The Berlin Conspiracy

TWENTY-SIX

“This is Big Daddy to all units. … Repeat, this is Big Daddy. … All units please acknowledge, over.” I grabbed the radio.
“Babysitter acknowledging, over,” I said, clicking on. A long minute passed, just the static noise of the television filling the space. Then Fisher’s voice came crackling back.
“Okay, we’re looking at a green light. … Countdown begins on my signal. … Get set for ten and stand by….”
I opened Chase’s briefcase, which was lying on the bed, and grabbed the stopwatch. It was a Company special, the first digital timepiece I’d seen. I set it for ten minutes and we waited.
Fisher came back after a short delay. “Okay, we’re ready to roll,” he said. It was a big moment for him and you could hear in his voice that he was enjoying it. “Stand by … three … two … one. …”
I hit the start button and the seconds started ticking off. The clock by the bed showed it was a couple of minutes short of one o’clock, when Kennedy was supposed to appear on the dais. It occurred to me that only the Germans could keep things on schedule in the midst of all this insanity.
“We’re operational,” Fisher announced. “All systems are go!” He sounded more like he was blasting a rocket into space than murdering his president. “Stand by. …”
We were on the clock now. No more theories or conjecture, no time for maybe this or maybe that. Whatever was gonna happen was gonna happen now and it was gonna determine whether the world kept turning on its knife’s edge or went spinning out of control. Everything was plugged in, switched on, and, like Fisher said, all systems go. I could see that Horst was pumped up, too. He had that look—the slightly deranged, supercharged look that I’d seen on the faces of too many boys. Boys who were so juiced on adrenaline that they were prepared to rush headlong into a machine gunner’s nest with bayonet fixed. Whenever I saw that look I knew chances were pretty good that I was looking at a soldier who wouldn’t come out the other end.
Horst said something but it was drowned out by a sudden deafening roar from outside. The thunderous cheer shook the entire building, rattling doors and windows in their frames and twisting the butterflies in the pit of my stomach into a tangled knot of nervous energy. Kennedy had arrived on stage.
“NINE MINUTES!” Fisher barked out.
Time to make my move, but I needed to do it alone. I knew the odds were against me, and making a casualty out of Horst wouldn’t improve them any.
“Stay here!” I shouted over the din.
“No!” he yelled back. “We go together!”
There wasn’t time to think, let alone argue. I grabbed Chase’s handcuffs out of my pocket, quickly slapped one manacle onto his wrist then locked the other to the metal bed frame.
“I’m sorry, Horst,” I said, clipping the radio to my belt and heading for the door. “But it’s better this way.”
The cheering built to a fever pitch, then the crowd started to chant: “KEN-NE-DY! … KEN-NE-DY! … KEN-NE-DY!”
Horst gave me this parting look—a combination of hurt and anger that I can still see clearly to this day. He felt betrayed and offended, but I dismissed it then, partly because there was no time to do anything else, but also because I believed that I was doing him a favor, maybe even saving his life. And, in some feeble way, I think I was thinking about Hanna.
The hallway was unnervingly quiet. Another great cheer went up, muffled by the hotel’s thick walls, then evaporated, leaving an expectant hush in the air. I guessed that Kennedy had stepped up to the podium.
“EIGHT MINUTES …” Fisher’s voice called out over the radio.
I spotted a “Fire Exit” sign and followed it up the long corridor. Walking quickly at first, then breaking into a run.
Kennedy’s familiar voice cut through the silence:
I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor, who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed. …
I tried to ignore the second thoughts I was having about leaving Horst behind. I told myself that no matter how humiliated he felt, he’d be safer where he was than tagging along with me. If it all worked out I’d retrieve him before anyone knew what had happened. If it didn’t work out… well, he was still better off handcuffed to the furniture than being teamed up with a dead patsy. By the time things went sour, he’d probably have figured out that I’d left the key to the cuffs in Chase’s briefcase and, I hoped, have the good sense to make a quick exit. Anyway, it was done, so I had to let it go and I did.
“SEVEN MINUTES …” Fisher announced.
I hesitated at the emergency exit. I knew I’d run into security somewhere along the line, wondered if this was the place. I put my ear to the reinforced door, but all I could hear was my heart pounding like a jackhammer and the president’s voice:
There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the Free World and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin! …
The crowd roared its approval. I grabbed the Lucky Strikes out of my jacket pocket….
