Nightfall Berlin

by Jack Grimwood

  ‘In a moment,’ Amelia said. Pulling out a T-shirt Tom hadn’t known she was carrying, she stripped off her blood-stained shirt, rolled it up and stuffed it into her bag. ‘I’ve no intention of walking round a zoo smelling like food.’

  Dipping into the bag again, she added, ‘And you’ll want this.’

  Tom looked at a clip of 9mm Makarov.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  From Schneider’s pocket.

  ‘I don’t suppose …?’ he asked.

  She handed him the notebook.

  There was something unnerving about this woman.

  A path behind the hut led through to sheds in a clearing, with spades, brooms and wheelbarrows leant against them. Between the sheds were low-level brambles that could be trusted to tumble back into place. Indicating them, Tom lifted one aside and stepped through, holding it back for Amelia.

  Across the clearing, he heard a twig snap, followed by the faintest hint of a curse. After which, only silence.

  ‘Bugger,’ he muttered.

  Fitz in tracker mode was dangerous. Amelia shook her head when Tom asked if she’d mind if he kept the Makarov. ‘I’m a pacifist,’ she whispered.

  ‘You helped burn down Porton Down.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Tom,’ a voice called. ‘For God’s sake be reasonable.’

  ‘Ignore him,’ Amelia hissed.

  FitzSymonds’s answer splintered the shed they’d just abandoned. The dull crack of his Pistolet Besshumnyy arrived a split-second later. Birds screamed and the wolves howled louder. ‘Tom!’ FitzSymonds shouted.

  Turning, Tom fired once, his pistol far louder. For a second, he was blinded by his own muzzle flare but training made him step sideways, an instant before a round hissed through where he’d been.

  Amelia ran for the trees, Tom following.

  101

  With the dead guards a quarter of a mile behind her, Maya stopped in the shadow of a fat oak. One of those very English, very traditional oaks clipped flat below its canopy. She’d been cross about messing up her shot, all those years before. She’d been cross with the commissar, who’d had to work hard to convince her he hadn’t knowingly sent her to her death.

  She knew he hadn’t, and those days were so black that she wouldn’t have really blamed him if he had, but she made him work to get her back into bed.

  If she’d had her way, they’d have burnt the lodge at Reinickendorf-Tegelerforst to the ground, with all of its inhabitants in it. She wasn’t minded to make nice distinctions about the kind of men who went there. The men who made those kind of decisions had disagreed. Of course they had.

  She saw the purple Rolls-Royce in the drive.

  Patting it as she passed, Maya hammered on the front door. The watery-eyed old man who answered opened his mouth to ask who she was, and shut it again. He recognized death when she came calling. Maya walked him back from the steps, along a dank corridor with cracked tiles, through a box room filled with cardboard boxes, into a tiny lavatory with no windows. He already knew what was about to happen.

  ‘Where’s the boy?’ Maya demanded.

  He nodded upwards.

  ‘Where upstairs?’

  ‘The white door at the top. There’s a lock outside.’

  ‘Is he hurt?’

  The old man shook his head.

  ‘Are you quite sure?’

  He nodded fiercely.

  ‘How many guards?’

  ‘Three pairs. In the gardens.’

  Two pairs, Maya thought.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling, looking into his faded eyes, that he’d been expecting something like this to happen. Perhaps for a while.

  Shutting the lavatory door muffled her shot.

  It didn’t muffle it enough, though. Two crop-haired men raced across the lawn towards a French window, and Maya killed them both as they rushed inside. She shot them twice. Double tap, a great British special-forces tradition.

  She hoped the coroner liked that touch too.

  In the drawing room she found a small man in a red jacket, telephone gripped in one hand, desperately dialling a number with his other. She shot him before he could do more than say, hello, hello …

  Picking up the receiver, Maya listened, while an English voice demanded to know what was happening. ‘Your man is dead,’ she said. She left the receiver hanging.

  The last pair of guards split up and entered through separate doors. For a while they were hunting each other, freezing with each creek of floorboards or squeak of a door. She watched them from above, hidden in a minstrel’s gallery that looked down on the entrance hall.

