Ragnarok 03 - Resonance

by John Meaney

  ‘Got it.’ His expression was one of grim camaraderie. ‘She does a good job of hiding how scared she is.’

  ‘Good.’ Meaning both things: the fear and not showing it.

  Likewise Gavriela’s own fear, that things would go to hell and Carl would end up living with Rosie and Jack in Abing-don. But she pushed those thoughts aside as she climbed the bare wooden stairs, and entered a room whose floor was covered in cracked green lino, older but not so different from her kitchen back home.

  Ursula was sitting on a plain wooden chair at a card table, wearing a grey cardigan and skirt, looking pale. The resem-blance to Erik at that age sent a dagger into Gavriela.

  ‘Who are you, please?’ asked Ursula formally: Wer sind Sie, bitte?

  Gavriela was not a field agent. If she had been, her answer would have been a conscious choice. ‘I’m your aunt,’ she said in German. ‘Gavriela Wolf. I loved your mother Ilse like a sister.’

  ‘You died—’ Ursula stopped.

  ‘So you do know that Erik was your father,’ said Gavriela. ‘Your real father.’

  ‘Mother told me’ – with a dry eyed blink – ‘to stop me cutting myself. Knowing I’m not doomed to inherit his . . . obsessions. There’s a reason I wear long sleeves.’

  Gavriela wanted to reach out and hug her, but it was too soon, far too soon.

  ‘It must have been hard, given your stepfather’s profession.’

  Caution now, sounding out the girl’s political worldview.

  My niece!

  ‘It’s not his job that’s the problem,’ said Ursula. ‘The things he’s— Never mind.’

  Gavriela swallowed. ‘He . . . hurt you?’

  ‘Oh, no! Not the way you . . . No.’

  So Dmitri’s victims remained outside the family at least. Plus, Ursula separated her stepfather’s actions from his job, implying violence that even the KGB would not sanction. But this would be guesswork on the girl’s part, nothing more.

  Still, it was dangerous ground to cover so soon, so Gavriela broke the conversation, taking a chair and placing it opposite Ursula. She sat down, neither too far back – which might convey coldness – nor close enough to intimidate.

  Being careful.

  ‘The war ruined everything,’ said Gavriela. ‘I believe Erik died, but I lost all traces of Ilse. And you . . . I didn’t know you existed.’

  ‘I contacted the British. I don’t understand why you are here.’

  The thing was not to think of this as conducting an interrogation, although there were dangers in two-way information exchange – Gavriela felt exposed enough just being on the wrong side of the Curtain. The intent was for Ursula to help them willingly.

  ‘In 1940 I reached England,’ said Gavriela. ‘I’ve lived there ever since. Because of my war work, the Secret Intelligence Service knew how to contact me.’ She switched to English: ‘I’m really British these days. And I use a different name, but let’s stick to Gavriela for now.’

  That was a little colloquial, but Ursula seemed to understand.

  ‘Do you know how many people died in Hungary?’ she asked, also in English. ‘Forty thousand.’

  ‘I know,’ said Gavriela.

  ‘But my stepfather says’ – in German once more – ‘that if it weren’t for Britain throwing its weight around over Suez, the Kremlin would not have had to react so hard. They have to show strength, he says.’

  All Gavriela knew was that the PM was in Jamaica to ‘rest’, his health shattered by the crisis, having backed down following explicit threats from Washington and Moscow, including a Soviet promise of nuclear missiles destroying London if the British army, currently twenty-three miles from Suez, did not depart. Meanwhile, in the Commons, Macmillan had told backbenchers of Britain’s new place in the world: Greece to the United States’ Rome.

  ‘And what do you think, Ursula?’

  The girl – my niece – clasped her hands over her belly.

  ‘I don’t know any more.’ She sounded old. ‘But I can’t help you kill him’

  So she understood that she was of interest to British intelligence only as a way of getting to Colonel Dmitri Shtemenko

  ‘We don’t want him dead, Ursula.’

  It seemed safe to promise that much.

  Five days after the extraction of Ursula from the East, Gavriela faced the real challenge.

