Appointment in Berlin Read online

  Appointment in Berlin

  Neil Maresca

  © 2017 Neil Maresca

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1545005524

  ISBN 13: 9781545005521

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017909016

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

  North Charleston, South Carolina

  To

  Judy

  without whose help and support this book would not exist

  An Arabian Folk Tale

  There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions, and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, “Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd, and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.”

  The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw Death standing in the crowd and he came to him and said, “Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”

  “That was not a threatening gesture,” Death said. “It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

  Anonymous

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part Two

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  May, 1957

  Landstuhl Army Medical Center

  Frankfurt, Germany

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better.”

  A nurse came by. “Excuse me,” she said. “It’s time for your medicine.” The young man in the bed, the one who had said, “Better” smiled and straightened up. He had been slouching, but he liked the nurse, so he sat up. She gave him two pills and a glass of water, and as he drank, she silently checked his IV. She hummed faintly as she worked, and paid no attention to the man in the suit, the one who had said, “How are you feeling” and who now sat unsmiling, observing the young man while the nurse completed her tasks.

  “Is there anything you need?” the nurse asked, and when the young man replied “No,” left the room as quietly as she had entered, without acknowledging the presence of the man in the suit.

  The room was still as death, the only sound the buzzing of a fly fruitlessly attempting to escape through a closed window through which a feeble winter sun gave the pale green hospital walls an unpleasant yellowish tint.

  “I don’t think she likes me,” the man in the suit said.

  “No, I don’t think she does,” replied the young man.

  The two sat in silence for a while longer. The man in the suit periodically jotted something down in a small notebook. The young man slouched down in the bed and closed his eyes.

  “Did they beat you?” the man asked.

  “Did who beat me?” the young man responded, opening his eyes.

  “The guards.”

  “You know they did.”

  “What did they want to know?”

  “The guards? The guards didn’t want to know anything. You’re confusing the guards with the interrogators. The interrogators wanted to know lots of things. The guards were too stupid to want to know anything. They were there just for the beatings.”

  “Do you hate them?”

  The young man looked puzzled. “No, I don’t hate them. Why should I?”

  “Because they hurt you.”

  “They were stupid animals, like vicious dogs. I don’t hate them.”

  “But these dogs hurt you.”

  “I still don’t hate them.”

  “Do you forgive them?”

  “Of course not. For a psychiatrist, you ask some stupid questions.”

  “I’m trying to understand you. You say you don’t hate the men who hurt you, but you do not forgive them either.”

  “That’s right.”

  The man in the suit looked at the young man for a few moments without speaking. He wrote in his notebook. “Do you want to know what I wrote?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Why not?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “The man in the suit stared silently at the young man for a while before asking, “What would you do if the roles were reversed and you had those men in your power?”

  “Which men?”

  “The guards.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you beat them like they beat you?”

  “No. I’m not a vicious dog.”

  “Still, if they were in your power, you would do something.”

  The young man thought this over; then he asked, “Would I have a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would shoot them.”

  “But I thought you said that you didn’t hate them?”

  “Hate has nothing to do with it. Vicious dogs need to be put down.”

  The man in the suit nodded and wrote in his notebook. The young man turned to look at the clock on the table beside the bed. “Almost time,” he said.

  “Just one more question, and we’ll be finished for today.” The young man didn’t respond.

  “The man you killed in Berlin…any regrets?”

  “No, none, but you know all this already.”

  “I know what I have been told, but I need to hear it from you. Perhaps tomorrow.”

  When the young man failed to respond, the man in the suit got up from his chair, put his notebook in his briefcase, and began walking out of the room.

  “Doctor Rosenfeld ?”

  “Yes Lucas? The Doctor turned to face the young man, full of anticipation.

  “Would you turn out the lights and close the door behind you? I’m tired and would like to sleep now.”

  Chapter 2

  September, 1956

  Rutgers University

  Newark, New Jersey

  Lucas made his way, like a salmon swimming upstream, against the crowds of students pouring out of the classroo
ms. He was on his way to his Russian history seminar with Professor Washburn, whose lectures on U.S.-Soviet relations and the Cold War during a mandatory U.S. history survey course two years earlier had inspired Lucas to become a history major. Now, as a senior, he eagerly looked forward to his tutorial with the man whose books he had read, and whom he considered something of a hero.

  As he tried to squirm and wriggle through the crowd, he was stopped by a logjam of students congregating in front of the bulletin board. Lucas didn’t usually read student notices. He was in Rutgers to earn a degree, and as a commuting student with an after-school job, had little time for, or interest in, campus activities.

  This day, however, his curiosity piqued by the large number of students gathered around the bulletin board, he waited patiently for an opportunity to see what the fuss was all about. When he was able to get a clear view of the board, he found himself looking at a large, professionally-produced poster bearing a picture of President Eisenhower and the headline:

  MAKE A DIFFERENCE

  BE A STUDENT AMBASSADOR.

