Another Man's Freedom Fighter

by Joseph Carter

  He pulled out his phone and walked back to number two whose head was now surrounded by an almost circular lake of blood a yard wide. Sanders danced around the blood and photographed the dead man’s face from the side. He also made a picture of the man’s left hand that lay limp beside the dead body. He did the same with number one and also took a photo of the half-exposed gun in the man’s shoulder holster before pulling him off the front door by his right ankle.

  Mark left the building with the bag in his left hand and the gun in his right. He kept the Glock close to his leg, so onlooking neighbors would not freak out immediately. Yet, he wanted it handy, in case the two goons had not come alone.

  Ofelia had already pulled out of the parking spot, the motor was running. No doubt, if it had taken Mark another half-minute, she would have made a run for it as agreed.

  Mark jogged toward their car and opened the trunk. He pushed the shot-up go-bag in and pulled the fake plates from the side pocket. He closed the lid, popped the set of plates on back and front then got in the passenger seat.

  “We need to go to Motzstraße and pick up Dernov,” he said apologetically.

  “What the fuck,” Ofelia shouted as she shifted into first gear and slammed the pedal to the floor. The car jumped forward and then accelerated along the cobbled street.

  Mark programmed the navigation system. “Sorry, that was one thing I forgot to mention,” he said.

  Ofelia pulled onto Schönhauser Allee and accelerated. “Lucky us, there is not that much traffic at this time of night,” she said.

  Mark sent the pictures of the dead Russians to Svetlana via TLKS together with a message explaining it was self-defense and that the building’s camera certainly filmed him during the act.

  Ofelia eyed over to her husband while navigating through Berlin Mitte. She sensed that he was a little shaken and that there was an acrid smell on him. She would have called it the smell of gunpowder.

  “Anything you want to tell me about the two minutes we weren’t together?” she asked.

  “Not now, kochanie,” Mark replied. “Not now.”

  ✽✽✽

  Thomas Hardy was used to late nights, but the lack of sleep for over twenty-four hours caught up with the man in his mid-fifties. He wasn’t the youngest anymore, he had to admit.

  The ambassador was not a happy diplomat either. Hardy’s grandmother would have washed his excellency’s mouth with soap for most of the words he had used on the phone.

  The desk phone chirped, Everett with an update. He picked up the receiver immediately.

  “Three cars left the embassy within a few minutes time about fifteen ago, diplomatic plates, each manned with two guys. Our bum had to wait before he could call it in because the Polizei on guard were shooing him away.”

  “Okay, what’d Verfassungsschutz say?”

  “The duty guy said he’d pull the agency’s president out of bed. No idea where they’re going to take it from there,” Everett answered through the phone. “In any case, I forwarded the description and the plates of the three cars to them.”

  “Let’s hope they take this seriously and for once pull out their hot potatoes for themselves,” Hardy sneered.

  “Potatoes?”

  “It’s a German saying. Für jemanden die Kartoffeln aus dem Feuer holen. We’ve been burning our fingers getting their potatoes out of the fire for over seventy years. I, for one, am getting tired of it,” Hardy said and slammed the receiver back on its cradle.

  ✽✽✽

  Once the Sanders’ car was on Schönhauser, Mark started the backup sequence of his phone, contacts, emails, apps, and pictures were copied to a cloud server. He pulled Ofelia’s phone out from the center console and did the same with her’s.

  As they reached Alexanderplatz, he spotted an orange van standing at the curb opposite the Alexa mall. “I like that one, it’s perfect,” he pointed at it.

  “Got it, I’ll stop at the light right behind it,” Ofelia replied. She took the foot off the accelerator, and they rolled toward the green light, it turned yellow, then red.

  Perfect timing, Mark thought.

  The employee of the Berliner Straßenreinigung had already emptied the orange public trash can into the van’s back and got seated again. Now his focus was on the traffic light and not the family car that pulled up behind him. He did not notice the two fairly new smartphones Mark expertly threw into the three-by-three foot opening in the back of the dump van. They both made a quiet thump when they landed on the pile of banana peels, plastic bottles, and half-eaten Döner kebabs.

