by Eddy Shah
As Kaas introduced his leader to his band of warriors, Kragan finally relaxed. Things had gone well. Charlottenburg had been a glorious success. But it was only a springboard for what was to come. If the public had been sickened by the carnage at the Olympiastdion, the next spectacle to fill their television screens would be in such spectacular technicolor and DestructaVision that it would make Rambo look like a Disney movie.
Normally a cautious man, Kragan felt the glimmer of satisfaction spread within him. He sensed success.
Nothing could stop them now.
Ch. 62
London and beyond
Europe.
Adam chuckled to himself as the small Piper Arrow flew at two thousand feet across German airspace.
'What's so funny?' asked Jenny Dale, sitting to his left and piloting the single-engined, low-winged plane in her usual deft manner across the turbulent, cumulus covered sky.
'Nothing. Just something I was thinking about,' he replied.
'How long?' shouted Billy from the rear, loud enough to be heard over the roar of the two hundred horsepower engine.
'Twenty minutes,' answered Jenny. 'We're nearly there.'
Adam went back to his private world as the plane bucked across the sky, the unseen hands of the veering winds twisting and turning it as it flew on towards Hannover.
That morning he had watched the surveillance team from the living-room window. They were parked across the road, outside the chemists, with a layer of frost covering their Rover Sterling. The team inside the car, three of them, would occasionally turn on the engine and try to warm themselves, but he knew they'd feel the cold after such a freezing night.
'I'm ready,' Billie said as she came out of the bathroom.
'Let's go,' he replied. He didn't feel like saying much, the blackness had been within him when he woke up. The lonely pain had tightened across his chest, reminding him of the danger he was about to enter, of his depression at the futility of it all. Then Billie had moved against him, still in her sleep, and he relaxed momentarily. Somehow it eased the pain, knowing that she was ready to depend on him. He had woken her ten minutes later.
He drew the curtain shut. Then he opened the front door, so that they could see where they were going, and flicked the bathroom light off. He picked up his brown holdall. Apart from the weapons, he had packed two sweat shirts, thermal underwear and socks and his toiletries. This time he really was travelling light.
She followed him out into the hallway, toting her small suitcase.
The red F40 was parked and ready in the underground car park.
'Wow!' he heard Billie exclaim. 'They yours?'
He nodded. Emma and Steed, side by side. He'd be glad when this was over and he could settle down to enjoy himself again. He knew his service days were finished. After the New Orleans episode and this latest scrape he was about to embark on, Coy and his sort would never have him back.
He stroked the Gullwing as he passed it and then unlocked the Ferrari's passenger door to let Billie in. He slid the holdall between her legs, on the floor pan, then walked round and climbed in the driver's side.
He started the engine as gently and quietly as possible. It was till as loudas an old World War II tank in the confines of the small garage.
He backed her out of the parking space and turned towards the automatic garage doors. The remote control was clipped to the sun visor and he pressed the button.
It was the last thing the surveillance team had expected. The driver saw the garage door spring upwards. He hurriedly tried to wind the window down as he couldn't see clearly through the thin layer of frost and condensation, but by the time he'd done so, the red Ferrari had spurted to the top of the ramp, its full-beam lights blinding him, swung to the right and roared down the street.
'It's him!' he shrieked to the others as he started the engine. 'It's him! He's doing a fucking runner!'
The engine turned, was slow to fire before it came to life. The driver gunned the accelerator too hard in his anxiety and the car slid sideways, its rear wheels spinning as it tried to grip the tarmac, but only contacted the thin layer of overnight frost. It slid helplessly into the next parked car, slammed into its side.
'Shit!' screamed the driver as he tried to extricate himself from the situation.
'Come on!' yelled the man in the rear seat.
The car eventually pulled away from the kerb and drove after the F40. But it had disappeared at high speed into the early morning darkness.
'They'll radio all the police cars,' said Adam. 'Not to stop us, but to keep an eye on us.'
'Why not stop us?'
'We've done nothing wrong. And they'll want to know where we're going.'
