Dark Winter

by Andy McNab

  ‘Looks like a nice day for it.’ We hadn’t talked about the job itself since we entered Stansted, and wouldn’t again until we got out of the cab at the other end. We didn’t want to be overheard, and talking in whispers attracts too much attention.

  Suzy had bought a guidebook at the airport, so we knew Bergmannstrasse was in the old Western part of the city, in an area called Kreuzberg, which I thought I knew from my time as a squaddie in the early eighties. The book said it had a large Turkish population, and Germans went there to escape National Service and become artists, punks or anarchists instead. That sounded about right. I wasn’t too sure about having seen any artists, but I’d spent a good few nights in West Berlin getting ripped off by Turkish bar owners and trading punches with German punks.

  We landed and everybody stood up and clogged the aisle as soon as the seat-belt sign flickered off. The suits revved up their mobiles to start the day’s work. When we eventually disembarked, we were channelled towards two control booths immediately at the top of the ramp. They were manned by German Immigration police in dark-green jackets and washed-out yellow shirts, their spiky hair and stern faces making them look as if they’d be more at home sticking out the top of a tank than checking passports and watching for illegals.

  Suzy made sure she had the guidebook in view as the two of us stepped forward. A guy in his late twenties, with a blond crewcut, flushed cheeks and rectangular frameless glasses, took our passports, looked at us, then snapped them shut before passing them back with a nod. We muttered thanks and entered Germany, following signs for taxis. Checkpoint Charlie was just a couple of Ks to the north of Bergmannstrasse, and a major tourist trap. It was as good a destination as any to give to a cabbie, before walking into the target area.

  We stepped out into bright sunshine as I took a couple more antibiotics, not bothering to offer any to Suzy. The temperature was still a little cold as we lined up at the rank with about thirty others, mostly suits with their phones stuck to their ears. White Mercedes cabs filtered forwards to run the fares the dozen or so kilometres into town. We didn’t talk: there were still too many spare ears around.

  When our turn eventually came, we climbed into a six- or seven-year-old Merc with plastic seats. The driver, an old Turk, didn’t need to speak English to understand Suzy’s ‘Checkpoint Charlie, mate.’

  ‘ Ja, ja – Checkpoint Charlie, OK.’

  We headed out of Tegel, straight into urban sprawl, and soon passed Spandau prison. We arrived at the older part of the city, driving along wide boulevards with cobbled pavements. I stared out at the place the wall had once cut through the heart of Berlin, at Potsdammer Platz. Brand-new buildings were springing up everywhere like crystal puffballs where the wall and its corridor of no man’s land, the Death Zone, had once stretched. This had to be the only major city on the planet with so much space for new development at its centre. Billions were being poured into its regeneration, with futuristic buildings, brand-new boulevards and landscaped open spaces everywhere you looked. The last time I’d been here all I’d seen was the wall, rolls of barbed-wire and the bricked-up entrance to the metro. Now Potsdammer station was shiny and new, and speeding passengers all over the city. I wondered if it was on the ASU’s list of targets.

  There were no glittering puffballs springing up on the other side of the square just yet; there were derelict factories and warehouses instead, fenced off and surrounded by wasteland where other buildings had been demolished, awaiting their turn for an injection of chrome and spangle.

  Then, just as quickly, we were driving past Porsche showrooms and Hugo Boss boutiques, and when we turned the next corner, Checkpoint Charlie was ahead of us. Now preserved as a monument, it looked much the same as I remembered it, only without the wall and its phalanx of armed soldiers. The white guardhouse in the middle of the road was still surrounded by sandbags, and they’d even kept the sign up warning that you were now entering the American sector or, on the flip side, that you were leaving it for East Berlin.

  Tourists poured out of a coach and into the museum. As I paid the driver, an old American guy caught my eye, pointing things out to someone I guessed was his son. His uniform, these days, was jeans, a suit jacket and a pair of white tennis shoes, but he clearly still had a full stock of Checkpoint Charlie war stories.

