The Company: A Novel of the CIA (31 page)

"Say about eleven. If this works out I'll owe you," Torriti told the caller.

"Harv, Harv, it is already in the ledger books."

Using his thumb and forefinger, the Sorcerer lowered the phone back int0 the cradle as if a sudden gesture would cause it to explode. "Harv, Harv, its already in the goddamn ledger books," he cheeped, mimicking Otto's voice. "I fucking know what's in the ledger books." A flaccid smile of bliss plastered itself across his limp jowls. He took a deep breath, peered at the wallclock, then rubbed his hands together in anticipation. "All hands on deck!" he bawled.

"What is it about Otto that makes your nose twitch?" Jack wanted know.

The Sorcerer was happy to fill in the blanks. "My friend Otto is Herr Doktor Otto Zaisser, the second in command of an organization calla Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit—Fighting Group against Inhumanities —set up, with a little financial help from their friends in the Pickle Factory maybe two, maybe three years back. They work out of two tumbledown stucco houses in a back street"—Torriti waved his hand in the general direction of the American Sector—"crammed with packing crates. The packing crates are filled with index cards; each card contains the name of someone who's gone missing behind the Iron Curtain. If we need to get a line on someone in particular, Kampfgruppe can be useful. Otto himself specializes in pranks. Last year he counterfeited goddamn postage stamps bearing the portrait of Joe Stalin with a noose around his neck and stuck them on thousands of goddamn letters mailed eastward. On quiet months Kampfgruppe sends in agents to blow up the occasional Communist railroad bridge or poison the occasional herd of Communist cows."

"You still haven't explained why your nose twitched," Jack noted.

"If Otto could really put his hands on Thermofax copies of Anton Ackermann's outgoing letters, he would have begged or borrowed the twenty-five thousand and bought them himself, then turned around and peddled the collection to the Rabbi for a cool fifty grand. The Rabbi would have passed the stuff on to us for a modest seventy-five grand; he would have offered to give it to us free if we could tell him where in South America he he could put his paws on Israel's Public Enemy Number One, the former head of the Gestapos Jewish section named Adolf Eichmann."

"The Thermofaxes could be real—you won't know for sure until you see one."

With a twinkle in his eye, the Sorcerer shook his head. "I happen to know that Comrade Ackermann doesn't dictate his letters to a secretary—he is paranoid about microphones, he is paranoid about leaks, so he writes them out in longhand and seals them in envelopes that leave traces if they are tampered with."

"So your friend Otto is not your friend?"

"Knowingly or unknowingly, he's baiting a trap."

"What do you do now, Harvey?"

"I walk into it, sport."

Torriti, the tradecraft shaman capable of blending into a nonexistent crowd shed the lazy pose of a fat man who drowned his sense of doom and gloom in booze and swung into action. The two Silwans and the four others chosen for the mission, along with Jack, were convoked. Miss Sipp provided a large map of Spandau, located in the British zone of Berlin, and taped it to a wall.

"We have six hours to play with," Torriti told them. "All hardware will be carried out of sight. When it gets dark you will trickle one at a time into the area and take up positions. The Silwans, dressed in sackcloth and ashes, sawed-off shotguns hidden under their scapulars, will be inside the church; when I turn up I expect to see you on your knees praying for my salvation. You four will install yourselves in the darkest doorways you can find on the four corners outside the church. Jack, wearing a beat-up leather jacket and a cloth cap so that anyone spotting him will not mistake him for a Yale graduate, will drive the taxi. You'll drop me off at the door and pick me up if and when I come out. You'll have an M3 and a pile of clips on the seat next to you covered with a raincoat. Everyone will be connected to everyone by the gizmos that Miss Sipp, bless her delicate hands, will now attach to your lapels. Questions?"

Sweet Jesus wanted to know if he could take his lap dog with him. "Priests don't usually go around with dogs on a leash," Torriti told him.

"Are we going to draw hazardous duty bonuses for this operation?" Sweet Jesus inquired.

"If there is gunfire."

Sweet Jesus persisted. "For the purposes of the bonus, will the gunfire be considered gunfire if we shoot and they don't?"

"You're squandering your natural talents in espionage," the Sorcerer told him. "You're cut out to be a lawyer who chases ambulances."

