Cold Warriors

by Rebecca Levene

  He took a turning off the main road, into a narrower street still noisy with evening rush-hour traffic. He noticed the way that pedestrians' eyes darted away from his own, heads held lower than in the west of the city. The legacy of oppression lingered, like a foul smell.

  Genter Strasse was buried in the straggling, ugly suburbs. Tomas remembered coming to the area before, a visit to a low-level source he'd needed to pay off. But he'd never visited Heinrich here, in such a seedy, hopeless part of the city. He paused a moment to study the tower block where the old Stasi agent now lived. It had probably been put up some time in the sixties, but it already looked on the point of collapse. Substandard concrete, crumbling into dust, surrounded broken and boarded-up windows. The whole place felt half empty, but maybe that was because most of its residents preferred to stay hidden.

  Tomas travelled up to the seventh floor in a lift that was dark with graffiti and stank of piss. He barely noticed. He was lost in memories, mostly painful ones.

  When Tomas had last seen Heinrich, he'd been in an apartment in the heart of the city, only a few blocks from the Volkskammer. Heinrich had been living the highest life the communist state afforded, while those he spied on sank into poverty and despair. Tomas could picture him quite clearly, standing at his window and looking out over the streets he ruled like a king. Most East Berliners lived in constant fear, the nagging accompaniment to their every move. It was men like Heinrich who inspired that fear, and Tomas had known that the German man revelled in it. Tomas had felt a deep, visceral loathing for Heinrich which he'd found very hard to disguise.

  The operation that had brought Tomas into contact with Heinrich had been a honey-trap, though Tomas hadn't felt the need to share that with Gunter earlier. Tomas and Kate had worked it together, back in eighty-one. Kate found Heinrich repellent, with his calculating eyes and self-important smirk, but she'd done what was needed to get the goods on him.

  Tomas and Kate hadn't been an item then, but he'd hated it all the same. As the lift reached the seventh floor, and Tomas stepped out into a concrete hallway, he remembered how thoughts of her and Heinrich together had tormented him. He'd looked at the man's hands and imagined them on Kate's body, and it was all he could do not to break them.

  His mental image of Heinrich was so strong - the slicked-back black hair, the bulbous nose and high slanting cheekbones - that for a moment Tomas stared dumbly at the shuffling old man who answered the door.

  Heinrich stared back at him. He had lank grey hair and stooped shoulders, nothing left of the commanding presence he'd once used to intimidate.

  "Tomas," he said eventually, stepping back to admit him. "So. Time has not changed you as it has me." His voice quavered with age, but there was still the same arrogant sneer hidden inside it.

  Tomas didn't bother to answer, just brushed past the other man into the apartment. It was a study in brown linoleum, peeling at the corners and clashing horribly with the orange formica furniture. In the centre of the main room, a television sat on an old cardboard box. There was only one chair, a battered leather recliner, and it had been pulled round to face the screen. A curdling cup of tea rested on the floor beside it.

  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair, Tomas thought.

  Heinrich sank into the chair with a relieved grunt. "So you actually let them do this to you... do you mind if I ask why?"

  "I had my reasons."

  "Hmm. Well, sit down, sit down. There's a stool in the kitchen if you want it."

  The kitchen was little more than a corridor, lined with sagging cupboards on one side. Heinrich was far too old a hand to leave anything incriminating in plain sight, so Tomas just picked up the stool and headed back to the other room. It wobbled when he sat on it, and put his head a good foot below Heinrich's.

  The amused twist of Heinrich's lips told him that had been deliberate. "Don't tell me," he said. "There's only one reason you're here - the Ragnarok artefacts. It doesn't surprise me. Quite a few of the usual suspects have been sniffing around them recently."

  "Really?"

  "Don't act coy with me. I'm far too old to have the patience for it." Heinrich took a sip from his tea, pointedly failing to offer Tomas a drink.

  "OK," Tomas said. "Let's pretend it is about the artefacts. What would you be able to tell me?"

