The Oktober Projekt

by R. J. Dillon

  Thrown, caught unprepared, Gottfried did a number of things with his hands none of them a success. His eyes lingering on this hard stranger broke away as Nick returned his stare.

  ‘She told you about being in trouble didn’t she? Didn’t she, Gottfried? She came back here and wanted you to give her advice, a place to run to. Or was it to collect something? Pick up an item that she had given you to take care of for her?’ said Nick, glancing at the space in the dust under a clothes rail, a space that Nick knew would match the base of Sabine’s imitation vanity case.

  Gottfried feigned disbelief. His body squared away from Nick revealed nothing of his face, but Nick knew of the misery from the pull and downturn of his shoulders.

  ‘And which side are you on?’ he asked, facing up to Nick, though the fight had already gone out of him.

  ‘Sabine’s.’

  Gottfried dwelt for a terrible couple of minutes on Nick’s answer. At one point he made to put up some resistance only to change his mind, and perhaps of the options that he considered in that cold disheartening room, the one he had less to fear was placing his trust in Nick. Which he did, in a gentle conciliatory voice that compounded his innocence.

  ‘Sabine came to me, scared, frightened, two months ago,’ he said, distracted, far away, listening to Hans bellow for help.

  ‘That would be?’

  ‘Sometime in October,’ said Gottfried as though Nick was stupid.

  ‘I’d heard nothing, nothing from her since the time she asked me to look after her cosmetic bag. Then in October she turned up in a real state, in tears, yelling, asking for the bag back.’

  ‘Did she tell you what the problem was?’

  ‘Some friend of hers had got into a mess. But it was going to be okay, made right in a couple of days, no problems, no worries. This friend is in big danger and only Sabine can do this. This friend has to be saved and Sabine’s just met someone who can help.’

  ‘Who was going to help?’

  ‘Some woman, okay, I don’t know and I didn’t ask.’

  ‘What was in her bag that was so important?’

  ‘Said it was a key to unlock the gates to the magic kingdom. I asked her if she’d been using again because she was going through the bag as though her life depended on finding something.’

  Which it had done thought Nick, but Sabine wasn’t to know. ‘What was she looking for?’

  ‘One of those protective postal bags and I asked what’s in the bag, asked her to let me help, take care of things. But she said she didn’t want me involved. I must have looked like I thought she had a stash in the bag, so she showed me. It was a DVD and she said it was a private film. I thought she was crazy, but she took it with her bag and told me not to worry, Sabine was going to save her friend.’

  ‘You know this friend?’

  ‘She never gave me the details,’ said Gottfried. ‘But I guess it was Franziska.’

  Reaching in the back pocket of his jeans Gottfried pulled out his wallet. From a clear plastic flap he lifted out a photograph; taken in colour in a photo booth, the curtain not properly drawn because a blaze of light swam across their faces so they seemed as pale as prisoners. Three faces in rapture, Gottfried on the swivel seat a girl squeezed either side; Sabine and a beautiful blonde who cast a radiant laugh at the camera.

  ‘That’s Franziska?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Sabine’s best friend,’ said Gottfried with a smile, ‘Sabine’s sister.’

  In some ways Nick’s world fell in on itself at that very moment; not only from Gottfried’s disclosure regarding Franziska, but also at the realisation that the DVD Sabine staked her salvation on would probably contain footage of Franziska entertaining her special clients. Franziska told Sabine she’d banked something for the future, remembered Nick, and Sally Wynn was never allowed to collect it. I got a part in helping her make it happen, she got a crazy deal arranged, but it’s all top secret, Sabine had told Nick.

  ‘Did she say what she was going to do with the DVD?’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me, only that I had to wait and we’d all be free.’

  ‘Has anyone else called asking for Sabine?’

  ‘You mean Tolz?’ said Gottfried and shook his head. ‘I knew about her and Tolz,’ he admitted. ‘Sabine told me, he was part of her past, part of what she was leaving behind.’

  ‘And no one else?’ pressed Nick calmly.

  ‘An American was here, but Emmerich dealt with him.’ Amused or troubled by the recollection, Gottfried twisted his hands tighter.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘And what did he look like?’

