Exit Day: Brexit; An Assassin Stalks the Prime Minister

by David Laws

  “The things I do for ambition,” he said, winding the rope around his chest. He watched Vogler fix the end to one of the stout wooden beams supporting the canopy. On the way down he stopped twice to control his racing heartbeat. Everything was wet and slippery to the touch. Was it his imagination, or did he see a pair of eyes staring at him from the darkness? The rocky wall was jagged, cruel and unforgiving. It ripped at his hands and nails but he kept control by telling himself this was just like flying, the suspension of fear.

  When he got his feet on the ledge it too was dark, slippery and alive with dripping water. A sudden thought flashed into his mind: just as well Erika wasn’t with him. He knew all about her water phobia – then he wondered how she was coping in his absence. What was she doing at this very moment? He shook his head and told himself to concentrate, shining the lantern along the ledge, testing stability and judging width before edging gingerly along. A curve took it away into the darkness beyond the beam of his light.

  “Everything OK?” Vogler’s voice called from above.

  Harry replied with a confident affirmative he did not feel. He swallowed, took a deep breath, and laboriously took one small, careful step after another. There were over a hundred thousand litres of water in this place, waiting – if disaster struck – to swallow him up in a deep, black embrace. He tested the rope around his chest and edged a little further. Was skewering the Right Honourable Christopher Tresham – or Portus, if that was his real name – worth all this? Harry grimaced in the darkness and told himself this was no time to entertain doubts. He’d made his decision. Some way to the right he felt tiny ridges beneath his feet and knelt to discover several slimy strands of rope thick with algae. They were anchored to the rock wall and ran over the edge, disappearing into the water below. They were difficult to grasp. Wedging himself into a crouching position, he used both hands to test for tautness. Two strands were rigid and immovable, but another began to give, and when he pulled something bumped, swayed and splashed in the water below.

  Harry began to haul.

  A hoarse whisper came down the shaft from above. Its tense urgency echoed around the chamber. “Hurry up, Harry; I can hear cars pulling up at the gate.” Vogler’s anxiety was clear, but Harry had no intention of giving up and running. If necessary, he’d talk his way out of any trouble with the local police. He kept hauling, the rope slipping back through his grimy fingers several times, but he persisted.

  “Lights, I can see lights. Now voices.” Vogler’s anxiety was palpable.

  “Nearly done!” Something metallic was out of the water now and banging on the rocky wall of the cistern as it came up toward the ledge. Harry ignored the nervous commentary from above, intent on not allowing the slippery rope to snake back through his fingers.

  “They’re unlocking the gates!”

  Harry had it. A large, black, slimy object about the size of a cooking pot. He eased it gently into his rucksack, drawing the straps tight.

  “Someone’s coming up the path! I’ll have to go! Can’t be caught!”

  “Stay!” Harry barked up the chamber. “Haul me up.”

  This was the ultimate horror. Abandoned, stranded in a darkened pit on the edge of a watery abyss with the unknowable intention of a stranger his only avenue of rescue.

  Fortunately, Vogler kept pulling.

  When Harry got a grip on the top of the cistern and hauled himself clear, he expected to be met by hostile figures in police green. Instead, Vogler had his finger up to his lips. “Not here yet,” he whispered. He jerked his head and the two of them crawled silently away to the point in the fence where they had entered, easing themselves back through the gap they had made.

  Vogler was already halfway to the car but Harry hung back, listening to the voices, trying to decide who they might be.

  There were the dim interior lights in a couple of cars at the gate, which told him nothing; then a match flared, two smokers lighting up, and Harry caught a brief illumination of his pursuers. Two faces, men cupping a match, busy puffing on fresh cigarettes.

  A chill went down his spine and he gripped the rucksack tighter to his shoulders in a protective reflex. One face was immediately clear. Just a brief illumination, true, but Harry had no doubt. He’d never forget it. His nemesis from the Barton cottage he’d struck with the soil sack – the man who had chased him through Highbury Fields – was back on track.

