by Mark Dawson
Part I
1
Harry Mackintosh raised his binoculars and looked out over the Wall.
He was with Élodie Leroux and David Morgan on the fourth floor of an abandoned office block that still bore the scars of a Red Army shell from forty years earlier. There was no money to fix the building and so it had been condemned, left to the rats and roaches that scurried across the bare concrete floors and the bohemians from Schöneberg who came to party on the weekends. The windows had been boarded over, but Mackintosh had prised one of the planks away so that he could look out. The western face of the Wall was directly below him, and, as he looked down, he could see the graffiti that had been scrawled across it. The Wall was, in reality, two walls that sandwiched a swath of open ground. The walls were twelve feet tall and topped with coils of barbed wire. The death strip was in between them, an expanse that had been cleared when the East Germans had demolished the buildings on their side of the original wall. It was made impassable with tank traps and fakir beds, all observed by guards staffing a series of tall watchtowers. There was a tower a hundred feet away from Mackintosh’s position; Mackintosh had been watching the guards through the binoculars for any signs of heightened activity, and had been pleased to see that they were apparently as bored and lackadaisical as ever.
Mackintosh was up high enough to be able to look over the second wall and see into the snow-covered streets of East Berlin. He was anxious, and for good reason. The crossing was dangerous, and, however hard he had worked to minimise the risks, there was still a chance that they would be discovered. Mackintosh gritted his teeth. The prize was tantalisingly close and, with it, his career would be made.
“Anything?” he asked Morgan.
Morgan was standing at a second window with a pair of high-powered binoculars. He had a good view of Strelitzer Straße. “Not that I can see,” he reported.
Morgan had been in Berlin for a year longer than Mackintosh. Mackintosh had taken over when the head of station had been murdered in a knife attack in the East three months ago. Morgan—with more experience and five years older—had not taken the promotion well. Mackintosh knew it, too. He had told Morgan it was nothing personal, and that he would need the benefit of his experience and advice. Morgan was a professional and, whatever personal animus he held, he had not let it interfere with his work. He ran his network of informants on both sides of the border, submitted his reports promptly, and had proved invaluable with the intelligence that he routinely provided. Despite that, there remained an unspoken distance between the two men. They spoke of the job and nothing else. Mackintosh didn’t care. That was all he needed.
Mackintosh looked at his watch. “It’s nearly time.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Élodie said. “What is it? You nervous?”
“I need to be over there,” he said.
“That’s not what we agreed.”
“I know. Change of plan. I’m going to go across.”
“They know what they’re doing, Harry,” Morgan said.
“I want to make sure.”
“I’ll keep an eye out. Keep the radio on.”
Mackintosh had arranged for the team to have Magnavox AN/PRC-68 radios. His own unit—an olive drab brick that weighed two and a half pounds—was in the rucksack that he collected from the floor where he had left it. He made sure the unit was switched on and receiving and put it back into the bag. He took out his Beretta, popped the magazine and ensured that it was loaded. He confirmed that there was a round in the chamber, pressed the magazine back into the port, and made the gun safe. He put the gun into its holster.
“RV back at base when we’re all out,” Mackintosh said.
“Good luck.”
Mackintosh gave a nod, swallowed down the anxiety that was boiling in his gut, and started down the stairs to the street.
2
Mackintosh came out of the building, checked that the road was clear, and then walked toward the Konditorei Buchwald bakery. There was a delivery van waiting there; the vehicle’s lights were off, but the engine was on. Mackintosh walked by the van and looked into the wing mirror as he went by. He could see the driver: dark coat, pale face, eyes focussed forward. The plan called for the package to be removed from the vicinity of the Wall in the back of the van, out of view of the guards in the watchtowers that were visible over the lip of the Wall.
“Hey.”
It was a hiss, not much more than a whisper, but he heard it and turned around. Élodie was hurrying after him. He frowned at her breach of protocol but indicated that she should join him in the bakery and went inside.
She reached him and grabbed him by the arm.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“The plan’s not right. I should be over there.”
“They know what they’re doing. You’re interfering.”
“No, I’m not,” he protested. “I’m doing my job. PICASSO is too important.”
She moved her hand from his elbow to his face and laid her palm against his cheek. Then, with the impetuousness that Mackintosh had always found so beguiling, and before he could stop her, she took a step closer and kissed him. He let her, then put his arms around her and drew her closer; her mouth opened as he returned her kiss. He lost himself for a long moment, drinking in the smell of her and the taste of her lipstick and the sweet tea that they had shared in the consulate before making their way across town.
