'I don't know why Archenko is here.'
Bikov walked back to his car, settled on the back seat, and waited.
Viktor was offered a chair but declined it.
The home of Boris Chelbia was in the old city, the part that had survived the bombing and had been outside the defensive perimeter line of strong points built by General Lasch. These streets had not been fought over: the hand-to-hand, building-to-building combat had bypassed them. The old merchants' houses had survived and had become the homes of the new elite. The largest home in this tree lined street, running off Borzova, north of the city, had high iron gates that were screened with plate metal, and there had been the barking of big dogs when he pulled up outside. Men, shaven-headed and leather-jacketed, had let him walk through the gates. Because he had been at the admiral's meeting he wore his best dress uniform with the bright gold braid at the shoulders and on the sleeves, his medal ribbons were on his chest, and he had carried his naval greatcoat over his arm. A man of such status, a man alone, was not searched by the minders at the gate. He had walked up the swept drive, the loaded service pistol under his tunic and the grenades in the pockets of his greatcoat. Nothing of what he was about to do had been thought through: it came from instinct bred by anger.
'You took delivery of weapons from the base at Baltiysk. The weapons were sold to you. Your purchase of the weapons is a theft from the State. Among the weapons were five NSV 12.7mm heavy machine-guns, and ammunition for them. One of those machine guns has on the shoulder stock the carved initials IV. The machine-gun is used by a conscript, Igor Vasiliev. I want it back, that machine-gun, and all the ammunition of that calibre.' He spoke in the short sharp sentences so beloved by his master, the admiral, when authority was to be built.
Chelbia lounged in a low, soft chair, and a minder watched from the door with tattooed arms folded over his chest. No response. Viktor thought his grandmother might have fled from such a house or such a street. The furniture was old, German and heavy, the pictures on the walls were lushly romantic and showed sea views with women in long muslin skirts paddling on the shore. The brocade wallpaper alone would have cost a half-year of a captain, second rank's salary.
In a quick movement, Viktor took two of the RGO fragmentation grenades from his greatcoat pocket, laid them on the tray in the middle of the walnut-veneered table and let them roll in their awkward, lurching pineapple shape as far as the tray's rim would permit. With his second quick movement—too fast for the minder at the door—he held a third grenade in his hand. He pulled out the pin, held the lever tight in his right hand, below his overcoat, then tossed the pin over the carpet and on to Chelbia's lap. The killing radius of the grenade was listed as twenty metres. Inside its casing were ninety grams of A-1X-1 explosive. If his hand released the lever, he would die—as would Chelbia. The pin lay across the fly of Chelbia's trousers.
'It is all I want. I will leave here with that one NSV machine-gun and its ammunition. Please, make whatever arrangements are necessary.'
He thought the man, Chelbia, was a street-fighter and from the gutter, and would have been hardened by time in the gulag camps. There was no flicker of fear on Chelbia's face, and his hands did not fidget. His voice was calm. 'Only that weapon?'
'The machine-gun with the initials IV cut with a knife on the shoulder stock, and the ammunition.'
'And the rest?'
'Not important to me—one day your friend Piatkin will tell you what is important to me.'
'And you have a steady hand?'
'You have to hope my hand is steady.'
The slightest gesture: Chelbia bobbed his head. His eyes were focused beyond Viktor, and the grenade in Viktor's hand, aimed at the minder by the door. The door opened and closed behind him.
'Your conscript's weapon is coming. We should do business, Captain Archenko, mutually profitable business. Whisky, gin, vodka, brandy, will you take a drink—one-handed?'
Viktor said, 'I would like to take two cartons of Camel cigarettes, if that were possible, if you have them.'
He walked across the carpet, bent over the low, soft chair and reached down to Chelbia's trousers. He lifted the pin and, holding the lever down tight, replaced the pin in its socket.
'Would you have done it, Captain Archenko?' Chelbia chuckled. 'Killed yourself and me for a conscript's machine-gun?'
'Can you not, Mr Mowbray, do something about my pension? Is that a big matter to ask? I…' the voice wheedled.
'Just keep your eyes on the road, Jerry, watch the traffic, and look for a parking place.'
