If The Bed Falls In

by Paul Casselle

  “Well, thanks for getting me out of there, anyway,” said Joseph.

  “Oh, no, don’t thank me. For fuck’s sake don’t do that.”

  Joseph looked up from his sandwich.

  “First rule in this game,” explained Boris, “is you don’t have to thank anyone… why?… Because no one is doing anything for you. There are only two reasons that people like us do anything. One, because we are ordered to, and two, because we are saving our own skins.”

  “Suits me fine,” said Joseph.

  “Good,” emphasised Boris, “because if you’re looking for respect… or love, choose a different profession.”

  “Fine.” Joseph drank some coffee. “So, who ordered you to look after me?”

  “You’re full of questions, aren’t you?”

  “Never let any possibly useful piece of information get away,” Joseph responded.

  “You think I have useful info for you?”

  “I don’t know, do you?”

  “What do I get in return?” Boris said with a laugh.

  “So you do have something?”

  Boris thought for a few moments, then took a long drink from his cup.

  “Listen, this has been a little tough on you; doing your first deletion without a number one, the fucking local cops sticking their noses in… ahhh, fuck it… I’m going to do you a solid. But listen good, James Bond junior, you didn’t get any of this from me, right?” Joseph nodded. “Tonight was not the first time I’ve encountered Aabzari Al-Ghazali. I met him two weeks ago.”

  “What do you mean? Coincidentally?”

  “Fuck no, there are no coincidences for us. I was ordered to prime him.”

  “You set him up?”

  “Yeah, look, this is a fucking dirty business, but someone’s gotta do it or we’re all fucked, right?”

  “So, what happened?”

  “We needed extreme leverage on him…”

  “Who needed leverage on him?”

  “I don’t fucking know. Listen, you want to hear this or what?… So, I got talking to him in a bar; got his confidence, then offered him something I knew he wouldn’t refuse. There’s one thing you can always rely on that no man will refuse… a good fuck. He’s been away from his wife for a long time. He’s missing his life back home; stuck in a strange land, you know. So, I set him up with a prostitute, in the same fucking hotel he works in. Then as soon as he’d got his dick out I burst in and pretended to mug him at gun point. So, I gave him the chance to jump me, let him get hold of the gun, struggled some more, then – bang – the gun went off, and the hooker got it right in the chest. Now he’s standing there with a smoking gun in his hand and a dead hooker at his feet; I fucking own him, right? Now, he’d do anything I asked to escape me turning him in, right?”

  “But you’d got to get rid of the dead body?”

  “What dead body?… There was no hooker and there wasn’t no dead body. The gun had blanks and the CIA agent, playing the hooker, had a squib under her blouse. The whole thing’s a set-up.”

  “So, what did you get him to do?” Joseph asked.

  Boris went quiet, and an uncomfortable look crawled across his face.

  “Look son, I’m not proud of everything I do, but I gotta trust that someone in this fucking world knows what they’re doing, right? I just follow orders, right? Yeah, I know that’s what the Nazis said… Ahhh fuck it!”

  Boris got up and went to the counter. Joseph watched him order and return with two fresh coffees.

  “I got you another one. Don’t know if you want it, but if you don’t, no matter, I’ll have it.”

  “What did you get Aabzari Al-Ghazali to do, Boris?”

  “Well… that was two weeks ago, right? What major incident can you recall happening between two weeks ago and now?”

  Joseph closed his eyes and replayed the last two week’s news over in his head. Suddenly he re-opened his eyes. Boris looked at him and pushed his lips together like a school boy trying not to cry.

  “Yeah, you got it boy. You got it.”

  “The crazed gunman that opened fire on a café full of people in the centre of Berlin? That was Aabzari Al-Ghazali?”

  “Yep! But he weren’t crazed, but crazy scared. The police were supposed to take him out at the scene, but you’ve seen what bozos they are. He got away. So, before he became an embarrassment you took him out.”

