The Wind and the Rain

by Martin O'Brien

  As South African sanctions began to bite my business. I decided to cut our ties with the country and close the clinics. Under the cover of bringing a sick Bulgarian child to our Berlin clinic I managed to bring back large amounts of currency. This comprised not only my savings, but also money from Afrikaaner Apartheiders who were being stung by the sanctions from Western regimes.

  I arrived in Berlin ready to start a new chapter in my life. I was hoping it may be the last place I would reside but it turned out I would be gone within weeks. And it was due to some psychotic woman who had discovered the links between Federico Hernández and my South African interests and then worked out the link to Berlin.

  Berlin in January can be an oppressive place, the cosmetic glamour and lights of West Berlin couldn’t hide the fact that it was hemmed in by a concrete monolith. East Berlin is aesthetically and morally, utterly rigid and bland. And this influenced life in West Berlin. The people in West Berlin gave the appearance that their Western lifestyles were making them happy. In truth they were as miserable and spiritually dead as their Communist brethren over the wall.

  Flattery opens doors. I claimed to be Andre Hester, a South African who lived in Austria for many years. I exchanged large sacks of US dollars to purchase a fifty years lease on the land underneath the old Stadtmitte station from the East Germans and agreed to contribute towards the rebuild of the Deutscher Dom. The East German government were glad of the money we gave them in exchange for a nice office and rental of a few underground areas that were no longer in use. I set up the facility and used my contacts in West Germany to source the equipment and funding. Occasionally, we would take custody of some of the Stasi’s more troublesome citizens.

  Within a few weeks of my arrival in the city, the woman telephoned our office. She called herself Aleksandra Nuričić and we arranged a meeting at our office a short walk from Unter den Linden.

  She told us that she had been serving as a soldier in Yugoslavia but had recently been discharged. She had read about little Bulgarian baby Kalin and she let it be known that she could access children with similar complicated health issues. She said that her cousin worked at an orphanage in deepest Yugoslavia where state funding had been drastically cut in the last couple of years.

  We were swayed by tales of gypsy children being born with wild deformities. Conjoined twins, clubbed feet, hunchbacks. A whole cavalcade of disfigurement that we could investigate. She knew my weakness and she exploited it ruthlessly.

  In return for a hefty cash reward she would be able to supply children for us to help with our testing. The orphanage would be fully funded again so it was a win-win for everybody concerned. I was enamoured by the soldier, she was incredibly intelligent and someone that I began to see as almost an intellectual equal and potential business partner. Paul and Michael were suspicious but, to my eternal shame, I dismissed their fears as fanciful and grounded in jealousy.

  The final meeting with the Yugoslav woman would be held at the TV Tower. We had received word that the restaurant had been closed for two weeks for refurbishment. No one would be there on an evening so we arranged with the security staff that we would be able to host a discreet meeting there.

  The weather was dreadful and Paul and Michael’s constant suspicions were weighing on my mind. By the time of the meeting I was almost convinced that the woman was not who she said she was. I had been blinded by her intelligence and potent charm.

  My nerves were on edge waiting for her. Decorators’ tables and temporary walls were dotted around the restaurant. Snow was tumbling down outside, Berlin was an awe-inspiring blanket of white. I was staring out of the window entranced by the snow-covered city when I heard a voice calling my name. I quickly spun around and was momentarily confused.

  “Mr Hester?” Aleksandra Nuričić said, if that was her real name.

  “Ah good evening, Aleksandra,” I said, laying the charm on thick. I greeted her with a kiss on each cheek and she seemed embarrassed by the closeness. A week earlier, I would have put this down to her military bearing. I held a hand on her lower back and guided her to a chair in which she sat down dutifully.

  “My colleagues are under the impression you are not who you claim to be,” I said while maintaining an upbeat manner. I could see her shift in her seat. She didn’t respond, she simply continued to stare at me. That was my final confirmation that she was an imposter. Butterflies tingled in my belly and I strived to maintain my composure.