  "I don't know," Heinrich said. "What would you be able to offer me? What can you offer me? Because now that those oh-so-incriminating photos you took are twenty years old, I'm not so interested in buying them back." He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, as if his back was paining him. "As I noticed you noticing, everything I ever had has been taken away from me. What can you possibly threaten me with now?"

  Heinrich's voice was stingingly bitter, and Tomas knew his plans to use the soft approach were futile. "How about the loss of your freedom?" he asked. "Your old bosses might no longer be around to care about your indiscretions, but they turned a blind eye to plenty of other things that the new bosses would care about very much."

  Heinrich's unhealthily pallid skin flushed red. "I see. And here I thought the years might have mellowed you. But of course they didn't pass for you, did they? No deal, Tomas. There's no evidence of anything. I made sure of it before the Wall fell."

  "No physical evidence, maybe," Tomas said. "What about that girl you raped, then framed and shipped off to Schloss Hoheneck. Anna, that was her name. Think I might be able to track her down? I think I could. You and I both know you'd be dead before they let you out of prison."

  Heinrich was quiet for a long time. Tomas almost felt sorry for him, this old man who really didn't have much left to lose. But Tomas had met Anna's parents, a long time ago. Heinrich didn't deserve anyone's pity.

  "Fine," Heinrich said eventually. He laughed, an unhealthy rattle deep in his chest. "You win, as you always do, ruthlessness hidden behind a smile. The capitalist way."

  "I don't need an ethics lecture from you," Tomas said sharply. "Where are the artefacts?"

  Heinrich shrugged. "I don't have the first idea."

  Tomas stood up, the stool toppling to the floor behind him. "Don't mess me around, Heinrich. I can't begin to tell you how much I'd enjoy seeing you behind bars." He knew he was being cruel, and he couldn't bring himself to care. Even now, he looked at the other man's hands, and he saw them pawing Kate, combing possessively through her chestnut hair.

  Heinrich smiled thinly. "Do you really think I'd be living in this shithole if I had information like that to trade? But -" he held up a hand. "I think I may still be of some assistance. Enough to guarantee my freedom, at least." He said freedom as if the word scratched his throat on the way out.

  Tomas folded his arms, but didn't sit back down. "I'm listening."

  "A businessman called Gabriel is searching for the artefacts too. You know that already, I imagine. His agents contacted me a few months back. I told them I couldn't help, and they left contact details, in case I changed my mind. If you liked, I could set up a meet."

  Tomas smiled for the first time since he'd entered the apartment. "Yes, Heinrich. That's exactly what I'd like."

  Morgan was in a church. He could see the altar and the silver cross above it, hanging from a long wire. The walls were pure white, the ceiling as well. He thought about looking down and suddenly he was, though he didn't recall moving his head.

  The floor was white too. It looked grainy, like sand. That couldn't be right. Churches were supposed to be made of grey stone, with stained-glass windows and rows of pews.

  There were no windows here to break up the white monotony of the walls. Instead they were lined with statues, kings and queens in long white robes. Morgan studied the face of the nearest, a proud, thin-faced old man. But then his view shifted, turning to the other side of the statue - and he realised that it was horribly deformed. Its eye had melted down its cheek, which in turn drooped down towards the remnants of its chin. Half its nose was gone, leaving nothing but the cavity of its nostril.

  Horrified, Morgan t
ried to take a step back. He didn't move. Feet he couldn't see remained rooted to the gleaming white floor.

  And as sometimes happens in dreams, he suddenly recognised it for what it was. The realisation didn't cut through the illusion, but it deadened the terror a little. It wasn't real. It would soon be over.

  Not yet, though. There was still something else he needed to see. His eyeless gaze was drawn away from the statue, back to the altar, and now there was something on it. There was no sensation of movement, but suddenly he was nearer, and he could see what it was. A person. A little girl.

  There was another figure, bending over her. His face was hidden, the tall, angular body curving like a bracket around the altar. He cast a dark shadow across the little girl. Morgan knew this person, though he couldn't name him. The fear came back, a cloud of dread as formless as Morgan himself.

