by Rob Aspinall
“Of course,” said Nathan. “As you can see, we’ve brought Mr Mobutu with us. Now all we’re missing is the good Dr Belinsky.”
One of Nikolai’s men opened the door to an SUV and hauled a tired man in his sixties out of the back seat. He looked like a university professor abducted mid-lecture, a grey tweed suit with patches and a blue shirt messily untucked. Belinsky was marched forward by the arm as Clarence pushed Mobutu towards the front of the exchange. General Yurkovich held up a hand and the exchange stopped, the two prizes standing across from one another, cuffed in the same brand of white plastic wrist ties.
Yurkovich whispered something to Nikolai.
“The general would like to negotiate the terms of the deal,” Nikolai said.
“The deal is very clear,” Nathan said, smiling through it. “We deliver General Mobutu. You give us Dr Belinsky in return.”
“That’s the deal. Now we negotiate details,” said Yurkovich.
“And what would you like, exactly?” Nathan asked.
Yurkovich conferred with Nikolai.
“As much as the general appreciates the opportunity to talk personally with General Mobutu,” said Nikolai, “he would like to agree a fee on top. Say, two million dollars, with my organisation taking its usual cut.”
“See?” said Mobutu. “This is why I did not pay them for their last shipment. They increase the rate every time. Weapons. Missiles. Helicopters. Everything! They are nothing but thieves and murderers!”
“You steal from us and then you call us thieves?” said Yurkovich, voice rising, nostrils flaring. “You kill women and children in their thousands and call us murderers?”
“Please, please, gentlemen,” Nathan said. “General Yurkovich, I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement that doesn’t involve the very painful death of your wives and children. Nikolai, can you convey that to the general in a way he’ll understand?”
I took a step forward. So, too, did Inge. The henchmen at the back tensed up, hands ready to reach inside those big coats. Nikolai eyed the pair of us. He turned to his men and held out a calming hand, before gibbering away under his breath with Yurkovich. The pair nodded in agreement.
“General Yurkovich will accept the existing terms,” Nikolai said.
Nathan clapped and rubbed his hands together. “Marvellous.”
Mobutu was shoved kicking and screaming into the back of one of the SUVs by the henchmen. Dr Belinsky was handed over to us without a word of protest. The SUVs spun around and sped off out of sight.
“Well, that was unpleasant,” Nathan said, checking his watch. “Let’s go home, shall we? It’s my youngest’s birthday in twelve hours. We’ve hired a clown.”
Dr Belinsky shook off Inge’s grip, outraged. “Who are you people? Where are you taking me?”
He suddenly seemed chattier now the Russian mafia had gone. As the turbines revved up, Nathan put an arm around Dr Belinsky and steered him around the back of the plane. “Don’t worry, Doctor. We’re not here to harm you. You’re very important to us.”
“You’re kidnapping me from Russia?” Belinsky said. “I have a life here.”
“Oh, it’s not forever,” Nathan said. “You’re going to be treated very well from now on. Much better than in the Russian military. You’ll have everything you need. No expense spared.”
Nathan walked a bewildered Belinsky up the ramp, with me, Clarence and Inge in tow.
“Our bioweapons team are incredibly excited to work with you,” Nathan said. “I hear your expertise is unparalleled.”
30
Ghosts Of Berlin
I hit street level again but took a left when I should have gone right towards the Brandenburg Gate area. After wandering around in a circle through some identikit residential streets, I broke out into a clearing that took me by surprise. It was a huge, eerie space free of any buildings, sloping down towards a swathe of dense parkland. Thousands of big, dark-grey concrete blocks sat at different depths and angles. I couldn’t work out if it looked like a huge cemetery full of nameless tombstones, or something alien out of a sci-fi film. My phone told me it was the Field of Stelae, a memorial to the Jewish lives lost during the Holocaust. I set off through the blocks, each no more than waist-high. I saw a few people here and there, roaming, sitting, taking it in. Yet, as I descended further below street level, the blocks rose higher and the sunlight disappeared. There were no tourists in sight. Only voices. Like ghosts.
