The Vault Read online

  Part I

  1

  Harry Mack­in­tosh raised his bin­ocu­lars and looked out over the Wall.

  He was with Élodie Ler­oux and David Mor­gan on the fourth floor of an aban­doned of­fice block that still bore the scars of a Red Army shell from forty years earlier. There was no money to fix the build­ing and so it had been con­demned, left to the rats and roaches that scur­ried across the bare con­crete floors and the bo­hemi­ans from Schöne­berg who came to party on the week­ends. The win­dows had been boarded over, but Mack­in­tosh had prised one of the planks away so that he could look out. The west­ern face of the Wall was dir­ectly be­low him, and, as he looked down, he could see the graf­fiti that had been scrawled across it. The Wall was, in real­ity, two walls that sand­wiched a swath of open ground. The walls were twelve feet tall and topped with coils of barbed wire. The death strip was in between them, an ex­panse that had been cleared when the East Ger­mans had de­mol­ished the build­ings on their side of the ori­ginal wall. It was made im­pass­able with tank traps and fakir beds, all ob­served by guards staff­ing a series of tall watchtowers. There was a tower a hun­dred feet away from Mack­in­tosh’s po­s­i­tion; Mack­in­tosh had been watch­ing the guards through the bin­ocu­lars for any signs of heightened activ­ity, and had been pleased to see that they were ap­par­ently as bored and lack­a­dais­ical as ever.

  Mack­in­tosh was up high enough to be able to look over the second wall and see into the snow-covered streets of East Ber­lin. He was anxious, and for good reason. The cross­ing was dan­ger­ous, and, how­ever hard he had worked to min­im­ise the risks, there was still a chance that they would be dis­covered. Mack­in­tosh grit­ted his teeth. The prize was tan­tal­isingly close and, with it, his ca­reer would be made.

  “Any­thing?” he asked Mor­gan.

  Mor­gan was stand­ing at a second win­dow with a pair of high-powered bin­ocu­lars. He had a good view of Strel­itzer Straße. “Not that I can see,” he re­por­ted.

  Mor­gan had been in Ber­lin for a year longer than Mack­in­tosh. Mack­in­tosh had taken over when the head of sta­tion had been murdered in a knife at­tack in the East three months ago. Mor­gan—with more ex­per­i­ence and five years older—had not taken the pro­mo­tion well. Mack­in­tosh knew it, too. He had told Mor­gan it was noth­ing per­sonal, and that he would need the be­ne­fit of his ex­per­i­ence and ad­vice. Mor­gan was a pro­fes­sional and, whatever per­sonal an­imus he held, he had not let it in­ter­fere with his work. He ran his net­work of in­form­ants on both sides of the bor­der, sub­mit­ted his re­ports promptly, and had proved in­valu­able with the in­tel­li­gence that he routinely provided. Des­pite that, there re­mained an un­spoken dis­tance between the two men. They spoke of the job and noth­ing else. Mack­in­tosh didn’t care. That was all he needed.

  Mack­in­tosh looked at his watch. “It’s nearly time.”

  “Fif­teen minutes,” Élodie said. “What is it? You nervous?”

  “I need to be over there,” he said.

  “That’s not what we agreed.”

  “I know. Change of plan. I’m go­ing to go across.”

  “They know what they’re do­ing, Harry,” Mor­gan said.

  “I want to make sure.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out. Keep the ra­dio on.”

  Mack­in­tosh had ar­ranged for the team to have Mag­navox AN/PRC-68 ra­dios. His own unit—an olive drab brick that weighed two and a half pounds—was in the ruck­sack that he col­lec­ted from the floor where he had left it. He made sure the unit was switched on and re­ceiv­ing and put it back into the bag. He took out his Ber­etta, popped the magazine and en­sured that it was loaded. He con­firmed that there was a round in the cham­ber, pressed the magazine back into the port, and made the gun safe. He put the gun into its hol­ster.

  “RV back at base when we’re all out,” Mack­in­tosh said.

  “Good luck.”

  Mack­in­tosh gave a nod, swal­lowed down the anxi­ety that was boil­ing in his gut, and star­ted down the stairs to the street.

  2

  Mack­in­tosh came out of the build­ing, checked that the road was clear, and then walked to­ward the Kond­itorei Buch­wald bakery. There was a de­liv­ery van wait­ing there; the vehicle’s lights were off, but the en­gine was on. Mack­in­tosh walked by the van and looked into the wing mir­ror as he went by. He could see the driver: dark coat, pale face, eyes fo­cussed for­ward. The plan called for the pack­age to be re­moved from the vi­cin­ity of the Wall in the back of the van, out of view of the guards in the watchtowers that were vis­ible over the lip of the Wall.

  “Hey.”

  It was a hiss, not much more than a whis­per, but he heard it and turned around. Élodie was hur­ry­ing after him. He frowned at her breach of pro­tocol but in­dic­ated that she should join him in the bakery and went in­side.

  She reached him and grabbed him by the arm.

  “What are you do­ing?” she asked.

  “The plan’s not right. I should be over there.”

