by Angus McLean
Berlin was a city Archer had only briefly been through some years before, when on a training exercise with the Group. He knew his history so appreciated the significance of the place, and there were plenty of places he’d be keen to go to, perhaps on an off-duty return trip.
The guidebook he’d bought at the airport was well thumbed by the time BA986 landed at Berlin-Tegel airport, right on time at 18:25hrs. Even visitors to the country seemed to be affected by the legendary German efficiency, he reflected. Archer had always liked the Germans. Their vehicles and weapons were first rate, their food and bier were excellent, their country was beautiful and they were a friendly people.
According to Ingoe they were currently experiencing some low levels of civil unrest, the usual anti-immigration kind of protests that flared up now and again. It seemed to be fairly constant in this part of the world, apparently supported by some sectors of government.
He had served with a sprinkling of Brits in the army, and had quickly learned the fastest way to wind them up was to show an affinity for the Germans, the gypsies or the French. Archer had made it known he was a staunch supporter of FC Bayern, despite knowing nothing about soccer, and had used his senseless arguments to great effect with a couple of his British mates.
The hotel was the Centennial, a 4-star block of bronze-coloured stone on a side street near Zoo Berlin. It was lit up from spotlights in the ground, giving the darkened windows the impression of black eyes in a stone edifice. A liveried doorman welcomed them and helped Sarah alight from the cab, waving a young lad over to come and fetch the bags.
Archer took his time fussing over a tip for the doorman and paying off the cab, using the time for a quick recce at the neighbouring hotel. Like the Centennial, the Imperial Grand was a four-storey slab of concrete with tall windows and narrow balconies and a doorman out the front.
It was also home, at least temporarily, to a number of guests booked in under the name John Krane. He left Sarah to check in while he browsed the brochures at the desk and grabbed a handful of guides to the local sights, including a decent map of the city centre. Their room on the third floor was facing the side of the Imperial Grand, the buildings separated only by a service lane maybe five metres wide.
As soon as they got to their room Sarah pulled the drapes while Archer tipped the bellboy and locked the door behind him. He looked around the room, noting it was a basic studio with a queen-size bed and standard furnishings in polished wood and neutral colours.
‘Budget constraints,’ Sarah supplied with a grin, dragging her bag onto the bed. ‘That and it was all we could get on this side and this floor.’
Archer nodded. The Krane party were in two rooms on the same floor next door; according to their intel, directly across from where he now stood.
‘I’ll take the floor,’ he said, poking his head into the small bathroom. ‘Fancy a bath?’
She gave him a bemused look. ‘No, but you could make yourself useful and order some dinner.’ She checked her watch. ‘I need to get an update.’
He tossed his jacket aside and flopped onto the bed to browse the room service menu. He didn’t know what Sarah would want, and she was busy on the phone now, so he went for variety based on the assumption that he would eat whatever she didn’t. He dialled down, ordering a pork steak and a Viennese veal schnitzel, with a Caesar salad and a creamy tomato soup for starters.
The waiter arrived shortly after Sarah had brought him up to speed on progress. They sat and ate at the small table, and Archer was secretly pleased to see she enjoyed her food. He had dated a girl recently who had pecked at her food like a chicken in a farmyard, and it had driven him crazy.
‘So we do a brush pass tonight?’ he said, wiping his mouth on a white linen napkin. ‘I don’t suppose they’re sending anyone else to help with surveillance?’
She shook her head and chewed a mouthful of steamed vegetables. He noticed she had half her schnitzel remaining. He wondered if it would remain so.
‘No, just us.’
He shrugged. ‘We could CTR it.’
Sarah swallowed her mouthful and contemplated that for a moment. ‘Risky though.’
‘Calculated.’ A close target recce was always high risk; it was just a matter of mitigating the known risks as best they could, and planning for the unexpected. CTRs were a specialty of the SAS, in far more hostile environments than the Berlin city centre.