There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin! …
More applause and I reached for the handle. …
And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin! …
Wild cheers and I almost bounced out of my skin as “SIX MINUTES!” blared out of the radio. I jumped back, threw myself against the wall. Fumbling around, I managed to hit the off switch on the radio, then froze. Didn’t move, didn’t breathe. I clutched the Lucky Strikes, ready to pop anyone who tried to come through the door.
And there are even a few who say that it’s true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. La?t sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin!
The crowd went wild. … A drop of sweat rolled down my forehead, burning as it filled my eye. I drew a breath, reached for the handle again, but stopped short when I heard a radio sputter to life on the other side:
“Big Daddy to Hero,” Fisher’s voice crackled out. “What’s your position? Over.”
“The north stairwell, fourth floor, over,” came the response from behind the door.
“Okay, Hero … Stand by,” Fisher instructed him.
I didn’t recognize the voice, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that “Hero” was the Secret Service agent who’d decided that instead of protecting the president today, he’d help knock him off. He was also my executioner and I was sorely tempted to open the door and put a poison pellet up the bastard’s nose. I thought better of it, slipped away, and doubled back, jogging the length of the corridor. I was hoping, but not really expecting, to find an unguarded stairwell in the south wing.
The cheers faded away and Kennedy’s voice filtered through again:
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. …
Kennedy had to pause, unable to continue over the frenzied response that this statement elicited. It was a simple enough observation, almost a cliche, that would get polite applause anywhere else in the world. But this wasn’t anywhere else; it was Berlin, and the wall was more than an abstract idea to them. It was a desecration of their city and a violation of their lives, separating them from family and friends. They abhorred it and Kennedy had said the words they’d been waiting for. The words they’d come to hear.
I reached the end of the hall and ducked into a doorway across from the exit. Even if the stairs were covered, I was out of options. I’d have to go in and take my chances.
The timer read 04:22.
I decided to wait for Fisher’s four-minute announcement to see if there were any more “Heroes” behind this door. At least I’d know what I was walking into.
The crowd finally let Kennedy continue:
I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even fiom a distance, the story of the last eighteen years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for eighteen years that still lives with the vitality and the force and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin. …
The four-minute mark came and went with nothing from behind the door. I wiped the sweat off my palms, slipped the Luckys into my palm, and grabbed the door handle. …
Locked. …
Goddamm it! Kennedy would be lying on a slab at the morgue by the time I picked the dead bolt. I didn’t have the tools anyway. I tried kicking it in, but it wasn’t gonna give. Desperation creeping up on me, I looked around, spotted a fire extinguisher attached to the wall. Above it, behind glass, was just what I needed. I ran over, punched the window out, and grabbed the ax.
I noticed halfway up the hall that I was trailing blood. Locating a gash in my right palm, I hastily tied a handkerchief around it as I ran the rest of the way and went to work on the door. After a few solid blows, I was able to kick the bastard in.
Racing up the steps, I found the door leading onto the roof wide open. I dropped the ax and stepped back into the shadows, needing a minute to catch my breath and think things through. I drew a mental picture of the building’s L-shaped layout, placing myself at the southern end. The gunman would be above my room in the north wing, just past the ninety-degree turn. I’d have about sixty yards to cover.
I peeked out, trying to get a sense of how open the terrain was. An elevator support unit—a ten-foot-high brick structure at the center of the building—stood between me and where the sniper’s nest would be set up. I’d be exposed for about forty yards, but once there, I could locate the shooter and lay low until the right moment, when he was focused on the plaza with the president in his sights. About the only thing I had going for me was the element of surprise, so I’d damn well better make the most of it, I thought. I’d rush him at full speed, come up from behind before he had time to react. I’d go for a head shot from point-blank range.
I turned my radio back on before stepping out onto the roof, just in time for the three-minute warning. Time was running out.
I slipped in behind the open door, scanned the area up and down. I was too far from the front of the building to see the stage, but now that I was out in the open, Kennedy’s voice was coming through loud and clear:
While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it. … For it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together….
I couldn’t see any security from my position, but it was impossible that the shooter would be out there naked and vulnerable. If there was one of them, I might have a shot—a long shot—at killing him and still getting the sniper. If two guns were up there, well, the fat lady could start warming up.
