Berlin Reload: A Cold War Espionage Thriller

by James Quinn

  When he got back to his car, he opened the cigarette packet that contained an audiotape of the listening device's findings in Ulrich Vogel's study. There were also two neatly folded pieces of paper; one with the designation number that said that it was encoded and for SIS eyes only, but the other was more blatant and simply said JACK. The audiotape and the encoded paper he returned to the packet; that was something for the people back at SIS Berlin Station. The paper with his name on it… well, instinctively, he knew that was something else completely.

  His hands were shaking as he opened it, wiped the rain from his eyes and read the message. It was the same feeling that he had in the book emporium. It was written in German so she knew that he would get the meaning behind the words;

  My darling Jack

  It saddens me that I have to write this to you.

  It is obvious that you do not wish me to be a part of your life and that I am expendable. With all my heart I wish that was not the case. But it seems that I am merely just an agent to you and not someone worthy enough to live in your world and be a part of your life. I have no need for a man of mystery.

  Things have changed very quickly and are different for me now. My life has changed. I am leaving Berlin for a while. I am to travel. To Cairo, to Egypt, the Middle East. Will I make it back alive? I do not know. But I do know that I am determined to survive.

  I wish I was as important to you as you were to me. I think I will always love you. For me, I do not wish to be with anyone else anytime soon and I hope that you will always be a part of my life, even if it is just in memories.

  Tu me manques

  Lisbeth

  X

  When an agent disappears off the radar, even temporarily, there is always an analysis of what, if anything, has gone wrong. For EMERALD it was no different.

  The encoded message that she had sent in the brush past gave a brief overview of her situation and how she would effectively be disappearing off the map of Berlin for the foreseeable future. EMERALD stated that she would gather any useable intelligence that she could while she was away, but that because of the unknown factors of the location, she would also like to request that SIS not make contact with her there. She only felt secure on her home ground of Berlin. So, once again the espionage masters at SIS London put the EMERALD operation under the microscope and studied it forensically.

  It was a clear case of an inexperienced case officer not controlling the agent properly, said some. While others insisted that EMERALD had probably been a fraud all along, a Stasi double agent meant to lure SIS Berlin into a trap. The case had always been seemingly problematic, cautioned a third viewpoint. EMERALD's material had always been of grass roots value and she showed no sign of being entrusted with useable real time intelligence about SSD operation on the ground, said others.

  A jolly, grey-suited man came over from SIS London, a respected counter-intelligence expert and spycatcher. He interviewed everyone related to the operation, but especially Jack Grant as EMERALD's handler.

  “Did you get too close to your agent, Jack? I know what you Gutterfighters are like! Randy and rough, the lot of you,” he said.

  “No. It was purely professional,” said Grant, the lie tripping easily from his lips. He just hoped that he had gotten away with it.

  “I'm not judging you, Jack. Pretty young woman, healthy young buck like you – inevitable, really. That's why we like our spies to be old and ugly, like me, what!” chortled the spycatcher.

  Jack Grant knew where he was going with this and he wasn't falling for it. A relationship with an active agent was a sacking offence, and God knows his record sheet was already tarnished by the violence against Grenham-Smythe way back when. So Grant put up his wall and stuck to his story.

  The SIS investigation trundled on for a few weeks until it ran out of steam. The final consensus was that EMERALD was probably genuine, but had gotten too far in and was out of her depth. Perhaps she had lost her nerve, perhaps she had been found out? Either way, she was too far out of reach for Berlin Station at the moment and so the case was declared moribund.

  “We'll alert Cairo Station,” said Markham to Grant on his final Agent Handling Debriefing session. “Let's see if she pops up over the next few months. We'll keep her on a long leash… give her a bit of space while she's in Egypt.”

  “And what if she does become active again?” asked Grant.

  Markham shrugged. “Well, she has to come home to Berlin at some point. If she does, you are back in harness, Jack, my old son.”

  And what was Jack Grant's fate in all of this? Well, an agent runner without an agent to run is like a ship without a sail; it flounders and has no direction. After the initial investigation of EMERALD's whereabouts and motives got underway, Masterman and Markham decided to send him home to London. But Grant dug his heels in and said that he wanted to stay in Berlin. The thought of idling out the months at home filled him with dread.

  “Look, if you send me back to Britain on leave I'll just stay here – find a hotel, book in, live in Berlin,” said Grant.

  So Masterman took an executive decision and had Grant formally reattached to Covert Operations Group jobs again instead. It was a healthy compromise that suited everyone.

  “I've got no time for prima donnas, Gorilla. I've got Russians coming out of the woodwork everywhere, so I need one of my best men back with a clear head and a strong work ethic,” cautioned Masterman.

  Grant was already donning his Gutterfighter's persona, street clothes and weapons. “You just tell me what you need, boss. I'll do whatever you and the lads need.”

  Masterman clapped him on the shoulder. “Excellent. Oh and, er… that agent, EMERALD?”

  “Yes?”

  “You sure you two didn't have a fling of some kind?” said Masterman, a knowing look in his eye.

  Grant shook his head. He could feel the guilt rising up within him. He hated lying to Masterman, it felt awkward and foreign to him. “No. What makes you say that?”