  “Perhaps you are also not whom you say you are, Mr Hester. Or should I say Dr Tremmick?”

  “Why are you here this evening? Tell me the truth,”

  “Why do you think you I am here?”

  “I would hazard a guess that you’re not here for altruistic reasons unlike myself,”

  “Altruism?” the woman snorted, a face now filled with hatred, “You do not know the meaning of that word,”

  “Oh, so you are the moral arbiter now? A lying opportunist who doesn’t realise she has made the biggest, most fateful decision of her life,”

  “On the contrary Dr Tremmick, this is the night when fate selects you for judgment,”

  The woman prepared to stand up to attack me when Paul’s giant hands clamp down hard on her shoulders. He had crept through the restaurant earlier and had been hiding behind a wall a few metres away. For him, the stealth brought back memories of travelling through fields in Poland avoiding partisans and Soviets.

  Schwarzer, who had also been hiding came out and grabbed the woman’s feet. The two men lifted her up so she was helpless. She was writhing and managed to unloose one of her hands where she raked it down the face of Schwarzer. He screamed and punched her hard in the gut. She now had all but one limb free.

  I was stood still, I couldn’t react. Violence has never been my strong point, I leave that to other people who enjoy those kind of primitive urges.

  The woman was on the floor flailing around trying to free her other hand, she was repeatedly striking Beckermann’s chubby paw that was clamped around her collar-bone. At the moment it seemed that she was going to succeed, Schwarzer delivered a sickening stamp into the guts of the woman. She was incapacitated from the blow and curled herself up in a ball, she began coughing blood up when Paul shouted. I can’t recall what it was but I knew it was related to the final journey for this woman.

  Before the meeting we had unfastened one the big windows that look out across the city. I moved to the window and pulled the window from its pane. A huge gust of snowy wind hit me and knocked me over. Paul shouted something again, I turned around and he was dragging the woman towards the window. She was screeching like an animal, it was a primal sound. I was on my knees in a state of disbelief.

  Schwarzer joined Paul at the window, gusts of white wind powering through the gap. Schwarzer kicked the assassin viciously in the ribs and the noises emanating from her became even more disgusting.

  Paul clubbed her across the face with his right hand and her head snapped back and bounced off the window frame. She began to wail at this point and my mind was taken back to the little gypsy girl in Auschwitz begging for her life. In one smooth motion, Paul lifted her up and hurled her through the snow-filled breach, a howl of anguish trailing behind her.

  I jumped to my feet and ran to the window. The three of us watched as her body plummeted through the air and crash to the floor metres away from the eye-line of Neptune and her fountain.

  For a second or two we stand around in complete shock until Schwarzer tells us we need to leave.

  “Albert, Karl is in the car outside the North entrance. Get in the car and leave the city now,” Schwarzer said.

  “What are you two going to do?” I said.

  “We will leave later, I know the way out of one of the emergency fire escapes. Quick man, go!”

  And I did run, I reached the lift in record time. As the doors parted on the ground floor I was ready for the police but there was no one there. I ran out of the TV Tower and I could see Karl’s car a hundred me
tres away.

  He must have seen me running as he started the car and accelerated towards me at great speed. He pulled up and I rushed into the passenger seat. I kept an eye out to see if I could see any police. I didn’t see any police but I did see a familiar face. The man with the scarred neck who tried to murder me in Argentina.

  As Karl drove away I could not resist smiling at my opponent, once more vanquished and impotent. It was only a small spanner in the machinery of the Berlin clinic but it did mean I was once again forced to leave my new home and leave Paul and Michael in charge.

  In a funny turn of events this was the airport I landed in after departing East Berlin on that night. I arrived in Nice airport and began a new life yet again. I assumed that would be for the final time. Fate has selected one more departure for me.

