by Mark Dawson
“What’s the meaning of this?” she said angrily.
“Who is travelling with you, Miss?” he said.
“That’s none of your business. I’m on diplomatic business.”
“I don’t care,” the man said. “Who are they?”
“And I told you—that’s none of your business.”
“Then I’m going to have to ask you all to get out of the car.”
“No,” Oksana said. “You’re going to let us pass over the border.”
The man took another step forward and then bellowed into the car. “Get out of the car now or I’ll order my men to shoot.”
Oksana turned to Mackintosh. “Wait here,” she said. “Don’t open the doors to anyone other than me. They’re just looking for a reason to shoot us.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Make a phone call.”
She got out of the car and closed the door behind her. Mackintosh reached across the cabin and pressed down on the lock. The door was secured with a satisfying thunk.
The windows were closed, but Mackintosh could hear the sound of Oksana’s voice as she upbraided the soldier with the clipboard. She punctuated her tirade with sharp little stabs of her finger into the chest of the man. He turned away and led Oksana into the guardhouse. There was a wide window next to the door where the soldiers could look out onto the vehicles that passed through the checkpoint. The snow was still falling heavily, but Mackintosh was able to see the soldier lead Oksana into the room. He handed her a telephone. She pressed the receiver to her ear and began a conversation.
“What’s happening?” Schmidt asked, his voice quavering.
“Everything will be fine,” Mackintosh said, trying to find a reassuring tone despite the fact that he was very far from reassured himself.
Oksana handed the receiver to the soldier and stood, her arms folded, while he spoke to whoever was on the other end of the line. The man handed the receiver back to her; she said something else into it, then replaced it on the cradle. She spoke to the soldier again, adding yet more angry stabs of her finger, and then strode to the door and came outside.
“Here she comes,” Mackintosh said.
Oksana reached the car. Mackintosh reached over to open the door and she got inside.
“What was all that about?”
“They’re going to let us through,” she said.
“Who did you call?” Mackintosh said.
“Someone with authority who’s very interested that we’re able to bring Herr Schmidt over the border.”
Oksana put her hands on the wheel and waited for the armed guards to part. She put the car into drive and slowly passed between them. Mackintosh looked out of the window into their faces as they went by; their hats were brimmed with snow, their faces flushed with the cold, and they stared back with unmasked hostility.
The final stretch of the checkpoint was a slalom created by two lines of tank traps. Oksana drove the car around the first barrier, turned right to bring them around the edge of the second and then accelerated slowly away toward the American side of the border.
Mackintosh looked back at East Berlin. It looked dimmer and darker than its twin, as if shamed by its poverty. The comparison between the destitution of those who lived there and the ease and luxury of those who lived on the other side of the Wall was stark. It felt as if a heavy weight had been removed from Mackintosh’s shoulders, and, for the first time in days, he allowed himself to exhale and relax.
He looked back to the front and watched through the windshield as two American MPs, both armed with automatic rifles, beckoned them forward.
They were nearly home.
Part VII
61
Red Square looked beautiful in the snow. The limousine drove through the Borovitskaya Gate, bouncing over the cobblestones and passing the yellow and gold Grand Kremlin Palace. The driver skirted around the Cathedral of the Archangel and took them through the arch into the courtyard attached to the Senate building. Oksana looked up at the buildings ranged around her and tried to imagine the scale of the battle that was raging within them. The old guard had been assailed by the reformers, and those men who stood to lose everything were not letting go without a fight. Oksana had found herself pulled into that battle, and it was still too early to say whether she had chosen the right side.
She made her way into the Senate and followed the corridor to the reception hall. An aide appeared and gestured that she should follow him into a separate office. She did as she was told. The room was as impressive as the rest of the Senate, with grand pieces of furniture, a roaring fire in a majestic grate and curtains made of luxurious fabrics. Oksana thought of the lot of ordinary Muscovites, hungry and cold, and found the opulence here as nauseating as she always had. The Kremlin, and the autocrats who had their snouts in the trough, could not have been farther removed from the men and women that they purported to serve. It was the flicker of hope represented by Gorbachev that drove them on.
The aide indicated that Oksana should sit, closed the grand doors behind her and exited through a door that she had not seen.
She waited for ten minutes, wondering if she had been forgotten, before the door opened again and Anatoly Maximychev came inside.
Oksana stood. Maximychev made his way over to her, shook her hand, and gestured that she should sit.
“How are you, Major?”
“I am well, sir,” she replied.
