Absolute Friends (46 page)

He makes it up the first flight and through the door to the old servants' staircase leading to the attic. A shower of bullets and plaster and smoke and invective comes up after him, but he has his wits about him, he is climbing, and when he gets to the attic and discovers he is on his knees mosque-style with his arse in the air and his face in his blood-caked hands, he can still crawl to the dormer window and crank himself up high enough to see over the sill.

And what he sees is truly amazing, the sort of _son et lumière__ show you'd travel miles for. He remembers very well taking Jake to one in Caernarvon--or was it Carlisle? They had cannon and pikemen and halberdiers and siege towers and chaps pouring very lifelike boiling oil from the battlements, and Jake had a whale of a time: a divorced father's half-term to remember, for once.

But in its own way, this show is just as impressive: spotlights and floodlights and arc lights and searchlights, lights stuck up on cherry pickers and flashing lights on the police vans and _grüne Minnas__ and ambulances drawn up at each entrance to the little grass square below the front gate: lights everywhere except in the blackened windows of the surrounding houses, because marksmen like their privacy.

And costumes? Well, if you don't mind mixing ancient with modern, unsurpassed: frogmen rubbing shoulders with King Richard Crusaders in balaclava helmets, blackamoors with battle-axes, maces and witches' boxes lashed to their belts, West Berlin police in Prussian-style helmets, firemen dressed like Nazi storm troopers, paramedics in tin hats and laundered white coats with red crosses on, and any number of mischievous black elves and hobgoblins flitting from doorway to doorway looking to stir up trouble.

And for your sound effects, instead of the usual tattoo music and spotty rumble of cannon fire, we have the sergeant major from the parade ground at Murree, no less, barking unintelligible orders in English, German or, for all Mundy can hear, Punjabi. And at one side of the little square where the road goes by stands a brilliantly lit white taxi with all five doors open, and the driver kneeling next to it with two fellows in gas masks pointing guns at him--the driver being the same Herr Knau who delivered Sasha to the school a couple of days ago. Mundy remembered him as thin. Tied up he looks much fatter.

But the unquestioned star of the show, the man everybody has come from miles around to see, is Sasha without his _Tarnkappe__ but carrying his Party briefcase, skipping down the cobbled road with one sneaker missing and waving his free hand in the air saying, "No, no," the way a film star tells the paparazzi, please boys, not today, I haven't got my makeup on.

The loss of one shoe, paradoxically, has evened him out. You'd hardly know he had a limp from the way he skips from side to side like a Kreuzberg kid in the last throes of a game of hopscotch. Are the cobbles red-hot? It's probably part of the game to pretend they are. Then suddenly he's outrun himself or he's missed his footing, because the champion's down, and rolling like a rag doll with no Mundy around to pick him up, and his arms and legs are rolling with him but it's probably the bullets that are keeping him going rather than his own efforts, because the bullets are tearing round him as well as into him, they're mauling him and disfiguring him, and even when he's well and truly dead, they seem unwilling to believe him, but give him one last all-together-now-boys salvo, just for safety's sake.

Mundy meanwhile is clinging to the windowsill with both bloody hands, but unfortunately he hasn't got the attic to himself anymore. There are two frogmen standing behind him, loosing off burst after burst of submachine gun fire through the open window at the blacked-out neighboring houses, just as coolly as if they were on the range at Edinburgh. And though they are patently oversupplied with weapons, they seem keen to use them all, no sooner firing one gun than dropping it, picking up another and firing with that.

And there's a third, tall fellow joined the party who, for all the tack he's wearing, can't disguise his lazy Bostonian walk. He's backing away from Mundy as if he's scared of him, and he's putting his pistol back in his belt. But make no mistake: this is not the gesture of someone preparing to talk sweet reason with a wounded man lying on the ground. What this masked, languid antiterrorist needs is something heavier to shoot with, which turns out to be some sort of sophisticated rifle with sights so big that an uninformed and recumbent person at the receiving end--such as Mundy--might not know which hole to watch when he is being shot. But this is not something that bothers the shooter, clearly, because when he's got himself as far away from Mundy as the room allows--until he's right up against the wall, in fact--he puts this same rifle to his shoulder and, with studied deliberation, fires three high-velocity sniper bullets into Mundy, one straight through the center of his brow and two more at leisure into the upper body, one to the abdomen and the other to the heart, though neither can have been strictly necessary.