I ducked out from behind the door and sprinted across the asphalt surface, hitting the safety of the brick wall sooner than I’d expected. I hadn’t seen anything, but I’d been moving, not looking. I edged around the structure and peered out toward the retaining wall at the front of the building. Still nothing. Not a sign of anybody or anything along the entire length of the wall. Or on the entire roof, for that matter.
I started to get a sinking feeling.
“TWO MINUTES … !” Fisher barked.
I stepped into the open, turned in a complete circle, surveying the whole area. I was alone, completely f*cking alone. I walked toward the front of the building, where I’d expected to find the assassin. As the plaza came into view, I could see President Kennedy gesturing emotionally from the speaker’s platform:
… real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. …
Jesus Christ, I thought, it’s gonna happen. I’d got it wrong and they were gonna murder the president right there in front of me and a million other witnesses.
In eighteen years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace. …
“BIG DADDY TO BABYSITTER!” Fisher’s voice crackled out. “COME IN BABYSITTER! … OVER!”
I grabbed the radio like it was a life preserver. “This is Babysitter. … Go ahead, Big Daddy….” Come on, Fisher, I prayed, give me something! Give me a f*cking clue!
“STAND BY TO RECEIVE SHADOW ONE! …REPEAT, I’M SENDING SHADOW ONE IN TO YOU NOW!… OVER!”
I went numb, actually numb in the face and hands. He was going to fire out of the window of my room, exactly the way I’d figured it. He hadn’t been waiting for me because they were sending him in at the last minute. Into my room, where Horst was locked to the bed like a lamb waiting for slaughter.
“FISHER, IT’S JACK TELLER!” I yelled into the radio. “CHASE IS DEAD, I KILLED HIM! … THE OPERATION’S BLOWN! YOU HEAR ME, FISHER, IT’S OVER!”
“Jack?! … What the f*ck’s going on?”
“CALL IT OFF!”
“Where the hell are you, Jack?”
“YOU KNOW WHERE I AM!” I bluffed desperately. “AND I’M TELLING YOU, HENRY, IF YOU SEND THAT KILLER IN HERE, I’M GONNA DROP HIM OUT THE F*ckING WINDOW!”
There was a short pause, then Fisher came back on the line.
“Look to your left, Jack,” he said. “The building across the street….”
It was a six-story apartment block, recently built.
“The balcony on the top floor, the one nearest to you.” I scanned across the face of the building until I found the one he meant. And there he was—Big Daddy, Henry E. Fisher, radio in his right hand, the left fully extended, giving me the finger.
“F*ck you, Jack,” he said with a smile, forming his hand into a gun. “Bang, bang, you’re dead. … Over and out, amigo.”
I was already sprinting toward the north exit when he finished his sentence. Hero would be on his way up and I’d be exposed, a sitting duck on the open roof. If I could get to the door before he did, I might have a fighting chance.
He beat me to it, stepping out onto the roof, pistol drawn, when I was still twenty yards short. He pivoted toward me and I launched myself as he lined me up in his sights….
“HRUMMPHH!” I could hear the air go out of him as I plowed into his midsection. We bounced off the door and went flying back into the building, landing in a pile at the top of the stairwell. He pulled himself onto his knees, doubled over, holding his gut, struggling to draw a breath. I stood up, held the pack of Luckys to his ear, and pressed the trigger….
Click … Nothing.
Either the damn thing misfired or I’d shot the pellet off into space during my flying tackle. Either way, “Hero” was getting his wind back and his pistol was moving around toward me. I kicked him hard in the gut, then again across the side of the head, sending him tumbling backward down the stairs. I don’t know if it was the kick or the fall that did it, but he landed with his head facing the wrong way on his shoulders. It looked very odd and I must’ve hesitated a moment at the sight before snapping out of it and hastily looking around for his gun. It was gone, lost in the shuffle …
“SIXTY SECONDS …” Fisher announced. “STAND BY. …”
I exploded into the hallway and up the corridor. Kennedy’s voice rose above the spellbound plaza as he built to a climax:
So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind. …
I burst through the door and found myself looking straight into the long barrel of a silencer-fitted .22. Shadow One was a big, Mediterranean-looking guy, athletic, with short dark wiry hair, a broad nose, and a thick black mustache. I saw from his position that he’d been a hairsbreadth away from putting a slug into Horst’s forehead and had swiveled the gun toward the door at the last moment when he heard me coming through it. And I was trapped, as good as dead.