"I completed three years of law studies in Bucharest before the Communists came to power and I ran for it," Sweet Jesus reminded him.

"So much for my elephant's memory," Torriti told Jack. But nothing could dampen his high spirits.

Jack eased the taxi to the curb in front of the Catholic church as the bells in the tower began tolling eleven. He angled his jaw down to his shirt collar and said, "Whiskey leader—everyone outside set?" One by one the Watchers in the street reported in.

"Whiskey one, roger." "Whiskey two, roger." "Whiskey three and four, on station."

"How about inside?" Jack asked.

There was a burst of static. "Whiskey five and six, ditto."

Torriti, wearing an old loose-fitting raincoat and clutching a bottle of gin in a paper bag, pushed open the back door of the small taxi and stumbled onto the sidewalk. He tilted his head, downed what was left in the bottle, tossed it into the back seat and slammed the car door shut with his foot. Jack leaned over and rolled down the passenger window. Torriti dragged a wallet from the hip pocket of his trousers and, holding it close to his eyes counted out some bills. "Wait for me," he barked, gesturing with a palm.

Jack asked, "Um wieviel Uhr?"

"Later, goddamn it. Later." Torriti straightened and belched and, walking as if he were having trouble keeping his balance, staggered toward the double door of the church.

Pulling his cap down low over his eyes, resting his hand on the stock of the M3 hidden under the raincoat on the next seat, Jack settled back to wait; from under the visor he had a good view of the two side view mirrors and the rear view mirror. From the tiny earphone he heard the progress reports:

"Whiskey two—he's gone in," one of the Americans across the street said.

"Whiskey five—I see him," Sweet Jesus was heard to mutter. "Whiskey six—me, too, I see him," said the Fallen Angel.

Inside, the Sorcerer stopped at the shell-shaped font to dip the fingers of both hands in and splash water on his face. Shuddering, he started down the center aisle. There were a dozen or so people scattered around on the benches, praying silently. Two slender men in cowls and scapulars could be seen rocking back and forth in prayer, kneeling on either side of the aisle beside the last row; Torriti made a mental note to tell them that their style of communing with God made them look more like Hasidic Jews than Roman Catholics. As the Sorcerer headed toward the altar, a woman bundled into a man's faded green loden coat, wearing a scarf over her head and sturdy East German walking shoes, started back up the aisle. When they came abreast of each other the woman whispered, "Herr Torriti?"

The Sorcerer mimicked answering a telephone. "Speaking," he said. "Sprechen Sie Englisch?"

The woman said, "I am speaking some little English. Where can we go to be talking?"

Tugging at the elbow of her coat, Torriti led her into the shadows of an altar at the side of the church. He surveyed the people praying on the benches; only the two cowled figures in the back row seemed to be paying attention to them.

The Sorcerer said, "A mutual friend told me you might have some delicious goodies for sale."

"I will exhibit you zvei samples," the woman said. She seemed very ill at ease and anxious to get through the business at hand as quickly as possible. "You are liking what you see, we are meeting again and performing the exchange—my letters, your twenty-five thousand American dollars."

"How can you be sure I won't take the letters and refuse to pay you?"

The woman puckered her lips. "You are doing such, you are never seeing more letters, ja?" She thought a moment, then added, "Twenty-five thousand American dollars billig for what I bringing you."

"Cheap my balls," Torriti grunted, but he said it with a humorless smile and the woman half-smiled back.

Reaching under her coat, she pulled two folded sheets of paper from the folds of her thick skirt and handed them to Torriti. He glanced around again, then opened one and held it up to the light of a candle burning before the statue of the Madonna. He could make out a clean typescript that began with a businesslike salutation to Comrade Ulbricht and ended with the German for "Comradely greetings." The name A. Ackermann was typed at the bottom of the letter. Over the typed name was Ackermann's clearly legible signature. The second letter was addressed to the deputy Soviet rezident at Karlshorst, Comrade Oskar Ugor-Molody, and ended with the same comradely greetings over Ackermann's signature.

"Smells kosher to me," the Sorcerer said, pocketing the two letters. He looked around again and saw two older gentlemen leave their seats and start up the center aisle toward the back of the church. The two Silwans must have noticed them at the same moment because they began fingering the stiff objects hidden under their scapulars; Torriti knew it wasn't erections they were caressing. When the two older men reached the last row, they turned to face the altar, genuflected and crossed themselves and then, whispering intently to each other, left the church. Torriti said to the woman, "Where? When?" He scraped the bottom of the barrel for some high school German. "Wo? Wann?"

