Drumbeat Berlin Read online

  I heard a sound, not much but enough to tell me I wasn’t alone in the apartment. Raising up on the balls of my feet, I started to turn. I caught a whiff of musky perfume. Then a sharp pain burst above my right ear, my legs went rubbery and I hit the carpet hard on hands and knees.

  “Don’t move,” a woman’s voice said in German. I could understand that much. She sounded frightened.

  A brighter light came on, and I swung my head for a look at her. Blood dripped from my temple to the carpet. She was crouched over me with a high-heeled shoe gripped in a businesslike fashion, heel foremost, in her right hand. She’d hit me with that, and it must have been a good roundhouse swing to put me down. She had the heft to do it. She was barefoot and wearing a pale blue flannel robe. Standing straight, she would be a tall girl, and she was full-blown in the approved Nordic fashion. The robe had parted enough to show deep cleavage between her breasts. Her hair was long and blond and looked sleep-tousled. Her right eye was big, blue and very angry. Her left eye was developing a gorgeous shiner.

  “What happened to you?” I said in English.

  Her full red lips parted in a moist O of surprise. She said in German, and then in English: “Why, you are—not the same man.”

  I began to get up.

  “No. Don’t. I’m warning you.” She raised the spike-heeled shoe threateningly.

  “You already said it. I’m not the same guy. He give you the shiner?”

  “Shiner?” It dawned on her then, and she touched the eye gingerly.

  “Now can I get up on my hindlegs? You’re Lorelei Graeber, aren’t you?”

  She nodded, and suddenly grinned. “You look so silly on your hands and knees like that.”

  I stood up. The room went black for a moment, but I didn’t let her know that. I sat down on the sofa. She was gone and then back with a wet towel for my head.

  “I’d suggest raw steak for the shiner,” I said, “but actually it’s an old wives’ tale and never helps.”

  “Who are you? Is your head very bad?”

  “I’ll live, my name is Chet Drum and I came here to get a lead on Quentin Hammond and your father.”

  That made her close up on me. “There’s nothing I can tell you. Who sent you here?”

  “View Magazine. You can tell me what happened before I got here.”

  While she was considering that, I gave her a cigarette. I lit one for myself too. The first deep drag made my head throb.

  “He came to the door saying he had word of my father. He was a small man. Fat. Frightened, he looked. In exchange for my father’s freedom, he said, he would need all the correspondence between—but why should I tell you this? How do I know who you are?”

  “Correspondence between your father and Quentin Hammond and concerned with the mass escape through the Wall. Please go ahead, Lorelei. I told you I wanted to find them.”

  “I could not give him the correspondence.” She spoke excellent English in an unself-consciously throaty voice, but every now and then the patterns of her speech were German. “Myself, I did not know where they were. The letters. The fat man became very angry. He did not believe this. When he threatened me, I ran inside. The bedroom door I was going to lock, and call the police. But he forced the door. We struggled. He hit me. A knockout,” she said in self-deprecation, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “A fat little man like that. Panting and sweating. He was lucky. I am no weakling, Herr Drum.

  “Only a little’ while I was unconscious. Then I heard you in here. The rest you know.”

  “You didn’t recognize the fat man?”

  “No. I never saw him before. Do you think he found the letters?”

  I gestured at the pile of books and papers on the floor. We spent half an hour going through them and the remaining contents of the storage unit. We found no letters either from Heinrich Graeber to Hammond or from Hammond to Graeber. There were several pictures of Lorelei under a baby spot and in a sequined evening gown, looking halfway between her seductive namesake and a buxom Valkyrie.

  “I sing,” she explained, shoving one of the glossy photos aside with her bare toes. “At a club on the Kudamm. The Congo. I am very good,” she added matter-of-factly.

  “Bet there’s no doubt about it,” I said. Despite the shiner and what had been a frightening experience, she had a frank and engaging self-confidence. I decided I liked her.

  “Can those letters be anywhere else? Your father’s office? A bank?”

