The Vault

by Mark Dawson

  He dumped his bag on the bed and sat down next to it. A wave of leth­argy washed over him. He real­ised that he had been main­lin­ing ad­ren­aline for the last couple of days, and that this was the comedown. Mack­in­tosh’s antics had taken it out of him.

  He heard a quiet knock at the door. He opened it and saw Ok­sana stand­ing out­side. She put her fin­ger to her lips and came in­side. Jimmy frowned, and then re­membered where he was; she went to the win­dow and opened the French doors so that she could go out onto the bal­cony. Jimmy fol­lowed her. It was cold out­side, the wind whip­ping the drapes. Ok­sana shut the door be­hind him.

  He cocked an eye­brow as if to ask whether it was safe to speak.

  “We’re fine out here,” she said.

  “But the room’s bugged?”

  “Of course. Au­dio only, though. I had a col­league stay here last night. He’s very good at find­ing devices. The bed­side lamp, the tele­phone, the light fit­ting in the bath­room—they’ve all been tampered with. But no cam­eras, and noth­ing out here.”

  He put his fore­arms on the stone bal­us­trade and gazed into the dis­mal street be­low.

  “What a dump,” he said with a long sigh.

  “Wel­come to the East. And well done, by the way. You did well.”

  “It wasn’t straight­for­ward. They had me out of the car.”

  “I saw.”

  “You were watch­ing?”

  “I was be­hind you. And it hap­pens. I told you—they’re un­pre­dict­able. But you’re here.”

  “I am. Any idea how I’m go­ing to get back?”

  “We’ll deal with that later.”

  “What now?”

  “You should rest.”

  “I could sleep for a month,” he ad­mit­ted.

  “Then sleep. Re­mem­ber what I told you to do to­mor­row?”

  “Go to a Re­ise­büro of­fice and ar­range for an ex­ten­sion.”

  “And?”

  “Ask the hotel to re­gister me with the Volk­spol­izei.”

  “And?”

  “Change Deutschmarks into Ost­marks.”

  “Very good,” she said, and smiled.

  “When am I meet­ing Som­mer?”

  “Eight o’clock. Spend the day in the city. I’ll come and get you at seven.”

  Jimmy let her out. He un­packed his bag, took out his spare cash, stuffed the notes into a sock, and put the sock on the top of the ward­robe. He real­ised he was hungry. He picked up the phone and di­alled for room ser­vice. There was a menu by the phone.

  “I’d like a steak, please.”

  “I’m afraid steak is off the menu,” said the man on the other end of the line.

  “No steak?”

  “We have to­mato salad.”

  “How about the chicken?”

  “We do not have chicken. The to­mato salad is––”

  “The lamb, then.”

  “The lamb is not avail­able––”

  “What have you got?”

  “We have to­mato salad.”

  Jimmy cursed un­der his breath. “I’ll have that, then, see­ing as how I’ve heard so much about it.”

  He put the phone down and looked around the room. There was a TV in the corner. He switched it on and watched a man giv­ing a speech in Ger­man, then, bored, he switched over. There were four chan­nels. Three of them were show­ing the same speech. The fourth chan­nel showed a doc­u­ment­ary that seemed, to Jimmy’s un­trained ear, to be about the rise of so­cial­ism. He turned off the TV.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Jimmy opened it to an eld­erly man in a tuxedo push­ing a serving trol­ley. In the centre of the trol­ley was a plate hid­den be­neath a sil­ver cloche. The waiter took his time to set the table with a faded linen table­cloth, a stained linen nap­kin and scuffed sil­ver cut­lery. He in­vited Jimmy to sit. Jimmy sat down while the waiter poured iced wa­ter. He put the plate on the table in front of Jimmy, and, with a flour­ish, re­moved the cloche.

  Care­fully ar­ranged to­ma­toes covered the chipped por­cel­ain. A single lettuce leaf, brown­ing at the edges, had been placed at the side to­gether with a few slices of raw onion.

  “En­joy your meal,” said the waiter.

  44

  Dawn broke, send­ing grey light in through the dusty panes of the win­dow in the bed­room. Jimmy had been ly­ing in bed, awake, for al­most an hour. He was think­ing about his fam­ily, about how Isa­bel and Sean were. Were they snuggled up in bed to­gether? Were they wor­ried about him? What had Isa­bel told his son?

