The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books)
Page 49
Okubo lit another cigarette and stared at Willie coldly. “It is a stupid plan,” he said. “If your people want me, they should arrange a practical operation, meticulously organized, and covered by an experienced group – ”
“Nobody’s going to start a war to get you out,” Willie said. “We’re using an opportunity that’s simple and that works.” He gave Okubo no time to reply but said to Toller, “Can you bring him to that car park north of Rosenthaler Platz at midnight?”
Toller nodded.
“All right. We’ll be there in a gray Skoda. I’ll have the bonnet up and I’ll be fiddling with the engine. Park alongside if you can. Have Okubo in overalls. He slides out and into the Skoda. Then you can forget him.”
Okubo’s face was hard with anger. He said, “I have told you – ”
“I know you have,” Willie cut in. “But don’t. Don’t tell us how to get you out of East Berlin, and we won’t tell you how to breed foot-and-mouth bugs. All we want to know is if you’re going to be in that car park at midnight.”
The hatred of pricked vanity flamed in Okubo’s dark eyes. He looked away. After a long silence he said, “Very well. You force me to agree.”
Toller’s sigh of relief was audible. He opened the door, and followed Modesty and Willie out. In the room below, Willie exhaled and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. He swore softly and said in English, “We got a little beauty there. You signaled me to lean on ’im, Princess. I didn’t make it too strong?”
“Just right. It worked. But he scares me.”
Toller nodded his head in grim agreement. “It is a good plan. Very good. But Okubo has a great sense of his importance. I think he wished for some big, dramatic affair.”
“Yes.” Modesty took a compact from her handbag and checked her appearance. Her face was too taut, and she worked the muscles to relax them. “Dramatics are all right. But not when the man awarding the Oscars is Major-General Starov.”
In the afternoon they drove out to a village north of Halle, to see a farmer who had telephoned after reading one of their advertisements. He had, he said, over two dozen carved wooden fairground animals for sale, cockerels and horses and ostriches. The small antique business in Gothenberg was managed by a competent Swede who kept abreast of the whims of fashion and who had told Modesty that there was a ready market at up to eighty pounds apiece for these curiosities from the old fairground roundabouts.
At the farm they were shown round three big barns, almost filled with circus and fairground equipment. The owner of a tenting circus, a Hungarian, had disappeared with all the cash takings at the end of last summer, leaving the season’s rent unpaid and the performers and handling staff short of a month’s wages.
Some of the circus acts had taken their gear and departed. But others, perhaps recognizing that theirs was a dying profession, had simply abandoned their gear and dispersed. Since the Hungarian had chosen to decamp with the lady lion-tamer, the farmer had found himself with six mangy lions to feed until they were taken over by a zoo. He had a long and harrowing story to tell about this.
Willie, who in his early twenties had once worked for a spell in a circus, was fascinated by the evocative sights and smells of the tawdry equipment. There were moldering tents, broken seating, sections of a dismantled roundabout and helter-skelter; rusting donkey engines and a miniature railway track; cages and cables, a huge cannon, a clowns’ car with eccentric wheels and a set of distorting mirrors with most of the silvering gone. But only the roundabout animals were of any real value. Beneath the dirt and peeling paint they were exceptionally good specimens, free from worm and dry-rot, beautifully carved, and with the wooden eyes which set them above the cheaper type with eyes of glass.
After some uncertain bargaining on the farmer’s part, Willie agreed to buy the twenty best for eighteen hundred kroner or the dollar equivalent, and to pay all transport charges. Modesty made a note of the transaction in a little book. She was pleased with the afternoon’s work. Doing genuine business was important in strengthening their cover.
They drove out past Leipzig to look at some clocks, and were back in Berlin by seven that evening. Willie drove the car into one of the hired lock-up garages, only three doors from the garage where the Daimler of the United Nations representative was kept.
As he switched off he said softly, “I’ll be glad when this one’s over, Princess. That bug-fancier gets under my skin.”