Élodie had been responsible for developing PICASSO as a source. She had been operating in East Berlin as a language student and had heard about him from an acquaintance with experience of some of the seedier aspects of the local nightlife. She had approached PICASSO, confirmed his story, verified it as likely true, and then reported it to her superiors at the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure on Boulevard Mortier in Paris. The French did not have the capacity to exfiltrate PICASSO themselves and so, in a rare example of Anglo–French cooperation, they had proposed a joint operation with MI6.
Élodie was made Berlin liaison to the UK’s Berlin Station. Mackintosh had found her to be a superb agent, and their professional relationship had immediately been excellent. It was, perhaps, inevitable that it would become more than that. They had been in a relationship for several months, and those months had been among the happiest of his life. Their union was born from a confection of different motivations: greed, initially, then professional advancement, shared glory and, finally—he hoped—love.
The moment stretched, and he would have let it continue forever but for the squelch of his radio. He gently moved her a step back, took the radio and pressed the transmit button to send the single bar of static that acknowledged receipt. It was the pre-agreed signal from the other side of the Wall: everything was clear.
“See?” she said. “It’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“So where is he?”
“It’s not time yet. He’s not late. Relax, Harry.”
“I’m going to go across. I can’t just sit here and let it happen.”
“Fine. I’m going too.”
“No, you’re not.”
“He’s my agent—yes I am.”
He was about to protest, to tell her that was crazy, but
she was French—stubborn and single-minded—and he knew that she wouldn’t take no for an answer. He could order her to stand down, but he did not have authority over her and, more to the point, he knew what she would have said when they were back in his apartment that night: he was a sexist hypocrite. She would have been right, too. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“Fine,” he said. “Got your gun?”
She patted the bulge beneath her left shoulder. “Yes.”
“We need to hurry.”
Mackintosh went down into the basement. MI6 had arranged for four SAS soldiers from the Berlin Regiment to be assigned to the mission, and two of them were waiting for them.
“Anything happening, sir?” the senior man asked him.
“Looks clear.”
“Fisher and Cameron are ready on the other side.”
“Very good,” Mackintosh said. “Leroux and I are going across.”
The soldier frowned. “Are you sure, sir? We’ve got it all under control.”
“I don’t doubt it. But I’d like to have a look for myself.”
The man knew better than to protest, and stood aside.
They had started building the tunnel two months earlier. Berliners had been tunnelling under the Wall for years, but most of their efforts were failures: the passages were either too unstable to use or were discovered quickly by the East German border guards. Western intelligence knew that covert access across the border would be a valuable asset, and they had advantages that the citizens of the divided city did not. MI6 had arranged for sappers from the Royal Engineers to come to the city and select promising locations for a tunnel. This bakery had been chosen as the site of the western entrance, with the eastern entrance emerging in the basement of an apartment block at Strelitzer Straße 55. The sappers had slept in the bakery on week-long shifts, piling up the spoil in flour sacks that were then removed from the site by appropriately liveried delivery vans. They had cut a rectangular opening in the floor of the basement and then burrowed down eleven metres; once they were deep enough they had started to tunnel to the East, eventually constructing a passage that was wide enough for one person to pass through.
Mackintosh lowered himself into the opening until his feet found the rungs of the ladder. The tunnel was lit by lanterns that were placed at regular intervals. There was one at the top and another below him, and their combined light meant that the descent was into gloom rather than pitch darkness.
He looked up. “Ready?”
Élodie nodded.
He climbed down until he reached the bottom, Élodie following above him. The city had been constructed on soft foundations, and it had not been particularly difficult to excavate the route. The engineers had strengthened the walls with wooden boards and lattice girders that had been smuggled into the bakery under cover of darkness. The sappers had asked Mackintosh how long they had to construct the tunnel, and he had told them that time was not a luxury that they possessed. PICASSO was ready to be exfiltrated, and the longer they waited the greater the chance that he would be found by the Stasi. He couldn’t tolerate that. The captain in charge of the dig had suggested that it would take them four months to complete the build. Mackintosh had told him that was unacceptable, and that he had three weeks. They had settled on two months, but the engineer had said that the compromise was that the tunnel would be rudimentary, cramped and claustrophobic. He had been right.
Mackintosh started to crawl and, as ever, he wondered if he could have allowed the sappers a little extra time to make the experience less unpleasant. The tunnel was narrow and the ceiling pressed down oppressively. The passage could only be negotiated on hands and knees and, after just a few seconds, Mackintosh found that his arms and legs were caked with wet mud.
