The Oktober Projekt

by R. J. Dillon

  ‘Lies,’ he complained feebly, accepting a dressing stool provided by Ernst. ‘You are crooks, thieves, nothing more,’ Bliska grumbled, turning unhappily from his own reflection in the dressing table mirror.

  ‘I will give you five minutes to make up your mind, cooperate with us, or take your chance with Moscow, your wife and the authorities here. You agree to work with us and I ask for nothing more than total commitment.’

  ‘Commitment,’ he repeated loudly, an oath. ‘If I do not adhere with your demands I will lose everything.’

  ‘Everything, possibly your life, maybe the lives of your family also,’ Nick told him.

  Downstairs the music was getting higher followed by laughter. The more noise you make the less attention you create; fact of life thought Nick, noise gives assurance that you’re invited, welcomed and not a prying thief. In Klara’s bedroom they were in a different world; isolated, waiting for Bliska to make his decision. Which he did, drawing a huge breath to commence his heroic tale.

  ‘I was recruited from a technical college in Riga,’ Bliska began, ‘I studied software engineering and was chosen to attend a training facility in north Ossetia.’ He glanced up, touring the faces around the room, considering whether he should continue, which after a hesitant pause he did. Bliska then went on to detail how he had been ‘placed’ in SVZkom, at that time a small Swiss IT company, but with Moscow funding he transformed it into a cutting-edge R&D concern. With further Moscow funding he eventually bought the company shares outright, giving Moscow its very own clean Swiss front. He became a Swiss national twenty-years ago, adding more veneer to his cover by marrying into a respected local family. He met Klara at the local tennis club he added, his wife never enjoyed physical sport.

  ‘There is a particular problem that you can help us with,’ Nick suggested. ‘Not the funding of the seminars and honeytraps in Hamburg, but,’ here Nick took a deliberate weighted pause, ‘there is the separate additional payment from Panama, a regular monthly transfer that we can’t fully understand.’ Nor could Aubrey-Spencer’s specialists, Nick learnt after Danny Redman had delivered the reconstructed accounts Galina Myla had dumped on the laptop.

  His head hung low, Bliska nodded in principle.

  ‘And unless you are willing to give me your full assistance, the Swiss authorities will be informed immediately.’ Nick waited for the censure, the victim’s last attempt to convince himself he was in no position to reject the reasonable offer. ‘I really need you to make up your mind.’

  Bliska hesitated for a moment before venturing his opinion. ‘You are a fool, you’re a lunatic,’ he decided. ‘You cannot protect me from Moscow.’ And before anyone could prevent him, he had lurched over to Nick and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘They can get to me as easy as that.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Nick snapped.

  The music lifted again, the floor vibrated and Bliska lost his concentration briefly. ‘Keep it reasonable,’ Ernst shouted from the gallery returning with an apology on his face, and resumed his vigil by the window.

  Bliska stared unflinchingly ahead, his grey eyes indifferent to his plight, determined the whole world should take a share of the blame. Nick slapped the clipboard on his knees, a clipboard containing Lubov’s hard won prize presented in common spreadsheet rows and columns.

  ‘We need to move fast, not tomorrow, the day after, but now. I need to know if you’re going to provide me with answers?’

  A prospect so daunting that Bliska screwed his silk handkerchief into a tight ball, a move Nick recognised as clear as signal as he might have wished for, that Bliska had finally lost his inner struggle.

  ‘I have no choice as you know,’ said Bliska, lifting his eyes to Nick in one last open appeal. ‘I will cooperate.’

  Markus brought them coffee, three small cups and a pot that gleamed from never being used. Bliska listened in a rapt silence as Nick outlined how that one monthly special payment was the only stumbling block to Bliska being welcomed in London with open arms.

  ‘It’s important that you’re totally frank with me,’ Nick added as a warning.

  Bliska looked blankly at Nick, a slight frown of suspicion puckering his heavy brow. Slipping off his jacket Bliska folded it neatly and laid it by his feet, loosened the knot on his tie, unbuttoned his collar, a man about to play serious poker.

  ‘This monthly payment is really a very straight forward transaction,’ Bliska stated, with no qualms, no hesitancy and no compunction in revealing his GRU subterfuge.