  “No. He was going over them with Herr Hammond the night they were kidnapped.”

  “Then they’re here. Or they were here.”

  We searched the rest of the apartment and failed to come up with the letters. Lorelei could not—or would not—give me any details of the kidnapping to add to the sketchy account Marianne had supplied. I asked her: “What about before they disappeared? You hear any of their conversation that night?”

  “No. I was due at the Congo later. I was resting in my bedroom.” I took the damp towel away from my temple. The laceration had stopped bleeding. “Except for one thing,” Lorelei said suddenly, scowling. “Always they were on the best of terms, my father and Herr Hammond. But that night they argued.”

  “You overheard them?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. For perhaps five minutes there was shouting, a disagreement.”

  I leaned forward. “What about?”

  “You must realize I was drowsy, half asleep. But I did hear one word. They both shouted it.”

  I waited. She said nothing. “Okay,” I told her. “I’ll bite. What was the word?”

  She began to laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I love that American expression: I’ll bite. And it fits.”

  “Huh? You lost me there.”

  “You’ll think this very strange,” Lorelei Graeber said. “They were arguing about steak.”

  “About what?”

  “Steak. I’m sure of it. Something to do with steak.”

  I gave her a cocked eyebrow look. She nodded solemnly. She wasn’t kidding.

  “Something to do with steak?” I repeated foolishly, and then added suddenly: “Or, wait a minute, maybe stake. S,t,a,k,e—not s,t,e,a,k?”

  She shrugged. “Well, yes; I hadn’t thought of that. Steak or, perhaps as you say, stake. And that, Herr Drum, is all I remember.” She pouted then. “The Congo. I am supposed to sing there tonight. That is why I was asleep when the fat man came. But how can I sing with an eye like this?” She brightened. “I know. Sad songs I will sing, the hard lot of a woman in a man’s world, how my man beats me and leaves me. What do you think?”

  “You’ll wow them,” I said.

  Probably she would.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE CIA cover in West Berlin was a travel agency on Tauentzien Strasse, not far from the gutted ruin of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It was Wednesday morning, my first full day in Berlin. I walked there from the Kempinski. The bombed-out tower of the church stood on its traffic island as a solitary reminder of the war, silhouetted against the glass façades of new office buildings.

  CIA’s cover held down a corner shop in one of those buildings. The sign said: Reisebüro Kaiser Wilhelm, and under that, in English: Travel Agency, Tours, Foreign Currency, Traveler’s Checks. I went in. They had just opened. A busty German girl was busy switching on lights and arranging stacks of travel folders. She pretended I didn’t exist until she went behind a long counter. Against a backdrop of posters advertising the Tyrol, the Black Forest and the Mosel River Valley, she smiled at me.

  “May I help you?”

  “I want to see the manager.”

  “Mr. Temple does not arrive until ten. And after that,” she said discouragingly, “he is very busy.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I can wait.”

  “He will be very busy, I assure you. A pity if you wait for nothing.”

  There is no one more officious than an officious German, even a reasonably attractive fräulein with a diverting bosom. I s
aid, coolly: “Suppose we let him decide,” and that ended the conversation.

  I sat down in an ersatz-leather chair, smoked a few cigarettes and watched a couple of other clerks who emerged from a back room help her with the early morning tourists. They poured over folders, cashed traveler’s checks and wrote airline tickets. The busty girl looked at me every now and then. At exactly ten o’clock, a tall, broomstick-thin number wearing a trench coat and a Tyrolean hat came in, draped himself across the counter, said a few words to the fräulein, glanced at me with mild curiosity and disappeared through a doorway behind the counter.

  “That him?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Let me guess. He’s very busy.”

  “Exactly. So if you—”

  “Let him take a squint at this.” I scrawled the names Hammond and Graeber on a business card, the one with no machine gun embossed in the upper right-hand corner, and gave it to her. She went away with it and returned inside of thirty seconds with a look of surprise and grudging respect on her face.