  He got up, showered and changed. He wore a black t-shirt un­der a thick black wool­len jumper, black Levi’s and his Dr. Martens laced up to the top. He left the room and went down­stairs for break­fast. He saw the menu, re­membered the meal last night, and de­cided that maybe he could get a bet­ter break­fast in one of the cafés that he had seen as he had driven in from the cross­ing last night. It was com­ing up on seven now, and the streets were be­gin­ning to get busy. The pro­pri­et­ors of the cafés were set­ting out their boards on the street. Jimmy entered the largest one he could find and sat down to look at the menu.

  An­other diner was eat­ing saus­ages. Jimmy went to the counter and poin­ted at the man’s plate, then poin­ted to a large urn that steamed with fresh tea. He sat down and watched the city come to life through the win­dow. The food was de­livered and Jimmy de­mol­ished it, send­ing the plate back and ask­ing for an­other. He ate this a little more slowly, en­joy­ing the saus­ages and wash­ing them down with the tea.

  He paid the pro­pri­etor and went out­side. The other ped­es­tri­ans were scan­ning the shop win­dows, read­ing the signs tacked up out­side or the writ­ing on the win­dows. There didn’t seem to be much food or choice of clothes in any of the shops or cafés. Times were evid­ently hard. The fab­ric of the build­ings was sim­ilar to the West, but this was very much a poor cousin of its coun­ter­part on the other side of the wall.

  The roads were busy with traffic and yet every­one seemed to be driv­ing the same car: a Tra­bant. A friend in Lon­don had im­por­ted one, told him—after Jimmy had ribbed him about its ap­pear­ance—that it was Ger­man and built to last. The roads here were full of them in both avail­able col­ours: beige and black. Jimmy re­membered look­ing at his friend’s car. It had a plastic body at­tached to a steel frame and was powered by a 500-CC en­gine. Jimmy had laughed, telling his friend that he had been ripped off, that he had paid a grand for a spark plug with a roof. His friend had de­murred, ar­guing that the car would work for years be­cause there were no real work­ing parts that would break.

  He glanced around as he walked, look­ing for tails. Would he spot one, if he was be­ing fol­lowed? He wasn’t sure. He saw a man be­hind him whom he thought he re­membered from be­fore and de­cided to check. He crossed the road and took a quiet turn­ing, head­ing into a res­id­en­tial area with less foot traffic. The man fol­lowed, seem­ingly un­con­cerned that Jimmy might have no­ticed him. Jimmy stopped; the man stopped. He star­ted again, pick­ing up his pace; the man picked up his pace, too. Jimmy was temp­ted to turn around and walk straight at him, maybe say some­thing, but de­cided against it. What was the point? He turned left and left again, re-join­ing the main road. He saw a black car pull away from the kerb; the driver and his pas­sen­ger eye­balled him dole­fully as they went past.

  Jimmy had noted down the ad­dress of the Re­ise­büro and walked across town to ex­tend his visa. He found the of­fice. It was dilap­id­ated, and had evid­ently not been ren­ov­ated since the war. The green paint was peel­ing off the walls and patches of brick showed through the plaster. There was a line ex­tend­ing out of the door with West Ger­mans and in­ter­na­tional vis­it­ors seek­ing to ex­tend their visas. Jimmy waited his turn, even­tu­ally reach­ing a desk in­side that was staffed by a har­assed and ir­rit­able clerk. There was a stack of forms to f
ill out—Jimmy didn’t un­der­stand them, and didn’t ask for them to be trans­lated—and then he was is­sued with a fresh visa al­low­ing him to stay for a week.

  He fol­ded the pa­per and slipped it into his pocket. A week. He hoped that wouldn’t be ne­ces­sary. The place was alien and un­wel­com­ing, with a sense of un­ease every­where. People walked with their heads down, frightened to make eye con­tact, swal­lowed up by grey mu­ni­cipal build­ings that all looked the same. He hoped that the meet­ing with Som­mer happened to­night, as Ok­sana had sug­ges­ted. He had no plan, other than to rely upon the fact that what Mack­in­tosh had pro­posed was au­da­cious and could not pos­sibly be ex­pec­ted to suc­ceed. He knew that he would have to ad­apt to the cir­cum­stances as he found them. If there was an op­por­tun­ity to achieve the goals that had been set for him, he would take it.

  He was nervous, but he was here now and what was the point in drag­ging it out?

