The Berlin Conspiracy (The Division Book 4)

by Angus McLean

  He took his time, savouring the last vestiges of the meal and watching his fellow diners – mostly couples or small groups, the odd person on their own.

  One of these he noticed at a table in the far corner from him, enjoying a large bowl of soup and a glass of white. She had a phone on the table beside her and a newspaper folded neatly which she was reading between spoonfuls. The light of a street lamp outside cast a yellow glow in the window and her long blonde hair seemed almost luminescent, giving her an ethereal quality. Despite the back-lighting he could tell instinctively that she was very attractive. She wore a dark top of some sort and jeans, and had a jacket slung over the back of her chair.

  As he watched her over the rim of his cup, he saw her slip a surreptitious look his way, as if she had felt his eyes on her.

  He lowered the cup and smiled. She ignored him and turned back to her dinner.

  Bugger it, he decided. He had nothing better to do.

  He got up, tucked some notes under his empty plate and carried his coffee over to her table. He half pulled the chair out and she looked up. She looked mildly irritated but not surprised.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit?’ he asked, giving her his best attempt at charming.

  She shrugged noncommittally. He took it as a yes and sat. She made a point of taking another spoonful of soup. It looked like ham and pea, thick and hearty and accompanied by a chunk of crusty bread.

  He took a moment to assess her while she ate.

  She was average height with an athletic build. Her blonde hair was shoulder length and styled by someone who probably charged more than Archer earned in a week. She had that timeless European style that you never found anywhere else. She could have been anywhere in her thirties, maybe older if she had good genes.

  She swallowed and sat back, looking at him as she wiped her mouth carefully on a napkin. Her eyes were a very clear ice blue and there was an intelligence behind them. He knew she was assessing him as much as he was her.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. Her English was perfect, with a strong German accent.

  ‘I was just wondering if you’d like some company, that’s all,’ he replied easily, lifting his coffee cup. It was cold and nearly gone, but it didn’t matter. She was more confident than he’d predicted and he found himself suddenly wondering whether it had been such a good idea. Perhaps now was not the best time to be hitting on a strange woman in a café.

  ‘I am fine, thank you.’ She lifted her spoon pointedly. ‘I have my dinner to eat and my newspaper to read.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He nodded and forced a smile, feeling his resolve slipping away. This had definitely been a bad idea. He was striking out like a fourteen-year-old at his first school dance. He peered at her soup. ‘Looks good.’

  ‘It would be,’ she said, her tone cool, ‘if I was able to eat it while it is still hot.’

  ‘Point taken.’ He drained his cup and pushed the chair back. ‘I’m sorry for disturbing you.’

  She waited until he was half standing before she spoke again. ‘You have an interesting accent. Are you from New Zealand?’

  Archer paused, unsure now whether she was opening the door or not. ‘Good spotting,’ he said, feeling his cheeks burn immediately. Good spotting – what an idiot. ‘Have you been there?’

  ‘No.’ The tiniest hint of a smile played at her lips. Her blue eyes seemed to be laughing at him. ‘I don’t really like hobbits.’

  Archer opened his mouth to speak, felt his cheeks getting hotter still, and closed it again. Best to cut and run, he figured. He was going to need a beer to put these flames out.

  ‘Have a good evening,’ he managed, before turning and heading for the door. His humiliation was overwhelming and he couldn’t wait any longer to get the hell out of there.

  The night air was cool and refreshing when he emerged onto the street.

  He took a slow breath and tried to regather himself.

  ‘Fuck you, Peter Jackson,’ he muttered. It was time to call it a night.

  Chapter 20

  Archer could see the screen of his phone flashing as he padded across the concrete floor towards it, fresh from the pool and dripping water with every movement. He snatched it up off the towel.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where the hell’ve you been?’ Ingoe sounded grumpy. ‘I’ve been trying to get you for the last half hour.’