  Getting Ursula into the British Sector had been only stage one, but after that she wore an RAF uniform and carried official documentation, journeying aboard a military lorry on one of the three authorised roads to West Germany. Still, Gavriela had been nervous. When the package received signal finally came in, Gavriela had gone for a walk around the Kleine Tiergarten in falling snow, where wind and cold were sufficient explanation for the tears in her eyes.

  Now Gavriela was making the journey from Ku-Damm to Alt-Moabit on foot, while two armed officers in heavy over-coats trailed her, and four more were already in place around the café where Dmitri was due to appear. In one sense, it was a show of strength on both their parts: Dmitri had chosen the area, demonstrating that he, too, could cross between sectors via clandestine means.

  Gavriela was not party to the operational details, but some-how messages had moved both ways between her and Dmitri, requesting and agreeing to a rendezvous.

  Much of the cityscape she walked through was ruins. The major difference between now and a decade ago was that the rubble had been stacked and sorted, even cleaned, to produce an urban paradox: a tidy catastrophe. Cities like Frankfurt and Munich were revitalised, but sad old Berlin had only one thing to show for the new freedom in the western sectors: rich department stores amid the ruins, especially on the Kurfürsten-Damm, with a dazzling array of goods on offer in their bright interiors. See what you’ll get, they whispered to East Berliners, if you overthrow your Communist masters.

  In the café, a large radio was playing ‘Hound Dog’, and Dmitri was sitting behind a table at the rear with his legs crossed – a posture that reminded her of Rupert – and a cup of thick Turkish coffee in front of him. There were no genuine customers, and according to the sign on the door she had entered through, the place was closed.

  The bulky owner fetched a coffee for Gavriela and placed it on the table, then moved back behind the counter where his weapons would be at hand. An SIS man stood with coat unbuttoned, watching. One of his colleagues would be up-stairs, two more outside at the rear. The pair who had followed Gavriela remained on the street.

  ‘I’m very impressed,’ said Dmitri, giving no sign that almost three decades separated today from their only other meeting, hiding in the loft above a school assembly hall. Afterwards, he had saved them both from SA attackers in a churchyard, then escorted her home.

  Where he first saw Ilse, at that time engaged to Erik.

  ‘Precautions seemed in order,’ said Gavriela. ‘Danger seems to follow you around.’

  ‘Oh, no. I mean I’m impressed with your callous manipulation of a vulnerable schoolgirl, your own niece, in order to serve your political masters.’

  Gavriela controlled her breathing.

  Keep balanced.

  ‘Don’t think I’m impressed with you, Colonel.’

  Surrounding Dmitri, flickers of darkness, like licking tongues, came into existence and disappeared like short-lived particle-antiparticle pairs.

  ‘May I?’ He pointed at a cloth-wrapped bundle. ‘Your people have already checked it.’

  She looked at the man behind the counter, then said: ‘OK.’

  What Dmitri unwrapped was a shard of metal, nothing more. ‘I was stationed in Siberia after the war, until I proved myself.’

  Because initially he had remained in hiding, here in Berlin. SIS found out because he had been forced to use an old cover identity, which rang alarm bells during routine denazification procedures. Returning to Moscow, he must have faced some difficult times before his rehabilitation and reinstatement within the KGB.

  Gavriela smiled.

  �
��Don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘Tunguska event, 1920s. Cataclysmic meteor strike, but you’re going to tell me – what, exactly? A crashed UFO?’

  There were rumours that the USSR was planning to get devices into orbit, followed by actual people. Some kind of KGB-designed disinformation was consistent with this, enemy confusion being the goal.

  ‘I didn’t say the material was extraterrestrial, Dr Wolf. You did.’

  A wide area of tingling curled around her back.

  Something very strange about it . . .

  Dmitri wrapped the metal once more.

  ‘My archaeologist friends were puzzled, because this was beneath ice-preserved fossilised wood that was carved with runes. If the Tunguska event was anything, it was a successful take-off performed by a similar vessel, while this is a fragment of one that blew up centuries before. Maybe it was searching for the first one, the one we found. Assuming you believe any of that, of course.’