‘We would need to be certain their rooms were empty.’
He nodded. ‘Easy enough.’
‘And not a brush pass – we’ll be picking up a car.’
He nodded again. That sounded like a good plan. It paid to have transport available, whether they used it or not. He watched her slice a piece off the schnitzel. He could see she’d had enough and was just picking now.
Sarah sat back and wiped her mouth and hands on a napkin. He took that as the signal to start clearing the plates. She looked amused as he slipped the remaining meat from her plate onto his.
‘God, it’s like having dinner with my kids.’ She smiled self-consciously.
‘No point letting food go to waste,’ he replied, forking it into his mouth. ‘Third rule of soldiering.’
‘The third? What’re the first two?’
He chewed down a mouthful and swallowed. ‘Sleep when you can and volunteer for nothing.’
She took a sip of water and nodded. ‘So you were one of the black pyjama boys too, like Rob?’
He flicked his eyebrows. ‘I was his boss at one stage, but I think he probably taught me more than I taught him.’
‘He was a good man.’ There was a tinge of sadness in her voice, and he wondered again about the extent of the relationship between this foreign agent and his former colleague.
‘Probably still is.’
‘Wherever he is.’
He nodded, saying nothing. He knew he was being probed for info; whether for personal or professional reasons didn’t matter. He had nothing to pass on anyway. A confirmed sighting in Mosul several months ago. A possible sighting in Albania, another in Chechnya. A rumour in Haiti. But nothing firm, nothing more than wisps of smoke.
‘I’ve noticed with you blokes, and Rob was just the same – you don’t say much.’
He shrugged. ‘No point talking just to make noise.’
‘The self-contained tough guy, is that your story?’ She watched him across the table. ‘Actions speak louder than words and all that?’
Archer almost smiled. ‘Great imagination. You make me sound like an old-time sheriff or something.’ He gave a self-deprecating grin and shook his head. ‘I’m probably more Elmer Fudd than Wyatt Earp.’
‘Huh,’ she snorted, ‘somehow I doubt it.’ She pushed her chair back and stood. ‘Anyway, we’ve got things to do.’
It was time to move and Archer felt a quick buzz of adrenaline. Much and all as he enjoyed dinner and banter with a pretty lady, this was game time.
***
He had to respect the efficiency of the Brits – they obviously had a local asset who had been given the heads-up and had got preparations in place probably even before their flight touched down.
An unremarkable black three-year-old VW Golf had been parked several blocks away, the location given to Sarah by phone. They approached on foot from different directions with Sarah staying wide to keep an external perimeter at the top of the street. It was a residential area and the car had been parked at the kerb, crammed in amongst other residents’ cars. The apartment buildings that dominated the street cast long shadows, providing plenty of concealment for any watching eyes.
Archer did a walk by, taking his time as he made his way down the street, checking out the cars and general surroundings. It was almost ten o’clock but people were still moving about, giving him good cover. He turned into a walkway between buildings and stood in the shadows, checking his tail. All clear.
He stood there for several minutes, absorbing the sounds of the environment. Muffled noise from the apartments beside hi
m. A TV, a radio. A door opening and closing. Muted chatter as a girl walked by across the road, talking on a cell phone. The odd car cruising past. A streetlight flickered.
Satisfied there was nothing out of the ordinary, he moved off again to the far end of the street. He buzzed Sarah and heard her answer immediately in his earpiece.
‘Clear, go,’ he said.
‘That’s me moving up.’ She clicked off.
He found a shadow to melt into, and watched her approach from the opposite end of the footpath. She moved with purpose but not rushed, nothing to arouse suspicion, just another local on the way home. Or to her car. She paused at the rear of the black Golf, bending down for a few seconds then straightening up and moving to the driver’s door. The key had been secured under the bumper in a magnetic lockbox.
The lights flashed as she bleeped the key fob.
Archer waited until she was in, the headlights had come on and she was pulling out of the parking slot, before he sifted around the corner and made some distance.
