The War in the Dark

by Nick Setchfield

  ‘Karina!’

  It was Malykh’s voice, startled and furious. He had seen them climb on the bike. Now he bolted from the shelter of the watchtower, his long leather coat trailing on the wind as he ran. He was reloading his pistol with a fresh clip of ammunition.

  Winter opened the bike’s throttle and released the clutch. The vehicle juddered and sprang forward with a stomach-stealing lurch. It gained speed, almost hungrily, its wheels carving through the soil, scattering thick sprays of mud in its wake.

  Malykh fired after them. ‘Karina!’

  Winter was riding by muscle memory. It had been years since he had last sat on a bike – and God knew he had never attempted to master a military beast like this one – but his body seemed to know what to do, even if the M-72 felt dangerously wilful beneath him. He let the speedometer’s needle climb, conscious that he was serving the bike rather than taming it.

  ‘Keep it straight, you idiot!’ yelled Karina, above the rattling roar of the machine.

  Winter corrected the bike as it tilted, its wheels skimming a treacherous stretch of rain-drenched earth. He took his eye from the twitching needle on the instrument panel, determined to keep his focus ahead of him. The empty plain swept by in a blast of air. Soon they were racing past the truck that had brought them there, their sheer speed rippling the canvas that clung to the vehicle’s sides.

  The motorcycle jumped from the wet grass to the coarse tarmac of the road, landing with a jounce of tyres. Winter felt the wind on his skin, cold and numbing. There was a rush of exhilaration in his blood, a heady surge of adrenalin and gratitude. This was freedom. This road, this simple country road, was suddenly sweet and infinite. Above him the October sky seemed equally endless. He had an urge to race away from everything, all the madness and the darkness of the last few weeks. He could do it. So easily. Just let the needle climb. Don’t look down and don’t look back.

  Karina’s arms were locked around him, her muscles hardening as the bike gathered speed. They were bound together now, in a way that he sensed rather than entirely understood.

  No, there was really only one road, he knew. They had to go deeper into this world, straight into its heart, however insane, however terrifying.

  Winter gunned the throttle. Beneath a sprawl of stars the bike tore north.

  18

  Berlin felt haunted by rubble.

  It was piled in great colourless hills between buildings still pockmarked by wartime bombing.

  Some of the debris had been shovelled into tidy mounds, awaiting turfing and the planting of trees, but for the most part the war remained unburied, for all that a skyline filled with cranes and construction work promised the future. A fine dust of shattered brick and stone lay upon the city, and when the wind rose over these open graves of masonry the dust found the eyes, infiltrated the throat.

  Rubble. It was everywhere. Berlin had an asphalt pallor.

  This was a wounded place, thought Winter. He wondered if it could ever heal. Hitler had dreamt of it as the capital of a Thousand-Year Reich, something shining and eternal, only to see it razed by the strength of Soviet firepower. The great Strafe had levelled half the city, the bombs falling day and night, relentless as an Old Testament judgement. The centre had been flattened in the final battle of 1945, a sustained artillery assault reducing the great streets to a charred wasteland as the Red Army routed the Nazis.

  Winter thought of the Widow of Kursk. He imagined her walking among the gutted buildings, the ruined streets, over the corpses of soldiers and civilians strewn on the cobbles. God, she must have feasted on this city.

  And now Berlin had a fresh wound. The Wall had come overnight and cut the city in half, severing its arteries. The major transport links of the S-Bahn and U-Bahn lines had been broken. Squares and canals had been divided. Even houses had been sliced in two with ruthless communist pragmatism, doors tied and windows choked with bales of barbed wire. It was as if someone had turned a knife in the city’s still-raw scar tissue.

  Winter gazed out across West Berlin, over the bomb-wrecked buildings and emerging tower blocks. He saw the Europa-Center in the Breitscheidplatz, a cradle of scaffolding supporting its modernist bulk of steel and glass. It was already a giant of a building. It should, by rights, have dominated the horizon. But it didn’t. It was the Wall and the Wall alone that ruled this city. Even when it was hidden from view it was all that you could see.