  The little girl's voice echoed through the empty, vaulted church, at once familiar and strange. "The Polish priest," she said.

  The man bending over her jerked and straightened. He turned, a slow, almost balletic pirouette, and Morgan felt a surge of terror. Finally he would see the man, know him for who he was. But when the figure had turned to him it was just another statue, white from head to toe. And as Morgan watched, the priest's stony face began to melt and drip.

  Morgan jerked awake, gasping for breath. Something slithered from his lap to the floor, and he let out a little moan of fear. His eyes tried desperately to penetrate the darkness, to convince himself that the dream really was over.

  After a few seconds he remembered that there was a lamp on his bedside table. His fingers scrabbled for it, knocking it on its side before he finally managed to find the switch.

  It didn't make him feel much better. The lamp bathed the room in a flat, pale glow that made it seem as unreal as anything in his dream.

  Morgan fought to get his breathing under control, then leant over the side of the bed to retrieve the diary and notebook which had fallen when he woke. He must have dropped off while he was working on the translation. He certainly didn't remember going to bed, and he was still wearing his jeans and yellow t-shirt.

  Anya stirred in the bed to his right. "What the hell are you doing? It's -" her hand reached out to fumble at the bedside clock "- four in the morning."

  "I had a dream," Morgan said. Though 'Dream' seemed an inadequate word to describe the experience he'd just been through.

  Anya looked like she was about to say something cutting. Then she read his face and her own softened. "Bad one?"

  "Not great," Morgan said. He was quiet a long time, trying to get his head in order. The dream had been bad, but it had been more than that. "It was important," he said. "I think. It was about the Polish priest."

  He could see it took Anya a moment to realise he was talking about something from his father's diary. Then she shrugged. "No surprise if you're dreaming about it. You've been reading it all day."

  "No," Morgan said. A vision from the dream flashed across his mind's eye, the tall figure at the altar, stooping over the little girl. And suddenly he knew why the figure had looked so familiar. "No, it's not that. Raphael said he knew my - that he knew Nicholson. I think Raphael's the Polish priest."

  "Because of a dream?" Anya wasn't scoffing exactly, but she didn't sound convinced.

  "It makes sense, doesn't it?"

  She shrugged. "It could be true, I suppose. That's a long way from saying it definitely is."

  And now Morgan was remembering the little girl, whose face he hadn't been able to see. The terror in her voice when she told him about the priest. "We have to go to Poland," he said.

  He expected Anya to fight him. He was prepared to go on his own if he had to. But she just studied him without saying anything. As the silence stretched on, he had time to notice that a lock of hair was stuck to the corner of her mouth, and there were red seams in her cheek where it had pressed too hard against her pillow.

  "What?" he said eventually.

  Her eyes didn't drop from his face, disconcerting in their seriousness. "Why did the Hermetic Division choose you for this mission, Morgan? I know what Tomas is. What are you?"

  "I don't know," Morgan said.

  She nodded. "Then I guess we're going to Poland."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Morgan woke as the sun blazed its light through a narrow gap in the curtains and spread warmth across his face. He was amazed that he'd managed to get back to sleep, but as soon as he'd recognised Raphael, the anxiety of his dream had faded into nothing. He'd been left feeling almost peaceful. Purposeful, anyway.

  He rolled out of bed, hitching up his boxers where they'd slipped down his hips and scraping the sleep out of his eyes.

  Anya was still dozing, curled in on herself like a baby. Morgan shook her shoulder to wake her. Her hand sleepily tried to bat his away, but he kept on shaking till her body unwound, and he saw her eyes open. He ignored her muttered protests and headed into the bathroom.

  The taps only yielded a trickle of cold water. Morgan splashed a handful on his face and hissed at the icy sting of it. He tried to remember the last time he'd washed and realised it was probably back in Budapest, when he'd sat in the thermal baths with Karamov. His fingers grated against his cheeks as he rubbed them. He must have a two-day growth of stubble. Lucky Anya had bought him a razor along with the clothes and toothbrush.

  One final splash of water on his face, and he looked up to catch his reflection in the mirror over the sink.