  The word Russia derived from the Rus, the red-headed Vikings who headed east to explore and trade, and settled there, producing descendants. While Gavriela’s father, who claimed Viking descent, had never been further eastward than Berlin, she remembered Ilse’s words from the night that Dmitri had met her and the Wolf family.

  ‘Never mind Erik,’ Ilse had told Dmitri. ‘You and Gavriela could be brother and sister.’

  That intense stare, Dmitri’s stare, was not too different from the gaze that Gavriela encountered daily in the mirror.

  ‘I find it curious,’ she said, ‘that a repressive Communist state where religion is outlawed is nevertheless rife with superstition. Or maybe it’s because of that repression that people believe in such nutty things.’

  ‘As you say.’ Dmitri pushed the bundle aside. ‘That’s a more likely explanation, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you were thinking of offering that to the British Museum, Colonel . . . Well, it’s not much of an offer.’

  ‘So what did you have in mind? Details of uranium shipments?’

  They were getting to the heart of it.

  ‘Possibly,’ said Gavriela. ‘What would you want in return?’

  ‘My daughter back, of course.’ Dmitri’s eyes shone hard. ‘What did you expect me to demand?’

  ‘She’s safe in the West. Why would she want to come back?’

  ‘Why would her wishes matter to your government? Ursula is a schoolgirl. A German schoolgirl.’

  ‘Not Dutch?’ said Gavriela.

  Ilse and Erik had been living in Amsterdam when the Wehrmacht invaded.

  ‘You want to turn me,’ said Dmitri. ‘So I can feed you classified information, now your famous tunnel has been blown. Very well, I agree. Provided you send her back to me.’

  If it had not been for the flickering darkness, Gavriela might have agreed.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not acceptable.’

  Rupert might have made a different decision, but he wasn’t here. In such matters as recruiting agents and turning the opposition, nuance and context – and the case officer’s interpretation – were everything. She could justify refusing Dmitri’s demands simply by stating that she did not believe they were genuine.

  The last thing London wanted, particularly after Burgess and Maclean, was to be played like fools, fed titbits of truth along with massive lies, manipulated from Moscow.

  But they should also realise – Rupert certainly must – that she would have no intention of handing Ursula back to her monstrous stepfather. A new thought: Gavriela wondered if Rupert was in fact counting on that, because he believed in the darkness but could not share that belief with his fellow officers.

  Perhaps Rupert, unlike his colleagues and superiors, wanted her to sabotage any attempt by Dmitri to work for SIS.

  ‘If I were to live in England,’ said Dmitri, ‘would I have access to Ursula? Controlled occasional access with your people watching – that would be acceptable.’

  ‘Who said anything about England?’

  Dmitri’s gaze flicked towards the counter, and the SIS man standing ready.

  What are you capable of, Dmitri?

  If he could call on pseudo-mesmeric powers the way she had seen others of his kind utilise before, only violence on her part would stop him. This meeting could yet become catastrophe.

  ‘Surely, Colonel,’ she went on, ‘you’re not content with working for a single master?’

  Unspoken: they both knew he already served two powers, and could not always work for the benefit of one without betraying the other – and that if anything he revelled in the ambiguity.

  ‘Ah, dear Gavi,’ he said. ‘You think you know me, don’t you?’

  The use of the familiar form – du denkst dass du kennst mich – caused her to freeze.

  ‘Ma’am?’ The outer door had opened without her noticing. ‘We have company.’

  A military staff-car had pulled up outside, its red pennant showing the yellow hammer and sickle. The driver and two officers inside did nothing for a moment; then a door opened. Nobody got out.

  ‘You’ll excuse me,’ said Dmitri, rising.

  He took the cloth-wrapped metal and pushed it into his pocket.

  ‘Nice catching up with you,’ he added.

  Then he walked out of the café, nodding to the SIS man who stepped aside for him, and slid into the staff-car. For a second, he looked back at Gavriela; then he pulled the door shut. It was a signal for the driver to drop in the clutch and power away from the kerb.

  ‘What just happened?’ asked the man who had been standing guard.

