The Vault

by Mark Dawson

  “Copy that. SALIS­BURY out.”

  Mack­in­tosh put the ra­dio back into his pack.

  “I’m go­ing to go out­side,” he said.

  Cameron stepped for­ward. “I don’t think that’s wise. We haven’t planned for it.”

  “I’m go­ing out,” Mack­in­tosh in­sisted. “I know the area. And he should be here by now.”

  He looked from the sol­dier’s face to Élodie’s. She was as con­cerned as he was, yet there was some­thing else on her face, too. They had only been see­ing each other for a short while, and they had man­aged—at least they thought they had—to keep their re­la­tion­ship private. He looked at her, saw the damp shine to her eyes, the hes­it­ant up­turn to her lips, and saw the af­fec­tion there.

  He couldn’t let that stop him. PI­CASSO was too im­port­ant, his po­ten­tial too great.

  Élodie mouthed two words: Be care­ful. Mack­in­tosh wanted to re­cip­roc­ate, but while Foulkes had his back to Élodie and couldn’t see her, he was look­ing dead at Mack­in­tosh and he would see him.

  “Eyes open,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

  4

  Mack­in­tosh opened the door and stepped out onto the street. Strel­itzer Straße was cobbled with two rows of four-storey apart­ment blocks that faced each other. Cars had been slot­ted against the kerb with their noses pok­ing out, leav­ing enough space for two lines of traffic to pro­ceed in either dir­ec­tion. An at­tempt had been made to soften the bru­tal ar­chi­tec­ture with the plant­ing of a row of young elms, al­though the winter winds had long since plucked the last leaves from the branches. Mack­in­tosh took a step away from the door and turned left and right to look for any sign that there was any­one else here with him. The street was heavy with snow, save a slushy stripe where the cars had been passing. Mack­in­tosh looked left and saw the Fernse­hturm, the enorm­ous tele­vi­sion mast in Al­ex­an­der­platz that was vis­ible all across the city. He had al­ways hated it; the Com­mun­ists had erec­ted it in an at­tempt to demon­strate their power, but it had al­ways em­bod­ied their sur­veil­lance to Mack­in­tosh, the sense that they loomed over everything and that nowhere was safe from their sus­pi­cious gaze.

  Mack­in­tosh star­ted to the east, walk­ing slowly across the com­pacted snow and ice. There was a builder’s van parked on his side of the street. The loc­als were do­ing some work on a nearby build­ing, fix­ing it up after what looked like years of neg­lect. The van was old and dirty, and it had a ragtag col­lec­tion of equip­ment in the flat­bed: a ce­ment mixer, lad­ders, a wheel­bar­row.

  He had passed the back of the van when he saw move­ment at the junc­tion with Rheins­ber­ger Straße. He was fifty feet away, and the per­son he saw was look­ing in the op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion. Mack­in­tosh didn’t think that he had been seen. He walked on and saw that the per­son was male, that he was wear­ing a fit­ted black over­coat and a Rus­sian-style ush­anka on his head. Mack­in­tosh drew closer and saw that the man’s hair, just vis­ible un­der the lowered flaps of the hat, had been dyed a bright plat­inum blond.

  It was PI­CASSO.

  Mack­in­tosh picked up his pace.

  “Günter,” Mack­in­tosh said, his voice as quiet as he could make it while still be­ing loud enough for the man to hear.

  The man froze and then turned around to face him. His cryptonym was PI­CASSO, but his real name was Günter Schmidt. He was nine­teen years old and he had pale skin and blue eyes that were filled with fear. Mack­in­tosh reached out a hand; Schmidt took it and they shook.

  “Is everything okay?” Mack­in­tosh asked him in Ger­man.

  “I’m scared,” Schmidt said.

  “You’re fine,” he said, smil­ing at him.

  “I couldn’t re­mem­ber the num­ber of the house.”

  “You’re on the wrong street,” Mack­in­tosh said gently, tak­ing Schmidt by the sleeve and angling him to­ward the junc­tion. “It’s over here.”

  Mack­in­tosh glanced over at the young man as they walked. The coat he was wear­ing was the over­sized her­ring­bone that Mack­in­tosh had bought for him a month ago. Günter had a fix­a­tion with David Bowie, and he had seen him wear­ing a sim­ilar coat in a pho­toshoot by Helmut New­ton that had been pub­lished in Sounds. Mack­in­tosh had brought him reg­u­lar cop­ies of the magazine as he had gently re­cruited him, a slow dance that had taken months to bring to fruition. He had smuggled the coat across the bor­der to con­sum­mate their ar­range­ment and had given it to him at their last meet­ing in Treptower Park.