Space between the blocks was tight and, no matter where I turned, there was just stelae after stelae. Maybe that was the purpose. To feel lost, alone, devoid of hope, with no light at the end. It made me wonder how this so-called Joint Peace Alliance Committee – an organisation started to stop dark forces like the Nazis – could transform into the same kind of evil. Learning about the Holocaust in school, I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t paid much attention. Half the time, I’d been too tired due to the bad flap in my old heart. But here, in the memorial, I got it. Rocked by the emotional punch of all those deaths. All that waste of life. And I used to think I’d had a rough ride. I was lottery-winner lucky.
I stopped between two of the highest stelae. I put a palm flat against one of the blocks and felt overcome by sadness. I closed my eyes and thought I heard a voice. The girl I’d shot in my dream, who’d spoken to me in Giles’s bathroom. She said my name. Nothing more than a faint whisper. I sensed another presence. Auntie Claire. She whispered my name too. I felt them either side of me. I saw them in my mind, standing pale and blue and bleeding. The young girl in a night dress. Auntie Claire in her blood-speckled blouse. The hairs on my neck bristling. I didn’t want to open my eyes and see them there. But I forced myself to. As soon as I did … snap … they were gone. I looked right. I looked left. No signs of anyone. The voices, they were just tourists wandering around. I took my hand from the block, pulled my shit together and moved on.
I eventually found my way out of the blocks, the daylight seeming all the brighter for it. Lost hope rediscovered. I skirted back around the memorial to the main road. The walk had turned into a two-hour yomp and I was starting to tire. I bought a bottle of water off a street vendor and sunk some more pills. I looked up a few places to stay and picked out a hostel nearby. I’d have preferred a plush hotel, but IF I survived the next day, I’d need all the cash I had to get out of shitsville and on to the next location on the list.
Rather than check out the Brandenburg Gate, I checked into the hostel; according to the review, just a short walk around the corner from the Reichstag building. Calling it basic was like calling a homeless person under-housed. My room was tantamount to a short corridor with a threadbare blue carpet, a stained white wall on one side and a pair of flimsy metal bunk beds shoved up against the other. The young skater-boy type who showed me the room asked me if I liked being on top. He flicked back his long green fringe with a smirk as he said it.
“Dunno. Do you like having your testicles pulled off?” I asked, fixing him with a mean stare.
He sloped apologetically out of the room.
I took my rucksack off and swung it onto the top bunk he’d pointed at. I climbed the ladder and flopped onto my back, staring at the cracked ceiling, close enough to head-butt. I scooted off the bed and took a look out of the tiny window, framed by a pair of gaudy yellow and orange tartan curtains. Yep, you read that right. Yellow and orange tartan. Lovely.
Outside the window was a brick wall and, um, no. Just a brick wall. I checked my watch. It was gone five already. I decided to find something to eat and then hit the hay early. I strapped my rucksack back on and headed downstairs. I found a nearby Subway and chomped through a veggie foot-long with double cheddar.
I know what you’re thinking. Lorna, you fat biffer. Yeah, well I needed to keep my energy levels up. Evading JPAC agents was a real calorie burner. It drained you mentally and physically.
Around six, I headed back to the room, which was still empty. Maybe I’d got lucky and bagged a whole room to myself, I thoug
ht, as I tried to get comfy on the wafer-thin springy mattress. With the cheese sleeps kicking in, I was out faster than the buzzing tube light that lit the room.
31
Bunkmates
Ja. Squeak. Ja. Squeak. Oh ja. Squeak. Squeak. Oh ja. Squeakity-squeak. Oh mein Gott, ja!
Oh. Mein. Gott. No.
There were people under my bed. Having sex.
I must have slept through the foreplay, because I woke up smack in the middle, the room warm as a sauna, honking of stale booze and sweat and fresh out of the oven farts, the springs straining as they tried to make a sex dent in the bed beneath my bunk. They did know I was here, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, didn’t they?
The way I saw it, there were two possible scenarios.
Scenario A: they knew full well I was there, but were doing the nasty anyway – the shameless, thoughtless freakshows.
Scenario B: they’d stumbled in the darkened room in a drunken, clothing-ripping frenzy and hadn’t noticed the girl-shaped lump above, or the rucksack on the chair near the window. In which case, was it my duty to raise the alarm?
