The Oktober Projekt (40 page)

‘Why should you, Jack, what’s wrong with being Moscow’s
cut-out?’

Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, Balgrey had a sudden
realisation. ‘I’ve been right royally stitched up, old son, haven’t I?’ he
stated, as though someone has just illuminated a very dark highway and he could
now thankfully see his way home.

‘We all have,’ Nick answered.

‘Christ, old son, I had no way of knowing,’ he admitted, his
mouth and throat dry.

‘You weren’t meant to, no one was,’ explained Nick. ‘Anything
special about the house, Jack, anything you noted?’

Balgrey, for once not playing for time actually had to think,
his pudgy face grimaced in concentration as he went over the interior in his
mind. Pulling together an inventory of each room, he considered what up to then
he had taken for the mundane, seeing everything in an entirely fresh
perspective. ‘It always reeked like a cosmetic counter,’ he ventured slowly,
‘odd now I come to think of it.’

‘What else, come on,’ Nick encouraged him.

‘Anything, old son, anything?’ Balgrey wondered, not sure what
Nick wanted.

‘Anything out of the ordinary, anything that caught your eye.’

‘Difficult to say old son, one safe house is just like another,
except…’ Here Balgrey perhaps recognised for the first time what Nick was
striving to find; the anomaly that betrays the over confident, the ordinary
that when read differently yields the extraordinary. ‘The main room seemed too
personal, little objects, more like souvenirs really, dotted around.’

‘Where from? Can you remember Jack?’ Nick asked with an
intensity and passion in his voice that was both threatening and fearful all at
once.

‘Not all of ‘em, old son, think there was stuff from Nairobi,
Stockholm, Washington and London, which I didn’t think was what your average
Ukrainian General would class as important.’

He wouldn’t thought Nick, it
was only someone reaffirming a shared bond, a commitment to times they had
spent together. ‘I need your comms room,’ Nick insisted, his mood now
determined.

‘Whatever you say, old son,
lead and I shall follow.’

Which is exactly what Nick opted to do. In Jack’s communication
room Nick transmitted the name of Elsa De-Beyer on the secure Arramis system to
the CO8 duty officer, classed a priority and for the immediate attention of
Rossan alone, requesting a name check on passports and visas beginning with the
South African connection. He then drafted a separate cipher for Rossan again,
classification Ultra, that asked for verification on the details he wanted
clarifying regarding SIS worknames and postings matching Nairobi, Stockholm,
Washington and London. When Nick had finished, Jack with a growing sense of
relief showed him out.

‘Is that it? All you want? Free to go, old son am I, forget
you’ve ever seen me. Let a failure get back to his wife?’

‘For tonight.’ Nick held out his hand, and Balgrey came forward
to take it. Instead of reconciliation, Nick slammed him against a doorpost.
Unable to move, Balgrey winced as Nick’s face came within an inch of his own.
‘Our arrangement is private Jack,’ Nick said. ‘You don’t need to discuss our
joint operation with anyone.’

Wistfully nodding, Balgrey hung his head and shuffled along
towards his car.

Twenty-One

Suspicious Minds

Hamburg, December

The
girl wore her golden plaits like campaign medals as she strode
purposely up Hamburg’s Neuer Wall. Not displayed on her chest but falling
evenly down her long back, over a velvet collar on a Sunday coat, a coat old
fashioned in its cut, held by a row of double buttons and gathered round her
tapering waist. It reminded Nick of the coats worn by his aunt and her sisters,
refugees on painful photographs; a whole family album of them documenting his
mother’s family exodus across Europe. Now of course like so many contemporary
phases of fashion, retro was ‘seriously in’ though there were some things from
the past better left undisturbed. In front of Nick the girl walked with
assurance, her route predetermined while he had nothing to occupy him except
keeping her in sight.
 

Nick kept his steps brisk and short beneath the hooped
splendour of festive lights as Hamburg began to prepare for the night.
Demurely, her held high and proud, the girl wove through warps of women laden
with children and bags.
You follow Rosa, everything’s prepared
, Harry had promised Nick. To hell and back if it
proves Lubov correct vowed Nick, though he only had to go as far as the
Wilhelmsburg district. In some major cities there are certain areas, perhaps
consisting of a street or two, where the fieldman instinctively adjusts to a
change of atmosphere; a menace in the air, a sense of knowing that somehow you
have crossed into unknown and unfriendly territory. And Nick had that now,
trailing right after Rosa into a café rooted right under a Second World War
concrete flak tower that guarded nothing more strategic than a children’s
playground. Picking her seat with deep concentration, Rosa stared out across
marble-topped tables as dull as headstones.