But not before Mundy has filled his lungs for one last intended yell of _Hang on, it's all right, I'm coming,__ to his dead friend lying in the square.

15

THE SIEGE OF HEIDELBERG, as it immediately became known to the world's media, sent shock waves through the courts of Old Europe and Washington, and a clear signal to all critics of America's policy of conservative democratic imperialism.

For five full days, press and television were forced to observe something close to a puzzled silence. There were headlines--sensational ones--but there was no hard news, for the good reason that the security forces had operated the equivalent of a closed film set.

An entire sector of the city had been cordoned off, and its perplexed inhabitants evacuated to specially staffed hostels and held incommunicado throughout the operation.

No photographers, print or television journalists were admitted to the scene of the outrage until the authorities were satisfied that every last shred of potential intelligence had been removed for analysis.

When a television news company's helicopter attempted to overfly the area, it was seen off by American gunships and the pilot was arrested on landing. When the journalists complained, they were reminded that similar reporting restrictions had operated in Iraq. "And what goes for the terrorists in Iraq sure as hell goes for terrorists in Heidelberg," said a senior U. S. defense official, on condition he not be named.

The involvement of American special forces in the siege was celebrated rather than denied, though it was the cause of some anger to the more liberal German constitutionalists. Journalists, however, were blandly reminded that the United States reserved to itself the right to "hunt down its enemies at any time in any place, with or without the cooperation of its friends and allies."

In confirmation, German officials would only speak uncomfortably of "ignoring artificial national barriers in the greater interest of the common struggle." By common struggle was understood the war on terrorism.

One skeptical German commentator referred to the role of the German security services as a "coalition of the belatedly almost willing."

By the time the schoolhouse was finally opened to the press, there had obviously been a fair amount of cleaning up, but what remained to be photographed was still rewarding. A total of 207 bullets fired from the terrorists' hideaway had spattered against empty neighboring buildings. The absence of casualties among security forces was regarded as providential. A commentator for Fox News spoke of the Hand of God.

"This time we got lucky," said the same senior Washington defense official who wished to remain anonymous. "We went in there and we did what we had to do, and we came out without a nick on our finger. Unfortunately, there's always a next time. Nobody around here is crowing too loud."

In addition to the bullet holes there were photo opportunities for bloodstains on the cobbles that had either escaped the cleaners' attentions or been left out of consideration for the press. By following their path it was easy to reconstruct the last moments of Terrorist A, now unmasked as a former Baader-Meinhof sympathizer in middle age known as Sasha, the son of a respected Lutheran pastor.

Sasha, it was revealed by unnamed sources close to the U. S. Intelligence community, had worked in some of the darkest corners of East German Intelligence during the Cold War. His spying activities for the Communists had included the provision of training and other facilities to Arab terror groups.

When the Berlin Wall came down, Sasha exploited his old connections by signing up with a hitherto unknown splinter group of Arab militants believed to have links with Al Qaeda. This information was fed to the press piecemeal over several days, allowing ample time for journalistic license.

Details of Sasha's twilit career, and his close contacts with members of the German and French radical establishment, were also emerging. Documents discovered in a briefcase he was carrying at the time of his attempted escape were being examined by forensic experts and intelligence analysts.

But it was of course the so-called Academy of Professional English that provided the most blood-chilling insight into the terrorists' intentions. For weeks--until it was ruled unsafe and summarily closed on the orders of the city authorities--the devastated schoolhouse offered all the attractions of Scotland Yard's Black Museum. Television teams gorged themselves and came back for more. No news flash was complete without the public's favourite images being replayed. And where the cameras went, the print media dutifully followed.