  The area on the eastern side was flattened and awaiting redevelopment, and seemed to be lined by Turks and Bosnians with stalls selling Russian fur hats and East German peaked caps and badges. Everything looked suspiciously new and had probably been knocked out last week in the same Chinese factory that supplied Penang with its ethnic masks.

  We leant against the wall of a bar facing the museum and guardhouse so Suzy could get the map out. I grinned. ‘Two Brit tourists seeing the sights, moaning to each other in crap German accents that they can’t get a decent cup of tea – what could be more natural?’

  She laughed as I checked traser. It was just after eleven a.m. She pulled her cell from her black leather jacket. ‘Better check comms.’ I got Geoff’s out of the bumbag and powered it up. After a few seconds of roaming, the displays on both said Deutsche Telekom. I tapped in the international code and her number, and her phone rang. We exchanged a few words before closing down.

  ‘Right, let’s keep an eye out for a chemist.’

  Following the map, we headed south through former East Berlin, the monotonous brick buildings now covered in gig posters, graffiti and ‘Stop the War’ slogans.

  We passed a housing estate of grey, depressing, rectangular chunks of concrete with windows, which they’d tried unsuccessfully to brighten up with murals of the sun, sand and sea. There was even one with a moth-eaten old Union Jack sticking out among the graffiti.

  A Trabant passed us, handpainted in psychedelic colours, with posters in the windows advertising a cyber café.

  A section of the wall nearby had been fenced off as some sort of monument.

  Two policemen sat in a marked BMW police car alongside a line of shops, one of which had a large red Gothic letter A sticking out from its wall.

  ‘Apotheke.’

  Suzy was pleased. ‘Perfect.’

  As we got nearer, I could see that one of the officers had a big walrus moustache and more than his fair share of blubber. He reminded me of someone, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  Suzy raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s up with you, Norfolk boy?’

  ‘I was in Berlin for a while as a squaddie. Me and a mate came here for the weekend once on the Hanover troop train. It was our first trip, we didn’t know where we were going, what we were doing – just anything to get away from the garrison for a few days. We were bumming around the bars, and got into a fight with the resident battalion. The Turks piled in as well, and the German police came and started making arrests, throwing us into the backs of vans.

  ‘Me and my mate – I can’t even remember his name now, Kenny, I think – landed up sitting on the benches facing each other by the rear doors. This big fat copper, just like him over there, came round and slammed them on us, but the lock didn’t engage. Kenny and I just looked at each other and, fucking right, madness not to. We pushed open the doors and started running down the road, and all we could hear was this big German trying to waddle after us, waving his truncheon, hollering and shouting for us to stop.

  ‘I turned round and could see him trying his hardest to catch up. No way he was going to – we were young squaddies, he looked like Hermann Goering. I don’t know why, but I stopped, turned round again, and started yelling back at him, “Wanker, lardarse!” that sort of stuff. Anyway, he was getting really pissed off. I gave him another couple of paces before I turned round to run, and bang – next thing I knew I was face down on the cobbles and Lardarse was breathing all over me. The bastard had thrown his truncheon and got me smack in the back of the head.’

  Suzy shook her head and smiled. ‘Comforting to know I’m in such reliable hands.’

  We entered the chemist’s and didn’t exactly
have to hunt for masks and gloves. The SARS scare had hit everywhere, and the boy had plenty of choice on display. I picked up a pack of ten green ones, looking a bit like thick J-cloths. I couldn’t tell if they were N-whatever number Simon had said. Fuck it, I’d just hope for the best. Right next to them were ten-packs of latex gloves. Not quite the full NBC suit I really wanted, but better than nothing.

  Suzy checked out the household section. When we met at the counter she produced two pairs of swimming goggles, and a set of four different-sized stainless-steel knives in case the hand-over didn’t go to plan.

  Once outside we continued south. ‘You said Geoff was married before. What about you?’

  ‘Yeah, while I was in the Navy, just a kid, really.’

  We stopped and checked the map together at the end of a housing estate. ‘I fucked it right up. Don’t even ask. I was eighteen, he was nineteen. There should be a law against it. Two blocks to go.’