  Masterman waved a hand, as if dismissing a vague notion. “Oh, nothing. It's probably just coincidence, but there seem to be some sort of technical discrepancies on the safe house recording device. It seems that on several occasions, the recording device was disabled and then reactivated several hours later.”

  “Must be a glitch,” said Grant, hoping he'd sold the lie.

  “Yes, must be,” said Masterman, giving Jack Grant the hard stare.

  But Grant knew, he just knew, that Masterman could see through him. In front of this man, Jack Grant was as transparent as glass.

  That autumn and into winter, Jack Grant was the dog that didn't bark.

  Since the disappearance of his agent and his return to the Gutterfighters' fold, he became more serious and less cocky. He was back working with a team and that helped to focus his mind. The running of spies was a different discipline to that of the heavy work that the COG carried out, and as part of a team you were expected to pull your weight. As Masterman had said, the Gutterfighters was no place for prima donnas.

  He was professional, was happy to take orders about whatever operation the Gutterfighters were currently involved in, and he relished being in the background and operating undercover on the streets again. When the work was done, he would go back to the little flat he had rented in Spandau, the fight gone out of him, and only then he would sleep. But even that was not peace; instead, his sleep was filled with half dreams, half nightmares, about Lisbeth. He would wake regularly at two-thirty in the morning, like clockwork, and pace the empty rooms of his apartment; his mind in turmoil. He called it his '2am prowl'.

  When he was on the street, driving to or from work, or on operations around the city, he would catch himself doing a double-take, thinking he had seen her – in a store, on a tram, walking – and then he would look closely and the spell would magically disappear, to reveal a woman that only marginally favoured Lisbeth. He tried not to look, but her phantom haunted him.

  But of the real Elisabeth
Vogel, codenamed EMERALD, there was no information.

  Surveillance of the house in Kopenick and the Vogel farmhouse in Magdeburg confirmed that the occupants were away; with only the housekeeper coming in once a week to clean.

  Once a week, and without Masterman's knowledge or permission, Grant would check the safety signal locations – a chalk mark, a flower placed strategically, a ribbon tied around a railing or gate – that indicated that there was a message in one of their dead letter boxes around the city. But there was nothing; no signal and definitely no messages. As the months ground slowly on, he became more disheartened, but he never stopped checking.

  So, he thought, this is what it is like to communicate with the dead.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I seem to have spent my whole life hunting things,” said Mike Stern.

  They were huddled in a Trabant, new paint job, new licence plates, parked up in a side street in West Berlin, watching the scene before them. It was near midnight and in the distance, along the street, was the padded door of a nightclub. A large concierge, more geared for violence than welcoming clientele, stood guard outside.

  “When I was a boy in Virginia, my daddy would take me hunting. I got my first stag when I was twelve years old and was a few years away from having whiskers. So by the time I joined up for the military, I really just swapped hunting animals for hunting men,” reflected Stern.

  It was Mike's last few weeks in Berlin. His secondment to SIS's Covert Operations Group had come to an end and he was being returned to the CIA's control and then shipped overseas. “They got me a posting over in South-East Asia. Things are starting to hot up over there and they need covert operations officers from a paramilitary background. I'll be honest, I'm kinda over the cold in Germany, doesn't suit my southern blood, so the tropical environment of Laos will be a welcome change.”

  Stern's informant had arranged a meeting at a drinking club that he owned – Der Lila Keller – The Purple Cellar, so named because of the décor and colour scheme. The informant's name was 'Little Pauli', an exiled Hungarian gangster, black market shyster and low-level intelligence peddler who had seen one too many George Raft crime movies. Little Pauli knew a guy who knew a guy who had information about some blackmail material on a senior Red Army officer in the Soviet Sector.

  “So you are going to walk into a bar run by a black market Mafioso, full of his goons and which is probably a set-up?” asked Gorilla.

  “That's the plan,” said Stern calmly, checking the street in his wing mirror.

  “Mike, its suicidal!” cautioned Gorilla, who had been brought in to be Stern's back-up man and bodyguard for the operation.

  “Oh, stop your hollerin', it'll be fine. Besides, it's only a conversation to see if it's worthwhile going any further with it. They'll search me when I go in, anyway, so can you look after my baby for me?” said Stern, handing over the Smith & Wesson '39 that was his pride and joy.

  Gorilla raised an eyebrow at that. “Sure. I'll keep it safe for when you get back.”

  “Okay, wish me luck,” said Stern, climbing out of the car and crossing the street at an angle, heading towards the club. Gorilla watched him casually saunter up to the giant doorman. There was a brief conversation and then Mike Stern disappeared into the bowels of the club.

  With nothing left to do for the moment, Gorilla hunkered down inside the folds of his overcoat, keeping one eye on the street and one eye on the doors of Der Lila Keller.

  “So what are we talking here?” asked Stern.

  They were sitting in a private booth in one of the dark recesses of the club, away from the cabaret act – a young, flaxen-haired girl who was doing a passable version of Edith Piaf's Le Vie en Rose – so that they could talk 'bidiness', as the Hungarian liked to call it.