  ‘How so?’ Nick observed casually.

  Bliska returned a thin smile. ‘It is for the maintenance of an isolated property on Fehmarn, this you understand is a German island. A large house with many acres of land on the coast near Puttgarden, my company purchased it on Moscow’s instructions several years ago as a safe house. And for cover, it is accounted for as a company retreat. But no one from the company is allowed to visit. Buying the house did not even dent the sum Moscow had supplied, they could have bought the entire island,’ Bliska laughed.

  No one else so much as smiled along with him, and here Nick noticed a visible change come over those in the room; we have uncovered Lubov’s real treasure, he thought. ‘How was the property used?’

  Whether he was aware of the importance of Nick’s question or he enjoyed being in the limelight, Bliska made an inordinate fuss of remembering. Finally, when it seemed Nick was in danger of beating it out of him, Bliska nodded. ‘Someone from Moscow has the exclusive rights to the house. She has South African papers in the name of Elsa De-Beyer, she has cover as a SVZkom consultant,’ Bliska said, swallowing hard, because he appreciated just as everyone else in the room did, that at that very moment he had just become an official traitor punishable by death; a sentence Moscow resolutely enforced.

  ‘And this house is still used by Elsa De-Beyer?’ Nick asked suppressing his ache for a cigarette, a long drink of Laphroaig, as Bliska started to dry, needed nudging along.

  ‘Yes,’ Bliska confessed, and the knot of silk went from hand to hand. ‘But Moscow informed me that because the house was such a strategic asset, its maintenance would have to be undertaken by an outside company. The monthly payment from Panama I then have to divide, conceal as consultancy work,’ Bliska stated, inflating his standing with Moscow.

  ‘Who manages the property?’

  Closing his puffy eyes, Bliska played out his remaining moment in the spotlight until Nick again quite viciously demanded the name.

  ‘Venlag of Hamburg, it has diverse interests I believe.’

  And Nick refused his quite natural instinct to reveal his amazement, suppressing his justified sense of disbelief. Visualising instead, Jack Balgrey as the sole representative of Venlag & Co. GmbH, servicing a property belonging to Moscow. Jack and his company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Service; which did indeed have diverse interests, though not one of them should have included being employed by the GRU.

  ‘You have been extremely helpful, Herr Bliska. There are however a few items that we need your assistance with. A complete record of all transactions that you will provide to my colleague,’ said Nick, nodding in Ernst’s direction, disguising how important Bliska’s last piece of information had been.

  ‘You ask too much of me. They will hunt me and kill me.’

  ‘They would destroy you anyway,’ said Nick and paused as Ernst came to his side, a whisper in his ear. ‘I understand, no problem,’ Nick said to Ernst and turned back to Bliska. ‘We have arranged for you and your family to be relocated to a safe house. We will assist with papers, passports and new identities.’

  ‘But now, this very moment?’ Bliska said, reaching for his jacket. ‘You want me to leave immediately?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I have commitments here, friends, a reputation, a very good life, my company.’

  ‘I’m not forcing you to leave, but Moscow will send someone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Already thinking through his options, Bliska had a s
udden afterthought. ‘What of Klara, where is she? What have you done with her?’

  ‘She is being looked after and has accepted our offer of a new identity, a new life.’

  Suddenly the party broke up, the group departed as quickly as they arrived. Silently, with no farewells on the step, no goodbye kisses, Liesel and Lukas made a final inspection before Markus locked the door returning the house to its limbo. With quite enough things to concern him, Nick refused to return to Winterthur by car, opting to walk, allowing himself a chance to go through his remaining objectives.

  Twenty

  The Boatyard

  Blankenese, December

  Three in the afternoon and already it was dusk, the road out of Hamburg taking Nick in a new direction. Sleet turning to snow bumped against the Passat’s windscreen as he drove on into Blankenese and tucked the car out of sight close to the Elbe, the hollow melodic notes of a channel buoy tolling in mourning as he walked away. Following the river line Nick climbed past chalets built for the view, taking a stiff assent up the treppes that drained his legs, the blood slopping into his feet. Through long windows oblongs of honeycomb light spilled onto the snow by his side; nothing else moved other than a dog padding its way home through an empty square. Over the hillside a mist thinner than silk blew and billowed through the pine trees, and rounding a corner everything fell away; houses, trees and hill. On the horizon Hamburg burnt under halogen, a beautiful orange coming from generated power and not Allied incendiaries.

