The Vault

by Mark Dawson

  “I just want a mo­ment with the gen­eral.”

  Jimmy turned away from Som­mer and fol­lowed Ok­sana and Schmidt out to the cor­ridor.

  They reached the lift. Jimmy lif­ted the flap and used the key to open the door. He stayed out­side, hold­ing the door for Ok­sana and Schmidt.

  He heard the re­port of a single gun­shot.

  Schmidt flinched. Jimmy looked at Ok­sana, but there was no need to say any­thing. They both knew what had just happened.

  Mack­in­tosh came out of the cell and made his way to­ward them. Jimmy stayed in the cor­ridor, his arm block­ing the door from clos­ing while Mack­in­tosh stepped in­side.

  “Everything all right?” Ok­sana asked.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “We square now?” Jimmy said to Mack­in­tosh. “You’ve got Schmidt and Som­mer is dead. That was the deal.”

  “We’re square. You did everything you said you’d do.”

  “Good.”

  Jimmy reached into the lift and pressed the but­ton to send it up to the ground floor. He pulled his arm out of the way as the doors began to close.

  Mack­in­tosh looked con­fused. “What are you do­ing?”

  “I’ll see you later,” Jimmy said.

  Mack­in­tosh star­ted to protest, but the doors closed and the lift star­ted to as­cend.

  Jimmy knew that he would have to be quick. He made his way back to the room with the rocket launcher and the ex­plos­ives.

  57

  Jimmy took the crate from un­der­neath the table, opened it and took out the Sem­tex that he had seen earlier. He didn’t need all of it; after all, he only wanted to open the door to the vault and not bring the ceil­ing down onto his head. He took the can­vas bag and emp­tied out all of the det­on­at­ors, save two. He took the bag and the Sem­tex and jogged back along the cor­ridor to the large metal door that he had seen earlier. He worked quickly, tak­ing the ex­plos­ive and fash­ion­ing two squat saus­ages with it. He reached into his pocket and took out the roll of tape that he had pur­chased dur­ing his walk around the city. He un­rolled it, cut off a strip and then di­vided that into four sep­ar­ate, smal­ler strips. He held the first saus­age against the top hinge of the door and used the tape to hold it in place. He re­peated the pro­cess for the lower hinge. He took the two hol­low blast­ing caps, in­ser­ted the pyro­tech­nic fuses and used his teeth to crimp the open ends of the cyl­in­ders, crush­ing the bases of the caps around the fuses. He fit­ted the fuses to the Sem­tex, took his lighter, and lit the ends of the fuses on both caps. He star­ted the stop­watch on his watch. The fuses were reg­u­lated for three minutes.

  Jimmy ran back to the first cell and stepped in­side. He had for­got­ten: Som­mer was there. He was still se­cured to the chair, but his head was hanging back­wards, the white of his neck ex­posed, blood and brains splashed over the wall be­hind him.

  It didn’t mat­ter.

  He knelt down next to Müller’s body and stripped him, re­mov­ing his uni­form and then tak­ing off his own clothes. He was a little bit taller than the dead man, but there wasn’t much in it. He pulled on the trousers and shirt, shud­der­ing a little that the fab­ric was still warm with the corpse’s lat­ent heat. He pulled on Müller’s boots, la­cing them up, and then his jacket. There was a patch of some­thing ichor­ous on the right-hand shoulder board; Jimmy winced as he tried to brush it off.

  He checked his watch.

  Ten seconds.

  58

  “We can’t just leave him,” she said.

  “It’s his choice.”

  “I don’t un­der­stand. Why would he want to stay?”

  “He’s a bank rob­ber, Ok­sana. That’s how I found him. A leo­pard doesn’t change its spots.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he saw the vault and couldn’t help him­self.”

  “How’s he go­ing to get out?”

  “He’s not our prob­lem now.”

  Mack­in­tosh was com­fort­able with leav­ing Walker be­hind. He would have ful­filled his end of the bar­gain, but not hav­ing to worry about that was one less thing to do. There was a good chance that Walker would be picked up by the Stasi.

  Mack­in­tosh led the way out of the lift and, with the pis­tol ready should he need to use it, he checked the lobby. There was no one there. It was empty.

  “Where’s your car?” he said to Ok­sana.

  “I parked it in the street. Through the doors, down the steps and then turn right.”

  “What’s the se­cur­ity like?”