  “I’m frightened,” Schmidt said.

  “There’s no reason to be.”

  “The bor­der guards?”

  Mack­in­tosh shook his head. “None. It’s quiet.”

  “But what about the tun­nel?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I get claus­tro­phobic.”

  “I’ve just come through it,” Mack­in­tosh said, re­mind­ing him­self to speak kindly. “It’s safe. A mar­vel of en­gin­eer­ing. You’ll see.”

  5

  Élodie had ar­ranged for Mack­in­tosh to meet Schmidt. He had claimed to be in pos­ses­sion of evid­ence that would cause chaos at the very highest levels of the Stasi. Mack­in­tosh had im­me­di­ately seen how valu­able Schmidt could be. And he had seen how re­cruit­ing the young man would add a layer of gilt to a ca­reer that had already been im­press­ive. Mack­in­tosh’s tours of Bel­fast had seen him chop away at the lead­er­ship of the IRA, de­vel­op­ing re­la­tion­ships with sev­eral in­form­ants in­clud­ing a man who had served on the in­fam­ous “Nut­ting Squad,” the Provos’s counter-in­tel­li­gence and in­ter­rog­a­tion unit. He had used the in­form­ant’s in­tel­li­gence to pick off key play­ers, and, in the pro­cess, had de­veloped an aptitude for in­ter­rog­a­tion that had pro­duced start­ling res­ults while, at the same time, leav­ing him feel­ing as if he had been bathing in a sewer.

  PI­CASSO, though, would be an or­der of mag­nitude above everything else that he had achieved, and the pro­spect of bring­ing him in was in­tox­ic­at­ing.

  Mack­in­tosh had been me­tic­u­lous about everything, and his trade­craft had been the most thor­ough of his ca­reer. He wanted to get a meas­ure of the tar­get be­fore their first meet­ing and had fol­lowed him for a week. Each day had be­gun with a mara­thon sur­veil­lance de­tec­tion routine, backed by a ten-man Franco–Brit­ish counter-sur­veil­lance de­tail, to en­sure that he was black be­fore go­ing any­where near the tar­get. He would pick up the young man as he ended his work­ing day at five each af­ter­noon and fol­low him on his walk home. His route was the same every day: he left the build­ing on Nor­mannen­straße, went south on Kyn­as­traße, crossed the Spree and then made his way through Treptower Park.

  Sur­veil­lance was backed up with ex­tens­ive re­search on the sub­ject, his bona fides and the cred­ib­il­ity of the story he was of­fer­ing to sell. The as­sess­ment from Lon­don and Paris was that he was telling the truth.

  The of­fer Mack­in­tosh and Élodie could make Schmidt would be dif­fi­cult to turn down, but it would also be fraught with great danger. If Schmidt said yes and there was any mis­step, his fu­ture would be bleak: in­ter­rog­a­tion in the base­ments of the Ho­henschön­hausen and then a bul­let in the back of the head.

  Mack­in­tosh had al­most had second thoughts about mak­ing the of­fer.

  But who was he kid­ding? Here was an in­tel­li­gence coup that might be price­less. Schmidt had offered to work with them after be­ing sub­merged in the misery of his fel­low Ber­liners all of his life. He wanted to do some­thing about that, and, thanks to the un­for­tu­nate pro­cliv­it­ies of the Min­is­ter for State Se­cur­ity, he had been given the means to do so.

  Mack­in­tosh had put him in a po­s­i­tion to win his free­dom.

  6

  They made their way back along Strel­
itzer Straße to the derel­ict apart­ment. Mack­in­tosh al­lowed him­self a buzz of con­fid­ence: it was go­ing to hap­pen. They were go­ing to pull it off.

  A wo­man emerged from the door, wear­ing a wool­len hat that she had taken from the sol­diers: it was Élodie. Mack­in­tosh wanted to yell out that she should get back into the house, but he dared not. He would spook Schmidt, and there was no telling who else might be listen­ing.

  “Élodie?” Schmidt said hope­fully.

  “She wants to make sure you get out, too.”

  Mack­in­tosh put his hand on the young man’s back and nudged him for­ward. He smiled at him and told him that he would be fine, that the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment looked after those who were will­ing to risk their lives for the West, that everything—everything—would be fine.

  “The tun­nel,” Schmidt said. “It is dirty?”

  He ges­tured down at Mack­in­tosh’s trousers; Mack­in­tosh looked and saw the streaks of mud that he had missed.

  “A little,” he ad­mit­ted with a smile.

