On 16 June, Murphy’s terminal report came into the Outfit’s Washington headquarters from Tangier, where he was resting up in enviable luxury in one of those slick, new hallucinogenic resorts after his latest spectacular confrontation with what the Western press invariably referred to as “The Forces of International Communist Subversion.”

Murphy is a great performer, one of the best in the business. While I envied him the white sand beaches and those nubil e Nubians and the five-hundreddollar-an-hour selective neural stimulation, I did not begrudge it him. I regretted only that what he had done to earn it meant endless hours of nasty work for me, cleaning up after him.

I had barely skimmed Murph’s report — just enough to start my stomach aching — when my drab boss summoned me from my drab cubicle, presented me with a set of travel orders, and delivered his

customary words of good cheer: “Get your butt over there, Maxwell, and get that mess cleaned up. And if you spend one goddamn penny over authorization, you’ll be down in the file room when you get back.”

It saddened me how Jack’s threats had declined in beauty and vigor over the years. Maybe I was getting used to them, or maybe now I had so little to lose that no threat was very meaningful. After all, you make a man feel pretty large if you tell him he must do so-and-so or he will lose his shot at the Big Prize. You do nothing at all for his ego if you tell him he has to do it or lose the miserable job he already has.

But I took his comments, as I had for some years, with considerable charity. He too was a disappointed man. He too had waited all his working life with the Outfit for the big chance to be a Number One. And he was now too old to Hope.

At forty-three, I was very nearly too old myself. I was fully resigned to no greater expectations than to hang on to what I had and — at the most — to someday succeed Jack and snarl at other hopeless men, a far cry indeed from the glories we had both anticipated as young men.

So I didn’t stay to argue as I used to do, but went straight to Disbursing, signed my life away for a stack of hundreddoll a r travelers’ checks, and hurried to catch the subway to New York and the afternoon Superson to Berlin. I did not want to tarry for the pitying looks of my younger, still hopeful colleagues in the Office of Claims, Field Settlement Division. Thirteen years of cleaning up after the legendary Murphy ought to Have hardened me to those supercilious bastards. But it hadn’t. I found myself comfortable only in t he presence of my boss, who as I have explained — was even farther down the road to permanent obscurity than I.

In the hovercab down the Potomac to the subway station, I caught myself laughing out loud, a bitter so rt of laugh. Wh at a state things had fallen into! There was a time when the Outfit recruited only men who h ad -the phrase ran“a passion for anonymity.” Well, it had all changed. Guys like Jack and I had the anonymity and $14,000 a year; guys like Murph y had th e passion, not a shred of anonymity, and upwards of $35,000 a year plus a virtually unlimited expense account.

Back when I had joined up — fresh’ out of Vietnam, hungry to be a civilian again but unwilling to settle for the humdrum of business or academic life — the Outfit had seemed to promise an exciting and rewarding career. But then, about the time I got out of training, skilled in small arms, dead-dro ps, live drops, clandestine high-jinks of all kinds, the international espionage business went all to hell, at least as far as it involved the Americans and the Russians.

So you launch a major operation and find out the Sovs are deploying a brand-new multiple reentry fractional orbit bombardment system with’ a C.E.P. of a hundred yards and yields at the gigaton level.

So what? It doesn’t effect the balance of power a micro-minimilligram.

So you feed dozens of expendables to th e opposition apparat and get hard information that there is going to be another Kremlin power struggle and the hard-liners will replace the soft-liners, or vice versa.

So what? The political inertia of a polarized world, the kill and over-kill, the second strike and third strike capability on both sides, makes intelligence information take on all the relevance and pertinency of medieval arguments about angels on pin heads.

The hovercab flopped down on the subway station apron like a landing gooney-bird, and I fol lowed the rest of the passengers through the turnstile, d own the drop-chute, and into th e New York capsule. There was the usual muffled sigh, the gentle acceleration, and we plunged down the tube past the first sphincter. As it tightened behind us and we accelerated into the vacuum ahead, I tightened a few sphincters of my own. Tube travel frightens me. There is something of the claustrophobia c in all of us, and I never enter a capsule without remembering the holovision pictures of the Chicago pile-up in ’81.

