Radio Dusseldorf

"Well it's yellow! Your favorite color!" Stone barked as he hot-wired the Traubie, the worst car in the world. He worked with his sister the Bavarian Fox, BF, sometimes called New Orleans when she resided at her hide location, Bad Kissingen. She, when you took her out on a date, you went to the Big Easy, worried over the owner of the car getting 'screwed over'. To quote' Frau Hoff is the only person who talks to me when I shop! Her husband works very hard for what they have!' East Germans waited about ten years to get a 'free' car from their government, it wasn't worth it.

As for BF, she sat their looking like Princess Leia with freckles, the same way the actress did when she saw the torture droid guided by Dark Vader. Once Stone hotwired the car, they sped away toward the Neanderthal ravine several miles away and put good distance between them and the East German security apparatus. Once the road to the ravine, a popular make out spot with teenagers and a mild tourist attraction, ended he stopped to check BF's hair.

He did her hair, as he did all his sisters and a few cousins, and after a half a second scrutiny, decided her sticky buns were a shade off. They ran over the hill and through the dale to the edge of the ravine where Stone attempted to launch the grappling hook across it, aiming at the crook of a large tree. He missed, twice.

"You sure they're going to be on the other side?" BF shrieked as she grabbed the rope and hook.

"You know as much as I do," Stone answered as he watched her nail the tree on the first attempt. "How'd you do that?"

"I used the force," BF replied and threw some ass into seating the hook. "Get on! We can go now!"

"I'm bigger than you," Stone barked grabbing the rope and pulling it. "Take the satchel and the rifle...You're on my back!"

"Storm troopers, Luke!" BF shouted as Stone mentally calculated his angle of descent to a lower ledge.

"What!" he replied as his sister emptied the Ak-47, spraying tracers acquired from the East German Mafia through the woods at, as far as Stone could see, nothing.

"Let's go Luke!" BF yelled climbing onto his back.

At that point Stone leaped hoping to be able to swing around in a hyperbola to the other edge. He struck, feet first the opposing precipice allowing inertia to carry them over to the lower ledge. He let go several feet above the jutting outcropping and they tumbled into their retrieval team. Only then, did he realize they were under fire.

BF picked herself up off the ground looked around and exclaimed "We escaped the Death Star, Luke!"

The recovery team hurried her off to the awaiting vehicles, while Stone watched blood drip from his skinned hands. He then realized his other sisters, Slut and Satan were hauling off a hot 12.7mm Duskie HMG, and the field surgeon is his cousin Morty of the Dead. The last he heard from BF is 'X-Wing fighters! Cool beans! I'm riding in an X-Wing!'

"Just dump some medicinal whiskey on it," Stone grunted. "Why the hell are you here? With them? You know I don't want all of us together at one time."

"We left Little Brother and Air Dave in the rear," she commented and asked if he really wanted the whiskey.

Stone hissed 'That'll light your morning up!' his eyes watering while temporarily going blind as the whiskey drenched his hands. After a minute or so of jumping up and down, hooting and hollering he grasped the bottle. He swirled a mouthful around, gargled with it, then swallowed. After the hot flashes passed, he looked blandly at Morty of the Dead, declared the whiskey rot gut.

As for her, she stood there dumbfounded as he slapped her on the shoulder saying let's go.

********

"And? Not only do I bath with my sisters I do their hair too," Stone shrugged as he stared down Capt. Bonnie Ann Clyde, U.S. Army 1st. Division. "What's the problem? We were supposed to be a married couple..."

Bonnie wrote notes on her large yellow paper lined tablet. She is a staff psychologist, and Stone didn't like her. More succinctly, he didn't trust her, he had one up on her though. His sister Slut, who's espionage specialty is sexual blackmail, worked for her. Through her, he knew everything he needed to know about Bonnie. He also didn't like all the questions that came with a formal debriefing; He figured all he had to do is make a statement and have that regarded as the final word. It didn't work like that.

"And you didn't have sex with her?" Bonnie went on.

"This is Germany not Soviet Georgia," Stone barked. The last place he wanted to be is sitting in an empty office in Stuttgart talking to another thug about his actions and why BF lost her mind. "Besides there was only the Murphy bed and the couch sucked ass...The only thing that happen was waking up with my sister's hand on that morning wood."

"Okay..." Bonnie shrugged. Then asked, "Other sisters? Who are..."?

"Satan, Slut and I'm sure you remember Terry? One of The Devil's own...She got killed a few months ago. So, I want to get to know everything about my sisters before another one bites it. Furthermore, BF... you remember the story about the guy that carried his sister 675 miles to a hospital?"