  We moved off and there was no more chat about failed marriages. Everything went serious now.

  Either the buildings on Bergmannstrasse and the surrounding area had survived the Allied bombing, or they’d been perfectly restored in its old style. It looked like we were walking through a movie set for old Berlin.

  Bergmannstrasse turned out to be a major thoroughfare. The kerbs on the south side were solid with cars, and the pavements were wide. It was tree-lined all the way down, with a mixture of eighteenth-century-style houses and a few newer apartment blocks. The ground floor of every building seemed to be a shopfront with an awning out, and the pavements were packed.

  We stopped on a corner and had a look at the numbers. We seemed to be up in the high hundreds, so twenty-two was going to be somewhere down to our left. We walked on, merging with the crowds of Monday-morning shoppers. It looked like half of Berlin’s mothers were out and about, holding back their toddlers with baby reins.

  I got the feeling I’d been here before, though it was hard to tell now the area had gone upmarket. It was definitely ex-Bohemia. Every other shop seemed to sell Indian tablecloths and shiny cushions, hemp clothing and candles. Pumpkins were strewn outside organic food shops as a come-on for anyone not already seduced by the New Age music. Boxes of books were laid out on the pavement, alongside bric-à-brac and rails of used clothes. The Turkish influence was obvious, the smell of coffee wafting out of every other shop.

  We carried on until we saw numbers forty-eight and forty-six across the road, then stopped under an awning and leant against a wall. Suzy browsed through rails of old leather jackets and jeans while I tried to work out where twenty-two was. When I did, I stared at it in disbelief.

  She followed the direction of my gaze. Number twenty-four was a large fruit and veg shop, with trays of produce piled up outside and guys selling from them as if it was a market stall. To the left of it was a plain, off-white apartment block with large square windows set into its façade. There was a central doorway that I assumed led to the apartments, with a shopfront either side. The one to the left was a café called Break-out; the one on the right had an illuminated sign, and you didn’t have to know any German to understand what Evangelisch-Freikirchliche meant. Josh would have liked it here.

  As we came out from under the awning and moved closer, Suzy pulled on my jacket sleeve. ‘It gets better.’ She nodded towards the top of the building, at a neon cross maybe twenty feet high, then got out her gum. ‘Say what you like about these arseholes, but they do a nice line in irony.’

  ‘Let’s do a walk-past.’

  We crossed the road, Suzy’s right hand in my left, and her guidebook prominent in the other. We passed the fruit and veg place and looked through the glass front of the church. White stone steps led up to what looked like Hotel Heaven’s reception desk. There were quite a few people checking in. The entrance to the apartments was a large glazed door with two glass side panels, and a stainless-steel push-button intercom system. Names appeared in only two of the slots.

  Break-out was dark inside, with bare floors and stainless-steel tables, about half filled with coffee drinkers. We meandered on, not knowing where we were going, but it didn’t really matter. All we wanted to do was move clear.

  We carried on along Bergmannstrasse and turned right as soon as we could to get out of line of sight of the flats. After the rush of the main street this was a bit surreal: we were in a cemetery.

  Old grannies placed flowers on graves, while their grandkids played quietly. Paths were dotted with reflection seats, many filled with young couples who seemed to be doing precious little reflection. Suzy and I found one from where we could see the back of the apartment block, and sat down.

  54

  As the church filled up on the first floor, Suzy’s hands worked inside the carrier-bag, pulling away the cardboard and plastic packaging from the knives. I ripped the plastic away from the goggles, masks and the ten-pack of latex gloves, and stuffed half of them into my pockets. The rest were for Suzy.

  ‘This is how I see it. I’ll try to leave the front door open in case you need it. I’ll collect DW, and meet you back here. If I’m not back in thirty, or you don’t get a call, come and get me. If the front door is closed, there might be another way in through the church, or maybe round the back here. You need to check it out.’

  She nodded and one of her hands jerked against the side of the bag as a knife suddenly parted company with its wrapping. ‘OK, thirty – then I’ll come and save your arse, yet again.’