I sought distraction in my previous train of thought. Espionage is like religion, I thought, which shows you what foolish things you think when you are frightened. And they lost pertinence at about the same time, I thought. And maybe there is some connection.

But granting that and Having determined that a god is dead, how do you dismantle his church?

The answer is, of course, you don’t. And the big-time espionage business is still just as big, still just as expensive. Only its purpose has diminished. Now it is a kind of international gladiatorial sport in which’ all participants are as careful as they can be not to do each other serious damage. Accidents sometimes happen. But I couldn’t recall hearing of

a real assassination attempt against a professional on either side since way back in the bad old days of Stalin. And even the professionals who foul up and are taken prisoner can count cm all the headlines of a show trial followed by some sort of exchange on the old Powers-Abel model long before their prison pallor becomes very noticeable.

It is a grand game, if you are one of the few real players. Everyone in it recognizes it for the game it is. We benchwarmers, though, don’t have such a good time of it. We do our menial tasks and wait with vanishing hope for one of our first-stringers to get knocked out of the game or to retire from old age.

But what the hell! I thought as the capsule zipped along its chordal tube a hundred miles beneath Philadelphia. What the hell; it is $14,000 a year, and there are two kids in college and there is the mortgage, and there will be retirement in another dozen years or so (fifty per cent of my high five). And for a lot of years it hadn’t been so bad. Th ere’d been the hope that maybe something would happen to Murphy, that maybe (contrary to all expectations) he’d grow tired of the big time, the limelight, the periodic performances, and retire while I was still young enough to step into his shoes. Well, he hadn’t. And I wasn’t any longer. But what the hell, it was a living.

I have always found East-West Supers flights disconcerting. You leave Berlin, say, at 3:00 PM and get into New York at noon. The other way is even worse. The stewardesses hardly have time to say “coffeeteaormi lk,” and for the passengers, th ere is hardly enough time for the psilobennies to take effect, much’ less wear off for the landing. But despite their lingering effect, I could not overcome the gloom of Tempelhof.

I hate jobs in Berlin. Not only has th e whole population been raised on spy stories, but a considerable segment of it still lives in one way or another off tHe intelligence business. It may be still the best place in Europe to recruit expendables, but cleaning up after MurpH there is a real Augean job.

The little gray man at the Tempelhof Passkontrolle desk was familiar, and he recognized me from previous trips. He waved my passport back into my pocket and gave me one of those sly, conspiratorial Berlin smiles. ‘‘AH! Herr Maxwell! We have been expecting you!” His voice dropped to a stentorian whisper: “It is that the Murph y Has been busy again, nicht?” He held up the previous day’s edition of Der Morgenpost. There was a muddy picture of a group of policemen herding a gaggle of men in handcuffs into the back of a carryall ductor. Under* the picture was an italicized headline, leaning against a row of exclamation points and proclaiming: “Der Murphy hat wieder gesiegt!!!!!”

“Murphy again victorious!” Under it was a small cut of Murphy himself, bearded and fierce, and a two-column story on the roundup of another Soviet spy ring in Berlin followed by a box score of Murphy’s accomplishments against his opposite number, Yevgenyi Komiev. I noted that the Outfit’s P-R section, big and well financed as it was, had fallen down again. The paper put the score at seventeen-fifteen. And there was no mention of the affair in Belgrade in ’82, which actually made it eighteen for Murph.

“Wunderbar, the Murphy,” said the little man, the glint of the devoted, loyal fan in his eyes. “Such a record! And against the Korniev!”

“Yeah, wunderbar ” I said. I returned the conspiratorial smile out of courtesy, without mirth. I did not want to get involved in a discourse on the relative merits of the greats of the past, although there was no doubt in my mind that Murph’ could have h eld his own with the very best of them.

The little man leaned toward me across his counter, laid a consoling hand on my sleeve, and let his angular face droop in good-natured sympathy. “But now, there will be much to do, nich t? Many, many people, Herr Maxwell. I do not envy you.” “Yeah. Well, we’ll get it cleaned up.” I was getting so that I could no longer bear even the most heartfelt sympathy. I turne d away abruptly. “I’ll be at th e Hotel am Zoo if you come across anything.” The little man snapped his heels and touched his cap, pride and pleasure on his face. “JawohlI Herr Maxwell.”

