Checkpoint Charlie

*   *   *

I ASSEMBLED the cables in order and dropped them on Pete’s desk. “He’s been living in retirement on Tahiti.” “Karl Jurgens? He found his paradise then.”

“But he’s not there now.” I indicated the cables.

Pete sat up and looked.

I said, “He left eleven weeks ago on a plane for Djakarta. Coincidence? Within a week of his arrival in Djakarta you started losing agents. Djakarta, Taipei — he was sighted there two weeks later — they’re both major substations on your network and that’s where you lost the first two agents. If we keep digging I’m sure we’ll find traces of him in Macao and here in Hong Kong. It’s Karl all right. No doubt of it.”

“But what’s he up to? Surely the West German government can’t be ru

“It’s not a German caper. It’s got to be a free-lance job. He’s hired himself out as a mercenary. Probably started to run short of money to sustain him in paradise.”

“Hired himself out where? Who’s the villain and why’s he doing these things to us?”

“I guess I’d better ask Karl,” I said.

*   *   *

KARL JURGENS and I had formed a warm friendship during the hottest of the Cold War years and I didn’t enjoy the prospect of dismantling him but I’d had unpleasant jobs before and I didn’t intend to do halfhearted work on this one. If Karl had set himself against us he could expect no quarter from us; I had little sumpathy to spare for him.

The first task was to find him. I couldn’t employ Pete’s people for the legwork because I didn’t know which of them might have been compromised; there were too many rotten apples in that barrel. So I had to use Myerson’s authority to call in security people from Kyoto and various floating departments. The hunt fa

Gradually reports began to drift in from Mindanao, Tokyo, Rangoon, Macao, Singapore — Karl was careful but he had left a bit of a spoor here and there, partly because he’d gone a bit rusty from disuse but mainly because he probably felt no one would have reason to be looking for him. It was only an accident that I’d been able to co

It appeared he was all over the map; we kept finding his trail twelve or twenty-four hours too late.

During that week Pete Morgan found the rot had spread to four more agents. He had no choice but to spread the dictum throughout his network that all agents in the system were under suspicion and surveillance until further notice.

Whether the threat succeeded was not immediately clear but defections appeared to be on the decrease: either the agents were impressed or Karl was laying off, or perhaps his job was concluded. I suspected the latter because none of Pete’s agents came forward after the middle of that week to report attempts to bribe them.

By then we had lost seventeen agents — about twenty percent of the station’s complement — and this made the issue so grave that Myerson personally flew out to Guam to light a fire under me.

I gave him a cool welcome. Myerson has no head for tactics. He was not going to be any material help and I didn’t want him underfoot.

He favored me with his most menacing smile. “I’m not interested in your preferences, Charlie. I want this thing wrapped and I intend to sit on you until you wrap it. I’m getting flak from stations as far away as Beirut and Marseilles and even Mexico City — a flood of trouble coming in from the Far East without any prior warning from China Station. We’ve got to get this network back in operation before the trouble spreads all the way into Langley.”

I gave him a cold eye. “If you can do a better job than I’m doing then I’ll stand aside but otherwise don’t call me -I’ll call you.”

*   *   *

A STRINGER in Djakarta had his eyes open and spotted Karl Jurgens from the photo he’d memorized. The stringer phoned in from the airport and I was on the runway at Singapore with an armed crew when Karl’s plane landed. We took him into custody and bundled him aboard a cabin cruiser. Out at sea I conducted the interrogation personally. No witnesses; but I had a tape deck rolling.

Karl was urbane and stoic. He managed a bleak smile. “I thought you must have retired years ago — you’re even older than I am. If I’d known they would pit you against me I think I might have refused the job. I never was quite a match for you, Charlie. How did you tumble to me?”

“Legwork.” I wasn’t about to tell him how he’d revealed himself through his attachment to paradise. In a poker game you don’t tell another player that he wiggles his ears when he’s bluffing.

I said, “Who’s footing the bill?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Don’t force me to make tedious threats, Karl.”

“The offer was made by telephone, just as my offers have gone to your agents by phone. I was given a list of names of agents to be subverted.”

“And the visas, passports and millions of dollars?”

“The visas and passports were sent to me at a general delivery post office box in Djakarta. They came in a plain carton. If it matters it was postmarked Hong Kong. As for the millions of dollars in bribe money, it was mostly fictitious. The numbered Swiss accounts exist but they contain only a few hundred francs each.”

“Then you intended to double-cross all these people who thought you were making them rich.”

“I intended nothing, Charlie. I was paid in cash, through the mails, and I’ve done the job I was paid to do. I didn’t ask my employer his intentions. If I had, do you suppose he’d have told me? It was only on my own initiative and from my own curiosity that I inquired into those Swiss accounts. After all, he had to give me the account numbers so that I could pass them on to the defectors.”

“The Mandarin Chinese who made the phone calls for you?”

“An unemployed Formosan actor of no account. I paid him to make the calls. He read from prepared scripts. He knows nothing more than that. Forget him.”

“You’re telling me it’s a dead end?”

He spread his hands and smiled faintly. “You have me in custody. That should solve your problem for the moment.”

“Hardly. Why’d you do it?”

“Money. What else? It’s hardly been stimulating to my ingenuity.”

“Why did they choose you?”

“I suppose I’d let the word go out that I was available for free-lance work. And I flatter myself I still have a reputation for efficiency and secrecy. I cover my tracks fairly well — I doubt any man but you could have tumbled me. In any case I swear to you I have no knowledge of the identity of my employers.”

“You weren’t curious?”

“I was, but I curbed it. Does the postman care who the postmaster is? My job was simply to deliver mail and messages. Menial — beneath me, really, but the money was attractive.” His smile dwindled and departed. “I’m an old man, Charlie. I take what I can get.”

“Describe the voice on the phone.”

“Disguised. Muffled with a handkerchief and artificial falsetto. High pitched, nasal. A man, not a woman.”

“Language?”

“German. Not a native German accent. Possibly English, American, Australian, Canadian, South African — English-speaking at any rate, but the falsetto confused things. I couldn’t be specific.”

“All right. What was the operation designed to cover?”

“I’ve no earthly idea. That’s the truth. I wasn’t told and I didn’t ask.”

“You’ve certainly come down in the world.”

“I’m an old beggar,” he agreed. “You know, oddly enough, I don’t think I’ve broken any laws. Isn’t that curious? At least not to the extent that it could be proved in a court against me. What do you intend doing about me? Is Miles Kendig still in charge of your Security Executive?”

“No. Kendig’s gone. Myerson runs the office.”

Karl made a face. “Him. The ultimate Philistine bureaucrat. Well — what will you do with me?”