Uncertain Aims Book Two of Doubtful Intelligence

Uncertain Aims Book

Two of Doubtful Intelligence

Brad Field

Writers Club Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

Uncertain Aims Book Two of Doubtful Intelligence

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Bradford S. Field

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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ISBN: 0-595-19289-0

ISBN: 978-1-4697-9526-3 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

With gratitude to Mary Lee for her gifts of time, of patience, and her love.

Uncertain Aims Book Two of Doubtful Intelligence

22 August 1963

At ten o’clock on Thursday morning, Daw sat with his newspaper in the Volvo parked in Amsterdam across the canal from the Hotel Switz. The passenger door slowly opened. Daw raised his newspaper higher, in front of his face, looked to his right. Crouching down below the level of the window, Nancy Young, in her barrel-chested crew shirt, man’s slacks, crawled into the car, onto the floor in front of the passenger seat, pulled the door shut behind her. She turned her face up to him, pulled off her cap, let loose the mass of red curls that Daw had remembered from Maryland.

Let’s go, she said quietly.

Daw tossed his newspaper over his shoulder into the back seat, started the car, backed slowly out, then drove along by the canal, running his window washer to get the soapy sign, RESCUE, off the windshield. It soon washed clean, easier to see where he was going by the time he got out to some wider streets.

Where are we going? he said.

Keep an eye on the mirror, she said. Just to see if we’re being followed or not.

Daw turned right, then left, around the block, left turns all the way. No one behind them.

Where are we now? she said, still from the floor.

Don’t know. Wait ‘til I see a sign.

Who are you?

Daw. Eddie Daw.

Daw! Where do I know that name?

You and spoke a moment in Stockholm.

Oh, yeah, right!

You’re Nancy Young.

You got it.

Pleased to meet you.

Yeah, me too. A long time since Stockholm. Those cables I sent took the last money I had.

You sent more than one wire?

Besides the one to Prexy, I sent one to a girl in Paris, too. My only chance, Friday morning. I only had money for two those. Any idea where we are yet?

I see a sign that says we’re headed for Utrecht.

Yeah, that’s good. That’s southeast of us. On the way to Heidelberg. How soon can you get to Heidelberg?

I don’t know. Is it as far away as Paris?

You came from Paris? You get around. Step on it. Her blue eyes sparkled up at him, a bright grin on her face, as she crouched in the foot box in front of the passenger seat. There’s a train, she was saying, from Amsterdam to Heidelberg. I checked. It leaves at one. Nothing before that. The trip takes six hours. So we have until about seven tonight to beat him there.

Beat who there? That tall guy?

Yeah, the Graf, she sighed. The Graf Eugen von Burgsturmheim.

Who’s he?

Nobody special, though he had me fooled for a while. Nancy pushed herself up to sit beside him on the passenger seat. A small-time op. Peddles guns, information, does a little blackmail, anything going. Hey, good, here’s a superhighway.

She turned away from him. He had to keep his eyes on the road. But in glances he could see her pull the tail of her shirt out of her trousers, then pull up the shirt, reach up under it. She seemed to be unfastening some straps at the back of her neck. She pulled down from under the shirt a pink, padded thing, like a baseball chest protector.

Like it? she said, holding up the pink pad between their seats. Daw could see the nipples of her breasts move against the cloth of her shirt. The pad, not the titties, Daw.

What is it?

My man’s chest. I’ve been wearing the damned thing now for nearly a month. She flipped it over her shoulder behind them, where it landed with a crackle on the newspaper. The Graf had this idea that as a pair of fags in Amsterdam, we’d attract less attention.

There were a lot of them there.

I think he originally intended some other scam. She suddenly unzipped the fly of her pants. He had a blackmail stunt of some kind, but it was just a cover for something else that never jelled… She pulled from the crotch of the trousers some rolls of cloth.My temporary boy’s balls, she said. She threw those over her shoulder into the back seat too. He had a lot of plans. She zipped up the fly again. But after a while I got tired of hearing him tell me, ‘Just a little longer.’ I gotta admit, it was worth the time. I got a graduate education in small-time espionage. But god… Nancy put her hands together, cracked her knuckles audibly. I got the feeling that he never meant to let me go. A weird old creep.

Old?

Yeah. That hair is dyed. He must be sixty or seventy. Can’t get his cock up any more. Never tried. She stretched, raised her arms above her head. Just finger-fucked me, or used his tongue. God, it’s a relief to have all that stuff out of the crotch of these pants. How you guys ever sit comfortably with all that plumbing hanging out is a mystery to me.

