CHAPTER SEVEN – CONGRESSMAN COOK
The Hilton lobby had big plate glass windows, enabling Delahaye to watch the police gathering outside the hotel with a very professional interest. He also smiled wryly, because he could see a television crew busy setting up as well, bestrewing the pavement with heavy black cables. This would not go down well with senior members of the VKAN, operational arm of the East German external intelligence service, for Colonel General Helmut Witkowski had grown VKAN to rank as one of the most secretive, and least known, intelligence services in the world, and loathed publicity with a truly visceral hatred. Television coverage would probably drive him to apoplexy. But then the confrontation was not a thing of Delahaye’s making, and perhaps it would come in handy in his dealings with the Amis.
Nothing happened for a little while, and then a policeman, suitably fierce in helmet and body armour, moved tentatively towards the main door of the hotel. Delahaye smiled again, for the policeman was brandishing a white cloth as a token of peaceful intent, and looked a little ridiculous. Everything was quiet inside the hotel. One group of Delahaye’s hard men had marshalled the two CIA hit teams onto sofas in a kind of miniature palm court between the plate glass windows and the main reception desk, and added a group of assorted hotel guests and the reception desk staff for luck. A second team guarded the back of the lobby and the lifts.
The Hilton hostages included a young woman with dark, shoulder-length hair in a crisp white blouse and tight black skirt, and Delahaye glanced at her from time to time, because she had bedroom eyes and a truly magnificent bosom. He could see that she was starting to return his glances – she had looked frightened at first, perhaps she thought she was about to meet her Maker. Then she had gained a little confidence, and merely looked timid. Now she seemed to be making eyes at him. It was a flattering thing for a man past his fiftieth birthday, to flirt with a pretty young woman with a magnificent bosom. He sighed within himself. They might have made good music, at any other time.
The policeman approached the revolving doors, holding his hands well away from his body. It was plain that he had watched many thrillers. Then he pushed at the doors, moving even more tentatively, with the air of a man anxious for his future. Delahaye beamed as he enters the lobby. ‘Welcome.’
The policeman scowled. He carried the twin stars of a captain on his shoulder straps, and a patch on his dark blue combat blouse identified him as Captain Menke. He looked as though he needed a shave. ‘You must release the Americans, and then come out with your hands on your heads.’ His voice was harsh, and he spoke with the authority of his uniform.
Delahaye beckoned to the nearest Hilton employee, and smiled at the newcomer politely. ‘Would you like coffee? I’d offer you schnapps. But I don’t expect you’ll drink whilst you’re on duty.’
Menke’s scowl grew fiercer as the Hilton employee hurried away, but Delahaye’s hard men looked thirsty. They were Russians, and they smelled the possibility of alcohol. The two men stared at each other: it was a battle of wills.
Menke gave way first. ‘You don’t want to come out?’
Delahaye shook his head, and waited for a moment, marshalling his reply. Then he spoke, and his voice chopped out his words in small bullets of sound. ‘I want a bus, to the Alexanderbrucke, and no publicity. I’ll let the goons go when we reach the middle of the bridge. But you send the TV crew packing first.’
Menke snorted. ‘You come out, and you get a fair trial.’
He waited, but Delahaye’s eyes were unblinking, and it was plain that he was on a mission doomed to failure. He shrugged. ‘Be it on your own head, then: we’ve got plenty of time.’
He turned to make his way back to the revolving doors. But Delahaye gestured to the Russians, and one blocked Menke’s way.
Menke looked flustered. ‘I’ve come in under a flag of truce.’
Delahaye pursed his lips. ‘You haven’t had coffee yet. I think you and the two CIA teams deserve some refreshment before you undress.’
‘Undress?’ Menke’s voice rose sharply.