  Maybe that was how this whole strange business of magic worked, he mused, sipping the remains of a thick, grainy coffee. Huge ideas, unseen but unimaginably powerful. Invisible to the everyday eye but always there, regardless, shaping the world.

  And walls were there to keep things out, of course.

  They had reached Berlin that morning, after a night of travelling. The bike had taken them as far as the town of Lauchhammer, only to be unceremoniously abandoned in a backstreet. A Russian military motorcycle would be just a little too conspicuous by daylight, and nowhere more so than in West Berlin. And so, in the early hours, they had stolen a Volkswagen coupe sat in a hushed residential street, hotwiring its engine as its owner – a dentist with a taste for opera and hunting, to judge from the paraphernalia that littered the top of the dashboard – slept unaware.

  Winter had taken the wheel, Karina closing her eyes in the passenger seat, her hands protectively clasping her bag. Once again he wondered what was inside. She must have slept for some of the journey but whenever he took his eyes from the road to glance at her she was staring back, her gaze mirroring his, lit by the glow of the dashboard.

  Dawn had found them on the autobahn. Its emptiness at that hour made its endless lines feel even more hypnotic than usual. The concrete lanes flashed by without ever really seeming to change. Winter felt as though he was in stasis, only the reverberation of the car reassuring him that they were actually moving. Already tired, he had to concentrate to ignore the infinite blankness of the German motorway system. It made him ridiculously heartsick for England. All he asked for was a damp green verge, a Little Chef.

  Reaching the fringes of West Berlin they had driven to an old SIS safehouse placed in the Neukölln borough. Karina had been against the idea and Winter, to be honest, had his own qualms – he still wasn’t sure how far he could trust the service, or, indeed, how far the service trusted him. But he knew that Britain’s European safehouse network traditionally used operatives recruited years before, people whose contact with London was remote at most. These were satellite operations, divorced from the main intelligence hub, and that made them just a little easier to trust, he reasoned.

  The contact at the safehouse was a petite, vinegary German woman in her late sixties. Frau Weissbach wore her hair wrenched in a tight grey bun and carried a fug of Muratti cigarettes that extended to every stale little corner of her home, from the vase of ailing flowers in the entrance hall to the nicotine-yellowed cupboards of the kitchen. She had quibbled over Winter’s credentials at first – his pass code was out of date, part of a set of protocols that had been upgraded some months ago – but he had managed to win her over with a mention of Malcolm. She had responded to the Englishman’s name with a sudden, fond smile. Karina, at that point, had quietly sheathed her blade.

  Winter had stolen a couple of hours’ sleep in a drab room decorated with thick-framed watercolours of agricultural fairs. He had drawn the curtains against the sun. The bed had been hard but it was, at least, a bed, his first for weeks. Even the stiff, chemical-scented sheets were a luxury compared to the floor of that farm building.

  It had been a brief but useful sleep. No dreams to speak of. Only images, as fleeting as sparks: the Widow of Kursk with her unfathomably black eyes; Father Katsworth, clasping the Bible, about to die; a white light, more piercing than the lights on the watchtower, a light as vivid as fire, bright enough to blind, bright enough to wake him…

  Rising, Winter had washed and shaved, pressing the towel against his face and holding it there for a moment, inhaling its strangely comfor
ting laundry scent. Then he had exchanged his rumpled, grimy tweed suit for a pinstriped one he had found in the wardrobe. Just as every drawer of the safehouse held forged papers and documentation, each wardrobe offered a choice of clothes, from discreet business suits to counterfeit police uniforms. The cut was a little old-fashioned – as if he cared – but it just about fitted and, teamed with a new cotton shirt, made him feel considerably fresher, even if his shoes were still encrusted with the mud of the Hungarian border.

  ‘You look like a Frankfurt banker,’ Karina had said, meeting him in the kitchen for a breakfast of schlackwurst, herbed cheese and poppy seed rolls.

  ‘Pity,’ Winter had replied. ‘I wanted to look like a fugitive British Intelligence agent.’

  Now the two of them were sat outside at a terrace café in the Charlottenburg district, close to the flea market. An aroma of fresh eels, coffee and cabbage drifted from the stalls. There was rain in the air, along with the ever-present dust. An uncommitted drizzle hit the morning edition of the Berliner Morgenpost that Karina was reading, spattering grey stains on the newsprint.

