Apparently, he did not.
After a few minutes of fruitless argument, Mark grew impatient “Look, Corporal, just call the CIA station, tell them Mark Sanders is here to see Thomas Hardy or John Smith or whatever his name may be.”
“Sir, it’s Sergeant, please. And I can assure you, there is no CIA personell present in this building, sir,” the marine insisted.
“Alright, Sergeant, my apologies. Please tell the CIA people I need to urgently talk to someone,” Mark struggled to keep calm thinking the sergeant was playing dumb.
The marine started to grow equally impatient and told Mark to leave the embassy premises before he would be removed by force. Mark sighed and slowly turned around.
As he put the second strap of his backpack on his shoulder, he looked past the walk-through metal detector that separated the small aquarium-like front desk lobby from a larger lobby. He could not believe his eyes. He saw the blond lumbersexual hipster or his twin brother wearing a white shirt and slacks and an embassy staff ID on a lanyard around his neck. He was joking with a brunette who laughed a little too loud.
“Hey, you. You know me, right,” Mark shouted across the lobby. The hipster looked up and pursed his lips. “You don’t fool me, buddy,” Mark said and darted through the Smiths Heimann metal detector which immediately screamed a loud alarm.
The marine ran around the back and tackled Mark hard. Both fell to the ground, wrestled briefly, then the soldier expertly pinned the struggling German down in a hammerlock.
As more marines flooded the lobby and Mark screamed in pain, the hipster finally intervened. He left the perplexed girl and tapped the sergeant on the shoulder. “It’s alright, Sergeant, he’s had enough.”
“Sir, do you know this man?” the marine asked.
“I do. You may let go, I’ll take responsibility,” the blond, bearded man said.
The marine let go, Mark stayed face down on the floor for a few seconds. The armlock had hurt like hell. As he recovered slowly, he made a mental note to ask his Krav Maga trainer Jan about countermeasures against a hold like that.
“Come on, Mr. Sanders, let’s go downstairs,” the hipster said holding out his hand. Mark sat on his butt and took the offered hand to pull himself up. The hipster held on a little longer and looked Mark in the eyes. “It’s time to formally introduce myself, I guess. The name’s Everett, Michael James Everett. I work,” he hesitated. “I work with Mr. Hardy.”
“Mark Sanders, pleased to meet you, I guess.”
Everett took Sanders down a flight of stairs but not before the marine had searched Mark’s backpack. In a room full of lockers Everett put his cell phone into a small locker and offered a larger one to Mark for his backpack. “You can’t take anything electronic inside,” he said.
“I have a spreadsheet to show Hardy, I need the Mac at least,” Mark responded.
“No can do. We’ll have to do this another way then. Is it a big file?” the CIA man asked.
“No, two or three printed pages.”
“Put it on a thumb drive, and I’ll have someone upstairs print it out for us from a non-networked computer,” Everett said and explained the obvious reasons to Mark. Of course, the digital security consultant did not need any explanation. Yet, he found the strict security protocols annoying.
When Everett returned with triplicate printouts after a minute, he held his embassy ID to an RFID sensor, and the frosted glass doors slid open. At the next set of sliding doors, Everett again put his ID to the sensor, and the clear glass doors opened to a large room full of desks. It looked like any old office, with people sitting at desks in front of screens. Some were talking to each other, others into desk phones. On the wall, a TV ran CNN international, and some other screens showed graphs and information feeds. They walked past a coffee kitchen where men and women were eating sandwiches and drinking coffee or sodas. It was a disappointingly normal workplace, Mark realized, until they reached a heavy black door with a big lever instead of a regular door handle. Everett pulled it open, it was nearly eight inches thick. A red light above the door started flashing.
Mark had seen rooms like this one on TV many times, he had always thought it was a device for screenwriters to make dull dialogues seem more interesting. A large screen dominated the room, the walls were black and irregular. This was some sort of soundproofing apparently. Across a long black table with six Herman Miller chairs on each side sat Hardy reading something on a tablet computer.