  I took off my bumbag and passed it over. I was going in there sterile, apart from the cell. She slipped me two of the shorter vegetable knives and they went into my jacket pocket.

  ‘Thirty, then?’ I got up, kissed her cheek, then started walking. I turned left out of the graveyard, back on to the busy main, then left again towards the building. Break-out had got busier and so had the church: people were filing in munching on sandwiches, or fruit fresh from the stall. I stopped by the bank of call buttons for the flats. The organ was thumping out a happy-clappy tune next door as I used a knuckle to press twenty-seven. It took for ever, but at last the speaker crackled. I heard someone coughing, then nothing apart from a burst of static. A truck roared past and I had to put my mouth right up to the intercom. ‘I’ve been sent from London. You’re expecting me.’

  There was a delay, then the door gave a buzz. Once inside, I used my foot to stop it locking again, and had a look round. There was no CCTV: the only visible security was the intercom and door lock, a Yale-type device that couldn’t be overridden. I folded one of the masks over the bolt and pushed the door closed so it wedged in position.

  I found myself in a white fake-marble hall that smelt of pine cleaning fluid. According to the signs, twenty-seven would be on the second floor. As I climbed the stairs, listening to a dim murmur from the happy-clappies and the squeak of my Caterpillars on the shiny floor, I started to pull on a pair of gloves.

  The steel-and-glass fire door to the second floor opened into a clinically white corridor. There were apartment doors on both sides; I put on the goggles and all four masks as I squeaked down towards number twenty-seven. It was at the end on the left, which meant it faced the main.

  Checking my protection one last time, I knocked on the door, making sure my face was directly in front of the spyhole. I was standing there for a good fifteen seconds before I heard the sound of gaffer-tape being stripped away. It opened eventually, just a quarter of the way, and what I saw made me step straight back against the wall on the other side of the corridor. Six foot, my arse: I wanted to be a hundred from this fucker.

  The face at the door belonged to a young Turk or Arab, mid-twenties maybe, his hands stained red with paint. That didn’t worry me. What did was the state of his face. His eyes were bloodshot and he was soaked with sweat. He panted rather than breathed, and snot poured from his nose. I lifted my hand to stop him coming any further towards me. ‘You speak English?’

  He nodded, then disappeared behind the door and gave an agonizing cough. Ev
en through the masks, the smell of shit and decay seeping out from the flat was overpowering.

  His head reappeared, framed by lank, greasy hair.

  ‘Bring the bottles to the door, OK? You get that?’

  He nodded slowly, wiped his nose with his sleeve and shuffled back into the flat, leaving the door ajar. The happy-clappies were still doing their bit for God down below.

  I moved left along the opposite wall until I got level with the doorway. The hall was small, square and empty, apart from the vomit covering the carpet and splashed up the walls, and the lengths of gaffer-tape that had probably been sealing the gap between door and frame. I heard more vomit hitting the floor and moved further left. Some of the living area came into view; I could see a big square window, curtained off with cheap material that let in the light. The walls were covered with the same red, spray-painted lettering we’d seen at King’s Cross. I moved a little more to the left to try to see more, and wished I hadn’t.

  A dark-skinned body was sprawled on the carpet. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, because it was in an even worse state than Archibald. On the floor next to it were two shoulder-bags. I didn’t need Simon here to tell me what was inside.

  I could feel myself starting to gag.

  The stomach was so bloated that it had burst through the vomit-covered shirt. All the exposed flesh was covered with saucer-sized scabs, weeping pus that glistened in the light. More vomit clung to the face. I couldn’t tell if he or she was still alive; if they were, it wouldn’t be for much longer.

  I heard the noise of retching from another room, followed by a wet, phlegm-laden cough that sounded like a drain being cleared. My guy was still trying to make it to the door.

  The body’s head moved, rolling to one side so that its dark eyes looked at me. The mouth smiled, just for a second or so, before it spewed its guts up, probably for the last time. Fuck ’em, they didn’t look or sound like martyrs to me.