  ‘Sitting round with my finger up my date,’ Archer snapped back. ‘There’s fuck all else to do at sparrow fart.’

  That wasn’t entirely true, but he was bored and irritable and not in the mood for a serve. He’d risen at dawn, hit the floor for some stretching and exercises, and had been doing lengths for the better part of 45 minutes. His arms and shoulders were humming and he needed to rehydrate.

  ‘Well untangle your panties, you’ve got somewhere to be.’

  Archer wiped his face on the towel as he listened intently.

  ‘Get moving to Prague, it’s about four hours driving from Berlin. There’s a cobbler there you need to see. We believe our friend is likely to be in contact.’

  Archer knew that a cobbler in their parlance had nothing to do with shoemaking, but rather was a forger, usually for identification and travel documents.

  ‘How likely is likely?’

  ‘That crew you met, or what’s left of them, haven’t surfaced anywhere yet, but this particular cobbler has supplied shoes to the likes of them before.’

  ‘But we don’t even know who these clowns are; how can we be so sure?’ He could almost hear Ingoe’s teeth grind down the line. ‘What I mean is, if I’m going to rock in there and brace some joker, I need to be on fairly solid ground.’

  There was a tense silence for a moment.

  ‘It is my arse in the sling, after all,’ he added, feeling somewhat defensive now. A Czech prison held no more appeal to him than a Croatian one.

  ‘Just chill the fuck out, Arch,’ Ingoe said tersely. ‘Some of us are actually quite competent as well, okay? There is plenty of intel about this coozer in Prague supplying documents to terrorists and criminals. We know that an outfit like this will use forged documents. Making sense so far?’

  ‘Yep.’ Archer’s tone was just as terse.

  ‘After the bunfight in Croatia, there was an incident just outside Bratislava, where some traffic cops tried to stop a stolen vehicle and ended up getting shot – one dead, one critical. The car had been stolen just hours beforehand in Zagreb. The bad guys got away, and a few hours after that a different car was hired in Vienna. It’s been sighted heading through the Czech border.’

  Archer mentally traced the route. Croatia through Hungary to Slovakia, over to Austria and north to the Czech Republic.

  ‘The car was hired using documents we have confirmed as forged. The stolen car was found dumped in a public car park about a klick or so from the rental agency.’

  ‘Were the docs done by this guy in Prague?’

  ‘Unconfirmed on that, but definitely bogus. And the hirer was an American male, so things are falling into place pretty well.’

  Archer nodded to himself, feeling his earlier irritation sliding away, replaced by the buzz of anticipation. This was what it was all about.

  It was a concern how things were developing – torturing and killing business associates was never a good thing, and killing a cop was an open invitation for the authorities to unleash hell. It indicated either desperation or recklessness, and nothing he had learned so far gave him any reason to believe these guys were reckless.

  Or it could be something far more dangerous. If the bad guys were unravelling then it created a whole different beast to deal with.

  He could scent the quarry and it was time to get on the trail.

  ‘So where am I going, and what am I doing there?’

  ‘I’ll flick you the address. I think, considering the current situation, a direct approach may be needed.’

  ‘Got that. Who’s the target there?’

  ‘A Russian named Vladi
mir Semenov. Previously worked at the Kremlin in some kind of capacity, not sure exactly what, and is now freelance. Aged about 55.’

  ‘Ex-KGB?’

  ‘I’d say.’

  ‘Security?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘High risk then.’

  Ingoe chuckled. ‘Abso-fucking-lutely.’

  Archer nodded to himself again, keeping the iPhone clamped to his ear as he dried his torso with the hotel towel. ‘If he’s so well known, how come he’s still in business?’

  ‘Who knows mate? You gotta remember, this is still Eastern Europe; they don’t play by the same rules as us.’

  ‘Speaking of playing, are our friends playing with us now?’

  ‘Your recent ones are, the other ones not so much – only as much as they want to, like normal.’

  ‘So we still don’t have an ID on the main man yet?’

