“You find your uniform?”
“In the closet.”
“Better get into it. We have an appointment at the beauty parlor.”
I took the uniform out of the closet and started to dress. “This is a comedown for an ex-captain, you know.”
“You should have stayed in,” Padillo said; “you could have retired this year.”
“There seems to be some chance that another institution may make me a free-bed-and-board offer. For twenty years or so, if I play it right.”
Somebody knocked on the door and Padillo said come in. It was one of the big men with a large pot of coffee and two cups. He put them down on the dresser and left. I tied my tie and walked over and poured a cup. Then I slipped on the blouse and admired myself in the mirror. “I knew a guy who looked like me twenty-one years ago in Camp Wolters,” I said. “I hated his guts.”
“No dog tags,” Padillo said. “If they start asking for those, we’re dead anyway.”
“What’s next?”
“Wolgemuth is a little skittish about the airport. He’s got his expert in to do a make-up job on us. All of us.”
“The guy has quite an operation.”
“You read the report?”
“Seems as though we had some company we didn’t know about.”
“So did Weatherby,” Padillo said.
“That still bother you?”
“It will for a long time. He was a good man.”
I finished my coffee and we went down the hall to the paneled room where we had first met Wolgemuth. He was dressed in a single-breasted blue suit, white shirt, carefully knotted blue-and-black tie, and black shoes that glistened. A white linen handkerchief peeked casually out of his breast pocket.
He nodded at me in a friendly way and asked if I had slept well and seemed interested and happy when I told him that I had.
“If you and Mike will come this way,” he said politely, indicating the door.
We followed him down the corridor, past our bedrooms, and into a room lined with closets on one side and a series of dressing tables on the other.
A tall blond woman with a lantern jaw and pale skin was arranging some articles on one of the dressing tables, which had a row of frosted bulbs around its mirror. “This is Frau Koepler,” said Wolgemuth. She turned, nodded, and went back to her arranging. “Frau Koepler is in charge of this section.”
Wolgemuth opened one of the closets. “Here we have uniforms of every description. The ones located in this closet are a complete range of sizes of those worn by the Volkspolizei. Complete with boots, hats, shirts—the lot,” He closed that door and opened the next. “These are military—American, British, French and West German. Also East German—which the Vopos are switching to shortly, I understand. Next police uniforms—Berlin variety. And here are dresses for women—made in New York, London, Berlin, Chicago, Hamburg, Paris, Rome: the labels are authentic, as are the materials. Coats, undergarments, shoes—a complete wardrobe. Next are men’s furnishings— civilian variety. Off-the-peg suits from the Fankfurt
I was impressed and said so. Wolgemuth grinned proudly. “If we have time, Herr McCorkle, I would like to show you our reproduction facilities.”
“He means his forged-document shop,” Padillo said. “I took a look at it earlier. It’s good. Maybe the best.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said.
“I’m ready,” Frau Koepler said.
“Good. Which of you will volunteer first?” Wolgemuth asked.
“Go ahead,” I said to Padillo.
He sat down in the chair before the dressing table and Frau Koepler draped a sheetlike affair around him—the kind that barbers use. She studied his face in the mirror and then covered his hair with a rubber cap that fitted down over his sideburns and neck. She murmured to herself, cocked her head this way and that, and then selected some soft wax. “Our nose is straight and thin,” she said; “we will broaden it slightly, flaring the nostrils just so.” Her hands flew deftly around Padillo’s face. She patted and probed and shaped and molded. When she was through, he had a new nose. I would still have recognized him, but his features were altered.
“Our eyes are brown and our hair is black. We will soon have brown hair, but we shall also have brown eyebrows.” She picked up a tube and rubbed some of its contents into Padillo’s eyebrows. They became brown—or dirty blond. “Now the mouth: it is one of the most important features of the face. May I see our teeth?”
Padillo leered at her.
“They are very white and contrast nicely with our rather olive complexion. We will stain them ever so slightly, giving them a strong yellowish look—like a nice old horse.” She squeezed some paste onto a toothbrush that she had taken from a clear-plastic container and handed the brush to Padillo. “Let’s brush our teeth now carefully. It will wear off in a few days.” He brushed. “Now for the shape of our mouth and cheeks,” she went on. “We will balloon them slightly.” She inserted some flesh-colored sponge rubber into her mouth. “Bite down. Now open. Now here and here. Now bite down. Now open. You see we have a slightly pendulous lower lip now, rounder cheeks, and we have become a mouth breather. It is always slightly open, as if we were suffering from a slight respiratory ailment. We
