The Oktober Projekt (38 page)

Escorted up by Ernst and Lukas who actually had to pull and
push, Vilhelms Bliska chose to stay with his back to the bed. That’s fine, I
know where you’re coming from, facing your own lust in front of strangers isn’t
easy, decided Nick. Bliska remained by the window, a burly figure with a wise
face and dark thinning hair. The looseness in his shoulders stiffened as
footage of him and Tobel played on the laptop set squarely on the bed by Nick,
the hissing clearing to Klara giggling and groaning as Bliska asked if she
wanted more. Fake sounds of joy, a straight playback of regular bedtime action
spreading through the room, the unmistakable sweating face of Bliska clear and
visible as his mistress rode him. Whether it was Klara’s clinical performance,
Bliska’s enthusiastic grunts of pleasure or pure embarrassment, the majority
shareholder and managing director of SVZkom suddenly awoke as though coming out
of a dream. Ashen faced he threw the laptop against the wall, shattering it
with a bang. Nick glanced unconcerned at the wreckage.

‘We have additional footage,’ said Nick, raising his eyebrows.

‘You are crazy,’ Bliska stormed, fluently switching on his
English. ‘You are all mad, animals, thugs. We have laws in Switzerland to
protect men like me. I am Herr Bliska. I am the manager of an international
company. You are fools to think you can keep me.’

Lunging forward at Nick, Bliska only gained a couple of steps
before Ernst and Harry restrained him, whilst Nick the object of his rage,
remained unmoved on a corner of Klara’s bed.
 

‘Don’t touch me, get your filthy hands off me,’ Bliska snarled,
more in exhibition than threat. ‘Is this the way to treat a man of my position?
Answer me? Do you understand justice?’

‘We all understand justice, it’s the interpretation that’s
difficult to define,’ suggested Nick, fixing Bliska with resolute eyes. ‘Now
sit down and be quiet.’ Nick waved his hand for calm, in perfect control.

Bliska erupted once more. ‘Who do you think you are dealing
with? So I have a mistress, who will care about an extra-marital affair in the
twenty-first century,’ he said brightly, finding a seed of hope, his confidence
returning.

‘Paid for by Moscow.’

‘Moscow… Moscow. Where is your right to make these
accusations?’ he blustered, rising to his full height, Ernst and Lukas promptly
at his side. ‘If you leave now, I will forget that you even tried to blackmail
me. That is my option, that is my deal.’

‘Whether we leave or stay, Moscow is going to kill you,’ said
Nick reasonably. ‘They will assume that you have told us many privileged
things.’

Taking measured steps to the window, Bliska studied Nick as
though he needed more persuasion. ‘I am a man of substance,’ he declared
indigent once more. ‘I am in receipt of a considerable salary, I have invested
wisely and this,’ he said with a wave of both arms, ‘is my reward, an
investment. Moscow,’ he snorted, ‘has nothing to do with this or me.’

‘Moscow has already killed to prevent us reaching you,’ said
Nick. ‘What are they going to think when they find that we have interviewed the
managing director of a wholly owned GRU company, namely your own? They will
assume that Herr Bliska, an agent they believed they could trust has disclosed
many things. How his company SVZkom, uses GRU funding transferred here from
Panama to assist his R&D development that is a cover for cyber-terrorism
and espionage,’ Nick continued. ‘You are equally dispensable, you should not
forget that.’

Visibly shaken, Bliska’s composure withered. A man without a
counter-claim or an excuse, he floundered for something to say, his heavy eyes
looked first to Lukas, then Ernst, coming at last forlornly to Nick.

‘This is a lie, totally untrue.’

It was the final protest and they all knew it. Uttered flatly
without any conviction or feeling, it was an act of defiance that even Bliska
had no faith in.

‘Why not sit down,’ offered Nick. ‘We have evidence of the
movements of funds from Moscow to Approva Holdings and Investment in Panama.
From there, the transfers to your company here including the times, dates and
amounts. You cooperate and there’s no reason for Frau Bliska or your GRU
controllers to watch your performances with Klara. We can even assist you to
start a new life if you come over to us.’