She picked him up a minute later, slowing just long enough for him to slide into the passenger’s seat before moving off again.
‘All good?’ Her eyes were flicking between the mirrors and the windscreen as she took them away from the pick-up area. It was the hot zone and they needed to distance themselves from any potential watchers.
Archer ran his window down and adjusted the wing mirror. He was reasonably satisfied they were clear but only time would tell. The vehicle itself should be clear unless the local asset had been tagged already, so any watchers would be on to the asset themselves. They had cleared their tail on the way there so by rights it would only be dumb luck for them to have been picked up since then.
But if you were compromised, dumb luck didn’t make you any less compromised than good planning.
Sarah took a circuitous route towards the city outer, ducking down side streets, pulling over and waiting, U-turning, cruising through a parking building and back out again two minutes later.
Once they were satisfied they were clear they dropped the car in a multi-storey car park a street away from the hotel. Archer kept a watch on the street just in case, while Sarah removed a black holdall from the boot. As she approached him with it over her shoulder he could tell it had some weight, and he took it from her. He put it down and was beginning to unzip it when Sarah touched his shoulder.
‘What’re you doing?’ she said. ‘We haven’t got time for that right now.’
He glanced up at her as he finished opening the bag. ‘Do you know the asset?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Then we need to check the kit. For all we know he could be a double.’
‘Jeez.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘And I thought I was paranoid.’
‘Better to be paranoid than in jail.’
He had a quick fossick through the bag, finding a good selection of gear: a night sight, a directional microphone with a recording unit, a Canon SLR with a set of decent lenses, a Panasonic 4K camcorder and tripod, Steiner 8x44 bino’s, and an array of spare batteries and chargers.
It was good kit and he was pleased with it, but he still gave the bag itself a quick search for any tracking devices attached to the lining. Sarah watched him with amusement.
‘Happy now, Doubtful Dan?’ she grinned.
Archer straightened up and slung the bag over his shoulder. ‘Ever worked with agents in Afghanistan or Iraq?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.
She gave a curt shake of the head. ‘No.’
‘Well I have, and you can’t trust any bastard. Let’s go.’
She was silent as she led the way out of the multi-storey and out to the street. He could sense her annoyance with him, but fuck it, too bad. It wouldn’t be the first time a double agent had planted a tracking device, drugs, weapons or an IED on friendly forces. He had no intention of getting worked over by some shithead asset who took the money and ran.
They made it back to the hotel before eleven and set up their OP in silence. While Sarah fiddled with the directional mic – basically a long microphone with a pistol grip which could pick up conversations 100 yards away – he got busy setting up the camera gear.
The trick to not standing out like dog’s balls was to avoid the pitfalls shown so proudly in the movies. Poking a camera lens out between two drawn curtains or standing backlit in a window with a pair of bino’s were dead giveaways.
Instead, Archer killed the lights in the room and kept the curtains open with the nets drawn. He placed the tripod-mounted camcorder to one side and moved the coffee table under the window. The SLR was ready there with the bino’s, and the charging units plugged in beneath it with the spare batteries.
Sitting at the table he had a good line of sight to the rooms across the service lane, and could see that both had light leakage around their drawn curtains. He powered up the night sight and ran it over the windows but couldn’t see anything further. An infra-red scope would have been good, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
‘Shove over, fatty.’
Sarah nudged him out of the chair and took his place, the earphones clamped to her head like Princess Leia’s hair-do. He took the dig as a sign she’d got over her earlier huff and was pleased – it would have made for an unpleasant environment otherwise. She aimed the mic at the windows opposite and listened intently.
Archer had no idea how good this particular piece of kit was, but judging from the rest of the gear it should do the job. Sarah certainly seemed happy enough with it, nodding to herself as she listened. He waited silently for a few minutes but she showed no sign of stopping, so he moved off and got his gear together.
