by John Meaney
"And what specifically are you planning to do with him?"
"That'll be up to you, Wolf."
"What?"
"He's your weapon in reserve, to deploy if needed. When you get access."
"Shit." I got up and paced the room. "Shit shit shit."
"I couldn't agree more."
There's an alternative to kicking an agent out of the service: they can be suspended indefinitely without pay. Later, some mission director may offer a chance of redemption, a mission role, close to suicidal. If they survive, they have passed, rehabilitated. It reminds me of drowning witches: how if they died, they'd been innocent all along.
"If Boaz has any sense, he'll just walk away." Pinchas adjusted his glasses. "Tell Schröder to piss off, leave and never look back."
Whatever I'd expected him to say, that hadn't been it.
"He's got a pregnant wife. Or has she given birth by now?"
"I don't know. But Schröder and the directors will be aware of everything."
I pushed out a slow exhalation.
"Have you got family, Pinchas?"
Shadows passed through his eyes.
"Not any more."
"Sorry."
"I'm fine. Drink your coffee. And have you heard of a man called Schtüpnagel?"
"No. I'd remember if I had."
"Well, he's Black Path but purely political, at least in public. A planner. Based in Munich, works out of the Free Popular Democratic Alliance Party office."
"The respectable face of terrorism."
"Perhaps you could suggest that as their new slogan."
So this was it.
My nerves tightened up, and I had to stop myself grinning. Pinchas noticed. This wasn't the mission briefing proper, not yet and not here, but he'd given me the shape of it: Munich, and an infiltration.
"You've been there before?"
"Yes," I said. "Low-key. I've no history there."
It's such a pretty gingerbread town, the place where it all began for Hitler and his Sturmabteilung thugs.
"Full briefing tomorrow. All I can say is, while you were getting back to full fitness, Braun and the others have done their share. Lots of legwork."
"Uh-huh."
In the cafeteria they'd said that Braun had been trapped in a Frankfurt warehouse on the back of a truck, with crates of handguns all around. The Nazis had spotted him, and they'd been between him and the exit, but their coats had been buttoned up against the cold, restricting access to their shoulder holsters. He got clear. Some of the Black Path cell might have survived.
"The information on Schtüpnagel," said Pinchas, "came from Moscow."
"You mean Ignatieff?"
Call me stupid, but while I'd been through detailed debriefing, I'd said nothing to point the finger at Fern. Not her. Thinking back to the insane cold and the primeval violence of facing Zadok, it was easy to associate those momentary suspicions of Fern with short-lived madness, fading into the past. Nothing real or lasting.
"So how much do we trust Ignatieff, Pinchas?"
"That's the real question. He's given us a location for another Longshot graduate."
The abandoned GRU programme had been labelled Operation Longshot. None of the addresses in the dossier had been up to date. The whole point was that the assassins had gone to ground, some of them hidden by their new employer, Black Path.
"An address in Munich?"
"Right. Not a permanent address, but a meeting location with fluid dates."
"Meaning you know where the bastard is going to be, but not when."
Pinchas removed his unnecessary glasses and focused on me, his eyes hardening to grey stone. You wouldn't want to have him for an enemy.
"They've been using the FPDA party headquarters plus another site. There's an English connection, which is one of the reasons we've chosen you."
Using an English identity is rarely the best way to infiltrate German neo-Nazis, but Pinchas and Schröder know what they're doing.
"When's the actual briefing?"
"Tomorrow, eleven hundred."
"And you came here today just to give me coffee?"
"Why else?"
We both knew why, but since I'd passed his evaluation, who cared? I was ready to go back into the field. More than ready: I needed it. There was an ache inside that could only be displaced by action. Call it hunger, desperation, or the need to scratch an itch. And Pinchas had seen the signs. Don't ask me how he knew, but if I hadn't broadcast the unconscious signals he was looking for, I wouldn't be at the briefing tomorrow: they'd have found somebody else.