“Well done. We have been impressed with your work—very impressed.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Can you confirm that ZERKALO has arrived in London?”
“We believe so. Mackintosh flew out of Tempelhof three days ago. Our sources confirm that ZERKALO was with him.”
“I am relieved.”
“It should have been easier. The British traitor very nearly put a stop to it.”
“True,” Maximychev said. “It would have delayed us, but we would have adapted. The Minister’s appetite has not been sated. He is still associating with the same people. The same clubs. You would think that a man in his position would be more discreet, but it appears that he cannot control his urges. If not ZERKALO, then someone else. His tastes in young men have always been predictable.”
Maximychev was an adviser to the Soviet ambassador in Berlin, although his true influence within the government was more extensive than that. President Gorbachev regarded him as one of his closest political allies, and his reputation as a sounding board and fixer was well known within the walls of the Kremlin. Oksana did not know whether it was Maximychev who had proposed the plan to discredit the Minister or whether he had simply approved it. It did not matter: he had given it to Oksana to administer, and she had done everything that he had asked. Schmidt—or ZERKALO, his cryptonym—had been introduced to the old pervert and that had been that. The boy’s real name was Sokolov. He was a recent graduate from State School 4 in Kazan, an institution that taught both male and female agents how to seduce the targets that they were ranged against. She had seen how the Western newspapers reported it: sexpionage. Sokolov had been trained with a specific aim in mind: he was to seduce the man responsible for the operation of the East German secret police.
Maximychev went to a salver that had been left on a side table and poured two glasses of tea. He brought them both over, gave one to Oksana, and sat down next to her.
“I have read your repor
t,” he said. “It is excellent, as usual. But I have a few questions. Do you have time?”
“Of course.”
“You have personal experience of the British. What do you think they will do?”
“They will debrief ZERKALO very carefully,” she said. “His legend is secure and he tells it well—they will confirm it. I imagine that they will confer with their friends in Langley and Paris and then they will arrange for him to go public. A television interview. Newspapers. Eventually a book, no doubt. They will want his story to be broadcast as far and wide as possible.”
“When do you think they will have him speak?”
“I don’t think it will be long.”
“Good. The Minister will not allow the Wall to fall. He must be removed. He is an impediment to the president’s agenda. Glasnost is too important—it must succeed.” He sipped his tea and looked back at her. “What of Mackintosh?”
“I suspect that he will be rewarded.”
“They really do not know of his”—he paused—“ethical flexibility?”
“It would appear not.”
“And the man he used?”
“Walker? He was exfiltrated through Black Route Two. He landed in Denmark. After that, we don’t know.”
“Very good, Oksana. As I say—the president is pleased with how you conducted this operation. He wanted to tell you that himself.”
“Please thank him for me,” she said. “And please apologise that I had to call him.”
“The border?” Maximychev laughed.
“The guard was stubborn. I believe he would have shot us.”
“No doubt. I would have given a lot to see his face when he realised to whom he was talking.”
She smiled at the memory. “It would be fair to say that he was more accommodating afterwards.”
Maximychev finished his tea and stood. Oksana stood, too, and took the old man’s hand again. “The president would like you to go back to Berlin. We have another man—Schabowski—who has a position of influence within the Politburo. You are to assist him. The Wall must fall, Oksana. The president is adamant. It is the first domino. The others will follow.”
Oksana thanked Maximychev, saluted, and turned. Her heels clicked on the tiled floor as she made her way out of the office and into the vaulted chamber beyond.
62
Mackintosh took off his jacket and gave it to the waiter. He made his way into the private room where he had met Vivian Bloom before. A fire blazed in the hearth. Mackintosh had chosen a light cotton suit today instead of the tweed that had threatened to overwhelm him before. He felt better than before, and not just because he was better prepared for the heat. He had been hanging on then, powered by grief and fury and his desire for revenge. He was still grieving Élodie, but he had taken his measure of revenge. Sommer was dead and Schmidt’s story was a bomb that British intelligence was just waiting to drop on the DDR.
Bloom was in the same seat as before.
“Sit down, Mackintosh,” he said. “Drink?”
“Thank you, sir.”
Bloom poured out two glasses of sherry and passed one to Mackintosh. “Cheers.”
They touched glasses.
“Not a bad way to start the year,” Bloom said. “Well done.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ve read your report. You did well. The only thing I’m not convinced about was involving yourself. That was an unnecessary risk.”
“I disagree, sir. I’m not sure that Walker would have been able to accomplish it on his own.”
