Read Online The Berlin Conspiracy by Tom Gabbay - Free Book Online

cover the six-dollar fare. He was happy enough with that.
    It was dark, almost pitch-black after the car drove off. The nearest working streetlight was a block away and I could barely make out the silhouette of the gloomy structure that was supposed to be our meeting place. If anyone was in there, it sure as hell wasn’t obvious.
    I found an old iron gate that took me up an overgrown path toward the front of the building. Once I got closer I could see the place was an even worse mess than it looked from the road. A large town house that had probably been deserted since the end of the war; the windows were broken, the brickwork was crumbling, and it didn’t look like there was much left of the roof. In better days it could’ve passed for the Addams Family home, including a medieval-style turret that rose out of the middle of the property.
    A short flight of steps led to a gabled porch dominated by a massive weather-beaten hardwood door. I gave it a pushand it moved, but not much. When I put my shoulder to it I was able to slip inside.
    Even with the door ajar I couldn’t make out my own two feet. I could feel that the floor was covered with debris, probably pieces of plaster from the ceiling and walls, some broken roof tiles, who knows what else. Glass crunched under my feet when I took a few steps into the void. The place was goddamned eerie and I had no intention of going on a blind sightseeing tour, so I stayed put. If the Colonel was still there he’d know where to find me.
    I waited. Maybe ten minutes, probably not that long. There was a scratching sound a few feet in front of me. Rats. More than one. And the stench was getting to me.
    “DID SOMEBODY ORDER A PIZZA …?!”
    My voice bounced off the walls, carried up through the building, and came back to me. I must’ve been standing in a huge entrance hall. I waited another minute. Nothing but me and the rats. The Colonel was long gone and Powell was going to nail my ass to the wall.
    “FUCK YOU, THEN, I’M GOING HOME!”
    And I meant all the way home, to my beach house, where I’d pack my fishhooks and my typewriter, get in my boat, and get really lost this time. Maybe the Gulf Coast. Or Mexico. As long as it was warm and there were no spooks, I didn’t give a damn.
    I was about to take my first step in that direction when I heard a Zippo flip open a few feet in front of me, followed by a spark and a flame illuminating his face. The fire went out, leaving the Colonel’s features bathed in the red glow of cigarette ash.
    “How long have you been standing there?” I asked.
    “Since you came in.”
    “I mistook you for a rat.”
    He smiled stiffly and turned a small flashlight on thefloor. We were standing in the middle of a rat convention. Hundreds of them. They didn’t seem to worry about us, but why would they?
    “You’re among friends,” I said.
    “Lucky for you I’m still here.”
    “Yeah, I’m catching all the breaks.” He turned the flashlight off so all I could see was the lit end of his cigarette moving around. “Very dramatic,” I noted. “Did you go to the Boris Karloff School of Espionage?”
    He brushed by me and pushed the big door shut. “How did you get here?”
    “Three taxis, four trains, and a couple of mules,” I replied. He didn’t think it was funny, and I guess it wasn’t. “Nobody followed me,” I assured him.
    “Why were you late? Did you have trouble?”
    “I overslept.” I could feel him looking at me from behind, through the darkness, like he had bat eyes. “Look,” I insisted. “I was exhausted and I overslept. Everything’s fine.” I turned to face him, but all I got was a shadow.
    He was silent for a moment while he took a long draw of smoke, making up, I guess, for the nicotine-free minutes he had endured while standing across from me in the dark, making some kind of pointless point. He finally threw the butt on the floor, immediately lit another.
    “What I have to tell you is extremely sensitive,”