warm and charming as ever. We had gone into the studio and he had gotten on the phone to his editor in New York. The editor had started to reel off the AP and UPI stories that had come over the wire from Bonn.

“I’ve got that … got that … got that. Yeah. That, too. And I’ve got one more on the Ambassador.… I don’t give a goddamn if AP doesn’t have it; they’ll move it after nine o'clock.”

We had all had another drink. Cooky had put the earphones on and had talked over the live mike to the engineer in New York. “How they hanging, Frank? That’s good. All right; here we go.”

And Cooky had begun to read. His voice had been excellent, a fifth of Scotch apparently having made no effect.