The Oktober Projekt (33 page)

He turned off the television and took one final look at Sabine
and thought dear old little Lubov, what have you got me into? Outside he lit a
cigarette his hands trembling, not from fear but anger, then he followed a
different route through Rendsburg for good measure, feeling utter dismay as he
tried to forget Sabine’s dying breath.

By mid-morning Nick had arrived back in Hamburg the sleet
slowly turning to snow, thick flakes that thudded against the train windows as
powdery as moths. Nick sought out a cheap hotel, finally finding one at the top
of a dismal alley off Lange Reihe in Sankt Georg. It stood at the back of the
main tracks into the Hauptbahnhof and didn’t have any views. Cobbled and
narrow, the alley tapered off into a run of tenements where the evening never
fully withdrew, where broken and forgotten bodies slipped in and out of flaking
doorways in search of their next fix. The hotel’s walls were liberally coated
in graffiti, its iron balustrades on the balconies were chipped their rusting
bars sunk into the stone staining it where they touched.

Avoiding the pimp who had a permanent corner in the reception,
Nick wove around club chairs and palms that must have been freshly potted when
the railway was a mere drawing on an engineer’s desk. A clerk in a faded suit
appeared when he hammered a quaint brass bell. We’ve gone backwards through
time, he thought. I haven’t arrived in modern Hamburg, but Hamburg in the
Fifties, the sort of port where my father would come ashore for a tryst with
one of his young acrobatic lovers because he believed young foreign women had
better orgasms; tarts on a braided naval arm.
            

‘There is only our best suite remaining, Herr Greiz,’ said the
desk clerk, a fabricated smile on his lips. He could have been sixty, a dry
dusty relic in a hotel functioning as a brothel. He touched the tip of his
moustache, his manicured fingers as smooth in rhythm as a pianist’s.

Nick paid for three nights and the suite turned out to be
nothing better than a double. Dismal and dark there was a tangy aroma from its
last guest. How long since it had been cleaned was hard to tell, but Nick was
determined he’d only sleep on top of the bed and its stained duvet. Dropping
his small bag of provisions he’d bought on his return to the city, he abruptly
turned his back on his suite. Reaching up to set a telltale on the door, the
two halves of his fractured rib ground together. Black and red filters altered
his vision, a fusion of colour that lasted for two blocks, hardly able to get his
breath until the ache in his chest started to wear off. Clouds loured over the
rooftops and emptied thick sleet over the port, adding yet another misery to
the passing cold faces.

Browsing in windows that he used as rear-view mirrors he
sampled prices and faces, checking his back was clean; until in a toy shop
painted as bright as a kite a face appeared once too often. This one of yours
Blümhof is it? Moscow maybe, come to finish what they started? He was a callow
youth no older than twenty, and from the way he slouched in such a bored
fashion trailing after Nick, he guessed the youth was one of Jack Balgrey’s
irregular footpads. So Jack’s sent his greetings decided Nick, letting me know
that I’m on his turf. The youth wore baggy skater’s pants, Converse trainers
and an olive green military surplus jacket; a tram length between them and
closing.

Ducking into the underground station on Königstraße Nick’s
return ticket to Bergedorf felt sticky in his hand, the destination was the
first button he’d punched on the machine. Warm bodies crowded along the island
platform and the youth came up behind him.
Approaching
from Hamburg-Central a train decreased speed providing Nick’s cue; turning in a
fast arc Nick hit the footpad hard in the chest slamming him into his outstretched
leg.
As the footpad hit the dark tiled platform Nick swooped, his knee
pressed into the footpad’s chest.
‘Thief!
Robber!’ Nick yelled, pinning the footpad down. A crowd gathered, jostling for
a better view of a citizen finally making a stand. ‘Hold him for me,’ Nick
ordered a portly white haired traveller in denim shirt, denim jeans, and
leather fisherman’s waistcoat. ‘Hold him while I get my things,’ insisted Nick.
Not tempted to refuse Nick’s brusque command, the traveller sat on the footpad’s
chest as Nick threaded his way through the crowd. Slipping through an exit Nick
sprinted up and out of the station.
  

• • •

Once it must have been a prosperous
block built of solid stone cut fine, trimmed with matching delicate ribs; now
it had a layer of grime that the brightest of days never penetrated. The tattoo
parlour had come after the grime, Nick decided. It nestled between bars where
old anarchists came to drink; alongside bookshops that dealt in the political
and mysterious shops that took orders by arrangement only. He counted off the
door numbers and knew that she was waiting for him. In the doorway a young
woman watched him arrive, her gaze lingering in the street as though something
kept it permanently there. In trousers, leather jacket and dark glasses she
retreated inside as Nick followed her in. He thought she called his name, but
when Nick looked she had her phone pressed to one ear and never acknowledged
him. One more of Harry’s bizarre network Nick realised, like the tattooist and
most probably the entire street.