No eye contact Harry had said, let Rosa make the moves; only
she has gone to sleep, she has forgotten Nick thought, trying to catch her
wilful gaze. Decorating the walls were patchy relics of circus life. Posters
from a different age were framed big and small, along with tickets, a whip, and
suspended from the high 1930s ceiling, a trapeze the owner had once
spectacularly performed on. As Harry predicted, Rosa ordered a coffee. ‘When
she has finished Nick, she will ask you if you have a pen she can borrow. She
will accept your pen and tell you a destination.’

Except none of what Harry promised actually happened. In the
middle of ordering his own drink, Nick watched as the whole performance went to
pieces. A waiter crisp with authority, a starched towel across his forearm,
bent to Rosa, spoke then fell back smartly. Holding his cheek, he yelled and
swore as Rosa stood to aim another slap with her open hand. A couple of
regulars sat immobile as the screams reached full pitch. The table upended,
scattering the cup and menu. More staff appeared, the trapeze swinging
furiously as they passed.

In the melee a heavy hand pulled Nick sideways, dragging him
away through empty tables into the kitchen. A precaution, a thin boy in chef’s
whites assured him. Nick dug in his heels. From what? From who? From those
following you sent by Moscow, the thin boy answered as Nick was tugged roughly
by the arm; out into the cold evening air that pushed frantically into his
face. Into the back of a Renault box van; nudged forcefully from behind Nick
struck his head on a door pillar and instinctively felt for blood. Thrown head
over heels as the van drew sharply away, Nick lay perfectly still amongst a
collection of laundry sacks.

Stabs of orange light came in quick succession through the
van’s rear window, prison bars of amber flashing on his outstretched legs.
Moscow all over again, Nick thought. Cold off the floor seeped through his coat
and Nick slapped a couple of laundry sacks into shape forming makeshift
cushions and began to replay key segments of Moscow’s cunning strategy. A
moment of quiet reflection before the madness began. After his meeting with
Balgrey, Nick had kept his own counsel, preferring his own dour company as he
waited Rossan’s response. Moving between hotels, never staying longer than one
night, Nick always paid cash in advance acutely aware that he had made himself
a prime target. Leaving himself an exit, planning a route, he experienced once
more some of the urgency he had known in his early days in the field. Now a
different nervousness gripped him, a state of heightened anticipation and
clarity, as well as the depression. Unshaven, eating only when he had to, when
the weakness threatened to keel him over, he had become a creature of
preparation. Long hours only punctured by the waiting.

As he lay there atop the laundry sacks, Nick had a sensation of
it all being a dream, of having no real concept of how it all had begun, or why
so many had perished as he followed Lubov’s trail for the treasure. If he’d
also demanded of himself a truthful assessment of whether he’d succeed, his
answer would have to be that he couldn’t be sure. There were too many unknown
factors in the equation. Had Rossan actually succeeded in carrying out Nick’s
bidding, had he matched the souvenirs from the Puttgarden house with a face?
Had the offer of opening a parley with Moscow been rejected? Asking himself a
further rhetorical question of how much could go catastrophically wrong? Nick
again had to answer – plenty, reminding himself that Rossan had not only Moscow
to convince. And if Rossan… But Nick didn’t want to dwell on that particular
‘and if’.

But waiting had always been an occupational hazard that stunned
the liveliest senses, so that months and years seemed to have passed after Nick
and Foula had set out for Moscow. Since then Moscow’s main asset had always
been a step ahead, and Nick sorely wanted an answer as to why someone would
allow innocent people to die to protect their treachery. Right now, he wanted
that answer more than ever.
 

The van pulled up sharply flinging him into the partition
behind the front seats. Cold air swam into the back and the driver’s voice
insisted he didn’t move. Edging up to the back windows he pushed his face tight
into the corner, giving himself a broad view through the glass, watching as the
front passenger set off alone. On each corner of the market square four
braziers caged in roaring flames, seasoned wood spitting in the heat, black
tails of smoke corkscrewing over red roofs and families in small groups,
chocolate for the children, plum brandy for the parents. Nick’s eyes wandered
through them, a stranger come to steal their joy. Pulled open with a dry rusty
cry the back doors brought in a handful of sleet, a familiar greeting and Danny
Redman dressed in black.