“I thought gadgets weren’t allowed in here?” Mark chuckled.
“Agency issue,” Hardy replied dryly.
A beep and the loud clack of steel bolts announced the closing of the door and a green light appeared instead of the flashing red one.
“Not happy to see me?” Mark asked sensing some hostility from the agency man.
Hardy breathed in and pushed the air out through his nose. “I tried my best to make you invisible to friend and foe, to protect you and your family. I tried to convince you not to stick your head out, again to protect yourself and your family. But do you do what I tell you? No. You storm into the fucking embassy shouting out my name and fucking CIA in a public lobby.” Hardy was furious, that was easy to see.
Sanders said nothing. Pursing his lips, he looked first at his feet and then at the angry intelligence officer.
Everett broke the silence. “This list you brought, Sanders. Want to tell us what we’re looking at?”
He handed Sanders and Hardy a copy and kept the third one for himself, then sat down across the table from Hardy.
Mark looked over the three printed pages and started to explain while the two others thumbed through the sheets. “This is the list of Polish targets the Russian intelligence agencies, GRU to be precise, have pursued in the last six days. The last ten are the reason I’m here.”
Sanders shuffled through the papers and held up the last page with both hands. With his left index finger Sanders pointed at the location data column and tapped on the white sheet.
“See the fifth column. The coordinates suggest that these targets are located in Berlin. They belong to addresses in Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, et cetera. We believe the Russians are moving their search and destroy operation to Germany.”
“Bravo, Sanders,” Hardy sneered and clapped his hands together twice. “We knew that already.”
“How?” Sanders asked innocently.
“No comment,” Hardy said. “Now you listen very carefully. I’m not going to say this again.” He got up and walked around the table to directly face the German. “You go back home now and make dinner for your wife and son. Tomorrow, you get on the fucking phone and get yourself and Miss Belyakova some well-paid work. And most importantly, you both forget about fucking Poland and fucking GRU and above all the CIA.”
“Alright,” Mark said somewhat fazed by Hardy’s aggressive tone. He nodded his head slowly and pressed his lips together. “I’ll leave you to do your job then.”
“Damn right. It’s our job. Glad you got that,” Hardy said, he emphasized the pronoun. “We’re professionals who get paid to do this work and trained to take the risks. Amateurs should not meddle in our work. Take care, Sanders. Literally, take care.”
Everett opened the door, and the flashing red light came back on. “I’ll show you out,” he said quietly.
“Thanks, Everett,” Hardy said as he rushed past Sanders and left the room with the three pages in his hands.
Everett collected the two remaining copies and motioned Sanders to follow him back out. They passed through the office space again, Mark trolled after the bearded agency officer. Behind two rows of cubicles with heads turning left and right and moving up and down, Mark saw Hardy go into a glass cubicle. This seemed to be his office. In the distance, he could see some personal objects on the desk, picture frames, a navy blue mug, and an orchid in a navy blue ceramic pot. He threw the pages on the desktop and then slouched into his chair.
They passed the security doors, and Everett s
howed Sanders to his locker. Sanders felt disappointed and angry. He had set out to help and got told off like a schoolboy.
“Here, take my card and call me if there’s an emergency,” Everett said as they had reached the center of the larger lobby.
Mark took the card and read it.
“Foreign Agricultural Service? Really?” He chuckled.
“Sure, I travel around Germany and the Central European countries, look at fields and stuff,” Everett joked. “I won’t tell Hardy and you shouldn’t either. But I personally feel it’s better for you and us to have some point of contact without showing up here drawing attention like the Queen of England on a state visit.”
“I’ll reach you at this number?”
“It’s the embassy switchboard but they’ll get to me fastest possible,” Everett explained.
“Thank you, Michael,” Mark extended his hand.
“You’re welcome, Mark. I admire your courage, but Hardy has a point. Saving the world is our job, not yours. You’re putting yourself into harm’s way and your family, too. Leave the job to the pros.”