Let me at the bastards.
Because I needed to do something besides think of Fern.
Early next morning at Berlin Central, the basement gym and firing range were empty. There were no weights, only punchbags and gymnastic mats. I found a rope and jumped five rounds, until a warm, slick coating of sweat formed a second skin. Then I switched the lights off, filling the place with shadows, and pulled on a pair of old, soft bag gloves that were polished with use. The heavy bags hung from their chains, threatening in the gloom.
I attacked.
It's impossible to go all out against a training partner – remember Zadok – but you have to let rip to be able to fight for real – that bastard – and punch bags are the hardest opponents because they never go down. For twenty minutes I worked rounds, occasionally moving in to grapple, taking the bag's weight off the chains, starting a throw without completion. But with striking you can go all the way. I was ripping in a sequence – hook punch, elbow, knee – when something moved in the doorway.
Zeev. No problem.
Spinning, I threw an arcing kick, then elbow, triple punch. Then I backed off. A small group was entering behind Zeev. Neophytes, with young features and wide eyes.
"That's Wolf."
Zeev's voice was hidden beneath the rushing surf of stressed-out hearing. I felt my lips draw back.
Show them.
Hammering with the bottom of my fist, a fast series of palm heels and elbows that bent the bag double, then slamming the same kick over and over off my right leg, immersed in the flux of violence. Switching to the left leg, another series, then ripping in a hook punch, hitting off centre – bastard – and following with a...
What?
... the air in front of me was empty...
"Shit."
...as the twisting bag sailed away and hit the floor.
Bloody hell.
"Showing off, Wolf?"
The bag was lying on the floor. Torque had snapped the old chains because I'd missed the centre, that was all. I walked up and down a few paces, reclaiming my breath. My T-shirt was heavy with sweat.
I'm going into Outer Germany.
The briefing was a matter of hours away. Soon I'd have the details and everything would be on the line again.
Undercover into Black Path.
Soon I would be surrounded by bastards who would kill me if they knew me.
Nazi bastards.
Like a corpse – or a prone opponent with a gun – the punchbag lay on the floor.
Now.
I spun, stomped down, then dropped knee-first. I sprawled, chest on the bag, whipping in knees to its side, hearing the crunch of imaginary ribs. Then elbows, using feel instead of vision in the gloom, because that's where the fuckers often are, coming at you in the dark, which is why the lights were off, because this is not a sport, or hadn't you realized?
I hit the thing over and over again, and then I was through.
"Wolf? You want to help me put these nice people through their paces?"
It lay there dead, its broken chains splayed out like severed arteries.
"If you like."
The neos shuffled their feet, swallowing.
We worked on disarming drills.
"Take the enemy out while they're talking," I told the young man. "You're Isser, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"OK, Isser, listen." I needed to teach him neurolog
y. Applied neurology. "It takes a tenth of a second to pull a trigger. But it takes nearly a whole second for the bastard's brain to recognize the danger you present, and then react."
Call it pre-emptive defence. If you move when they're not expecting it, you'll succeed.
Isser tried again, sweeping his opponent's gun aside, clasping her forearm as he punched towards her throat. He pulled the yellow practice gun from her grasp, pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.
"No," I said.
The young woman bit her lip, and held out her hand for the gun. It was painted canary yellow for safety. The yellow ones are real weapons with their innards welded solid.
"I did it." Isser started to hand the gun back. "Didn't I?"
"Stop. Put the gun down on the floor, then step back."
"Why—?"
He did what I'd told him, stepping away so the young woman could pick it up.
"Under stress, you react the way you train. So training to hand the weapon back is stupid, and don't think it wouldn't happen."
The conscious brain is switched off in combat. By the time it catches up, the violence is over.
"And the reason you don't try to shoot," I added, "is that it's a stranger's weapon, not yours. Do you even know if the safety's off?"
The young woman – her name was Hannah, that's right – smiled at Isser.