"I saw the debriefing film...They entitled it 'The Ballad of King Kong and Fae Ray'. How do you know that? You don't have the security clearance to know that..."

Stone stared at her, "That was BF and I...Besides I live with them. I shower with them after my professional duties in the gym...So what's the problem with me performing the same hygiene on my own time?"

"That's what camaraderie coaches do...This is personal. Hold it...You're showering with all three of them?"

"Not all at once..." Stone giggled.

"Well, if it's not sexual what are you doing with them?"

"Funny..." Stone grinned leaning forward. "I've been accused of being an Ace because I'm not screwing everything that moves and now, I'm being accused of being a reprobate...again...I know you did the analyses on that...I'm the guy the Russians name Cerberus the Three Headed Hound of Hades, Lap Dog to Satan's Whore...Go talk to The Devil over at MI about that jive."

"Oh!" Bonnie Ann Clyde inhaled as her face flushed. She stopped making notes, laying the tablet across her lap, then exploded, "I do know you! I read your profiles and reports! Wow! Okay! Okay! I got it! Okay, it's not sexual...But I must know. What do you do with them?"

"Listen."

"What?" she asked looking confused.

"Listen," Stone repeated sternly, albeit calmly. "They talk, I listen. I get to know everything about their soul. I know when they're in love, when they're heartbroken, what they like and dislike. I know them...I know Slut has a birthmark on the crack of her arse and Satan craves chocolate when she goes on the rag...And yes, I do think they're all sexy. What kind of man would I be if I didn't?"

Bonnie sat there stunned, held in a distant thoughtful pall for a few seconds.

"You're jealous...I can see it on your face...AH! A psychic flash cascades across my otherwise empty psyche! You're wondering exactly what flips my switch? Feet."

"You got a foot fetish?" she muttered. "Didn't see that coming."

"No, I just like my bitches to have big paws...they all have things that make them alike and things that make them different. What's sticks out in my mind is big feet. So, let's cut to the chase. Yeah, if they weren't my sisters, I'd pull their little red wagon all the way to Alabama and back but I'll have to find that in other women. Let's get on with this three-ring circus I have to talk with a man about a horse down at the race track...Three to one on Seabiscuit."

Bonnie smiled as she kicked off her shoes, crossing her legs smiling widely. Stone wondered if the action portended to an offer, or if the seduction a ruse. He also thought that she resembled an overweight beaver somehow.

"So, which one of your sisters would you say...Which one would you look for in another woman as a wife?" Bonnie beamed.

"She's a fat beaver if you catch her just right," Stone thought before answering. "They all have their points...However I'm already pitying the man that ends up with BF...If you stand still long enough she'll clean you, demandingly neat...I can see it now he comes home from work, is standing in the kitchen having a beer asks for the obligatory sexual favor and she sprays him down with Windex(TM) first."

Bonnie chuckles, then asks about his mission.

The 'Dusseldorf Station' is a small efficiency apartment common to the GDR's one size fits all description. What made it 'valuable' is that it was a corner apartment. The front door led to a kitchen, that had a soaking tub in the center of it. A piece of plywood covered in aquamarine felt fit overtop, converting it to a kitchen table. An extremely small toilet hid behind an almost invisible door off to the left of the front entrance. It is so small; Stone couldn't comfortably fit into it.

The living room, more like a living space, came with a cheap mass-produced painting on it, of a peasant carrying the hammer and sickle with the ghost of Lenin watching over them, leading the October Revolution to victory, the drapes worn, the carpet threadbare. In the closet is a poorly maintained AK-47, damaged corroded Soviet issued ammunition and a woman's coat left over from the last occupants. Behind the moth-eaten coat is a hidden panel secured with magnets...Behind that the radio transmitter and the code books.

They sent BF as the primary radio operator, the brains, and her brother, the security operator, otherwise known as the muscle. She, a typical East German housewife from Berlin, he a German of Slavic ancestry from Gorlitz. When they arrived, she dressed as what Stone would describe as a gypsy flower child, her coal black hair flowing to her ankles. As his verbal language skills are charitably, nonexistent, he had a bandaged throat and typical of the East, smelled like Vodka.

His cover, the idiot nephew of a trucking company owner; he fit the role perfectly. During his work days, typical of the Soviet style economy, he spent in an office learning German, some Russian and Morris code; As far as the locals went, he was smart enough to be stupid and on his way to a university in Poland. Hence the no work contract. At the end of three weeks he could pass himself off, almost as one of them.