'Then don't speed. Unless you want to be caught.'
He grinned. 'It's all right. I'm taking all the back roads.'
They drove for nearly forty minutes through the empty suburb streets. Past Chiswick and Heathrow Airport, under the M25 and through the villages of Wentworth and Sunningdale, out towards Woking.
They parked where he always did, hidden deep in the shadows.
'Will you be all right here?' he asked.
'I'd rather come.' As she answered, she sensed his nervousness. 'If a cop comes and finds the car, with me in it, I wouldn't know what to do.' They both knew she was lying.
Suddenly he didn't care. There was nothing to hide. He wanted to tell her, had never shared the secret with anyone before, only Lily, and that was a long time ago.
'Come on,' he said and they both left Steed parked there and made their way to the twisted and bent railing that was his door to the family. She shivered as they crossed to the west hill.
She stood back and watched him approach the three headstones, saw him touch them as gently as she had known he would. She heard his low voice as he spoke to them, greeted them after his long absence. When he'd finished, he turned and called out to her, beckoned her over.
Billie picked her way between the graves, stumbled just before she reached him, but he leant forward and easily caught her. She was always surprised by the strength in such a compact body.
'Morbid? Eh?' he chided her.
'Don't be stupid,' she snapped back. 'You should know better.'
'Sorry. Not used to letting my defences down, I suppose.'
She touched his cheek. 'Talk to me, tough guy. Like you talk to yourself'
'Just like that?'
'Just like that.'
'I've already told you about Marcus. And my parents. About how they died.'
'What do you talk about when you come here. I know they're real. In there...' she stroked his forehead.'...they're alive.'
'Yes.'
'Can you feel him now?'
'He never leaves me.'
'What's he saying?'
'Nothing. He is me.'
'How?'
'I don't know. I...there's feelings inside me that I can't explain. Evil with depression. It comes from nowhere. For no reason.'
'Is it there now?'
'Was. Before we left home. It consumes me. When I'm in danger, when it's all going against me, that's when it's at its strongest. I kill without thinking, so cool I think I must enjoy it. Pain becomes bearable through pleasure. I have no soul in those moments.'
'And you think that's how you really are?'
He nodded. 'I was the best field agent we ever had. That's true, because you always know your own worth. It wasn't because I enjoy killing, not just going out and doing it. Or danger. That's how they saw it. The boys behind the desks. No, it was because I didn't care. Didn't give a shit whether I lived or died.'
'Why?'
'No-one to care for. They were dead, since I was that small.' Adam held his hand down, palm outstretched. 'I just had a go at everything. If I lost, then I got the final reward. I went over to the other side.' He smiled as he said it.
'To join them.'
'Something like that.'
'The death wish. They saw it in New Orleans.'
'Spooky, that.'<
br />
'I've seen you with Lily. With me. Here, with your family. You do care'
'So what is the blackness that I feel inside? The evil?'
It suddenly hit her. 'You think it's Marcus. Him, pushing inside you.'
'No. Not him. Me.'
'Oh no. Not you, tough guy. Not you.' She put her arms round him and held him. 'Not you. Not even Marcus. Just the hurt. Of a little boy. Don't you see? Not any of you.'
'But Marcus is there. I know he's inside me.'
'He is. He always was. But he loves you. Like you love him. But you were still a little boy left on your own. Don't you see? It's just what you were. Lost and hurt and full of pain. Don't you see?'
And he started to cry, there, alone with her in the cemetery, next to those he had loved the most and missed the most.
The police had picked up the red sports car nine miles south of Ashford in Kent. It was doing seventy down a country lane, in a fifty mile an hour zone.
The police car was speeding up to give chase when the co-driver warned his partner to ease off. 'That's the car they were looking for. Report but don't apprehend.'
'But he's over the limit.'
'Stay well behind while I report in.'
By the time they had received instructions to follow and observe, they had lost it in a swirl of speed at one hundred and forty miles an hour.
'They're really going to come after us now,' said Billie pinned to the seat as it accelerated through the corners.