‘Lies,’ he complained feebly, accepting a dressing stool
provided by Ernst. ‘You are crooks, thieves, nothing more,’ Bliska grumbled,
turning unhappily from his own reflection in the dressing table mirror.

‘I will give you five minutes to make up your mind, cooperate
with us, or take your chance with Moscow, your wife and the authorities here.
You agree to work with us and I ask for nothing more than total commitment.’

‘Commitment,’ he repeated loudly, an oath. ‘If I do not adhere
with your demands I will lose everything.’

‘Everything, possibly your life, maybe the lives of your family
also,’ Nick told him.

Downstairs the music was getting higher followed by laughter.
The more noise you make the less attention you create; fact of life thought
Nick, noise gives assurance that you’re invited, welcomed and not a prying
thief. In Klara’s bedroom they were in a different world; isolated, waiting for
Bliska to make his decision. Which he did, drawing a huge breath to commence
his heroic tale.

‘I was recruited from a technical college in Riga,’ Bliska
began, ‘I studied software engineering and was chosen to attend a training
facility in north Ossetia.’ He glanced up, touring the faces around the room,
considering whether he should continue, which after a hesitant pause he did.
Bliska then went on to detail how he had been ‘placed’ in SVZkom, at that time
a small Swiss IT company, but with Moscow funding he transformed it into a
cutting-edge R&D concern. With further Moscow funding he eventually bought
the company shares outright, giving Moscow its very own clean Swiss front. He
became a Swiss national twenty-years ago, adding more veneer to his cover by
marrying into a respected local family. He met Klara at the local tennis club
he added, his wife never enjoyed physical sport.

‘There is a particular problem that you can help us with,’ Nick
suggested.
‘Not the funding of the seminars
and honeytraps in Hamburg, but,’ here Nick took a deliberate weighted pause,
‘there is the separate additional payment from Panama, a regular monthly
transfer that we can’t fully understand.’
 
Nor could Aubrey-Spencer’s specialists, Nick learnt after Danny Redman
had delivered the reconstructed accounts Galina Myla had dumped on the laptop.

His head hung low, Bliska nodded in principle.

‘And unless you are willing to give me your full assistance,
the Swiss authorities will be informed immediately.’ Nick waited for the
censure, the victim’s last attempt to convince himself he was in no position to
reject the reasonable offer. ‘I really need you to make up your mind.’

Bliska hesitated for a moment before venturing his opinion.
‘You are a fool, you’re a lunatic,’ he decided. ‘You cannot protect me from
Moscow.’ And before anyone could prevent him, he had lurched over to Nick and
tapped him on the shoulder. ‘They can get to me as easy as that.’

‘Sit down,’ Nick snapped.

The music lifted again, the floor vibrated and Bliska lost his
concentration briefly. ‘Keep it reasonable,’ Ernst shouted from the gallery
returning with an apology on his face, and resumed his vigil by the window.

Bliska stared unflinchingly ahead, his grey eyes indifferent to
his plight, determined the whole world should take a share of the blame. Nick
slapped the clipboard on his knees, a clipboard containing Lubov’s hard won
prize presented in common spreadsheet rows and columns.

‘We need to move fast, not
tomorrow, the day after, but now. I need to know if you’re going to provide me
with answers?’

A prospect so daunting that
Bliska screwed his silk handkerchief into a tight ball, a move Nick recognised
as clear as signal as he might have wished for, that Bliska had finally lost
his inner
struggle.

‘I have no choice as you know,’ said Bliska, lifting his eyes
to Nick in one last open appeal. ‘I will cooperate.’

Markus brought them coffee, three small cups and a pot that
gleamed from never being used. Bliska listened in a rapt silence as Nick
outlined how that one monthly special payment was the only stumbling block to
Bliska being welcomed in London with open arms.

‘It’s important that you’re totally frank with me,’ Nick added
as a warning.

Bliska looked blankly at Nick, a slight frown of suspicion
puckering his heavy brow. Slipping off his jacket Bliska folded it neatly and
laid it by his feet, loosened the knot on his tie, unbuttoned his collar, a man
about to play serious poker.

‘This monthly payment is really a very straight forward
transaction,’
Bliska stated, with no
qualms, no hesitancy and no compunction in revealing his GRU subterfuge.
             

