“Just a little gift from the gods, I guess. So you’re safe. Shaeffer’s stuck and I’m off looking at watches in the black market. And then something happens. I start asking questions about Brandt at Kransberg-for personal reasons, but you don’t know that, you think I must know something, made the connection no one else did. And if I’m asking, maybe somebody else is going to put two and two together too. But you can’t get me out of Berlin, that would just make things worse-I’d make a stink and people would wonder. And then, at Tommy’s going-away party, what do I do? I ask you to check the dispatcher at Frankfurt, the one you called-or did you get Jeanie to do it? No, you’d do it yourself-to get Tully on the plane. Personal authorization, not on the manifest. Which he’d remember. Not just close anymore, a real connection. So you panic again. You transfer his ass out of there like that, but even that’s not safe enough. You get somebody to get rid of me in Potsdam. The next day. But that didn’t occur to me either, not then. I was just lying there with an innocent woman’s blood all over me.“
Muller lowered his head. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Jake sat still. Finally there, the confession, so easily said.
“That girl. That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Muller said again. “I never meant her to-”
“No, just me. Christ, Muller.”
“It wasn’t me. Sikorsky. I told him I’d transfer Mahoney, that would do it. I never told him to kill you. Never. Believe me.”
Jake looked up at him. “I do believe you. But Liz is still dead.”
Now Muller did sit down, his body sagging slowly into the chair, head still low, so that only his silver hair caught the light of the desk lamp. “None of this was supposed to happen.”
“You start something, people get in the way. I suppose Shaeffer would have been a bonus.”
“I didn’t even know he was there. I didn’t know. It was all Sikorsky. He was worse than Tully. Once they start-” His voice trailed off.
“Yeah, it’s hard to get away. I know.” Jake paused, toying with the folder. “Tell me something, though. Why’d you tip Shaeffer that I’d be at the parade with Brandt? It had to be you-I’ll bet you know just how to get something to Intelligence like it came out of the air. But why do it? Gunther sets it up with Kalach, who tells you, but you can’t go. The one person who couldn’t. You’re brass, General Clay’s man- you had to be at the parade. Another thing that didn’t occur to me. So, our mistake. But Kalach s going to make the snatch anyway. You could have watched the whole thing without anyone’s being the wiser. Right up there with Patton. Why tip Shaeffer?”
“To put an end to it. If Shaeffer got him back, he’d stop. I wanted it to stop.
“And if he didn’t get him? It didn’t really matter who got him, did it? Maybe Kalach would after all and take Shaeffer out doing it, and it would stop that way. While you were watching.”
“No. I wanted Shaeffer to have him. I thought it would work. Sikorsky would have been suspicious if something went wrong, but the new man-”
“Would have taken the blame himself. And you’d be home free.”
Muller looked over. “I wanted out. Of all of it. I’m not a traitor. When this started, I didn’t know what Brandt meant to us.”
“You mean how much Shaeffer would want him back. Just another one of these,” Jake said, picking up the Bensheim file. “For ten thousand dollars.”
“I didn’t know-”
“Let’s do us both a favor and skip the explanations. Everybody in Berlin wants to give me an explanation, and it never changes anything.” He dropped the folder. “But just give me one. The one thing I still can’t figure. Why’d you do it? The money?”
Muller said nothing, then looked away, oddly embarrassed. “It was just sitting there. So easy.” He turned back to Jake. “Everybody else was getting theirs. I’ve been in the service twenty-three years, and what’s it going to get me? A lousy pension? And here’s a little snot like Tully with plenty of change in his pockets. Why not?” He pointed to the persilscheins. “The first few, at Bensheim, I didn’t even know what I was signing. Just more paper. There was always something-he knew how to slip them through. Then I finally realized what he was doing-”
“And could have court-martialed him. But you didn’t. He make you a deal? ”
Muller nodded. “I’d already signed. Why not a few more?” he said, his voice vague, talking to himself. “Nobody cared about the Germans, whether they got out or not. He said if it went wrong later, I could say he’d forged them. Meanwhile, the money was there-all you had to do was pick it up. Who would know? He could be persuasive when he wanted to be-you didn’t know that about him.”
“Maybe he had a willing audience,” Jake said. “Then things got tricky at Bensheim, so you got him out of there-another one of your quick transfers-and the next thing you know, he turns up with another idea. Still persuasive. Not just a little persilschein this time. Real money.”