  “They know what they’re do­ing. You’re in­ter­fer­ing.”

  “No, I’m not,” he pro­tested. “I’m do­ing my job. PI­CASSO is too im­port­ant.”

  She moved her hand from his el­bow to his face and laid her palm against his cheek. Then, with the im­petu­ous­ness that Mack­in­tosh had al­ways found so be­guil­ing, and be­fore he could stop her, she took a step closer and kissed him. He let her, then put his arms around her and drew her closer; her mouth opened as he re­turned her kiss. He lost him­self for a long mo­ment, drink­ing in the smell of her and the taste of her lip­stick and the sweet tea that they had shared in the con­su­late be­fore mak­ing their way across town.

  Élodie had been re­spons­ible for de­vel­op­ing PI­CASSO as a source. She had been op­er­at­ing in East Ber­lin as a lan­guage stu­dent and had heard about him from an ac­quaint­ance with ex­per­i­ence of some of the seedier as­pects of the local night­life. She had ap­proached PI­CASSO, con­firmed his story, veri­fied it as likely true, and then re­por­ted it to her su­per­i­ors at the Dir­ec­tion Générale de la Sé­cur­ité Ex­térieure on Boulevard Mor­tier in Paris. The French did not have the ca­pa­city to ex­filtrate PI­CASSO them­selves and so, in a rare ex­ample of Anglo–French co­oper­a­tion, they had pro­posed a joint op­er­a­tion with MI6.

  Élodie was made Ber­lin li­aison to the UK’s Ber­lin Sta­tion. Mack­in­tosh had found her to be a su­perb agent, and their pro­fes­sional re­la­tion­ship had im­me­di­ately been ex­cel­lent. It was, per­haps, in­ev­it­able that it would be­come more than that. They had been in a re­la­tion­ship for sev­eral months, and those months had been among the hap­pi­est of his life. Their union was born from a con­fec­tion of dif­fer­ent mo­tiv­a­tions: greed, ini­tially, then pro­fes­sional ad­vance­ment, shared glory and, fi­nally—he hoped—love.

  The mo­ment stretched, and he would have let it con­tinue forever but for the squelch of his ra­dio. He gently moved her a step back, took the ra­dio and pressed the trans­mit but­ton to send the single bar of static that ac­know­ledged re­ceipt. It was the pre-agreed sig­nal from the other side of the Wall: everything was clear.

  “See?” she said. “It’s fine. There’s noth­ing to worry about.”

  “So where is he?”

  “It’s not time yet. He’s not late. Re­lax, Harry.”

  “I’m go­ing to go across. I can’t just sit here and let it hap­pen.”

  “Fine. I’m go­ing too.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “He’s my agent—yes I am.”

  He was about to protest, to tell her that was crazy, but
she was French—stub­born and single-minded—and he knew that she wouldn’t take no for an an­swer. He could or­der her to stand down, but he did not have au­thor­ity over her and, more to the point, he knew what she would have said when they were back in his apart­ment that night: he was a sex­ist hy­po­crite. She would have been right, too. He couldn’t bring him­self to do it.

  “Fine,” he said. “Got your gun?”

  She pat­ted the bulge be­neath her left shoulder. “Yes.”

  “We need to hurry.”

  Mack­in­tosh went down into the base­ment. MI6 had ar­ranged for four SAS sol­diers from the Ber­lin Re­gi­ment to be as­signed to the mis­sion, and two of them were wait­ing for them.

  “Any­thing hap­pen­ing, sir?” the senior man asked him.

  “Looks clear.”

  “Fisher and Cameron are ready on the other side.”

  “Very good,” Mack­in­tosh said. “Ler­oux and I are go­ing across.”

  The sol­dier frowned. “Are you sure, sir? We’ve got it all un­der con­trol.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But I’d like to have a look for my­self.”

  The man knew bet­ter than to protest, and stood aside.

  They had star­ted build­ing the tun­nel two months earlier. Ber­liners had been tun­nel­ling un­der the Wall for years, but most of their ef­forts were fail­ures: the pas­sages were either too un­stable to use or were dis­covered quickly by the East Ger­man bor­der guards. West­ern in­tel­li­gence knew that cov­ert ac­cess across the bor­der would be a valu­able as­set, and they had ad­vant­ages that the cit­izens of the di­vided city did not. MI6 had ar­ranged for sap­pers from the Royal En­gin­eers to come to the city and se­lect prom­ising loc­a­tions for a tun­nel. This bakery had been chosen as the site of the west­ern en­trance, with the east­ern en­trance emer­ging in the base­ment of an apart­ment block at Strel­itzer Straße 55. The sap­pers had slept in the bakery on week-long shifts, pil­ing up the spoil in flour sacks that were then re­moved from the site by ap­pro­pri­ately liv­er­ied de­liv­ery vans. They had cut a rect­an­gu­lar open­ing in the floor of the base­ment and then bur­rowed down el­even metres; once they were deep enough they had star­ted to tun­nel to the East, even­tu­ally con­struct­ing a pas­sage that was wide enough for one per­son to pass through.