Mark turned around and walked through the metal detector. The marine gave him a look as he walked past the front desk.
✽✽✽
Smagin looked out the window on the fourth floor. After their motorcade had entered the grounds of the Russian embassy through a metal gate on Behrenstraße, they had been shown to a white annex building overlooking Unter den Linden. Under his corner office window, he saw the trees after which the boulevard was named, a café with a burgundy awning, and tourists strolling under the trees between the four vehicle lanes. He had seen the Brandenburg Gate on the drive to the embassy, it was only a short walk away. He contemplated taking a stroll after setting up his equipment and getting one of the famous Döner kebabs for dinner.
“I’ll get set up, Comrade Colonel,” he said turning away from the window. “Do you need anything from me in the evening?”
The colonel turned around from the desk he had just chosen for himself and disappointed Smagin who hoped for an evening off. “Yes, Captain, we’ll need you here. We’ll be operating differently now. The operatives are much more vulnerable with only light armor, and the targets have it a lot easier getting lost in the civilian population here.”
There go my dinner plans, Smagin thought.
“We will start operations at 2300 hours. Everyone prepare,” Popov shouted through the corridor. From the different rooms, men came out and shouted confirmation of the order. “You, Comrade Captain, will monitor the targets in real time and inform our operators in the field of their movements.”
✽✽✽
Everett closed the glass door behind himself. Hardy just looked at him from behind his desk.
“So, Defiant confirmed our source’s report from Minsk airport. This GRU wet team has already arrived in Berlin,” Everett said with a certain urgency.
“Suspected wet team,” Hardy corrected his junior intelligence officer. “I should’ve let them ship Defiant to Gitmo, would’ve been healthier for everybody involved. Himself included.”
“I got to hand it to the guy, for an amateur he’s really good. Pulls his own weight in the defence of the free world.” Everett chuckled.
“Hah,” Hardy sneered. Then he looked at a photograph of seven men in matching polo shirts on his desk. They were standing in front of a Cessna piston engine aircraft. A brass plaque on the oak frame read ‘Bonn Station Retreat 1988, Winningen/Mosel’.
“It’s in his blood, I guess. The insubordination, too.”
Forty-Five
“I’ll call Bilinski in Kraków and update him on the move of the suspected wetworks guys to Berlin,” Hardy told Everett. “You try to get some more info from the Minsk airport source on the number of operatives and their cover identities. After that talk to the guys in signals intelligence. Maybe they can pick up something in or out of the embassy. What was the name of the guy hanging out with the Russian janitor once in a while?”
“The ex-Stasi guy? His codename is Ecki. Want me to contact him?”
“Yeah, he should go get a beer tonight. See if he can quietly get something out of the janitor.”
“Consider it done,” Everett said and left.
✽✽✽
The Car2go was gone, someone else had rented it probably just a short while after Mark had parked it. He scanned the area with the app for another. He couldn’t find any nearby, so he decided to use public transport. After circling around the embassy, he walked through the Brandenburg Gate and past the tourists posing for photos and selfies on Pariser Platz. He entered the S-Bahn station in front of the Adlon Hotel and boarded the train.
When Mark got off the S-Bahn at Nordbahnhof, he decided to walk instead of boarding the Tram number 12. He would pick up Xandi at the daycare center. On the walk there he could do two things that needed doing after his uncomfortable encounter with Hardy. First, he would let off some steam on the two-mile walk and second he would call Svetlana and see how they were progressing with the bomb.
He called Svetlana on TLKS after he had crossed Brunnenstraße and hiked up the hill through Volkspark am Weinbergsweg.
“How did it go,” she asked Mark without a greeting.
“And hello to you,” he answered. “Not perfect, I got my backside spanked like a schoolboy. The professionals don’t want us amateurs messing around.” He emphasized the words professionals and amateurs.”
