Gerald Seymour

  He soaked up the atmosphere and memories of the place, then stepped briskly on to the pavement, crossed the span, and didn't consider that the world had changed.

  Rupert Mowbray went in search of Jerry the Pole.

  He walked past the Custom House on the far side, now boarded up and decaying. In the days of his memories the exchanges had been watched from the upper windows behind the planks by East German troops and by Russians of the KGB, the enemy, the reason for his working life. Many of the villas on Konigstrasse, the road to Potsdam, had now been found, he noticed, by the present breed of property developers; they had been empty in his day, when he had stared down that road from the far side of the bridge. Children played in the gardens and washing hung in the backyards. He wondered if the recent owners of the properties knew of the history of that small corner of Europe; he doubted if they cared because that was the way of the modern world, and he despised it. The developments, the signs said, were "exclusif". He went past Timmerman's Cafe, a single-storey building, little more than a hut, and he thought it was where the Russian men, of the Third Directorate of the KGB—his opponents, his enemies—might have gathered for their own celebration while he and the Americans ate and drank at the restaurant in the Glienicker Schloss. He checked the numbers as he walked, and Alice North had done her work well.

  The building was more than five hundred metres back from the bridge. The developers had not yet reached it. The small wrought iron balconies leading from the full-length windows were held up, on the first, second and third floors, by timber props, and the walls were daubed with spray-paint graffiti. The name at the bell was a scrawl, as if written by a hand from which hope had long gone…but he needed the man. Jerry the Pole was as much a part of his life as the Glienicker bridge and the pension in Charlottenberg. He rang the bell, pressed long and hard on it. Whether he wanted him there or not, Jerzy Kwasniewski was in Rupert Mowbray's life and in his blood.

  The door creaked open. The man's eyes lit with a rheumy wetness. Perhaps he had not quite believed it when Alice North had telephoned him. He wore carpet slippers and shapeless trousers held up by braces, a vest with buttons to the neck, and a small blue scarf loosely knotted at his spare throat. No, he had not believed that Rupert Mowbray was coming. He straightened. Behind him, the hall was dark. A scrawny hand was extended. Mowbray smelt the sewers. When the hand was taken, Jerry the Pole's head ducked in respect.

  It was the old world, one long gone, their world—master and man, employer and servant.

  On the second floor was a single living and sleeping room that smelt of stale sweat, with a kitchen annexe, and a bathroom that Mowbray deduced was shared. It overlooked a back garden where the grass and the bushes were jungle high. The light was not on and only a single bar of the fire burned. Mowbray counted money from his wallet, enough for a week, and because he had seen the respect, he estimated the minimum that would be acceptable. He thought Jerry the Pole would have taken a bag of boiled sweets and been grateful. When the Wall had come down the Service officers had abandoned the Olympic stadium and the men who drove them, cleaned for them, translated for them, ran messages for them were discarded. In the days of the Wall, when the quarters at the Olympic stadium bulged with activity, Jerry the Pole had lived in a decent two-bedroomed apartment in Wannsee village. The last time they had met, eighteen months after the Wall's collapse, Jerry the Pole had moved to a cheaper block nearer the bridge. Now he had moved on again. Money would be harder, work scarcer—he had been forgotten and Alice had had to search in the files, hard and long, to trace him.

  'I think that is better, Mr Mowbray…'

  Jerry the Pole now wore a suit that was too large for his shrunken frame, a suit to be buried in. He had put on a nearly clean shirt and I had shaved. He was combing his thin pepper-coloured hair.

  'If you come back to me, Mr Mowbray, search out someone you can depend upon, then I know it is going to be a big operation.'

  'As big as the biggest,' Mowbray said. He told Jerry the Pole what would be required of him. The man's thin lips dribbled with pleasure. Mowbray paid him and saw a little flicker of disappointment as the money was counted. After it had been placed in a small empty tin under the bed, he asked Jerry the Pole to sign a receipt for it. Then he gave him more money, for the hire of a car, and asked him to sign for that also.

