The Vault

by Mark Dawson

  “What’s the mean­ing of this?” she said an­grily.

  “Who is trav­el­ling with you, Miss?” he said.

  “That’s none of your busi­ness. I’m on dip­lo­matic busi­ness.”

  “I don’t care,” the man said. “Who are they?”

  “And I told you—that’s none of your busi­ness.”

  “Then I’m go­ing to have to ask you all to get out of the car.”

  “No,” Ok­sana said. “You’re go­ing to let us pass over the bor­der.”

  The man took an­other step for­ward and then bel­lowed into the car. “Get out of the car now or I’ll or­der my men to shoot.”

  Ok­sana turned to Mack­in­tosh. “Wait here,” she said. “Don’t open the doors to any­one other than me. They’re just look­ing for a reason to shoot us.”

  “What are you go­ing to do?”

  “Make a phone call.”

  She got out of the car and closed the door be­hind her. Mack­in­tosh reached across the cabin and pressed down on the lock. The door was se­cured with a sat­is­fy­ing thunk.

  The win­dows were closed, but Mack­in­tosh could hear the sound of Ok­sana’s voice as she up­braided the sol­dier with the clip­board. She punc­tu­ated her tirade with sharp little stabs of her fin­ger into the chest of the man. He turned away and led Ok­sana into the guard­house. There was a wide win­dow next to the door where the sol­diers could look out onto the vehicles that passed through the check­point. The snow was still fall­ing heav­ily, but Mack­in­tosh was able to see the sol­dier lead Ok­sana into the room. He handed her a tele­phone. She pressed the re­ceiver to her ear and began a con­ver­sa­tion.

  “What’s hap­pen­ing?” Schmidt asked, his voice quaver­ing.

  “Everything will be fine,” Mack­in­tosh said, try­ing to find a re­as­sur­ing tone des­pite the fact that he was very far from re­as­sured him­self.

  Ok­sana handed the re­ceiver to the sol­dier and stood, her arms fol­ded, while he spoke to who­ever was on the other end of the line. The man handed the re­ceiver back to her; she said some­thing else into it, then re­placed it on the cradle. She spoke to the sol­dier again, adding yet more angry stabs of her fin­ger, and then strode to the door and came out­side.

  “Here she comes,” Mack­in­tosh said.

  Ok­sana reached the car. Mack­in­tosh reached over to open the door and she got in­side.

  “What was all that about?”

  “They’re go­ing to let us through,” she said.

  “Who did you call?” Mack­in­tosh said.

  “Someone with au­thor­ity who’s very in­ter­ested that we’re able to bring Herr Schmidt over the bor­der.”

  Ok­sana put her hands on the wheel and waited for the armed guards to part. She put the car into drive and slowly passed between them. Mack­in­tosh looked out of the win­dow into their faces as they went by; their hats were brimmed with snow, their faces flushed with the cold, and they stared back with un­masked hos­til­ity.

  The fi­nal stretch of the check­point was a sla­lom cre­ated by two lines of tank traps. Ok­sana drove the car around the first bar­rier, turned right to bring them around the edge of the second and then ac­cel­er­ated slowly away to­ward the Amer­ican side of the bor­der.

  Mack­in­tosh looked back at East Ber­lin. It looked dim­mer and darker than its twin, as if shamed by its poverty. The com­par­ison between the des­ti­tu­tion of those who lived there and the ease and lux­ury of those who lived on the other side of the Wall was stark. It felt as if a heavy weight had been re­moved from Mack­in­tosh’s shoulders, and, for the first time in days, he al­lowed him­self to ex­hale and re­lax.

  He looked back to the front and watched through the wind­shield as two Amer­ican MPs, both armed with auto­matic rifles, beckoned them for­ward.

  They were nearly home.

  Part VII

  61

  Red Square looked beau­ti­ful in the snow. The lim­ousine drove through the Borovit­skaya Gate, boun­cing over the cobble­stones and passing the yel­low and gold Grand Krem­lin Palace. The driver skir­ted around the Cathed­ral of the Archangel and took them through the arch into the court­yard at­tached to the Sen­ate build­ing. Ok­sana looked up at the build­ings ranged around her and tried to ima­gine the scale of the battle that was ra­ging within them. The old guard had been as­sailed by the re­formers, and those men who stood to lose everything were not let­ting go without a fight. Ok­sana had found her­self pulled into that battle, and it was still too early to say whether she had chosen the right side.