“Hey,” Svetlana shouted through the phone. “Nobody calls me an amateur. Especially not this old fart, John Smith.”
“He said, they already knew about the GRU killers moving here.”
“Yeah, well. Did he say what they’ll be doing about it?” she asked.
“No, not a word. Probably not much,” Mark answered. “Anyway, I had contemplated telling Hardy about our plans on the way there. The way he treated me and our intel, though, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“No, definitely not,” Svetlana said. “He’d just be telling us about the Russian nukes again and how his president is worried about them.”
“It’s a new president now, he might have more balls,” Mark speculated but then reminded himself that the 46th president came from the same pressure chamber as the 44th. The United States Congress had probably shaped him just the same, even though he was a Republican.
“Whatever. We’re moving forward very nicely here,” Svetlana reported. “We just deployed a beta version to a local server here at Motz. We’re going to test our baby now, see how it behaves under an artificial load. Pyotr said he wanted to work through the night and get his deployment team involved once he’s sure it’ll work as advertised. He puts the ETA at sometime tomorrow.”
“Great,” Mark exclaimed. “So we’ll make history in the next twenty-four hours?”
“My guess is yes,” Svetlana laughed excitedly. Mark wondered at the unusual girlish tone in the normally undercooled hacker’s voice.
“What about security?” Mark asked.
“Pyotr keeps everything on TLKS’ Git repository which he let me look over. I’d do a few things differently than these guys but my way wouldn’t necessarily be better. Dernov and his crew are among the best I’ve seen.”
“Good, what about physical security?”
Svetlana went quiet, Mark could hear her footsteps on the wooden floor as she walked into another room. “Dernov still has some trust issues, he insists on holing up in here. I myself plan to see someone in the evening, and she promised to cook for me. So, I guess, I’ll be off the streets for the whole night.”
✽✽✽
“Thank you, Comrade Captain, but you know, a Döner costs four or five euros at worst. Letting me keep the rest is overly generous,” the man in the blue coverall said and looked at the twenty euro note in his hand.
“No, no, thank you, Mikhail Yevgenievich,” Smagin said. “You’ll find me in room 4.12, the open space on the corner of the two streets.”
Smagin had roamed through t
he embassy’s corridors looking for someone to fetch him a Döner kebab for dinner. Most embassy workers just ignored the short man with the greasy hair. Some others, especially the women, sped up and looked at their watches as if being late for a meeting to avoid the man who had something to do with the mean-looking crew suddenly working out of the annex. Rumor had it that they were Spetsnaz, they all sure looked the part. The embassy staff were not very keen on knowing more about the new arrivals. Yet, they worried that their showing up was a sign that the war would be coming to Germany.
Mikhail Yevgenievich, the embassy’s janitor since 1998, was the only one who did not avoid the mysterious men. They reminded him of himself when he was still in the Red Army. Once a dashing corporal in the 6th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade who had quite some success with the Mädchen of East Berlin, he had slowly devolved into the old man he was now after the fall of the Wall and a few unsuccessful attempts at earning a living in the reunified country. His East German wife had left him in 1992 for a Wessi, a West German who made big money as a real estate broker. Mikhail was lucky to get the job at the embassy which earned him a steady, if lousy, salary. It was enough to get a beer and a shot of vodka every other day at his Karlshorst Eckkneipe, a corner bar near his one-bedroom apartment.
This unsoldierly-looking captain’s tip of fifteen euros would buy him more than one drink in the evening. He thanked the captain again and admired the bulky men in black suits walking back and forth across the corridor, talking to each other, sometimes joking. He glanced sideways into a room where three men were cleaning their pistols and filling up magazines. Their thin bulletproof vests were visible under their white shirts, and with their suit jackets hanging on the backs of their chairs also their shoulder holsters were exposed.
Mikhail Yevgenievich straightened his back and sped up his stride. He suddenly felt a sense of purpose and pride supporting a mission of a secret unit, even if it was just by running a small errand for some geeky captain.
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