‘I wouldn’t say good, but yes, I’ve read the files.’
‘As soon as I’ve nailed down Harper’s location I’ll send you over,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘He’s moving around a bit at the moment but it’ll be Germany, almost certainly Berlin.’
‘And how do I explain it to Charlie?’
‘You don’t have to,’ said Willoughby-Brown. ‘She’s under observation twenty-four seven and I know what she’s doing even before she does. When I’m ready to send you over, she’ll find herself very busy. She’ll have no idea that you’re out of the country. And if she does get in touch, I’m sure you’ll think of something to say. You’ve made a career out of telling lies, haven’t you?’
‘Go fuck yourself, Jeremy.’
‘There’s no need to be like that, Danny boy. This is all for the greater good.’
Shepherd hung up and tossed the phone away.
Harper drove his motorbike to Berlin and booked into the Hotel Adlon. It was on the Unter den Linden Boulevard, facing the Brandenburg Gate. It was discreet, opulent and eye-wateringly expensive. He helped himself to a bottle of champagne from the minibar before showering. He went out and used the credit card to buy himself a new wardrobe including a black Hugo Boss suit and dress shoes, jeans and an Armani leather jacket, mindful that Button had said that money wouldn’t be an issue.
Zelda came to see him early in the afternoon and they sat in the lobby and drank tea from delicate porcelain cups and nibbled freshly made finger sandwiches.
‘My clients want to see one of your Katyushas before they’ll go ahead and complete the deal,’ Harper told Zelda. ‘Do you have somewhere secure where that would be possible?’
‘I know just the place and it’s not far from where the Katyushas are being stored. We can use the old Soviet airfield at Finsterwalde. It’s about an hour and a half’s drive south of Berlin.’
‘Is it safe and secure?’
‘No one goes there; virtually no one has gone there since the Berlin Wall came down. After the reunification of Germany, the West German government has spent billions wiping out every trace of the Russian presence in the cities of the former DDR, but in the rural areas they’ve done little or nothing to remove them.’
‘And the local people?’
‘They have a schizophrenic attitude to the past. They prefer to pretend it never existed and the remaining Soviet installations and buildings are not only unused by them but avoided as well. I can drive you there this afternoon, if you want.’
‘Perfect,’ Harper said. ‘And do you have someone who can show them how the weapon works?’
She nodded. ‘I know a technician who was part of the crew who worked on them and fired them, though only on the ranges, never in action.’ She sounded almost wistful as she said it.
After they had finished their tea and sandwiches, they went outside and climbed into Zelda’s car, a brand new white Audi R8 Coupé, and drove south through grey, sleety drizzle.
Finsterwalde was a few miles from Cottbus in the south east of the former DDR, but as they approached the airfield, Harper saw a newly restored art deco control tower and a light aircraft taking off from the runway. ‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘I thought you said this place was abandoned.’
‘It is,’ Zelda said. ‘They reopened it with a shortened runway about fifteen years ago and rebuilt the control tower, and a few civilian planes use it, but that’s not the part we’re going to. The rest of the Soviet airfield, including all the hardened aircraft shelters and the underground hardened munitions bunker where the nuclear weapons were stored, has been abandoned and fenced off ever since the Soviets left in 1992. That was a sad day,’ she added, her eyes misting over at the thought.
‘For you, Zelda, maybe. For the rest of the world it was a good excuse for a party.’ Another thought struck him. ‘The nukes aren’t still there, are they?’
Zelda gave a derisive laugh. ‘Of course not, even the West German government was not dumb enough to leave them untouched. More’s the pity.’ She turned off the autobahn, drove a couple of miles along a minor road and then turned off on to a grassy, overgrown track and bounced and jolted away across a field and through a small wood. She came to a halt at a rusting, padlocked gate bearing a death’s head sign and the caption ACHTUNG MINEN.
‘And the mines?’ Harper said.
Zelda gave an airy wave of her hand. ‘There may still be some, but not on the paths we shall use.’