  ‘Nope.’ Ingoe’s tone took on an edge. ‘All the chatter we’re getting though indicates some kind of spectacular is coming.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Don’t know. We had thought it was the LA incident, but the chatter has continued since then, so it must still be coming. The same groups are still talking, the same terminology and all that, so nothing seems to have changed in the last few days. All indications are that it’s imminent though; we just don’t know exactly when.’

  ‘GCSB must be working overtime,’ Archer murmured, referring to the Wellington-based sig-int agency.

  ‘They are. We’re getting this from the Yanks though.’ Ingoe gave a snort. ‘They seem to have a line into a vein we can’t tap ourselves. It’s about all they’re sharing at the moment.’

  ‘And we think this main player’s probably American as well?’

  ‘That’s the indication.’

  ‘Surely we must be able to drill down a bit further than that?’ Archer pressed. ‘How many American bad guys are there in this scene? Can’t be that many.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think so,’ Ingoe agreed. ‘Believe me mate, we’re working on it. Our friends are getting a lot of pressure, particularly after the LA incident. It’s been highlighted to them that they owe us big for that.’

  ‘Well, good luck with that.’ Archer had a lot of respect for the US agencies, but he also knew how stubborn and self-contained they could be. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  He disconnected and headed for his room, anticipation tingling in his veins.

  ***

  Prague was about 350 k’s from Berlin, and after Archer had showered and dressed, he fuelled the car and himself and headed south. After stopping near the border to purchase the required highway tolls vignette, he arrived in the Czech capital nearly five hours later.

  It was midday and the cities and towns of south-east Germany and north-west Czechia were a blur behind him. He stopped at a service centre on the outskirts of the city and topped up the blue Audi again. He took a few minutes more for a toilet stop, grabbed some refreshments for himself, added a Lonely Planet guide and a folding road map, and hit the road again.

  The address Ingoe had sent him was right in the heart of Kyje, one of the higher crime areas in the north-eastern part of the city. Archer followed his sat nav for a drive by, and was directed to a street named Koberkova. It was a residential area with a mixture of houses and apartment blocks.

  His target appeared to be the worst of the blocks – a plain concrete structure, five storeys high with satellite dishes and aerials dotting it like zits on a teenager.

  The car park out the front was partially full, and he noticed a small group of youths sidling around aimlessly. He ignored them as they watched him cruise past. He hooked a left and made his way back towards the central city.

  He’d called ahead and made a reservation, and now navigated his way to the Hilton Prague. They had another hotel in the Old Town but he had taken the more modern one simply because the advertised price was cheaper. Ingoe seemed grumpy enough at the moment without Archer blowing the budget.

  The young guy at the desk was happy to book him in early, and within ten minutes of arriving Archer had dumped his bag in his room, left the car with the concierge and made his way on foot to Palladium shopping mall.

  After all the time in the car it was good to stretch his legs, and it also gave him the opportunity to check his tail with a couple of basic but reliable anti-surveillance moves. Satisfied he hadn’t picked up any obvious watchers, he entered the mall and wandered from store to store, ducking in and out and doubling back on himself to be sure he was clear.

  He picked up a coffee to go and grabbed a cab outside, asking the driver to take him to the Saint Bartholomew church in Kyje. It was an obvious tourist destination for those foreigners doing the standard ABC – Another Bloody Church/Castle-tour, and Archer had the Lonely Planet book in his hand tagged at the appropriate page.

  The cabbie dropped him right outside and accepted the cash Archer passed over, before disappearing to find another punter. Archer took the time to enter and admire the 13th century church before ditching his empty coffee cup and striding out for his true destination.

  It was a walk of several minutes and Archer used the time to familiarise himself with the area. His plan was simple, but it always paid to be prepared. Murphy was a cantankerous bastard but his laws always seemed to be accurate, and if something could go wrong, it would. Archer identified a couple of places on this side of the target address that could serve as somewhere to hide if things went pear-shaped and he ended up needing to leg it.