  Mowbray beamed his smile of confidence. 'Bigger than the biggest.'

  A commander, reading from his notes, said, 'I have to say, Admiral, that the position of the supply of potatoes is critical. We are down to three weeks of potatoes, which is a serious shortage. To buy potatoes on the open market is twenty-two per cent more expensive than using the contracted supplier, but the contractor does not have more potatoes to sell. In addition, at this time of year, the potatoes available on the open market are of poor quality, and I would estimate that a minimum of fifteen per cent would be unfit for consumption. It is difficult—we must have potatoes, but to buy them we must have further budgetary sources. Without potatoes, the fleet goes hungry.'

  Viktor sat in on the meeting in Admiral Falkovsky's office. Half of his attention was in the smoke-filled room, and half was far away. He still shivered from his plunge into the dock water the previous night. He hadn't run that morning on the beach, not because of the cold in his body but because of the chill from knowing he would be watched from the moment he left his quarters. With care, and trying not to arouse further suspicion of guilt, he had now searched his sleeping quarters three times. He had not found a pinhead microphone or a fisheye lens, but he could not tear the room apart because that would give them a hint of the evidence they hunted for. It was about nerve: if his nerve broke he was beaten; and if he was beaten, he was dead. There were seven men around the table, the admiral at the head, his favoured chief of staff in the honoured position to his immediate right, and furthest to the left was Piatkin, the zampolit, who watched and did not contribute.

  'Buy them—we cannot be without them,' the admiral growled, ground out a cigarette, coughed and lit another. 'Next item—what is next on the agenda?'

  A second commander spoke up. 'It is early, but decisions have to be taken on the spring exercise. At the present time we plan an amphibious landing between Pionerskij and Zelonogradsk, with one regiment going ashore, that is agreed. Will we deploy a mine clearance capability? Can we reasonably predict we will have the resources to put mine-sweepers to sea along with the assault fleet? I remind you that the mine-sweepers have not exercised for two years, and their efficiency quotient is highly limited. But the crews cannot be taught mine-sweeping in the classroom or on a vessel that is permanently tied up. Do we have the resources?'

  Admiral Falkovsky's head twisted to his right. 'Viktor, what do we do?'

  His head jolted up. He blurted, 'We have no choice. We buy the potatoes.'

  There was a moment of silence. Viktor saw the astonishment around the table, then Piatkin's keen gaze, and the commander to Viktor's right broke the silence with an involuntary titter. The laughter was taken up. It rolled around the table. He did not know what he had said that had provoked it. He was the admiral's chosen man, he was given deference because he had the admiral's ear—and they laughed at him. Viktor turned to his protector and saw Admiral Falkovsky's anger.

  The admiral said, 'We have finished with discussing potatoes, we are now talking about mine-sweeping. If we don't interest you, Viktor, I suggest you leave us…now.'

  He stood, gathering his papers together. He was dismissed. It had never happened before. He ducked his head to the admiral and walked round the table to the door. He had learned never to argue, plead, dispute with Admiral Falkovsky. He saw the sneering satisfaction creep on to Piatkin's mouth. He had dreamed, and the dream had cost him protection.

  He closed the door behind him. From the dream came a sudden, surging impulse. He stamped to his desk in the outer office and threw down his papers. The staff looked away. He snatched up the telephone and dialled the number of the chief of police
for the oblast of Kaliningrad.

  'This is Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko, chief of staff to the fleet commander, Admiral Falkovsky. Please, the address of the residence of Boris Chelbia. It is a matter of security, I want it immediately.'

  I When he had written it down, Viktor went to the armoury. He was light-headed, gripped with a rare recklessness. He did not care that he was followed, watched.