‘How so?’ Nick observed casually.

Bliska returned a thin smile. ‘It is for the maintenance of an
isolated property on Fehmarn, this you understand is a German island. A large
house with many acres of land on the coast near Puttgarden, my company
purchased it on Moscow’s instructions several years ago as a safe house. And
for cover, it is accounted for as a company retreat. But no one from the
company is allowed to visit. Buying the house did not even dent the sum Moscow
had supplied, they could have bought the entire island,’ Bliska laughed.

No one else so much as smiled along with him, and here Nick
noticed a visible change come over those in the room; we have uncovered Lubov’s
real treasure, he thought. ‘How was the property used?’

Whether he was aware of the importance of Nick’s question or he
enjoyed being in the limelight, Bliska made an inordinate fuss of remembering.
Finally, when it seemed Nick was in danger of beating it out of him, Bliska
nodded.
‘Someone from Moscow has the
exclusive rights to the house. She has South African papers in the name of Elsa
De-Beyer, she has cover as a SVZkom consultant,’ Bliska said, swallowing hard,
because he appreciated just as everyone else in the room did, that at that very
moment he had just become an official traitor punishable by death; a sentence
Moscow resolutely enforced.

‘And this house is still used by
Elsa De-Beyer
?’ Nick asked suppressing his ache for a cigarette,
a long drink of Laphroaig, as Bliska started to dry, needed nudging along.

‘Yes,’ Bliska confessed, and the knot of silk went from hand to
hand. ‘But Moscow informed me that because the house was such a strategic
asset, its maintenance would have to be undertaken by an outside company. The
monthly payment from Panama I then have to divide, conceal as consultancy
work,’ Bliska stated, inflating his standing with Moscow.

‘Who manages the property?’

Closing his puffy eyes, Bliska played out his remaining moment
in the spotlight until Nick again quite viciously demanded the name.

‘Venlag of Hamburg, it has diverse interests I believe.’
 

And Nick refused his quite natural instinct to reveal his
amazement, suppressing his justified sense of disbelief. Visualising instead,
Jack Balgrey as the sole representative of Venlag & Co. GmbH, servicing a
property belonging to Moscow. Jack and his company, a wholly owned subsidiary
of the Service; which did indeed have diverse interests, though not one of them
should have included being employed by the GRU.

‘You have been extremely helpful, Herr Bliska. There are
however a few items that we need your assistance with. A complete record of all
transactions that you will provide to my colleague,’ said Nick, nodding in
Ernst’s direction, disguising how important Bliska’s last piece of information
had been.

‘You ask too much of me. They will hunt me and kill me.’

‘They would destroy you anyway,’ said Nick and paused as Ernst
came to his side, a whisper in his ear. ‘I understand, no problem,’ Nick said
to Ernst and turned back to Bliska. ‘We have arranged for you and your family
to be relocated to a safe house. We will assist with papers, passports and new
identities.’

‘But now, this very moment?’ Bliska said, reaching for his
jacket. ‘You want me to leave immediately?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I have commitments here, friends, a reputation, a very good
life, my company.’

‘I’m not forcing you to leave, but Moscow will send someone.’

‘Yes.’

Already thinking through his options, Bliska had a sudden
afterthought. ‘What of Klara, where is she? What have you done with her?’

‘She is being looked after and has accepted our offer of a new
identity, a new life.’

Suddenly the party broke up, the group departed as quickly as
they arrived. Silently, with no farewells on the step, no goodbye kisses,
Liesel and Lukas made a final inspection before Markus locked the door
returning the house to its limbo. With quite enough things to concern him, Nick
refused to return to Winterthur by car, opting to walk, allowing himself a
chance to go through his remaining objectives.
            