  “But why would the CIA want to have fifty innocent people gunned down like that?”

  “Go figure! I just hope they know what they’re fucking doing.” He looked at his watch. “Shiiit, look at the time. We gotta get you on an airplane, boy.”

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  Chapter 24

  “Pretty tough on a young guy, eh?” commented Sherry. “But the good ol’ CIA got you out of trouble as usual. Where would you Limeys be without us?”

  Sherry and Joseph were still on Wilhelmstraße. Joseph realised that while he had been talking they had passed the British Embassy without him noticing. It was nothing important, but he often found it comforting to lay eyes on a British Embassy when he was abroad. Maybe it was simply that he was able to visualise where he would run if the shit hit the fan. But the irony was that if he did run to them they would completely refuse to help. He was a spy; the only profession not officially recognised by embassies.

  The two lonely figures turned left onto Behrenstraße. A short way down this road was number sixty-six; the consular and visa department of the Russian Embassy. They slowed their pace a little as they passed the grey stone, five storey building on the opposite side of the street.

  “And there she is,” Sherry said under her breath.

  They took the next left, and were a good distance up the street before they spoke.

  “So,” said Joseph, “they close their doors to the public at sixteen hundred hours. The staff leave at eighteen hundred, then a single security guard does his round every thirty minutes.”

  “No additional security around the ‘chip’?” asked Sherry.

  “We think that they have no idea that we know it’s here. The broadcasts we’ve been intercepting suggest the ‘chip’ is already in Moscow, but we have someone on the inside; we know that it’s still here.”

  Sherry cocked her head slightly, and looked at Joseph.

  “You have a Russian double agent?”

  “You didn’t know?” asked Joseph.

  “No, I didn’t,” she said, then paused. “I hate fucking double agents. Where’s their goddamn loyalty?”

  “Ah, so you’re a, ‘my country right or wrong’ kind of gal, are you?”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  Sherry stared straight ahead and set her jaw to the bitter winds.

  “Err, the ‘wrong’ bit,” said Joseph.

  “What, you never get anything wrong? We all get things wrong sometimes. Well, so do countries. You don’t turn your back on your own flesh and blood because they make a goddamn mistake!”

  “We’re not talking about mistakes, Sherry, we’re talking about deep set, misplaced ideologies.”

  “Well, I still think it’s a gutless choice.”

  “Spoken like a true American.”

  “Fuck you!” responded Sherry.

  “Spoken like a true American,” Joseph repeated with a smile.

  Despite the rolling tide of animosity between them, sex was unfailingly great. They brought the animal out in each other. Maybe, if one had the dubious pleasure of seeing them in congress, their behaviour may have looked abusive. But from the inside it was some of the most satisfying ‘letting off steam’ either of them had experienced.

  “Goddamn,” exclaimed Sherry rolling from atop Joseph exhaustedly onto her back, “you really can fuck!”

  Joseph found Sherry’s coarseness less appealing post-orgasm, but he was aware that it was he that changed, not her. The male sex drive, produced single-mindedly by raging hormones, disappeared as viscerally as it arrived after ej
aculation, and this after-shock was sometimes as lachrymose as it was soporific.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you sure, Joseph?” Sherry probed gently.

  Maybe as much as Joseph found the immediate post sexual period emotionally confusing and a little disconnecting, Sherry seemed to have an equal and opposite reaction.

  “Are you still pissed at me banging on about going in alone?” she asked. “Look, fuck it, Joseph. If it means so much to you, we’ll do it together.”

  “No, Sherry…”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Going in ten strong is crazy; I agree. So…” She rolled onto her side to face him, then stroked his cheek. “You go in with your team. We’ll stand down.”

  Joseph got out of bed.

  “Why are you giving up so easily now?” he demanded.

  “Jeeez Joseph, what do you want? You’ve been fighting me tooth and nail to go in alone, and now I’m saying yes, and you’re complaining about that.”

  “Well… what’s changed your mind?”