  The Princess Rose sailed on. Twelve hours out from Gdansk, the master again radioed ahead to the harbour authorities, and again gave an estimated time of arrival. She was now using the main traffic lane that took her south of the Renne Bank and the Danish island of Bornholm. Even the engineer admitted that the diesel engine was performing to the best of its capability. Below the bridge, where the master kept watch and studied relentlessly the radar screen, was a storeroom. On a level below the principal cabins and behind the crews' quarters, it was above the forward section of the engine room. By unscrewing a section of plate metal lining the wall of the storeroom a dead area could be reached. Here, narcotics, cigarettes and people had been housed. Now four weighted black canvas bags and four large cardboard boxes were packed into that space. With galley supplies and pieces of machinery piled up in front of the section of plate metal, the covert hiding-place would survive any search not as determined as a full-scale Customs rummage. A sharp, brilliantly white bow wave peeled away from the progress of the Princess Rose.

  'Did you know him?' The question had been a long time forming but, like an air pocket in the ocean, it had eventually burst to the surface.

  'Of course I knew him,' Alice said.

  'Did you meet him?'

  'I knew him and I met him.' There was an intransigence in her voice, a challenge, as if he intruded.

  Gabriel Locke persisted, didn't know where it would lead him. 'Why is he special?'

  She seemed for a moment to ponder. She looked out through the car's windscreen. They were parked up on hard core at a farm gateway. Behind them was the main road to the town of Braniewo and ahead was the border crossing point. The second car was half hidden n a clump of hazel and birch in front of them. It was three hours since the team had gone, and while they'd waited Locke had said barely a word to Alice North. The questions had seeped into his mind until they filled it.

  She shook her head, as if a fly irritated her. 'You wouldn't understand…'

  'It would help if I understood. We're mounting an operation, something out of the history books, some sort of vanity trip for a has-been that's Mowbray—which ignores every paragraph in the rule book of the modern Service, and when I try to find out why I'm brushed off, like a piece of shit on a boot. What's so special?'

  She climbed out of the car. They had left the hotel in Berlin before dawn, before that city had woken, and had been well into Poland before full daylight, hammering the old roads through forests and past flat, sodden fields and by reeded boglands. Buzzards and kites had been cruising over the pastures and the marshes, hunting, and twice they had seen grazing deer. They had driven through a great emptiness, and he'd thought they crossed the no man's land between the German civilization and the Russian wilderness. It was not what Gabriel Locke had joined for. He had pressed his recruitment in order to be a part of a modern, forward-looking organization, working at the sharp end of intellect, in defence of the realm.

  They had stopped briefly at the castle, at Malbork—and she'd walked away from him and he'd hung back, and she'd sat for a half-minute, no more, on the bench by the knights' bronze statues. Now they were in a farm gateway, two miles from the Kaliningrad border. Gabriel Locke had been once to Hereford, and he'd been told there—often enough so that it itched in him—that reconnaissance was paramount. Time spent on reconnaissance was never wasted, they'd said. The car lurched as her weight settled on the bonnet.

  Gabriel Locke's temper cracked. 'I've the bloody right to know what this is all about.'

  She didn't turn. Her voice came faintly into the car. 'What I said, you wouldn't understand.'

  He shouted, 'When this has fucked up, and it will, I'm going to put a report in—see if I don't. I've my career to think of.'

  Her voice came to him, calm, as if he didn't trouble her. 'You wouldn't understand, Gabriel. Just enjoy the view.'

  There was an old and dilapidated farmhouse at the end of a lane a quarter of a mile away, with barns without roofs, and clumps of ragged trees from which the wind had shredded the leaves, yellow fields, some cows with their calves, and a distant forest line. The sun threw long shadows. She was an attractive girl, but he hardly noticed it. When the operation went wrong, and it would, his career would be among the casualties, would be in the front line and a prime target. He'd fight, whatever it took, to save himself. He could not see into the forest line, and he waited.

  Wickso heard the whistle, like a screech owl's, and then the engine. It was the same engine that he'd heard twice before in the last hour, and six times since he'd taken his position in the cavity made by the tree-trunk's roots, and he'd memorized how often the jeep came along the forest track. He made the return call, also the screech owl's, so that Billy and Lofty would hear him and be warned off. The jeep's engine was using poor fuel because each time it came by the smell of the diesel hung on the path between the close-set pines.