  Monte Carlo or Bust

  Sunday, 11 May 1986

  A fitful sleep causes my mind to repetitively spool back to a moment from my childhood when my mother would sit on my bed reading to me. In reality, she would read me children’s stories but in the dream she is telling me about the experiments in Berlin. Her face is as serious as it was on the rare occasions she would tell me off. She is recounting every detail of that terrible place.

  My mum is explaining that the girl with the hole instead of an eye was the daughter of abusive parents. Alcoholics who only cared where their next drink came from rather than ensuring their little girl ate her breakfast on a morning. She ran away from home at age sixteen and made her way to Berlin. Her parents didn’t report her missing to the police. They simply allowed their child drift away, pulled down by treacherous currents of their own self-hatred and exploitative, powerful men.

  She is telling me that the old man shouting ‘torturers’ at the orderlies was a teenage conscript at the back end of the war. His only battle was in the defence of Berlin as the Soviets closed in. A young boy who developed in to a man during the glories of the Nazi regime. When he finally seized the chance to represent his nation on the battlefield, his unit surrendered within hours without firing a single bullet from his rifle. He tormented himself for years by labelling himself a coward, a betrayer of the values of his nation. Decade after decade of alcohol abuse followed and his weakness preyed upon by underground vampires.

  How does my mother know these things about these people? I am confused. I know it is a dream but I am so upset. I start crying and my mother’s face doesn’t change. Tears relentlessly flow and blur my vision. A voice I don’t recognise fills my ears as though it is coming from every angle, saying my name. Finally my eyes begin to clear and I see who is speaking to me.

  The woman in the dream isn’t my mother; when I examine her face I know it is Nuri.

  My watch starts beeping which tells me it is half past four. Vile images from the IMFG facility in Berlin are at the forefront of my head. The pitiful girl with the syringe in the hole where her eye should be. Her soul dead but her body technically alive. The grubby old man in his loincloth, like a figure from the bible testifying about the torturers.

  I am shattered but I can’t face staying in bed if it means when I fall asleep I see those images again. I sit up in bed and open the curtains next to the bed. There is no hint of sunrise and the majority of the street lights outside have been smashed. I pull myself up onto my knees and try and check the street outside. It’s too dark to see anything clearly and there is no sign of movement. This is the witching hour. My hands are shaking and I bring them up to my eyes to check. The fingers are gently vibrating. I’m sure they don’t normally do that.

  It’s a surprise I haven’t taken up smoking to relax myself. Although if that results in my speaking in a grizzled voice like Janko I’ll put that idea on the backburner. I peel myself away from the blackness and the window and jump off the bed. I pop in the shower, tie my hair up away from the water and turn it on. I hear a knock at my door which I presume is one of the men. I ignore it and there isn’t a second knock so I can assume they heard the shower running.

  After exiting the shower and drying off I put on the Chanel dress and I laugh out loud thinking about Gunari at the shop buying this. The dress is out of this world, or at least my world. It makes me look less like a scruffy tramp like I normally do and someone who could fit in lounging around on a yacht. Although when I put my dirty trainers on, it slightly mars my glamorous new look.

  Another knock at my door. I open it and it is Gunari.

  “Ready?” he says. I pick up my things and leave the room. We walk off and Janko comes out of his room, tells me I look like a million dollars and hands out some pains au chocolat to Gunari and I, which we eat on the way down the stairs.

  It is five minutes to five when the three of us enter the Argenta and pull away from the hotel in Nice. It only takes fifteen minutes of racing along the deserted main road to reach Monaco. Janko takes a quick detour past Tremmick’s house but there is no sign of him. The traffic is light at this hour and we are able to drop Gunari off in front of the main entrance.

  No goodbyes are said, Gunari is wearing his leather jacket with the Glock 17 hidden in an inside pocket. Gunari walks straight into the station. It is all very low-key. If this is the last time I see Gunari, I would be heartbroken. Janko drives us away through the winding streets of Monaco and a few minutes later we arrive in front of the lower entrance. We park over the road in a shallow car park. To our left and right are tunnels.