The first thing was to get an ad in the papers. I telephoned it from my room at the hotel. First Der Morgenpost and then the mass-circulation tabloid, B.Z.i

“Persons with valid claims for damages resulting from an incident at the former Sector Border, corner of Klemmke Strasse and Dannenwalder Weg, at about 0200 hours on 14 June, should contact Mr. Albert Maxwell, Room 243, Hotel am Zoo.”

Both papers would hit th e streets in the morning; I had tKe rest of the day to relax and readjust my plumbing after the trans-Atlantic time change. I unpacked, bathed, dined on room service Wurst und Schrippen, and stretched out on the eiderdown with’ a full bottle of Jameson to dri nk myself into a semblance of h onest resignation, which’ meant forgetting for a little while a Hundred other Hotel rooms, two kids in college, the mortgage, and wh at I knew was coming tomorrow.

The next morning, I was up, shaved, and breakfasted well before the first knock on the door.

The Germans are go-getting people and — like I say — used to dealing with intelligence

organizations. They get right on it, unlike the Italians and the Spanish. This is good, in a way. You can get an unpleasant job over with in very short order. The English are the worst. I’ve spent as much’ as two weeks in London cleaning up after Murph’. The English’ are so goddam polite. And so law-abiding. They write letters first and call in their solicitors and telephone M16 or the War Office or Scotland Yard.

The first claimant was one of the easy kind. He had his ductor parked nearby, around the corner on John Foster Dulles Allee. I took the sidewalk there with him, p hotographed the hole in the righ t front pressure-shrouding of His ’81 Opel and measured it. He Had a claim, all right. The hole was from an old-fas hioned .38 slug and not a nine millimeter rocket dart or one of those great big dumdum cannons the Soviets sometimes like to pack. I chipped his claim down from 200 marks to 60, paid him, got a receipt, shook his hand and exchanged conspiratorial Berlin smiles with him and rode the sidewalk back to the hotel. If only they were all that easy I

There was a line of people all the way down from my door to the bank o f drop chutes. I groaned. Murph , the bastard, had outdone himself this time. Not ten o’clock and at least thirty people.

The first half dozen or so were broken glass cases. With German efficiency, they had all come with glazers’ estimates in hand, and I paid up with’ argument. In all likelihood I was paying for a hell of a lot of damage that the Outfit really wasn’t accountable for, but the time and effort of digging out all those slugs from baby carriages and Highboy s and antique Biedermeier cloth espresses was far too great. Better to pay up. Even knowing that most of those people would be eagerly scanning De r Morgenpost and B.Z. for signs that Federov or one of his people was in town settling claims for their side so they could double the ir profits. Sometimes I think th at between them, since the espionage business went big-time and public, the Outfit and the

KGB have glazed half the windows in Europe.

I worked through the day and well into the evening settling cl aims. There were the usual flesh wounds and — of course — the beneficiaries of the expendables, and one unusual case of a man who claimed damages for involuntary coitus interu ptus (which I paid, knowing damn well I’d have trouble with Disbursing over it), but no homicides showed up. I was grateful; but then it was only the first day. By eight o’clock I had finished 33 claims and paid out just over 8000 marks, which — in case you are not familiar with the rate of exchange— is about 2000 of your tax dollars.

I hung the Nicht Stören! sign on the door and went down to the dining room for a drink and some dinner.

Halfway through a greasy plate of Schweinefleisch und Salzkart offeln, I looked up to see Federov standing expectantly on the other side of my table. Like most Russians in official jobs, he is about a ninety-five per cent pain, but in a curious way I was always glad to see him. He was the one man I knew — other than my boss back in Washington — who had no occasion to feel sorry for me. I rose, gave him a stiff, one-pump, Central European handshake, and waved him to a seat. I did not say, nor did tie, “What brings you to Berlin?” We knew.

Instead, I said: “When are you setting up shop?” Federov sighed with resignation. “The announcem ent will appear tomorrow in th e press. You have already started, da?” I nodded and chewed my Schweinefleisch.