But he hesitated.
I don’t know why he did, and it couldn’t have been for more than a fraction of a second, but it felt like a damned eternity. There’s nothing like staring death in the face to make you feel alive. Every sound is amplified, every detail is crystal clear, every twitch catches the eye. I became aware of Horst’s movement in the same moment that I saw the killer’s finger squeeze down on the trigger. It happened quickly, more quickly than should’ve been possible—Horst stretched his long frame across the bed, grabbed something out of Chase’s briefcase, then shot to his feet. Extending himself as far as the handcuffs would allow, he brought his arm around and stabbed the killer in the jugular with the hypodermic needle.
A look of complete and utter shock replaced the killer’s detached expression. He managed to say “Merd—” just before Horst drove the plunger home, sending the Frenchman on what must’ve been the Cosmic Cocktail ride of all time. He stumbled backward for a few steps, then his legs gave way. He landed hard, his back propped up against the wall where he’d left the Tokarev. Hard to say whether the blank look in his eyes was that of a dead man or a vegetable, but either way the guy was traveling on a one-way ticket.
Horst and I shared a “Holy Shit!” look.
“THIRTY SECONDS!”
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. …
I grabbed the killer’s radio.
“FISHER!” I screamed into it.
“… Jesus Christ, Jack … Aren’t you dead yet?!” “No, but your shooter is!”
When all arefiee, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one, and this country, and this great Continent of Europe, in a peaceful and hopeful globe. …
“Give it up, Jack!” He clicked off then came back on, announcing “TWENTY SECONDS! … STAND BY FOR FINAL COUNTDOWN. …”
When that day finally comes—as it will—the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades. …
“WAKE UP, HENRY! I’M USING YOUR SHOOTER’S RADIO, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! …” I grabbed the killer by the collar and propped him up against the window. “LOOK AT THE HOTEL WINDOW! … SEE HIM, YOU STUPID F*ck?! AND I’M GONNA THROW THIS PIECE OF SHIT AND HIS RIFLE OUT THE WINDOW IF YOU DON’T CALL IT OFF!”
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin …
“TEN SECONDS …” he announced. “NINE … EIGHT …” I drew a deep breath and spoke into the radio again—quietly, absolutely calm.
“If you can hear me, Harvey, I want you to know that I’m dialing the phone. … I’m calling the West German police….”
“SIX … FIVE …”
“… And the first name of the many that I’m going to give them is Harvey King….”
“FOUR … THREE …” Then it stopped. Nothing for a moment, then …
“ABORT! … REPEAT … ABORT ACTION AND DISENGAGE! … ALL UNITS ABORT AND DISENGAGE!”
… and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
The wall wouldn’t hold back the cheer that filled the plaza with those words. They probably heard it in Moscow. I let the killer drop to the floor and freed Horst. He didn’t move, just sat there on the bed with a dazed look on his face.
I pulled him up and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here while we can.”
“Yes … yes …” he said, and headed for the exit. I stopped to pick up the killer’s handgun and looked up as Horst was going through the doorway.
“Wait!” I yelled, but it was too late, he was in the hallway. I heard the shots—three of them—and saw Horst fall away.
Christ. I get the same sick feeling now that I got then, even after all these years. Sudden shock and alarm, like you just stepped off a cliff. Then your stomach drops out and dread takes over as you wait to hit the ground.
I flew out the door, laying down fire wildly, killing Andy Johnson in a hail of bullets. POP! POP! POP! went his flesh.
Horst was lying on his side, holding his gut. He was bleeding badly and I could see he wasn’t going to make it, so I didn’t try to move him, I just rolled him onto my lap and held him. I didn’t care that they were coming for me. I wasn’t going to let him die alone.
“Don’t move,” I said.
He didn’t try to speak, just nodded. I could see that the pain was receding, but he was scared.
“You’ll be all right,” I said.
He coughed up some blood and said, “I thought we did win.”
“We did,” I answered. “We won … and you were the hero.” But I think he died without hearing it.