by Jack Freeman
The security officer now looked more warmly at Max, as a fellow Berliner and one who was staunchly anti-Turkish immigrant. He visibly relaxed and replied, “Ya. Ok, that will be it. Damn Turks. This wouldn’t have happened in the old days, if you know what I mean, believe you me. You know something? This is true. In the war, I was in Crete with the para brigades. They had Turks there, in Crete, some left overs from the Ottoman days. You wouldn’t think so to look at me now, but back then I was real fit, a model Aryan, ubermensch type. They put my picture in Die Wehrmacht magazine back in ’42. Anyway, after we kicked the Englanders out of Crete, some Turkish Cretans there got uppity, and threw stones at us as we were having a victory parade through their God-forsaken town. Our boys sorted them out double quick. Those Turks never threw stones again…or anything else after our Schmeisser machine guns finished with them. Those were the days, believe me!”
“Ha, ha, you taught them, ok. Now, I can show you where we were working if you like. A hole had opened up on the roof near the edge over there and was causing a leak of rain into some fat cat’s room. Probably a Jew fat cat. They’re back on top; but you know that. Right? Like cockroaches, can’t get rid of them totally, no matter what. But come on over and have a look at this. There must have been a lightning strike. It’s weird.”
The burly security man waddled over with Max to the far edge of the roof, some 400 feet above the Ku-Damm. There was only a low parapet between the solid roof and the thin cold air. Max pointed to a spot by the parapet and as the security man bent down to look at the offending hole, a judo move sent the guard rolling to the edge. Just before going over the parapet the guard caught Max’s trousers in a desperate grasp and hanging over the edge dragged him towards the parapet. Max hit the parapet with a bruising impact and the guard’s grasp was broken. A long scream was followed by a sickening explosive sound as the man burst open on impact far below.
Ali gasped in amazement, as Max jumped upright and ran back to the door, “Shit, what have you just done?”
“Don’t worry Ali, I’m only bruised. We’re out of here by the back door. It will go down as a tragic accident or maybe a possible suicide. The guy pretty much admitted to war crimes, so some sort of justice was done, but mainly we couldn’t have him blabbing about us. With his suspicions he could have sparked off a full scale search of the hotel ducts and pipes and that could have compromised the action. Our bosses wouldn’t have liked that, would they?”
“Ok, Ok, let’s just get the hell out of here.”
They found an exit that avoided passing the reception desk, and left. Max thought, “An unnoticed get away. That was lucky. So far, so good.”
Around the front of the hotel the local police soon covered over the guard’s distorted remains and the bodily fluids surrounding them and began to look for witnesses. None were ever found and the case was left as a possible suicide. He had lived alone and was only missed, and that briefly, by his fellow Stammtischers who always drank at the same table at the same time in the same bar every day. “Good old Heini,” they would say over their Weissbier and schnaps and return to bemoaning the ascendency of the Turks, the Jews, the Reds and now the beatniks and the hippies over the honest hard working volk.
Within ten minutes Max and Ali had walked the short distance over to the Alt Solutions building where Murphy’s office light was on. The front door of the building was open. As they went in Max adopted a look which he hoped signalled gastric distress.
“Sorry, man, what with the tension up there, I’ve got to go to the john.”
“Ok,” said Ali, “I’ll wait here.”
Max went into the lavatory cubicle he had checked the previous day. He locked the door and lifted the toilet lid. Standing on the toilet bowl he unscrewed and eased up a ceiling panel. Within minutes he had the second and larger bomb installed in the cavity space above the cubicle and below where Murphy’s office should be according to his mental map of the building. Max set the timer for 03.05 hours, activated the device and replaced the panel. Just as he finished there was a loud banging on the cubicle door and he heard Ali shouting “Hurry up man, the other johns are bust and I’m getting desperate!”
“Ok, Ok, its all yours,” said Max emerging from the toilet with the sound of flushing in the background. As Ali closed the door, Max remembered he had not wiped his foot prints from the toilet bowl rim where he had stood to place the bomb in the cavity. Had he put the seat back down?, he wondered, and checked the whereabouts of the Luger, in case Ali challenged him to explain those footprints.