Federov sighed again, a deep, White Russian sigh, the ridiculously wide lapels on his double-breasted suit sliding across each other like scissors. “It is a bad one, da?” I nodded again and swallowed. “33 claims first day.” Federov shook his round head, slumped in his chair and ran a trembling hand through his thick, graying hair. “Every time with Murphy and Korniev—” His voice trailed off. I knew what he meant. Both of them sprayed slugs and rocket darts like small boys peeing in the snow. Murphy alone was bad enough, God knows. But Murphy and Komiev together …

I finished all I could handle of the Schweinefleisch and rose to go. Federov looked at me pleadingly. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, an unaccustomed emotion I rather enjoyed. Maybe it was the mutuality of our adversity. We’d worked quite a few jobs together over the past dozen

years, and if anybody in the business had it rougher than I it was Federov. He had entered the KGB at about the same time I had entered <the Outfit (I had seen his dossier as, I’m sure, he’d seen mine), and he undoubtedly had had the same bright dreams of glory. But his Number One, Korniev, showed every sign of being even more durable than Murphy, and he was a little younger, a little farther from retirement. Murphy might have outpointed Korniev over the years. But the Soviet establishment is a little smaller than ours, and in his own country Korniev was a real national hero. You couldn’t pick up a copy of Pravda or Novy Myr without seeing a picture of him or reading an account of his latest confrontation with The Forces of Capitalist Reaction.

It’s tough’ to play Number Two to a genuine champion, I know.

“Okay,” I said, pulling the day’s tally from my pocket. “Here’s a list of the claims I’ve settled. But just once I wish to Christ you’d get some place before I do and save me all the work and money I’m saving you.” Federov grinned weakly and stuffed the list in his breast pocket. “Thank you,” he said. “It is for our mutual good, after all. Perhaps, in time, these people will learn they cannot get away with duplicate claims.”

““Fine,” I said, turning to go. “I’m all in favor. But next time,

I wish you’d pay some of my claims and give me a list.”

Federov gave a comical shrug. “I will try, but you know Central.”

I headed for the drop chute bank.

The next morning the line in front of the door was smaller. By three o’clock in the afternoon I had disposed of a dozen more broken glass cases, three ductor and two automobile punctures (only one of which I paid; Korniev had apparently been armed with a little Fabrique National dart-gun and it was easy to distinguish his workmanship from Murphy’s), and a lady who claimed she had miscarried from fright. The price of miscarriages has gone way up in Berlin. I used to pay a flat 200 marks a throw back in ’69 and ’70, but since the East Germans took the Wall down, the price has more than doubled.

I got the cable from the Outfit just as I was leaving to go down to dinner. I decoded it with my electric razor:

FROM: THE OUTFIT TO: MAXWELL REF: OUTFIT 98043 COMPLETE BERLIN CLEAN UP SOONEST AND PROCEED

GALAXY

TANGIER STOP MURPHY IN SHOOT OUT STOP INITIAL DAMAGE REPORT INDICATES SEVERAL DEAD AND EXTENSIVE PROPERTY DAMAGE STOP MURPHY TERMINAL REPORT WILL BE FORWARDED YOU IN TANGIER STOP YOU ARE REMINDED OF PRESIDENT’S CURRENT COST REDUCTION DRIVE STOP

Oh Christ! I thought. I’ll bet he had that damn .375 Magnum with’ him, or maybe even the Armalite. They ought to take it away from him before Ke …

Sick at heart, I burned the cable, reassembled m y Remington and went down to th e dining room. Federov was already there, and he beckoned me to his table with a shaking forefinger. His usual worried expression had deepened.

“You have heard about Tangier?” he said as I sat.

“I have heard about Tangier.”

“Shall we share a cab to the airport after dinner?” I nodded as I stared at the menu and all the different ways they have for preparing Sch weinefleisch in Berlin. Then it hit me. “You mean you’re going to Tangier? You mean Komiev was ..

“Da. Komiev was also in Tangier.” Federov spat a fingernail onto the carpet.