  “Nothing but net,” Mark smirked as the window buzzed back up.

  “Three points, baby,” Ofelia said.

  “Six, kochanie, it should be six points. Two difficult shots, that.”

  Ofelia overtook the van and sped along Leipziger Straße, at this time of night a pleasantly empty avenue. They passed Leipziger Platz, then Potsdamer Platz, on Bülowstraße they turned right. When Nollendorfplatz came up, Mark looked at the screen of the navigation.

  “Crap, it’s one way streets all around, we can’t turn left at Nolli,” he said. “But I need to get to Dernov fastest possible.”

  “I hate the idea, but okay,” Ofelia said anticipating Marks plan and pulled onto a shoulder on the left side of Kleiststraße, a white gate closed off Nollendorfplatz for vehicle traffic.

  Mark took the Glock and unbuckled. “Wait, I need a bag or something.”

  “I have shoes in a Jutebeutel in the back. Take the jute bag,” Ofelia said.

  Mark took the jute bag, shoved the gun inside, and jogged across Nolli. He passed under the U-Bahn tracks and crossed the street on the other side. As he entered Motzstraße, he already saw the black luxury SUV parked across the street from number 1. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thought.

  He crossed Motz at the side entrance of the former theater and calculated what to do. There were at least two armed Russians in the building somewhere between the front door and Dernov’s top-floor apartment. Would they take Dernov or kill him? If they took him, would they take the stairs or the elevator? Impossible odds, he thought.

  Then suddenly, he saw the door open, and three figures stumbled out of the narrow entrance. It was two big men who carried the much shorter and thinner Dernov in the middle. Completely different odds.

  They were busy finding a way through the parked cars and did not sense Mark walking up to them from behind. They found a gap behind a beech tree planted on the edge of the sidewalk.

  Mark closed in on the trio, and when he was eight feet behind, he pulled the Glock out of the jute bag and raised it. His heart raced. He synced his pace with theirs.

  “He, wo geht’s denn hier zum Berghain,” he faked a drunken loll.

  “It’s not here, you drunken faggot. Fuck off,” the Russian on the right of Dernov’s said halfway turning his head.

  Pop, pop. Mark did not miss at this short range. The first shot hit the man above the ear, no way to tell where the second bullet went. The man fell sideways against the beech tree and Dernov with him. The left-hand goon scrambled to pull out his gun, but he did not make it.

  Pop, pop. Brains and blood splattered from the back of his skull onto the sidewalk. He dropped like a bag of potatoes.

  Forty-Eight

  Dernov lay limp between the two dead Russians. He was out, that was for sure. Mark could not know how long he would be unconscious. He put the gun back into the jute and grabbed Dernov by his belt. The skinny man’s pelvis lifted off the ground easily enough. With the jute dangling on his shoulder, Mark now grabbed the entrepreneur’s hoodie collar with his left hand and manhandled Dernov against the trunk of the tree. Then he bowed down and let the limp body fall on his right shoulder.

  Just in time, the Sanders’ family car screeched to a halt. Mark with Dernov on his shoulder made through the gap. Ofelia left the motor running and jogged around the hood to open the passenger door. Mark lifted the Russian into the passenger seat and secured his body and his arms wi
th the safety belt. Wouldn’t be good if he starts thrashing around once he wakes up, Mark thought and pulled the belt tight.

  Ofelia went in the back seat with Xandi, and Mark took the driver’s seat. Just as he closed the door, he heard a loud scream. It was a high voice, probably a woman’s. He could easily imagine what had prompted her to scream in the wee morning hours. Two men shot dead on the sidewalk.

  ✽✽✽

  “Anna squad, this is tsentr, report,” Sergeant Major Krug had already repeated the request three times. Since Anna’s last update over five minutes had passed. SemFoNi showed their position unchanged at Motzstraße. There was no reaction to the call.

  “Chto za khren, what the hell is wrong with these Volking people. First Vasily goes quiet, now Anna,” Colonel Popov swore. “Galina squad, get moving,” he shouted into the office space. “You will be briefed en route.”