When Ali emerged from the lavatory he gave no sign of having noticed anything but Max checked the Luger was still in his pocket and scrutinised Ali’s body language in the hope of detecting any suspicions.
“Hell,” said Max, “I’ve got to go again” and pushed past Ali to re-enter the cubicle. Once in he saw that the foot prints were still just visible on the rim of the toilet bowl but were mainly obscured by the wooden seat and that the critical ceiling panel was sitting slightly lower than its neighbours. He quickly tightened up the screws holding the panel up and wiped the toilet bowl rim carefully. Now, all looked normal, he felt.
“Ok,” said Ali “Let’s go see the man, Murphy. Hope you’re not losing your nerve, Blue. All these toilet trips make me wonder if you’re as tough as you claim. What do you have to be nervous about? Guilty conscience, maybe?”
“Well, I’ve racked up about six murder raps in the last couple of days, depending if I get blamed for your two, and more will be added soon, no doubt. Maybe that is reason enough to be a bit anxious? Don’t you think? Anyway, I’m ok now. I think it might have been that beer last night, or the airline food. By the way, we won’t mention the security guy incident to Murphy. The fewer people who know these things the better. I don’t trust that guy an inch”
Ali laughed and slapped Max on the back and said “Don’t worry old buddy. Yeah, the security man business is our little secret. The RPI will look after you now.”
That’s what worries me, thought Max but he laughed back and led the way to Murphy’s office. Kilroy was seated in the corridor outside the office, as before; he nodded recognition at Max and Ali but again said nothing. After quietly knocking in a complex pattern on the office door, Kilroy opened it and waved Max and Ali to enter. Murphy gestured them in and produced a large lacquered box full of Cuban cigars.
Max and Ali explained to Murphy that all had gone to plan. Cigars were issued all round and soon the small room was full of thick blue smoke. The overalls and tools were handed over to Murphy to be disposed of and he confirmed that he would be in his office that night to report back by an international telephone call to the Inner Circle at one of their safe houses on the outcome of the operation. The call time had already been booked for 03.04 hours.
“Good,” said Max, “It’s a great pity we can’t be with you tonight to share a few Irish whiskeys over the success of our mission. This one really will be historic and could lead to a mass uprising in Iran and bring on the Revolution. But, we’ve now got to leave the scene as soon as possible and put a few countries and extradition treaties between us and the Bundesrepublik.”
“Before you go there are a couple of people I’d like you to meet, said Murphy while pressing a buzzer on his desk.
Turning round in his chair Max saw two men in leather trench coats and pork pie hats enter the room pointing Walther PPKs at Ali and him. Their eyes were blue and their mouths were unsmiling. One was wearing rimless glasses and both had close cropped hair visible beneath the rims of their hats. Max thought they looked like Gestapo straight out of Central Casting in a Hollywood wartime propaganda effort. He turned to Murphy and said, “What’s the hell’s all this? I don’t advise you to double cross the RPI or try some blackmail stunt!”
Murphy now gestured with a Colt .45, retrieved from a small ledge under the desk top, invisible to any visitor until produced with a flourish, if the occasion demanded it. Waving the heavy weapon in the direction of Ali’s h
ead he said, “There’s something you didn’t tell me about, isn’t there? A little matter of murder? I know about the flying security guard. These gentlemen who have just joined us are from the HVA, you know, the MI6 or CIA of our German friends and comrades to the east, just over their nice new wall. You’ll be pleased to hear that they were keeping a comradely eye on you two this morning.”
“We didn’t think you needed to know about that guard business, Joe. We work need-to-know only and didn’t see how it would help things to fill you in on that wrinkle,” replied Max.
“Still, there’s a lack of trust here. Hurtful, really hurtful,” said Murphy and then began laughing, “Hah, you should have seen your faces! But I thought you deserved some grief for holding back like that. Don’t worry. These guys are secret commie cops from over the wall, but they’re with us and the RPI on this one. They will be escorting you on some of your way back via a slight detour."
“Murphy, you are a bastard. But, at least, I hope you are our bastard. So, come on, what the hell is going on?” asked Max, thinking that he did not need a detour that went via a commie gulag. Being held in a DDR jail would mean a long stay in the East with little prospect of being sprung. Why would the West want a renegade CIA man? If the HVA or their KGB bosses thought for a minute he was a double it would be a bullet in the back of the head and an unmarked grave.