  It was a good position he'd found. The tree had been toppled in a gale, could have been two years or more back, and he'd camouflaged the cavity with dead branches; there was no chance that he'd be seen from the track. The jeep went by. It was open, two men in it, and the soldier in the passenger seat, Wickso's side, had an automatic rifle across his legs. It was twelve years since Wickso had had to find a 'basher' and lie up in it. When the jeep had gone away down the track, he made the owl's call, and waited for them to reach him. The jeep had been regular but there had also been a foot patrol, six men and a dog. The dog had bothered him more than the jeep. It had been in the middle of the group, not out ahead where it would have had the chance of picking up the scent of Billy and Lofty, or of pointing to him in his basher. They came across the track fast. No talking, only hand signs. Wickso crawled out of the basher, and left it covered with old branches so that the chance of its discovery before it was needed next time, the real time, was minimal. It was three hundred metres to the wire, where Ham waited at the hole they'd cut. Wickso didn't look back and a few times he heard Billy's and Lofty's feet on the forest floor, but that was seldom. They moved well, like it wasn't twelve years since they'd crossed opposition ground. When he could see the hole, Wickso did the owl screech and Ham answered it.

  A drainage ditch, six inches of water stagnant in it, was the route away from the forest and through the fields. Then it was a crawl on their stomachs through an I old beet-field. They were muddied damp urchins when they reached the cars.

  They were peeling off the overalls. The girl didn't say anything, like she knew better than to talk, but the guy, Locke, piped, like he needed to piss and couldn't hold himself. 'How was it? Everything all right? What did you find?'

  Billy said, 'Found a nice pub, doing real ale.'

  'For Christ's sake, can you not be serious?'

  Billy said, 'We went three kilometres in. There's a farm barn just outside the village of Lipovka, on the Vituska river. It's by a road. It's a good enough drop point. Right now I'm looking for a bath—you got a better idea, Mr Locke?'

  The girl hadn't spoken. She helped Lofty and Ham out of their overalls and held a plastic bag for them. Wickso liked her. The best of the nurses at Wolverhampton kept their mouths shut when talking helped nobody.

  He had been summoned.

  A flurry of messages had alerted Yuri Bikov. Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko had left a meeting at fleet headquarters early, he I had gone to the armoury and had drawn a service pistol with two clips of ammunition and four hand grenades. Then he had driven out of the base and was headed for Kaliningrad.

  The messages from Piatkin came by radio, were fielded by Bikov's major. Piatkin reported t
hat additional patrols were on the frontier and that the crossing point was alerted. At first, as the messages were given him, Bikov felt a sense of nagging disappointment, as if he might be cheated. Was Archenko making a run for the border? It would fail…fail in blood and vulgar capture, and his journey to this dead shit-heap of a place would have been wasted. Then the tone of the messages had changed to a note of bewilderment from Piatkin, and an address was given on the north side of the city.

  When he arrived at the pleasant street, different from anything else in the city he had seen, Bikov saw a staff car parked outside high gates that were flanked by high walls. A dog bayed. There were properties like that, with high gates and high walls, in Moscow. He knew the trade of men who were protected by gates, walls and dogs. Short of the staff car, half on the grass and under the trees, were a silver saloon and a black van with smoked windows. He went to the saloon and spoke sharply to Piatkin: 'Whose home is this?'

  'It is the home of Boris Chelbia.'

  'Who is Boris Chelbia?'

  Piatkin flushed. 'A local businessman.'

  'A mafiya businessman?'

  'I would not know.'

  'Does Archenko know him?'

  Piatkin stumbled, 'I have no record they have ever met.'

  'But you know Boris Chelbia?'

  'I have met him, yes, socially…' Piatkin squirmed, and Bikov saw it.

  'Would Boris Chelbia, mafiya businessman, wish to buy one service pistol with two clips of ammunition and four hand grenades, from your "social" knowledge of him?'