“You, too, are a businessman, Herr McCorkle.”
“A most conservative one.”
“Twenties and fifties would do nicely.”
“No checks?”
Maas patted me affectionately on the shoulder. “That humor! No, dear friend; no checks. Now I must leave. I trust you will arrange for the money. I have a feeling that Herr Padillo will be agreeable to my proposition.”
“Suppose he needs to get in touch with you in a hurry?”
“Every night for the next four nights I will be at this number in East Berlin. Between eleven and midnight. Unfortunately I can be there for only four nights. Starting tomorrow. Is that clear?” He rose, brief case in hand. “It has been a most interesting discussion, Herr McCorkle.”
“Yes, it has, hasn’t it?”
“I will be interested in Herr Padillo’s decision. Purely from a businessman’s point of view, of course.”
“One more question. Who were the hard boys who shot the little man?”
Maas pursed his lips. “I’m afraid that the KGB now knows that I know, if you follow me. I shall have to find some way to make my peace with them. It is distinctly uncomfortable to be an assassin’s target.”
“It could make you jumpy.”
“Yes, Herr McCorkle, it could. Auf wiedersehen.”
“Auf wiedersehen.”
I watched him leave the café, clutching his worn brief case. It was a hard way to make a dollar, I decided. The proprietor came over and asked if I wished anything else. I told him no and paid the check — something Maas had overlooked. I sat there in the café in what the reporters keep calling the beleaguered city and tried to sort it out. I removed the map from the envelope and looked at it, but I didn’t know East Berlin and it was meaningless, although it seemed accurate enough, drawn on a one-inch-to-twenty-meters scale. The tunnel appeared to be sixty meters or so long. I put the map back in the envelope. Maybe it was worth five thousand dollars.
I got up and left the café. I hailed a cab and went back to the Hilton. I checked the desk for messages. There were none. I bought a copy of Der Spiegel to find out the current German prejudices and took the elevator up to my room. I opened the door, and the two of them were sitting in the same chairs where Weatherby and I had sat earlier. I tossed the magazine on the bed.
“Privacy is something that I’m beginning to put a very high premium on. What do you want, Burmser?”
Bill or Wilhelm, the dude with the wonderful smile, was with him. Burmser crossed his long legs and frowned. The four wrinkles appeared in his forehead. It may have been a sign that he was thinking.
“You’re headed for trouble, McCorkle,” he said.
I nodded. “Good. It’s my trouble, not yours.”
“You’ve seen Maas,” he said accusingly, and named the café.
“I gave him your message. He wasn’t impressed.” I sat down on the bed.
Burmser got up and walked over to the window and stared out, his hands turned into fists that rested on his hips. “What does Padillo want from you?”
“None of your goddamned business,” I said. It came out pleasantly enough.
He turned from the window. “You’re out of your depth, McCorkle. You’re messing around in a potful of crap that’s going to spill all over you. You’d better take the next plane back to Bonn and run your saloon. Your only value to us is that you could put us on to Padillo before he gets himself into a jam he can’t get out of. But you tell me it’s none of my goddamned business. Let me tell you that we haven’t got time to nursemaid you — and God knows you need one.”
“They had a tail on him today,” Bill said.
Burmser waved a hand in disgust. “Christ, they’ve probably had someone on him since he left Bonn.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
“Not quite,” Burmser said. “Padillo has decided to play it cute, just like you. He knows better, and maybe he thinks he can take care of himself. He’s not bad, I’ll admit. In fact, he’s damn good. But not that good. Nobody is — not when he’s bucking both sides.” He got up. This time Bill-Wilhelm got up too. “When you see Padillo, tell him we’re looking for him,” Burmser went on, his voice harsh and scratchy. “Tell him he’s in too deep to get out.”
“In the potful of crap,” I offered.
“That’s right, McCorkle: in the potful of crap.”
I got up and walked over to Burmser. Bill-Wilhelm moved in quickly. I turned toward him. “Don’t worry, sonny. I’m not going to slug him. I’m just going to tell him something.” I tapped my finger against Burmser’s chest. “If anybody’s in trouble, you are. If anybody’s played it cute, you have. I’ll tell you the same thing I told your friend here, with just a little more detail. I’m in Berlin on a private matter that involves the partner of the business I run. As far as I’m concerned, I intend to preserve that business by being of whatever assistance I can to my partner.”
Burmser shook his head in disgust. “You’re dumb, McCorkle. A real dumb bastard. Let’s go, Bill.”
They left. I walked over to the phone and dialed a direct long-distance call to Bonn. It answered on the first ring.
“Sitting in your favorite chair sipping your favorite beverage, Cooky?”
“Hello, Mac. Where are you?”
“The Berlin Hilton, and I need five thousand bucks by eight o’clock tonight. Fifties and twenties.”
There was a silence. “I’m thinking,” Cooky said.
“You’re taking one straight from the bottle, you mean.”
“It helps. There are two possibilities: a pigeon at American Express or another one at Deutsche Bank downtown. I’ve got plenty in both accounts. I’m rich, you know.”
“I know. The bank’s closed, isn’t it?”
“I’m a big depositor. I’ll get it.”
“Can you get an evening flight up here?”
“Sure. I’ll tell New York I’ve got a touch of virus.”
“I’ll get you a room.”
“Make it a suite. I know a couple of pigeons in Berlin. We may need room to romp. By the way, my friend from Düsseldorf just left. Somebody had a tap on the phone at your apartment and at the saloon.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I’ll see you tonight. With the money.”
“I appreciate it, Cooky.”
“No sweat.”
My watch said it was four P.M. I had five hours before Weatherby was to pick me up. I looked at the Scotch bottle but decided against it. Instead I went down to the lobby and reserved a suite for Cooky and cashed a check for two thousand Marks. I went back up to my room, wrote out a check to Mr. Cook Baker for five thousand dollars, put it in an envelope, and sealed it. I took the .38 out of the suitcase and put it in my jacket pocket. Then I mixed a drink and hauled a chair around so that I could look out over the city. I sat there for a long time, watching the shadows deepen from gray into black. The grays and blacks matched my thoughts. It was a long, lonely afternoon.
At eight forty-five Cooky called from the lobby I told him to come up and he said he would as soon as he checked in and got his bag to his room. He knocked on the door ten minutes later. I let him in and he handed me a tightly wrapped package a little over an inch thick. “I had to take hundreds — ten of them,” he said. “Ten hundreds, fifty fifties, and seventy-five twenties. That’s five thousand bucks.”
I handed him the envelope containing the check. “Here’s my check.” He didn’t look at it and I didn’t count the money.
“Was it much trouble?”
“I had to threaten to withdraw my account is all. Where’s the booze?”
“In the closet.”
He got it and poured himself a drink, his usual half-tumbler.