'By the time they get search teams out we'll be there. You okay?'
'Yes. In a numbed sort of way.' She'd never been driven that fast before, never experienced the sheer exhilaration and heart stopping fear that merged into one as the F40 powered on the knife edge of its optimum limits. But she trusted him, saw the way he handled it through the bends, fed the power in as it was required, was part of the hurtling machine that he controlled so gently. 'Like making love,' she thought. And then shuddered when she remembered his death wish.
Just north of Dungeness atomic power station, he slowed through the village of Lydd and followed the road out to the small airport. The F40 swung into the entrance and pulled up outside the terminal. Adam parked the car behind a large yellow Ford Transit van and switched off the engine.
'Let's get going,' he said, turning to Billie.
'I can't!' she gasped. 'Not yet.'
He suddenly realised how much the speed had affected her. He leant over and put his arm round her shoulders. 'Legs shaky?'
'Don't laugh, you bastard.'
'I'm not.' He grinned cheekily back. 'But we've got to go.'
'In a minute, in a minute.'
He kissed her on the forehead, then climbed out of the car and walked round to the other side. He opened her door and held his hand out. 'Come on. We've got to get moving.'
'Shit to you, tough guy,' she answered, then took his hand and scrambled out.
'They really are shaky!' he exclaimed as she wobbled towards him. 'Sorry about that.'
Then he picked up the two bags and led her into the terminal.
Five minutes later they walked through the departure lounge for national and European community destinations to the Piper Arrow that was parked on the ramp.
Nine minutes later the plane was airborne from the pitted runway. It was a visual flight plan route, with no destination recorded.
'Where the fuck's he gone now?' Coy's superior asked him later. It had taken them over an hour to find the F40.
'No idea. We've got air traffic onto it. The plane came in from Manchester. The pilot was hired to fly them in a chartered plane.'
'To where?'
'Nobody knows. It's a visual flight. They don't need flight plans if it's out of controlled airspace.'
'Who's the pilot?'
'The same one, a girl, who flew them across the Atlantic.'
'Dear God. It gets deeper by the minute. Anything else?'
'Not yet.'
'We'll keep this away from the Yanks for now. Come back when you've got something.'
Coy put down the phone. There was nothing he could do anyway. Not until the plane surfaced. And that would take time. It was impossible to contact every air traffic control unit in Europe, every airfield, every charter company.
Blast, it had been a long night. He put his feet up on the desk, tilted back the swivel executive chair and went to sleep.
'Thanks,' said Jenny, taking the traveller's cheques from Adam and putting them into her flying jacket. 'Nice to do business with you.'
'Take care when you get back.'
'No problem. As you said, you're not running drugs, or anything like that. It was just another charter.'
'Even so, the intelligence arm will want to grill you.'
'Tsk, Tsk,' she clucked. 'They're not going to torture me, are they? Pull my nails out one by one.'
Adam laughed. 'I doubt it. But they will question you. And remember, when they ask about Billie, say she was edgy, always nervous. Seemed scared of me.'
'Aye, aye, captain.'
'And thanks. Safe journey back.'
Adam went to get the hire car as Billie and Jenny said their goodbyes. Twenty minutes later they were on the Salzgitter autobahn, heading for Nordhausen, some one hundred and ten kilometres to the south.
Ch. 63
KGB Headquarters
Dzerzhinsky Square
Moscow
'Yes, Dimitri Dimitrovitch,' said Rostov into the phone.
'The Americans are growing more concerned by the minute,' reported Sorge over the receiver. 'They now think the British know more than they're admitting.'
'The British know nothing.'
'They are frightened that we are all working against them.'
'Poppycock.'
'That's what I told them.'
'You must take the heat out of the situation. Just because some of them don't know their arse from their elbow doesn't mean that we’ve lost control.'
'You want me to repeat that?'
Rostov laughed. 'No. But diffuse it. Calm them down.'
'I will do my best.'
There was a considerable pause before Rostov continued. 'We've found Albert Goodenache.'