Harper tried to look reassured. They climbed over the gate, pushed their way along a bramble-clogged pathway and into dense birch woodland. She paused as they emerged into the open, gesturing to her right towards a strange-looking construction: three pairs of tall concrete columns, perhaps thirty feet high, supporting a flimsy corrugated roof. Beyond them was a massive concrete structure like a truncated pyramid. The face of it was painted in fading camouflage with newer graffiti tags spray-painted on it, and the top was covered by an earthen mound from which trees were now sprouting. In the centre of the concrete facade were two massive steel doors, at least eight inches thick, one of which hung open. A few feet inside, just visible in the gloom, was another set of double doors.
‘This was the nuclear bunker,’ Zelda said, ‘where the weapons and missiles were stored. It was built to withstand even a direct hit by one of your nuclear weapons.’
‘Sure, you keep believing that. And it’s just left open for any kids to wander into?’ Harper said, pointing towards the graffiti.
She shrugged. ‘Like I said, it’s been abandoned for over twenty years.’
‘It’ll take a hell of a lot more than twenty years for the radioactivity from those nukes to decay. You can’t really be thinking of holding the demonstration here?’
‘Of course not,’ she said, guiding him on along an overgrown concrete track leading away from the bunker. The track, its concrete surface cracked and pitted, and so strewn with weeds, fallen branches and debris that it was now barely distinguishable from the forest floor that surrounded it, split and split again, each branch ending in a concrete pan and a Soviet hardened aircraft shelter, still standing and apparently little altered by the passing decades. The super-strong reinforced concrete structures had been designed to withstand a direct hit by a 500-pound bomb or a near miss by a 1,000-pounder; everything, in fact, short of a nuclear blast. Modern precision-guided missiles would have obliterated them, but since the Cold War had never turned hot, their defences had never been tested in war and the Hardened Aircraft Shelters and most of the surrounding infrastructure of crew quarters and equipment and weapons stores was still in place. As Harper looked around him he had the feeling that the military airfield was merely in suspended animation, only waiting for the return of the squadrons of Russian Migs in order to spring back into life once more. He shivered; it was a place of ghosts and bad memories, but it would suit his purpose well enough to overcome those superstitious feelings.
Zelda was studying him thoughtfully. ‘You feel it too? Here the past seems very close at hand, ja?’
He nodded. ‘But only one of us thinks that’s a good thing.’
‘But, just the same, it is perfect for what we need for your clients?’
‘I think so, yes. I’ll have my surveillance team check it over, and then we should be good to go. Is Thursday too soon for you? The day after tomorrow.’
Zelda grinned. ‘I don’t see why not.’
Billy Big, Billy Whisper and Maggie May spent most of Wednesday exploring the Finsterwalde base and keeping it, and particularly the hardened aircraft shelter where the demonstration was to take place, under observation. Apart from a couple of kids hurling stones against the steel doors of the nuclear bunker, there was no sign of anyone, suspicious or otherwise, and they reported back to Harper that it was safe for him to go ahead.
Harper phoned O’Brien’s hotel shortly after six. ‘We’re on for Thursday,’ he said. ‘You’ll be picked up at your hotel after breakfast. Make sure you have the cash with you.’
> ‘No problem,’ agreed O’Brien.
The two Billys picked up O’Brien and Walsh at their hotel in a rented Mercedes G-class SUV. The men climbed into the back of the vehicle. Walsh was carrying a briefcase, though this time it wasn’t chained to his wrist.
‘Mr Müller said we are to check the money,’ said Billy Whisper.
‘What?’ said O’Brien.
Billy Whisper repeated what he’d said but his voice was so quiet that neither man could make out what he’d said.
Billy Big twisted around in the driving seat. ‘We need to see the money,’ he said.
Walsh held up the briefcase. ‘It’s all here.’
‘We need to see it,’ said Billy Big. ‘Mr Müller insists.’
Walsh put the briefcase on his lap and clicked open the two locks. He lifted the lid and held up a bundle of €500 notes.
‘Fifty thousand euros,’ said Walsh.
‘Doesn’t look much,’ said Billy Whisper.
‘Yeah, well fifty grand is only a hundred notes,’ said O’Brien. ‘That’s why the euro is the criminal’s currency of choice.’ He laughed at his own joke as Walsh put the money back in the case and clicked it shut.