  “I don’t fucking know…” said Sherry. “Maybe I’m just being nice.”

  “And how do I trust that… Suddenly you’re being, ‘nice’.”

  “Joseph, is it really impossible for us to actually just act like normal, real people for once? Do we always have to be on our guard? Can’t you just lower your defences for once… for me?”

  “You’re CIA, Sherry, and I’m MI6. We can’t pretend that we’re on the same side. We’re fighting for the same result, but we’re doing it from different perspectives. You said it yourself; my country right or wrong. Your loyalty will always be to the US, mine never will.”

  “Yeah, and you just said it, ‘we’re fighting for the same result’, so, we’re virtually on the same side.”

  “Today, Sherry. We’re on the same side today, but what about tomorrow? In our world, friend and enemy are two sides of the same coin. In this business that coin doesn’t take a lot to flip.”

  “So, you don’t trust me?”

  “I can’t trust you. That’s the game we’re both in. It doesn’t matter if I want to trust you or not… I can’t.”

  Joseph collapsed into an armchair. Sherry sat up in bed and looked at him.

  “Joseph?” she said. He looked up. “Do you want us to be able to trust each other?”

  “Well, of course I do, but…”

  Sherry held up her hand and cut him off.

  “Then fuck the CIA, fuck MI6, fuck them all… we can decide to trust each other… Give me your hand.” She reached out to him. He took her hand. “You and me, kiddo. It’s just you and me, okay?”

  “Really?”

  “Fucking A, baby!”

  Joseph got up and his face softened. He turned and went to the bathroom. Sherry laid back onto the bed and smiled. Joseph came back into the bedroom.

  “Okay, Sherry, you and me, fuck the rest of them.”

  “That’s the Joseph I know and love.”

  Joseph looked quizzically at her.

  “Love?”

  “It’s a manner of speech, asshole.”

  Joseph sighed.

  “Listen,” he said, “you’re right, I have been an ‘asshole’. The Russians are your fight… I’ll stand my team down. We’ll be here if you need us, but it’s your gig. You go in with your guys, alone.”

  Sherry sat up and grinned.

  “Now how fucking hard was that, asshole?”

  At breakfast the next morning, Sherry announced to Joseph that she was taking her team in that night. Ten o’clock was when she needed his team to be standing by.

  Joseph spent the day trying to amuse himself. He briefed his agents and then gave them the day off. They seemed to have no trouble finding things to do in their designated twosomes. At nine fifteen Sherry knocked at his door. Joseph let her in.

  “Okay babe, we’re on our way,” she said.

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks, but this one’s a cinch.”

  “We’ll be right across the street if you need us,” Joseph said.

  “No, I got this. You guys stay here.”

  “Okay… if you say so,” he said. “I’ll see you when you get back, then.”

  She held her hand up and formed it into a gun shape, then fired it at him accompanying it with an explosive noise. Joseph pushed the door closed and went back to the book he had been trying to read. It was the only one that had caught his eye earlier that day when he had perused the bookshelves downstairs. The cover showed the twin towers of the New York World Trade Center, and the title read The Truth Behind The Lies. He turned to page fifteen, which was as far as he had managed to read, when the phone rang. He stared at the bedside table. Sherry had only just left. There was no possibility that she was contacting him so soon. And besides, she would call on his mobile not the room phone. He picked it up.

  “Frintern?” said a familiar voice.

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to come home,” said Simmons.

  “Okay. The work is being done tonight.”

  “I know,” said Simmons.

  “We can come home first flight tomorrow.”

  “No,” said Simmons, “you’re booked on a flight leaving at eleven… tonight.”

  “Tonight? But I need to liaise with our American friends.”

  “Tonight. I want you out of the hotel within the next twenty minutes.”

  “What!? What’s the rush?”

  “Do I have to remind you, Mr Frintern, that you do not question me?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m just confused…”

  “Well, be confused on the way to the airport. You now have nineteen minutes to leave the hotel.”