  “I propose to send Galina to the Dernov residence, and maybe we should deploy another squad for the woman. I’ll have a fix on her very shortly,” Smagin said while ferociously typing on his keyboard.

  “Of course to Dernov’s house, send them what they need to their handsets,” Popov grunted. “And you better get a result on the woman, Smagin. And fast.”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel.” Smagin was mad at himself, he had not got a valid location for Mlada in over an hour. While he had her MSISDN and he had managed to place her and this Sanders in the vicinity of Dernov, he was now unable to track her. Her phone seemed to ping in Delhi one minute, then in Kairo or Istanbul another. She had masked her whereabouts on a network level, an amazing feat.

  One of the mercenaries jogged up to the three GRU officers from behind. “Comrade Colonel, we’re monitoring the police band on our own equipment. Schöneberg police department just deployed two squad cars to Motzstraße in response to an emergency call. A double homicide, two men shot dead in the street.”

  That very second, the redirected Boris squad reported to center. “Tsentr, this is Boris from the Sanders residence. Come in,” the radio squeaked.

  “This is tsentr, report,” Shashka said.

  “Two men down, double-taps to the center mass, kill shot to the neck in one case, the head in another. And some additional misfires. We found 9 mm casings in the building’s entrance hall. The operatives must have been surprised, they did not fire back. Guns are holstered. This is amateur work, but very fierce work.”

  Shashka looked at Colonel Popov. “This man, Sanders, it’s him,” he said.

  “Go to the Dernov apartment, take three more squads,” Popov said. Shashka left. Popov leaned over the desk and looked at Smagin. “Captain, where is this man?”

  “I have a ping from his cell phone just three hundred meters from here, on Unter den Linden. But if he’s here now, it’s unlikely he could have killed our team on Motzstraße. It’s at least a fifteen-minute drive.”

  “Zinaida squad will have a look,” the colonel ordered Smagin. “Zinaida, get moving,” he called through the annex’ top floor. “Smagin, what have you not told me about this man?”

  “There is nothing, Comrade Colonel. Here, see my dossier. A father of one, married since just over a year. Been a rising star in the Berlin startup scene, PR trip to the States with the Bundeskanzlerin, successful with investors and customers. Then suddenly he falls out of favor with his investors in Paramond, a digital security company. No explanation why he left the company, his co-founder takes over his shares for a penny to the dollar. He vanishes for a while then works freelance for everyone willing to pay him. His wife makes the money in the family, he collects some sort of childcare benefit. This is what there’s to know about this character.”

  “Military training, criminal record?”

  Smagin made a few more taps on the keyboard.

  “Ten months conscription service in a signals corps twenty years ago. Nothing serious. Tax authorities looked into him for some thing or another, no conviction. No other criminal charges, no history of violence, nothing.” Smagin tapped away on his keyword and looked up more information in German government databases and Mark Sanders’ bank records. In his head, he checked off the standard GRU checklist for evaluating opposition agents. “No gun permit, no known ownership, no gun club membership, no memberships in martial arts clubs, he pays a personal trainer, and that’s that.”

  Popov slammed his fist on the desk. “Blyad.”

  “Zinaida for tsentr,” the radio squeaked.

  “Zinaida, this is Popov, report,” he answered.

  “There is a garbage truck traveling the length of the boulevard,” the voice explained. “It seems, the signal moves with this truck, Comrade Colonel.”

  “Alright, abort,” the colonel grunted into the handset.

  “I have a license plate for his car,” Smagin told Popov. “The German autobahns are toll roads with cameras every twenty-something kilometers. I’ll try to access the collecting agency’s live monitoring.”

  Smagin opened a chat to a group of fellow GRU 6th Directorate operators. He asked if anyone of them had accessed the German toll collector before. In under a minute, he had a positive feedback complete with instructions on how to get into the system.

  “Did the homicide witnesses give a plate and description of the car? Check that, too, Smagin. We need to be diligent with this one,” the Colonel grunted.

  “There’s more to this man than what’s in your file,” Popov said leaning in on Smagin’s desk.