  “There’s one way in and out. There’s a guard­house—I saw one man there earlier.”

  She nod­ded at him. “You don’t have a jacket?”

  “No.”

  “You’re go­ing to stand out. Som­mer might have clothes on the top floor—“

  “We don’t have time for that. We’ll have to take our chances. You go first.” He turned to Schmidt. “Stay close to me. We’re go­ing to get into a car and then drive you away from here.”

  “And then what?” he said. “Where are we go­ing to go? You prom­ised you’d get me into the West.”

  “That’s ex­actly what we’re go­ing to do.”

  “How?”

  Ok­sana went to the doors. “Leave that to me,” she said.

  She waited for Mack­in­tosh and Schmidt to join her and opened the doors. It was snow­ing heav­ily. That, at least, was in their fa­vour. Vis­ib­il­ity was lim­ited, and Mack­in­tosh wasn’t able to see the guard­house that she had men­tioned. He hoped that meant that any guards there wouldn’t be able to see them either. They des­cen­ded the steps, tread­ing care­fully, turned right and fol­lowed Ok­sana to her car. She opened the rear door, ushered Schmidt in­side, and then got into the driver’s seat. Mack­in­tosh made his way around the car, opened the pas­sen­ger side door, and got in­side next to her.

  She star­ted the en­gine, flicked on the lights and pulled out.

  They saw the guard­house through the glow of the lights. The gate was lowered. Ok­sana pulled up in front of it and tapped the horn.

  “Here we go,” she said.

  A guard came out of the hut, huddled over against the cold and the snow that settled on his hat and shoulders. He made his way to the driver’s side and in­dic­ated that Ok­sana should lower the win­dow. She did as she was told.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ok­sana Baran­ova. I’ve been to see the gen­eral.”

  “And your pas­sen­gers?”

  “Ilya Pushkin and Mikhail Bak­unin. They work with me.”

  “Wait here, please,” he said.

  “Is there a prob­lem? Your col­league signed us in earlier. An hour ago.”

  “He’s off shift. Wait here. I won’t be a mo­ment.”

  Mack­in­tosh held the Makarov between the edge of the seat and the door, out of sight but eas­ily at hand, should he need it.

  “He’s not go­ing to get very far if he calls the house,” he said.

  The snow was too heavy for them to make out much of what was go­ing on in­side the guard­house. Ok­sana squin­ted through it. “Maybe he’s just go­ing to check the log.”

  “Maybe,” Mack­in­tosh said. “Be ready to move.”

  She nod­ded.

  Ten seconds passed, and then an­other ten. Still the guard did not re­appear. Mack­in­tosh found his thoughts go­ing to Walker.

  “It’s a vault, though,” he said. “It was a ser­i­ous door. How does he think he’s go­ing to get it open?”

  Ok­sana’s face crumpled into a frown. “Oh shit,” she said.

  “What?”

  She was about to an­swer when they heard the sound of a muffled ex­plo­sion. The ground be­neath the car shook and the glass in the win­dow of the guard­house rattled against the frames. Ok­sana didn’t wait. She took her foot off the brake and stomped d
own on the gas, send­ing the car lurch­ing ahead. It crashed through the gate, the bar break­ing off its mount and slid­ing off the bon­net be­fore thump­ing into the snow.

  “What the fuck was that?” Mack­in­tosh shouted over the sound of the en­gine.

  “I don’t be­lieve it,” Ok­sana said, un­able to take the grin from her face.

  “What?”

  “The or­der that you told Jimmy to make with Som­mer?”

  “Yes,” Mack­in­tosh said. “The RPGs. Why?”

  “Jimmy asked for Sem­tex, too.”

  59

  The ex­plo­sion was deaf­en­ing. The blast wave rolled down the cor­ridor, the noise amp­li­fied by the bare walls and punch­ing open the door that Jimmy had left ajar. Dust and small bits of debris blew into the room, and Jimmy looked away to stop it from get­ting into his eyes. The noise of the blast echoed back and forth, punc­tu­ated by a crash as some­thing heavy slammed against the con­crete.

  The vault door.

  He waited a mo­ment un­til his ears had stopped ringing and then stepped out into the cor­ridor. There was a cloud of dust that was dif­fi­cult to see through and he could smell the harsh, chem­ical tang of the plastique. He waited for the dust to settle so that he could check the dam­age. The door had been blown clean off its hinges and had col­lapsed for­ward so that it was ly­ing flat against the floor. Jimmy hur­ried over and stepped over the door and into the vault.