  I check my watch and it is now a quarter to six in the morning. Tremmick is due to depart in twenty-five minutes. I hope we aren’t too late. He’s probably at the platform surrounded by burly henchmen like the American president. My ears are tuned waiting to hear a gunshot. Would I even hear it from down here?

  “Are you OK, Ana?” Janko asks.

  “Yeah, I’m ready,” I say despite being utterly unready. This is completely surreal, stalking a Nazi war criminal on the spotless streets of Monaco. At least I’m not feeling as ill as I was yesterday. The sun is now rising and the morning traffic is beginning to pick up.

  Five more minutes pass and still nothing happens. Janko turns the radio on and slides the dial to a local Monegasque station. Clearly he thinks there may be breaking news being imminently announced. Instead we hear adverts for Loews Hotel Monte-Carlo and Heli Air Monaco.

  The waiting is killing me. I check the time again and it is exactly six o’clock. If Tremmick is getting on that train it should be any minute now. Gunari’s plan is to wait just inside the upper entrance doors, spot him and then shoot him in the head. He is then due to immediately leave and meet up with us down here to make our escape.

  Has Gunari completed the mission yet? I don’t think I’ve seen Janko look so tense, he has his SIG on his lap. Janko is completely still. His eyes are the only sign of movement, darting around trying to spot Albert Tremmick.

  The numbers of people entering and exiting the station is beginning to rise. Once more I check the time and it is now seven minutes past six. Janko has started loudly rapping his figures on the steering wheel. I refrain from telling him to stop and he carries on oblivious to my torment.

  A black BMW pulls up at the station in front of us, blocking our view.

  “I can’t see the entrance,” I say, stating the obvious.

  “Neither can I,” Janko says, “Does the driver of that car look familiar to you?”

  The windows are tinted but there is something about the man that is escaping my memory. It is there on the tip of my tongue. There may by someone in the back too but the tint on the windows is too dark to see through properly.

  “I might have to get out of the car and take a better look. I can’t see the entrance because of that car. Pass me that newspaper, Ana,”

  I hand yesterday’s copy of Nice-Matin to him and Janko steps out of the car leaving his gun in the glove box. He walks twenty metres to his left and does an admirable job of pretending to read the newspaper while also peering over the top of it towards the station.

  By the time Janko has looked ba
ck down at his paper a short old man limps along the road in front of our car. The man crosses the road and then steps into the parked car. That’s when it hits me.

  The BMW begins to move away. I open the car door and leap out and shout to Janko.

  “Quick Janko! That’s him!”

  I point in the direction where the car has now disappeared to, in to the tunnel to our left. Janko runs over to our car and we both get back in.

  “The driver is the guy we saw outside Tremmick’s place yesterday.” I say, “And Tremmick has just walked past you in to the car. Let’s go!”

  “Shit,” Janko says, he hits the accelerator and we race off on to the Monaco streets, Janko is doing a fair impression of Alain Prost, “Shit, shit, shit,”

  “They can’t have gone far Janko, step on it,”

  “Calm down, Ana, you’re not in the A-Team. We will catch up and then stay behind them and see where they go.”

  “I can’t see them,”

  We burst out of the tunnel and the road splits into three lanes, all at different levels. Shards of sunlight strike the road. Janko maintains our pace as we enter another tunnel. I squint to get a better look in front, the black car could be about a hundred metres in front.

  “I think that’s it in front,” I say. I’m finally beginning to calm down after the shock of seeing Tremmick getting in that car and driving off.

  “Don’t worry,” Janko says. Is he saying that to me or to himself?

  As we approach a roundabout at the end of the tunnel I maintain eyes on the black car. The traffic is steady and I spot the BMW leave the tunnel and head right. My eyes struggle to adjust to daylight as we exit on to a junction surrounded by beautiful four-storey apartments with pretty shops spanning the bottom floors.

  Janko turns right and the black car remains in the distance, a good hundred metres away still. The road is narrow with parked cars lining up along one side. The road curves around to the right with the castle walls dominating from above.