  She made her way into the Sen­ate and fol­lowed the cor­ridor to the re­cep­tion hall. An aide ap­peared and ges­tured that she should fol­low him into a sep­ar­ate of­fice. She did as she was told. The room was as im­press­ive as the rest of the Sen­ate, with grand pieces of fur­niture, a roar­ing fire in a majestic grate and cur­tains made of lux­uri­ous fab­rics. Ok­sana thought of the lot of or­din­ary Mus­cov­ites, hungry and cold, and found the op­u­lence here as naus­eat­ing as she al­ways had. The Krem­lin, and the auto­crats who had their snouts in the trough, could not have been farther re­moved from the men and wo­men that they pur­por­ted to serve. It was the flicker of hope rep­res­en­ted by Gorbachev that drove them on.

  The aide in­dic­ated that Ok­sana should sit, closed the grand doors be­hind her and ex­ited through a door that she had not seen.

  She waited for ten minutes, won­der­ing if she had been for­got­ten, be­fore the door opened again and Anatoly Max­i­my­chev came in­side.

  Ok­sana stood. Max­i­my­chev made his way over to her, shook her hand, and ges­tured that she should sit.

  “How are you, Ma­jor?”

  “I am well, sir,” she replied.

  “Well done. We have been im­pressed with your work—very im­pressed.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Can you con­firm that ZERKALO has ar­rived in Lon­don?”

  “We be­lieve so. Mack­in­tosh flew out of Tem­pel­hof three days ago. Our sources con­firm that ZERKALO was with him.”

  “I am re­lieved.”

  “It should have been easier. The Brit­ish traitor very nearly put a stop to it.”

  “True,” Max­i­my­chev said. “It would have delayed us, but we would have ad­ap­ted. The Min­is­ter’s ap­pet­ite has not been sated. He is still as­so­ci­at­ing with the same people. The same clubs. You would think that a man in his po­s­i­tion would be more dis­creet, but it ap­pears that he can­not con­trol his urges. If not ZERKALO, then someone else. His tastes in young men have al­ways been pre­dict­able.”

  Max­i­my­chev was an ad­viser to the So­viet am­bas­sador in Ber­lin, al­though his true in­flu­ence within the gov­ern­ment was more ex­tens­ive than that. Pres­id­ent Gorbachev re­garded him as one of his closest polit­ical al­lies, and his repu­ta­tion as a sound­ing board and fixer was well known within the walls of the Krem­lin. Ok­sana did not know whether it was Max­i­my­chev who had pro­posed the plan to dis­credit the Min­is­ter or whether he had simply ap­proved it. It did not mat­ter: he had given it to Ok­sana to ad­min­is­ter, and she had done everything that he had asked. Schmidt—or ZERKALO, his cryptonym—had been in­tro­duced to the old per­vert and that had been that. The boy’s real name was Soko­lov. He was a re­cent gradu­ate from State School 4 in Kazan, an in­sti­tu­tion that taught both male and fe­male agents how to se­duce the tar­gets that they were ranged against. She had seen how the West­ern news­pa­pers re­por­ted it: sex­pi­on­age. Soko­lov had been trained with a spe­cific aim in mind: he was to se­duce the man re­spons­ible for the op­er­a­tion of the East Ger­man secret po­lice.

  Max­i­my­chev went to a sal­ver that had been left on a side table and poured two glasses of tea. He brought them both over, gave one to Ok­sana, and sat down next to her.

  “I have read your re­por
t,” he said. “It is ex­cel­lent, as usual. But I have a few ques­tions. Do you have time?”

  “Of course.”

  “You have per­sonal ex­per­i­ence of the Brit­ish. What do you think they will do?”

  “They will de­brief ZERKALO very care­fully,” she said. “His le­gend is se­cure and he tells it well—they will con­firm it. I ima­gine that they will con­fer with their friends in Langley and Paris and then they will ar­range for him to go pub­lic. A tele­vi­sion in­ter­view. News­pa­pers. Even­tu­ally a book, no doubt. They will want his story to be broad­cast as far and wide as pos­sible.”

  “When do you think they will have him speak?”

  “I don’t think it will be long.”

