Checkpoint Charlie

“Don’t lie,” Myerson said. “You wanted him to be watching you in his binoculars — you wanted him to know you were the one who defused him. One of these days your brain’s going to slow down a notch or two. Next time maybe it’ll blow up before you throw it in the pond. But all right, since you’re waiting for me to ask — how did you pick the blond one?”

“We knew until recently he’d worn his hair hippie length.”

“So?”

“I saw him at the pool toweling himself dry. I saw him shake his head back the way you do when you want to get the hair back out of your eyes. He had a crew cut. He wouldn’t have made that gesture unless he’d cut his hair so recently that he still had the old habit.”

Myerson said, “It took you twelve hours to figure that out? You are getting old, Charlie.”

“And hungry. Have you got anything to eat around here?”

“No.”

Checkpoint

Charlie

I ALWAYS MISTRUST Myerson but never more so than on those occasions when he pulls me off a job that’s only half done and drags me back all the way from Beirut or Helsinki or Sydney to hand me a new assignment. Usually it means he’s at his wits’ end and needs me to bail him out.

This time it was a short trip back to Langley. I’d been in Montreal and consequently managed to arrive at Myerson’s lair without the usual jet lag; my only complaint was hunger — there’d been nothing but a light snack on the plane.

It was two in the morning but Myerson keeps odd hours and I knew he’d still be in his fourth-floor office. I trampled the U.S. government seal into the tiles and the security guard ran my card through the sca

“Where do you buy those suits, Charlie,” Myerson greeted me, “a tent shop?”

I hate him too.

I sat down. “It’s late, you’re rude and I’m hungry. Can we get down to it without half an hour of the usual sparring?”

“I guess we’d better.”

I was astonished. “It’s serious then.”

“Desperate, actually. You’ve been following the Quito hijack?”

“Just the headlines.”

“We’re in a bind.”

Myerson’s smile displays a keyboard of teeth reminiscent of an alligator. He rarely employs it to indicate amusement; he uses it mainly when he is anticipating the acute discomfort of someone other than himself.

For a while he smiled without speaking. Then, after he felt he’d struck terror deep into my heart, he resumed.

“The hijackers have nearly one hundred hostages, a Boeing 727 and a variety of explosives and small arms. They have a number of ransom demands as well. They’ve communicated the demands to the world via the plane’s radio equipment.”

“Does anybody know where they are yet?”

“Sure. We’ve known their location from the begi

“Access by road?”

“Forget it, Charlie. It’s not an Entebbe situation. We can’t go in after them. Our hands are tied.”

“Why?”

“International politics. Organization of American States etcetera. Just take my word for it.”

“Then what’s the scam?”

“The hijackers have demanded the release of seventeen so-called political prisoners who are incarcerated in various countries on charges of terrorism, murder, espionage, so forth. What the liberation people think of as victims of political persecution. Actually most of them are vermin, guilty of the vilest crimes.”

“Plus they’re doubtless asking for a few million dollars and a free ride to Libya or Uganda.”

“Yes, of course. Disregard all that, Charlie. The problem is something altogether different.”

“Then why bore me with inessentials?”

“Bear with me. Twelve of the seventeen so-called political prisoners are Ché guerrillas who’re incarcerated in various South American jails. Four in Ecuador, seven in Bolivia, one in Venezuela. Four more are in prison in Mexico.”

“That adds up to sixteen. Where’s the seventeenth?”

“Here. Leavenworth.”

“Who is he?”

“Emil Stossel.” And he gri

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of rising to the bait; I merely said, “So?”

“So the Latin Americans have elected to accede to the terrorists’ demands temporarily, figuring to nail them after the hostages have been freed. The plane has several high-ranking Latin American dignitaries on board. The OAS doesn’t want to risk their lives any more than it has to.”

I snorted. “They’re already at risk.”

“It’s not for us to decide. The various governments have agreed to turn the sixteen guerrillas loose and give them safe passage to Havana. They’re asking us to cooperate by handing Stossel over to the East Germans in Berlin.”

“Why not Havana? It’s closer.”

“He’s not Cuban. The Cubans would have little reason to grant him asylum — he’d be an embarrassment to them. He’s German. Anyhow that’s the demand and we’ve got to live with it.” Myerson glanced at the clock above the official photograph of the President. “In two hours we’re putting him on a plane in Kansas. It will co

Then Myerson made a face. “It’s asinine, I agree — you don’t make deals with terrorists. These governments are fools. But we’ve got no choice. If we held out — refused to release Stossel — you can imagine the black eye we’d get if the hijackers started murdering hostages one at a time.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ve got our national tail in a crack. We have to turn him over to the DDR. I don’t like turning mass murderers loose any more than you do but I still don’t see what it’s got to do with me.”

He smiled again. I fought the impulse to flinch. “How’s your broken-field ru

I saw it coming. His smugness made me gag. He said, “You’re going to intercept the pass, Charlie.”

“Before or after he crosses the wall?”

“After.”

“Lovely.”

“We can’t recapture him until after the hijack has been dealt with, can we. The hostages have to be turned loose before we can lay a finger on Stossel.”

“In other words you want to deliver him to the East Germans and wait for the hijack to end and then afterward you expect me to get him back and put him back in Leaven-worth to finish out his sentence.”

“Right. After all, we can’t have the world think we’ve gone soft, can we. We’ve got to prove they can’t get away with it. Carry a big stick and all that.”

“We could kill him,” I said. “It’s a lot easier to assassinate him in East Germany than it is to bring him out alive. No, never mind, don’t say it. I know. We won’t be stampeded into committing public murder, especially on hostile soil. We have to bring him back alive because that’s the best way to rub their noses in it.”

“You have the picture, I’m happy to see.”

I said, “It’s impossible.”

“Of course it is. They’ll be expecting it. They’ll leave no openings at all.” He smiled slowly, deliciously. “Charlie, it’s the kind of job you do best. You get bored with anything less.”

“Ever since that caper with von Schnee I’ve been persona non grata in the Eastern sector. If they catch me on their side of the wall they’ll lock me up for a hundred and fifty years. In thumbscrews. On German peasant food.”