For Rupert Mowbray it was a pilgrimage. But the voice bleated at him, 'I have no pension. There are German people, they have pensions, and they were not as useful to you, your colleagues, as I. I do not understand why I have no pension.'
'I think you can get in there.' Mowbray leaned forward in the back seat of the Mercedes, one hand resting on the shoulder of Jerry the Pole's suit jacket, the other pointing expansively to the slot between parked cars on Friedrichstrasse. He had never visited Berlin, before the Wall had come down or afterwards, without travelling as a pilgrim to this place. He was the true believer. The car came awkwardly to a halt.
Jerry the Pole turned to him. 'What I am asking, Mr Mowbray, is to be treated fairly, to be awarded a fair pension.'
'Just wait here, Jerry, just wait with the car.'
He slipped out, shut the door behind him and looked around, Checkpoint Charlie was a place of worship to Mowbray. His eyes raked the new scene and a little curl of disgust played at his mouth. There was a token sangar of sandbags in the centre of the street, a large, hanging colour photograph of an American GI, and a modern museum; scaffolding disguised the facade of the Cafe Adler. Mowbray, on his '69-73 tour in Berlin and on his '78-'82 posting to Bonn, when he'd often come to Berlin, had always preferred Checkpoint Charlie as an inner-city crossing-point for agents, rated it as better than anywhere in the British sector. The Americans of the Agency had been kind to him. He'd sat in the Cafe Adler so many hours with the Agency's Marty, Dwight and Alvin, had sipped coffee, drained beer bottles and waited. He'd waited, and all the time looked out of the café windows and down towards the floodlit empty street in front of the crossing-point. And further down the street, in another café, would have been the opponents, the enemy, with their coffee and their beer. God, it had been a world of certainties, and a place of brave men. He thought of himself as the flag-bearer for those agents coming in the dark to the checkpoint. Old Americans in veterans' caps were having their photographs taken by the sangar, and Japanese tourists were painting the place with their digital video cameras. Sometimes, on the bad nights and far back behind the floodlights, there would be a rasp of brittle gunfire, and sometimes on the worst nights they would see the agent walk to the final check and then the Volkspolizei would pounce. Many nights he had waited in the window seats of the Cafe Adler and had not left until dawn.
He told Jerry the Pole where he wanted to be driven.
'Can I rely on you, Mr Mowbray, to settle for me a pension—not a great sum, but what reflects my value?'
'I'll look into it, Jerry.'
'Times are very hard for me, Mr Mowbray. I have written to London six times…' It was the last stretch of the Wall to have been left by the city's authorities. He saw the street sign: Niederkirchnerstrasse. The Wall was painted with pop-art. Mowbray would have said it had been defaced. The Wall had been so precious to him. He had spent hours each day, each week and each month staring at it as if it had secrets that only constant observation might unlock. The length of this section was around two hundred metres. Well, the bloody authorities didn't want history, did they? History was uncomfortable. History made heroes and cowards. Without the weight of history, an agent could be abandoned, surplus to bloody requirements. Behind the wall, hidden from him as he sat upright on the back seat of the Mercedes, was the bombsite of what had been the Gestapo headquarters, and on the raised pile of rubble, where the offices and the torture chambers and the holding cells had
been, was the old viewing platform where Rupert Mowbray had stood with binoculars. On the platform he had believed he communed with the agents he ran on the far side of the Wall. It was the least he could do, because he could not walk with them where they were, separated from his protection by the guards, automatic guns, dogs and mines. He had been obligated to stand there, as if that way he could share their danger. That day the danger lay as a shadow on Viktor Archenko.
They were at the last stop of his pilgrimage. He would have liked to bring flowers but that would have been ostentatious. He walked from the Mercedes through the wide entrance and into a wide cobbled courtyard. Around it were the windows of what had been, more than a half-century before, the war ministry of the Third Reich, its pulse point. In the exact centre of the courtyard was a statue in bronze, two metres high, of a naked man, commemorating the life and death of Count Klaus von Stauffenberg, who had laid the bomb in the briefing room of the Wolf's Lair. A plaque marked where he had stood and faced his firing squad. The man had given his life. Mowbray thought him noble and bowed his head in reverence in front of the statue. Nobody watched him. Germans rarely came here. A traitor confused the ignorant. Nothing, they parroted, was owed to a traitor. They were bloody wrong: Viktor Archenko was a traitor.