A room set aside to wait in was frugal and low, partitioned by
ceilings of varying heights and styles rather than walls. Colour charts of
tattoos on offer competed with a television hanging off a bracket on the
opposite wall, the picture disappearing in a blaze of vertical lines. Cigarette
smoke curled against the ceiling, reluctantly drawn out of a slit in a sash
window held open by a brick. Two Portuguese sailors were arguing, jabbing each
other in the chest, a couple in their teens were wrapped in each other’s arms,
serenely happy or drunk. None of them objected when the young woman locked the
outside door, turning the sign to ‘Closed’. Putting her phone on a shelf behind
a counter where clients were invited to discuss their chosen designs or
piercings, she approached Nick with a measured walk both surly and independent.
Wastefully thin she had hair dyed a
vibrant red, a keffiyeh around her neck. She watched him with the arrogance of
a student radical, and in the 1970s she’d have supported the Baader-Meinhof
group, thought Nick.
 

‘Otto will see you now,’ she said, seeming never to move her
lips.

While she shouted down the sailors’ protests, Nick entered a
door marked ‘Studio’. Inside the rich air was soiled with antiseptic and the
odour of rubber from a dentist’s chair and couch. Otto was ageless, bald and
triumphantly tattooed; washing his hands in a tiny alcove sink, his broad back
parting a bead curtain, the beads splayed over his powerful shoulders. He had a
strong smile and a fixed way of throwing his weight when he walked. Against his
white vest his arms showed up a lifetime of ink, stopping short at the wrists
like cuffs.

‘Harry, he is a something else,’ said Otto, measuring Nick with
small eyes from behind round-wired glasses.

‘Definitely,’ said Nick, declining Otto’s offer of taking a
seat on the dentist’s chair, so Otto took it for himself. One tired
professional in need of a rest, stretching out his legs, massaging his right
wrist, reclining the backrest to an acceptable angle.

‘So you need information?’ Otto asked, comfortable at last.

‘What do you know about Sabine? She had an appointment booked
with you.’

Down the back of a yellow door behind the tattooist’s chair, a
life-size 48DD cartoon woman with jet black curls and a waist dreamt up by a
pervert. In a comic strip pose, she had one leg raised with her knee forward as
a python wound round the other.

‘I would not class it as a crime,’ Otto suggested. ‘But I don’t
know anyone called Sabine.’

‘She died,’ Nick explained. ‘Someone gave her an overdose.’

‘Life is tough,’ offered Otto with a streetwise smile.

In the waiting area Nick could hear the Portuguese sailors
erupt; high angry shouts that Otto’s assistant quelled with a lengthy yell for
order that rattled the inner door. With Otto briefly interested in the noise
outside Nick brought the chair up fast, smashing his elbow into Otto’s jaw, his
glasses spinning off his nose. Another punch delivered with a straight arm
doubled Otto up, bringing tears to his eyes.

‘Harry told me you were going to cooperate,’ said Nick. ‘Harry
said I could rely on Otto.’

Massaging his jaw, Otto took some seriously deep breaths.

‘A misunderstanding,’ wheezed Otto. ‘So many girls, so many
names sound the same, but now I remember Sabine. Certainly I know her. She was
a bit dizzy, but okay, did a good BJ, one of the best I have known.’

‘Have that engraved on her headstone should she? Sabine was
wonderful at oral sex.’

Otto had begun to sweat, using a swab to dab his forehead going
one way and then back. ‘It was a fact,’ Otto explained hurriedly, squinting at
Nick. ‘You wanted facts and I gave you one. A business transaction, that was
her payment for two small designs I did on the inside of her thighs, you know
where I mean.’

‘I have an idea,’ offered Nick.

‘Took my time, no rush, outline and colours just fine.’

‘I bet you did,’ said Nick. ‘Sabine talked about going to a
refuge, she mention it to you?’

Otto made a real attempt to smile, but Nick’s hard eyes changed
his mind.

‘Sabine, a totally crazy girl, kept saying she was going to get
her head straight, get a fresh start.’

‘But she never made it?’