  “Good. The Min­is­ter will not al­low the Wall to fall. He must be re­moved. He is an im­ped­i­ment to the pres­id­ent’s agenda. Glas­nost is too im­port­ant—it must suc­ceed.” He sipped his tea and looked back at her. “What of Mack­in­tosh?”

  “I sus­pect that he will be re­war­ded.”

  “They really do not know of his”—he paused—“eth­ical flex­ib­il­ity?”

  “It would ap­pear not.”

  “And the man he used?”

  “Walker? He was ex­filtrated through Black Route Two. He landed in Den­mark. After that, we don’t know.”

  “Very good, Ok­sana. As I say—the pres­id­ent is pleased with how you con­duc­ted this op­er­a­tion. He wanted to tell you that him­self.”

  “Please thank him for me,” she said. “And please apo­lo­gise that I had to call him.”

  “The bor­der?” Max­i­my­chev laughed.

  “The guard was stub­born. I be­lieve he would have shot us.”

  “No doubt. I would have given a lot to see his face when he real­ised to whom he was talk­ing.”

  She smiled at the memory. “It would be fair to say that he was more ac­com­mod­at­ing af­ter­wards.”

  Max­i­my­chev fin­ished his tea and stood. Ok­sana stood, too, and took the old man’s hand again. “The pres­id­ent would like you to go back to Ber­lin. We have an­other man—Schabow­ski—who has a po­s­i­tion of in­flu­ence within the Polit­buro. You are to as­sist him. The Wall must fall, Ok­sana. The pres­id­ent is adam­ant. It is the first dom­ino. The oth­ers will fol­low.”

  Ok­sana thanked Max­i­my­chev, sa­luted, and turned. Her heels clicked on the tiled floor as she made her way out of the of­fice and into the vaul­ted cham­ber bey­ond.

  62

  Mack­in­tosh took off his jacket and gave it to the waiter. He made his way into the private room where he had met Vivian Bloom be­fore. A fire blazed in the hearth. Mack­in­tosh had chosen a light cot­ton suit today in­stead of the tweed that had threatened to over­whelm him be­fore. He felt bet­ter than be­fore, and not just be­cause he was bet­ter pre­pared for the heat. He had been hanging on then, powered by grief and fury and his de­sire for re­venge. He was still griev­ing Élodie, but he had taken his meas­ure of re­venge. Som­mer was dead and Schmidt’s story was a bomb that Brit­ish in­tel­li­gence was just wait­ing to drop on the DDR.

  Bloom was in the same seat as be­fore.

  “Sit down, Mack­in­tosh,” he said. “Drink?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Bloom poured out two glasses of sherry and passed one to Mack­in­tosh. “Cheers.”

  They touched glasses.

  “Not a bad way to start the year,” Bloom said. “Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’ve read your re­port. You did well. The only thing I’m not con­vinced about was in­volving your­self. That was an un­ne­ces­sary risk.”

  “I dis­agree, sir. I’m not sure that Walker would have been able to ac­com­plish it on his own.”

  Bloom stared at him. “Come on, Harry. Don’t pre­tend that was the reason. I know about you and the French girl. You wanted to be there to sort Som­mer out your­self.”

  Mack­in­tosh swal­lowed, wrong-footed. “I…”

  “I shouldn’t have to re­mind you that frat­ern­ising with agents from rival in­tel­li­gence agen­cies is not a very good idea. I’ll turn a blind eye to it this time given that it would be churl­ish to let it spoil an ex­cel­lent res­ult, but don’t do it again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mack­in­tosh said.

  He waited for Bloom to say some­thing else—to say that he knew about the money that the French had been pay­ing him, that he knew about the Swiss ac­count—but he didn’t. He emp­tied his glass and poured an­other.

  “Everything is neat and tidy apart from Walker. Do you know where he is?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Really? No idea?”

  “None.”

  “And do you really think he robbed Som­mer’s vault?”

  “I’m ab­so­lutely sure of it, sir.”

  “You think he’s still alive?”

  “It’s im­possible to say. We barely got out, as you know. He has no con­tacts in the East. He doesn’t speak the lan­guage. I don’t know what he would have been think­ing.”

  Bloom shook his head. “The brass balls on him.”

  “He’s more re­source­ful than I was led to be­lieve.”