All of a sudden, I felt like the guilty one. Some perv listening in on their squeaky, squelchy love sesh. This was like when you woke up in the middle of the night and needed to pee. You’re desperate to go, but the thought of climbing out of bed is too much to bear. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. I’d never stayed in a hostel before. I didn’t know the drill. Maybe this was the norm. Two people noodling away. One unlucky sod lying there taking it. I cleared my throat, thinking that would say everything while saying nothing.
Suddenly, the squeaking and the moaning stopped.
Ah yes. They got the message. Night-night, all.
A few minutes later, they started again.
Ja, ja, ja … Mein Gott, ja …
No! No! Fucking hell, no!
I put my brick of a pillow over my face. It smelled of cheap hair gel. Why on the nights you must absolutely, without fail, get a good sleep did something always spoil the party? Either because insomnia hits, or a car alarm goes off, or the neighbour plays dance music at three in the morning … it always happened. I tried the throat clearing again. Louder this time. Louder still. Neither enough to stop the love train. I sighed to myself and leaned over the edge of the bed. I saw clothing strewn all over. Socks. Tops. Jeans. Leggings.
“Um, excuse me,” I said in their native tongue.
The guy on top was young and wiry, a mop of curly hair and a spotty back.
“Yeah, what?” asked the girl, over his bony shoulder, vaguely narked.
“I don’t want to be the fun police, but could you stop that?”
“Stop what?” the guy asked.
“That,” I said, pointing down at their naked bods.
“Uh, no,” the guy said, re-commencing Project Sex Dent.
“Listen, I need to get some sleep.”
“So get some,” said the girl.
I gave up and thumped the back of my head into my pillow and waited for them to stop. And waited. And waited … After another fifteen minutes, they did. They took turns in padding off down the corridor to the loo, light shafting in and the bedroom door left to slam shut EVERY time. Finally, they settled down.
That’s it, I thought. 3.37 a.m. I can finally catch some Zs.
I let my eyelids fall and settled into a nice, relaxing … Suddenly, there was an almighty rumble from the bunk below. The noise from hell. Like someone hocking up a huge ball of phlegm ready to spit. It was the guy. He was snoring louder than a ship’s horn, the entire bunk vibrating. I thought the girl might give him a nudge, but instead she chimed in with her own whistle-pitch version. They were some kind of snoring tag team. When he wasn’t rumbling away like a volcano, she was rasping in and out like a bunged-up field mouse. Somehow, by some quirk of fate, the universe had thrown together the two most annoying people on the planet, both infuriating in the exact same way. I flipped over onto my front and screamed into my hair gel pillow. Maybe I’d get lucky and suffocate.
My alarm went off the next morning at 7.30. I felt surprisingly refreshed and ready for my mission. I didn’t waste any time in whipping off the cover and climbing down the ladder. I grabbed my stuff and headed to the showers, stealing one of the girl’s towels she’d left on top of her wheelie case.
A quick sniff. Yeah, it was clean. I’d take pleasure in using it first.
No one was up at this time, so I had the bathroom to myself. Plenty of space to shower, change and do my hair and makeup. There was a hairdryer and a half-decent pair of straighteners too.
I came back into the room and draped the towel over the end of the bunk, packed my rucksack and slipped my cap on over my hair. I squatted low next to the bottom bunk and regarded my roommates. The girl: hands and feet tied to the top end of the bed with two sets of tights picked out of her suitcase, her mouth gagged by a pair of socks and a pair of her own knickers stretched around a bunk bed pole so she couldn’t move her head. The guy: tied up with his girlfriend’s leggings around his wrists and his own spray-on jeans around his ankles. Again, a sock in his mouth. Same deal as the girl but using his own undies. Thanks to my new heart, I knew just how to tie them up so they couldn’t move, or scream. They stared at me, shattered, naked and terrified. Probably in agony, bless them.
“Okay, I’m going to remove the socks now,” I said. “And then I’m going to free up your necks, so you can use your teeth to undo the knots around your wrists.”