  ‘This guy can take care of himself, for sure. Big, stocky, mid-forties maybe, his hair was short, grey at the sides. He only walked past me and that was enough. His eyes, they don’t give you a second chance.’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘No.’

  Gottfried bowed his head, thought, then finally found a grin. ‘We had great times together.’

  ‘She was a good person.’

  ‘But no one knew or cared,’ said Gottfried with a prolonged sigh.

  Back outside Nick lit a cigarette. In the alley the bus stood trembling and rattling like a tank as Emmerich headed up the company in a shivering chain as they loaded away what they could of the theatre, working all-out under the considerable eye of Anke. Walking up the alley Nick heard her shout after him, a long stabbing call made for inferiors. Turning up his collar in an act of defiance, he kept going into the thickening snow. I’m the perpetual latecomer he thought, deeply troubled how Mitch Harney was on the trail of Sabine so quickly.

  At an Aldi store on Eiffestraße Nick browsed the salads and cold meats, buying some meagre provisions to take back to his hotel room in Sankt Georg. He knew she hadn’t been there when he entered, but now she was waiting outside the store for him when he left; pretty and deadly serious, a slim woman in her thirties, she’d pure clear skin and hair mowed close to her skull. She wore tight jeans, combat boots, a ski jacket and the same smile he remembered from shared operations. Setting off from where she’d taken up position, Erika carried off a classic brush-contact drop, a folded square of paper pressed into Nick’s waiting hand so deftly that he hardly felt it land. Erika, one of Ernst Sargens’ team; a private consortium made up of specialist ex-intelligence and military officers who had proved their value with Nick and CO8 in the past. Erika’s background was with the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the German equivalent of the Service. Taking to what any curious observer seemed a cursory check of the provisions in his carrier bag, Nick noted the address on the paper.

  • • •

  From a maze of low wooden sheds tannoy voices boomed out across unloading basins, as though trying to prove a point. Nick moved quickly through the quays unchallenged. He kept going until he came to a row of grain silos, silver bullets aimed at a pewter sky, and crossing a swing-bridge he entered an alley recovering from the night. At the end of the alley the light ran out altogether, and he descended a narrow flight of steps into a courtyard strewn with cans and rocks. It resembled a battlefield waiting for the dead to be added in strategic places, the final touches to complete the tableau. A group of kids with swollen eyes and pale skin swarmed round him, asking his name, his purpose, pulling his sleeve, touting for their junkie sisters or mothers.

  Nick pushed through not speaking and a stone hit him squarely on the shoulder. He didn’t look back; going on towards a blighted tenement struggling warily up in the frail light, the remains of a crude barricade blocking its entrance, a motorcycle without wheels and the bodies of supermarket trolleys stocked with rubble. Climbing over them he waited for the next stone or fist to land. On concrete stairs starved of light, he smelt vomit and trapped smoke from a previous fire lit to cleanse or repel unwanted callers.

  On the top landing there were a dozen doors, most of them boarded along with the windows, the last two without padlocks. From one, a young squatter with reserved eyes followe
d Nick’s progress. When Nick drew level the door slammed and music started up, pounding through the slab walls in their own decadent beat. I am the intruder he thought, knocking loudly on the last door, I represent all in life that there is to hate. Dominik greeted him, another of Ernst’s troops on loan, in jeans and T-shirt, his blond hair short and tufty.

  ‘Long time, Nick,’ he said kicking the door shut and sliding the bolts. ‘Welcome to our nice little place, all the comforts of home. It stinks, Nick, but we’re happy to be here.’

  They were in a long confined hall plagued by the damp. A ship’s barometer showed fair on a wall shedding its scrolled paper and mould covered the woodwork in a rash of black spots. It might have belonged to a dozen students or squatters Nick thought, Harry would have seen to that, put word about, even bribed the young killers in the courtyard. Nothing had the permanence of a residence. In each room as Dominik conducted a guided tour, he found the impermanence of spying, the litter, the throw away artefacts of life taken a day at a time. A couple of ex-army issue blankets divided off the lounge and Dominik escorted Nick through it like an honoured guest. Sat at the window Erika waved without bothering to turn, her attention locked through a pair of binoculars mounted on a tripod providing security.