'Can I inform them?'
'Yes.'
'And tell them where?'
'No. Just that we think we've traced him. That we're following it up.' He didn't tell Sorge about the sleepers who still operated throughout Europe, agents that were never authorised or listed on any budget seen outside the most secret areas of the KGB. He'd identified various locations where Goodenache was likely to turn up. He'd even questioned some of the older members of the Lucy Ghosts in private to help trace the fugitive. Nordhausen had been one of them. And his people there had soon found the scientist.
'I'll pass that on.'
'Good. We will resolve this situation, Dimitri Dimitrovitch. Just keep the Americans calm. This thing is bigger than they realise. I now have some idea of what it's about. But I don't have all the answers. Time is short, but I need all I can get.'
'I will, as they say here, keep them off your back.'
'I know you will. These people have crawled out of the sewers. And that's where we've got to go, if we want to end it.'
Ch. 64
The road to Nordhausen
Harz Mountains
Germany.
The road from Hannover to Nordhausen passed through all that was best in West Germany and all that was worst in the East. The first section is a mixture of three laned autobahns and twin laned primary roads. The traffic moves at a fast pace and averaging a speed of over one hundred kilometres an hour is not difficult. The surrounding countryside is fertile, a mixture of productive fields and bulbous forests that spread over the horizon. The towns and villages are prosperous, clean and bustling with enterprise. The people look affluent and busy.
When the four wheel drive saloon they had hired, an Audi Quattro, reached the old border that split the villages of Tenterborn and Mackenrode, everything changed.
The transformation was sudden. The old wall still stood, stretched across the countryside like a giant twenty-foot picket fence, disappearing over the horizon on both sides. The road, where the border post had once split it, became narrow, just wide enough for two cars to pass each other. The tall metal and concrete watch towers to the left and right, now unmanned and unarmed, still dominated the skyline on their high steel footings.
They parked the Audi where the guardhouse had once stood. They walked across the field to where the wall stopped, sliced in its eternal stride by some giant wire cutters.
'I always thought it was solid,' said Billie, coming up to it, reaching out and touching it in awe.
There were two walls, running parallel with each other. The one they stood at was made of heavy chain link, stretched between towering concrete posts that were spaced fifteen metres apart. The second row, the inner wall, was of the same design. The gap between them, that area which had been mined and guarded by machine guns from the watch towers, was about forty metres wide. There was little growth there, just patchy, overgrown grass, a desolate, don't-come-here-or-you’ll-regret-it sort of place.
They stayed there for about twenty minutes, walked where there once had been fear and intimidation, tried to imagine it as it had been, wondered who'd died there, whose dreams had been shattered.
'I guess they'll get round to dragging it off to the junk yard,' said Billie, her arm linked through his as they made their way back towards the car. ‘Some waste dealer’s going to make a fortune.’
'That’s capitalism. They should leave it. To remind us about the dark side of life.'
It was different now, the countryside more desolate, less machinery in the fields. The roads were potholed and had received little maintenance since 1944. The villages and towns they passed through were shabby where buildings had long since been left to decay. Sleek Mercedes Benz and BMWs intermingled with smoke belching, rattling Trabants, Wartburgs and Ladas, but it was still an environment that lacked the hurly burly of enterprise.
Then there was Nordhausen.
An industrial centre that was an ecological disaster. An old town, its wealth based on brewing before the second world war came along and transformed it into a steel and munitions centre. Since then, under the communists, Nordhausen remained a metal town, spewing its untreated black smelter smoke into the atmosphere and polluting the beautiful countryside that surrounded it. In time, the forest trees in the magnificent Harz Mountains started to thin out as they were poisoned. In time the untreated smoke and grime turned Nordhausen into a dirty city, with dirty people, all with little to do except work and drink and then go back to work. The town had suffered from the worst of industrial enterprise. It would take many years before Nordhausen became a green town, many years before it could even start to ease back on the pollution it coughed onto its inhabitants and the surrounds in which they existed.