They drove in silence to the old airfield where Harper was waiting with Zelda. Billy Whisper climbed out of the front passenger seat and Harper took his place. O’Brien and Walsh flashed Zelda inquisitive glances but Harper didn’t introduce her. Then O’Brien noticed the shady-looking, badly dressed men wearing cheap sunglasses who were staking out the area.
‘Who the feck are they?’ growled O’Brien.
‘Ex-Stasi,’ said Harper. ‘Security.’
‘This better not be a set-up,’ said O’Brien.
‘Why would I be setting you up, Declan? I make my money by selling you the gear, not by stealing fifty grand off you. Speaking of which …’ He held out his hand. Walsh opened the briefcase and handed the money to Harper. He flicked the notes with his thumb, then nodded. ‘Let’s rock and roll,’ he said, slipping the money into his jacket.
Billy Whisper and Zelda got into her Audi and they followed the SUV down a rough track and through a metal gate that stood open, its padlock having been severed by the bolt cutters that one of Zelda’s men was holding.
Harper turned to face the two men in the back. ‘You’re getting the executive treatment today, normally we would have to walk.’
Zelda drove on across the weed-strewn wasteland of crumbling concrete, past the massive nuclear bunker and along the track to one of the hardened aircraft shelters. Four more of her ex-Stasi cronies were standing around the HAS, once more in near-identical dark suits and dark glasses.
The steel doors of the HAS were shut, but as Zelda pulled up in front of it, they were slid open a couple of feet with a deafening squeal of protesting metal that set the birds perched in the trees to flight. While Harper made for the HAS, studiously ignoring the Stasi goons, O’Brien and Walsh climbed out of the back seat and looked around.
Walsh left the briefcase on the back seat. He suppressed a shiver as he stared at the thick, damp-stained concrete walls. ‘And what the heck is this place?’
‘An ex-Soviet airbase,’ Harper said, pausing in the entrance. ‘We won’t be disturbed here.’
Zelda led the way into the building and as soon as they were inside, two of her ex-Stasi henchmen slid the heavy steel doors shut again. The clang as they met made Walsh jump. A generator stood at the far end, its engine running, powering the lights that illuminated what the men had come to see. Covered by an old camouflaged tarpaulin, the Katyusha rocket was spaced across three folding tables that had been erected in the middle of the empty shelter. Behind the table, dressed in an immaculate white lab coat, and presiding over his apparatus like a stage magician preparing for a show, stood a stoop-shouldered, wispy-haired, middle-aged man, who Harper assumed was the weapons technician.
The atmosphere inside the shelter could scarcely have been more tense. Harper was confident that his surveillance team would give him ample warning on his phone if any danger threatened, but Walsh and O’Brien, shut off from sight and sound of the outside world, sealed in the tomb-like concrete bunker, looked increasingly nervous. Walsh directed baleful looks at Harper and at the two ex-Stasi men at the doors, who returned the glares with interest, hitching up the supposedly concealed weapons they had stuffed in their waistbands.
‘Let’s all relax, shall we?’ Harper said. ‘We’re here to do business. Zelda? Can we get the show on the road?’
She nodded to the technician who, after a theatrical pause, dramatically flung back the tarpaulin cover that had been concealing the weapon. The malevolent-looking cylindrical rocket, still with its Soviet markings in Cyrillic script, was about fifteen feet long, with four large and four smaller fins interrupting the sleek lines of its gunmetal-grey casing, which culminated in a needle-sharp point. At the back of the rocket was the booster, shaped like a large calor gas cylinder with a broad conical exhaust jutting from it. There were two other items on the tables: a large heavy-duty vehicle battery and a box with switches and illuminated dials, and wires connecting it to the rocket.