  He wanted to leave.

  45

  Jimmy did an hour of ex­er­cise—sit-ups and press-ups—and then took a bath. He dressed, made him­self an­other cup of cof­fee, and then went down to the re­cep­tion. He took a map from the con­ci­erge and set off to ex­plore the city.

  He went to a bank and, as Ok­sana had in­struc­ted, ex­changed fifty Deutschmarks for fifty Ost­marks. East Ger­man marks were worth­less out­side of the coun­try, and the gov­ern­ment re­quired for­eign­ers to ex­change a set amount of hard cur­rency for every day of their stay. The min­imum was twenty-five Deutschmarks per day, but Jimmy paid for two days so he didn’t have to come back to­mor­row.

  He fol­lowed the map to Al­ex­an­der­platz and the Fernse­hturm TV tower that dom­in­ated the sky­line. He went to the Palast der Re­pub­lik and found him­self gaz­ing up at a can­vas that covered one side of a build­ing. It was a pic­ture of Lenin, with men in Stasi and mil­it­ary uni­forms march­ing in front of him. A wo­man with brown hair and a thread­bare coat walked along the pave­ment be­low the sign. She glanced up at it, shook her head and kept walk­ing. She looked like she was on her way back to work after a lunch break. Her shoulders slumped for­ward and she looked down at the ground. She looked beaten.

  He con­tin­ued to the Branden­burg Gate, walled off by the Ber­lin Wall. He walked to Karl-Marx Al­lee and found Kino In­ter­na­tional, the state-sponsored cinema, where he bought a ticket and took a seat in a sparsely pop­u­lated aud­it­or­ium for a film in Ger­man that he didn’t un­der­stand. He sat and let the im­ages play out on the screen, breath­ing in the smells of the room—brat­wurst, dust, hot cel­lu­loid, sweat—and even­tu­ally closed his eyes and al­lowed them to take him back to Lon­don and the cinema in Hack­ney where he and Isa­bel had gone to watch films be­fore Sean’s birth made it more dif­fi­cult to be spon­tan­eous.

  The film fin­ished and he made his way out into the grim af­ter­noon; a bank of cloud had settled over the city. It deadened the day­light and prom­ised snow.

  He had an early din­ner in the res­taur­ant near the hotel, and then went back to his room.

  Ok­sana was wait­ing by his door.

  “Where have you been?” she said.

  “Went out to get din­ner. Why?”

  “You have a meet­ing to go to.”

  “You said eight.”

  “They brought it for­ward”

  “Som­mer?”

  “No,” she said. “Not yet. Come on—I’ll tell you in the car.”

  46

  Oksana led the way to a car with dip­lo­matic plates that marked it as the prop­erty of the So­viet Union. She got in­side and Jimmy fol­lowed. Snow had star­ted to fall, fat flakes that drif­ted down, suf­fused wit gold as they fell through the beams of the head­lights.

  She nod­ded up to the sky. “There’s go­ing to be a bliz­zard. They’re fore­cast­ing a foot of it by to­mor­row morn­ing.”

  “I like Ber­lin more and more,” he said.

  They pulled out.

  “What did you do today?” she asked him.

  “Ex­plored the city.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m really look­ing for­ward to leav­ing.”

  “It’s worse than it’s ever been,” she said. “There’s no money. No jobs. The sys­tem doesn’t work. The people are suf­fer­ing.”

  Jimmy turned to look at her. “I thought you were KGB,” he said.

  “That doesn’t mean that I think the old way is the only way. There are people in Rus­sia who would like to see a change. Here and at home.”

  “Gorbachev?”

  “Yes, and oth­ers. There are many people who sup­port what he is try­ing to do.” She stared darkly through the wind­shield. “Many who op­pose him, too.”

  There was a junc­tion up ahead and Ok­sana braked care­fully, rolling to a stop next to the red light.

  “Can I ask you some­thing?” Jimmy said.

  “Of course.”

  “I heard that Som­mer has a vault. Is that true?”

  “He does.”

  “Why would he have a vault?”

  She glanced over at him. “Have you heard about Nazi gold? They looted valu­ables dur­ing the war. The Stasi did it, too.”

  “What kind of loot?”