Twenty

The Boatyard

Blankenese, December

Three
in the afternoon and already it was dusk, the road out of Hamburg
taking Nick in a new direction. Sleet turning to snow bumped against the
Passat’s windscreen as he drove on into Blankenese and tucked the car out of
sight close to the Elbe, the hollow melodic notes of a channel buoy tolling in
mourning as he walked away. Following the river line Nick climbed past chalets
built for the view, taking a stiff assent up the
treppes
that
drained his legs, the blood slopping into his feet. Through long windows
oblongs of honeycomb light spilled onto the snow by his side; nothing else
moved other than a dog padding its way home through an empty square. Over the
hillside a mist thinner than silk blew and billowed through the pine trees, and
rounding a corner everything fell away; houses, trees and hill. On the horizon
Hamburg burnt under halogen, a beautiful orange coming from generated power and
not Allied incendiaries.

Slipping and scrambling Nick started down a harsh steep path
leading out of a canopy of branches strung with outdoor lights, their coloured
bulbs bobbing in the wind giving off a numinous glow. Without warning the path
spread into a clearing and he was facing the river. Around a tiny inlet of
unequal sides, grocery stores, ships’ chandlers and restaurants were dark and
closed until next season when fair weather sailors would arrive. In the
shadows, Ernst Sargens hunched up tight against the cold began impatiently
waving with a torch, a father calling home his wayward son.
                              
                     

‘We thought you weren’t coming,’ Sargens said, his heavy jawed
grin replaced by a sombre look. ‘Danny was getting concerned.’

They shook hands and as an added touch Ernst embraced him, the
torch digging into Nick’s arm.

‘They’re doing a fantastic job, Nick,’ said Ernst ushering him
along. ‘Since Switzerland the boys and girls are glad to be involved. We want
to be there at the end, to help him wrap it up, they told me. They’re good
Nick, they’re committed.’

Snow stood in soiled heaps at the roadside and a thorough frost
gave it a slick sheen as Ernst crunched through it, jogging up concrete stairs
to the second level of holiday apartments; three rooms and a dining kitchen,
furniture out of a box. Ernst had paid for a month explaining to the agent he
and his crew were here to try out a racing yacht, a breakthrough in design, a
commercial secret. The agent dusted cigar ash of his lap and shook hands, a
wink and the deal signed; nothing would pass his lips the agent promised,
they’d have to torture him first. Ernst without a flicker of a smile told him
that could be easily arranged. And Ernst’s team had decamped from their original
grubby squat to concentrate on Blümhof’s boatyard, no doubt much to the
squatter’s relief.

‘There’d been no activity since we set up,’ he said ushering
Nick to a picture window to admire the view. ‘Then yesterday, bang, we had
arrivals.’

At the far end of the small
inlet as though distanced through shame, Blümhof’s boatyard sprawled raggedly
over a sloping shore.
Nothing more than a melee of sheds and buckled
canopies over unfinished hulls, all of them waiting for a final touch Nick
reasoned they would never receive.

‘We’ve assembled this from the faces Erika caught when they
arrived. Where possible we have cross-referenced them,’ Ernst explained,
leading Nick to a rear wall.

A series of photographs were taped to a perspex panel that had
been hung in place of a panorama of Old Hamburg, elegantly done in watercolour
from across the Außenalster. Some recent the work of Erika, others were file
copies in colour, some dark and grainy the result of a high speed film probably
taken at night. Nick didn’t even want to guess how Ernst had acquired them; a
who’s who of Moscow’s remaining players that Ernst had assembled into
 
a genealogical tree, with names and
connecting arrows added in different colours according to rank criss-crossing
the perspex.

‘Not bad, Nick, a good job, yes?’ said Ernst touching each
image in turn, applying names to faces. At its head one severe and stiff face
that Ernst identified as GRU Colonel Evgeni Kasimov, beneath him the sullen
pout belonged to Sergei Perekop, those two were Franziska and Blümhof, the last
is Levko, Perekop’s legman.

He was also involved in Angie’s rape and murder, thought Nick,
remembering the maisonette in East London which brought the hairs on Nick’s
neck arms and neck standing on end. ‘A very good job, Ernst,’ said Nick.

‘The woman we think might have been brought along to entertain
Kasimov.’

‘Anything’s possible,’ sighed Nick, moving over to the window
standing back in the shadows, staring at the boatyard until his vision blurred.
‘Can we take them?’ Nick wanted to know, rubbing his eyes.

‘Say the word Nick, everyone is in place. Your show right down
the line, your word. Say when.’

‘Go,’ Nick said with quiet determination. ‘We go Ernst, it’s a
green light.’