‘Well, first of all I think you should take off all that ridiculous body armour.’ Delahaye’s voice was gentle, but it carried an undertone of steel. He looked the policeman up and down speculatively. ‘Your helmet as well. You won’t looked very good on TV if you are just wearing a helmet and nothing else – your wife might see you.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ A note of fear edged its way into Menke’s voice. He could sense that Delahaye had something unpleasant in mind, something that he would not enjoy, and he wanted no part of it.
‘Off with the helmet and body armour.’ The command was sharp.
Menke hesitated, but the Russian blocking his way had a hungry look, and a gun in his hand, and it was plainly no time for squabbling. He took his helmet off first, placing it carefully on a nearby table, and then unfastened his armour, a latterday knight unguirding himself. He was a stockily built man, with close-cropped fair hair and watery blue eyes, perhaps in his mid-thirties, and looked a little lost without his protection.
‘Now your shirt.’
Menke quivered with outraged disbelief. The Hilton girl put her hand to her mouth – it looked as though she was trying hard to stifle a giggle. A waiter appears with a coffeepot and two cups on a tray, hovered for a moment, and then set them carefully next to the policeman’s body armour as though armed confrontations were quite everyday events.
‘Your shirt, captain.’
Menke did not move. Self-respect underpinned his dignity, and there were things that he simply would not do. He shook his head firmly. ‘I’m not a bloody striptease artist.’
Delahaye was silent for a moment. The Hilton girl kept looking at him from under her eyelashes, and she was plainly egging him on. But it was a delicate moment. He had already ruled violence from his mind as disproportionate. But he wanted to send a strong message to the men besieging the Hilton, to convince them that they must not trifle with him, and it would be a handy bonus to send it in a way that made them looked foolish as well, because Witkowski had a soldier’s sense of humour, and might well guffaw out loud at the sight of appropriate humiliation.
He decided to change tack and gestured towards the waiting tray. ‘Have some coffee.’ All this manoeuvering was thirsty work. But it was very possible that the besieging forces had already infiltrated the hotel’s kitchens and dosed the coffee with something soporific, or worse.
Menke glanced at the tray, and hesitated. He plainly had the same thought in his mind.
Delahaye gestured again, insistently now. The policeman looked at the pot, and shrugged. There were worse fates than cups of coffee. He tasted it gingerly, then drained it, and smiled a tight little smile. It was an imprimatur.
The Russian behind him smacked his lips hopefully, but Delahaye ignored the sound and poured himself a cup, and drank. ‘Thirsty work.’
This time Menke did not smile.
The two men watch each other carefully, it was a game of poker. Then Delahaye poured himself a second cup, and spoke with it in his hand. ‘Okay, this is what you do. You strip to the waist: I’ll let you keep your pants and boots. You go back to your boss, whoever he is, and tell him that he has half an hour to round up a minibus. After that I make the Americans strip down bare naked, and stand in the window here with big signs around their necks.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘Maybe signs saying ‘CIA on parade’, something like that. They’ll look good on TV.’
Two minutes later Menke stood in front of police colonel Koegel, still stripped to the waist. They were perhaps forty metres from the Hilton entrance, shielded by the bulk of an armoured personnel carrier, and the hostages inside the Hilton lobby were clearly visible. Koegel was a tall, lean man, tough in his body armour, chewing a short fat cigar. A group of armed police surrounded him respectfully, and an American colonel in camouflage fatigues stood discreetly in the background, with a British major in buff open-necked shirt and battledress slacks a little way way behind him, because inter-Allied responsibilities were important. Koegel was not a happy man: in fact he was furious. He listened to the captain repeat Delahaye’s demands, and his mouth tightened into a thin hard line. He turned to a policeman at his side.
‘Can you kill Delahaye from here?’
Police Lieutnant Dieter Backele commanded the Berlin police department’s sharpshooting section, a unit called on whenever shots needed to be wholly accurate, and he held any number of gold medals from international marksmanship contests to his credit. But he shook his head decisively as he stared at the Hilton’s plate glass windows. ‘Not a hope. We might hit him, we might not. We’d certainly break a good deal of glass.’