‘From Rossan,’ Danny said, passing across a thin envelope as
the van set off.

As Nick reached forward for Rossan’s response, Danny saw his
fingers hesitate for the briefest of seconds before he snatched the envelope
off him, ripping open the flap as though an inner-turmoil, a craving, consumed
him. Nick, his head dipped low, read the single sheet of A4 paper in the murky
van’s light, grunted at the end of the page then scanned it again more quickly;
nothing coded just all the facts presented clear – dates, locations and a
name. When he’d finished Nick tucked the paper and envelope into an inside
pocket; his eyes noted Danny, were ferocious, his mood dark, murderous even;
staring so intently, that Danny later swore that Nick could see right through
him and the side of the van.

‘Rossan also said to say that we’re on,’ added Danny, though
because of his mood, Nick might never have heard him.

Twenty-Two

The Point of No Return

Fehmarn, December

End
of the line, full circle reached and Nick was at the point of no
return as his team of irregulars took up their positions on the island of
Fehmarn. He snatched at his parka hood, losing a running skirmish with the
freezing Baltic gusts storming in off the sea. This is it here and now, this is
where he finally laid the ghosts to rest: Angie, Sabine, Lubov, Wynn, Lister,
Parfrey and God forgive them Nick thought, all the others who the London
traitor had condemned to death over the years. He swung away and glanced off to
his right, not bothering to look up at the house’s windows facing Puttgarden’s
small square. He knew he had an audience tracing his every step; standing there
with all the lights off Hawick, Blackmore and Stratton with Rossan holding
their coat-tails, come as official observers for a joint operation.

What operation they had demanded? The culmination of a Langley
led adventure Bailrigg had explained, in a thoroughly bad temper when he
briefed them collectively the day before. Something Langley had simmering for a
while when it unexpectedly came to the boil, but Harney had overstretched his
resources. So, he’s had to go cap in hand asking for assistance which means
Cologne have cleared the way and Torr and some freelancers are making up the
numbers, coordinating the final stages Bailrigg announced as though it deeply pained
him. Exactly who or what Harney had landed Bailrigg kept vague, stressing that
with Washington, London and Berlin holding hands on the outcome of what had
been touted as a high-value catch, he wanted them present to make sure the
Service wasn’t palmed off with the left-over scraps.

So the London observers had taken their positions in the house,
a fine old property bordering the square its roof pitched unevenly towards the
street, its bright shutters pinned back against white rendered walls. Smeared by
sand urged off the shore by the Baltic, its windows were coated in a fine brown
film giving the square an old world tint. A seasonal residence belonging to a
senior civil servant from Berlin that Döbeln had secured for the operation;
which Nick and his tireless team had worked solidly without a break to prepare
it for the forthcoming show.

Upstairs in one of the bedrooms Ernst had set up an airband
receiver and sundry equipment on a dressing table lovingly treated to furniture
wax. ‘Basic, but fine, enough for our needs for sure,’ Ernst had assured Nick,
checking the equipment the previous afternoon. Danny hoped it would also be
enough, because in Nick’s absence he had been delegated second in command and
part of his duties including briefing the senior officers from London. Which he
had done, by firstly standing with Jane as they watched Nick circle the square
and disappear.

‘Nick his usual self?’ Jane asked casually, turning from the
window her sharp eyes locked on Danny.

‘When isn’t he stressed or concerned about an operation,’ Danny
admitted. ‘Everything’s up in the air. Organising this firewall around the
joint reception party has been manic. Too many cooks and all that.’

‘I can imagine.’ Jane hadn’t taken her eyes off Danny. ‘Do we
know what sort of deal Harney has brokered?’

 
‘Something Harney
has cooked up with us and Cologne stirring the pot,’ said Danny, following
Nick’s script to the letter, though with the amount of culinary references it
ought to be have been a recipe he decided. ‘Nick’s handling the reception and
he’s keeping everything close to his chest.’

‘He would,’ agreed Jane.

And Danny had used the same script for Hawick and Blackmore
without deviation or variation, delivering his lines without so much as a
hiccup. After that, to all casual observers, Danny disappeared from the stage,
so too did Ernst’s very serious young man, Ignaz.
                                         

Now, with their teams split between the square and the ferry
terminal, Nick and Ernst did one final check and returned to the house with
nothing before them but the night. A sullen moon had slipped behind heavy cloud
and the darkness glowered over Puttgarden in a threat. Hostile and dirty it had
crawled across the frozen plain seeking them out; it’s the night making fools
of us thought Nick, come all the way from Moscow for its revenge. Nearby a dog
barked out a lonely call that ran through the square as Ernst once more
monitoring the airwaves, called out the time; Nick noting the taught voice,
feeling the same tightness in his own throat. Outside a lively wind picked at
the mounds of hard snow, kicking specks of white into the air where they shone
for a few seconds and went out.
 