  Opposite her, Juergen, another of Ernst’s happy troupe sat on a cracked leather couch that someone had disfigured with permanent marker, drawing graffiti of a very sexual nature; crude bodies in basic poses, and the same theme had been carried down one wall in felt tip, but here the bodies had bled in the damp. This is the sum of my team to take on Moscow thought Nick, a collection of specialists borrowed from Ernst, plus Danny and good old Harry Bransk.

  A net curtain ran across the window threaded on a piece of wire hooked on nails cutting down the glare, damping the reflection for anyone outside showing too much interest.

  ‘There’s a number of targets that we need to keep under surveillance,’ said Nick, when Freja, an expert on the acoustic stealing of sound appeared with coffee in stainless steel mugs.

  ‘How do you want us to run it?’ asked Dominik.

  ‘Foot and car,’ said Nick, ‘changes of clothes and personnel, nothing static for too long. Images where possible.’

  ‘Ernst told me to confirm with you that he is already making provisional preparations in Winterthur,’ announced Erika over her shoulder.

  ‘I’ll call him later,’ promised Nick

  Stretching out as though relaxing on a beach, Juergen rubbed the warmth from an oil heater into his fingers. His left hand first then his right.

  Suddenly the room became too much for Nick, the heater with its noxious scent, the anticipation of imminent action. ‘Let’s go over our plan of attack,’ he decided.

  Seventeen

  Illusions of Spying

  Hamburg, December

  A taxi had collected Nick and driven him through Hamburg as though they were heading for a fire. Waiting for him, a small reception party grouped together on a remote quay off Roßdamm; Jack Balgrey, Döbeln and one more. Who might that be? Nick asked himself, paying off the taxi that had ferried him here in response to uncle Jack’s quixotic demand. Well, isn’t that a surprise, it’s the cavalry, my old worst friend Mitchell Harney.

  ‘I was ready to give you up,’ Mitch said as Nick ambled up.

  ‘Jack and his friend taking you out for a midnight feast? A few glasses of blood before you get back into your casket?’ Nick said, the cold working on his fingers, no feeling at all; just numb as though his dentist had practised injections on them.

  ‘If someone hadn’t already beaten you in Moscow, I would have,’ growled Harney, a senior American National Clandestine Service officer, the Director for Europe, his lair in London.

  ‘Sent you on a training mission, Mitch? Come to see how us pros do it?’ Nick taunted him. For Harney always seemed to cast a shadow on CO8 operations, trying to muscle in; turn agents, make his own bed without lying in it.

  ‘You’re not even in the same league,’ yelled Harney.

  ‘What league would that be? The one reserved for losers that you’re always top of,’ snapped Nick as Balgrey stepped safely away.

  ‘We have business to attend to,’ Döbeln reminded them officiously.

  Mitch truculently faced Döbeln and shook his head. Under the branched stems of a crane Harney cast an imposing presence, the grey suit, the unbuttoned navy overcoat, the red scarf; all stirring Nick’s memory of cold Virginia mornings when the unfaithful were summoned to attend CIA briefings to clarify perspectives, as they used to term it.

  ‘This way,’ proposed Döbeln setting briskly off, padding towards a long low morgue of grey brick; a squat building damp from layers of snow, a building not requiring windows because the river police post next door had all those. Behind them Balgrey kept his own pace and counsel, his work completed.

  ‘Could be Oskar, could be a mistake,’ spat Harney.

  ‘How did he get involved?’

  Harney never replied, only glared as they strode on. Oskar, Nick remembered him well; a thirty-three year old freelance journalist working out of Hamburg who always fancied himself as a spy. A loner who used maps, travel guides, magazines, newspapers, internet global security sites, even declassified CIA documents to manufacture his own fake sources and worthless intelligence. His very own secret bricolage that he believed would buy him entry into the secret world. No one ever took Oskar seriously and Nick couldn’t understand why Mitch suddenly would.