The American colonel twitched nervously. ‘We don’t want that guy making fools of our people. It won’t look good.’ His German was fluent, but heavily accented. The British major shuffle his feet, to make sure that his presence was noted. But he had no intention of intervening, except perhaps as a very last resort. He was on the American sector side of the street.
Koegel chewed silently for a moment. He had a feeling that Delahaye had laid him across a barrel, and was starting to regret the presence of the TV crew. He had very little room for manoeuvre: armed assault was out, because bloodshed might be horrific, and a protracted siege could also be forgotten, because Delahaye was holed up in a top class hotel with food and drink aplenty. He glanced at the American. Someone else could make the decisions.
Colonel John E. Wilberforce, the American in camouflage fatigues, tall and as toned as a racing whippet, tried to looked calm and masterful as he stared at the Hilton. But his mind was racing. This was a can of worms to beat all hell. He would catch shit if he gave in to the reds, and the Agency would shit on him even harder if it was humiliated. He hesitated for barely a moment. He was a soldier, and orders must always come from the top in difficult situations. Somebody else could carry the can. He turned and began to walk back to a jeep parked just off the Budapesterstrasse. The jeep had a radio telephone, and he would pass the buck back up the line.
Ten minutes ticked by, then another ten. Delahaye glanced at his watch and beckoned to a Russian. ‘Wait for another five minutes, then make them strip.’ He spoke in Russian, eyeing the Hilton girl. He had a feeling this was going to be fun.
The Russian grinned. ‘The lot?’
Delahaye nods. The Hilton girl must have understood Russian, because suddenly her bedroom eyes froze to hard chips of black ice.
Five minutes later the Russians moved into action. One barked at the seated hostages to attract their attention, and Delahaye cleared his throat, making sure that a miniature Hilton palm tree shielded him from observers outside the hotel.
‘I am sorry, ladies and gentlemen.’ He accentuated the feminine word a little, and was rewarded by a barrage of small icicles. He smiled at the girl, she was really quite a handful. ‘We want to get out of here just as much as you do, and we have asked for some transport. But the gentlemen across the road don’t seem to want to play ball. I must therefore ask the American gentlemen from the CIA to start undressing and line up in the window, stark naked, so the TV cameras get a good view, and see whether that helps.’ He looked at the girl again. ‘We will hold that situation for twenty minutes, then I am afraid some hotel staff will have to join them. I am sure the TV crews would prefer gender equality.’
The girl blushed, and for the first time lowered her eyes. Delahaye licked his lips.
The Russians had to help the CIA agents a little, because they were really very shy men at heart, with wives and families living in USAREUR married quarters. But some rough words, and a little prodding and pushing, rapidly got their stripping going, and soon six Americans stood quite bare in a row, their hands cupped over their private parts, wishing that the Hilton floor would wholly open up and swallow them.
Colonel Wilberforce watched them line up in the Hilton window, and was shocked. He had reported back to Frankfurt, and Frankfurt had promised to consult Washington, but it was Saturday morning in the US, the Pentagon only operatds skeleton staffing at weekends, and every senior officer with decision-making powers was out playing golf – or hiding. Koegel was equally embarrassed, because he had tried to push the TV cameramen back, but they had insisted on advancing, and he bitterly regretted allowing them to set up outside the Hilton in the first place. Both officers stood with their backs to invisible walls, and both knew it. Wilberforce had a premonition that he would soon be heading for the icier parts of Alaska, whilst Koegel wondered whether he could take early retirement. But neither dared give Delahaye what he wanted.
Meanwhile Delahaye had begun to grow impatient. He glanced at his watch at shorter and shorter intervals, and looked increasingly often at the Hilton girl. But suddenly there was an eruption at the back of the lobby. A tall girl stood by the Hilton reception desk holding a microphone. She was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and had a portable recorder hanging by a strap from her shoulder, with a camera on a second strap. She coolly surveyed the small crowd gathered by the lobby window and started towards Delahaye.