  True to form, he had been expertly searched in the foyer by a couple of Little Pauli's goons, before finally being greeted by the squat Hungarian. They were now fifteen minutes into a negotiation and Stern was already beginning to think that the Hungarian was full of shit and that the place smelt of cheap whisky, ash and sweat.

  The little Hungarian made a gesture with his hands, making a ring with his index finger and thumb and pumping the finger from his other hand in and out quickly in a sexual motion.

  Stern nodded. “So he's fucking someone? Big whoop! Who is it – hooker, his boss's wife?”

  “No, this Red Army molesztalo likes the more masculine companion, the younger the better, too. Boys! Come in the back, in the office, I have a sample of the material,” said Pauli, his eyes greedy and angling for a deal.

  Stern shrugged, playing it cool. “Can I finish my drink first?”

  “Of course!”

  Mike Stern took a long, slow sip of his drink, dragging out the exercise, and all the while his eyes never left Pauli's face, reading him, trying to figure out his angle in all this. But Pauli's face remained impassive, perhaps a bit too impassive; he seemed to be more concerned with the pieces of dandruff that had found their way onto his suit jacket.

  “Okay, sure… why not? Let's do this,” said Stern, knocking back the rest of his vodka. They moved through the busy club towards a side door beyond the stage area, Little Pauli hanging on Stern's shoulder, trying not to get too far ahead.

  “The office is just here,” said the Hungarian, opening a door at the end of the corridor and allowing Stern to enter first.

  Stern walked into the darkness of the room and felt hands grab him from all sides. An ambush! Fuck! He managed to twist his body and throw a haymaker out, felt it connect. He heard the body crash and then he was wrestled to the ground. He suddenly felt the cold pressure of a gun barrel placed against his head.

  “Keep still, Yankee, we don't want to make a mess of the office,” said a voice in English. The voice might have been English, but the accent was definitely Russian. Shit!

  It was only when the car turned on its engine that Gorilla became aware of it. It was parked concealed in the alleyway that ran along the back of the nightclub. He had been so focused on watching the main doors, expecting Mike Stern to come out any minute, that he hadn't even considered any other exit point.

  The vehicle's lights came on, its engine idling in the 'ready' position. Something was about to go down.

  Seconds later, a service door at the back of the club was flung open and four men came out of it and into the darkness. It was the tallest one that he focused on, that really could only have been the American. He had a hood over his head and was being half carried, half dragged, in the manner of a prisoner. Two men got in the back with the prisoner, one man in the front with the driver; a four-man snatch team. Shit!

  The moment the doors were closed, the car began to move off out of the alleyway, taking its time, no hurry, very professional. It was an old Mercedes, beat-up but serviceable. Gorilla gave it a moment, letting the car pass him before starting the engine and beginning the pursuit of the target car.

  They turned onto Kurfurstendamnn, moving past the Tiergarten and heading towards Potsdamer Platz. Gorilla was two cars back and in a comfortable position to keep the surveillance running. Then the target car began to do odd things; a left here, a right turn there, then back again at the next junction. They are seeing if they have a tail, he thought.

  The snatch car sped up, slowed down, a left, another left, fast again, back streets to the north, and then back across the city. Then, either assuming or detecting the Trabant was on them, they put their foot down and increased speed. All subterfuge was off the table now; this was a catch and kill mission. Gorilla didn't have a map, he didn't even know the names of the streets that he was careering down; he was simply driving by instinct, trying to keep the taillights of the snatch car in view and looking for a place where he could run them off the road.

  Standard operating procedure was that if any member of the Gutterfighters was 'snatched' by the opposition – KGB, Stasi, etc – then the remaining team members would call for backup, doing everything they could to get their
man back. The Russians certainly had earned a reputation over the past few months for kidnapping people, whisking them across the demarcation lines and interrogating them ruthlessly – sometimes they survived the torture, sometimes not. If the car made it to the Soviet Zone, it would be virtually impossible to get Mike Stern back in one piece.

  Grant picked up the covert radio mike that linked him with the COG base and any other Gutterfighter cars in the area.

  “This is Delta 1 – we have an immediate code 13 heading towards Agincourt. I am in pursuit. Request back up; over?” He kept repeating it into the handset in his left hand while steering the car with his other one. A 'Code 13' was a kidnap attempt by enemy agents and Agincourt was the codename for East Berlin.

  The streets passed by in a blur, but the taillights were still in his sights. The radio crackled to life and responded, “Delta 1, this Echo 3. We acknowledge. Heading towards Agincourt to provide backup. ETA twelve minutes.”

  It was Bob Knights. But Bob was twelve minutes away and that could be too long to intercept the snatch car.

  The snatch car veered left around a sharp bend, sticking to back streets and off the main roads. They knew that they had someone following them and were putting in none-too-subtle anti-surveillance manoeuvres in the hope of throwing their pursuer off.

  Gorilla put his foot down. Another few minutes and they would be in touching distance of the Soviet Sector! If he was going to act, he was going to have to do it now. He did his tactical vehicle checks; speed good, no police presence, lead vehicle in offside position, seatbelt off, weapon ready and cocked. A little further up the main street and he would go for it!