Modesty felt the same. It was a neat and beautifully simple caper. Willie’s idea. But like Willie, she felt that Okubo himself was the weak link, the dangerous element. And there was nothing they could do about that.
The pick-up at midnight went smoothly. Okubo was left to spend the night on the back seat of the Skoda in the garage. His manner was unchanged. He did not seem to be afraid, only resentful and ungracious, complaining of the inadequacy of the arrangements for his escape.
At eight in the morning, as Herr Jorgensen and his secretary, they left the hotel and took the Skoda out of the garage, with Okubo lying on the back seat. Willie immediately stalled it directly outside the door of the Daimler garage, and pretended to have difficulty in restarting. While he raised the bonnet and checked the leads, Modesty opened the door of the Daimler garage with the key Willie had made two days ago. Okubo slid out of the Skoda and into the darkness of the garage.
Surprisingly, he did not renew his complaints of the night before, but seemed subdued as he curled up in the big boot of the Daimler. She whispered, “Don’t worry. We’ll be watching you all the way.” He nodded, saying nothing, and she closed the boot. A minute later she was in the Skoda with Willie, heading for Toller’s yard.
Now, an hour later, Okubo was less than half a mile from Checkpoint Charlie and freedom. The Daimler moved smoothly along the Friedrichstrasse and crossed the intersection of Unter den Linden. Willie Garvin, driving a dirty brown van, kept on its tail. He wore overalls which covered his Jorgensen suit, and a beret pulled down low. Immediately behind him, Modesty was driving the Skoda.
Ahead lay Leipziger Strade. Willie prepared to turn off. He could go no farther without coming to the checkpoint.
It was then that shock hit him like a full-blooded jab under the heart. The Daimler was slowing, pulling into the curb, moving a little bumpily. The nearside tire was flat. He whispered, “Jesus!” The chauffeur would have to open the boot to release the spare wheel.
Willie Garvin became suddenly immensely calm. He put out his hand in a quick signal to Modesty, a wave-on followed by a chopping halt sign. As the Daimler stopped he pulled in behind it, leaving a space of no more than five feet between his front bumper and the rear of the Daimler. In the Skoda, Modesty came up alongside and stopped, covering the gap between the two vehicles.
She saw the flat tire, saw the chauffeur alighting. Willie was already out of the van. He glanced at her without interest and she gave him a fractional nod. From long years of working dangerously together their minds were sensitively attuned. His glance had simply asked for her confirmation to go ahead with what they both knew was the only way to snatch Okubo from disaster.
Willie would meet the chauffeur at the rear of the Daimler and offer to help. When the chauffeur opened the boot, Willie would drop him with a body-jab at close quarters. And while Modesty, anxious and fluttering, tapped on the Daimler window to tell De Souta his chauffeur had apparently fainted, Willie would get Okubo out of the boot and into the van.
The whole move was electric with danger, but it would take only five seconds and there was no other option now. A car hooted and swung out past Modesty. She made an apologetic gesture, started the engine and stalled as soon as it fired. The chauffeur had spoken to his master and was moving round to the rear of the Daimler. With an air of hopeful cupidity Willie said in German, “You want a hand with it?” The chauffeur looked slightly surprised. Then, grasping that goodwill was not the motive, he nodded indifferently and bent to open the boot. As he lifted the lid Modesty saw Willie’s rigid hand poised
to stab forward, his body hiding it from any passing pedestrian. Then he froze.
She could see into the boot, and it was empty. No Okubo. The chauffeur began to winch down the spare wheel from its resting place. Willie rubbed his chin and turned his head so that his gaze passed idly across her. Now what? She gave a little backward jerk of her head, then started the Skoda and moved off, turning down Leipziger Strade. Anger, relief and speculation all battled for a place in her mind.
An hour later Willie drove the van into Toller’s yard. She was waiting for him in the big garage, and said, “We’re alone. It’s safe to talk.”
He began to take off his overalls and said grimly, “Where’s the little bastard now?”
“Back where he started. Up in Toller’s room.”