  “He is, in­deed.” Bloom topped up Mack­in­tosh’s glass.

  “What about Schmidt, sir?” Mack­in­tosh asked.

  “He’s been de­briefed. He’s very com­pel­ling.”

  “And the pho­to­graphs?”

  “Ana­lysed and con­firmed. They’re quite real.”

  Schmidt had given them the loc­a­tion of the pho­to­graphs as soon as he ar­rived in Lon­don. He had hid­den them in a lock-box that he had bur­ied in the rubble of a shelled build­ing near to the Wall. Mack­in­tosh had sent an as­set to pick them up. They had been copied and faxed to HQ from a se­cure line and then the ori­gin­als had been brought out in a dip­lo­matic bag.

  “What will hap­pen with them?” Mack­in­tosh asked.

  “We’ve given them to Der Spiegel,” he said. “They’ll be pub­lished next month.”

  “What do you think will hap­pen?”

  “The Min­is­ter will have to resign. He’ll have no choice.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, who knows. Gorbachev is push­ing his agenda as hard as he dares. Protests are spread­ing. There only needs to be a spark. And if that hap­pens, all bets are off. We could be look­ing at a new world.”

  “New worlds have new prob­lems, sir.”

  “I was think­ing about that. You’ll need a re­place­ment for Walker. There’s a chap just been ar­res­ted for murder—”

  “No,” said Mack­in­tosh.

  “It worked out last time.”

  Mack­in­tosh looked at Bloom and saw that he was strug­gling to keep a straight face.

  “I’m jok­ing. You’ve earned some cap­ital, Harry. A lot of cap­ital.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And you need some­thing to do. You can’t go back to Ber­lin. The Stasi know what you did. They won’t look kindly on it.”

  “That had crossed my mind.”

  “It would be fair to say that your suc­cess has changed some minds in White­hall. Your pro­posal has been given an­other look. I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I think it might be some­thing that we are pre­pared to con­sider. There’s go­ing to be a ra­tion­al­isa­tion of MI5 and MI6. We’re look­ing to build some­thing new—a col­lec­tion of all the tal­ents—and we will need a unit to op­er­ate as the tip of the spear. The work would be deni­able. Off book. I doubt I need to say any­thing more about that.”

  “Mil­it­ary? It won’t work with am­a­teurs. We were lucky with Walker.”

  “I agree. It would be mil­it­ary—SAS, SBS, SRR, UKSF. How many agents did you ask for?”

  “For Ber­lin? Five.”

  “But this wouldn’t be lim­ited to Ger­many. We were think­ing of twelve. New m
em­bers ro­tated in when there’s a va­cancy. What do you say?”

  “I’d say that I would be very in­ter­ested.”

  “Good. Here are your first two men.”

  Bloom took two files from the table next to him and handed them to Mack­in­tosh. He flicked through them: each file bore the name of its sub­ject on the cover. FISHER and CAMERON.

  “Do you ap­prove?”

  “I do, sir. Ex­cel­lent choices.”

  “Ex­cel­lent.” Bloom smiled. “We’re just sketch­ing this out, but we think there’ll be fif­teen groups within the new or­gan­isa­tion. Yours would be the fif­teenth.”

  “Group Fif­teen.”

  “Quite so. And you would be run­ning it.”

  Bloom got to his feet and ex­ten­ded a hand. Mack­in­tosh took it.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Con­grat­u­la­tions, Con­trol. I think this is go­ing to go very well.”

  63

  Mack­in­tosh came out of the club in high spir­its. He made his way down the steps to the street and paused there, breath­ing deeply. It was a bright day—pleas­ant and fresh—and he de­cided that he would walk to the va­cant build­ing that Bloom had sug­ges­ted would make an ex­cel­lent HQ for the new group. It was two miles to Vaux­hall and the ex­er­cise would do him good. He star­ted to walk.

  He saw the man cross the street without really pay­ing at­ten­tion to him.

  The man stepped out in front of him, block­ing his path.

  It was Walker.

  “Morn­ing,” he said.

  Mack­in­tosh came to a sud­den stop, stock still. His mouth fell open.

  “Walker?”

  “Sur­prised to see me?”

  “I am. Very sur­prised. How did you get out?”

  “The Rus­si­ans have been very help­ful.”