  “What about my coat? It’ll be ruined.”

  Mack­in­tosh smiled with in­dul­gent pa­tience. “I’ll get you a new one.”

  Élodie came along­side. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes. All fine. What are you do­ing out­side?”

  “We couldn’t see you.”

  “Let’s get off the street.”

  They were still thirty feet from the door to num­ber 55 when a black van raced around the corner and came to a stop on the other side of the road. It was a Bar­kas B1000, the trans­port that the Stasi used to snatch people from the street. A man stepped out of the driver’s com­part­ment, leav­ing the door open be­hind him. A second man got out.

  “Merde,” Élodie hissed.

  Mack­in­tosh reached with his left hand, took Schmidt by the el­bow and picked up the pace. He let his right arm hang loosely by his side, his fin­gers ready to reach around for the gun that was go­ing to be pressed into the small of his back.

  The men walked across the ice-slicked cobbles in their dir­ec­tion.

  “Achtung!”

  Mack­in­tosh held onto Schmidt’s arm and kept walk­ing. They were out­side num­ber 49, with just a few more paces to the door to 55. If they could get in­side, maybe…

  He heard the sound of an en­gine from be­hind him, the crunch of tyres across com­pacted snow. Mack­in­tosh turned his head to look back; an­other black Bar­kas van had ar­rived, this one block­ing the road be­hind them. A fur­ther two men had stepped down from the cab and were com­ing their way.

  He swal­lowed down on a throat that was sud­denly very dry.

  Min­is­terium für Staats­sich­er­heit.

  The Stasi.

  Bor­der guards were dumb and pre­dict­able; they fol­lowed or­ders, did what they were told, shunned ori­gin­al­ity for rote. The Stasi were dif­fer­ent. They were ruth­less. They killed whenever they had the chance. Mack­in­tosh’s former head of sta­tion had been gut­ted in the street as he lit a ci­gar­ette. His re­place­ment’s car had been fit­ted with a bomb and blown up while he waited to pick up a sec­ret­ary at Tem­pel­hof. They had eyes every­where and they were slowly tight­en­ing their grip around what they saw as the hos­tile in­tel­li­gence ser­vices ranged against them. They were im­plac­able, ruth­less, and driven by a cold ideo­lo­gical an­imus that could not be reasoned or ne­go­ti­ated with.

  And they knew. Someone had tipped them off. Fear wrapped around him, icy cold. It tightened, for­cing his breath from his lungs.

  The two agents ahead of them were car­ry­ing Makarov PMs. Mack­in­tosh re­cog­nised one of them: it was Axel Geipel, a col­onel in the Hauptver­wal­tung Aufklärung, the Stasi’s Main Dir­ect­or­ate for Re­con­nais­sance. Geipel had a repu­ta­tion for bru­tal­ity; Mack­in­tosh had heard the stor­ies of what happened to the men and wo­men he took back to Ho­henschön­hausen prison. But worse than Geipel’s repu­ta­tion was that of his pat­ron; Geipel worked for Karl-Heinz Som­mer, and Som­mer was a devil.

  “Get your hands up!” Geipel shouted in Eng­lish. “Now!”

  Mack­in­tosh stopped.

  Not like this. Not without a fight.

  Élodie stopped next to him. Her hand twitched to­ward her weapon.

  “Don’t,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

  Mack­in­tosh re­leased Schmidt’s wrist and held his left hand aloft, his open palm fa­cing for­ward.

  Geipel waved his gun. “Both hands!”

  He raised his right hand, too, and stretched both of them above his head.

  7

  The ground floor win­dow of num­ber 55 ex­ploded out­wards in a cas­cade of glass shards. A sub­ma­chine gun chugged as one of the sol­diers un­loaded the magazine of his MP5-SD. The two Stasi agents were di­ag­on­ally op­pos­ite the win­dow; the vol­ley streaked across the cobbled street and det­on­ated against the graf­fiti-scarred wall be­hind them. Chunks of plaster were blown into the air and a cloud of fine dust choked that side of the road. One of them fell; Geipel fired back.

  Mack­in­tosh knew their op­por­tun­ity would last for mo­ments and no more. He heard the gun­fire from be­hind them, flinched with the ex­pect­a­tion that he was about to be struck, but felt noth­ing. He grabbed Schmidt by the arm and dragged him into the cover offered by the front of the builder’s van. At the same time, he reached be­hind his back, snagged the butt of the pis­tol, and yanked it clear so hast­ily that the iron sight scored a groove on his skin. He aimed at the two agents in front of him, but he could only see the un­mov­ing body of one of them; Geipel had slipped into cover be­hind the black van.