The Dutch superhighway ended at Arnhem. Daw threaded between bikes again through the city streets, had to pay close attention his driving.

Prexy give you this car? asked Nancy.

Old man Sylvester? No. I got it from Inga Rolig.

What’s that?

A woman. In Sweden.

Well. Swedish girls give you cars?

You know her?

She gives cars to girls too?

It’s not that simple. You don’t know Inga?

Nancy shrugged beside him. Daw, shifting gears, leaned toward her to inhale her scent. It was the same as ever, without a tinge of alarm or surprise at the name of Inga Rolig. My car, she was saying, is still parked in Heidelberg. A good thing, too. Or the Graf would have had that off me, like everything else. Spent all my money, and still has my bag, my clothes, and stuff. While he was shaving this morning, I finally got my passport back. She had reached into her hip pocket, brought out the little blue-grey booklet.

They got out of Arnhem on the road east. By noon they were crossing the border into Germany at Emmerich, where the border guards, merely at the sight of the covers of their American passports, waved them through.

Back to Germany again, said Nancy. This time I’m gonna know what I’m doing, get into some real deals, and maybe make that stupid newsletter into something. She put the passport away in her hip pocket again, again cracked her knuckles. I learned a lot from the Graf. But I didn’t learn enough about that scam that he had going in Amsterdam. Probably he was setting me up to take the rap in case it went wrong.

She nodded her head.The red curls flopped.Just as well I got out when I did, maybe.

They drove down from hilly country into heavily built-up industrial areas, with the river Rhine somewhere off to their right. They got onto the autobahn, headed southeast toward Koln and beyond that, Frankfurt.

You like working for Prexy? she said.

I’m getting to see a bit of Europe.

How many guys does he have working for him?

How many? Just me, as far as I know.

Sure, Daw, never mind. Are you going to take me all the way to Heidelberg?

If you want.

Well, sure I want. If you’re gonna put me on a train somewhere, you gotta gimme some money. I’m broke.

Sure, I can give you some money. But I can take you to Heidelberg, too.

I mean, like, maybe you have some other errand that you have to do?

No.

No? That’s all you do for Prexy? Go ‘round rescuing damsels in distress?

Daw thought of Inga Rolig, dead in Sweden. Of Melissa, picked up, questioned endlessly by the French cops. Sometimes I’m too late, he said. Mostly I look for his long-lost brother.

Whose?

Sylvester’s.

Prexy had a brother? Where’d he lose it?

In Spain. In the ‘thirties. I guess the family heard he’d died there. But now it seems he didn’t die after all. He’s in Paris. Or maybe Amsterdam. Or was.

I get it! She laughed aloud, one sharp bark. Amsterdam! I needed to be rescued, but since he had an errand for you in Amsterdam anyway, he thought he’d save the expense of sending two people or making two trips. Was that how he thought about it? Did you find his brother?

Didn’t look. Waited to see what you’d do.

Hey, don’t tell Prexy you didn’t hustle for him.

Fuck him.

She smiled, nodded. You got the right attitude, but don’t let it carry you away. Write him a letter. Tell him about how you looked high and low–but I guess you know how that goes already, hunh?

Now Daw shrugged. No, not really.

Why, hell, that’s how we run the newsletter for him. Write him some kind of shit he thinks he wants to hear. Read the newsletter carefully, you’ll see what I mean.

I, ah, I guess I don’t know it.

Know what?

This newsletter.

Don’t you write for it?

No. Like I said, I’m just over here to find this brother of his, Lester Sylvester.

Well, I guess you’re not missing much, but it would–you don’t know it at all?

What’s its title?

The Tidewater Investment Club Newsletter. You sure you don’t write for it?

I’ve never even seen a copy of it.

When we get to Heidelberg, come into my place. I’ll let you look over a couple back issues. It’s all bullshit, of course. ‘Cause that’s what Prexy’s willing to pay for. For instance, the newsletter is just now starting on a series of things about that French army revolt that wanted to keep Algiers part of France. Now that France has pulled stakes in Algiers, it’s a dead issue, but Prexy wants us to write stuff about it. So I’m digging up German stuff, Melissa is working on the French angles, and I suppose Kathy and Pat are working their ends for it too. We’ll never keep Prexy happy by telling him that it’s all blood over the dam, so we make up stuff to show that it’s still alive. Nancy snorted. What crap! Anyway, that’s what you should do. About this brother. Never mind the facts. Just write Prexy what he pays to read…

Just as on Daw’s first trip through Germany the week before with Melissa Miller, the autobahn was full of traffic running at terrific speed. They raced under a grey sky between steel-plant smoke-stacks.