  “Think about it: you had East Ger­mans who crossed be­fore the Wall went up, thou­sands of Jews who were de­por­ted to the camps or fled and never came back. They left safe de­posit boxes, vaults, and safes, and the Stasi emp­tied them all. It was state-sanc­tioned mass theft. I’ve heard of rooms full of jew­els, gold and sil­ver, an­tiques, sculp­tures, paint­ings. Sav­ings books. Life in­sur­ance policies. Cash. They loaded it all into trucks and drove it all away.”

  “And Som­mer has some­thing like that?”

  “I know he has a vault, I don’t know what’s in it. But he’s greedy. It wouldn’t sur­prise me. And money’s one thing, but he’s al­ways been in­ter­ested in in­form­a­tion, too. Those boxes they opened wouldn’t just have held things with fin­an­cial value. Let­ters between secret lov­ers. Com­prom­ising pho­to­graphs. Evid­ence of crime. Som­mer lives for that. For secrets. Things he can ex­ploit.”

  Jimmy thought of what Geipel had said, and the plan of the build­ing that he had drawn. He wondered whether he should say any­thing else, but de­cided against it. Ok­sana didn’t need to know. What good would that do?

  “So I’m not meet­ing him to­night?”

  “No. One of Som­mer’s depu­ties. His name is Müller. You’ll need to per­suade him that you are ser­i­ous. He de­cides whether you see Som­mer or not.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  “By be­ing con­vin­cing. Re­mem­ber your le­gend: you’re a mem­ber of the Ir­ish Re­pub­lican Army. You’ve dealt with men like Müller be­fore—he might try to brow­beat you, but you mustn’t show that you are wor­ried.”

  “Easier said than done,” Jimmy said. The un­cer­tainty of what he was be­ing asked to do was not far from the front of his mind.

  “You’ll need that bag,” she said, nod­ding to the sports bag in the foot­well.

  “What’s in­side?”

  “Fifty thou­sand Deutschmarks. Som­mer will want some­thing as a sign of good faith. A down pay­ment. Give it to Müller when he asks for it.”

  “Just like that?”

  “It’s not your money, Jimmy. Mack­in­tosh provided it. He can deal with the con­sequences if it goes miss­ing.”

  Ok­sana in­dic­ated and pulled over, park­ing next to a bar. It couldn’t have looked any more dif­fer­ent to the bars and nightclubs that Jimmy had seen in West Ber­lin. On the other side of the Wall it was all de­signer clothes, cock­tails and neon-lit marble with the latest av­ant-garde elec­tron­ica blast­ing so loud you couldn’t hear the bar­tender ask­ing for a week’s wages in ex­change for a vodka mar­tini. This bar could have been an il­legal she­been back home. A low, single-storey build­ing that
had been built within the empty foot­print of a build­ing that must have been torn down after the war, it looked as though it was en­tirely con­struc­ted from con­crete breeze blocks, haphaz­ardly at­tacked with a brush and white paint. There were four win­dows that were so dirty that Jimmy doubted they had been cleaned in years. The wooden en­trance stood open.

  “Müller should be wait­ing. In­side, at the back. He knows what you look like.”

  Jimmy opened the door and stepped out­side.

  “Good luck,” Ok­sana said.

  Jimmy nod­ded an ac­know­ledge­ment and shivered in the cold.

  Good luck.

  That was right.

  He was go­ing to need luck, and a lot of it.

  47

  A door­man stood out­side the bar in a leather jacket and leather gloves with a wool­len hat pulled down tight over his round head. They called those hats “jolly begs” in Bel­fast, and the memory made Jimmy smile. Isa­bel hadn’t un­der­stood it, and Jimmy had to ex­plain that “bag” was pro­nounced “beg” there. She still didn’t get it, and, in fair­ness, neither did Jimmy. He had no idea why they were called that, but he liked the idea of hav­ing a fa­mil­iar name for things. He liked that even in the cold of East Ber­lin, a place so alien to everything he knew, so dif­fer­ent from the sum of his ex­per­i­ences, there were still things that could re­mind him of his past and an in­no­cent laugh that he had shared with the wo­man who would one day, he hoped, be­come his wife.

  The door­man clapped his hands to­gether and rubbed them for warmth. His breath came in a mist as he said some­thing to Jimmy by way of a greet­ing. Jimmy didn’t un­der­stand, but nod­ded in re­sponse as he stepped up onto the pave­ment and ap­proached the en­trance.

  The door­man stepped across to block his way.

  “I’m here to see a man,” Jimmy said.