To save getting caught with his pants down if things unfolded quickly, he took a change of clothes out ready to jump into and packed the rest of his gear so he was good to go. He placed a couple of different tops and a hat in his daypack, added a bottle of water and a chocolate bar from the mini bar, and padded silently back over to the OP. Sarah was still listening intently, her brow furrowed, pen poised over a pad of the hotel’s stationery.
He peeked over her shoulder at the notes she’d jotted already. She had the neatest writing he’d ever seen.
3 – US? – leader – relaxed – team – rough –
She lifted the bin from her left ear and looked up at him, whispering as if the bad guys could hear her.
‘Can’t hear much, they’re just talking shit. They sound like squaddies.’
‘Is that the “rough” bit?’ he enquired with a slight smile.
Sarah smiled self-consciously. ‘Of course. All squaddies are rough, didn’t you know that?’
Archer grinned and stepped back. ‘I’m going to take a quick shower. Give me a shout if anything kicks off.’
Sarah watched him grab his toilet bag and close the bathroom door behind him, before she turned back to the notepad before her. The chatter in the room across the way was sporadic, the sort of idle chatter that men made, laced with expletives and laughter. After a couple of minutes she heard some hooting and sexual comments, ribald enough to raise even her eyebrows, and guessed they had found a pay-per-view porno channel.
She smiled and shook her head to herself as she listened to the comments among the men. The grunting and gasping would soon begin, she guessed. Men. Just oversized children in so many ways. She wondered kind of man would sit in a hotel room and watch porn with other men. Her mind drifted to the man in the bathroom, Archer.
She barely knew him but he seemed different to most men she had known. Certainly different to her ex-husband, at least. Tim had been far more emotional. Archer seemed much more…reserved? Self-contained? Not a man to give too much away, anyway.
The men she worked with came from a variety of backgrounds – some ex-cops, some ex-military, many just normal civilians. Even if she hadn’t known Archer was ex-Special Forces, she would have picked it. Far from being muscle-bound Rambo types, they tended to be quiet and confident. No need to shout from the rooftops.
And she couldn’t deny there was something inherently attractive about that. At that moment the bathroom door opened and he emerged amidst a cloud of steam. A white towel was wrapped around his waist beneath a toned torso, the white almost glowing in the near-darkness.
Sarah watched as he grabbed some clothes and returned to the bathroom. He paused in the doorway and glanced at her. She could feel his eyes boring into her and a slight smirk crossed his lips. He said nothing before closing the door again, but she knew what he was thinking.
She felt her cheeks get warm and she turned back to the window, cursing him for making her feel like a silly schoolgirl. Maybe it was her own fault. It had been a long drought since the split, broken only sporadically. The first had been a drunken fumble with a self-important prick from Six at a course down on the coast, which had brought more embarrassment than pleasure. As far as icebreakers went, it had barely qualified.
The door opened again behind her and she heard him rustling about. The porno was still going in the background in the targets’ room, but the conversation had stopped. Perhaps they’d gone to bed.
‘Cuppa?’ His voice was so close it made her jump.
‘Yes.’ She half-turned, lifting one of the bins so she could hear properly. He was close enough that she could smell his aftershave. It wasn’t anything she recognised. Tim had worn Fahrenheit and it wasn’t that – thank God. ‘Yes please.’
A cup duly arrived and he told her to wake him if anything happened. She agreed that she would hit the sack as soon as the targets did, and he left her to it, bedding down on the floor with a pillow and a blanket. The room was dark and silent. Within seconds she could hear his breathing slow and settle into a steady rhythm.
Sarah turned away and stared out the window.
Chapter 8
The airfield was a standard small operation catering to private owners and an aero club. There was a single runway and five separate hangars, with a control tower attached to the clubhouse/admin building.
At midnight the place appeared deserted and secure, the gates locked and the perimeter secured with fences topped with razor wire. Signs for a security company hung on each side of the boundary fence, but so far Archer had seen no sign of a mobile patrol.