“You found ’im still in the lock-up garage?”
“Yes. He changed his mind at the last minute, he tells me, so he hid under a tarpaulin there when the chauffeur came to get the Daimler out.”
“Changed ’is mind? He wants to go back to Moscow?”
She shook her head. “Changed his mind about accepting our plan for getting him out. I managed to smuggle him into the Skoda without anyone seeing, and I brought him back here. Toller was ripe to kill him when we turned up.”
Willie took off the beret and inserted the rubber pads in his cheeks. His movements were taut and precise. She knew that he was boiling with anger. Her own fury had had time to cool now. She said, “It could have been worse, Willie love. I know that flat tire was a million-to-one chance, but it happened. We might have scooped Okubo out of the boot and into the van safely, but we could only have brought him back here.”
Willie let out a long breath and nodded reluctant agreement. “Did you tell Okubo what ’appened?”
She grimaced. “No. He’s bad enough without being given a chance to say I-told-you-so. I just tore him apart for fouling up the plan. But I’m female so he hardly listened. He just wants to know what the next move will be.”
“I wouldn’t mind knowing that meself,” Willie said bleakly, and put on his plain-glass spectacles.
“I told him that we’d have to lay on a major operation, but that it would take a few days to organize.”
Willie stared. “Activating Tarrant’s lot?”
“Yes. That’s what Okubo wants. A big show. I thought we might let him believe he’ll get it.”
Willie relaxed, gazing at her curiously, trying to mesh with her thoughts. Then his eyebrows lifted and he gave a little nod of comprehension. “Yes. You could be right, Princess.”
His anger had vanished now. They stood in silence for a while, their minds mutually preoccupied. At last Willie said, “Tarrant should’ve got the message last night. It’ll make ’im sweat when Okubo doesn’t ’op out of that Daimler.”
“Yes.” She gave a wry shrug. “He’s used to sweating. We’ll get another message to him tonight.”
“Same way?”
“The same way. I don’t want to use couriers. I don’t want to rely on anybody but us. And Toller. We’ll use the pamphlet bomb again. Toller says they’re firing nightly for the next two weeks at least.”
Willie grinned. The idea was Modesty’s, and he thought it a knock-out. Toller printed the propaganda pamphlets and packed them in papier-mâché “bombs” which were fired over the border from crude mortars. He made a delivery of bombs nightly to gun sites along a four-mile stretch of the border south of Berlin.
It was easy to make a stronger bomb, a container which would not burst and scatter its contents. It would contain no pamphlets but would carry a homing device transmitting on a set frequency and activated by the shock of the discharge. Toller would deliver that bomb, with the usual issue, to a prearranged site. On the other side of the border, Tarrant had men on permanent listening watch, to get a cross-reference on the homing device in the fallen bomb. It would be located within minutes of landing, and it would contain whatever message Modesty wished to send.
Toller had been entranced by the idea. He hated using couriers, and the thought that the East German propaganda gunners would be acting as messengers gave him a pleasure that was rare in the unremittingly gray and dangerous life he lived.
Willie said, his grin fading, “So all we’ve got to do is figure another way of getting Okubo out.”
“Just that small item.”
He sighed. “There’s only one good thing ’appened this morning,” he said gloomily. “I got a dollar tip from that chauffeur for ’elping change the wheel.”
Throughout the rest of the day they made no conscious efforts to formulate a plan, but simply left their minds open to recognize any opportunity. This was their method, and this was how Willie had hit upon the first plan, several days ago, when he had seen the United Nations car pass by on its daily journey through Checkpoint Charlie.
When night came they were still without inspiration. Modesty lay in bed and reviewed the chances of using the same escape plan again, except that this time they would knock Okubo unconscious before putting him in the boot. But his cooperation would be needed until the last moment, and she knew they could not fool him for long enough to ensure that cooperation.
It was eleven o’clock. Within the next hour or two the East Germans would obligingly shoot her message to Tarrant over the border. It would be some relief to him to know that even though one attempt had failed, at least they had not been caught . . .