He walked out of the courtyard.
'I am very glad, Mr Mowbray, that you will look into the matter of my pension.'
'I think it better that we let the matter rest, Jerry.'
'Because with the winter coming, and the cold—you know the cold of a Berlin winter, Mr Mowbray—and the influenza and bronchitis, it is important to have heating. To heat myself I must have a pension…'
'As I've said, I'll see what I can do.'
'Heh, Mr Mowbray, you chose old Jerry the Pole for an operation that you say is "bigger than the biggest". I have that importance. Surely I am worth money each month, a pension?'
'Depend on me, Jerry.'
They called at the embassy. The building was heavily guarded by troops of the Bundesgrenzschutz, who carried machine-guns and peered officiously at the passenger from the Mercedes. Mowbray saw Daphne Sullivan, who relayed to him that his people had arrived safely in Gdansk and gave him the position of the Princess Rose. He dictated a short, bland, confident progress report for transmission to London. Dusk fell on the city.
Six and a half hours' driving time, Jerry the Pole said. The Mercedes was at least ten years old and it had in excess of two hundred thousand kilometres on the clock, but it was warm and comfortable, and he would doze in the back. And if he slept he would not have to listen to the wretch's drip-moan about his bloody pension. By the time Mowbray reached his bed he would be, fancifully, within spitting distance of Kaliningrad.
If he were not too late. For what he had done, he would be consigned to hell if he were too late.
The master had the charts of the approach spread out. He watched his instruments closely to be certain that the course he took bisected the areas marked on the chart as dumping grounds for explosives (disused) and minefields (cleared). Andreas Yaxis did not trust the Polish navy, under Communism or democracy, to have made safe the charted positions of mines or explosives dumps. When he was within a sea mile of the rocking light buoy at the head of the inshore traffic zone, he relaxed. He cleared away the chart, ordered the engine room to cut power, and felt the throb of the Princess Rose die, as if sleep took it. He strained to see through his binoculars, and was rewarded. The pilot's cutter powered towards him, and in the distance were the lights of Gdansk.
Viktor elbowed open the door to the darkened dormitory. The weight crushed him. He sagged against the wall, wriggled his back until he felt the light switch, and the dormitory flooded with light. He staggered down the aisle between the beds. White, staring faces watched him. The audience were upright, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Viktor looked for the conscript's bed. At the bed, Vasiliev's, he dumped it. The machine-gun dropped to the floor, and the clap of noise reverberated through the dormitory. He straightened, arched, then peeled the belts of 12.7mm ammunition off his shoulders and let them fall, clanging, on to the concrete. In Vasiliev's face, he saw disbelief turn to gratitude. He gasped, then pointed down to the machine-gun's stock where the light caught the carved initials.
He said, 'Set it up. Load it.'
Wearing only a tatty singlet and pants, Vasiliev crawled off the bed, then crouched beside the weapon. With sure hands he extended the tripod's legs, locked them. He worked open the breech and used the singlet's hem to wipe the chamber. No one spoke. The clatter of the movements destroyed the silence. He loaded a belt, lowered the breech flap on to the bullets and looked up. He would have seen a trace of madness on Viktor's face. Above where Viktor stood was the single light that lit the dormitory, with a Bakelite shade over it.
Viktor pointed to the light, and ordered, 'Shoot it out.'
The safety lever rattled. Vasiliev squatted behind the weapon, then elevated the barrel aim, fired. The dormitory crashed into darkness and the fumes of the shots stank in the air. Viktor could no longer see the faces that had watched him. He imagined them pressed against their pillows, holding their hands over their ears.
He shouted, 'Now, go back to sleep.'
The last sound they would have heard of him was the beat of his feet as he strode towards the door. He threw it open, slammed it shut after him, and walked away into the night. It had been an insanity, but for a few minutes it had displaced the nightmare. He went towards his quarters, the insanity was blown out, and the nightmare once again settled on him.