He signalled to one of the Russians at the back of the lobby, spreading his hands in a gesture of interrogation, but the Russian was plainly just as surprised. The girl strode up to him. She had a narrow elfin face and short dark hair, and the look of a woman accustomed to questioning, and also to securing results.
‘I came through the kitchen, then on hands and knees.’ She lifted one bejeaned knee to dust at it vigorously. ‘Not difficult.’ She was plainly a most determined girl. ‘Are you in charge in here?’
Delahaye was still a little bewildered. But he smileed slightly, because he always believed in treating women with courtesy.
The girl pushed her microphone at him. ‘You know they want to starve you out?’ She waited impatiently for Delahaye to answer, then took the microphone back with an irritated frown.
‘Well, listeners, I am now in the Hilton, standing with the man who appears to be in command here. He is tall, with silver hair, I would say quite distinguished looking.’
Delahaye’s smile broadened. It was hard, even for a hard man, to resist flattery.
‘But he seems reluctant to speak to me. He has lined six men up in the hotel window, they are all naked.’ The girl broke off as a Russian held up a cardboard placard. ‘Ah, he has a colleague, he is placing a sign in front of the naked men, it says ‘CIA on parade’. This silverhaired man must be playing some kind of practical joke.’
One of the Russians moved his submachinegun on his knees, and she swallowed. ‘Well, perhaps not, because the men with him have guns. But I am certainly watching a very strange game.’ She lowered her microphone a little, and smiled at Delahaye hopefully. ‘You wouldn’t like to tell me your name, and give me a little interview?’
Delahaye shook his head. But he was still smiling.
‘Oh, come on.’ Her voice was insistent. ‘I am Petra Karlsen, from Radio Havel. We link into North German Radio, we’ll have the world by its ears. Tell me what you want, I might help you get it.’
Delahaye looked at his watch. The half hour was up. He signed to the Russian guarding the Hilton staff, and the Russian brandished his gun meaningfully. Two Hilton men began to undress reluctantly. But the girl in the crisp white blouse lifted her chin in defiance. She was damned if she was going to give this man a free eyeful, for all that he had distinguished silver hair.
The radio girl was now goggling. ‘Oh, heavens. Listeners, this is incredible. These men are making everyone in the hotel strip off.’
Now the Russian was eyeing her speculatively, and she began to back away. ‘No, I’m not part of this game.’ She flipped a switch on her recorder and glowered at Delahaye. ‘I’m here from the press.’
Delahaye shrugged. She had a very boyish figure for a woman, but she would make a nice contrast with the receptionist.
‘Look, I’ll do a deal.’ Her voice was now climbing in her alarm. ‘There’s an American congressman holed up here with a sixteen year Berlin boy, they’ve been having…’ she paused, and looked down at her recorder to make sure that she really had switched it off. ‘They’ve been doing bad things – I know where they are.’
Delahaye’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly he lifted his hand, just as the Russian was starting to prod the girl with the magnificent bosom. There were some things more important than pleasure.
‘Where?’
‘You won’t make me strip?’
He laughed. ‘I won’t make you strip.’
‘They’re both in the reception manager’s office. They locked themselves in there when all this started. One of the chefs told me as I came through the kitchen.’
Delahaye listened, and suddenly he was beaming like a cat presented with a large saucer of cream. He rested his hand on Petra Karlsen’s shoulder, and it was a gesture of approval that made the Hilton girl look quite sour. ‘Well, Fraulein Karlsen, let’s go and dig them out.’
‘What if they don’t want to come?’
Delahaye thought for a moment, and beckoned to Lindsay. ‘We’ll talk to them in English.’
Lindsay was baffled.
‘We’re in the British sector of Berlin, the sector boundary runs down the middle of the street outside. Go up to the door, knock politely, pretend you’re a British army officer, and lure the man out. Then Fraulein Karlsen can have him.’