  Bruno and his Kameraden team had caught up with him in Saxony.

  Chapter 40

  Sunday 24th March 2019; 5 days to go

  The old men parked their Trabbis and the one remaining Wartburg three blocks away, so as not to attract attention, then walked unsteadily and with failing gait toward the old prison. They had to tread carefully. The paving stones were mostly broken, the kerbs set at odd angles. This part of East Berlin, well out of the glitzy city centre, had yet to receive the full Westernised makeover. As they walked they watched their reflections in the oily rainwater puddles. A close-mesh fence enclosed a derelict factory. The street, with its withered trees and unkempt verges, was deserted. No bikes roamed here, pedestrians a rarity.

  That suited them, these elderly and infirm men who had once been a power in the land. These former generals, colonels and secretaries of state who, in their pomp, exercised life-or-death decisions over millions of citizens were now reduced to a slow totter using walking sticks and frames, headed for the most infamous of their former establishments, the Hohenschönhausen jail. Their dress – a once-sharp suit in ’50s grey, a hand-knitted brown jumper, a red tie – reflected the mindset of these walking statues to the values of a long-dead regime.

  Hohenschönhausen, a name ranked in infamy along with the worst of the Gulags. A place of imprisonment, mental cruelty and physical torture. A place that destroyed personalities.

  Now it was a museum, exhibiting to anyone who wished to see the full panoply of the one-time secret police ‘correction’ facility. This had been the centre of the regime’s political persecution during the years of Communist repression, an area so secret it was blanked from the city’s maps.

  However Kramer, Lutz and Ziegler would no longer be entering Hohenschönhausen through the tall entrance gate alongside the tourists. They now had their own highly secret entrance, one that was not simply unknown to the organisers of the museum, but which would – if discovered – create shock waves of dismay in modern Berlin.

  Once inside, past the iron grille and the studded door marked DANGER: ELECTRICITY, KEEP OUT, there were several sly grins. It amused them on every visitor day to think that while the curators and guides on the other side of the wall talked up the defeat of the now-defunct Stasi here, merely the width of a cellar wall away, a shadow of that organisation met for its weekly session. Now, of course, the trappings of power had gone. No shiny rosewood desks, no damask curtains, no banks of phones, no eager secretaries – just a plain cellar ringed by an assortment of armchairs and stools. Bare concrete walls were bereft of decoration and a circle of brown damp stained one corner. Faded green matting, the product of some plundered Stasi store, had been laid on the floor to dampen the sound of voices or movement and a sprawling green sofa made a bizarre centrepiece.

  Norbert Kramer, Herbert Lutz and Franz Ziegler filed in, leaving sticks and frames at the door, vying for the most comfortable of the available seats. Lutz grabbed a Chesterfield, Kramer a wing chair and Ziegler a corroded steel cantilever. Nods were exchanged with latecomers Sommer, Bergmann and Trautmann. These last had to make do with creaking plastic stools. All six sat around the edges of the cellar, in every way representing their status as men on the periphery.

  They styled this a plenary session. The old guard of the Kameraden insisted on the formal terminology in an effort to recapture the cadences and practices of former times and the illusion of power as if the regime still held sway on the other side of the cellar wall. And in the centre sat the new politburo, ca
lling itself the Troika. Respectful nods were made to Comrade Kroon, in charge of security, completely bald apart from two patches of straggly hair above his ears; and Comrade Fischer, the contacts man, easily distinguished by the scar running from his left ear to his chin.

  But where was the leader?

  Lutz searched the room for the man they all wanted to hear and see. The mastermind, the Wolf, also known as the Mask, the one who held them all together, the elusive will-o’-the-wisp who had the enemy falling over themselves to find him. A small, incongruous figure was hunched over some papers, eyes cast down. In the expectant silence they all heard the whispered statement from Kroon that the entire politburo was assembled and ready.