  A different face stared back at him.

  Morgan shut his eyes, his mind desperately trying not to build snapshot impressions of features into a known face. The snub, little-girl nose. The black hair hanging in damp curls around the broad forehead. The feral smile. No, it wasn't real, it wasn't her. But he opened his eyes again and of course it was.

  Morgan backed out of the bathroom, stumbling against the door frame. An awkward scramble and he was out, falling to his knees on the bedroom floor. He could hear his own breathing, rapid and harsh.

  Anya was fully awake by then, sitting on the one small chair brushing her hair.

  She jumped to her feet when she saw Morgan, letting out a startled yelp. "Shit! What's wrong?" The hairbrush fell out of her hand to bounce once against the carpet.

  Morgan's eyes tracked it mindlessly, his brain still buzzing with panic.

  "Morgan?"

  "Nothing," he said, finally looking up at her.

  "Don't lie to me," she said. "It's not conducive to a good working relationship."

  He shuddered, and wrapped his arms around himself. "On the train," he told her. "There was a man, an American..." He swallowed hard. "He had some kind of power, I don't know. He used mirrors to call them up."

  "To call what up?" Anya was darting nervous glances towards the bathroom now.

  "Ghosts," Morgan said. "Spirits. It's okay, you can stop fucking looking, I don't think it's there any longer. They're only there when you can see them."

  "But you think this 'spirit' followed you from the train? That it somehow came to this mirror to find you?"

  "I think she's in every mirror I look in," Morgan said. He shivered again, because he hadn't realised the truth of that until he said it.

  "And what -"

  "It doesn't matter. It's dangerous, and that's as much as I know."

  "Okay," Anya said. "Take it easy. Do you think it's safe for me to go in there?"

  Morgan nodded. "She... it doesn't know you. The man, the American man, said he only opened the gate, that I was the one who called the spirit through. It's me who's being haunted, not you."

  Anya looked dubious, but after a second she nodded too, and scooped up her toiletry bag from the floor. "So we're still going to Poland."

  "Yes, we've got to." Morgan didn't know how to tell her that he thought the spirit of his dead sister wanted him to find the white church he'd seen in his dream. In fact, he was pretty sure he shouldn't tell her. "The answers are there," he said instead. "We just have to w
ork out how to find them."

  "It's your decision," Anya said reluctantly. "But perhaps you should buy an electric razor. And for god's sake use some deodorant. I'm going to be stuck in a car with you for hours."

  Tomas had told Heinrich he'd be the only other person attending the meeting with Raphael's agent, but both men had known it was a lie. Just because Tomas was using Heinrich, didn't mean he trusted him.

  Still, Belle wouldn't have been his first choice of back-up. But she and Tomas were wired for sound, button cameras in their lapels. Anya and the van with the audio-visual equipment were parked a few streets away. They should be safe enough. And it was true they didn't want to scare off Raphael's go-between - that a man walking with his young daughter looked a hell of a lot less suspicious than almost any other combination of personnel.

  Heinrich had wanted to arrange the meet in a park. Anya had shuddered and refused and Tomas knew she was remembering what had happened to Karamov in that sunny, open green space in Budapest. So instead Tomas had told Heinrich to fix the rendezvous at the Checkpoint Charlie museum. Tomas had sensed the other man's grimace over the phone line and almost smiled.

  Now he was regretting his choice. Here, at last, was a piece of the Wall that used to symbolise so much. Multi-coloured, scrawled with graffiti - and locked away behind glass. An exhibit. Tomas stood and stared at it, lost in memory, until Belle squeezed the hand she held clasped in hers.

  Tomas looked down at the little girl. Her eyes were darting around the large exhibition room, too watchful for someone her age.

  "Heinrich's here," she said.

  She was right. He'd just come through the entry gates, feet cautious and stumbling. Tomas saw his eyes squint in anger when he caught sight of the fragment of the Wall, but he made no acknowledgement of Tomas or Belle. No doubt Raphael already had people in the room. They couldn't afford to betray the connection.