‘No. She’d met this bum, called him her boyfriend, but I think
she was into him for drugs, maybe he was her pimp, who knows with these girls,’
Otto reflected. ‘This boyfriend’s not a pleasant piece of work. I even heard
that he might have been offering to sell Sabine out. Does glamour shoots and
he’s called Tolz.’

‘Did she ever mention a good friend she worked with?’

‘Good. You joking? Sabine and the other girls, well, they’re
okay, but good? What does good mean?’ asked Otto, raising his arms to emphasise
this knotty philosophical argument.

‘What about the refuge she was planning to go to?’

‘Supplementary information comes at a price,’ decided Otto.

‘Take it up with Harry, I don’t carry cash advances.’

‘Numa Theatre,’ Otto disclosed unhappily, a man sensing a
business transaction fading. ‘Ask for Anke.’ Getting out of the dentist’s
chair, he rubbed his jaw again as Nick made for the door.

Sixteen

The Man from Cologne

Hamburg, December

On
Königstraße as Nick walked against the flow of heavy traffic, mostly tourist
coaches meandering towards the port for midnight sailings, a police car came
from nowhere slipping in front of him, its blue light starting to remorselessly
flash. Nick checked over his shoulder as a second patrol car pulled up close
behind; the officers from the first car ordering Nick to stop, both young with
remarkably seasoned faces, their leather jackets glistening in the passing headlights.
While one stood clear of Nick his colleague opened the rear door.

‘Please, Herr Torr, you will come with us,’ he said with a tidy
smile. ‘You have nothing to fear,’ he added, gripping Nick firmly by the arm.

The skaters had gone home and the policemen kept Nick between
them, walking along a path on the lip of the park’s ice-rink; around them bare
oak and beeches shuffled their branches in the wind. A walkway running out into
the centre of the rink had a timekeeper’s box skewered into the ice by a single
metal shaft. As they escorted Nick towards the rink, their holsters chafed
against their jackets. Reaching the walkway they stopped, one of them directing
Nick forward as though he were about to cross a major road.

‘Please, Herr Torr.’ And with a firm but unceremonious hand,
started Nick down the concrete aisle, a groom without a bride.

‘Well old son, isn’t this just a great place for an informal
chat?’ Jack Balgrey met him, his face red, his cheeks blown out, Jack a spectre
that would not let him rest. In the doorway to the box a figure too slight for
the night watched them, as though they were playing out a scene for his benefit
alone. Balgrey tucked his scarf round his neck and adjusted his stance.

‘You should have made it more obvious, Jack,’ said Nick,
falling in step. ‘Taken a full page in the local paper or organised a civic
reception.’ Jack Balgrey, a jaded regular SIS officer winding down his career.
Jack a seasoned hand with a stain on his record for having an attitude and a
fondness for booze.
 

Balgrey swung on his heels, his gauche face as heavy as a
hammer; his flat nose flared and his eyes had long ago run out of sparkle, his
hair thick and oiled ended in a natural quiff.
 

‘We don’t want to be falling out in front of our host,’ he
hissed, leaning forward, his face close, alcohol and recent garlic on his
breath. ‘Just be bloody grateful that I’m here to hold your hand. It’s a damn
sight more than you deserve old son after what you did to my boy.’

Stocky and plump he had one of those faces Nick had often drunk
with in the Riyadh Hyatt Hotel or a Hong Kong bar; a well-travelled company
rep, a boring companion for a long hot expatriate night endlessly bragging of
tax fiddles and tales of how to beat the local boys.

‘You’ve saved me again, Jack, pretty soon I won’t have a life
to call my own.’

‘Cut out the funnies, old son, you’re well in it and I can only
do so much. Now come on and say hello to this nice man who has come all the way
from Cologne to meet you. Isn’t that an honour?’

Jack’s friend from the German internal security service, the
Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, the BfV based in Cologne stepped out to meet
them. A wafer of a man with an unspoilt face and small intense eyes, he wore
practical clothes for the season; a fastidious observer of tradition, he was in
his early fifties with an overcoat that didn’t come off the peg. A mendicant
air to him Nick thought, and this is your monk isn’t it Jack, your very own
confessor.

‘Herr Döbeln,’ began Balgrey with impressive formality, ‘this
is...’

‘Thank you, I am aware,’ said Döbeln, abruptly. Perhaps to make
up for this curious style he offered Nick his hand; swinging it out stiffly
from the shoulder in one graceless leaden arc, his palm very soft and damp.

‘I forgot to ask permission for operating on your patch,
sorry,’ Nick said without meaning a word.