  At this the hunchbacked figure uncoiled itself, stretched and stood tall, and they all stared at the gaunt, fleshy face, the flared nostrils, prominent lips and great slashes for unmoving eyes. Lifelike, hideous, inhuman. A Hyperflesh mask given the lie by the line around the neck.

  Lutz grunted in recognition. This was the heartbeat of the organisation, the ultimate survivor, the man who had faked his own death to be born again. Wolf Steigel was head of The Troika but, of course, would not reveal his true self lest some traitor in their midst should furnish the enemy with a description. A precaution against betrayal – that was the reason given, though others speculated differently: that one side of his face had been scalded in a struggle, that he’d been horrifically injured fleeing a trap laid by the authorities. And the Wolf’s many disguises, adopted upon leaving each Kameraden session, were said to be ingenious and legion: crutches, wigs, a white stick, a dog… and now this, the hunchback.

  The voice, when it came, was strong if somewhat nasal. A strident, if predictable, monologue on the plan to perpetuate the EU alongside the Kameraden’s long-term goal: its suborning into the sort of command body familiar and acceptable to the denizens of the DDR.

  At a suitable pause there was the scrape of an uncomfortable chair followed by a cough. In a quavering voice Kramer wanted to know: “What are we doing about Brexit? Are we going to allow it to happen?”

  “Never!”

  Lutz also found a doubting voice. “I’m not in love with the EC. It’s global capitalism. Just a handmaiden to the big corporations.”

  Wolf put up a hand. “Comrades, please, look to the future. Sooner or later capitalism will stumble into another crisis; then our time will come. And when we have the power we shall want to command the widest possible territory. This is our future and we want it on a grand scale. We have to stop the Brexit leakage.”

  Kramer spoke again. “Then, may I ask, has a final course of action been decided?”

  “Indeed it has.” The response was sharp. The mask swivelled around as if challenging further doubt, then appeared to raise its gaze as if calling on an inspiring spirit from the solitary photograph hanging on the cellar wall, a posed portrait of the old Stasi chief, Erich Mielke. “Indeed it has.”

  There was a silence before detail was added: there would be a blow to the heart of Exit Day, now only five days hence. New instructions were being issued. The full range of the network would be called into action: Eiche, Kiefer, Larchen, Kastanie, Bergehorn, Apfelbaum and Mandelbaum. They would assist the reactivation of a key source for the ultimate strike.

  Grey heads nodded in unison at this news. They all had authoritarian history, these men; they all thirsted for a restoration of the old order.

  Comrade Fischer, Wolf announced, would be leaving for London in the morning.

  At this the comrades nodded again their approval. Given their proximity to the museum, applause or acclamation were out of the question.

  They bade their farewells, Kramer, Lutz and Ziegler making their way slowly back along the deserted streets, hoping the Trabbis and the Wartburg had not been plundered or stolen while they been about the business of seeking to change the established order of the world.

  Chapter 41

  5 days to go

  Saxony was no longer Harry’s happy hunting ground. The relative ease of the past few days was over. Bruno’s sudden appearance at the castle ruin was a shock, proving that the Kameraden had caught up with him. As such, it became his trigger for a rapid return to the UK.

  Air travel was out of the question. What would Baggage Security make of a smelly rucksack containing the slimy, rusty remains of a Stasi Crab? Doubtless, its fate would be a rapid confiscation.

  Harry opted for a Channel crossing, but a stormy sea and gridlock at Dover had caused all sailings to be cancelled at Calais. After a long delay the captain of the late-night ferry from Boulogne decided it was calm enough to sail but the crossing was still rough, the ferry rocking from side to side in deep troughs, and somewhere an unlatched door banged in the wind the whole night through.

  Harry arrived at London Bridge Station looking weary and dishevelled, and handed his precious cargo to Patronella, who was waiting in a car parked on the station forecourt. She wrinkled her nose and looked less than pleased.

  “Is it the right one?”