On a tall stool borrowed from the kitchen Nick sat by the
window, a group of kids wandering across his view obscuring a Volkswagen camper,
three boys and a girl joking and playing about, pushing and jostling their way
to a corner of the square. The exchange is not going to happen Nick panicked in
a wild moment of doubt, the waiting, the suffering, the dead along the way, all
would be for nothing, a useless epitaph for failure. For Nick felt nothing of
triumph or achievement, merely the empty longing of someone who has had a
glimpse of the future and can only helplessly watch it vanish. A big new estate
laboured through the frozen streets before pulling over for the kids to climb
in. Twisting to follow the red tail lights, he thought it’s all been called off
and we’re the last to know, Moscow has broken its end of the deal. He turned to
the camper again in the middle of the square where it sat at rest in a stark
crater of light. Sitting up front was Markus; his hands on the wheel, clearly
visible from a distance, while lying on the floor in the back Freja and Liesel
had their weapons trained on Sergei Perekop.

‘Everything okay?’ asked Nick at the window as Erika walked in,
and down in the square Lukas trailed off out of sight. ‘Where’s Rossan?’

‘Having a conference next door with the three seniors. Not to
be disturbed, all of them deciding on procedure.’

‘Good,’ said Nick.

Around Nick a haphazard stock of equipment stacked in no
necessary order, a covert intelligence team’s wares packed for a busy night’s
work. Radios and receivers, tool rolls and hard cases holding electronic
devices, binoculars, night scopes; all the assistance specialists would require
for the covert surveillance of an exchange. Was this how other great losers
down the centuries had sat and fretted before a battle? Croesus, Harold,
Richard III, all of them camped close to the battlefield which in a matter of
hours would be the scene of their destruction and humiliation. Watching,
waiting, hearing distant sounds of the enemy and seeing the flames from their
campfires and the bark from their dogs of war. Did they also put on a smile and
a mask of courage as they tried to conquer their own inadequacy and fear? he
wondered as Ernst joined him, chatting to his boys and girls in the square and
the ferry berths on his radio.

‘Why’s Harney so late?’ Nick asked no one in particular,
panning a night scope along the road remorselessly flowing on and up from
Hamburg on the E47, through Heiligenhafen to this skinny island peninsula where
it dribbled into the sea. Ernst pacing behind him, the king of the airwaves,
everyone’s friend of all time, Ernst and the wonders of modern technology.

Nick let his mind drift following the crying wind as it plucked
at mounds of hard snow, flicking specks through pyramids of light shining from
the street lamps. In this mood Nick reminded himself that he was doing this out
of duty for his country; that he agreed with Orwell on the concept of
patriotism as being devoted to a nation, and its way of life rather that
nationalism that was utterly divisive. And if that was too deep, too patriotic,
Nick would have provided a popular analogy, that all his life he had refused to
cross to the dark side because he despised what it offered, what it turned
individuals into.

‘Coffee?’ asked Ernst. Not getting an answer, he poured boiling
water over granules in three mugs.

Watching wind and snow was a tiresome game, a countdown to
destruction or humiliation that didn’t improve Nick’s inner gloom, less so when
movement caught his eye. A figure crouched into a low run moving so fast it
could have been mistaken for a shadow. Then it was no more, swallowed by a
thick group of sturdy elder trees swaying and bowing by a Protestant church
monopolising the town and square, easily outgrowing the trees with its steep
straight corners and a high box tower.

‘It’s going to happen, Nick, no problems,’ Ernst reassured him.
‘Jesus, you’re making me jumpy, have some coffee,’ he insisted.

‘Why don’t we pull Anja off the ferry berths to boost numbers
by the vehicles?’ Nick said, his binoculars swinging up and down the square.

‘Hey, think some of the time, Nick, please. The Ferry is due
any minute,’ Ernst said, shaking his head as he looked at Erika. It’d be no use
trying to reason with Nick at this point, realised Ernst. He’d lived with this
tension before when the final round of surveillance actually takes its toll,
even with experienced guys ready to blow. On his radio an atmospheric hiss
played up and down a scale all its own.