  “He’ll see you, Mr. Drum.”

  She escorted me behind the counter and through the doorway, frowning at the Band-Aid on my temple and at a door we reached side by side. “He can spare a few moments after all,” she said, still officious.

  I patted her shoulder. “Don’t take it so hard. The age of miracles is indeed upon us.”

  That earned me a blank look, a knock at the door and a heel-clacking departure. “Come on in,” Chris Temple called.

  His long, lanky frame was slouched in a swivel chair behind a steel and linoleum desk. He smiled but did not offer to shake hands. He took out a pack of cigarettes, frowned at it, shook his head and tossed it on the desk.

  “What’s an American private dick doing in Berlin?”

  “I wrote what on the card, Mr. Temple.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  “Then why see me? You’re a busy guy I’ve been told.”

  He undid the cellophane, removed a cigarette from the pack, made a face at it and shoved it between his lips without lighting it. We stared at each other with restrained curiosity. I took a stab: “You ever in the FBI?”

  He lit the cigarette unhappily.

  “Lots of CIA men I know were former agents with the bureau.”

  “I’m a travel agent,” he said. He inhaled, coughed and stubbed the cigarette out furiously.

  I showed him a card which said I was a member in good standing of the FBI Association. That meant I had served a tour of duty with the bureau. His long face lost a little of its solemn look. “Where?”

  “Miami office. I did a tour of duty with an agent named Trowbridge. He died l.o.d.”

  That broke the ice. Chris Temple said: “Say, I knew Harry Trowbridge. One really sweet guy. A damn shame what happened to him.” We mentioned a few other agents we knew in common. That didn’t make us friends; Chris Temple wasn’t the sort of man who would have many friends. But it cleared the air enough for me to say:

  “I got a cable from Marianne Baker. I flew here. She told me you’re with the CIA and working on the Hammond case. You can call her to verify it.”

  I thought he wouldn’t, but he put a call through to the Kempinski, got Marianne, said a few words and then gave me the phone.

  “Hello,” I told her. “This is J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “Oh, Chet.”

  “All right, then it’s Hoover Vacuum of the Hoover Vacuum Company.” That got a grin from Temple. In a dramatic voice I told Marianne: “There’s a guy here who claims he’s Chris Temple of the CIA, but who am I to believe him?”

  “I should have warned you about him. Good luck.”

  “So long.” I returned the receiver to Temple, who hung it up.

  “Sorry for the apparent paranoia,” he said, “but it’s necessary. This wouldn’t. be much of a front if every visiting fireman in Berlin knew I was with the CIA.”

  “You mind if I sort of poke my nose into the Hammond kidnapping?”

  “Why should I mind? I’m not with the Consulate, so the care and feeding of Americans abroad isn’t my problem. But that tunnel under the Wall is. Mrs. Baker tell you about it?”

  I nodded.

  “They’re still digging away. Very professionally. This office got the equipment, a little here and a little there, from various German construction firms. They’re due to break through I think on Friday in a cemetery a few hundred feet on the other side of the Wall. But with Hammond and Graeber among the missing, whether or not there’ll be any escapees I can’t say. And that tunnel won’t go undetected forever.”

  “You get any leads on them?”

  “Finally dreamed up a cover,” Temple said noncommittally, “so we can start poking around. The obvious one: Hammond returned to Berlin to do a follow-up story on Heinrich Graeber. We can get the co-operation of the police now if we need it.”

  “Couldn’t you have otherwise?”

  The sour expression returned to Chris Temple’s long face. “Not in this town and not if we wanted the tunnel to remain a secret. Several million refugees came into West Berlin before the Wall was built, which is why it was built. Most of them were the real thing and just wanted out, and most of them have been settled elsewhere in West Germany. But a few hundred thousand stayed in West Berlin, and among them there are enough double-agents to give you the willies. Including members of the local police force.”

  “I get you, but I don’t get this: what makes you so sure Graeber and Hammond were kidnapped? Did this bodyguard who got clobbered talk?”