Mostly we give him stuff that we translate from the local papers, Nancy chattered on, economic stuff. It’s all just filler, but a lot of his subscribers, jerks with more money than sense, seem to go for that junk. ‘Course, rich fools would be the only kind that would subscribe to it.

Why?

Why? Who else could afford it?

Does it cost?

Hell, yes, it costs! Don’t you know anything? A thousand per!

A thousand? Per year?

Yas, per year!

Daw whistled. What do subscribers get for that?

Six, maybe ten issues.

That’s it?

That’s it? Sure, that’s it! What were you expecting, pin-ups? Well, we do give ‘em some entertainment now and then.

As they got further south, the traffic decreased, but Nancy kept on talking. We throw in some spy stuff, industrial espionage if we can find any, but political stuff will do as well. According to Prexy, he always gets a lot of mail on that kind of stuff. Of course, none of the real ops take any of our news seriously. The Graf calls it a garbage mill. Nancy wriggled in her seat, frowned. It could be better. If me and Miller, and some of the other kids got organized, we could feed Sylvester a nice pattern that he couldn’t fuck up, no matter how much he edited it. She sat back again in her seat, sighed. What we need, too, is a decent editor. Prexy is a damned old idiot.

Maybe he’ll drop dead, suggested Daw.

Yeah, but we been expectin’ that for years, and nothing’s happened.

I thought he was going to have a heart attack one time in the hotel.

Hotel?

Yes, in Paris.

In Paris? He’s in Paris? Now?

No, he’s gone back. Sunday.

What in hell was he doing in Paris?

It was on account of his missing brother.

Oh, that. He must think finding the guy is important.

Betsy didn’t seem to think much of that.

Betsy! Was she there too?

Yes, with her husband.

Husband! Oh, my god, I remember! I got some sort of announcement beginning of June…Who in hell’s the guy that would marry Betsy Sylvester?

His name is Tipley. Arlington Tipley. Works for some federal agency up in Maryland.

He must be hotter’n a two dollar pistol. Or rich and dumb. Could be both. Jeezis! Betsy Sylvester married! Well, it happens. Lots of girls do it. I did it once…

They went on by the big exit signs for West German cities. Daw tried to ask her about the dates for their rendez-vous in Scandinavia. That meeting? In Helsinki? In Stockholm, in Copenhagen?

Copenhagen? He got a new idea in Copenhagen.

Who did?

"The Graf! Who else? He was gonna ditch the Amsterdam idea for a while. But it didn’t work out. Copenhagen was full of guys from other parts of Europe that he knew. We avoided most of ‘em, but this one, an

Italian, named Spurante, walked right up to us. You know Spurante?

No.

Yeah, I’ll bet you don’t. The sarcasm was striking. He and the Graf, they talked a lot. In Italian. So I didn’t pick up much. Something about Helsinki. In Finland.

They sped on southward past the exit signs for more cities, toward Frankfurt.

We took a ferry boat ride, the three of us, from Denmark over to Malmo in Sweden. You know where that is?

I know the ride, said Daw, who had taken the ferry in the opposite direction only three weeks earlier.

I was eager to see a new country, you know? she said, smiling suddenly at him. But the Graf, he just put a hand on my shoulder. ‘No hurry,’ he said. We stood at the rail and watched. One of the guys getting off first was Spurante. He got about ten steps up the ramp on the shore, and two guys in trench coats were all of a sudden walking along beside him, one on either side. They stopped him. Talked. Spurante pulled out his papers. Then the three of them got out of line and walked off to a little shed on the side. About that time, the Graf stepped back from the rail and went back into the cabin. We rode the ferry back to Denmark again. The Graf said those two guys in trench coats were cops.

Trench coats, said Daw, remembering the two men who had arrested Melissa Miller at the ABC cafeteria in Metz, seem popular.

Nancy cracked her knuckles again. I told the Graf I could go to Helsinki for him. They didn’t have me on a list in Sweden the way they had all the other ops. But I don’t think the Graf trusted me. Wouldn’t tell me what was so interesting in Helsinki. So I wired Prexy for the name of his girl in Scandinavia. He sent me yours.

Why were the Swedish cops arresting people?

Why? Where the hell have you been? That Wennerstrom thing! Swedes caught Wennerstrom selling info to the Russians, and there was hell to pay. Copenhagen was full of small time ops like Spurante–and the Graf–who wanted to go to Helsinki. I still don’t know why. But they knew Swedish counter-espionage would pick ‘em up and hold ‘em for as long as they felt like it.

Why not take a plane?

Oh, hell, you couldn’t buy a plane ticket for anything.