  ‘You go on,’ Balgrey called. ‘I’ll wait out here, stay in the car, feel a bit queasy truth told.’

  Together Nick and Harney entered through swing doors held by crooked springs. Official edicts in gruesome colours warning about Aids and rabies hid the cracks in the reinforced glass. Then the smell hit them in a sickly rush, river and formaldehyde in a lobby spotlessly clean with polished floor tiles in sea green, reflective cream walls and a dozen stacking plastic chairs with red seats and back pads.

  Two river policemen were dealing with a Chinese captain, one of them peeled away and came forward; the end of his shift in his eyes, reporting to a weary officer in plain clothes, taking him to one side, words low, confidential, a mouth close to the detective’s ear. ‘Sailor...Filipino... missing for a watch....stabbing.’ Nick picked up the basics, a radio drama with the sound a tad low. Busy night in the morgue he thought, as an interpreter came with a jug of water for the captain. Through an opened office door Nick saw a pathologist in cream boots and a blue patterned hat swing from the hip, answering a question from someone farther back. The calmness and ordinary way these people went about their duties made Nick uneasy. Mitch shrugged at him another routine to be completed, nothing more taxing than filling in expenses.

  ‘Gentlemen.’ Döbeln cleared the little sad group writing up murder details. ‘Please.’

  In fast lurches he sauntered into an office laid out for administration containing four desks of grey metal arranged in a square. At one a middle-aged clerk in a white coat retreated into her seat when Döbeln squatted on a tip of her desk. She had a flushed face, shoulder length hair missing a wash, and hesitant eyes behind hornbeam glasses; all of her crushed low into a defensive ball as Döbeln loomed over her. Entering their visit, date and names in neat capitals, her pen nib crackled louder than a welder’s torch. She gently folded the ledger closed and invited them down a passage where fluorescent tubes hummed and stuttered.

  Embarrassed, uneasy, Nick concentrated on the floor tiles noticing how the colour was derived from masses of individual flecks, counting them as they went. Three hundred and eighty tiles in all, before they gave way to carpet in a viewing room, nothing more than a hot cubicle sprinkled with plastic flowers and potpourri in plain wide lipped bowls. She asked them to wait and clumped out, letting the formaldehyde in. Mitch flopped in a chair his face a shield, no sentiment showing or permitted.

  This wasn’t right, decided Nick sitting back, Oskar working for Mitch?

  ‘How did he die?’ Nick brus
quely asked Döbeln, draped in a chair opposite Mitch. They were waiting for the show to begin the body to be drained, a dab of foundation added, holes stitched and darned.

  ‘Not pleasantly I think. A body in the water carries so many disadvantages.’

  ‘Being dead’s one,’ said Mitch.

  ‘Perhaps working for you did not help,’ Döbeln declared plaiting the spare ends of his trench coat belt, tying them, flapping them. ‘He was vulnerable, yes?’ he asked, throwing a glance at Mitch. ‘Maybe you exploited him too much?’ He sprang out of his chair with a sudden thought, attending to something at a plexiglass window set in the wall everyone tried to avoid.

  ‘Nice one,’ Nick said to Mitch. ‘Ace.’

  ‘No sweat,’ said Harney with a smile.

  As a diversion Döbeln and a morgue attendant conversed through the plexiglass, a flurry of waves from this side and a gloved thumbs up from the other. What are they, wondered Nick, the warm up team? Wafting in, the woman clerk produced a clipboard from the folds of her white coat. A master of ceremonies with a shy greasy curl trapped between her spectacles and her brow.

  ‘Who is going to identify the body?’ she asked.

  ‘He is,’ said Döbeln and Nick in the same breath.

  ‘Very well.’ She tapped reprovingly on the plexiglass, attempting to wake a guest who’d overslept.

  In one busy dash Harney was over at the plexiglass staring in. Craning his neck from different angles he took his time, nodded once as in a goodbye, turned and said, ‘Sure, that’s him.’ Handing him a biro, the clerk pointed on her clipboard where he should sign and signalled the curtains to be closed again.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ said Döbeln to Nick when Harney had retaken his seat. ‘I would like to be absolutely sure.’