“They wouldn’t like that.”
“No, but the reporters would.”
“What’ll happen to Burchwood and Symmes?”
“They’ll disappear quietly.”
“Dead?”
“Possibly, but probably not. Sometime somebody may pick up a rock and start wondering what happened to a couple of the bugs. They’ll have to be produced quickly.”
“You think it will work out the way you just told it?”
“No, but if I didn’t say it and try to believe it then there wouldn’t be any reason for any of it. And I’d feel more like a damn fool than I do right now.”
I looked at my watch. “We have a couple of hours until our good fairy comes. You want to get some sleep? I caught a nap this afternoon.”
Padillo rose from the swivel chair, lowered himself to the floor, and stretched out full length, his head resting over the closed trap door. “Wake me up in a couple of weeks,” he said. I took over the chair, leaned back, and put my feet up on the desk. I noticed that I needed a shine — and a shave, and a bath, and six eggs over easy with a dozen or so slices of thick bacon, a stack of well-buttered rye toast, a fresh, red whole tomato and a gallon of coffee. Instead I settled for another swallow of bad gin and a cigarette of doubtful merit. I sat in the swivel chair and waited some more. It was quiet. The telephone didn’t ring and nobody knocked on the door. I told myself I was learning patience. I was a poor student.
At four-thirty I poked Padillo with my toe. He was up immediately, fully awake. I told him the time. “I’ll rouse them up downstairs,” he said. He opened the trap door and went down the ladder. Symmes was the first up, followed by Burchwood, and then Padillo. I closed the trap door.
“In about ten minutes we’re going to take another little ride,” Padillo told the pair. “You will do exactly as you are told. You will say nothing regardless of whom you see or what you are asked to do. You will speak only if he or I ask you a direct question. Is that understood?”
“I don’t care what it is any more,” Symmes said. “I just want to get it over. I don’t want any more killing and I don’t want to be pushed and shoved and ordered around like an idiot. Just get it over with, whatever it is, for God’s sake.”
“Have you got anything to say, Burchwood?” Padillo asked.
His dark eyes snapped and his tongue ran around his lips nervously. He shook his head in a weary, hopeless manner. “I don’t care any more,” he mumbled. “I’m just too tired to care.”
“In a couple of hours you’ll have a chance to rest. Just do as you’re told. All right?”
They stood there, disheveled, pale and drawn, their hands hanging loosely by their sides. Symmes closed his eyes and nodded. Burchwood said, “Yes, yes, yes, Christ, yes.”
Padillo looked at me and shrugged. I leaned against the wall. Padillo again sat in the chair. Burchwood and Symmes simply stood, weaving a little. Symmes kept his eyes closed.
At four forty-five we heard the car. Padillo took out his revolver and opened the door. I removed my gun from my coat pocket. It was getting to feel like an old friend.
Maas was at the door. He had left the car engine running. “Ah, Herr Padillo.”
“Everything ready?”
“Yes, yes, but we must hurry. We should be there at five.”
“All right,” Padillo said; “get back in the car. We’ll load up.” He swung around from the door to face us. “You two in the back seat with Mac. Get in this side.”
He went out first. I followed Symmes and Burchwood. Outside, Padillo held open the door of a brown 1953 Mercedes 220. Burchwood and Symmes crawled into the back seat. I followed. Padillo closed the door to the office and got in the front seat next to Maas. “Let’s go,” he said.
Maas drove slowly down the dark alley, using only his parking lights. When he got near the end he stopped. Without saying anything Padillo got out and walked to the corner and looked carefully both ways. He signaled Maas on. The car started up, stopped for Padillo, and we were out in the street. Maas switched on his driving lights.
“Where’d you get the car?” Padillo asked.
“From a friend,” Maas said.
“Your friend forgot to give you the key to the ignition.”
Maas chuckled. “You are very observant, Herr Padillo.”
“For five hundred Marks we could have avoided a hot car,” he said.
“It will not be missed until late tomorrow. I chose it carefully, and it is very easy to cross the ignition on this model.”
The ride took twenty-one minutes. We passed a few trucks on a boulevard, and then Maas took to the side streets. East Berlin was asleep. At five-nine he pulled up in front of a house.
“Is this it?” Padillo asked.
“No. It is around the next corner. But I will leave the car here. We will walk.”
“You take Symmes,” Padillo told me. “Burchwood will come with me. Let’s make it a group, not a procession.”
We walked in a bunch. Around the corner Maas stopped before a three-story house. He went up three white marble steps and knocked softly on the door. It opened and Maas whispered, “In quickly!”
We went in. A tall, indistinct figure stood in what seemed to be a hallway. There were no lights. “This way,” a man’s voice said. “Walk straight. When you come to a door, be prepared to step down past me on the stairs. When you are all on the stairs, stop and I will turn on a light.”
We moved slowly in the dark. I went first, feeling my way, my hands in front of me.
“You are at the stairs,” the voice said, right next to me. “The railing is on the right. It will guide you.”
I found the railing with my right hand and walked down six steps and stopped. I heard the rest of them follow. I heard the door close and a light was turned on. We were standing on a stairway that led down to a landing and then turned right. I glanced back up. A tall, thin man with a hawk nose and bristling salt-and-pepper eyebrows stood at the top of the stairs, his hand on a light switch. He wore a white shirt, open at the neck. A few tufts of gray hair poked out at his throat. He could have been fifty or fifty-five. Maas was on the next step down from him, and below Maas were Padillo, Burchwood and Symmes.
“Straight down,” the thin man said.
I walked down the remaining two steps, turned and walked down five more. The basement walls were painted white and blue, and blue-speckled linoleum covered the floor. A workbench with a vise attached to it ran the length of one side of the room. Above it was a series of cabinets, stained a dark brown. At one narrow end of the basement, at what I judged to be the street side, was a five-foot cabinet of good walnut. It had four small shelves at the top and a series of flat drawers beneath them. Brass knobs were attached to the drawers. I kept my hand on my gun in my coat pocket. Padillo motioned Burchwood and Symmes to one side of the room. He stood next to them.
The tall man came down the stairs and looked at us. “They are Americans,” he said angrily.
Maas took his hands out of the pockets of a tan raincoat that I hadn’t seen him wear before and spread them in a placating gesture. “Their money is good. It would not be wise to change your mind at this point. Please open the passage.”
“You said they were Germans,” the man muttered.
“The passage,” Maas said.
“The money,” the thin man demanded.
Maas took his left hand out of his pocket again and handed over an envelope.
The thin man walked over to the workbench, ripped open the envelope, and counted the money. Twice. He stuffed the envelope and the money into his trouser pocket and moved to the chest. He pulled out the first drawer, closed it; pulled out the third, closed it; and then pulled out the bottom drawer and left it open. There was nothing in any of them, but the pulling and closing were some kind of combination.