I got a ticket.

You did? You were in Helsinki?

Sure.

Well, what was the attraction?

I only went ‘cause I was sent. To look for you. Daw kept to himself the depressing shock he had felt back in July at hearing that Valerie, after their night together in Temsted, wanted nothing more to do with him.

Me? I was in Copenhagen!

Well, all I know is what the cable said. From Sylvester. To look for you at one hotel in Helsinki, or at another, that Salvation Army place in Stockholm. Where you popped in and out of my room.

I got a wire in Copenhagen from Prexy, about meeting you in Helsinki and Stockholm. But by the time I snuck away from the Graf, I figured you would have left Helsinki. That left Stockholm. I went up to Helsingfors, took the ferry across there to Sweden. No one stopped me. But I thought I was being followed. She sighed, then gave him that brilliant smile again. I over-reacted, maybe. All that talk I heard from the Graf in Copenhagen about Swedish counter-espionage… She wriggled in her seat, cracked her knuckles. "If the Swedish cops had finks in Copenhagen, informers, they might have connected me and the Graf. So, when I went to Stockholm, went into that Fralsingham hotel and asked for you. They rang for you, but you were out. While they were ringing the room, I spotted the room number. I took a walk around the block, in case I had a tail. Then I ran in, found you in the room, said my piece, and went out the back of the hotel, just as if I had only been trying to shake a tail, got on the train to Malmo, and that

night I was back on the ferry to Copenhagen. Slick, hunh?"

Except that we missed each other in Copenhagen.

Yeah, that must have been a pain. Sorry. She sagged in her seat, stared moodily out the window. I only figured out that there were a bunch of hostels in Copenhagen besides ours after I got back there again that night. Then the Graf gave up on Helsinki, and we finally left Copenhagen, came on down to Amsterdam.

When was that?

That last weekend in July.

I see, said Daw mentally calculating. She had left Scandinavia before Inga Rolig had been killed. But someone had killed Rolig. Someone would want to know what had happened to the roll of negatives he had still in his luggage. So, what went on in Amsterdam?

No much. The Graf and I, we’d get me all gussied every noon to look like a boy, then we’d go out like two fairies for a stroll. We’d stop in some bar or café, one with tables on the square, the one they call the Dam, get into conversation with another couple of homos. All this time, the Graf had a tape recorder between his legs, a little Uher? And out on the Dam, one of Graf’s guys had a Bolex movies camera aimed at us.

I never saw anyone with a movie camera.

Oh, you saw us out on the Dam?

I was parked across the canal from that hotel for three, four days!

Oh, yeah, that’s right. So you followed us?

Every noon. What was the point of prancing around on the Dam?

Nancy groaned. Beats me. Some of the other pairs of men we talked to, maybe they were big-shots. The ones we talked to were English and German, mostly. This Bolex was in a faked tripod camera. You know the kind?

Tall, blond guy, with a beak nose?

That’s him. So you did see him! The big camera looks as if it were aimed one way, but the Bolex inside is aimed sideways…

So no one feels like they’re getting pictured?

That was the idea. And later, the Graf and his guy were supposed to edit the film with the sound from the Graf ’s tape recorder, to make a sound movie.

Of you two and of other two. Sounds like a blackmail plot, to me, Nancy.

I suppose some of the guys we talked wouldn’t want the folks at home to know that they were homos.

Seems to me you got out of there just in time.

At the big interchange near the Frankfurt airport, they turned south, re-tracing now a part of the autobahn system over which Daw had driven the week before with Melissa Miller. Too bad you didn’t see more of Sweden, Daw said. Stockholm is interesting. So is Goteborg. And Lund. Lund is near Malmo.

Yeah? Well, maybe next summer.

Not a hint of any alarm flowed in the scent from Nancy’s body. Daw wriggled his shoulders, relaxed a little.

Gettin’ tired of driving? said Nancy. I don’t know if I can use a stick shift. I never drove a car with a clutch. But Heidelberg isn’t far now.

I’m all right. The autobahn took them past Darmstadt, the big U. S. service radio bases with tall radio antennae on either side of the highway, and ugly, long two-storey grey and yellow buildings.

It’s too bad you’re so busy looking for Prexy’s brother, Nancy said.

Is it?

Yeah. Sometimes we’ve needed someone who was mobile. This damned job I got, teaching army and air force brats, keeps me tied down. But there’s always leg-work that could be done for the crap we write for the Newsletter. You could be useful.

How do you know you could trust me?

Well, I don’t. But I have so far. And so far, it’s worked out. We’ll see. There’s our exit.

Baustelle?