Bloom stared at him. “Come on, Harry. Don’t pretend that was the reason. I know about you and the French girl. You wanted to be there to sort Sommer out yourself.”
Mackintosh swallowed, wrong-footed. “I…”
“I shouldn’t have to remind you that fraternising with agents from rival intelligence agencies is not a very good idea. I’ll turn a blind eye to it this time given that it would be churlish to let it spoil an excellent result, but don’t do it again.”
“Yes, sir,” Mackintosh said.
He waited for Bloom to say something else—to say that he knew about the money that the French had been paying him, that he knew about the Swiss account—but he didn’t. He emptied his glass and poured another.
“Everything is neat and tidy apart from Walker. Do you know where he is?”
“No, sir.”
“Really? No idea?”
“None.”
“And do you really think he robbed Sommer’s vault?”
“I’m absolutely sure of it, sir.”
“You think he’s still alive?”
“It’s impossible to say. We barely got out, as you know. He has no contacts in the East. He doesn’t speak the language. I don’t know what he would have been thinking.”
Bloom shook his head. “The brass balls on him.”
“He’s more resourceful than I was led to believe.”
“He is, indeed.” Bloom topped up Mackintosh’s glass.
“What about Schmidt, sir?” Mackintosh asked.
“He’s been debriefed. He’s very compelling.”
“And the photographs?”
“Analysed and confirmed. They’re quite real.”
Schmidt had given them the location of the photographs as soon as he arrived in London. He had hidden them in a lock-box that he had buried in the rubble of a shelled building near to the Wall. Mackintosh had sent an asset to pick them up. They had been copied and faxed to HQ from a secure line and then the originals had been brought out in a diplomatic bag.
“What will happen with them?” Mackintosh asked.
“We’ve given them to Der Spiegel,” he said. “They’ll be published next month.”
“What do you think will happen?”
“The Minister will have to resign. He’ll have no choice.”
“And then?”
“And then, who knows. Gorbachev is pushing his agenda as hard as he dares. Protests are spreading. There only needs to be a spark. And if that happens, all bets are off. We could be looking at a new world.”
“New worlds have new problems, sir.”
“I was thinking about that. You’ll need a replacement for Walker. There’s a chap just been arrested for murder—”
“No,” said Mackintosh.
“It worked out last time.”
Mackintosh looked at Bloom and saw that he was struggling to keep a straight face.
“I’m joking. You’ve earned some capital, Harry. A lot of capital.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And you need something to do. You can’t go back to Berlin. The Stasi know what you did. They won’t look kindly on it.”
“That had crossed my mind.”
“It would be fair to say that your success has changed some minds in Whitehall. Your proposal has been given another look. I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I think it might be something that we are prepared to consider. There’s going to be a rationalisation of MI5 and MI6. We’re looking to build something new—a collection of all the talents—and we will need a unit to operate as the tip of the spear. The work would be deniable. Off book. I doubt I need to say anything more about that.”
“Military? It won’t work with amateurs. We were lucky with Walker.”
“I agree. It would be military—SAS, SBS, SRR, UKSF. How many agents did you ask for?”
“For Berlin? Five.”
“But this wouldn’t be limited to Germany. We were thinking of twelve. New m
embers rotated in when there’s a vacancy. What do you say?”
“I’d say that I would be very interested.”
“Good. Here are your first two men.”
Bloom took two files from the table next to him and handed them to Mackintosh. He flicked through them: each file bore the name of its subject on the cover. FISHER and CAMERON.
“Do you approve?”
“I do, sir. Excellent choices.”
“Excellent.” Bloom smiled. “We’re just sketching this out, but we think there’ll be fifteen groups within the new organisation. Yours would be the fifteenth.”
“Group Fifteen.”
“Quite so. And you would be running it.”
Bloom got to his feet and extended a hand. Mackintosh took it.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Congratulations, Control. I think this is going to go very well.”
63
Mackintosh came out of the club in high spirits. He made his way down the steps to the street and paused there, breathing deeply. It was a bright day—pleasant and fresh—and he decided that he would walk to the vacant building that Bloom had suggested would make an excellent HQ for the new group. It was two miles to Vauxhall and the exercise would do him good. He started to walk.
He saw the man cross the street without really paying attention to him.
The man stepped out in front of him, blocking his path.
It was Walker.
“Morning,” he said.
Mackintosh came to a sudden stop, stock still. His mouth fell open.
“Walker?”
“Surprised to see me?”
“I am. Very surprised. How did you get out?”
“The Russians have been very helpful.”