“Don’t you be worrying now. We’re on good terms with the HVA and we all co-operate on various projects. They have picked up some indications from their usually reliable sources that the West German BfV, their MI5, are thinking of detaining young Ali here on his way out. Seems he’s been agitating on previous visits and through propaganda sheets aimed at impressionable young Jerries, he’s been stirring them up to protest, well riot really, against the Shah’s visit and maybe take it further by attacking the Mayor’s office, newspaper buildings, hotels and so on. They’re getting worried that home grown Reds will get a revolution going and naturally want to stamp it out before good order is disturbed. So, we, and your bosses back home, agree that you should be re-routed via East Berlin’s Schoenefeld airport and take a Polish LOT airlines flight back to London to avoid Ali getting held in the slammer. The wheels grind slowly on the western side, like they do in the East too, and sometimes misguided detainees die in custody. Suicide, resisting lawful force, that sort of thing. You know how it goes. So, we all thought, why take a chance. We are sure the Brits aren’t interested in what young Ali gets up to outside their green and pleasant land. So once you get to London, all will be well,” replied Murphy.
“Ok, if Comrade Alpha says that’s what we’ve to do that’s what we do,” replied Ali.
Murphy picked up the receiver on his bulky desk phone and muttered instructions in German. After a few minutes delay, he handed the receiver to Ali, and said “Go ahead, speak to your man, Alpha.”
Ali began speaking in rapid Farsi which Max followed as checking orders. Ali finished by saying, “Long live the Revolution. Death to the Shah.” He then returned the receiver to Murphy and said “Yes, its confirmed. We return via Schoenefeld on LOT Polish Airlines. Cheer up Max, the vodka’s better than on BEA. Beats weak tea and stale sandwiches, you must admit.”
“Ok, orders are orders,” replied Max.
“Right. Off you go and don’t hold things back from me again,” said Murphy with a wide grin.
Taking their coats from the roll bag, Max and Ali went back to the Bristol Hotel, accompanied by the fraternal minders from the DDR’s external security service, picked up their hand-luggage from the hotel and got into a black Zil with tinted windows and Soviet Occupation Authority plates that had been pre-positioned in the hotel’s underground parking area. The HVA men had laughed and joked with Max on the way over to the hotel about his fame as a rebel CIA man and his standing as a new comrade in the cause of international revolution. The DDR they insisted was all for revolution especially in Iran. Max had a bad intuition about this situation. Why wouldn’t it be a sell out of him to the Sovs and their pals? Instead of the RPI simply bumping him off, this way they made a profit by selling him on and cemented relations with the Eastern bloc spooks. In a flash of intuition he was suddenly sure of this. The HVA men were seated in the front of the car with Max and Ali in the back. The driver got out the car keys and inserted them into the ignition after a few failed attempts accompanied by muttered curses about the poor quality of forced labour in car plants these days meaning that even the keys didn’t fit right.
Taking a deep breath, before the cumbersome Zil engine began to fire up, in a sudden fluid motion, Max pulled out his Luger and shot both the HVA men in the back of their heads. One shot each. He then pointed the now empty gun at Ali who was speechless and temporarily deafened by the gunshot explosions in the confined space.
“It was a sell out Ali! That wasn’t Alpha on the phone. These guys have voice doubles, perfect mimics. They wanted me, but you would have been disposed off too. You knew too much. Come on, lets get these stiffs in the trunk. We’ll drive this tank to Tegel. Nobody will stop us with the Sov plates up and we can wave the dead guys’ IDs, if we have to slow down at a checkpoint,” Max shouted in Ali’s ear.
Ali nodded and followed instructions. Just in case, Max made Ali be the driver on the eight kilometres between the centre of Berlin and Tegel and kept him covered with the Luger. As they passed through the central avenues of the city, they saw demonstrators against the Shah gathering on the roadsides and riot cops arriving in armoured vans and buses. A confrontation was brewing. The traffic halted and Max saw a scar faced cop ahead diverting traffic off the main road. As they drew near to the cop there was a sudden flash and a wave of searing heat passed through the cabin of the car.