"You should have thumped me with the butt."
"Right," I said. "Hammer it to the eye socket."
"OK." Isser wiped his face.
From the other end of the room, Zeev's voice drifted.
"No, for fuck's sake. Don't you get it? There's no such thing as a fair fight. Ever."
Isser and Hannah grinned, and I felt a little better.
Because some people get it right away, while others end up face down in a puddle in some junk-filled alley, or sprawled on pavement at the foot of a building with dark blood pooling outward from their skull, or waiting for the mercy of the trigger's click after screaming and the crunch of bones beneath gloved fists, wet electrodes and the acid-hot hell they carried.
But not these youngsters. Not if Zeev or I could help it.
"All right. Let's do it again."
Zeev and I were last out of the showers. The neos had left the changing-room by the time I pulled on my shirt, enjoying the crisp feel of it, my tactile senses heightened.
"They're deciding on Moshe this week," I said.
"You mean Moshe Boaz?"
"Right. I hear he's looking fit."
Zeev paused in knotting up his tie. "Fit but not healthy, right?"
"Could be. I haven't seen him."
"And you know the verdict?"
I shook my head.
"Maybe," said Zeev, "we'd all be better off with normal lives."
This, from the man who'd taught me to fight, to keep my awareness cranked to paranoid intensity.
"Normal," I said.
"Well—"
At that moment, young Isser, fully dressed, came back into the room.
"Sorry, sir," he said. "Mr Wolf, request from the top floor. They're ready early, so if you could meet Mr Pinchas in Room 507 in ten minutes, they'd be grateful."
The fifth floor holds briefing-rooms. Pinchas had said eleven, but someone had realized I was here, and decided to bring things forward. Good sign or bad, I had no idea.
"I'll be there."
Isser paused. "Um... Sir?"
"Yes?"
"Great lesson. Thank you." Isser gave an abbreviated wave as he left.
After a moment, Zeev chuckled.
"Guess who he reminds me of."
"Don't you bloody start."
There was time for water, orange juice and a banana, enough to get my brain partly working. When I entered 507 Pinchas and Schröder were waiting. A large jug of coffee was waiting on a side table. Pinchas smiled at my expression. We poured, settled down, and Pinchas began.
"You know Johnny von Neumann? He's started up again with his first-strike principle."
The Hungarian mathematician could be considered the inventor of computers and of game theory, the mathematics of strategy. Influential in US military circles, he thinks nuclear war is inevitable and that logic dictates the good guys strike first.
"Kennedy will never go for it," I said.
"Unless something goes off in New York. Like another Pearl Harbor."
"Shit."
Because he had a point. There were many Jewish people living in NY – besides my Uncle Isaak – but it wasn't just them we had to save. If the US lashed out wildly in response, where would it end?
Schröder's neck muscles flexed.
"Von Neumann isn't party to the president's secret dealings."
Pinchas and I looked at each other. I felt something like spiders' feet – like scorpions' feet – massing on my skin.
"So Kennedy did make a deal with Moscow, because of Cuba," I said. "Ignatieff was telling the truth. Will the Americans really hold back if the Soviet tanks roll west?"
"Possibly." Schröder moved his massive shoulders. "Our long-term analysts say that the Soviet Union needs to expand west or collapse inward."
"But the Russians control all the natural resources." It made no sense to me. "Oilfields and natural gas, not to mention the bastard uranium."
"You're thinking like a physicist," replied Pinchas. "Not an economist. And our membership has possibly weakened the EEC instead of strengthening it."
"Whose fault is—? Never mind." I remembered my coffee. It was strong. Good. "You think Black Path would help the Soviets take Berlin if Germany could have the Elbe Strip?"
"Maybe." Pinchas adjusted his glasses. "Mostly, I'm just pointing out that there's a kind of political madness in the world right now that we can't do much to prevent."
"And Black Path want to stir things up and see what falls out?"