  The poster dominated the scraps of paper and hand-lettered student notices that littered the board. But it wasn’t the size of the poster or the picture of the President that captured Lukas’ attention—it was the message, or more correctly, the promise of the message.

  In September, 1956, President Eisenhower had established a “People-to-People” program which he hoped would “…take advantage of the assumption that all people want peace.” The cornerstone of this program would be a student exchange program called Student Ambassadors—and to Lucas, it sounded wonderful. The program allowed students to complete a semester of college abroad while living with a host family. It was run by the United States Information Agency and the poster hinted that successful applicants would be looked upon favorably for future positions in the State Department and other branches of the U.S. government. There were other perks too, including a trip to Washington to meet the President and—best of all—full scholarships for a few highly qualified applicants.

  Lucas was the son of a Hungarian, Alexandra Károlyi, who everybody called Sasha, and who, along with ten-year-old Lukas, had survived the Nazis and escaped the communists, arriving in England as a French refugee under the assumed name of Alexandra Carol. There she met an American GI, Harold Hamilton, married him and returned with him to the United States, where she began her new life as an American citizen, and Lukas Károlyi became Lucas Hamilton.

  Lucas was Alexandra’s pride and joy. She had three more children with Harold, and she loved them all, but Lucas was special. Sasha had been in the university in Budapest before marrying her teacher, Professor Count Milan Károlyi. She had not been able to finish her degree, something she had always regretted. So she lavished, not only affection on Lucas, but also her love of learning. He became the vessel through which her dream of a university education would be fulfilled. He learned English in school and on the playgrounds of America; at home he spoke Hungarian to his mother and learned French, the language of culture in mid-twentieth century Eastern Europe, and German, the language of the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy to which the Károlyi’s belonged. Sasha even taught Lucas a smattering of Russian because, even though she hated the Russian Communists with a passion, she loved Tolstoy and Dostoevsky with an equal passion. As a result of Sasha’s efforts, Lucas excelled in grammar school, attended a private Catholic prep school and was attending Rutgers on a partial scholarship. His high school guidance counselors had urged him to apply for Ivy League schools, but Lucas knew that with three younger siblings, the finances would be impossible; so, instead, he opted to attend the much less expensive state university and work part-time so that his college expenses would not burden his family.

  Lucas had entered Rutgers as a Foreign Languages major because it was easy for him, but exposure to Professor Washburn had made him realize his interest in history. Now, this poster had awakened him to the potential for a career in Foreign Affairs, an idea so preposterous for a working-class student in a commuter college that it had never even dawned on him as a possibility.

  He went to his seminar on a cloud, infatuated with the idea of becoming a Student Ambassador, like a young girl who has fallen in love with a movie star and can’t get his image out of her mind. He entered the class a few minutes late, nodded an apology to his instructor, and took his seat at the end of a small semi-circle of student desks facing Professor Washburn.

  Rutgers-Newark was extremely fortunate to have Professor Washburn on campus. The Oxford-educated historian was a world-renowned expert on the Soviet Union, with three books and hundreds of papers published. He had been invited by Princeton University to come to America as a Visiting Professor Emeritus, and he accepted the position with the caveat that he be able to teach one day a week at an urban institution catering to lower and middle-class students. He wanted this, he explained, as a form of noblesse oblige, and also because he feared that once ensconced at Princeton, he would be insulated from the ‘real’ America which he longed to see. Princeton was happy to honor this request, and Rutgers-Newark was beyond happy. The urban campus was looked down upon by its larger, richer, New-Brunswick-based main campus, and usually attracted only non-tenured professors and recent grads who took the position in Newark only long enough to gain experience before moving on to someplace more appealing.

  So, once a week, Professor Washburn would take the train from Princeton to Newark and walk the several blocks from Pennsylvania Station to his classroom in a converted brewery. Despite the rather Spartan setting, he enjoyed his time at Rutgers. He considered himself a ‘man of the people,’ and he liked the down-to-earth, no-frills, urban edge that Newark offered—and he liked the students for the same reasons. Consequently, he often stayed longer after class than was required to talk to students at length about their lives and interests. A smallish man, with his cuffed and pleated pants belted a little too high and his distinctive polka-dotted bow tie, he was somewhat out of place and immediately recognizable on campus, but his students loved him. Most professors left the classroom almost before the students, anxious to return from wherever they had come from and escape the “Brick City’s” drabness and growing decay. The riots that would tear the city apart were still ten years away, but the “White Flight” that would dramatically change the future of the city had already begun. Professor Washburn, an expert on the Russian Revolution could see the signs—a permanent underclass, growing discontent, increasing violence—all ominous signals of an American cataclysm to come. Newark, he was convinced, would be in the middle of it, and he was fascinated by it—an extraordinary opportunity to witness history being made first hand. It would be akin to being in Petrograd in 1917.