  “No. He’s still in a coma. They don’t expect him to pull through.”

  “Then why couldn’t Graeber and Hammond have gone off somewhere, reason unknown? Or how do you know they weren’t murdered?”

  “It’s a possibility, but I doubt it,” Temple said. He did not elaborate.

  “Come on,” I urged, “give. We’re members of the same fraternity, remember?”

  Temple lit another cigarette, and studied it, and studied my face, down to the little knife scar on my right cheek. “What the hell,” he said, “there goes my professional paranoia again. Okay, Drum: I can reasonably assume they were kidnapped because they fell in with bad company. A known double-agent. And don’t ask me why he doesn’t get locked up if it’s known he plays both ends against the middle. He does it for money, and he’s valuable to both sides.”

  “Who is he?”

  “An ex-Nazi named Otto Fuchs. He’s a real dilly. Came over as a refugee ten years ago, dabbled in the black-market for a while, then delivered a couple of Red spies, complete with the goods on them, to the military police. He’s been double-agenting ever since, and getting rich at it.”

  “Didn’t Graeber know he was a double-agent?”

  “Sure he did. So do I, and I’ve paid for Fuchs’ services when I’ve had to. So have our Red numbers on the other side of the wall. Otto Fuchs is a guy with contacts all over Berlin. If you want something lined up in a hurry, he’s your man. One job at a time, CIA can trust him. Hell, we’ve got a dossier on his former Nazi activities, and he knows it. But CIA’s behind Graeber only unofficially, and that’s what Worries me. Fuchs might have decided to sell Graeber and Hammond out to the Reds.”

  “What was he supposed to do for them?”

  “Graeber and Hammond needed a contact who could arrange things on the other side of the Wall, get a few hundred East Berliners ready for a mass escape. Fuchs was their man.”

  “But you think he double-crossed them?”

  “It figures. He’s done it before, if the Reds came up with the right kind of financial reward. Look at it this way: if Fuchs went to them saying a tunnel was being dug under the Wall they’d want to close it up but quick, before even an East German mouse could get through. But Graeber’s no fool. He had to use Fuchs, sure; but that doesn’t mean he had to tell Fuchs where the tunnel was. Someone else could make the final contact with the escapees Fuchs had recruited. So Fuchs goes to the Reds, and t
hey decide to find the tunnel the only way they can.”

  “By kidnapping Graeber and Quent Hammond and making them talk.”

  “Right. That’s the way I see it.”

  “You picked up Fuchs?”

  “We can’t find him. Got a man planted where he lives. He hasn’t been home since the kidnapping.”

  I told Temple about my talk with Lorelei Graeber, the assault on her and the ransacking of the Graeber apartment. “A funny thing,” I said. “She heard her father and Hammond arguing the night they disappeared.”

  “She never told me that. What about?”

  “That’s the funny part of it. She doesn’t know. She was dozing. But she’s sure they kept hollering one word back and forth.”

  Temple looked at me expectantly.

  “Steak,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Steak”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Or maybe stake.” I spelled both variations for him. “That’s what she said.”

  Temple frowned, then did a double-take. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Our old pal Otto Fuchs again. In the old days when there was a food shortage in Berlin, he could get you anything you wanted if you had the Deutsche marks to pay for it—up to and including prime sirloin steak. The nickname stuck.”

  “What nickname?”

  “They call him Beefsteak Otto.” Abruptly Temple changed the subject. “How’d you hit it off with Lorelei Graeber?”

  I touched the Band-Aid. “Not bad, considering. The fat guy gave her a shiner and she gave me this. After that we were friends.”

  “Keep up the good work. Win her confidence if you can. She won’t co-operate with us.”

  “How come?”

  “Her boy friend’s a comic at the Congo where she sings. But he’s also a kind of poor man’s Otto Fuchs. Comedy’s his sideline and his real line of work isn’t so funny. Like our friend Beefsteak Otto, he’s a double-agent.”