Almost. That was good enough since the locals didn't want to know anything. Knowing something got the attention of the Stasi and nobody wanted those rabid pukes around.

They had a schedule to follow, every four hours they'd power up the radio and listen for a broadcast from a ghost station; the term for radio transmissions originating from an unknown but regular source. They'd, at first BF, however she taught him the proper skills and he acquired technique much faster than he thought possible, write down the Morris Code and translate that into an alphanumeric code. Then transpose that into written data. Once those steps reached the conclusion of process, they'd compare that to the authentication tables. This required the use of four distinct code books, that changed weekly to monthly.

They verify the signal as authentic or invalid according to the daily standard operating instructions. Based on that determination, encrypt the message, using a different alphanumeric set and retransmit on a rotating frequency.

Every four hours.

Supply came in the form of Slut, who operated under the guise of a social worker from the Moscow Office. The cover story is they have an unhappy marriage, he's a vicious drunk and she's a frustrated shut-in housewife. In a word, typical East Germans.

One of the items that transpired on the streets of Dusseldorf is a television program would arrive on the corner near the covert radio station and attempt to ask inane questions of passersby. Such as 'What do you think of the new Traubie?' the answer is generally 'They're shit like the last years model.' Or what do you think of the new Steinlitz movie? Then broadcast the result on a weekly program.

BF would watch them from the third story window in the kitchen out of boredom. On one occasion realizing the locals avoided them, again typical of the East Germans, they interviewed BF as she brushed out her five feet of hair. Unknowingly, this is the why the assumed people at Wiesbaden pulled them two weeks later. The host asked if she is aware their neighbors thought they were American spies. BF smile warmly, flashes a hairy armpit and says American women waste their time with unnecessary hygiene rituals being vain hussies.

In flawless German.

They ask about legs.

She then hiked up her full-length slip, whipped off a fuzzy pink slipper and put Polish girls and Clydesdale horses to shame. She then verbally notes that's why Western women are weak, the lack of body hair makes them cold all the time and that in turn reduces their immune function...Her stage act taken from a recent article in a woman's periodical popular among the rank and file of the local Communist Party.

At this point, quite by chance Stone wanders by half-cocked trailing plumes of Vodka. The television crew accost him. He stares at them applying his natural talent for appearing brain dead.

They ask his name.

In his best British accent, claims to be 'Bond, James Bond....'

He then claims Bond is the capitalist pig rip-off of Steinlitz.

BF then screams, from the kitchen window, "Hansel! Hansel! You drunken bastard! You can't stay off the sauce can you! Get your lazy good for nothing ass up here!"

Stone looks up at her, fearfully, hangs his head down, then walks slowly, shamefully off. Once in the kitchen she begins screaming louder, throws two dishes out the window, throws their A.M. portable radio out the window then says 'That was stupid, I liked the radio'. She then pushes him before the window, screaming obscenities while slapping him around.

Stone stands there and takes it.

The television crew records it while laughing and providing a step by step rude commentary that concludes with the phrase 'They're not Americans...That's authentic German...' as the cameraman pans around.

Slut is slinking up the street wearing the current fresh from Moscow office worker fashion trend lugging a suitcase. They interview her. When they ask her name, she answers with a sentence in Russian then asks if they can speak in English as her German is less than exemplary.

"No, I'm their social worker," she smiles looking directly into the camera. "I visit once a week for their in-home marriage counseling..."

"And you need a suit case for that?" the host asks surprised.

"Therapy aid," she replies. She then places the suitcase on the side walk opens it up and produces two large dolls, both dressed in typically ethnic, read Cossack, costumes appropriate to Russia. "I have them act out their problems through the dolls. This way they can focus on something other than themselves.... Latest therapy from the Shevchenko University at Kiev."

"They're that sick?" the host muttered off hand.

"She's okay but he's an asshole," she blushed, then looked up at the kitchen window as an empty Vodka bottle went airborne. "I need to go..."

Before she entered the flat, she picked up the smashed radio. A moment later, BF whipped open the door, shouting "Ludmilla! You're here thankfully! My asshole husband Hansel's been drinking on me and he smells like another woman!"

"Oh, you poor darling," Slut replied, sounding like Zsa Zsa Gabor. "Well I'll just have him fixed up in no time for you!"

"Hunky bitches," Stone thought. "If I close my eyes, I'm back home on Pittsburgh's Southside.... Carson Street...I want to go home."

"And what do you have to say for yourself?" Slut then yelled at her brother as she placed the wrecked radio on the counter top as BF put the tabletop on the bathtub.