  Lucas had no such insights. The only vision dancing in his head was his future as a Student Ambassador and the many doors that would open to him. He hardly paid attention to the discussion during the seminar and as soon as the Professor had dismissed the class, jumped from his seat to ask if he could have a word alone. Washburn readily agreed, and Lucas enthusiastically told him about the Student Ambassador program and his eagerness to apply for it.

  “I would need a faculty recommendation,” Lucas said, “and I was hoping that if I do well in this seminar, I could count on your help.”

  “I think it’s a grand idea, Lucas,” Professor Washburn replied, “You can count on me.”

  Chapter 3

  May, 1957

  Landstuhl Army Medical Center

  Frankfurt, Germany

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better.”

  “You were going to tell me about the man you killed in Berlin.”

  “Was I?”

  “You said you didn’t hate him, yet you killed him. I was wondering why.”

  “I had no choice. You know that.”

  Doctor Rosenfeld paused to write in his notebook. He pulled a pipe out of his jacket pocket, rolled it over in his hand and put it back into his pocket. He wanted to light up. Smo
king a pipe helped him to concentrate, but the hospital had a strict ‘no smoking’ policy.

  “You could have walked away. Nobody had seen you. Nobody knew you were there.”

  Lucas looked down, averting his eyes from the Doctor. After few moments, he murmured. “I knew. I was there.”

  Doctor Rosenfeld continued writing in his notebook. They sat for a while, Lucas in his bed, Doctor Rosenfeld in the chair beside him, listening to the sounds of the hospital outside the room. Eventually, Doctor Rosenfeld spoke.

  “Do you remember picking up the gun and pointing it at the man’s head?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Was your hand shaking?”

  “No.”

  “Had you shot anybody before?”

  “I had never even held a gun before. Why do you keep asking me questions that you know the answers to. I’ve gone over all of this in the debrief.”

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s difficult, but the men who debriefed you only wanted to know what happened. I have to try to understand why it happened, and how it affected you. Let’s talk about something else, something less upsetting.”

  “OK.”

  “I understand that you were very keen to join the Student Ambassadors. Is that true?

  “Yes.”

  Chapter 4

  November, 1956

  Offices of the U.S. Information Agency

  Washington, DC

  Lucas waited nervously outside the interview room along with several other equally nervous applicants. It reminded him of going to a dentist. Only the distinctive odor of eugenol was missing. Lucas fully expected to hear groans emanating from behind the closed door through which one person had just entered and another, pale and crestfallen, had recently exited.

  He looked around at what he assumed was his competition. There were about a dozen young men and women in the room, all around his age, maybe slightly older. Most were pretending to read magazines and avoiding eye contact. One man stood out. He was sitting upright, and like Lucas, looking around. If he were nervous, he didn’t show it. When their eyes met, he smiled, easily and unaffectedly. Lucas returned the smile, but he was sure it was not so smartly done. He felt clumsy. The man was nattily dressed in an expensive suit, his tie perfectly knotted, his hair perfectly groomed. Lucas noticed one of the young women surreptitiously stealing glances at him over the rim of her magazine. “He is impressive,” he reluctantly conceded to himself, and for some reason, the thought depressed him. His mother had insisted that he have a new suit for the interview, and even though he objected strenuously to the expense, she would not be deterred. Sasha was very proud of her son; she would not let him be embarrassed by going to an interview in Washington in his one and only worn out suit, but Lucas couldn’t help but think he would have been better off in his old, comfortable suit. He felt phony in this new suit that cost so much and still didn’t measure up to that of the man across the room who had smiled at him. His knot was a mess. He knew it. He never could tie a good, tight knot, and his hair was a mess too. Everybody teased him about his hair, a full, wild, unruly mass of brown curls that resisted every effort to stay in place. As a teenager, Lucas had spent a fortune on Brylcreem and any other lotion that promised to give his hair the look of other teens. Some of his friends sported perfectly shaped DA’s, while others had crew cuts with hair that stood at attention like a line of soldiers. It would have been OK if he had been an artist or a musician, or even a mad scientist, but he was none of those things, so he endured endless teasing from his friends. They didn’t call him ‘Lucas’ or ‘Luke’—they referred to him as ‘Ham,’ short for Hamilton, and, because of his unruly mop, “Ham-Head” or “Ham-Hair” became the local equivalent of “a bad hair day.” “Look,” one of the guys would say, messing up his hair, “I’m a Ham-head.” Lucas accepted the teasing without rancor; it was a normal part of the good-natured give-and-take of urban teens, and despite his hair, he was well-liked and accepted by his peers—although never as a leader. Quiet and unremarkable, Lucas fit in everywhere, but stood out nowhere.