will also lighten our complexion and give it some of the heavy drinker’s veins.”
Frau Koepler opened a small white pot, dipped her fingers into a grayish paste, and began to work the paste into Padillo’s face. His skin took on a yeasty, almost unhealthy look, as if he had spent too much time in a hospital —or a bar. Just below the sideburns she fitted a small adhesive-backed stencil; then she dabbed at it with a stick wrapped in cotton, which she had dipped into a small bottle of liquid. She let the liquid dry and peeled off the stencil. Padillo’s capillary veins had burst into a curlicue profusion of purples and reds. She did the same to the other side of his face and then began similar work on his nose. “Not too much here,” she said; “we have been friends with good schnapps for let us say—oh—fifteen years. A half-bottle a day perhaps.” She peeled off the stencil and the tip of Padillo’s nose glowed merrily. She whisked off the rubber head cover, reached into a bottom drawer, and produced a hair piece, which she fitted carefully to his head. Instead of a thick, gray-flecked crew cut he had a thin crop of dirty-blond hair, parted carefully on the right. Pink scalp gleamed through near the beginning of the hairline.
She examined her work critically. “Perhaps a small blemish on the chin—a pimple from a sour stomach.” She reached into a small box—the size of the ones that aspirin comes in—and applied her forefinger to Padillo’s chin. He had a pimple. He also had an unhealthy, puffy face; a drinker’s complexion; thinning hair; and a yellow-toothed mouth that never quite closed. He stood up. “Slump,” she ordered. “A man of our appearance avoids military bearing whenever possible.”
Padillo slumped and shuffled up and down the room.
“The perfect-thirty-year man,” I said.
“Think I could pass muster, Sergeant?” Padillo had even changed his voice to a White House drawl.
“Well, you’re not pretty—but you’re different.”
“If we had more time … but … ” Frau Koepler brushed off the chair and shrugged.
“Next,” I said, and sat down. She did a similar job on me, except that I grew tanner but unhealthier looking. She also gave me a neat, well-clipped mustache. New circles grew under my eyes, and they seemed to form deeper sockets than were there before. A slight but livid scar appeared over my right eye. “It is like a picture,” Frau Koepler explained. “The eye goes to the upper left-hand corner of a face automatically. That is where we put the scar. The mind registers the scar, scans the rest of the face, and runs into the mustache. Again the unexpected because the previous owner had no scar or mustache. Simple?”
“You’re very good,” I said.
“The best,” Wolgemuth said, and beamed some more. “We did not have to do so much work on the other two because they are known only by pictures. But they will pass. Now, then, we must have the pictures taken for your ID cards.”
We said good-bye to Frau Koepler. The last time I saw her she was seated at the dressing table, staring into the the mirror and stroking her lantern jaw reflectively.
After the pictures were taken we had lunch with Wolgemuth. Padillo and I chewed carefuly because of the spongy rubber doodads that Frau Koepler had clamped in our mouths. They weren’t too much trouble—no worse than the first set of false teeth. They didn’t slip and slide around, but they felt strange and foreign. We found that drinking was much easier, and Wolgemuth thoughtfully supplied some excellent wine.
“You know, Herr McCorkle, I have been trying to get Mike here to come to work with us for a long time. He’s really one of the best in this rather difficult profession.”
“He’s got a job,” I said. “Between trips, that is.”
“Yes, the cafe in Bonn. That has been a really excellent cover. But I’m afraid that it’s completely exposed now—blown.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Padillo said. “After this they wouldn’t even send me down to the corner for coffee. That’s the way I want it.”
“You’re still a young man, Mike,” Wolgemuth said. “You’ve got the experience, the firsthand knowledge, the languages.”
“I’m not fancy enough,” Padillo said. “Sometimes I think I would have been good at running bootleg Scotch during Prohibition. Or perhaps I could still make it as a loner, knocking off suburban branch banks on Tuesday afternoons. I have the languages, but my methods are too orthodox, or maybe it’s just that I’m lazy: I won’t go into an operation loaded down with hollowed-out coins and fountain pens that unfold into motor scooters.”
Wolgemuth poured some more wine. “All right; let us say that your past successes have been derived from the simplicity of your methods. Would you be interested in accepting occasional assignments—well-paying ones, of course?”
Padillo took a sip of the wine and smiled at its taste. His newly yellowed teeth flashed like a warning light. “No thanks. Twenty, twenty-one years is a long time. Maybe years ago I should have gone to UCLA and majored in political science and languages, and when I graduated I could have sent in a Form 57 to the CIA or State and right now I could be an FO 2 or 3 with a house in Fairfax County or explaining Vietnam to the newspaper boys in Ghana. But don’t forget, Kurt, the only thing I really know is how to run a saloon. My languages are good, but only because I learned them early and correctly. I don’t know the first fundamentals of grammar. I just know when it sounds right. I’m weak in history, poor in political science, and ambivalent about the world power struggle. I respect—even admire—those who do know or think they do. But for twenty years now I’ve had bad dreams and cold sweats and I’ve had to concentrate just on how to keep on living.” He held out his hand and spread his fingers. They trembled slightly. “My nerves are shot, I drink too much, and I smoke too much. I’m used up and I’m worn out and I’m quitting this time around and there’s not a thing in God’s world that can stop me.”
Wolgemuth listened carefully to Padillo’s speech. “You, of course, underestimate yourself, Mike. You have that rare quality that kept them coming back to you year after year to perform just one more task. You have the actor’s ability to assimilate an identity, to build a new personality with all its kinks and idiosyncrasies. When you are a German you walk like a German, you eat like one, and you smoke like one. These are little things, but after twenty years of occupation a European can recognize an American by his fat behind and the way it moves when he walks. You are a born mimic, an utterly ruthless rogue, and you have the cunning and skepticism of a successful criminal lawyer—and for that package I would be willing to pay a very high price indeed.”
Padillo raised his glass in a mock salute. “I’ll accept the compliment but refuse the offer. You should be looking for younger blood, Kurt.”
“I couldn’t even tempt you with the chance for a little revenge against your present employers?”