‘That is not the issue,’ he replied, a handkerchief swiped
firmly across his nose. He had a peculiar stillness to his voice, while his
eyes roamed nervously unable to rest.
             

‘Why not speak your mind?’ suggested Nick affably, sensing
Jack’s displeasure nonetheless.

‘Very well,’ agreed Döbeln, pocketing his handkerchief. ‘What
concerns my senior colleagues and myself, is the impact that your hostile
actions will have.’ Nick looked unimpressed, engrossed by something far away.

‘So what can I offer you?’

‘You flatter yourself,’ said Döbeln raising a trite smile,
removing his glasses, bending back the crook to obtain a snugger fit. ‘You are
not in a position to make offers.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Be reasonable, there’s concern in certain quarters that’s
all,’ Balgrey assured him. ‘No one’s ruling out cooperation,’ he said,
fidgeting with his feet.

‘This is correct,’ Döbeln said very quietly. ‘If we were only
interested in arresting you, this I could have achieved already. You prefer
that I should continue?’ he wondered smoothing down his short hair.

‘We all have ideals, old son. Sometimes we’ve just to modify
them a touch. Let a bit of reality see the light of day, remind us where we’re
going,’ Balgrey suggested.

‘Thanks for the backing Jack. I’ll do you a favour sometime,
remind you how it feels to have friends.’

From somewhere out in the port or the river, a large ship
blasted a leaving or an inward greeting on its siren; a deep bass echoing boom
unfolding in the night.

‘It is sensible advice,’ confided Döbeln with too much effort.

‘And what is the reality?’
demanded Nick, squaring up to Döbeln, ‘Care to tell me that?’

Döbeln paused, deliberately
concentrating on the precise movement of staring Nick in the eye.

‘You can be added to our watch list,’ he proposed. ‘A very
simple procedure.’

‘Flag me up, I don’t care.’

‘Think about it old son,’ urged Balgrey, turning in a circle
and slapping his gloves together to fend off the cold. ‘We don’t need to upset
friends,’ he added, passing them on his tight circuit.

‘If I don’t agree?’ asked Nick as though this was a natural
conclusion.

‘You will be harassed, you will be unable to follow the trail,’
said Döbeln, plunging his hands back into his overcoat pockets. ‘That will lead
to your arrest and create a difficult scenario for Berlin and London to
resolve.’

‘What are the terms?’ he asked almost too dispirited to care.

‘In Cologne we have suffered also, as your Service has suffered
in the past. From weakness, from poor morale, from betrayal also,’ began Döbeln
and Nick was struck by the conciliatory tones that only come with rehearsal.
‘Our problem is heightened by the future, how we construct Germany’s new role.
Allegiances with old enemies is easy to preach, but difficult to pay for. Your
findings, your conclusions are to be shared with Berlin and Washington.’

‘No.’

‘This is not an offer, but a condition. Any cooperation we
provide is non-attributable. You should go carefully.’

‘So you get more bargaining power for a say in which way Europe
and Moscow cooperate?’ said Nick, shaking his head. ‘Of course Germany striking
out, forming its own special relationship with the States or Moscow means Paris
is going to be mightily upset.’

‘This is non-negotiable,’ Döbeln warned. ‘Requests should be
made through Herr Balgrey. Now, if you will excuse me, I have other business.’
With a slight nod Döbeln set off down the walkway.

‘This is absurd, Jack, just too much.’ Nick threw off Balgrey’s
arm, going after Döbeln. Filling the exit a policeman barred his way, one hand
poised over his holster.

Out of breath, Balgrey landed at Nick’s side.

‘Have some sense, old son,’ he said pulling for air. ‘What’s
the big problem with sharing all of a sudden? Don’t we have barter? Don’t we
need friends any more?’

‘Mine are dead, Jack, what’s your excuse?’ said Nick in a fury.
‘You’re as bad as London now get off my back.’

‘And you’re the bloody saint aren’t you? You and your pious
cause of doing what’s right. You share, you hear. There’s no failure in that
for Christ’s sake.’

Two kids on skateboards came round a path at speed, saw the
gathering and changed their minds about going onto the ice without even
bothering to stop.

‘Who tipped them off, Jack?’ demanded Nick. ‘Who put Cologne on
my tail?’

‘The Americans, who else, old son,’ said Balgrey. ‘London have
been bleating for me to keep you on a short chain, but I thought I’d give you
some distance, what with your wife being caught up in it.’

‘That’s very decent of you Jack.’