  Slipping and scrambling Nick started down a harsh steep path leading out of a canopy of branches strung with outdoor lights, their coloured bulbs bobbing in the wind giving off a numinous glow. Without warning the path spread into a clearing and he was facing the river. Around a tiny inlet of unequal sides, grocery stores, ships’ chandlers and restaurants were dark and closed until next season when fair weather sailors would arrive. In the shadows, Ernst Sargens hunched up tight against the cold began impatiently waving with a torch, a father calling home his wayward son.

  ‘We thought you weren’t coming,’ Sargens said, his heavy jawed grin replaced by a sombre look. ‘Danny was getting concerned.’

  They shook hands and as an added touch Ernst embraced him, the torch digging into Nick’s arm.

  ‘They’re doing a fantastic job, Nick,’ said Ernst ushering him along. ‘Since Switzerland the boys and girls are glad to be involved. We want to be there at the end, to help him wrap it up, they told me. They’re good Nick, they’re committed.’

  Snow stood in soiled heaps at the roadside and a thorough frost gave it a slick sheen as Ernst crunched through it, jogging up concrete stairs to the second level of holiday apartments; three rooms and a dining kitchen, furniture out of a box. Ernst had paid for a month explaining to the agent he and his crew were here to try out a racing yacht, a breakthrough in design, a commercial secret. The agent dusted cigar ash of his lap and shook hands, a wink and the deal signed; nothing would pass his lips the agent promised, they’d have to torture him first. Ernst without a flicker of a smile told him that could be easily arranged. And Ernst’s team had decamped from their original grubby squat to concentrate on Blümhof’s boatyard, no doubt much to the squatter’s relief.

  ‘There’d been no activity since we set up,’ he said ushering Nick to a picture window to admire the view. ‘Then yesterday, bang, we had arrivals.’

  At the far end of the small inlet as though distanced through shame, Blümhof’s boatyard sprawled raggedly over a sloping shore. Nothing more than a melee of sheds and buckled canopies over unfinished hulls, all of them waiting for a final touch Nick reasoned they would never receive.

  ‘We’ve assembled this from the faces Erika caught when they arrived. Where possible we have cross-referenced them,’ Ernst explained, leading Nick to a rear wall.

  A series of photographs were taped to a perspex panel that had been hung in place of a panorama of Old Hamburg, elegantly done in watercolour from across the Außenalster. Some recent the work of Erika, others were file copies in colour, some dark and grainy the result of a high speed film probably taken at night. Nick didn’t even want to guess how Ernst had acquired them; a who’s who of Moscow’s remaining players that Ernst had assembled into a genealogical tree, with names and connecting arrows added in different colours according to rank criss-crossing the perspex.

  ‘Not bad, Nick, a good job, yes?’ said Ernst touching each image in turn, applying names to faces. At its head one severe and stiff face that Ernst identified as GRU Colonel Evgeni Kasimov, beneath him the sullen pout belonged to Sergei Perekop, those two were Franziska and Blümhof, the last is Levko, Perekop’s legman.

  He was also involved in Angie’s rape and murder, thought Nick, remembering the maisonette in East London which brought the hairs on Nick’s neck arms and neck standing on end. ‘A very good job, Ernst,’ said Nick.

  ‘The woman we think might have been brought along to entertain Kasimov.’

  ‘Anything’s possible,’ sighed Nick, moving over to the window standing back in the shadows, staring at the boatyard until his vision blurred. ‘Can we take them?’ Nick wanted to know, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Say the word Nick, everyone is in place. Your show right down the line, your word. Say when.’

  ‘Go,’ Nick said with quiet determination. ‘We go Ernst, it’s a green light.’

  Talking into his radio, Ernst relayed his orders and Nick ran after him down to a waiting Mercedes.

  ‘It’s going to be fine,’ Ernst assured him, pulling on a dark blue balaclava that he rolled down round his neck. ‘No problems, Nick.’

  ‘There never are,’ he answered, wishing he could laugh.