Some classrooms were so perforated by gunfire that, to quote one journalist, they resembled cheese graters. The main staircase looked as though it had been torpedoed in shallow water. The library, which at the time of the battle was in the throes of being restored, had been blown to pieces, its marble fireplace pulverized, its molded ceilings torn open and blackened by blast.

"When bad guys shoot first, it's true we get kind of testy," the same anonymous Washington defense official conceded.

The testiness showed. Doors and windows were eyeless voids. The art nouveau skylight, point of entry for one team of invaders, was reduced to a rubble of colored glass.

From these scenes of havoc the cameras turned lovingly to the prize exhibits: the bomb-making factory, the arsenal of small arms, submachine guns and hand grenades, the boxes of commercial chemicals, the urban guerrilla's handbooks, the crates of inflammatory literature, the fake passports and the wad of loose cash for two terrorists who wouldn't be going anywhere anymore. And best of all, the detailed maps of American military and civilian installations in Germany and France, some ominously ringed in red, the prize exhibit being a ground plan of U. S. military headquarters, Heidelberg, together with covertly taken photographs of the entrance and perimeter.

Estimates of how many terrorists had been inside the school when it was attacked varied between eight and six. Ballistics experts found evidence of six separate weapons firing into the square. Yet only two men were accounted for and one of them never reached the building. So where were the rest?

Townspeople living close to the evacuated area testified to _grüne Minnas__ tearing past their windows with lights flashing and sirens going. Others spoke of ambulances escorted by police cars and armored personnel carriers. Yet no local hospital reported receiving any VIP casualties, no local mortuary or prison could boast a new inmate. On the other hand, the concentration of U.S. military facilities and personnel stationed in the area--since 9/11 protected by electronically enhanced high wire--left open the possibility that casualties and prisoners had found their way there.

The devastation inside the school building made it nigh impossible to reconstruct the scene. The builders, questioned by journalists and police, recalled no visitors except for tradesmen and the tall Englishman since identified as Mundy. Bits of crockery and food found scattered around the rubble provided no hard evidence. Builders also have to eat. Terrorists, it is well known, are capable of sharing cups.

The official answer provided little comfort: "To divulge further details at this time could endanger vital ongoing operations. Other persons found on the premises are in custody."

What kind of persons? What age? What nationality, sex, race? What custody? Are they in Guantánamo already?

We have nothing further to add at this time.

One mystery figure who appeared to offer the chance of a breakthrough was the driver of a tan-colored BMW rental car who had collected Mundy from the house on the day of the raid and was said by witnesses to have visited several of the city's historical attractions in his company. The unknown man was described as _fesch__--well-dressed, fit-looking and aged fifty-five to sixty.

The BMW was swiftly traced. The hirer was one Hans Leppink, a resident of Delft in Holland. Credit card, passport and driving license confirmed this, but the Dutch authorities denied any knowledge of him, and offered no explanation of how he might have obtained such plausible Dutch identity documents. There was nothing for it but to go back to the two dead desperadoes, both in their fifties.

Sasha was clearly the easier of the two to categorize. A flock of terror psychologists from obscure universities descended from their academic perches to do just that.

He was a German archetype, a child of Nazidom, a seeker after absolutes, the poor man's shrill philosopher, now anarchist, now Communist, now homeless radical visionary in search of ever more extreme ways of subjecting society to his will.

His physical disability, and the sense of inferiority it engendered, drew comparison with Hitler's propaganda minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels. It was common ground, on evidence nobody could afterwards remember, that he hated Jews.

His estrangement from his pious father, his mother's dementia and the prolonged, now suspicious, death of an elder brother while Sasha looked on callously from the boy's bedside, were awarded their proper significance.

So was there a particular moment in Sasha's life--these wise men and women speculated--was there some kind of epiphany, when Sasha saw the path of violence, the _black road,__ open up before him and took it?