  He turned the other way, look­ing for Élodie, and saw blood.

  Lots of blood.

  He pan­icked.

  Élodie was on the pave­ment, face down, arms and legs akimbo. Her head was turned in Mack­in­tosh’s dir­ec­tion and he could see her face. There was panic there. Ter­ror.

  “I can’t move my legs.”

  He reached for her arm and dragged her, heed­less of the risk that he was tak­ing in com­ing out of cover and the dam­age that he might be do­ing by mov­ing her. Ad­ren­aline buzzed in his veins, gave him fresh strength, and Élodie wasn’t heavy; he hauled her out of harm’s way be­fore the agents be­hind them could fire again.

  She stammered some­thing in French that he didn’t catch. Her hand was un­der­neath body, clasped to her stom­ach and, when she held it up to look at it, he saw that her palm was red with blood. He could guess what must have happened: she had been shot in the back, the bul­let passing through her spine and then ex­it­ing through her gut. She had been para­lysed and, un­less he could get her back to the West, she would bleed out. The im­possib­il­ity of what he would have to do swamped him; how could he get her through the tun­nel like this? Hope­less­ness turned to des­per­a­tion and then be­came an­ger: it was his fault. He should have told her to stay on the other side of the Wall.

  Mack­in­tosh heard a whim­per and drew his fo­cus back. PI­CASSO was curled on his side, look­ing up at him. He wore an ex­pres­sion of sur­prise, the mo­ment of shock that would quickly pass as pain over­whelmed it. Mack­in­tosh checked him over, top to bot­tom, and saw the blood on his thigh. Schmidt was clasp­ing his leg with both hands and blood was run­ning out between his fin­gers.

  Mack­in­tosh was filled with a bub­bling of dread; the only wo­man who cared for him had been badly hurt and the op­er­a­tion that would have made him a hero was turn­ing to ash.

  He heard the sound of an­other en­gine and saw a third van as it rumbled into the street, com­ing to a halt be­hind the one that was shel­ter­ing Geipel. The doors opened and four men dropped down, each of them armed with sub­ma­chine guns. They stayed be­hind the van, us­ing its bulk to cover them from the shoot­ers in the apart­ment.

  It was a stan­doff. The two SAS war­rant of­ficers could keep Geipe
l and the new­comers covered. The two men who had shot Élodie and Schmidt might be ap­proach­ing from be­hind, but they would have to move with cau­tion. They must have ex­pec­ted that Mack­in­tosh was armed.

  “I’m go­ing to get you out,” he said to Élodie.

  “No,” she said. “You can’t. You have to leave me.”

  Her voice was weak, but there was cer­tainty there, and Mack­in­tosh knew that she was right even though it cut him to fol­low the lo­gic to its only pos­sible con­clu­sion.

  “They’ll fix you up,” he said. “They have to. You’re a dip­lo­mat. Tell them. I’ll speak to Claude. He’ll sort it out.”

  She reached up with her hand. Mack­in­tosh clasped it and held it tight.

  He turned to Schmidt. “Do you think you can move?”

  “My leg,” Schmidt said. “It hurts. And the bleed­ing won’t stop.”

  Mack­in­tosh grit­ted his teeth. It was fin­ished. Even if he could get Schmidt into the apart­ment, how was he go­ing to get him down the lad­der? Even if he man­aged to get to the bot­tom of the shaft, the tun­nel re­quired ef­fort to tra­verse; how would Schmidt man­age that with one leg? He would have to ask the SAS men to stay be­hind and hold up the Stasi, but that would be a death sen­tence. It was im­possible. They were done.

  He was go­ing to have to leave them both.

  “Herr Mack­in­tosh.”

  He froze. The shout had come from be­hind the van in front of him.

  “My name is Karl-Heinz Som­mer. I’m sure you know who I am.”

  Mack­in­tosh did know who Som­mer was; they all did. He was a killer. He was an in­ter­rog­ator and ex­e­cu­tioner, an of­ficer so en­am­oured with his grim vo­ca­tion that his vic­tims ar­gued he was more de­mon than man, an an­gel of death who left piles of corpses in his wake. Som­mer had risen through the Stasi’s ranks to Gen­er­aloberst and now he was in charge of counter-in­tel­li­gence. He op­er­ated a net­work of in­form­ers, trait­ors and turn­coats who sup­plied him with a flow of in­form­a­tion that some­times made him seem as if he had been blessed with clair­voy­ance. They called him die Spinne. The spider at the centre of a web that covered all of Ber­lin, East and West.