We dined in silence, smoked our cigars in silence and separated to clear our rooms. I packed, met Federov in the lobby a nd rode with him out to Tempelh of. We shared nothing but the fare and a series of resigned sighs.

And then, in the waiting room at Tempelhof, just before our Superson to Rome was due to be called, I was paged. There was a telegram. I left Federov staring gloomily out at the bright lights of the launch area, recovered my razor from my briefcase, and retired to the men’s room to decipher the cable:

FROM: THE OUTFIT TO: MAXWELL REF: OUTFIT 98176 IGNORE INSTRUCTIONS REF STOP PERKINS WILL ASSUME BERLIN/TANGIER CLEAN UP STOP MURPHY PERMANENTLY DISABLED IN TANGIER AFFAIR STOP YOU HEREBY APPOINTED NEW CENTRAL EUROPEAN NUMBER ONE STOP UNLIMITED ACCOUNT ESTABLISHED YOUR NAME BANK SUISSE STOP YOU ARE REMINDED OF PRESIDENT’S CURRENT COST REDUCTION DRIVE STOP

I reassembled my razor in a daze. This was it! Finally it! I was Central European Number One I Thirty-five thousand a year and my own Swiss bank account! All kinds of passion and no more anonymity!

I grew aware of a buzzing and humming to my left. At another sink stood Fe derov, shaving a telegram. As he worked, h is usually gloomy visage brightened visibly. A smile spread from one great drooping ear to the other. He finished and stood grinning at his reflection which was grinning back at him in tfie mirror.

I cleared my throat and He turned away from His satisfied contemplation. “You too?” I asked. “Did Komiev..

There was new dignity in Federov’s voice: “Da. There was a mistake. Comrade Komiev is incapacitated, and I h ave been appointed …” I whirled and crouched, reaching for the minidart in my left sock. Federov leaped in a perfect pas de chat to the protection of a booth; I tried a snapshot at His feet under th e door, and fie climbed atop the toilet and tried a bank shot at me with h is dumdum off the ceiling. I t was plaster and didn’t bank sh ot very well.

It was a standoff, and I paused to think.

“Federov,” I called shrilly. “Hold it!”

“Da,” Federov’s voice ecKoed from the booth .

“Let’s do this thing right. We’re both out of practice, and someone could get hurt. And furthermore there’s no press here.”

“Da!” said Federov.

“Come on out and let’s talk it over.”

“Da. Only I stay inside the booth and we talk it over. You understand?”

- I shrugged. “Okay. Look, let’s get this thing organized and start off the right way. You get in touch with the Tass man and Deutsche Nac hrich ten Agentur; I’ll call Reuters, UPI, Agence France Presse and AP. Then let’s meet down along the old Wall line say at the Checkpoint Charlie Monument — at about two o’clock. ”

There was silence in the boot for a moment and I began to worry abou t what Federov was up to. Then h e spoke, fiis voice newly alight, full of suppressed excitement.

“All right, Mr, Maxwell. I will call Comrade Stoniev and Herr Lempke. But th e old Wall line, Mr. Maxwell? Not th e old Wall line. Komiev and Murphy, th ey alw ays met down at th e old Wall line. We must establish — h ow do you say it in your country — a new image.” I had to hand it to Federov He was way ahead of me th ere. “You are entirely correct, Com-

rade Federov,” I said. “Let us meet—” I thought furiously — “let us meet in the heart of Berlin, in the bright lights and crowds of the Ku’udam, the most fashionable shopping street between Paris and Moscow I” I was astonished at the audacity of the idea and still I was very pleased with myself.

“Da!” said Federov with real enthusiasm.

“There are bright lights there,” I said, growing excitement in my voice.

“And many great glass show windows,” said Federov, his voice beginning to break with anticipation.

“And rows and rows of shi ny, late-model ductors!” I nearly shouted.

“And hundreds of new holovision sets all with implosive tubes!” “And windows full of expensive perfumes —”

“And rare antiques—”

“And bottles of booze —”

“And fine, inflammable clothing—”

“And … and … and—” Federov broke from His booth, his dumdum dangling innocently at h is side. We embraced each other and cried real tears of happiness.

- ROBIN SCOTT