by John Gardner
Even with the ease there was no relaxation. When you were on your own, in the dark labyrinth, one thoughtless moment could spell disaster. The techniques of watching his own back were ingrained, and his actions were based on routines he had followed countless times before.
In truth, Herbie Kruger had never left the field: aware constantly that enemies, from other times in his long career, could pop up like trapdoor spiders to haunt, maim or kill, even in the most unlikely places. At least since being with Ursula, part of his body was at rest and his emotions salved.
Now a shadow fell over his mind. The reunion with Ursula, and its outcome—which he had never seriously doubted—was the relatively easy part. If Schnabeln had done his job there would be unpleasant work ahead, even within the next hour or so. The kind of work from which Herbie naturally shrank and detested. He had seen too much of it before.
A smiling desk clerk handed Herbie his key. He spoke immaculate English. No, there were no messages for Herr Kagen. Herr Kagen thanked him and said good night, in the assumed atrocious German.
Instinct told Herbie there was someone in his room. It had nothing to do with setting markers—matchsticks in the door, threads over the latch, tiny pieces of wax on the knob. In well-run hotels those old tricks were useless, because of the constant coming and going of hotel staff, chambermaids and the like. There was only experience—hunch, sixth sense, years of being alert and of living two lives in one body. Call it what you will, Herbie had it; the room was not empty. His heart lurched and there was a tremble in his thighs. Over the hill? he thought. The activity with Ursula? So near the truth, this would be a bad time to die. His stomach knotted, and with some alarm Herbie realised that his breathing had become shallow, his heart thudding.
He put the key into its lock, keeping his body against the wall, to the left of the door. It used to be an old trick: hide in the target’s room, then shoot through the door at precisely the point where your target would be standing as he unlocked.
One hand on the key, the other grasping at the small length of necktie protruding from his waistband. One tug would release the automatic pistol from his thigh, dropping it down his trouser leg. Do it, Herbie. Come on, you know all the short cuts: all the sleights—the legerdemain of survival. He took a deep breath, turned the key and opened the door—pushing hard so that it swung in quickly, fully wide, combining the push with a swift kick.
Keep against the wall, out of any line of fire.
When he spoke it was with the American accent, German flavoured. “Come out quietly with your hands on your heads.” He kept it soft. “The police are here. You have no chance of escape.” Waiting for the eruption: the back-up man down the hall, or in the room opposite; or the sudden burst of fire. Maybe a grenade, or the silent death—the pellet with dissolving seals, like Georgi Markov. Even death in the field had changed since Herbie had been away.
The lights were on—or at least a standard lamp. Herbie had not seen it through any cracks, so presumed it had just been switched as he pushed the door open.
Then the voice, vaguely familiar, though he did not place it until he saw the face—
“Herbie, old cocker, it’s okay. All chums together. Give you my word. Officer and gent, all that rot. Just come on in. Got your pal Spendthrift with me.”
The last part of the speech was crossed with Schnabeln telling him there was no danger.
Herbie walked into the room, kicking the door closed behind him. Curry Shepherd was sprawled in one of the chairs. Christoph, looking green, stood by the other.
“Curry Shepherd. My God. It’s been a long time.”
“The old Big Herbie himself, in all that flesh. What’s a large man like you doing in a place like this, cocker?”
Herbie’s eyes flicked towards Schnabeln, then back to Curry Shepherd.
“What is it?” He was asking Schnabeln, his eyes still on Shepherd.
Christoph Schnabeln explained, using admirable brevity.
Herbie stood, legs apart, in the centre of the room where he had halted his entrance. Almost to himself he said, “Trapeze?” Then, addressing Shepherd, “They just gave you the crypto, Curry, Trapeze? No clues? Just Trapeze?”
“Sorry. Not very explicit, that part. Bit of added weight to convince you. Don’t think they’ve any idea themselves: you know how it goes? Trapeze as in circus.”
“Okay, Curry. So you have done your job. Always were a good postman. Now you should go, I think, before people get hurt.”