  He looked in­side. The vault was not large: five paces deep and five paces wide. The walls had been fit­ted with metal shelving on three sides and each shelf was stacked to ca­pa­city with gold in­gots. They had been neatly ar­ranged in in­di­vidual cubes and pyr­am­ids. Jimmy crossed over to the nearest shelf and ran his fin­ger along the low­est course of one of the stacks. He coun­ted ten bars along it, and an­other four courses ar­ranged on top. Ten by five: fifty bars in just that one stack. The bars were identical: ten cen­ti­metres long and four cen­ti­metres wide. He picked one up; it was heavy. The bar was marked with the Reich­sadler, the her­aldic eagle atop a swastika that had come to sym­bol­ise the Nazi Party dur­ing the Third Reich. Be­neath that was en­graved the le­gend DEUTSCHE REICHS­BANK and, be­low that, 1 KILO FEIN­GOLD and then a serial num­ber.

  Jimmy knew how much a gold in­got of this size would be worth. It would be £30,000 easy, maybe even £40,000 de­pend­ing on the mar­ket.

  He stepped back and checked the rest of the vault. The centre of the space was in some dis­ar­ray. A pal­let had been left there and stacks of bank­notes had been ar­ranged atop it. The ex­plo­sion had scattered the notes. Some of the stacks were still par­tially stand­ing, but most of them had been blown apart. Jimmy picked up a hand­ful of notes from the floor: Deutschmarks, francs, roubles, dol­lars, ster­ling. High de­nom­in­a­tions.

  On the other side of the room, in the corner between the shelving and the door, was an open cab­inet. Jimmy pulled the door all the way back and looked in­side. He saw a neatly ar­ranged col­lec­tion of files. They had been al­pha­bet­ised and, on a whim, he drew his fin­ger down the ordered rows un­til he found the one that was la­belled with the let­ter M. He flicked through it un­til he found a file with a tab at the top that read MACK­IN­TOSH. He took the file, opened it and flipped through the pages: there were writ­ten re­ports in Ger­man that he couldn’t read and a sheaf of pho­to­graphs. He thumbed through them: Mack­in­tosh out­side the con­su­late, at a res­taur­ant, in a park. A series showed him with a man Jimmy had not seen be­fore.

  He put the can­vas bag on the floor, spread it open, and then ar­ranged gold in­gots in a single course in­side it. The bars were heavy, and Jimmy was lim­ited by what the bag could stand and he could com­fort­ably carry rather than how many he could fit into the bag. He hef­ted the bag and de­cided that he couldn’t take any more. In­stead, he ad­ded a layer of bank­notes, each wad se­cured with a pa­per col­lar. Jimmy put Mack­in­tosh’s file at the top of the bag, zipped it up, and heaved it onto his shoulder. The bars clinked un­til they settled. It was heavy; Jimmy knew that he would have to find trans­port sooner rather than later.

  There was a Luger in the cab­inet; Jimmy wondered whether it might be Som­mer’s weapon from his SS days. He took it and backed out of the vault, giv­ing it one last long­ing look even as he knew he was re­mov­ing as much as was pos­sible. He chuckled at what Smiler would have said if he had seen him here; the thought of Smiler quickly led to home, and to Isa­bel and Sean, and he chided him­self for even the shortest delay. He had to move.

  With the pis­tol clasped in his right hand and the bag over his shoulder, Jimmy went to the el­ev­ator. He turned the key in the lock, stepped into the car, and pressed the but­ton for the ground floor. The doors opened and, gun ready, he stepped out­side.

  The lobby was empty.

  He turned left, away from the front door. Geipel had ad­ded the rear exit to the plan that he had drawn for Mack­in­tosh, and Jimmy headed for that rather than the front door. He fol­lowed a cor­ridor into the guts of the build­ing, passing through a din­ing room and then the kit­chen. The door was at the other side of the kit­chen and was locked when Jimmy tried it. He tried the keys, found none of them worked, stepped back, raised the pis­tol and fired. It took two shots to blast out the lock; Jimmy kicked it, hard, and the re­mains of the mech­an­ism snapped off.

  The door opened to an al­ley­way where the bins were lined up. Snow was fall­ing, heavy flakes that had already drif­ted against the door. Jimmy stepped out, his boots slid­ing through the soft crust all the way to his knees, and struck out. He needed to find a car. He had to get as far away from here as he could.