Petra Karlsen dimpled, and for a brief moment really looked quite girlish. She had only been working for Radio Havel for a couple of months, and she already had a scoop capable of engraving her name on the station’s promotion ladder in letters of gold. Would to heaven she had a television camera team handy as well. But a girl must make what she can of good fortune, so she checked her camera, switched her recorder back on, making sure the batteries were still bright, and shadowed Lindsay and Delahaye to the reception manager’s door.
Lindsay knocked briskly. He was not sure what he would say, but knew he would play it by ear.
Nothing happened for a moment, then a young male voice replied. ‘Wer ist das?’
‘My name is Lindsay, I’m from the British Control Commission.’ Lindsay tried to make his voice snappy and military.
There was the sound of mumbling and muffled whispering from behind the door. Then a new voice spoke, with a strong transatlantic accent. ‘Why British? Ain’t this an American hotel?’
‘Yes, sir, but the Hilton s in the British sector.’
More shuffling and mumbling. Petra Karlsen was beside herself with excitement. She put her mouth close to Lindsay’s ear, and her lips touched his ear lobe. He grinned, it was a gentle and very pleasant sensation, just like a kiss.
‘Ask him his name.’
‘I’ve been sent to escort you out of here, sir: there’s a television crew outside the hotel. I don’t think they should see you. Can you identify yourself?’
Another bout of whispering, then the American voice again. ‘I’m Joe Doe, I’m an American citizen of some stature, I have my German interpreter with me.’ The voice was stronger now, gaining in confidence. ‘You are?’
‘Lieutenant Lindsay, sir.’
‘Well, Lieutenant Lindsay, get us out of here without a fuss and I’ll see that your action is recognised in the right places.’ Now the voice was close to arrogant. ‘I guess you can get us out the back way?’
‘No sooner said than done, sir.’
A key turned in the door lock, and the door opened slowly. Delahaye swooped like an eagle, forcing it wide. A portly middle-aged man in a seersucker summer suit stared out at them, his jowls quivering with sudden terror. A teenage boy in tight jeans and T-shirt stood close behind him. Both were as white as sheets.
‘What’s going on?’ The American attempted to bluster, but his words died in his throat.
Petra Karlsen was busy snapping them for all she was worth. Then she switched from camera back to her recorder. ‘Listeners, we have a fresh development in this dramatic event. We have discovered a middle aged American locked in an office with a teenage boy.’
Delahaye held a gun in his hand. He gestured at the American and the teenager. ‘Your papers.’
The American looked as though he wished himself dead. He hesitated for a moment, and then took a slim green passport from his pocket. Delahaye took it, and handed it to Petra Karlsen. The American opened his mouth in a stranded goldfish grimace, and closed it again. Now he had turned a very delicate shade of green.
‘Listeners, we have a dramatic development.’ Petra Karlsen was beside herself with excitement, and her voice rose almost to a squeak. ‘The American iss a Congressman, his name was Henry J. Day, from California.’ She scanned the boy’s identity card. ‘His interpreter,’ she accented the word heavily. ‘His interpreter is a young man of sixteen called Tomas Piechel. A blonde boy, rather feminine looking.’
Three minutes later Piechel was standing at the Hilton door, sans T-shirt, but holding a white waiter’s apron. He had instructions to cross the Budapesterstrasse and deliver a message that Delahaye had scribbled on a sheet of Hilton notepaper, but he was nervous, because the police besieging the hotel had guns, and he feared that they may mistake his mission. For a moment he looked rather hangdog. But then he noted that the TV crew had a camera trained on him, and realised that he was now a focus for the eyes of the world, and that good might very well come out of evil, and he assumed an air of jauntiness. There were magazines that would reportedly pay well for newsworthy memoirs, he had seen them himself in ‘Skandal’ and ‘Erotik’. Bedded by an American congressman? The horny old goat had called himself a businessman.