Hier," she replied, pointing to the Madonna. "Tomorrow nacht. Okay? Do you comprehend?"

"I comprehend," Torriti said. He blinked rapidly and put a hand on the statue as if to steady himself.

The woman wasn't sure what to do next, which led the Sorcerer to conclude she was a neophyte; someone hired for a one-shot mission. She backed away, then stepped forward and offered her gloved hand. The Sorcerer scooped it up to his lips and kissed it. The woman appeared stunned. Giggling nervously, she fled between the benches and disappeared out a side door. In the back row, Sweet Jesus and the Fallen Angel looked at each other uncertainly.

The tiny speaker buried in the Sorcerers ear purred. "Whiskey three— a female just now came out the side entrance. Subject is walking very rapidly in the direction of Breitestrasse. Wait—an old Mercedes has turned in from Breitestrasse and pulled up alongside her—she's gotten in, the car's making a U-turn, it's picking up speed, it's turned into Breitestrasse. Okay, I've lost it."

"Whiskey leader —what's next on the menu?"

The Sorcerer muttered into his collar: "This is Barfly—if something's going to happen, now is when. Stay on your toes."

He reached under his raincoat and patted the pearl handle of his revolver for luck, then ambled a bit drunkenly across the stone floor toward the double door of the church. He didn't bother to look behind him; he knew the two Silwans would be covering his back. In his ear he could hear one of the Watchers burst on the air. "Whiskey one—two males have turned in from Carl Schurzstrasse," he reported breathlessly. Jack's voice, unruffled, came over the earpiece. "Whiskey leader—everyone keep calm. I see them in my sideview, Harvey. They're passing under a street light. One is wearing a long leather coat, the other a leather jacket. They're walking toward the church very slowly."

The Sorcerer remembered Jack's jittery comportment the night they were waiting for Vishnevsky to turn up in the safe house over the movie theater. He'd ripened on the vine in the four months since then; Torriti's original judgement—that Jack was a cut above the usual cannon fodder that came out from Washington—had been on the money. Torriti growled softly into his microphone: "Whiskey three and four—come around behind them but don't crowd them. I want them to make the first move."

Pushing through the doors into the darkened street, Torriti saw the two men passing under another vapor lamp about fifty yards down the road; light glinted off the bald crown of one of them. They must have spotted the Sorcerer because they separated slightly and quickened their pace. Shuffling his feet, Torriti drifted toward the taxi parked at the curb. He could make out Jack; he seemed to be asleep behind the wheel but his right arm was reaching for something on the seat next to him. Whiskey Three and Four turned the corner and appeared behind the two figures coming up the street.

The two men were only yards away when the Sorcerer arrived at the rear door of the taxi. As he grasped the door handle one of the two pulled something metallic from his belt and lunged clumsily toward him. Moving with the grace and lightness of a fat man who had survived more street brawls than he could count, Torriti bounded to one side and melted into a crouch. The pearl-handled beauty of a revolver materialized in his fist and kicked back into it as he pulled the trigger. The shot, amplified by the darkness, reverberated through the cobblestone street as the bullet punched into his attacker's shoulder, sending him sprawling. A butcher's knife clattered to the gutter at Jack's feet as he came around the back of the taxi, running low with the M3 under an armpit, and sighted on the second man, who had the good sense to freeze in his tracks. Whiskey Three and Four, pistols drawn, came up on the run. One of them kicked the knife away from the wounded man, who was sitting with his back against the bumper, whimpering. The other frisked the bald man, standing stock-still with his hands raised over his head, and relieved him of a handgun and a small walkie-talkie.

"This was the attack, Harvey?" Jack shook his head in disbelief. "It was amateur hour—"

A small car with a blue police light flashing on its roof suddenly appeared at the end of the street. It sped toward the taxi and, with a screech of brakes, came to a stop a dozen yards away. Two doors were flung open and two men wearing the dark blue uniforms of West German Polizei came toward them. Both had Schmeisser submachine pistols tucked under their arms and their fingers on the triggers.