The technician waited while O’Brien and Walsh walked right around the rocket examining it minutely. Walsh steeled himself to touch it gingerly with his fingertips, as if frightened that a mere touch would be enough to detonate it. As they stepped back, Zelda gave another nod and the technician connected the control box to the battery. As soon as he did so, the lights on the control panel began to blink and flash, and the rocket started to make a bleeping sound. It increased rapidly in volume, going from the bleep to a high-pitched whine that set Harper’s teeth on edge. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he said, pressing his fingers into his ears. ‘Every dog for twenty miles must be howling by now.’ The noise still kept increasing, finally peaking in an ear-piercing, teeth-rattling, banshee wail. Inside the bunker, with the sound reverberating from the closed steel blast doors and the concrete walls and roof that were several feet thick, the noise was almost unbearable.
Yelling to make himself heard above the din, the technician told them in heavily accented English that the rocket had already gone through its various self-analysis systems and was now ready to fire. He gestured towards the control box. ‘If I was now to press this red firing button,’ he said, moving his finger towards it, ‘the propellant in the body of the rocket would ignite and after flying for thirty metres the warhead would become live. In fact, if I were to press this button now we would all be dead before we could blink.’
Nervous even before the demonstration had begun, deranged by the appalling noise and terrified by the thought that the rocket might explode, Walsh was now close to total meltdown. He began screaming at the technician to turn it off, then sprinted for the steel doors and began scrabbling at the locks with his hands, trying desperately to get out of the shelter. The ex-Stasi men looked to Zelda for guidance and then took his arms and pinned them to his sides to stop him opening the doors, which only increased his panic and frenzy, and it was all they could do to hold on to him. Even O’Brien was white-faced, with sweat breaking out on his brow.
Harper had heard and seen enough and shouted to the technician to shut the rocket down. The technician hesitated, first looking towards Zelda for her approval. With a faint smile on her face, apparently impervious to the dreadful howling noise of the rocket, she was watching Walsh, who was still trying to wrestle free of the ex-Stasi men and drag the steel doors open, and did not at first see the technician’s mute appeal for her assent.
Harper shouted at him again. ‘Shut it down now!’
The technician flicked a couple of switches on the control box, shutting down the power. The bowel-loosening howling noise wound its way back down through the octaves and finally ceased altogether. The sudden silence was almost as shocking as the terrifying noise that had preceded it.
Walsh regained his composure and shook off the two men holding his arms.
‘So, you can see that it works,’ sa
id Harper. ‘Time for you to pay the piper and we’ll talk about delivery.’
O’Brien shook his head. ‘All we’ve seen and heard so far is something that looks like a rocket and makes a loud whining noise,’ he said. ‘We need to see the thing fired. We have to know that they function. I’ll look a right prick if I ship them over to Ireland and we find out they don’t work.’
Harper thought fast. ‘We’re not test firing pistols here. These are very valuable and expensive items of equipment and I’m not in the habit of firing one just for the entertainment of my clients. Besides, even out here it’s likely to attract attention. These are not pop-guns. When a Katyusha rocket detonates, the explosion can be heard several miles away and it will bring police and army buzzing around us thicker than flies on a corpse.’
‘It’s a deal-breaker,’ said O’Brien. He looked over at Walsh and Walsh nodded in agreement.
Harper took Zelda to one side. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘You’re right, we can’t do a live firing here,’ she said. ‘But there may be a solution. The Bundeswehr – the German army – inherited a very large number of Katyushas left over from when the NVA – the old East German regime’s Nationale Volksarmee – was disbanded. As I’m sure you know, all weapons have a certain shelf life and, as with all other military equipment, they have to stage regular test firings to reassure themselves about the weapons’ continued viability. I’m sure it will be possible for us to view one of these firings. Let me see when the next one is.’
‘You can get us in?’
‘I’ve got good army contacts.’ She nodded at the two men. ‘Think that’ll be good enough for them?’
‘It’ll have to be,’ he said. He went over to O’Brien and Walsh. ‘I can get you into a test firing. But it’ll take time. And money.’
‘We’ll wait,’ said O’Brien.
‘Here? Or in Dublin?’
Walsh and O’Brien looked at each other. ‘We can stay tonight, but if it looks as if it’s going to be more than a few days we’ll head back to Dublin,’ said Walsh.
Black Ops: The 12th Spider Shepherd Thriller Page 21