  “Who knows? It wasn’t exactly a reference library down that pit.”

  Harry felt underwhelmed by her reaction, but was impressed by her progress on Tresham’s passport trail.

  “Portus,” she said; “that’s the real family name. And guess what?”

  His curiosity was hard to contain.

  “He and Red Nina – they’re brother and sister.”

  “Explains a lot.”

  “Brought up in a children’s home. We got a look at the school rolls. Transpires they were put in care after the parents were found to be inadequate. Father a drunk and mother couldn’t cope. Big sister Nina – she’s five years older – did the mothering and Tresham’s the little kid she took under her wing. She’s been looking out for him ever since. Like a proper pushy parent, but always keeping herself in the background.”

  “What a fabulous story! How’s it never come out?”

  “Kept it very dark! Needed to. If it ever became public the connection between the two would be obvious, given who she works for and him passing himself off as someone on the other side of the political street.”

  “Good digging!” Harry said.

  “All paths led back to the children’s home in Slough.”

  Harry wrinkled a brow. “Surely the name change would have shown up on a security check?”

  “Some date forgery helped,” she said. Tresham’s application to join the party had been made to appear as if it had taken place much earlier than in reality. This bit of trickery masked his time in Germany and the change of name was explained away as ingratiating himself with the public, adopting a more traditional, English sort of name. “He won’t be the first politician to do that,” she said.

  “This story gets better and better. Can’t wait to write it.”

  “When the time comes.”

  “So what now?”

  “You,” she said, “have got to lie low. We don’t want any diplomatic incidents.”

  “On British territory?”

  “A certain person can operate against you in secret. He has control of Five, remember, and I don’t want any interdepartmental wrangling with them. Not till we’re ready. For the time being, don’t get busy, drop all inquiries and stay out of sight.”

  Harry’s biggest worry, however, was Erika. He’d been away three days and wondered, as he took the train back to Bury, just how she had fared in his absence. The truth was, you never knew what you were getting with her. She was unpredictable and her changes of mood quixotic. There was a carefree side to her and an obsessional side. Obsessional, that is, where her son was concerned, fussing over his clothing and schoolwork, though the boy was more organised than she. But alone, left to be herself, that was different. Like a child, she was. Like the day before he’d gone to Germany, when he found her up a tree in the wood behind the house.

  So
what would he discover this day? Would she be happy or depressed; reasonable or unfathomable? Despite complaining of social isolation, she was quite capable of collecting a bunch of oddballs like herself and throwing a party in Scobie’s house without seeing anything unreasonable in this behaviour. It was like living with a recalcitrant teenager. As he turned into the drive at Blackthorpe Grange he half expected to see a drunken girl staggering about the garden in one of Scobie’s designer suits.

  But no, there was no party. Just as on the day he went away, the place was empty and devoid of life – no note, no message, no clue.

  He looked at his watch; the boy was probably at his tutor’s. He tried her phone, the garden, the garage and the shed, then looked over the hedge. Several strange pinging noises came from the direction of the wood, followed by answering tinny clatters. These seemed to occur at regular intervals. They reminded him of the ringing of a bell.

  He went through the back gate and into the wood, past a small spinney and round a huge cluster of purple rhododendrons before he spotted her. Once again, she was wearing camouflage fatigues, only this time she was aiming an air rifle at a tree.

  Ping! Another clatter. His gaze went to a row of tin plates strung up in the lower branches. Several were askew; others had fallen into the grass.

  He strode up to her, hands on hips.

  She turned, betraying no surprise.

  “Last week I find you up a tree, today I find you shooting at them,” he said.

  “Hi, Harry.”

  He pointed at the rifle and a stock of pellets. “Where did all this come from?”

  “That shooting and fishing shop in the Buttermarket.”

  “I didn’t realise you had the necessary funds.”

  “I haven’t. Just rented for the week.”

  “Thank the Lord for that. Think what young Stefan would make of this – if he got interested. We’d never hear the end of it.”