A broad smile dragged across Yuri Bikov's mouth.
Before leaving his mother, his father had said that the teenaged Yuri did not smile enough. His wife had not contradicted him. A smile came rarely to him and was not to be witnessed. But in the dark he could smile.
When Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko had emerged from the gates, shown out by two thugs, his features had been hidden by the breech mounting of a heavy machine-gun. Bikov had not been able to see his prey's face. At the barracks, in darkness, Bikov had told the driver, his sergeant, to hold back as Archenko had laboured into the barracks building under the weight of the machine-gun. He had sensed that the man was bowed by the burden of his position and that the machine-gun was the focal point of a throw for self esteem. The gesture had been glorious. The roof of the building had exploded in gunfire, and then Archenko had emerged.
It was a strong face, it had purpose. Archenko could not have seen him. Bikov was back against a stores building; his sergeant stood in front of him and his major was beside him. He was hidden from Archenko, but he saw the resolution in the face. There were bears in the Gorno-Altaysk region that were tracked and hunted by marksmen who went deep into the mountains and forests after them. A hunter had told him that the best of the bears, as the marksman came close but was still hidden, seemed to sense the danger and would always turn to face it, even when they could not see it. Big animals, and proud, worthy quarries for a hunter. There was a light high above Archenko. Archenko seemed to face him. There was, Bikov thanked Archenko, stubborn, obstinate defiance. He could not ask for more.
Then the shadow was on Archenko's face and his body seemed to wilt. Archenko missed a step, tripped, lurched, then regained his stride. Bikov knew it went hard on him. The surveillance tightened, the pressure built. The matter of the machine-gun was to relieve the pressure, but there was no escape. Behind him the watchers kept company with him, from corner to corner, doorway to doorway, shadow to shadow.
No file, however detailed, could tell Yuri Bikov more than the shortened glimpse of a man's face. It was a good face. He gulped the air, scented by the sea, and felt the excitement.
Locke wanted to talk, Mowbray didn't.
Jerry the Pole had been waved away, sent to find a seaman's lodging-house, somewhere down by the Solidarity docks. The car stayed at the Excelsior Hotel.
The night lay heavy on Gdansk.
Locke wanted to talk about the reconnaissance b
y the team but Mowbray refused, left him in the bar, took his key and his bag, and climbed the stairs heavily. It was rare for him to feel his age, but he did that night. One more call…the most important of his day.
He knocked on the door, said his name, and heard the feet padding to it. The door was unlocked, then the chain was loosed.
She wore a simple cotton nightdress, white, with little flower patterns on it, and a wool dressing-gown lay around her shoulders. He saw the amber pendant at her throat.
'Forgive me, I just wanted to see you were all right.'
'I'm all right.'
'The room—did they offer it you? If I am not impertinent, did you ask for it?'
'It's the room they gave me. Don't worry, Rupert, that's all right.'
'Goodnight, Alice.'
'Goodnight.'
The room was as he remembered it: same curtains, same furniture, same bed as had been in it the first time he had come to Gdansk with Alice North. The first time they had come to Gdansk to meet face to face with the agent, codenamed Ferret, she had been given that room. The door closed on him and he heard the lock turn, the safety chain engage. He felt old and tired, weary…and the guilt sapped him.
In the calm waters of the dredged harbour channel, the master slept and the dog snored at the foot of his bunk. There was no need for Andreas Yaxis to be on the bridge. The pilot brought the Princess Rose to her berth by the fertilizer factory and loading beltways. Only when the engine had cut did he rise from his bunk, smooth the blankets, punch the pillow, then shrug into his jacket and slip on his boots. He climbed the steps to the bridge and thanked the pilot formally. When the pilot had gone, and ropes secured them to the quay, he began to prepare the master's declaration, the cargo manifest and the crew declaration for the Gdansk Customs men. It had been a good voyage and the engine had performed well. Over the internal telephone he thanked the engineer for his efforts. But it would not be difficult, if that were necessary, for the engineer with his skills to create 'difficulties' below. He expected Rupert Mowbray to come aboard in the morning.
Gerald Seymour Page 18