  Winter glanced at the headline. Back home that starchy aristocrat Alec Douglas-Home had just succeeded Macmillan as prime minister. It was the first piece of news he had seen in weeks. As the paper asked if this was good news for Germany Winter realised how utterly untethered he felt from Britain. No, not just Britain – the world. Sat here in Berlin, his future uncertain, he felt outside of everything. Absolutely everything. The world he had known now felt like a small, ignorant thing, burying its head beneath the blankets to keep the dark at bay.

  He moved his gaze to Karina, watching as the drizzle fixed a stray lock of blonde hair to her forehead. He had a sudden sense of her as one of those hollow Russian nesting dolls, the ones stacked inside one another. Faces behind faces, identities within identities.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked, genuinely curious.

  She turned a page of the newspaper. ‘Do we need this conversation, Christopher? I’m whoever I need to be.’

  Dear God, she was exasperating. ‘I’d prefer a straight answer.’

  ‘Then you might be in the wrong profession.’

  Winter was determined to press the subject. ‘Well, you’re clearly not Soviet Intelligence. Not unless that was a pretty unequivocal act of resignation back there at the border. So that’s twice now you haven’t been who you claim to be.’

  ‘Christ, who’s counting?’ she replied, casually mimicking Winter’s voice. She clearly had a talent for accents.

  ‘Is your name really Karina Lazarova?’

  She continued to study the newspaper. ‘Is Christopher Winter yours?’

  She had asked the same question in the farmhouse. This time Winter heard the Widow’s voice. Hello, Tobias…

  He regained focus. ‘If we’re going to be a team I think I should know your name, don’t you?’

  ‘Whatever makes you imagine we’re a team?’

  ‘The fact you haven’t stabbed me yet?’

  She allowed herself an ambiguous smile. ‘There’s a whole day ahead of us.’

  ‘But we’re here together, aren’t we?’ Winter insisted, nodding to the busy tables around them. ‘There must be a reason for that. You don’t strike me as someone who seeks out alliances. So you need me, don’t you? If you didn’t we wouldn’t be sat here. I think we’re partners.’

  For a moment she continued to scrutinise the newspaper. And then she folded it and placed it next to her glass of black tea.

  ‘We are not partners, Christopher. We are not a team. I don’t need you. You don’t need me. I don’t trust you. You don’t trust me. Is that understood? If it is, we can proceed.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Winter. ‘But I took all that for granted. First rules of engagement in this line of work. You know that.’

  ‘What line of work do you imagine I’m in?’

  Winter took a moment to drain his coffee. The accumulated grain at the bottom of the cup gave it a final kick.

  ‘Well, offhand I’d say you specialise in death and bullshit. And you’re very good at both. But you obviously have an agenda. I can only presume we’re after the same thing. That piece of intelligence that Harzner auctioned off. The code or the rune or whatever the hell it is.’

  Karina regarded him closely, watching as Winter returned his cup to the saucer. ‘Harzner told me you know exactly what it is.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Winter, wiping a smear of froth from his lips. ‘He was mistaken, then. My briefing was pretty vague. Circumstances.’ He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. ‘So that’s why you’re keeping me around, is it? You think I can help you make sense of this thing?’

  ‘I understand it perfectly well.’

  Her reply was almost defensive, thought Winter, intrigued by this sudden flash of emotion, cracking her customary composure.

  She spoke again, her words a little more measured this time. ‘Believe me, I’ve always understood its power.’

  ‘Always? How long have you been chasing it?’

  ‘A lifetime.’

  Winter saw something in her eyes then, something older than her face. A weariness matched by a kind of fire, a resilience and a determination. In that moment he felt he was finally glimpsing the truth of who she was.

  ‘You don’t seem old enough to have lived a lifetime,’ he told her, half teasing.

  Karina didn’t return a smile. ‘It’s been my life.’

  She said it so matter-of-factly and yet Winter sensed these words were raw. He’d never considered himself an empathic person – empathy wasn’t high on the list of requirements for a government-sanctioned assassin – but now, facing this puzzle of a woman across a café table in the rain, he felt a fraction closer to understanding her.