  The phone went dead. Fifteen minutes later five British agents were in a taxi heading for Tegel International Airport. Joseph looked back at the hotel, and watched it diminished into a single spot of light behind them.

  “Shit!” he said.

  “What is it, Sir?” asked one of his subordinates.

  Joseph had suddenly realised that he hadn’t left a message for Sherry at the hotel reception. He had meant to do so, but in his rush to evacuate the building within the time Simmons had ordered, he had forgotten.

  “It’s nothing,” Joseph answered the agent next to him, “it’s nothing important.”

  Sherry, accompanied by three CIA agents, approached sixty-six Behrenstraße on foot, hugging the buildings and staying in the shadows. The fifth member of their party had remained behind the wheel of their car which they had parked a short distance away. Sherry nodded to one of her team, and he stepped forward and picked the door lock. They filed into the building.

  According to the intelligence, the security guard would currently be on the top floor having just completed his half-hourly sweep of the embassy. As they got to the foot of the stairs they heard the mechanical whirl of the lift starting high above them. They moved silently up the stairs. On the fourth floor they glided down the corridor like phantoms, then stopped outside a door that was simply marked, ‘комната 403’. The agent that had picked the street door lock stepped forward. He looked to Sherry. She put her hand up and carefully looked down the corridor in both directions. She turned to the agent at the door and signalled with an almost imperceptible nod. The three agents stood to one side allowing Sherry into the room. They followed close behind her. The moon shone brightly through the window, illuminating the room enough to make the need for torches unnecessary. She scanned the room, then tapped the man to her right on the shoulder. She pointed to a picture of the Kremlin hanging on the far wall. The man crossed the room. His foot caught in a telephone cable causing the device to fall noisily to the floor. He stopped dead and spun his head and shoulders one hundred and eighty degrees to throw a terrified glance at Sherry. She set her lips angrily and raised both hands in a reprimanding and beseeching expression. The man mouthed, ‘sorry’. Sherry waved him on. He reached the picture and lifted the heavy, gilt fram
e from the wall exposing a safe. Opening a tool pouch attached to his chest, he worked on the safe, and had the door swinging on its hinges within twenty seconds. His gloved hand explored the contents, then re-emerged triumphantly holding a clear, plastic container aloft.

  The whole party turned as one towards the door. Sherry motioned the two agents nearest the entrance to move out. A split second after they had traversed the threshold, two distinctive noises, in quick succession, broke the silence of the building. The remaining agent and Sherry were in no doubt as to the source of the noise, and the sound of her two agents crumpling to the floor, outside in the corridor, was unnecessary conformation. Sherry waved the remaining agent to join her at the door. She held up three fingers, using them to count down to slipping their guns around the doorway and letting off rounds simultaneously in both directions. Continuing their covering fire, they ran into the hallway, quickly establishing that the assailants were a group of Russian soldiers and were to their right. Turning left and running backwards, the two CIA operatives kept the soldiers at bay with a barrage of gunfire from their semi-automatics. They reached the end of the corridor, threw themselves through the double doors and careered down the stairs. A hail of bullets rained down on them as the Russians reached the stairs above.

  A pained shout of, ‘fuck!’ arrested Sherry’s descent. She turned to see her comrade holding his shoulder. He held up the clear, plastic container in his unaffected hand, and threw it to her. She caught it and looked back, not understanding why he was taking time to throw it to her. Before he could answer the question in her eyes, his head exploded by curtesy of a well aimed, large calibre Russian bullet. Sherry put the plastic container into her pocket and continued down another flight of stairs. As she turned the penultimate corner to the ground floor, she was confronted by a lone soldier. She stopped, and the two warriors stood motionless pointing their weapons impotently at each other. The Russian swivelled his eyes left then right, as if hoping that backup had miraculously appeared behind him, but Sherry and he were alone, and they had to decide the fate of the ‘chip’ between themselves.