‘What time is the last sailing?’

‘This
is
the last
sailing from Denmark,’ Ernst said, rolling his coffee around the walls of a
thick mug.

‘The American will show,’ Erika said, conciliatory, trying to
damp down Nick’s fuse, bring him back from the edge.

‘Does everyone know what we’re doing?’

‘Actually I tell everyone we’re here for a vacation,’ said
Ernst. ‘Nick, listen to me please. Everything’s going to be fine. I told my
boys and girls they could have it rough. They know they’re not here for the
view. Isn’t that right?’ he asked Erika.

‘Sure, we’re not kids.’

Consoling himself Nick counted the cars in front of a hotel
opposite, eight assorted makes including the camper and parked strategically
nearby, a second-hand BMW four-by-four, containing Dominik.

‘Everyone knows the fallback?’ asked Nick.

‘Nick, please,’ cried Ernst in total exasperation.

‘I was only asking,’ said Nick, marking off reference points,
dividing up the square into areas of risk and threat as snow careered down,
see-sawing romantically on the town.

‘We may have a problem,’ said Ernst, cranking his head from his
radio. ‘Markus reports that he’s already sighted opposition.’

‘That’s too early, not what was agreed,’ snapped Nick.

Holding up a hand, Ernst spoke rapidly into his mouthpiece then
pressed to receive. ‘He thinks Moscow have people in place okay. They may be
observing, they may be rogues.’

‘That’s wonderful, Ernst. How long have we been making sure
this exchange was going to run to our schedule?’

‘A small problem, Nick, okay.’

‘No, Ernst, it’s a big problem. We’ve got uninvited guests out
there and we don’t know whose side they’re on.
Go find them, Ernst,’ insisted Nick. ‘Erika you reinforce the team in
the camper.’

‘We’ve action, the ferry’s
berthing,’ Ernst announced his radio chattering away. ‘Ten minutes before they
roll off. I’ll take care of it,’ promised Ernst, spinning on Erika’s heels and
heading for the
door.

I should have asked Döbeln to quarantine the town thought Nick;
passports required, a full ten-year history, positive vetting to get in or out,
of course I should. Behind him Nick heard the door open, glanced over his
shoulder and saw Jane come slowly to his side.

‘Things not going to plan?’ she asked, her voice low, strangely
disinterested.

‘I’ll get over it,’ Nick
answered, his attention elsewhere. ‘Where’s Teddy, Roly and Paul?’

‘Still squabbling over whether it’s us, the Americans or
Germans who get first bite. I gave them my opinion,’ she said.

‘You always do,’ said Nick slipping out the card written in
Latin, the one he’d taken from the side of Angie’s grave. ‘Meant to thank you,’
he added snapping the creased card down in front of Jane.

Without answering Jane lifted it, stared at it for a moment
before passing it back to Nick. ‘I didn’t think you’d know it was me.’

‘I had my suspicions. You were always good at Latin.’

Years impersonating minutes, Jane’s regular breathing by his
ear, her perfume running down losing its appeal and power. Cars with Danish
plates were rumbling through the town off the ferry, Ursel and Anja supplying a
running commentary when the first foot passengers appeared over the bridge. One
chance and it’s going to be tonight or never.
 

‘A Citroën, red, two on board,’ Nick relayed Ursel’s words to
the camper and BMW. ‘Do you receive? Should be coming over the bridge around
now.’

‘The Citroën has company, all the way from the ferry. Mercedes,
Danish plates, three passengers on board,’ Anja reported.

Distorted voices answered in relays, booming round the room in
a wide echo. Gothic clock bells clanged in the church tower, timing Nick would
never forget. The Citroën sped into the square throwing up sparks of snow from
under its wheels, stopping behind the BMW, becoming its very own shadow as a
large Mercedes fresh off the ferry drew up across the square.
 

‘Senior members of the opposition,’ Erika’s crackling voice
said. ‘Definitely.’

Pulling slowly into the square came a rugged Jeep complete with
tinted windows, Mitch Harney’s arrival creating another flurry of radio traffic
piped into Nick’s ear. It also brought Blackmore, Hawick and Rossan into the
room after hearing and seeing for themselves the scenes unfolding from the
monitors feeding the action directly next door.

‘Must the Americans always
be late?’ demanded Hawick, shrugging his coat onto his shoulders, tucking his
scarf inside his thick lapels.