Schröder hunched his big shoulders, then let them drop.
"Manny Silverberg has analysed their intentions. He believes they're fixated on New York for the usual pathological reasons."
Hitler had wet dreams over the prospect of destroying Manhattan with an A-bomb.
"So who did Manny analyse?" I asked. "The bastards in general, or Reinhard himself?"
"Both Reinhards," said Pinchas. "Father and son."
"Shit."
"Exactly. The next generation is old enough to be a problem now."
"That's all we need."
"Here." Schröder spread dossiers out on the table. "This is everything we know about them."
Reinhard senior, Herr Doktor Heinrich Reinhard, was a 'de-Nazified' German – rubber-stamped as rehabilitated by some British official who'd probably passed the war typing reports and drinking mugs of tea – who had risen to head up the Free Popular Democratic Alliance Party. His son Albrecht was charismatic, thirty years old, and a competitive Alpine biathlete. In his photo he looked like a movie star.
Pinchas was tapping his finger on Heinrich Reinhard's war record.
"By the war's end, the V-4 rockets were almost ready to fly. If the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute had worked a bit faster on the A-bomb, New York might not exist today. " Werner von Braun had developed two types of rocket, both nightmares that killed Londoners and British civilians everywhere. The more terrifying was the V-1, the doodlebug whose strange, characteristic whistling sound accompanied its flight. But it was the sudden silence that stopped the heart, when the engine cut out on the final glide, seconds from exploding. The V-2 missiles had been bigger, wingless, almost identical to present-day NASA rockets, no surprise since the same man designed them both. The prototype V-4s had been larger V-2s but with delta wings attached; and with one other difference.
They needed a human pilot. One who could steer but didn't need to know how to land, only how to point the thing at its target.
"Atomic kamikazes," murmured Pinchas.
For there had been bright-eyed young Nazis (blond and athletic, nothing like their dark, soft Führer who dreamed of 'purity') willing to die
for the Fatherland, for the Heimat. And Heinrich Reinhard's name was right there on the list of volunteers.
"You think the son is willing to kill himself?" I asked.
"Manny's done the psych profile." Pinchas slid out a sheet. "He thinks the younger Reinhard's psychosis runs as deep as his father's."
"Why do you ask about him?" said Schröder.
"Suicide missions are a young man's game, wouldn't you say? Any kind of active op, for that matter." I picked up Albrecht Reinhard's photo. "Looks vain. But the thing is, they don't need to send the bomb over on a rocket. For all we know, they're building it in a Brooklyn basement right now."
Or anywhere in North America, then put it on the bed of a truck and drive it to the destination of their choice: Manhattan, Washington D.C., whichever city they felt like obliterating. And they could use remote detonation, with no need to kill themselves.
But the uranium came from Europe, at least the stuff we knew about. Probably it would be easier to carry out refining and construction in Outer Germany, then ship it over to the States afterwards. The real point was that we didn't know, that we had so much to learn.
"Let's hope not," said Pinchas. "Now, Albrecht Reinhard. Surveillance suggests that he's been attending more clandestine meetings, and increasing his personal security."
"Gearing up for something?"
"We think so. Whether he's directly involved or not, we're getting vibrations that something is building up."
Tell me something new.
"Is there anything else I need to know regarding background?" My nerves were beginning to thrum, wondering how they were going to throw me to the sharks. "Before we look at access?"
"Anxious to get to it?" said Pinchas.
Schröder forestalled my not-so-polite comeback.
"Let's start with the locale. Munich, as you already know, Wolf."
"When am I going in?"
"Tomorrow morning."
The world seemed to zoom inward, growing hard-edged. No more piddling around.
"Thank God for that."
"Let's start with your cover story," said Pinchas. "You'll be working with an English asset, name of Rogers. Interesting character."
"Not a katsa?" I didn't know of any English case officers, but it's not as if we can't keep secrets.