  It looked for a bit as if they might kill each other but one of them realized just in time what was happening and called out, both of them coming into the hall from different directions.

  That was when Maya shot them.

  Head and heart. It wasn’t that she was better trained, had seen more action, or was even necessarily more prepared to kill. She simply knew what was going on and they didn’t. The seconds it took them to work that out gave her the edge.

  At the top of the stairs was the white door that the old man had told Maya to expect. A Yale fitted to the outside.

  Maya knocked.

  ‘Charlie,’ she said, stepping to the side. She stepped to the side in case somebody she’d missed was in there and shot her through the door.

  No one fired and no one answered.

  She’d hoped that knowing Charlie’s name would reassure the boy. Maybe not though. The man who took him would have known it too. Maya wondered, and didn’t want to wonder, what state she’d find Tom’s son in. Whether the dead man downstairs had lied. When calling produced no answer, she turned the knob and eased open the door.

  The room was empty. Charlie was gone.

  102

  Crouching, Tom removed the magazine, reached for the spare and thumbed out a round to give his pistol a full clip. As an afterthought, he jacked a round into the breech, removed the magazine again, pressing in another.

  FitzSymonds knew how many rounds a Makarov took. He’d have to guess, though, if Tom had chambered one extra.

  ‘You’re good at this,’ Amelia said.

  There was enough anger in her voice to make Tom look across to where she crouched, hand to her ribs. He listened for a moment to see if he could hear FitzSymonds and went back to the thought.

  ‘It’s about the one thing I know how to do.’

  He weighed the pistol in his hand, folding his fingers round its familiar grip. Nine rounds of 9mm Makarov. You could do a lot of damage with that.

  ‘Tom,’ a voice called. ‘You need to listen to me.’

  Tom didn’t reply.

  ‘Caro doesn’t know about Charlie. She’s ill. Seriously so. Eddington hasn’t dared tell her. She’s going to need you, Tom. She’s just started chemo. I don’t think the prognosis is good.’

  Standing, Tom fired a shot and heard wild horses stampede, their hooves hammering dry earth.

  ‘You’re wasting ammunition, Tom.’

  ‘You wish.’ Tom stepped away from where Amelia crouched, feeling rather than hearing a round that cut through the leaves above him. Away to one side, parakeets added to the noise.

  ‘Two clips,’ he shouted at FitzSymonds. ‘One more than you.’

  ‘I have a spare.’

  ‘Of course you do …’

  Five shots from FitzSymonds, possibly six.

  How many rounds did the old man have left? Tom thought three, and wondered if he’d be willing to bet his life on it. ‘Here.’ Digging into his pocket, he found the notebook. ‘You have to give this to Charles Eddington, Lord Eddington. Tell him I gave it to you. Tell him it used to belong to Flo Wakefield. Tell him everything you heard FitzSymonds say.’

  Amelia grabbed him as he stood.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Finishing this …’

  ‘That’s what he wants.
’

  ‘Tom.’ The voice came from somewhere slightly different. FitzSymonds had worked his way round to the left. ‘At least talk to me.’

  ‘About what?’ Tom called.

  Instead of an answering shot, Fitz said, ‘Listen.’

  The sirens were here at last. Several minutes after Tom expected them. Two cars in the distance. Approaching from different directions.

  Maybe another car, maybe an echo.

  The other car was more than an echo now.

  ‘Give me the memoirs,’ FitzSymonds called. ‘I’ll pull every string I can to get London to help you. We’ll offer a trade. Two of theirs for one of ours. Three of theirs …’

  Sirens howled as police vehicles cut up from Karlshorst and down from Lichtenberg. How many had been despatched? Gunshots in the night in a city where public order was mandatory and infringement savagely punished … Tom doubted they contained Volkspolizei.

  At the very least, VPB. Riot police. Quite possibly spetsnaz. Even FitzSymonds would baulk at fighting them.

  ‘Tom,’ FitzSymonds said.

  But Amelia was shaking his shoulder. ‘Up there.’