Talking into his radio, Ernst relayed his orders and Nick ran
after him down to a waiting Mercedes.

‘It’s going to be fine,’ Ernst assured him, pulling on a dark
blue balaclava that he rolled down round his neck. ‘No problems, Nick.’

‘There never are,’ he answered, wishing he could laugh.

Fine specks of snow swirled looking for somewhere to land,
drifting aimlessly in circles as Ernst drove round the block parking opposite
the boatyard gates, cutting the engine and headlights. Now they had ringside
seats with a chance of seeing blood. Ernst grabbed another balaclava off the
back seat and dropped it in Nick’s lap. Very nice, now he was really one of the
team. The traffic had all but dried up and a pale light struggled in the thick
white air when Lukas brushed by, dragging himself off up a frozen bank close to
the Elbe where trees grew to no great height, bent double by the wind. Coming
the other way Erika and Markus argued, their breath bursting in angry white
puffs. Two missing? Nick twisted in his seat. Ignaz and Danny as a second entry
team? Uncertainty and fear, a rush of nerves that he’d unleashed a diabolical
force; Dr. Frankenstein unable to control his monster.

‘OK, Liesel,’ Ernst in conversation with a voice sounding miles
away. ‘Take a good look round on your way in to check for opposition, count the
cars.’

By the crooked trees Lukas stooped to tie a lace on his combat
boot, Erika and Markus were clinched in a kiss by the gates and everything ran
at normal speed. Parked just inside the yard Nick saw a Land Cruiser resting in
weak light coming from a stockyard pole. An off-roader’s dream with tinted
windows, blocked in by Freja and her Volvo estate.

‘She can cope, Nick, no doubts. Freja can make it happen,’
Sargens said, tugging up his balaclava.

This is worse than taking a jump from a plane Nick thought, easing
his own woollen helmet on. His body jerked as Ernst’s radio crackled which
might have been the cue for stage effect smoke, a charge and Danny’s H&K
slaying everything in sight. But it only brought an absurd stale pause,
normality and ordinariness damping the tension, allowing Freja to prop up the
Volvo’s bonnet and peer into its guts; bent from the waist as if she’d been
frozen halfway to touching her toes, her blue jeans tight across her rump.

‘We’ve one chance,’ Nick said, and somehow he thought we might
just pull this thing off. Shaking her head Freja bent further into the engine.
They must be blind, or she’s not their type.

‘We’ve a response,’ said Ernst, making it sound as though
someone had replied to an ad in the evening paper.

Out from a clapboard office a figure came to check the
obstruction, thumping down three steps to get a clear look. Ernst passed Nick a
night scope and a fudged shape took on proportions that Nick could claim
belonged to Blümhof. A flare suddenly exploded in Blümhof’s hand and Nick
realised it was a match intensified by technology. He handed the scope back to
Ernst and Blümhof’s cigarette became an ember. An incomprehensible yell from
Blümhof brought Freja out of the engine. She gestured a helpless look,
venturing into the yard to meet Blümhof halfway.

‘Move it, get it out of here.’

‘But it won’t start,’ said Freja, striking her fingers through
her short hair in apparent frustration.

‘I don’t care. I don’t want to know. Move it.’

‘Come and try, have a look. Maybe I’ve not checked something,’
said Freja.

‘Me?’ said Blümhof and tossed the cigarette over his shoulder.
‘There will be a fee if I get it started, are you prepared to pay?’

‘Depends on what sort of job you make,’ laughed Freja as
Blümhof admired her figure all the way back to the car.

‘Turn it over,’ ordered Blümhof. Freja obliged and the engine
went through its preliminaries but never fired. ‘Battery’s dead.’ He got out
from under the bonnet and froze. Freja’s H&K P9S pointed at his head, not
his heart.

Erika and Markus hit him at speed and he put up a minimum
struggle, his head bagged, his wrists cuffed before they dragged him away.
Through Ernst’s open window Nick heard two rapid rounds emptied into the night.
Ignaz and Danny lurking, a trap set and by the sound, already sprung. A
breathtaking pause then figures suddenly running.
 

