by John Meaney
He nodded. Only two men had walked past. The music was still playing.
So we waited longer.
And then silence came. Then footsteps moved past outside, diminished, were gone.
I counted to fifty, then crossed to the window and worked it open, minimizing sound. There might be a watcher left in the corridor, or in the stairwell. Glimpsing Rogers' gaping expression, I rolled over the sill, crimping my fingers into a gap between bricks. A moment's pause, and I was spidering down. Touching ground in the side alley, I entered the street and turned away from the hotel, then crossed to the other side. There was a shop window, very clean. Reflected in it were two stationary cars, outside the hotel entrance. Men were descending from the doorway, entering the vehicles.
I walked on. Behind me, engines revved. The cars, black Audis, rolled past me, heading for Maximilianstrasse. Head lowered, I scanned the occupants' silhouettes, and read the licence plates.
Crossman's not with them.
There'd been only the face-on shot of him in the dossier, as with Zadok and the other assassins, but I'd studied the picture for long enough.
As the first car turned, I saw lank blond hair. This might have been the man I'd seen in the FPDA offices, the one who spoke in English. But not Crossman. Crap. How many English assets did they have? If you were looking for atomic energy expertise, England was a natural hunting ground, closer than the States.
They were gone, but they could have left watchers back at the hotel. I walked on, found a corner shop, and bought a newspaper and a magazine, Der Stern. Then I headed back.
I was soaking with sweat when I knocked on the door of my room. It wasn't the exertion, it was the fear, in case they'd left anyone behind, perhaps stationed behind a window with a bipod-mounted rifle.
Rogers let me in.
"We've got some nice music on tape." He pointed at the recorder. "Too bad about the conversation. I could extract the voices back in London, but I expect you've your own labs."
"We can probably manage."
"So what do we do next, old chap?" His eyes were bright and excited.
"Nothing."
"You mean hurry up and wait?"
"Uh-huh. Welcome to the exciting world of espionage."
The plan for the next morning was straightforward – at least until I faced my Nazi interview panel. An early run for me, then joining Rogers for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. It all began on schedule: a gentle jog to Marienplatz, enjoying the spring morning, then upping the pace, a circuit of the city, back to the U-bahn station by the hotel. Reclaiming my breathing, I wiped sweat from my face as I ascended the steps into the lobby.
And the mission blew apart.
For a few seconds, everything seemed normal. Rogers was sitting at a breakfast table, his back toward me. Another man, dapper in a three-piece suit and with a silver-grey goatee, was talking to the waiter who had brought his bill, and then...
Excuse me?
...the dapper man brushed his long fingers against the waiter's palm, as if handing over payment, except...
No. That's not possible.
...he didn't, and the waiter gave the man change. The thing that saved me was, in order to make the whole thing work, the dapper man was maintaining eye contact with the waiter.
Slowly. Just move.
Fast motion, at the edge of your vision, makes you want to look. We all have survival reflexes. Right now, the gentleman with the grey goatee and the fine clothes was a predator that I had to escape, and I fled by slowing down so he wouldn't notice me.
I'm out of his sight.
Then I was at the staircase, and lunging up the steps, accelerating hard.
I went for room 13 first, used my lock-picks in record time, and was in. I turned and jumped up, ripping out the lens and microphone from above the door. Then I was back outside, shutting the door, and wrenching the fibre and wire free from the picture-rail that ran parallel to the ceiling, ripping out the surveillance link.
Back in my own room, I threw the coiled fibre and wire into an equipment case. The tape recorder and camera followed. I snapped the lids shut.
Salty sweat had gathered around my eye sockets. My eyes were stinging.
Maybe I imagined it.
Except of course I hadn't.
My tracksuit was sweat-soaked. A shower and change into street-clothes would take time, but I'd be less inconspicuous as I left. It was a balance of speed against—
A tap sounded on the door.
He's here.
I checked through the keyhole, then pulled the door open.
"Get in fast."
I pulled Rogers inside, and pushed the door into place.
"Larry? What's—?"
"We're bugging out. That means now."
He saw the metal cases, fastened up and ready to go.
"You mean we're leaving?"
"Yes. I'm changing into streetclothes, then leaving everything behind."
All the garments, including my tracksuit, had come from London. There were no identifying labels or anything left in the pockets.
"Clive, if I dropped the camera and recorder out the window, would you be able to catch them?"
"They're heavy, but—"
"Quickly. Tell me."
"Um. Yes."
"Good. Go downstairs, go outside. Wait on the pavement."
"And what are we—?"
"Move now."
"Yes."
I let him out, then I was shedding my clothes as I entered the en suite shower, getting under the cold spray. Soap, shampoo, rinse: maybe forty-five seconds elapsed. Fast towel-off, clothes on, two minutes more.
Got to hurry.
So I slowed down, because of Brummie Greenmore's voice buried in my subconscious, telling me to do just that. When I pulled up the window, Rogers was waiting below. I dropped the camera case down to him, and he grimaced as he caught it.
Too bad. That was the light one.
I did the same with the recorder case, and he wobbled and let one corner strike the ground, but not too loud. Then I was over the sill, and descending.