“Dare say I should. But London really wants you back over that pile of East Deutsche masonry, PDQ Herbie.”
“PDQ?” muttered Schnabeln.
“Pretty Damned Quick,” Herbie snapped, fast, still not taking his eyes from Shepherd. “I put something to you, Curry—cocker,” this last a credible imitation of Shepherd’s irritating speech mannerism.
“Put away, old Kruger.” Shepherd glazed his face with an affable smile.
“You argue that I have no right here. You bring orders. Get Herbie back, fast; abort the operation; close down the networks. You understand any of that?”
“Only the obvious.”
“Right. You don’t know what they’re talking about when they say close the networks, get the people out. Okay, you give me an order from London. You pass a message to Spendthrift here. Now, I make you an offer, Curry. Either go or assist. There is no possible way anyone can get back to the West before tomorrow evening at the earliest.” He hesitated, genuinely considering the full implications. “Oh, yes, probably some of Spendthrift’s people can start moving first thing. Others may begin to get out by late morning. But nobody is going to move before tomorrow”—he glanced at his watch—“I mean today. Sunday.” A grin at Schnabeln. “Bleep.”
Their hands moved in unison. Back, high above the Mehring Platz, Tubby Fincher looked up from his chair.
“Both of them,” Tiptoes whispered, as the bleeps showed up on the map, the audios crossing one another in the speakers.
“Snug in the Hotel Metropol.” Fincher closed his eyes, asking if Schnabeln’s bleep was out of phase. It was. Ten minutes out. Trying to tell us something? wondered Fincher, shifting his lean rump on the chair. His body was not made for long periods of repose. Had they got Shepherd’s message? Were they trying to say, ‘Here we are now; watch out, we’re coming back’? A hundred times Tubby Fincher had gone over the thing in his head and come up with no stable answers. He also had doubts as to Herbie’s knowledge of the truth; but at least—if Curry had reached them—Herbie would know what he was up against.
Back in the East, in his room, Herbie repeated, “Nobody is going to get back straight away. Not now.”
“Told you: probably too late anyway.”
Herbie, heavy on the sarcasm, said he had gathered as much. “But you see, Curry, I came over on my own initiative to clean up a mess. A mess I made years ago: my mess. Everybody out may be a good order, but it’s one that cannot be obeyed. For one thing, I shall be seeing all the people concerned during the day. I shall be clearing up the mess. So either go now, or stay and assist.”
Curry Shepherd gave what might have been taken, in other people, for a shrug. He was under orders. “Queen and country, all that sort of rot, cocker. Includes orders to give assistance and get you out, but fast.”
If those were Shepherd’s orders, Herbie said, they were instructions that would have, to be bent to the facts. “Either help, as you are ordered, or go now. Get away and save your skin.”
Herbie had known Curry Shepherd for a long time. They went back together into a past littered with betrayals and political polkas of great intricacy. During one of those times, like a thief in the night, Curry had occasionally come over the Wall—God knew how—to carry intelligence in or out. Curry had also been one of those who were involved with the sporadic handling of the Telegraph Boys during their period in the wilderness. For Curry, your skin came second to the job—particularly when the chips were down. Of this Herbie was fully aware. He did not
even wait for a proper response; asking Shepherd about his cover, and getting the answer pat. He was free until Monday morning, when he really had to show the flag and trot around some publishers’ offices. “Go through the motions.”
“You don’t want to waste all of this Sunday, Curry, do you? Not when Uncle Herbie’s on the warpath.”
Curry Shepherd grinned. “Try to make me leave, old cocker. But I have to put it all on the table, though I’m sure it’s there in the old pate. The scarecrow—the Fincher—said I had to impress it on you.” He repeated what Tubby had said, almost word for word. Adding that he did not follow it all himself. “You’re not dealing with a simple double: someone given a bit of training and political propping by us, then let loose over here. It’s not about a straight spinner any more, Herbie. Old Tub said you had to understand you were dealing with a died-in-the-wool, fully-trained Moscow Centre covert. Someone who’s been at it from the beginning—whenever that was. Probably awarded the Order of the Red Banner with snowflakes, or whatever they get for the work. Old Tub said the bloke’s a pro, and he’d suss you quick as John Peel’s hounds on a cold and frosty morning.”