Screaming orders into his
radio Ernst stamped on the accelerator and they humped over the pavement,
crashing right through the fence.
Uprooted posts and wire stuck under
the car sent out a shiver of sparks, the muscles in Ernst’s hands taught and
solid as he fought with the yammering wheels. Throwing the car round a corner
they skidded into a hull and took it straight off its wedges smashing a
headlight, the engine screaming wildly. They missed Lukas by inches. Rolling
over and over in the snow in front of a motor cruiser stripped to its ribs,
Danny and Perekop not playing but intent on serious injury. In the pillar of
headlights Levko sprinted away from the rear of the office.

‘He’s mine,’ Nick shouted, out and running before Ernst could
even shut off the engine.

Nick landed with a crump that rearranged his senses. Pools of
darkness and pools of ice under his feet, his legs pounding away under him that
he couldn’t regulate. Ducking under a hull a length of anchor chain crashed
past his head, cracking and splitting a fibreglass mould. Levko swung the chain
again in a flail, neatly opening a three-inch tear along Nick’s right cheek,
crunching on into his shoulder. He parried Levko’s lashes with a boat hook
driving him back. With both hands Levko hurled his chain and scrambled clear
over a racing yacht’s cockpit. A dull drumming ahead as Levko slipping and
dropping pounded across a column of icy oil drums close to the yard’s fence.
Nick ran, drove his legs harder, his snatched breath giving off shrill
whistles. Vaulting a hurdle of masts, he lunged. One of Nick’s hands in
mid-air, curving, falling and snatching at Levko’s legs. Dragging him off the
wire, Nick punched and screamed. Venom. Anger. Frustration. Blows to Levko’s
body and head. A fine spray of blood and sweat bounced off the Russian as he
shook Levko to his feet.

‘You kill my wife?’ He slapped Levko into paying attention,
take the stupid grin off his face, pay his respects for the dead. ‘Who gave the
order?’

‘Go to hell,’ panted Levko touching a corner of his mouth. He
glanced at a trace of blood on the back of his hand, then stared defiantly at
Nick.
 

‘Did the asset in London know?’ Nick screamed, two severe
punches rocking Levko’s head.

‘Your wife weak, not strong, meant to live… distract you,’
Levko ran out of breath and his chest squeaked as he gasped for air. Shaking
his head, Levko clutched at his chest as though he needed to get it open and do
some urgent work inside there. He tried speaking but his voice had been lifted
out and there was only a strange hollow echo left.
 

Nick slammed Levko into the fence.

‘…she too weak.’
 
Levko took a break between words, a lull
to recharge his lungs.

‘That so,’ said Nick. Grabbing Levko by his collar he hurled
him into a catamaran, his head hitting the boat’s skin with a sickening thud.
‘On your knees,’ yelled Nick, kicking Levko off his feet. The cold night
staining his skin reminding him of Sabine, he stood panting and sweating, a
fighter waiting for the next round.

Levko moved every muscle in his face, a rushed check through
his nerves ending with an outright laugh. Nick unzipped his jacket, withdrew
his 9mm H&K and pressed the barrel into the nape of Levko’s neck, firing
once.

Waiting for him inside the
yard’s office Ernst paced backwards and forwards, stepping over Ignaz’s legs as
he sat on the corridor floor cleaning his H&K. Obsessive wipes up and down
the smooth barrel that had claimed a couple of victims, picked off as an inflatable
rode up a channel towards the yard’s slipway; Kasimov’s fallback, his means of
rapid escape. Groans from Perekop rhythmically kept time with Ignaz’s
polishing; the sniper sullen and sulky, concentrating on his task.

‘They’re all accounted for,’ Ernst said, avoiding Nick’s
simmering eyes.

Cuffed and sitting on a pile of hessian sacks, Evgeni Kasimov
calmly watched the drama unfold.

‘You appreciate that I will claim full diplomatic immunity,’
Kasimov declared, his voice hard but sounding as though it belonged to a
shadow.

‘Speak to me again and I’ll kill you,’ Nick warned him, walking
off.

In a storeroom Freja and Ursel were taking care of Franziska,
kneeling each side of her on a thick mattress, helping her dress. She visibly
shrank as Nick came in.