“Shit!” yelled Max, “Molotov cocktails! Gun it and keep going. Stop for nothing”
Max put on the powerful headlights and played the horn in a passable imitation of an emergency vehicle tone as Ali accelerated through the smoke of the petrol bomb. The traffic cop was smouldering by the side of the road as demonstrators poured over barricades towards the middle of the road. More cops appeared from the side streets. Ali did not weave but sped straight through the crowd who mostly avoided the heavy car. Some were left cursing and badly bruised in the gutters but miraculously no deaths resulted from Ali’s ruthless driving.
“Pity. They are on our side, but we have orders to get back to London,” said Ali . Gunshots could now be heard. Pistols, then machine guns. Ali ducked as they heard something smashing into the driver’s door.
“This is getting serious. Bullets hitting now. Think this baby is armour plated. Certainly handles like it is, so get a grip of yourself and watch the road. Come on, faster!” yelled Max waving the Luger at Ali.
After a short while they were out of the centre and joined the A111 autobahn far from the riot zone. Max kept switching his focus of attention from the rear and wing mirrors to Ali and back again. The traffic was becoming heavy. Max noticed that a black Mercedes SL saloon car seemed to be always two or three cars behind.
“Ok Ali. Now overtake these guys in front and keep in the fast lane till I tell you different.”
Looking in the mirrors, Max saw that the black Mercedes was still matching their moves and was now in the fast lane, again two cars behind.
“Pull back into the middle lane. When I give the word then pull straight across the slow lanes to take the airport exit.”
The Mercedes had pulled in to the middle lane and was now three cars behind Max and Ali. Suddenly, spotting a gap, Max shouted for Ali to haul the car across the traffic bearing down from behind and on to the exit ramp for Tegel.
The heavy Zil lurched dangerously and narrowly missed concrete bollards as it reached the exit ramp. Cars behind braked and hooted impotently at this appalling driving. The black Mercedes could not follow this manoeuvre and they reached the airport perimeter without the possible tail and stashed the Zil in the parking facility.
A telex message chattered out of a printer in
the CIA London Station situation room for Jack, reporting that Max and Ali had been on the roof of the Berlin Hilton and an unknown man had fallen from the roof. Max was reported to be leaving the centre of town, probably for Tegel airport, thought to be accompanied by Ali and possibly by two unknown men, in a Zil car with Soviet plates. Why they were in such a vehicle was undetermined. Jack was not in the Embassy building and the message was put on his desk in an opaque folder marked Top Secret.
Within an hour, the British European Airways flight from Berlin was high over the Netherlands and then out over the North Sea on direct course for London Heathrow. The weather had now turned overcast.
Max stared out of the plane window at the grey clouds and tried to review the situation. The official plan he had been given at the beginning, was to return to London, be taken to the safe house, report back to the Inner Circle and to lie low with Azar, resuming their normal life as booksellers, until called again by the cause. Of course, that was not how it could be. The RPI wouldn’t swallow the joint event of the failure of the bomb aimed at the Shah and the explosive destruction of the Alt Solutions consultancy at the same time. It could be proposed that the Alt Solutions explosion was a coincidence and one of those things that is liable to happen if you store high explosives on the premises. But that explanation wouldn’t be credible because plastic explosive is hard to set off without deliberate use of a detonator. Max had set the two bombs for almost the same time to cause maximum confusion and as a way of targeting Murphy whom he knew would be in the Alt Solutions office at the critical moment. Anyway, he couldn’t change that now. On top of all this, the HVA and friends would now also be even keener than usual to discuss various matters with him.
He felt that from the Company point of view, he had done a good job and the outcomes looked promising; he had removed a minor nuisance in the form of Makki, had, he hoped, stopped a major coup by the RPI against the Shah and had set things in motion to remove Murphy, who was a previously little known facilitator of world terrorism. So, Azar’s brother would be released, given a new identity, and maybe even an advisory post with the Company. He still hoped that he and Azar could go back to the bookshop, at least until the next time the Company thought he might be useful. The threat of the RPI and the HVA would be there for a long time. Those guys don’t forgive and forget and Max felt sure that after the Berlin events, the RPI would see him as likely enough to be a double agent to warrant eliminating even if they had not thought that before. Maybe have to re-locate, get new identity. A drag.