  Fine specks of snow swirled looking for somewhere to land, drifting aimlessly in circles as Ernst drove round the block parking opposite the boatyard gates, cutting the engine and headlights. Now they had ringside seats with a chance of seeing blood. Ernst grabbed another balaclava off the back seat and dropped it in Nick’s lap. Very nice, now he was really one of the team. The traffic had all but dried up and a pale light struggled in the thick white air when Lukas brushed by, dragging himself off up a frozen bank close to the Elbe where trees grew to no great height, bent double by the wind. Coming the other way Erika and Markus argued, their breath bursting in angry white puffs. Two missing? Nick twisted in his seat. Ignaz and Danny as a second entry team? Uncertainty and fear, a rush of nerves that he’d unleashed a diabolical force; Dr. Frankenstein unable to control his monster.

  ‘OK, Liesel,’ Ernst in conversation with a voice sounding miles away. ‘Take a good look round on your way in to check for opposition, count the cars.’

  By the crooked trees Lukas stooped to tie a lace on his combat boot, Erika and Markus were clinched in a kiss by the gates and everything ran at normal speed. Parked just inside the yard Nick saw a Land Cruiser resting in weak light coming from a stockyard pole. An off-roader’s dream with tinted windows, blocked in by Freja and her Volvo estate.

  ‘She can cope, Nick, no doubts. Freja can make it happen,’ Sargens said, tugging up his balaclava.

  This is worse than taking a jump from a plane Nick thought, easing his own woollen helmet on. His body jerked as Ernst’s radio crackled which might have been the cue for stage effect smoke, a charge and Danny’s H&K slaying everything in sight. But it only brought an absurd stale pause, normality and ordinariness damping the tension, allowing Freja to prop up the Volvo’s bonnet and peer into its guts; bent from the waist as if she’d been frozen halfway to touching her toes, her blue jeans tight across her rump.

  ‘We’ve one chance,’ Nick said, and somehow he thought we might just pull this thing off. Shaking her head Freja bent further into the engine. They must be blind, or she’s not their type.

  ‘We’ve a response,’ said Ernst, making it sound as though someone had replied to an ad in the evening paper.

  Out from a clapboard office a figure came to check the obstruction, thumping down three steps to get a clear look
. Ernst passed Nick a night scope and a fudged shape took on proportions that Nick could claim belonged to Blümhof. A flare suddenly exploded in Blümhof’s hand and Nick realised it was a match intensified by technology. He handed the scope back to Ernst and Blümhof’s cigarette became an ember. An incomprehensible yell from Blümhof brought Freja out of the engine. She gestured a helpless look, venturing into the yard to meet Blümhof halfway.

  ‘Move it, get it out of here.’

  ‘But it won’t start,’ said Freja, striking her fingers through her short hair in apparent frustration.

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t want to know. Move it.’

  ‘Come and try, have a look. Maybe I’ve not checked something,’ said Freja.

  ‘Me?’ said Blümhof and tossed the cigarette over his shoulder. ‘There will be a fee if I get it started, are you prepared to pay?’

  ‘Depends on what sort of job you make,’ laughed Freja as Blümhof admired her figure all the way back to the car.

  ‘Turn it over,’ ordered Blümhof. Freja obliged and the engine went through its preliminaries but never fired. ‘Battery’s dead.’ He got out from under the bonnet and froze. Freja’s H&K P9S pointed at his head, not his heart.

  Erika and Markus hit him at speed and he put up a minimum struggle, his head bagged, his wrists cuffed before they dragged him away. Through Ernst’s open window Nick heard two rapid rounds emptied into the night. Ignaz and Danny lurking, a trap set and by the sound, already sprung. A breathtaking pause then figures suddenly running.

  Screaming orders into his radio Ernst stamped on the accelerator and they humped over the pavement, crashing right through the fence. Uprooted posts and wire stuck under the car sent out a shiver of sparks, the muscles in Ernst’s hands taught and solid as he fought with the yammering wheels. Throwing the car round a corner they skidded into a hull and took it straight off its wedges smashing a headlight, the engine screaming wildly. They missed Lukas by inches. Rolling over and over in the snow in front of a motor cruiser stripped to its ribs, Danny and Perekop not playing but intent on serious injury. In the pillar of headlights Levko sprinted away from the rear of the office.