No! That means a construction zone. They’re messing with an interchange near Mannheim. No, there, off to the left. Heidelberg.

Nancy gave him directions on where to turn, had him turn right, the by a railroad station, on a bridge over the tracks, then along a road straight south for a mile.

Nancy had him turn right among rows and ranks of more two-storey grey and yellow buildings, like the ones beside the autobahn near Darmstadt. At regular intervals, entrances pierced long U.S. Army regulation apartment buildings. Each one led to four apartments on the first floor, and up stairs to four on the second.

Find a parking place over there, said Nancy. See that big blue Chevvy, with the fins? That’s mine. Park near that. Oh, damn!

What’s the matter?

The Graf has my apartment keys. The keys for the car are in the apartment. But the keys for this apartment are still in my suitcase with the Graf in Amsterdam. I gotta go see the manager. Sit tight. She got out, hurried away, soon returned with a wad of keys.

Daw?

Yes?

She stood by his door, holding the keys in her fists. I’m scared to go in.

We’re much earlier than seven.

Can you go in first?

Okay.

You can?

Sure. He got out, took the keys from her. They walked to one of the entrances.

I’m upstairs, she said, almost whispering at his shoulder. 3B. Oh, wait! Gimme the keys! Look at my mail box! The box for 3B overflowed with letters, some held onto the overflow with rubber bands.

Nancy grabbed it all, then with the key, opened the box, pulled out still more. Then she handed the keys back. Daw went up the steps.

He unlocked, cracked the door of 3B. No human smells, nothing fresh at all. He stepped inside. A living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, a bath, an odor of something rotten. No one in any of the rooms. Bedroom closet clothes, bathroom closet had sheets and towels.

A large, pink coverlet on the bed. No one under it. A couch, two chairs, a coffee table in the living room. In front of the window, another low table held a vase, from which drooped some long-dead flowers, sour smelling. Against the wall, behind the couch, a bookcase. Books. On the bottom shelf, a messy pile of papers.

The real smell of rottenness came from the kitchen. From the refrigerator. Daw looked under a counter, found some plastic bags, began to empty the rank, rancid contents of the fridge into one of the bags.

Hey? Nancy stood in the kitchen door. Everything all right?

You left some things here that got a little high.

Well, hell, I didn’t expect to be gone six weeks! No sign of anyone in the place?

Nope. He tied up the top of the plastic bag.

Then we beat him here.

If he bothers to come here.

Nancy sighed. I don’t know what he’ll do.

His train can’t get in before seven. You don’t have anything to eat here, not now. We could eat at the railroad station. Keep an eye on people coming in.

Nancy stared at him, her mouth agape. Then that brilliant smile. Not bad, Daw, she said. She turned, walked away from the kitchen door. Daw followed out with the plastic bag. Trash go outside? he asked.

Daw, look at that couch. How tall are you?

Uh, five-seven and a half.

You’ll fit. On that couch. You’re sleepin’ there.

Oh. Okay.

Okay? She stared at him in some concern.

Sure, Nancy.

Don’t get me wrong,she insisted.I’m no permanent plaster virgin, but…

Sure, he said.

See, I need a guy around.

I see.

For a while. If you don’t mind. Until I can get something arranged. She stood still in the middle of the room, as if waiting for him to speak. She put one hand inside the other, cracked her knuckles. I don’t want to be all feminine and phoney about it. ‘Cause after what I went through, you know, sexually, with that old weirdo the Graf, it’s not a question of taste, you know…

It’s okay, Nancy. Where’s the trash go?

I’ll show you. I gotta take this bunch of keys back to the manager. And get him to change the lock on this door. And get me a new key. Maybe two new keys?

Sure, he said. I’ll get my bags out of my car.

They shopped for fresh food that afternoon. Nancy had access to a PX shopping center with American products at lower prices than Daw had seen in the States. When they came back, they found the manager’s carpenter putting a new lock in the door. He handed Nancy two keys for it. After he had gone, she gave one of the keys to Daw.

Just in case, you know, you might need it, she said. Daw cooked a chicken with a hot sauce for supper. Nancy made a salad. Around the hour of seven in the evening, they waited for some one to knock on the door, but nothing happened. Nancy waded through the stacks of mail, discarding most of it, setting aside a few letters. They had their meal. They washed the dishes, drank a little German white wine, went off to bed, Nancy in the bedroom, Daw on the couch.

Friday morning Daw got up early, folded up the sheets that had been on the couch, stacked them neatly at one end. Then he went into the kitchen, began to heat the hot water for coffee. While waiting, he gave a few cleaning swipes at the