Herbie gave a series of small nods. Tubby Fincher, Curry Shepherd, old Uncle Tom—whatever his name was in that odd English folk song—and all, were perfectly correct. If they were dealing with a Moscow-trained asset the odds were now heavily against them; if only because the asset would also have been wise to Vascovsky and Mistochenkov. It figured. The hush funeral for Jacob Vascovsky. The fact that someone like Kashov had flown in: Kashov, a low-profile operator, Herbie thought. The man even hung on to the rank of major when his true rating should really be something like full colonel, or higher. Kashov, whom Schnabeln had seen with Hecuba. Kashov, hit man organiser; chief weasel to the Centre. Second from the top in Department V: the assassination bureau.
“Okay, Curry. You stay. Do as you’re told, right?”
“Right.”
Herbie moved for the first time, dropping into a chair, asking Schnabeln to go through the steps for him.
Like a bloody dancing instructor, Shepherd thought, but it only took a matter of three minutes or so before he realised how poorly he had been briefed. At the Dahlmannstrasse house Head of Station had, naturally, given him the bare essentials only. The old need-to-know principle working against itself, he thought. Listening to Spendthrift, whom Herbie referred to as Christoph, or even just Chris, was like hearing a new language for the first time.
He understood the basics because they were plain field techniques: mostly handling stuff, the gist of which a cretin could pick up in an hour or two—in a couple of lectures at the school. Less, in fact, because he had once heard Herbie’s famous talk on agent handling, while he was at the school having an oil change. That was an eye-opener, and helped with the language now. He deduced two safe houses, and a series of meetings with six assets crammed into six hours. The handling of the assets was complicated, and not being played by the book. Someone was still setting up a couple of them.
Then they got into an area which froze even Curry Shepherd’s blood, which he always reckoned had been treated with ethylene glycol at birth. The subject was one Luzia Gabell.
“Still using the same name, according to my source, which is sound.” Schnabeln said there was no address, just that she seemed to be working as an amateur whore, in an apartment over an Apotheke near the Alexanderplatz.
Herbie went white. His body tensed to the point of shaking; his fists clenched. An apartment over an Apotheke, near the Alexanderplatz. If there was ever a clincher that was it. Vascovsky had used her—his mistress and adviser on the Schnitzer Group. When the Schnitzer Group had run for cover, or been killed off, nothing could be more appropriate than to set up his woman in a nice apartment, going begging. Where better than the Schnitzer Group’s main safe house? It was the only apartment Herbie knew in that area located above a chemist’s shop. Bitterly, he thought, the bastard probably had the place done up for her as well: so the smells could not percolate up from the dispensary.
As if by some Pavlovian trigger, Herbie Kruger let out a throaty cry of rage. “We go and talk with her …”
“Now?”
“Of course now, Christoph. This has to be done before anything.”
“But …”
“I know. I know the Vopos question people more after midnight. I know they stop cars. But it has to be done.”
“In the early hours, perhaps …”
“You got a set of picks?”
“Of course, but Herbie. If—”
“If we’re stopped, too bad for those who stop us. Curry’ll watch our backs. We go in. I know the damned place where she’s living. That’s what makes it worse. Main safe house of my old network—the one she fucked up.”
Schnabeln saw there was no stopping him. Curry said that, at this time of night, he did quite a good lost drunk act for watching backs. That would not seem odd around the Alexanderplatz.
“What if she’s got a man with her?” Schnabeln asked.
“Then he gets it first,” Herbie still looked drained of colour—the white face of true rage and revenge. “I talk to her. Then …”
Schnabeln made a small choking noise. “You said,” he began.
“I said you wouldn’t have to do it. I do it. I recruited her. She blew a whole network—years of work—sky high. I talk, then I do her,” his hand came up, palm flat, slashing violently over his own windpipe. The action was horribly realistic.