We walked fast, me with the cases, heading for the U-bahn station. I scanned everywhere, because if Klaus Eisenmenger or Jürgen Schenck turned up now, we were going to going to have to fight our way out.
Shit shit shit.
I'd abandoned a mission-phase before, but never the whole bloody thing.
"Why exactly are we—?"
"Shut up."
"Look..."
"If you want to be a professional, then bug out means now, and save the fucking talk for later."
Twenty minutes after our exit, we were in the railway station, the Hauptbahnhof. Twelve minutes after that, we took our seats in an otherwise empty compartment inside the Paris Express. I stowed the cases overhead, and we sat down facing each other as the train chuffed into life. The platform began to slide past.
Soon, we were heading towards France, winding through forest, away from the wreckage of our mission.
After an inspector checked our tickets, we were alone again. Outside the sky was light but the forest was in shadow, black as a Nazi's heart.
"I'm going to tell you a story," I said. "Every word is true. OK?"
"OK."
"You know the Ku-Damm?"
"The Kurfürstendamm." Rogers pronounced the second 'u' correctly. "Berlin's answer to Oxford Street."
"I watched while a psychologist" – I meant Manny Silverberg – "received change from a bartender, after buying a round of drinks."
The drinks had been for me and my fellow neophytes.
"All right," said Rogers. "And the dramatic pause means what? The barman gave too much change?"
"You could say that. It was change from nothing, because the psychologist hadn't paid for the drinks. We got those free."
"But you said—"
"He pretty much stared the bartender in the eye and told him that he'd handed over twenty Marks, and told him how much change he expected. That w
as essentially all it took."
"That sounds so unlikely."
I could have told him about making yourself invisible to someone via post-hypnotic suggestion, and the use of phase-locked physiology, but we don't share operational secrets.
"Nevertheless, I saw it."
It hadn't been for giggles. Manny had been showing us how to work covert psych techniques in noisy public settings.
"So if I accept that, I guess it's a really interesting tale."
"Your words say one thing, Clive, but your tone says something else."
Rogers smiled. "Is that deep psychology?"
"No, but what I saw in the hotel restaurant this morning was. In fact, it might have been the best I've ever seen."
"The restaurant?" He blinked. "When?"
"I don't suppose you happened to notice a gentleman with a three-piece suit, grey-haired, goatee?"
"My dear chap, of course I did. One is always so impressed with continental elegance, although I find the Teutonic style rather stiffer than their Gallic counterparts."
"Yeah, well, this elegant fucker paid for his breakfast with invisible money. And he still got change."
It took nearly ten seconds for Rogers to work through the implications.
"You mean, there was somebody with the same kind of psychological training who was staying at the hotel."
"Eating. Maybe not staying."
"That's strange. But that's not enough for us to... Oh." He glanced up at the overhead rack where his two metal cases lay. "This psychologist in Berlin, the one who's your friend. He's part of Branch 7, isn't he?"
"Maybe," I said.
"I see. And you think this fellow in the hotel had the same kind of expertise, but he's working with Black Path?"
"I'm sure of it."
"Damn." And, after a moment: "You know, I wish I'd seen the man in action."
"Huh."
The compartment's interior grew shadowed as we passed through a cutting. Then we were through, and the March sunshine was bright again outside.
"We had to bug out, Larry? For sure?"
"My judgement call." I hoped that Pinchas and Schröder would see it the same way. "Because if that man was going to vet me before they let me join Black Path, I was blown."
It wasn't that he could break me so quickly. But he could break my cover, because the second he used covert hypnotic language patterns, my responses would reveal my own training. That was all it took.
"So you'll go back to London," I added, "send a letter to Schtüpnagel saying you're suspicious of Larry Brown, and you're dropping out of the deal. Then go on holiday, out of sight. If you need our help for that, you'll get it."
Unless Pinchas or Schröder became so pissed off at my abandoning the mission that they ignored their obligations.
Rogers watched the trees flowing past the window. Then: "All right. I trust you, Larry."
"My name's David." I hadn't planned to say it. "David Wolf."
"Oh."
He seemed to understand the importance of the moment. He reached over, and we shook hands.
"You've done a brilliant job, Clive."
It was my own performance that I doubted.
And what about Hilde?
But it was Berlin that were going to be the problem, as I tried to explain catastrophic failure on the basis of a moment's intuition. If they thought I'd lost my nerve, they'd be transferring me to a desk job at best. And if they suspected darker motivations, I'd be in for the same treatment as Moshe... except they'd have to catch me first.
What the hell had I just done?
TWENTY-FOUR:
BERLIN, March 1963
Pinchas was calm, seated like a statue behind the table. This was a bad sign: I'd rather he was steaming angry. Beside him was Weissmann, a blocky man in his late fifties with cropped near-white hair and large, square hands. I didn't know him well. If there were going to be an internal investigation, he would head it.
I sat across from them. Between us, like a barrier, was a rosewood conference table that smelled of beeswax. This was upscale, used for meeting important visitors, and part of me wished they'd drag me down to the Grinder where at least the interrogation is overt.