‘Look old son, once Downing
Street turned our product gathering into a manic obsession with suicide
bombers, Washington stepped in.
Your not so good friend Mitchell Harney
has been through Europe cutting deals faster than a rep chasing his Christmas
bonus. Harney is Cologne’s new best friend. You know how he operates.’

Nick certainly did, and he knew that Harry Bransk was always
seeking out avenues to exploit, a merchant who peddled information for pure
profit.

‘Harney’s trying to have me run me out of town, that it Jack?’
said Nick, for the first time hearing the traffic; movement without shape, a
constant stream of mechanical groans hardly ever changing pitch.

‘Cologne are not stupid, they’re playing it both ways.’

‘Maybe I’ll just ignore their offer, sod London too, do it on
my own.’

‘Let’s not push at the same button old son, we could end up
with a lot of trouble.’

‘Can’t have trouble can we Jack?’

‘Not at my age, old son.’ Jack mulled over a point for a second
or two, then ventured a question: ‘Know anyone called Sabine?’

‘Why?’

‘The name’s come up in a couple of conversations, all of ‘em
connected to Harney.’

‘Never heard of it,’ said Nick.

‘No worries,’ said Balgrey, tucking in his scarf.

‘Just one thing, Jack?’ Nick asked ready to leave. ‘Are you
going to play London’s game?’

‘That would be telling, old son, wouldn’t it.’

‘Secrets, Jack, they’ll be the death of you.’

‘Of us all, old son, of us all.’

But Nick never replied, on his way already stamping solemnly
away, the snow gently starting to fall once more.

• • •

The Numa Theatre was not one of
Hamburg’s most celebrated venues as it lay so far off the beaten track, in a
part of the city Nick’s father would have described as bohemian; a refuge for
anarchists and those groups of a similar persuasion who refused to swim in the
mainstream. Beside double sheet steel doors, a man in his thirties was waist
deep in the engine compartment of a clapped out bus.

‘This the Numa Theatre?’ Nick asked, taking shelter from the
driving snow behind the propped bonnet.

Barely noticing Nick or the weather, the man grunted at a
rounded nut, his spanner continually slipping off it. His faded military
overalls were a bottle green, soaked by the snow. Dropping the spanner in the
toolbox at his feet, the man straightened out. His head completely shaven held
dozens of snowflakes in place of hair, and for a second before they dissolved
gave him the pasty head of a clown.

‘What’s left of it,’ he said, wiping an oil streak off his nose
with a frayed sleeve. ‘The place is dropping around us. No safety certificate,
no performing licence, no one coming through the front door.’ He offered a
chesty laugh. ‘We owe you money too?’ he demanded sharply.

Nick humbly shook his head. ‘You heard of Sabine?’

‘A weirdo. Who knows where she is. One day to the next, she’s
making big plans. I don’t think she even knows herself what she wants to do. Go
round the side to the blue door, up the steps, watch for the floor, down the
corridor and ask for Anke. If anyone knows where that cuckoo is, she might.’

‘Thanks.’

But Nick received no reply. The man, back in the engine this
time armed with a smaller spanner, set about the nut cursing it to the end of
the world and back.

The blue door sagged forlornly on its hinges supported by a mop
bucket. In a vehement Gothic burst someone had taken the trouble to write STAGE
DOOR, and next to it a poster announced dates in different cities for the
theatre group, though half of their forthcoming tour was already cancelled.

Inside, the stale air was full of sound that seeped down from
above him, and from a radio playing far away Nick could just pick up Kasabian’s
Club Foot
. Tiny bulbs burned dimly and
he could vaguely make out the last rung of an iron staircase. He climbed
carefully the whole thing swaying under his feet, reaching a gallery propped
across girders. The diamond grating lifted at each step, and he remembered the
warning only after a section nearly tipped him over. At the end of a
whitewashed brick corridor damp and cold, a backstage area built over the stage
opened out; low and dim, veins of calcified wire tacked unevenly along the
bricks. Half eaten by shadow, a woman in a brown fur coat had her back to him,
doubled over a wicker basket tugging and cursing, straining at the task.
                             

‘Anke?’

She sucked in a mouthful of air and spun round.

‘What’s it to you?’ she spat, pushing by him to yell down the
corridor. ‘Emmerich, do you hear me you idle bastard? Emmerich, you’d better
have that lighting gantry down and stored and start on these baskets. I’m not
breaking my back for you. Emmerich, Emmerich, do you hear?’

A cloudy reply came from above or below and she shook her head
in disgust. She was in her thirties with long auburn hair and a plain tired
face, unremarkable but for its hardness.