I think Hatcher blushed a little, but Burmser kept boring in. “We’re concerned about Padillo. He was to catch a flight yesterday. To Frankfurt. And then from Frankfurt to Berlin. But he went to Frankfurt by train; he wasn’t on the flight to Berlin.”
“So he missed a flight.”
“This was a very important flight, Mr. McCorkle.”
“Look,” I said. “For all I know he was on Flight 487 to Moscow with a connection to Peiping. After he got the plans, he was to disguise himself as a coolie and take a sampan down to Hong Kong. Or maybe he met a broad in Frankfurt, bought himself a couple of fifths of Martell, and shacked up in the Savigny. I don’t know where he is. I wish I did. He’s my partner and I’d like him back. I never got used to the idea of being in business with a guy who caught more planes than a traveling salesman. I’d like him to get out of the spook business and help write up the menus and order the booze.”
“Yes,” Burmser said. “Yes, I can understand all that. But we have reason to believe that this man Maas had something to do with the fact that Padillo missed his flight to Berlin.”
“Well, I think your belief is founded on faulty reasoning. Maas was at my place at four o’clock this morning carrying a brief case and a Luger and drinking my Scotch. When I left shortly before eleven he was still there snoring on my living-room couch.”
Maybe they send them through a special school where they are taught not to express surprise or emotion. Perhaps they stick pins in each other and the one who says “ouch” gets a black star for the day. They showed no more surprise than if I had told them that it was nice this morning, but it looks like rain this afternoon.
“What did Maas say to you, McCorkle?” Hatcher asked. His voice was flat and not particularly friendly.
“I told him why I was going to boot his ass out and then he told me why I wasn’t. He said he knew where Mike was going and why and that he’d let the Bonn police know that plus the fact that Mike was here when the shooting took place unless I let him spend the night. What the hell — I let him spend the night.
“He said he had an appointment at noon today. He didn’t say where, I didn’t ask.”
“Was there anything else — anything at all?”
“He thanked me for the Scotch and I told him to go to hell. That’s all. Absolutely all.”
Hatcher started to recite. “After Padillo arrived at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhoff he had a glass of beer. Then he made a phone call. He spoke to no one in person. He then went to the Savigny Hotel, where he checked into a room. He went up in the elevator and stayed in his room for eight minutes and then came down to the bar. He sat down at the table of a couple who have been identified an American tourists. This was at eight-fifteen. At eight-thirty he excused himself and went to the men’s room, leaving his cigarette case and lighter on the table. He never came back from the men’s room, and that’s the last trace we’ve had of him.”
“So he’s disappeared,” I said. “What am I supposed to do? Just exactly what is it you want?”
Burmser ground his cigarette out into the ash tray. He frowned, and his tanned forehead developed four deep wrinkles. “Maas is important to Padillo,” he said in the voice of the patient teacher to the mayor’s retarded son. “First, because only he — besides us — knew Padillo was to catch that plane. And, second, because Padillo did not catch the plane.”
He paused and then continued in the same patient voice. “If Maas knows of the particular assignment that Padillo is on, then we want to call it off. Padillo is of no use on it. His cover is blown.”
“I take it you’d like him back,” I said.
“Yes, Mr. McCorkle. We would like him back very much.”
“And you think Maas knows what happened?”
“We think he’s the key.”
“O.K., if Maas drops by, I’ll tell him to call you before he calls Lieutenant Wentzel. And if Padillo happens to give me a ring, I’ll tell him you’ve asked after his health.”
They both looked pained.
“If you hear from either, let us know, please,” Hatcher said.
“I’ll call you at the Embassy.”
They not only looked pained but they seemed embarrassed.
Hatcher said, “Not at the Embassy Mr. McCorkle. We’re not with the Embassy. Call us at this number.” He wrote it down on a leaf from a notebook and handed it to me.
“I’ll burn it later,” I said.
Burmser smiled faintly. Hatcher almost did. They got up and left.
I finished my coffee, lighted a cigarette to get rid of its cold taste, and tried to determine why two of the town’s top agents so suddenly had revealed their identities to me. In the years I had been operating the bar, none had given me the time of day. Now I was an insider, almost a fellow conspirator in their efforts to unravel the mystery of the vanished American agent. McCorkle, the seemingly innocuous barkeep, whose espionage tentacles reached from Antwerp to Istanbul.
There was also the equally discomforting knowledge that I was a prime patsy. To Maas I was the lazy, easygoing lout to be used as chauffeur and innkeeper. To Burmser and Hatcher I was a sometime convenience, useful in the past in a minor sort of way, an expatriate American who had to be fed just enough line to keep him on the hook. Give the story the ring of intrigue. Throw in the mysterious disappearance of his partner, who should have been bound for Berlin, a cyanide capsule tacked onto his back molar, a flexible stainless-steel throwing knife sewn into his fly.
I opened the desk and pulled out last month’s bank statement. There was a zero or two missing, so I put the statement back. Not enough to go back to the States, not enough to retire on. Enough, maybe, for a couple of years in Paris or New York or Miami, living in a good hotel, eating well, enough for the right clothes and too much liquor. Enough for that, but not enough for anything else that would count. I ground out my cigarette and went back into the bar before I started fondling my collection of pressed flowers.
Chapter 7
The luncheon crowd had drifted in. The press was monopolizing the bar, killing the morning’s hangover with beer, whiskey and pink gins. Most were British, with a sprinkling of Americans and Germans and French. For lunch they usually gathered at the American Embassy Club, where the prices were low, but occasionally they descended upon us. There were no certain dates that they dropped in, but by some sense of radar they all flocked together at noon, and if someone was missing, then he was tagged as the dirty kind of a son-of-a-bitch who was out digging up a story on his own.
None of them worked too hard. In the first place they were blanketed by the wire services. Secondly, an interesting trunk murder in Chicago — or Manchester, for that matter — could reduce a careful analysis of the SPD’s chances in the forthcoming election to three paragraphs in the “News Around the World” column. They were a knowledgeable lot, however, usually writing a bit more than they knew, and never tipping a story until it was safely filed.
I signaled Karl to let the house buy a round of drinks. I said hello to a few of them, answered some questions about yesterday’s shooting, and told them I didn’t know whether or not it was a political assassination. They asked about Padillo and I told them he was out of town on business.
I wandered away and checked on reservations with Horst, who served as the maître d’ and ran the waiters and the kitchen with rigid Teutonic discipline. The press crowd was good for another hour at the bar before they ate. Some of them would forget to. I continued to circulate, shook a few hands, counted the house, and moved back to the bar.