  The chop of a helicopter, slow and steady as it approached the zoo. As it reached Tierpark’s edge, a searchlight snapped on and Tom saw the beam hit trees away to his left. They’d just become someone else’s target as well.

  ‘That’s an Mi-2 Hoplite,’ he said.

  Amelia scowled at him.

  ‘Saw one in Cuba.’

  ‘It makes a difference?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘Know your enemy.’

  ‘Your enemy is over there,’ Amelia said.

  The wind was rising, clouds shifting direction overhead.

  The parakeets that had started screaming fell silent. And, as Tom listened for police sirens, he discovered they’d fallen silent too. All he could hear was the creak of trees, rustling leaves, wild sheep shuffling down to a fence to see who they were, and the heartbeat of the helicopter overhead.

  No Entry Without Authorization.

  Tom imagined that was what the sheep-pen gate said. Yanking back its bolt, he dragged it open, leaving it wide. When the sheep just looked at him, he said, ‘Help me drive them out of there.’

  ‘Why?’ Amelia demanded.

  ‘We need to increase the number of targets.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘They’ll have night scopes. A dozen warm dots getting lost in the trees will mix things up nicely. If nothing else, we’ll know in advance if they’re operating shoot to kill …’

  In the skies above, the Mi-2 Hoplite made a sloping turn and began another sweep, its light picking out animal pens below. An elephant harrumphed, and the parakeets went back to shrieking.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Somewhere you’re not,’ Amelia replied.

  He caught up with her beside an ice cream kiosk next to the reptile house. A strange world, with sullen lights above the doors of an otherwise dark concrete block that held whole continents: tropical forests, South American swamps and Egyptian desert. Posters promised them spiders and snakes.

  Glancing back, Amelia said, ‘He’s still following.’

  ‘Of course he is.’

  Men like FitzSymonds always followed.

  This didn’t end at the edge of the park. Tom knew that now.

  It didn’t end with a flight to London, a train to Brunswick. Tom’s choices were end this or exile in Moscow. Fitz would follow, and he would keep following. It didn’t matter that Frederika had burnt the original. Fitz would take this to the wire. And even if Tom had had the memoirs, Fitz was responsible for what had happened to Charlie.

  Tom couldn’t have given them up.

  Not now.

  103

  ‘I know why I was chosen for this.’

  Amelia stopped, steadying Tom with a hand to his shoulder.

  His father-in-law hadn’t lied, Tom realized, he simply didn’t know the whole truth. Eddington’s given reason – Tom’s Russian connections – mattered. And they’d paid off, just not in the way those who sent Tom imagined. But there was more. ‘And, I’ve just realized why FitzSymonds was.’

  ‘He was your old boss. You said.’

  ‘I was one of the boys.’

  ‘And Fitz …?’

  ‘Patroclus. He must have been.’

  ‘The people who sent him. You’re saying they knew?’

  ‘Some of them,’ Tom said. ‘Some of them must.’ He didn’t believe Caro’s father was among them. But there would be others …

  Old men with convenient memories.

  There’d been a point at school, usually late afternoon, when the lambs knew what awaited and the wolves had yet to descend. Those hours were the worst. Tom remembered them better than what came after.

  He should probably be grateful for that.

  ‘Why does he believe you have the memoirs?’

  ‘An intercepted letter from your father said I had them.’

  ‘And he gave you nothing?’

  ‘Not a bloody –’ Tom stopped.

  ‘What?’ Amelia demanded.

  Digging into his pocket, Tom’s fingers closed on metal and for a second he felt afraid to remove it, as if the tiny metal Trabant might have become something else. It looked so ordinary in the moonlight.

  It was ordinary. Entirely so. He’d kept it because …

  Tom knew why he’d kept it, because once upon a time he’d never have dared throw a car like this away. Shaking the toy Trabant produced no rattle.

  He opened the metal doors and there was nothing inside.

  It was entirely ordinary. Cream body, pale-blue roof, doors that opened, jewelled headlights, slightly tinted …

  Tom became still.