  60

  Oksana drove them through the city, the red flag of the USSR that was at­tached to the hood flap­ping in the wind. Mack­in­tosh was on edge, ex­pect­ing to see flash­ing lights be­hind them, the Volk­spol­izei giv­ing pur­suit. But noth­ing happened. No one fol­lowed them. The roads were quiet thanks to the weather, with the main roads kept pass­able by snowploughs that chugged back and forth and lor­ries that sprayed out grit and salt. Ok­sana drove stead­ily, not too fast, dic­tated to by the con­di­tions. She stared ahead, eyes squint­ing against the glow of the lights re­flect­ing back from the cur­tain of snow. Mack­in­tosh held the Makarov in his lap, run­ning his fin­gers across the bar­rel, won­der­ing whether there would be a need to use it and know­ing that, if the need arose, it would prob­ably make little dif­fer­ence.

  They crossed the Spree and then the Spreekanal, cut west on Leipzi­ger Straße and then south on Friedrich­straße. Check­point Charlie loomed up ahead. Mack­in­tosh could see the struts of the watchtower along­side it, and saw the fin­ger of a search­light as it jerked through the cur­tain of snow and settled on them; both he and Ok­sana raised their hands to shield their eyes. She rolled up to the first bar­rier and waited for the guard to ap­proach the win­dow. The man was car­ry­ing a flash­light, and shone it into the cabin as he in­dic­ated that Ok­sana should wind down the win­dow. She did as she was told, wafts of cold air blow­ing the snow in­side.

  “Pa­pers,” the sol­dier said.

  Ok­sana handed the man her dip­lo­matic pass­port and waited for him to check it.

  “Who is trav­el­ling with you?” he said.

  “Two col­leagues.”

  “Their pa­pers, please.”

  “Never mind them,” she said.

  “Pa­pers—now.”

  “Did you see who I am, sol­dier?” she snapped. “I’m on of­fi­cial busi­ness and I do not have to ex­plain my­self to you. Re­mem­ber your place and open the gate.”

  The man stared down at her, his eyes hard and cold, and then turned away. He took a walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it. Mack­in­tosh held the Makarov down low, out of sight. It would do them no good, he re­minded him­self. He might be able to use it to get rid of this man, but he knew that the other gu
ards wouldn’t al­low them to get much farther. There would be snipers in the watchtower and sol­diers with auto­matic weapons in the guard­house.

  “They won’t let us through,” Schmidt said.

  “Be quiet,” Mack­in­tosh hissed.

  He heard the squelch of static as the guard fin­ished his con­ver­sa­tion, clipped the walkie-talkie back onto his belt and made his way back to them.

  He held out Ok­sana’s pass­port. “Drive through, please.”

  Ok­sana took her pass­port, wound up the win­dow and drove through the opened bar­rier. She turned to the right, passed through the nar­row gap in the first wall, and ap­proached the second bar­rier. The guard­house was on the right and a line of parked cars was on their left. They were halfway to the next bar­rier when two sol­diers came out of the far side of the guard­house and blocked their way. The men were car­ry­ing AK-47s; they pressed the stocks into their shoulders and aimed at the car.

  “Shit,” Mack­in­tosh said.

  He looked be­hind them. Four sol­diers, in­clud­ing the one who had spoken to them at the gate, were ap­proach­ing from the rear. They, too, were all armed. The man had let them carry on through so that they could block them in this sec­ond­ary area. The Amer­ican sec­tor was fifty feet away, but it might as well have been fifty miles. There was noth­ing that they could do.

  Mack­in­tosh looked at Ok­sana. She was bit­ing her lip, look­ing between the men in front of the car and, in the mir­ror, at the men who were ap­proach­ing them from be­hind. Mack­in­tosh turned and saw that Schmidt was pet­ri­fied; his head was down, his hands clasped to his temples. Mack­in­tosh thought of the pis­tols that they had taken from Som­mer’s build­ing. He squeezed the Makarov. He might be able to take out one or two of the sol­diers, but the oth­ers would turn the car into Swiss cheese be­fore they could get over to the West.

  An­other sol­dier emerged from the guard­house. This one was clearly more senior than the oth­ers, his rank de­noted by the flashes on his shoulders. He was car­ry­ing a clip­board and a flash­light. He came to the car and in­dic­ated that Ok­sana should wind down the win­dow again.