The Cold War Swap

Cooky smiled. “No hurry. You can give it to me when you get back.”

“Thanks.”

“Take it easy,” Cooky said at the door, the faint smile threatening to turn into a grin.

I drove home. Nobody with a Luger was in the apartment. There were no fat little men with shabby brief cases and brown trusting eyes or cold-faced policemen with starched shirts and overly clean fingernails. Just me. I picked up my suitcase, opened it on the bed and packed, leaving room for two bottles of Scotch. I started to close it, then walked over to the dresser and took a Colt .38 revolver from its clever hiding place under my shirts. It was a belly- gun. I put it in the suitcase, closed the hasps, went out to my car, and drove off to Dusseldorf feeling like a complete idiot.

By nine that night I was sitting in my room in the Berlin Hilton waiting for the phone to ring or a knock on the door or somebody to come through the transom if there had been one. I switched on the radio and listened to RIAS knock hell out of the Russians for a while. After fifteen minutes of that, and another drink, I decided it was time to get out of the room before I started leafing through the Gideon Bible’s handy guide to chapter and verse for times of stress. I wondered if it had one for fools.

I took a cab over to the Kurfurstendamm and sat in one of the cafes watching the Berliners go by. It was an interesting parade. When he sat down at my table, all I said was a polite “Guten Abend.” He was a bit of a dude, if the phrase doesn’t date me: middling tall with long black hair brushed straight back into not quite a ducktail. He wore a blue pin-striped suit that pinched a bit too much at the waist. His polka-dot bow tie had been knotted by a machine. The waitress came over and he ordered a bottle of Pils. After it came he sipped it slowly, his black eyes restlessly scanning the strollers.

“You left Bonn in a hurry, Mr. McCorkle.” The voice was pure Wisconsin. Madison, I thought.

“Did I forget to stop the milk?”

He grinned, a flicker of shiny white.

“We could talk here, but the book says we shouldn’t. We’d better go by the book.”

“I haven’t finished my beer. Does the book say anything about that?”

The flicker of white again. He had the best looking set of teeth I had seen in a long time. I thought he must be hell with the girls.

“You don’t have to ride me, Mr. McCorkle. I’ve got instructions from Bonn. They think it’s important. Maybe you will too when you hear what I’ve got to say.”

“Have you got a name?”

“You can call me Bill. Most of the time it’s Wilhelm.”

“What do you want to talk about, Bill? About how things are in the East and perhaps how they would have been better if the wheat crop had shown its early promise?”

The whiter-than-white teeth again. “About Mr. Padillo, Mr. McCorkle.” He shoved over one of the round paper coasters that are supplied by German beer firms. It had an address on it, and it wasn’t a very good address.

“High-class place,” I said.

“Safe. I’ll meet you there in half an hour. That’ll give you time to finish your beer.” He rose and lost himself in the sidewalk traffic.

The address on the coaster was for a cafe called Der Purzelbaum—The Somersault. It was a hangout for prostitutes and homosexuals of both sexes. I had gone there once in a party of people who had thought it was funny.

I waited fifteen minutes and then caught a cab. The driver shrugged eloquently when I gave him the address. Der Purzelbaum was no better or worse than similar establishments in Hamburg or London or Paris or New York. It was a basement joint, and I had to walk down eight steps and through a yellow door to reach a long low-ceilinged room with soft pink lights and cuddly-looking little alcoves. There was also a lot of fish net hung here and there. It was dyed different colors. Bill of the shiny teeth was sitting at the long bar that ran two-thirds of the length of the left side of the room. He was talking to the barkeep, who had long blond wavy hair and sad violet eyes. There were two or three girls at the bar whose appraising stares counted the change in my pocket. From the alcoves came the murmur of conversation and an occasional giggle. A jukebox in the rear played softly.

I walked over to the bar. The young man who said his name was Bill asked in German if I would like a drink. I said a beer, and the sad-eyed bartender served it silently. I let my host pay for it. He picked up his glass and bottle and nodded toward the rear of the place. I followed, sheeplike. We sat at a table next to the jukebox, which was loud enough to keep anyone from overhearing us but not so loud that we had to shout.

“I understand the book says that these things can be bugged,” I said, indicating the jukebox.

He looked startled for only a second. Then he relaxed and smiled that wonderful smile. “You’re quite a kidder, Mr. McCorkle.”

“What else is on your mind?”

“I’ve been told I should keep an eye on you while you’re in Berlin.”

“Who told you?”

“Mr. Burmser.”

“Where did you meet me?”

“At the Hilton. You weren’t trying to hide.”

I made some patterns on the table with my wet beer glass. “Not to be rude or anything, but how do I know you’re who you say you are? Just curious—but do you happen to have one of those little black folding cardcases that kind of outlines your bona fides?”

The smile exploded again. “If I have one it’s in Bonn or Washington or Munich. Burmser told me to repeat a telephone number to you.” He did. It was the same one Burmser had written on a slip of paper that morning.