  He walked down the street backing onto the target address, getting eyes on it from a different angle and noting the lack of a rear entrance. This was going to be a frontal approach out of necessity, which brought with it its own challenges. One way out meant only one way in. One way meant that if the entry was blocked, whoever was inside was trapped like a rat. But one way in was also always easier to defend, and created a death funnel for the attacker.

  Archer hooked right and came into the rear of the apartment block, via a rubbish-strewn walkway with graffiti on both walls. He counted the apartments as he walked, noting that there were eight on each floor. Apartment 31, the target address, would be on the fourth floor.

  The building was a bland brown and grey block of concrete, standard fare for the old Communist bloc. Street appeal hadn’t been high on the agenda back then, and it looked like the developers had overlooked this little gem so far.

  As he reached the mouth of the walkway he spotted the group of youths he’d seen earlier, still loitering in the car park. They were visible in the sunlight on the other side of the basement garage, the garage itself dark and shadowy between their location and his. He continued on, hands in his pockets and head down, just another guy on his way to nowhere in particular.

  Entering the darkened garage, which was ground level and open on both sides, he saw it was home to a few cars, a row of dumpsters against one wall, and another small group of youngsters. These ones were scattered about in ones and twos, but the way they all watched him told him they were together. At least a couple of joints were on the go between them and the sickly sweet smoke hung in the air.

  One of the youths, a skinny girl who was maybe 15, pushed herself off a concrete pillar and approached him, saying something in Czech.

  Archer shook his head and kept on going, only glancing at her when she repeated her question. She had a denim skirt up around her arse and the shimmery top under a stained khaki jacket plunged so low at the front that her barely-there tits were practically falling out.

  He picked her for a crack whore, and felt a kick inside at the sight of her, peddling her body to some stranger in a shitty car park under a shitty apartment block.

  He shook his head again and walked on.

  She called out something at his back, no doubt questioning his sexuality, and he heard a couple of others titter in the background. The scrape of a foot on dirty concrete brought his head round sharply to the right.

  An older youth was standing in
the shadows, watching him carefully as he went by. He was maybe 20, give or take, solidly built with long greasy brown hair. He wore a black jacket that could have been leather but was probably vinyl, and even in the shadows Archer spotted the bulge of a weapon in his waistband.

  The pimp maybe, but a heavy regardless. He made a mental note to keep an eye out for the guy.

  The guy watched him pass by, saying nothing, and a few moments later Archer emerged into the sunlight. He took a hard right to another path along the front of the building, staying away from the other group of youths.

  He reached an enclosed concrete stairwell and started up. As expected, the stairwell stank of piss and cigarette smoke. Discarded butts, wrappers and pieces of tinfoil dotted the ground. Archer continued climbing, stepping aside at the second floor to let a world-weary mother battle her way down with two snot-nosed young kids in tow.

  Reaching the fourth floor, he paused to take a breath and regather himself before the final approach. There was no going back once he knocked on that door, and he would just have to deal with things as they unfolded. He had no gun, no back up and a good chance of coming off second best if things went pear-shaped.

  On the plus side though, he had speed, aggression and surprise.

  Chapter 21

  He took the walkway to his left, checking off the door numbers as he went. Not every door was numbered but there were enough to keep track. He reached 31, stopped, and rapped on the door. It was a solid unit, definitely lined internally with something better than plywood. Probably a steel sheet through the core. The windows to the left of the door were closed, barred and had the curtains pulled.

  A fish-eye camera clung to the wall above the door and he stepped back, giving it a full facial. Whoever was monitoring it would want to see who he was, and there was no chance of getting inside without playing the game.

  A long moment later the door opened fractionally and he could just detect a person in the darkened interior.

  ‘Yes?’ The voice was deep and guttural, with some kind of European accent. Archer’s Russian was a bit rusty, but it sounded close enough.