"I'm sorry?" Stone mumbled in German.

"Sorry? Sorry? That's all you got to say for yourself? You and your privilege male attitude!" BF screamed. "You don't love me! Who is she? That tralka! I wouldn't give a pfennig for! I know she wears red lipstick! It was on your collar from work the other day...." BF yelled as she flew from the kitchen and returned with a shirt that had red lipstick on the collar.

"You sly dog," Slut giggled softly. "It's Brunhilda, the blonde with big tits? The secretary at the trucking company."

"What? You know about that?" Stone quietly replied as Slut unloaded the suitcase.

"Stasi Puke Scum informant," Slut replied. "We've been working up a list on who they all are around here...Stay away from her."

"So much for that idea..." Stone mumbled.

"You're really are cheating on me!" BF gasped, then caught herself.

"What's going on?" Slut seriously inquired as she opened the false bottom of the suitcase, then handed the new code books over to him, then handing BF a stack of money.

Stone for his part went to the hidden radio in the wall closet and brought back the old books.

"She'd make me a great wife..." Stone shrugged. "The tension around here is getting thicker than London fog."

"And?" Slut answered him while looking BF over questioningly. "God gave you fingers for a reason, girlfriend. Its been what three weeks? He only gets it once a month or so..."

"How do you know that?"

"We keep a list on you," Slut shrugs. "Madam Geshelia is your favorite and you once popped Traudel and Petra at the same time. That makes me wonder about you...You know, you and Petra would really make a nice couple."

"Wonder what?" Stone replied confused, and stunned that they had a list on him.

"You're supposed to be an asexual male...Sure as hell doesn't look like it. Besides, why don't you have a wife?"

"What does asexuality have to do with this? Explain since I'm really tired of hearing it."

"That was the problem with the last couple. They fell in love with each other and began doing it like rabbits. Problem was they were married to other people. So, command figured since you have zero sexual interest in anyone outside a hobby that wouldn't be an issue..." she answered. "Now about the wife bit."

"I'm disciplined, I don't let my little soldier think for me. That, and finding a Wendish hausfrau in a whorehouse isn't my idea of where to go for a wife," Stone flatly answered. He then took the broken radio into the living room and grabbed ahold of the radio repair kit.

"What's a Wend?" BF asked him. "You can't fix that! You don't know anything about radios!"

"I'll compare the transistors and the capacitors to what we have and I do know how to solder," he replied. "Oh, and Wends can also be called Sorbian."

"All of a sudden I feel stupid somehow..." BF miserably observed.

"You two chat," Stone suggested. "And can I get some food around here? Slut, tell her not to short herself on the dinner rations, she's losing weight."

"We don't have enough food," BF mentioned to Slut. "He needs a higher caloric intake so I'm shorting myself...If I buy more food it'll look suspicious..."

Slut stood there slack jawed then pointed at the money. The pile of marks equated to a year's wages, for East Germans.

Stone did get the radio working, it sounded better than it did before it flew out the window. However, it didn't last, it blew up a week later. Not being one to give up easy, he bought BF another one at the radio shop in town, something BF told him not to do again since it exposed him. She was right. They were right.

Three days later he explained to Brunhilda the Stasi Puke Scum, he's devoted to his wife and while she was a nice girl, it wouldn't work. She then blew her cover and asked how the new radio was working out. When he bought the radio, the streets were empty.

From the expression on his face, she knew she slipped up. She then adjusted her chest and asked if he wouldn't change his mind. He refused, politely. As she walked out of the office she mentioned "I hear Pittsburgh is nice this time of year."

Stone took the hint.

When Slut arrived the next day, he informed her and she sent that up the chain of command. Five hours after she left, Wiesbaden informed them to prepare for a hasty extraction via the radio.

"Well that's a story," Bonnie remarked as she finished off her notes. "Anything else?"

"No."

"What are you going to do now?" she asked putting her shoes on while grinning like a happy beaver.

"Visit my sister in the psych ward," Stone exhaled. "Yeah...Here's something else. I find it morally offensive to place a sixteen-year-old Reservist on Active Duty then chuck her to the wolves. That's why she slipped her gourd, she's too young for this."

"She has you," Bonnie replied. "Would you feel the same way if she wasn't your sister?"

"Yes."

"Now what," Bonnie asked as she straighten her uniform out.

"Mine is not to wonder why, mine is to do or die...I'll wait on the next mission," Stone shot back.

That, is the story of Radio Dusseldorf.