I hesitated before removing the sock from the girl’s mouth. “But whatever you do, don’t scream. Or I’ll have to kill both of you. Then I’ll probably have to cut you up somehow, so I can fit your body parts into your suitcases. Understand?”
The pair of them couldn’t nod in reply, but their eyes told me they agreed. I loosened the girl’s knickers from around the pole and took the sock out of her mouth. She gagged for air and swallowed on her own spit, but didn’t make a peep otherwise. I did the same with the guy and stood up over them.
“Um, it’s probably best if you don’t tell anyone about this, otherwise …” I ran a thumb across my throat. “Berlin is a small place. And there are only so many hostels, ja?”
I got a couple of eager nods.
“Right, well it was lovely meeting you,” I said, grabbing my rucksack. “I feel like we really bonded.”
“Auf Wiedersehen!” I chirped on my way out of the door.
Once I got downstairs, I stashed my rucksack in one of the yellow lockers in the reception area. I’d had the good sense to spend some of Philippe’s cash on a flesh-coloured money belt that I could wrap around my waist and store credit card, passport and cash inside. It meant I could travel lighter. And run faster if things got hairy, which they inevitably did when JPAC were in town. I pushed out through the glass hostel door and into the morning air, ready for whatever the day would throw at me. Maybe I’d been a bit harsh on my bunkmates. Maybe it was Philippe’s mind-worm burrowing deeper into my psyche. Frankly, who cared? It was revenge, dammit. A guilt-free sugary snack for the soul. It was supposed to taste sweet.
32
Back In Uniform
The Reichstag building. You might have seen it. If not, give it a quick Google. It was an old-looking place with huge stone pillars at the entrance and an über-mod glass dome on the top.
It was a humid, overcast day. I got there for opening time. Who knew when JPAC would strike? They didn’t seem like the types to lie in, so I thought it was best to get there early. I got in line to enter the building, nervous but holding it together. I seemed to remember one long, boring Wednesday afternoon in history when the teacher told us the country’s parliament met there. So it came as no surprise that security was tighter than a mosquito’s chuff. Grumpy-looking armed guards hung around by a metal detector, with friendlier customer-service reps standing just ahead of them. A small party of politicians breezed on through in sober suits while the rest of us shuffled forward in a lazy line, most people holding ema
il printouts and passports ready. I began to worry – I had a passport, but no printout.
“I haven’t got a printout,” I said to one of the ticket checkers, a smiley Arabic woman with perfectly arranged face and hair.
“Ah,” she said. “I’m afraid you need a ticket to come in.” She spoke better English than I did.
“Can’t I buy one inside?”
“Tickets can only be purchased in advance. Sorry … For security reasons.”
I sloped away, embarrassed and annoyed with myself. Operation Bitchslap seemed over before it had begun. That is, until a fab idea rolled right into town. A convoy of coaches pulled up beyond the lush, check-patterned lawns stretching out in front of the building. They were full of school kids in blue-grey uniform. They piled out and milled around, waiting to be herded into the Reichstag. I moved in close to the coaches and overheard a girl saying she needed to pee. The teacher told her to use the toilet on the coach. The girl climbed back on board using a rear-side door. She was around fifteen and close to my size. I followed her unnoticed.
As the girl pushed the tiny toilet door open, I put a sleeper hold on her from behind. I stepped off the coach in a bright-blue sweater and stripy blue-and-white tie, with a buttoned-up white blouse, white socks, a grey pleat skirt and plasticky black shoes.
I tagged on the back of another coach-load already making their way in. Sheer weight of numbers meant no one noticed the new girl. The friendly customer-service rep didn’t recognise me, while her colleague, checking my passport, barely paid attention. They just wanted us in there and out of their shit.
We were driven along like uniformed sheep into a set of elevators that took us up to the dome area. One of the kids asked a teacher if they could sit inside the parliament. She told him the rest of the building was off limits to the public. The elevators opened and we poured out onto the roof area surrounding the glass dome, like a giant greenhouse with a walkway that spiralled all the way up. I checked out the rooftop first, peeling off the group. I wondered what exactly I was looking for. I’d come here without any kind of plan. Just a date, some coordinates and a fake smile. This was typical of me. I launched into things without any forward planning.