  He knew the life she meant, knew it well. It whittled your heart out in the dark hours, left you empty. You formed a shell around yourself and then, one day, the shell was all you were. What was it Malykh had called him? Hollow inside. The Russian had been right. Even his marriage, his life with Joyce, had clearly been some kind of sham. Hollow inside, all those years.

  ‘Karina,’ he said, softly, ‘are we still being watched?’

  She moved her gaze. The men were still there. There were three of them, wrapped in slate-grey overcoats, standing altogether too still amid the swirl of the market. They had been there for ten minutes now, conspicuous as statues.

  ‘They haven’t moved,’ she said, letting her eyes stray past the men to settle on the bright colours of a fruit stall. ‘Who do you think they are? British Intelligence?’

  ‘Stasi, I’d imagine,’ said Winter. ‘We can’t come this close to the East and not expect to attract attention. They know we’re here. They just don’t know what we want. It’s routine surveillance. I wouldn’t worry. I’m more concerned about your friend Malykh knowing where we are.’ He paused. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘this gift of his, the eye. It’s called telepathy, right? I know the Russians have been conducting tests since the end of the war…’

  ‘It has nothing to do with science,’ said Karina. There was an intensity to her voice, just enough to unease Winter. ‘And it’s not a gift. He stole it. In a village north of the Caspian Sea he took the eye of a devil. Cut it out and used it for his own. He will find me soon enough. Perhaps you should not remain in my company longer than you can help it.’

  ‘If the Russians have that code then I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Oh, the Russians don’t have the code,’ said Karina, unexpectedly brightly. ‘I do. Naturally I gave Malykh a false envelope. The code it contains is quite inessential.’

  She raised a hand, summoning the waiter as Winter stared blankly at her. ‘Time to go, Christopher. The richest man in Berlin is waiting for us.’

  19

  The taxi slowed to the kerbside on the grand avenue of Kurfürstendamm, finally released from a squabble of midday traffic.

  Winter saw their destination through the drag of the cab’s wipers. Hotel
Fabelhaft was a regal, imposing building whose five portly storeys had seemingly defied the war. It bore none of the artillery scars or wounded stonework that so characterised the city. It looked invincible, in fact, a world away from the bomb-blasted remains of the Fairbridge in London. A cluster of international flags hung from its brick brows, their colours muted in the Berlin rain.

  It was a downpour now, rapping on the roof of the Mercedes and striking its bonnet with quick, vicious pecks. As the wipers crawled a doorman in a swallow-tailed coat broke from the hotel’s entrance and walked to the car, a large umbrella in his hand. He sheltered Winter and Karina as they left the taxi, accepting a tip with a nod.

  They entered the Fabelhaft through a revolving door. The carousel of glass turned at a stately pace, its tall, bronze-edged panes reflecting the bleak skies outside.

  The lobby was an expanse of cream and coral and crystal, lushly carpeted and decorated with altogether too many gold-framed clocks. A succession of bells marked the quarter-hour, chiming in synch. They were the only sound in the luxurious hush.

  Like all great hotels, the Fabelhaft made you feel as welcome as it did unworthy. Winter began to feel remarkably self-conscious about his mud-crusted shoes, which were already trailing filthy footprints on the deep-pile carpet.

  He looked around the foyer as Karina went to the reception desk, noting the cheerless parade of businessmen, the coiffed old women in stoles, the staff who seemed to glide past, powered by pure discretion. This place bled wealth. Above him he saw a web of pneumatic tubing, an antiquated communication network propelling messages in cylinders through the arteries of the building. And this was the age of satellites, he thought.

  Karina returned, removing her Cossack hat and squashing it under her arm. ‘The restaurant’s on the third floor. Herr Unterbrink is waiting.’

  They crossed the lobby to the lifts. A gleaming bronze rectangle of a door slid open, revealing a caged interior. A man in a tailcoat the colour of liquorice drew back the metal lattice and welcomed them in. He was polite enough not to smile. The lift ascended with a whisper and a soft lurch of motion. The floors scrolled past, their numbers illuminating coin-sized slots set into the walnut panel to the side of the door. No one spoke.