  ✽✽✽

  Everett ran through the station and almost threw himself against Hardy’s glass door. “Shit’s hit the fan, boss. Two homicides in Schöneberg. Big guys shot in the head. There’s an APB out on a license plate registered to an agency front,” he spilled out the key facts.

  “Fuck this stupid fucker,” Hardy exploded. “It’s Defiant. Find him. He was in Schöneberg for a reason, maybe for that Russian woman.”

  “Got it,” Everett acknowledged and ran back out leaving the door half-open.

  Great, now I’ll have to explain how these CIA plates ‘got lost’, Hardy thought. Then it dawned on him that Sanders might have been the target of a hit himself. It would make much more sense than him just running around town killing people. He got up and ran after Everett. The usual CIA protocol for finding a subject would be too slow to find Sanders.

  ✽✽✽

  “Kochanie, please fire up the burner phones. I need to let Svetlana know we’re on the way,” Mark said.

  Ofelia unstrapped herself and crawled into the back. Her fingers inspected the large hole in the black canvas. She noticed the blood, but chose to ignore it. She unzipped the bag and pulled the two blister packs with prepaid phones out. They had used the same make during their dry runs. She fired up both phones simultaneously, just like they had practiced.

  The SUV crawled through the maze of Schöneberg’s narrow one-way streets at the thirty kilometers per hour speed limit. Sanders decided it would be best to stick to the rules of the road and not attract any more attention. It would take a few minutes to get to Martin-Luther-Straße, the main axis taking them out of Berlin. The fastest way out of town would lead south and then west avoiding the busy center of the city that was slowly waking up.

  One of the burners rang. Ofelia hit the green button. “Tell your husband, he drives like my grandma,” Svetlana’s voice came out of the cheap loudspeaker. Two virgin SIMs handshaking with the same base station simultaneously is a statistical anomaly that goes undetected by even the most prying eyes. But it would be noticeable if one knew exactly what to look for. Svetlana had proposed this as their best way to light a flare in case they needed to talk while off the grid.

  “Thank you, I heard that,” Mark said. “You’re on your way?”

  “Not yet,” she replied. “I have to deal with your video problem first. But don’t worry about me, I’m safe. Do you have Dernov with you?”

  “Yes, but he’s in bad shape. Unconscious since we found him,” Mark explained. “We’ll hit A100 in about five mi
nutes.” They drove past Schöneberger Rathaus, where Kennedy made his famous speech in 1963.

  ✽✽✽

  “The police are cordoning off the scene,” Shashka told Popov through his headset. He sat in the passenger seat of a black luxury sedan with diplomatic plates, motor running.

  “Stand by, Sergeant Major,” Popov replied. “Smagin has a hit on the license plates.”

  “This is Smagin,” the hacker said. “They just passed a toll collection camera at the Wexstraße onramp onto A100. This is five minutes away for you.”

  “I know the way,” the mercenary in the driver’s seat said and accelerated.

  The convoy of three sedans and SUVs sped along Martin-Luther-Straße at almost one hundred kilometers per hour. It would take them less than five minutes, ignoring the one way streets, speed limits, and red lights on the way.

  ✽✽✽

  The Funkturm, old West Berlin’s landmark glowed in the rising sun straight ahead. The Sanders and their still unresponsive passenger passed Heidelberger Platz on the relatively empty Autobahn. Mark kept scanning his surroundings, including the mirrors.

  One of the burner phones rang, and Ofelia answered it with a hesitant hallo.

  “This is Thomas Hardy. I need to talk to your husband, Pani Ofelio,” the voice on the phone said.

  Ofelia pressed the loudspeaker button. “A Mister Hardy for you, Mark,” she said and held the phone near Mark’s right ear.

  “So, Svetlana is not the only smart hacker in town,” Mark greeted the CIA man.

  “They’re on to you, Sanders,” Hardy said ignoring the remark. “Three cars left the embassy courtyard with some mean-looking customers inside.”

  “And three more just left,” Everett added from the background.

  “You can exit A100 at Hohenzollerndamm and just go straight to the U.S. consulate on Clayallee. Everett will brief the marines, and they’ll wave you in.”