Jesus, thought Curry Shepherd, no wonder they want him back in London. He knew Herbie was not a natural killer—not equipped for those satanic arts. Yet any man, if driven by duplicity, can kill with no second thoughts.
Schnabeln took a step towards him. By the time he reached Herbie’s side the big man had calmed. “It’s what I came to do. First, the one who caused many brave people to go to their graves, and who played the double for a long, long time. Second, the one who’s at it now. We go by car. Yes?”
Schnabeln said some of the way by car. They could do a roistering act for the last couple of blocks, and leave Curry watching them. A charade. Was Herbie sure of the place?
“I’m so sure it’s almost killing me.” The wrath was returning quickly. “It’s Vascovsky’s final pay-off, Chris. His little joke. Let’s get on with it. There’s some tough confessing to be done, and Fräulein Gabell to be sent to her damnation.”
7
HERBIE DOWNED A SWIFT, large vodka before they left the hotel. He also insisted on examining Schnabeln’s wallet of lock picks. A change had come over him, almost terrible in its focused concentration. He issued one order after another: quick, clear and decisive. To Curry Shepherd Herbie suddenly seemed to have become a man with the scent of success—and possibly blood—in his nostrils.
Schnabeln explained separate and devious routes through the hotel to the car park. The trio moved off in different directions, sixty seconds between each departure, arriving in turn to where Schnabeln’s Wartburg stood among a sad scatter of vehicles.
Herbie was the last to reach the car, having taken time to scout the park from at least three different angles. He needed action now: drive—determination—no hesitation. Having put his whole career on the block, Herbie did not intend to be let down now by any of the people upon whom he depended. After all, the reason he had come over the Wall himself lay at the heart of the premise that his own soul, the mainspring of revenge, could not be transplanted into another person: even a dedicated operator like Christoph Schnabeln.
Herbie had removed the Browning automatic from the tie harness. On emerging from the hotel to survey the car park the weapon was back in his waistband, butt down and muzzle pointing outwards.
Before reaching the car he made a brief detour to examine a small grey van parked nearby. Vans were, to Herbie, danger areas: the homes of those surveillance teams known, in the argo of his trade, as peepers.
The van was empty, and Herbie ninety per cent satisfied that there were no leeches on
their backs.
Schnabeln drove with consummate care. Curry, murmuring something about always being the arse-end Charlie, slewed himself uncomfortably around in the back, so that he could watch the rear. Few cars moved in the streets, for it was now almost one-thirty. A policeman on foot patrol, near the hotel, hardly even looked at them.
Not one of the trio would deny the sense of vulnerability, for at this time of night East Berlin took on a look more menacing and grey than during the day: the sinister quality accentuated by the fuzzed angles of buildings, made eerie by the dim street lighting, which caused shadows to leap and blur in strange, unnatural shapes. The streets were more bare and deserted after midnight than in any other city Herbie had ever encountered.
“There is a door to the left of the Apotheke,” Herbie told them. “It used to be open permanently, but there’ll almost certainly be a lock on it now.” He went on to express the hope that Schnabeln knew how to negotiate even difficult—probably Russian—locks at speed. “If you botch it I take over, right? I want in, and I want quiet. Stairs inside; then a landing. Door to the right. No shoulders or forcing. You pick that lock as well: fast. Only if there is a chain on the inside do we smash. Got it?”
Schnabeln said he had got it, though his voice indicated he did not like it one bit.
They parked in a deserted side street off the old Munzstrasse. Five minutes’ easy walk to the place, Herbie said: but they did not plan an easy walk; not with a roistering routine. Roles were taken on from the moment they stepped out of the car—Schnabeln staggering a lot as he went around the vehicle, locking it and testing doors. Herbie and Curry Shepherd rolled around a little, giggling; making obvious attempts to subdue uncontrollable laughter. Curry and Schnabeln had been made to take quick swigs of vodka, just in case they ran into talk-out trouble. As it was, Schnabeln had already consumed his fair share of Schnapps during the evening; but he had the hard, clear head of a controlled drinker.