  How many diecast cars came with tinted windows? No one was likely to know the answer to that except someone who had seen too many. Tom thought of the little darkroom in Hackescher Markt with its over-elaborate enlarger. The bottles of developer. The developing trays.

  ‘Tell me,’ Amelia demanded.

  ‘After the war your father had charge of miniaturizing Nazi Intelligence archives. They were put on to microfiche and flown to London. The originals were burnt …’

  ‘Burnt?’

  There was no manuscript. What there was, Tom was willing to bet, was a key to Flo Wakefield’s notebook, quite possibly shrunken pages of the notebook itself, perhaps an unexpurgated section of memoir dealing directly with Reinickendorf-Tegelerforst. He’d had it all along.

  ‘We need to move,’ Amelia said.

  She was right and Tom knew where he was going.

  Looking back, he saw FitzSymonds break cover and glance around. Amelia shifted, and FitzSymonds spotted her movement.

  Raising his pistol, the old man hesitated.

  ‘Weave,’ Tom shouted.

  Amelia did without looking back or asking why. Simply hunched her shoulders, and jinked from side to side as she ran towards trees.

  FitzSymonds’s mistake was to shoot anyway.

  A silenced Makarov is effective to fifty yards. Amelia was beyond that and he should have factored in the fact that his muzzle flash would attract the helo. The old man flinched as its searchlight swept towards him.

  Tom and Amelia ran, not looking back, trying not to think of the helicopter. When they reached the safety of an open-sided shelter, the helo was hovering and its beam stabbed the ground where Fitz had been.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Amelia said. Her words ragged.

  ‘That’s what he does,’ Tom replied.

  It was too. He turned up, things happened, he vanished. Very little of the blame, if blame there was, ever stuck to him. Most of the politicians who breathed a sigh of relief when what they wanted to happen unexpectedly happened never stopped to wonder how or why, or even knew of his existence.

  Turning, Tom headed north.

  Looking back, he said, ‘You might want to strike out on your own.’

  ‘Abandoning me?’ Amelia de
manded.

  ‘Trying to save you from what comes next.’

  Amelia stopped, slid the latch on a gate into a compound and dragged it open, freeing wild horses. ‘Equus ferus przewalskii,’ she said. ‘This is my world. Not yours. We stick together …’

  104

  Just inside the door was a broken hairgrip. A breakfast tray rested on the floor in the far corner. It contained a bowl of dry cereal and a small jug of milk, both untouched. Nothing else to suggest the room had been used.

  It shouldn’t have been empty.

  The white door on the third floor at the top of the stairs. That was what the old man had said and he’d spoken the truth. She’d seen it in his face. Maya was sure this was the room and yet Charlie wasn’t here.

  Who had just moved him?

  Not the old man who answered the door. Not the guards, dead on the floor, their pistols beside their fallen bodies. Nor the small man in the red jacket, who lay dead on a Bokhara rug in the drawing room, telephone call unfinished, a hole where his heart should be. He was going nowhere. Although the Rolls-Royce he arrived in would be: its keys were in Maya’s pocket.

  No longer caring about noise, she raced up narrow stairs to the attics and shot the door open, splintering its lock. The space she stood in was small, its door to bigger rooms beyond padlocked and the padlock rusty. No one had passed this way in years.

  She went down the stairs fast, checked off the guestrooms, seeing herself – small and intense, and older than she remembered – in endless dark mirrors as she threw open wardrobes and dressing rooms, and gutted an airing cupboard stacked to head-height with yellowing sheets.

  All the places a frightened child might hide.

  She searched the ground floor. Stepping over bodies. She didn’t remember that many bodies. And then, feeling sick to her guts, her body exhausted, her legs tired from all those stairs, she returned to where Charlie should have been. As she reached the top, she heard scrabbling.

  It came from behind the door of a bathroom she’d already checked and found empty. Opening the door slowly, she slid herself into the room, with her pistol held tight to her chest. In the far corner, below a window, was a bath with taps the size of statuettes, and lion’s claws for feet. Stepping forward for a closer look, Maya found herself staring down at a naked child, lying there, clutching a Browning he’d obviously taken from one of the dead.