  He tried to find out where Ursula is.

  That would be the other reason for Rupert’s using Gavriela: besides the relationship with Ursula, there was her immunity to any psychological influence Dmitri might employ. Mean-while, Dmitri, for safety and as a fallback plan, had informed his people that the British had approached him. It allowed him to turn the play in either direction, unless Gavriela blocked the game totally.

  She answered, ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  What she knew for certain was that her first loyalty was to Carl, her son. Going home to be his mother again was her main objective. If she could keep her newfound niece safe as well, that was an added benefit; but Gavriela no longer wanted to work for Rupert, and had no interest in Dmitri Shtemenko’s future, so long as he stayed a long way away from her, preferably on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

  Not that such parochial, ephemeral divisions meant anything to the darkness.

  TWENTY-THREE

  VACHSS STATION, VIJAYA ORBITAL, 2604 AD

  The judicial hearing was held in camera, with two non-Pilot humans on the panel, matching the two Pilot representatives and the two Haxigoji. Roger had not expected an even-numbered group, and was curious about the possibility of deadlock in deciding a verdict; then he pushed extraneous thoughts behind him. His primary goal was to make sure Jed was freed.

  ‘Keep your eyes open,’ had been his briefing officer’s final comment, a throwaway remark that was really something else. So far Roger had not worked out what he was meant to be alert to.

  Jed’s incarceration meant confinement to the Sanctuary section of the orbital, no prison cells involved. If he and his fellow Pilots wanted to make an illegal getaway, they had the resources. This was a matter for diplomacy, not military tactics.

  The panel was chaired by a soulful-looking Pilot called Ibrahim al-Khalid, who early in the proceedings announced: ‘Vachss Station authorities have agreed to treat certain security matters, to be touched upon in this hearing, as classified material. As one of two Sanctuary representatives here, let me add an official statement of gratitude for that wise decision.’

  Beside al-Khalid sat the long-term ‘permanent’ Sanctuary resident, name of Declan Draper. The two humans on the panel were Emma Mbaka, who just happened to be Draper’s partner, and Vilok Khan, who had witnessed Jed killing Rick Mbuli – or the thing that once been Rick – which Roger would have thought disqualified him as an objective judg
e.

  The Haxigoji pair were a female called Nectarblossom and an antler-bearing male called Acid Tang, whose arrival by shuttle from the surface had been marked by a great deal of ceremony, almost reverence, among the station-resident Haxigoji. Since the Haxigoji who witnessed the killing had protected Jed and appeared to approve of his actions – Roger had seen the holo footage as part of his briefing – there should be no problem here.

  Not that he was complacent about any aspect of this mission, though it appeared to have little in common with the scenarios he had drilled in so hard in Tangleknot.

  ‘We look forward to exploring the implications of the defendant’s actions,’ said Nectarblossom through her translation-torc, ‘as a matter of the greatest importance.’

  Jed was sitting to one side, wearing old-fashioned mag-bracelets and anklets that could be commanded to snap together, immobilising him. It was a matter of form and out-moded legislation, Roger had been told. Jed had given his usual muscular grin on seeing Roger – they had not been allowed to meet beforehand – then put all his attention on the panel.

  ‘First I would like to show on board recordings of the event in question. Mr Khan?’

  ‘As a witness myself’ – Vilok Khan had raised a finger to speak – ‘I will be interested in confirming my subjective memory. If Nectarblossom and Acid Tang agree?’

  There was the faintest of perfumes in the air – the Haxigoji conferring with translators turned off – before Nectarblossom said: ‘We too are interested.’

  When the holo played through, the Haxigoji pair watched via smartmiasma-distorted air, acting as a dynamically configurable lens, as they sniffed the poorly reproduced scents from the surveillance fragrance-recorders at the original scene. Roger turned away, wincing, but too late: he had already seen Rick’s head being blown apart, and it was as awful now as it had been during the briefing.

  He was a witness giving evidence, but there was more than that. The Haxigoji had known that something was wrong about Rick Mbuli – and they had prevented Pilot Holland from coming on board Vachss Station.