Six Graves to Munich - Mario Cleri [16]
The next weekend the hotel desk called early on Sunday evening to inform him that two men wished to come to his room. Rogan grinned at Rosalie. The brothers had taken the bait. But it was Rogan who was surprised. The two men were strangers. Or rather, one was a stranger. The taller of the two Rogan recognized almost immediately as Arthur Bailey, the American Intelligence agent who had interrogated Rogan about his “execution” and had asked him to identify suspects in Berlin more than nine years before. Bailey was studying Rogan with impassive eyes as he showed his identification.
“I just read up on your file, Mr. Rogan,” Bailey said. “You don’t look anything like your photographs anymore. I didn’t recognize you at all when I first saw you again.”
“When was that?” Rogan asked.
“At the Freisling gas station a week ago,” Bailey said. He was a lanky midwestern type, his drawl as unmistakably American as were his clothes and posture. Rogan wondered why he hadn’t noticed him at the gas station.
Bailey smiled gently at him. “We think the Freislings are East German agents, just as a sideline. They are hustlers. So when you showed up there and got friendly we checked you out. Called Washington, checked your visas and all that. Then I sat down and read your file. Something else clicked, and I went to the back files of the daily papers. And finally I figured it all out. You managed to track down those seven men in Munich, and now you’ve come back to knock them off. There was Moltke in Vienna and Pfann in Hamburg. The Freisling brothers are next on your list—right?”
“I’m here to sell computers,” Rogan said warily. “That’s all.”
Bailey shrugged. “I don’t care what you do; I’m not responsible for law enforcement in this country. But I’m telling you now: Hands off the Freisling brothers. I’ve put in a lot of time to get the goods on them, and when I do I’ll bust up a whole East German spy setup. I don’t want you knocking them off and leaving me with a blind trail.”
Suddenly it was clear to Rogan why the Freisling brothers had been so friendly to him. “Are they after my data on the new computers?” he asked Bailey.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “Computers—the new ones—are on the embargo list to Red countries. But I’m not worried about that; I know what you want to give them. And I’m warning you: You do, and you have me for an enemy.”
Rogan stared at him coldly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but let me give you some advice: Don’t get in my way or I’ll run right over you. And there isn’t a damn thing you can do to me. I’ve got pipelines right into the Pentagon. My new computers are more important to them than any crap you can drag up with a two-bit spy apparatus.”
Bailey gave him a thoughtful look, then said, “OK, we can’t touch you, but how about the girlfriend?” He jerked his head toward Rosalie sitting on the sofa. “We can sure as hell cause her a little trouble. In fact, one phone call and you’ll never see her again.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Bailey’s lean, angular face took on an expression of mock surprise. “Didn’t she tell you? Six months ago she escaped from a mental hospital on the Nordsee. She was committed in 1950 for schizophrenia. The authorities are still looking for her—not very hard, but looking. One phone call and the police pick her up. Just remember that.” Bailey paused, and then said slowly, “When we don’t need those two guys anymore I’ll tell you. Why don’t you skip them