An association of ideas made her thoughts dart off at a tangent. She drew in a quick breath and sat up, her mind racing. The idea seemed hare-brained, but it might work. Yes . . . it just might. Willie would know, and he could make it work if it was in any way possible.
She got out of bed, pulled on a dressing-gown and went through the communicating door into his room. He woke at the faint sound of the door opening, sat up in bed and put on the bedside light. She beckoned him through to the bathroom and turned on the shower. It was possible the rooms were bugged, but unlikely that this included the bathroom. If so, then the sound of the shower would make the bug ineffective.
Willie sat beside her on the edge of the bath, his eyes eager, knowing she had an idea. She put her lips close to his ear and began to whisper. After the first ten seconds he suddenly hunched forward, a frantic expression on his face, then rammed the fingers of one hand into his mouth and closed his teeth on them, rocking back and forth in agonized struggle as he fought to subdue the gust of laughter that convulsed him, laughter so stupendous that if he had given vent to it the sound would have been heard through the walls.
She stared at him almost indignantly for a moment, then punched his arm gently in remonstrance. He shook his head in speechless apology, and doubled up again. Somehow he straightened, the breath rasping around the gag of his fingers. He looked at her, his face empurpled with strain, then nodded again and again, lifting his free hand to make a confirmatory circle with finger and thumb.
A new spasm gripped him, and suddenly she caught the infection. The same convulsive laughter welled up within her. Eyes closed, tears squeezing from under the lids, lips tightly compressed, she leaned against him and hugged her forearms across her stomach in the desperate struggle to keep silent.
Tarrant handed the sheet of paper to Berlin Control and fingered his mustache. Berlin Control read the message twice, a variety of expressions chasing one another over his face. At last he said simply, “They must be joking.”
“That’s the first impression one gets,” Tarrant agreed. “But it’s not tenable. So let’s assume that this is just a typically unorthodox idea. We’re going to comply with what they ask.”
It was two days since the earlier message had come through, giving no details but stating baldly that the first plan had failed and that another would be devised. Now this new message had come over the border. Berlin Control read it once again and said, “It won’t be easy to get this organized.”
Tarrant eyed him coldly. “It’s a bloody sight easier than what she and Willie have to organize, don’t you thin
k?”
“We only have thirty-six hours.”
“Then that will have to be long enough.” Tarrant frowned, trying to trap a fleeting thought of something he had seen or read in the last few days. He identified it and said, “There’s a man in the States called John Dall. A tycoon with all kinds of diverse interests. Get him on the phone for me.”
“I’ll try. Tycoons usually have a screen of secretaries to shield them.”
“Give my name and say it concerns Modesty Blaise,” Tarrant said. “You’ll get through that screen as fast as if you were the President.”
It was an hour later, and four a.m. in New York, when Tarrant picked up the phone and heard Dall’s voice. “Tarrant?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour – ”
“Never mind. Have you got her into another peck of trouble?”
“I could have stopped her by putting her in a straitjacket, perhaps.”
He heard Dall give a sigh of resignation: Then, “OK. I know what you mean. What can I do?”
“I believe you have a major interest in a film company which has a unit here at the moment, shooting scenes which include the Wall. They have, or can obtain, certain facilities she wants me to provide.”
There was a silence. Tarrant knew that Dall wanted to ask if Modesty was on the wrong side of the Wall, but would not do so on an open line. He said, “Yes, she is, John.”
Dall said, “Oh, my God. All right, the unit director is a guy called Joe Abrahams. I’ll call him now. He’ll make contact with you within the next couple of hours and he’ll be under your orders for – how long do you want?”
“Thirty-six hours, please,”
“OK. Where does he contact you?”
Tarrant gave the address and number of a small travel agency. Dall said, “I’ve got that. Will you have her ring me as soon as she’s able to, please?”
“Of course, and thank you.” Tarrant put down the phone and looked at Berlin Control. “I’ve seen them shooting scenes close to the Wall. They must have permission for it from the West Germans.”