Koegel read Delahaye’s message first, and his mouth was a thin hard line. He said nothing, but passed the sheet of Hilton notepaper to Wilberforce. A bell tolled a tocsin in his mind, and his only hope must be to saddle the whole blame for this fiasco squarely on the Americans. He began to rehearse the excuses he would make to Senator Eckhardt, chairman of the West Berlin Police Authority. Called in by the Amis to help recover two imprisoned CIA hit teams, and he would flatly deny flagging West Berlin TV. These things happened, TV stations were well informed, and they arrived of their own accord. It had been a radio message, and please heaven nobody had logged it. Koegel paled at the thought, and took a deep breath. He also breathed a silent prayer, and it was the first time he had prayed since leaving school.
Wilberforce turned a pale shade of green. He had never met Congressman Day, but he knows him for a powerful figure with much influence in high places. Then a small silver light began to shine through a chink in the dark, dark clouds above him. The scandal might well break Day, and the CIA would undoubtedly be covered with shit, but military liaison had been unimpeachable. He hurried away to his jeep to relay Piechel’s message to men better qualified to make decisions. Nobody was going to saddle Wilberforce with anything at all.
Ten minutes later a minibus drew up outside the Hilton. Powers in high places might be able to ignore scenes of violence, but Congressmen locked up with foreign young men ranked rather more serious. Major Spary, the British observer, was now in command: Koegel had retreated into his armoured personnel carrier feeling distinctly depressed, and Wilberforce had gone home.
Some of Delahaye’s Russians began to shepherd the CIA men out of the hotel – each now swathed a blanket to furnish some kind of self-respect - whilst a Hilton employee gathered their clothing together. Congressman Day also had a blanket, over his his head. He had heard himself named on German radio, but he was damned if he wanted his picture on television as well. But the Hilton girl lobby avoided Delahaye’s eyes, for she had been upstaged by a plain beanpole of a girl, and the thought did not please her at all.
However Petra Karlsen was as happy as a sandboy.
‘Can I come in the bus?’ She was bobbing up and down in her excitement. Then her face dropped as Delahaye shook his head. ‘Why not?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Delahaye gently touched the side of her face. ‘One day we may meet again, and I’ll explain.’
‘Are you going across the Wall?’
He smiled. ‘You ask too many questions.’
Five minutes later Delahaye, Lindsay, the Russians, Congressman Day and the CIA men were all in the bus, speeding towards the Alexanderbrucke, with a quartet of police motorcycle outriders clearing their way, and Major Spary riding behind in a jeep to keep a benevolent eye on things. The bus slowed as it reached the bridge, and began to move at a mere walking pace towards a white line painted to mark the mid-point.
A group of men stood waiting just beyond the line. Two were in Russian uniforms, with distinctive peaked caps, brown jackets and blue breeches tucked into well polished black leather riding boots, two more in baggy suits, and two wore the field-green uniforms of East German volksarmee officers. One of the East Germans beckoned the bus forward, and it moved slowly, with the driver watching his beckoning hand, until it was just short of the line, and then advanced again, centimetre by centimetre, until the door was exactly level with the line, and the man in field-green held up his hand.
Delahaye and his Russians disembarked, leaving Congressman Day and the CIA men in their seats, covered with their blankets, and Lindsay followed doubtfully, because he had left all his belongings at the Berlin Interglobal, and had no idea where he was going. He could see a field-green East German minibus parked a little way beyond them, at the eastern end of the bridge, but he was stepping into unknown territory.
The bus then backed away from the line, and returned to the western end of the bridge, to wait whilst the CIA men dressed again. Martins, the CIA team leader, tried mentally to draft a meaningful report as he dressed, but fury and humiliation combined to block his thinking. He cursed to himself, swearing vengeance. Some day, somewhere, he would catch up with these bastards, and he would have his revenge. Some day, somewhere, he would taste blood.
Meanwhile Wotan listened to Radio Havel and smiled grimly. He had men watching every flight, and every crossing point, in and out of West Berlin, and he would find Lindsay, the Englishman, and crucify him, or – perhaps even better – sell him to the CIA and let the Agency have fun with him.