"Clive Rogers," said Pinchas, "is at a safe house in Paris, right?"
"Jean-Paul's people got him out of sight," I said. "Fast and efficient."
"So where is the safe house?"
"I didn't need to know."
Weissmann gave the tiniest of nods. Not much of an encouragement. I shifted back in my chair, aware of the creak of leather, even the men's aftershave. The reptilian brain, polling the environment for danger.
"I was hoping we'd have the audio tape at least. Can't the tech boys extract voices from the noise?"
Black Path could have been meeting at the hotel to organize a birthday party, but it seemed unlikely, and there must be something on the tape. There had been nine men squashed into the two Audis, maybe five of them guards, the others senior officers of Black Path. They must have talking about something.
"The lab's working on the tape." Pinchas pushed a typewritten sheet over. "Recognize any of these?"
The sheet read:
CROSS MAN (??? CROSSMANN ???)
FOR SIR STRANG (??? PROFESSOR STRANG ???)
SALT AND PEPPER (???)
And so on, in that vein. It was a partial transcript, listing the few words that were audible over the music.
"So they were talking about Crossman." I tapped his name with my finger. "He wasn't in Munich, though. Not at the hotel."
"And that's all?"
I looked up at Pinchas, then at Weissmann.
"The gentleman with the grey goatee... The man I saw might be a professor. That would make sense."
"And there's no other information," said Weissmann, "that you can give us."
"For God's sake—"
"You didn't attempt to place this person, Professor Strang or whoever he might be, under observation?"
"You already know I didn't." I was guessing now. "You had a secondary watch team in place, didn't you?"
We were trying to close in on the bastards everywhere, and none of the neophytes were here in Berlin Central: I'd heard someone mention it in the canteen. My guess was that Schröder had deployed the youngsters in the less dangerous roles, because we needed everyone to be out in the field.
Pinchas and Weissmann had become still.
Something's going to happen.
They'd been waiting for me to lose my cool, but I wasn't going to, so now—
With a whisper of sound, the door opened, and Manny Silverberg walked in. He's short and nondescript, with a black-grey beard, until you notice those dark-brown eyes.
Sweet suffering shit.
This was in trouble.
"Hello, David."
"Hi." I rose to shake his hand. "Manny. It's so good to—"
Then everything went black as his hand covered my eyes – at least, I think that's what happened – and his voice surrounded me. It was close, like a blanket. It was distant: foaming waves washing on a stone beach.
"...because my voice will go with you as you sink deeper, faster, now, into this totally relaxed state where whether you remember to forget or forget to remember is irrelevant as you let everything go and—"
Don't ask me what happened next: time stopped.
And when I awoke, the world felt fresh and alive, every nerve and skin cell tingled, and Manny Silverberg was smiling.
"David, welcome back. And how good do you feel?"
"Absolutely bloody marvellous."
"Gentlemen, I'm done here." Manny turned to Pinchas and Weissmann. "Call me again, whenever you need me."
He seemed to move faster than light, and then he was gone.
"I'll order coffee," said Pinchas.
After coffee, Weissmann left. I asked Pinchas what had happened.
"You had a nice rest."
"I know that, but—"
"Do you fancy going to the pictur
es?" he said.
"Is there a new John Wayne out?"
"I was thinking of your surveillance film. The lab did develop it."
"That's nice. So you trust me now."
Pinchas toasted me with his coffee cup.
"Of course I do."
"So tell me what happened. What Manny got out of me while I was in la-la land."
"OK." Pinchas put the cup down, and picked up the typewritten sheet. "Professor Edmund Strang. Manny knows all about him, and the man is exactly what you thought."
"A psych wizard, just like Manny."
"Except that Strang had a great number of people to develop his skills on. The Gestapo provided everything he needed."
"Ah."
"Exactly. And between you and me, Wolf..."
"Yes?"
"I think Manny's afraid of him."
"Bloody hell."
"Exactly. So about that film...?"
I was on my feet in a fraction of a second. I really did feel reborn. Energized.
Call it a gift from Manny Silverberg.
"Let's do it," I said.
In the projection room, two dozen seats were arranged in rows, all empty. Pinchas and I sat at the front.
"Sorry I couldn't arrange popcorn," said Pinchas.
A pretty red-haired technician was threading film through the projector.
"Almost ready, gentlemen."
"Take your time," I told her. "Maybe there's ice cream?"
"Sorry." She gave the tiniest of mouth movements, without looking up. "OK. That's it."
"You've heard it before, huh?"
"Once or twice. You know how to operate this?"
"Of course."
"Then I'll leave you to it."
After she'd gone, I flicked the switch and the reel turned. Silvery black-and-white images moved up on the screen. I sat back down beside Pinchas.
"The big man," I said, "is Klaus Eisenmenger. Senior in the organization."
Without an ideal angle, it was a while before someone moved into clear view. "That's Jürgen Schenck."
A burst of sound came from a floor-mounted loudspeaker.
"—dok und Cross—"
"Shit," said Pinchas.
"Me too. She could've warned us."
The techs had synched the audio tape to the film, blanking out the music, leaving only the few words that had come through.