He tried to take his mind off the thought of the tonnes of earth above his head and thought about the operation. He had received intelligence that this part of the border would not be heavily protected tonight. It was Christmas Eve. Two-thirds of the guard were on relief, drinking schnapps and eating bratwurst at the barracks half a mile to the north. The intelligence had given him an opportunity and he had decided to take it.
He kept crawling. The way ahead was lit with more low-voltage lamps, but their light only travelled so far; the spaces between them were gloomy and, on occasion, almost completely black. It was impossible to know where he was in relation to the border; beneath the ramparts of the first wall, somewhere beneath the death strip, beneath the second wall. He kept going, ignoring the cramps in his back and shoulders and the gunk that was clinging to his clothes. He thought of PICASSO, the singular coup that they had been working to achieve for so long. These deprivations—the dirt and the damp—and the danger of his evening’s work would be as nothing compared to the reaction he would receive in London once they had successfully exfiltrated the asset. The intelligence that PICASSO was bringing with him would be dynamite; it would cripple the Stasi leadership for months. Mackintosh knew that it would be the making of him.
He could hear Élodie scrabbling after him. “You okay?” he hissed back to her.
“Fine,” she said. “Keep moving.”
He became aware that he had moved onto an upward slope. He remembered the incline from his previous visits to the tunnel, the sappers who had come down with him explaining that the slope began beneath the second wall and became more pronounced as it approached the eastern entrance. He slithered up, feeling the ceiling against his shoulders and the back of his head as the passage lowered, and then, with the muscles in his back burning from the effort, he saw another lamp and pushed on toward it. The slope levelled out and he saw the ladder that led up to the basement of number 55.
He climbed until he reached the top of the ladder. The passage was sealed to limit the amount of light that leaked out from the tunnel; Mackintosh knocked three times, waited, then knocked again.
He heard a voice, a hissed question that was only just audible through the boards. “Who is it?”
“Mackintosh and Leroux,” he whispered back.
He held onto the ladder for an extra moment until the board was removed and the dim light from the basement washed over him. One of the soldiers was above him; he reached down with both hands and clasped Mackintosh’s right wrist, helping him to climb out the rest of the way. The man was one of the SAS detail. His name was Cameron; he was a Scotsman, as hard as flint and with a deathly cold stare.
The basement was a medium-sized room that accommodated the boilers for the block above it. It was damp, with puddles of brackish water that reflected the glow of the shielded flashlight that Cameron shone in Mackintosh’s face before quickly extinguishing it again.
“Anything?” Mackintosh asked him.
“Not yet,” Cameron said, reaching down and helping Élodie to climb out of the shaft.
“Where are Foulkes and Fisher?”
“Upstairs. Waiting.”
Mackintosh swept his hands over his knees, trying to remove some of the encrusted mud, and then straightened up to work out the kinks in his back. “I won’t miss having to do that,” he said, indicating the entrance to the tunnel with a nod of his head.
“After tonight you won’t have to do it again,” Élodie said.
“Let’s hope so.”
3
Mackintosh took a shielded torch from a shelf and used it to light his
way up the stairs. He climbed to the ground floor with Élodie following behind. There was an empty apartment with a door that opened directly onto Strelitzer Straße. There were two men waiting for them: Fisher was the other SAS warrant officer, younger than Cameron, easier to talk to, but similarly competent; Nicholas Foulkes was one of the other agents who worked Berlin Station.
“Christ, boss,” Foulkes said. “You gave me a shock.”
Foulkes had bright blond hair, almost white in the muted glow of the torch. He was in his late twenties and was dressed in heavy black trousers and an overcoat. His role was important. The West Berliners had a word for it: he was the Fluchthelfer, the ‘escape helper,’ positioned at the start of the escape route to start the process of crossing the border.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Change of plan,” Mackintosh said. “I want to be here to get PICASSO across.”
“I tried to tell him,” Élodie said.
“It’s too important to take chances.”
Mackintosh realised that that might be taken as a lack of confidence in the abilities of the men he had deputed to run the eastern side of the exfiltration, but he was too on edge to worry about that. Foulkes brushed off the perceived slight; he was on edge, too, and Mackintosh wondered if he had even registered it.
“Have you seen anything?” Mackintosh asked Fisher.
“No, sir. It’s quiet.”
“Guards?”
“No. Looks like the intelligence was right. We haven’t seen any.”
“We couldn’t have chosen a better night,” Élodie offered.
“Maybe.” Mackintosh took the radio from his pack and pressed the button to speak. “WINCHESTER,” he said. “It’s SALISBURY. Anything to report?”
“No,” Morgan replied from the vantage point on the other side of the Wall. “It’s quiet. I can’t see anything.”