Weatherby returned to his apartment and telephoned Fraulein Fredl Arndt in Bonn, instructing her to contact Padillo’s business associate and inform him that he, Padillo, was in need of “Christmas help” (we find no suitable German translation for this phrase).
In East Berlin Padillo stayed at the apartment of Max Vess until dark. They then drove in the 1964 Citroen ID-19 to 117 Kerlerstrasse. The building is a five-story, temporarily deserted lightmanufacturing structure. Padillo and Vess remained in the building during the night.
Herr McCorkle arrived at Tempelhof at 1730 aboard BEA Flight 319 from Dusseldorf. He was followed to the Hilton Hotel by agents of the American defense establishment and by an agent from the KGB. At 1820 he registered and was assigned room 843. He remained there for two hours, telephoning no one, and then walked to the Kurfurstendamm, where he sat in a cafe. He was joined by Wilhelm Bartels, 28, American agent, 128 Meirenstrasse. They spoke briefly and Bartels left. McCorkle finished his beverage and proceeded by taxi to
John Weatherby entered McCorkle’s room at 1200 the following day as scheduled. He remained for 37 minutes and left. McCorkle took a taxi to
He speaks fluent English, French, and Italian and has a knowledge of the Yoruba dialect indigenous to Western Nigeria, where he spent three years, from 1954 to 1957. He has traveled extensively throughout Europe, South America, and Africa as well as the Near East. He has a concentration number (B-2316) tattooed on his left forearm, but it is false. Nothing is known of Maas prior to 1946, when he appeared in Frankfurt.
McCorkle accosted Maas and they entered a cafe. They talked briefly (21 minutes) and Maas handed the American a paper prior to departing. Contents of the paper are unknown. McCorkle returned to his hotel, telephoned Herr Cook Baker in Bonn, and asked him to secure and deliver $5,000 to Berlin that evening. Baker agreed.
NOE reports that Baker checked in at the Hilton that evening, made a telephone call that lasted only a few seconds from a house phone, and then telephoned for five minutes from a booth. He then seated himself in the lobby.
When Weatherby arrived, Baker entered the same elevator. There were no other passengers. The elevator stopped at the sixth and eighth floors. When it returned, NOE commandeered it, passing himself off as an official inspector to waiting passengers.
NOE found a .22 caliber cartridge on the elevator floor. A subsequent search of Baker’s room revealed a .22 Colt automatic. We assume Baker shot Weatherby in the back, pushed him off at the sixth floor, continued to the eighth floor and McCorkle’s room. Bloodstains indicate Weatherby took the stairs to McCorkle’s room, where he died.
At 2121 Baker and McCorkle left the hotel, rented a Mercedes, and drove to the Friedrichstrasse crossing. They went through at 2145. Both used their valid American passports.
They came under immediate surveillance by Agent Bartels in the East Sector. You have already received a report on his death and of the successful kidnapping of the two American defectors by Padillo and associates.
However, we have learned from Max Vess that Padillo shot and killed Cook Baker prior to the attempt at the wall. The body has not yet been discovered.
The accident at the wall was a fluke. A two-man patrol was inadvertently in the area. The diversion of the gasoline bombs worked well, and it is regrettable that this pattern, not used in three years, should be expended on a failure. Max Vess reports that Padillo and associates took refuge in Langeman’s garage, where they paid DM 2,000 for bed and board. I suggest that I speak to Langeman about his billing.
Padillo and McCorkle met Maas in an East Berlin cafe. Maas, for $10,000, offered to get the group into West Berlin through a tunnel. Padillo and McCorkle agreed. On their return to Langeman’s garage they were forced to kill two members of the Volkspolizei and dispose of their bodies in a manhole.
Max Vess is to meet Padillo and associates shortly after 0500 this morning and transport them here. You are acquainted with their subsequent needs from the verbal reports received from Max Vess.
Item: All our automobiles used in this operation have been recovered. I have sent a special memorandum to accounting informing them of all overhead charges.
I turned off the water in the tub and walked back into the bedroom. I put the report down and picked up the bottle of Scotch, uncapped it, and poured a drink. I took a long, deep swallow and stood there in the clean little bedroom with the turned-down bed and the picture of a cafe scene on the wall and let the liquor spread from the stomach to the cortex. I topped up the drink and opened the closet door. A Class-A Army uniform, complete with tech-sergeant’s stripes, combat infantry badge, and some ribbons indicating that the wearer had gone through a couple of battles in the Pacific, hung neatly in the closet. I closed the door and went back into the bathroom and set the glass down on the toilet lid within handy reach of the bath. I went back into the bedroom and fetched a package of the cigarettes and an ash tray and set them next to the glass of Scotch. Then I stripped off my clothes and threw them into a corner of the bathroom. I eased myself down into the water, which was a little short of scalding, and lay there staring up at the ceiling and letting the muscles unkink themselves.
I soaked in the bathtub, drinking the Scotch and smoking the cigarettes and thinking, but not too hard, until the water grew cool. I ran some more of the hot and then used the soap and rinsed myself off with a shower. I shaved and brushed my teeth and smoked a final cigarette. Then I got into bed.
Beds like that are too good for the common people.
CHAPTER 18
I was running down the long corridor again toward the brightly lighted door at the far, far end which seemed to grow no closer when I stepped in the snake-made noose and it began to jerk my leg. But it was only Padillo in his master-sergeant’s uniform, complete with the ribbons, the hash marks, and the gold overseas-duty bars. He looked like the kind who wasn’t overly generous with a three-day pass.
When he saw I was awake he quit shaking my foot and turned toward the Scotch. He poured himself a drink and said, “I have some coffee coming.”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and reached for a cigarette. “The sleep was good—what there was of it. You make a hell of a toughlooking top sergeant.”