  Mack­in­tosh lowered him­self into the open­ing un­til his feet found the rungs of the lad­der. The tun­nel was lit by lan­terns that were placed at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals. There was one at the top and an­other be­low him, and their com­bined light meant that the des­cent was into gloom rather than pitch dark­ness.

  He looked up. “Ready?”

  Élodie nod­ded.

  He climbed down un­til he reached the bot­tom, Élodie fol­low­ing above him. The city had been con­struc­ted on soft found­a­tions, and it had not been par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult to ex­cav­ate the route. The en­gin­eers had strengthened the walls with wooden boards and lat­tice girders that had been smuggled into the bakery un­der cover of dark­ness. The sap­pers had asked Mack­in­tosh how long they had to con­struct the tun­nel, and he had told them that time was not a lux­ury that they pos­sessed. PI­CASSO was ready to be ex­filtrated, and the longer they waited the greater the chance that he would be found by the Stasi. He couldn’t tol­er­ate that. The cap­tain in charge of the dig had sug­ges­ted that it would take them four months to com­plete the build. Mack­in­tosh had told him that was un­ac­cept­able, and that he had three weeks. They had settled on two months, but the en­gin­eer had said that the com­prom­ise was that the tun­nel would be rudi­ment­ary, cramped and claus­tro­phobic. He had been right.

  Mack­in­tosh star­ted to crawl and, as ever, he wondered if he could have al­lowed the sap­pers a little ex­tra time to make the ex­per­i­ence less un­pleas­ant. The tun­nel was nar­row and the ceil­ing pressed down op­press­ively. The pas­sage could only be ne­go­ti­ated on hands and knees and, after just a few seconds, Mack­in­tosh found that his arms and legs were caked with wet mud.

  He tried to take his mind off the thought of the tonnes of earth above his head and thought about the op­er­a­tion. He had re­ceived in­tel­li­gence that this part of the bor­der would not be heav­ily pro­tec­ted to­night. It was Christ­mas Eve. Two-thirds of the guard were on re­lief, drink­ing schnapps and eat­ing brat­wurst at the bar­racks half a mile to the north. The in­tel­li­gence had given him an op­por­tun­ity and he had de­cided to take it.

  He kept crawl­ing. The way ahead was lit with more low-voltage lamps, but their light only trav­elled so far; the spaces between them were gloomy and, on oc­ca­sion, al­most com­pletely black. It was im­possible to know where he was in re­la­tion to the bor­der; be­neath the ram­parts of the first wall, some­where be­neath the death strip, be­neath the second wall. He kept go­ing, ig­nor­ing the cramps in his back and shoulders and the gunk that was cling­ing to his clothes. He thought of PI­CASSO, the sin­gu­lar coup that they had been work­ing to achieve for so long. These depriva­tions—the dirt and the damp—and the danger of his even­ing’s work would be as noth­ing com­pared to the re­ac­tion he would re­ceive in Lon­don once they had suc­cess­fully ex­filtrated the as­set. The in­tel­li­gence that PI­CASSO was bring­ing with him would be dy­nam­ite; it would cripple the Stasi lead­er­ship for months. Mack­in­tosh knew that it would be the mak­ing of him.

  He could hear Élodie scrab­bling after him. “You okay?” he hissed back to her.

  “Fine,” she said. “Keep mov­ing.”

  He be­came aware that he had moved onto an up­ward slope. He re­membered the in­cline from his pre­vi­ous vis­its to the tun­nel, the sap­pers who had come down with him ex­plain­ing that the slope began be­neath the second wall and be­came more pro­nounced as it ap­proached the east­ern en­trance. He slithered up, feel­ing the ceil­ing against his shoulders and the back of his head as the pas­sage lowered, and then, with the muscles in his back burn­ing from the ef­fort, he saw an­other lamp and pushed on to­ward it. The slope lev­elled out and he saw the lad­der that led up to the base­ment of num­ber 55.

  He climbed un­til he reached the top of the lad­der. The pas­sage was sealed to limit the amount of light that leaked out from the tun­nel; Mack­in­tosh knocked three times, waited, then knocked again.

  He heard a voice, a hissed ques­tion that was only just aud­ible through the boards. “Who is it?”

  “Mack­in­tosh and Ler­oux,” he whispered back.

  He held onto the lad­der for an ex­tra mo­ment un­til the board was re­moved and the dim light from the base­ment washed over him. One of the sol­diers was above him; he reached down with both hands and clasped Mack­in­tosh’s right wrist, help­ing him to climb out the rest of the way. The man was one of the SAS de­tail. His name was Cameron; he was a Scots­man, as hard as flint and with a deathly cold stare.

  The base­ment was a me­dium-sized room that ac­com­mod­ated the boil­ers for the block above it. It was damp, with puddles of brack­ish wa­ter that re­flec­ted the glow of the shiel­ded flash­light that Cameron shone in Mack­in­tosh’s face be­fore quickly ex­tin­guish­ing it again.

  “Any­thing?” Mack­in­tosh asked him.

  “Not yet,” Cameron said, reach­ing down and help­ing Élodie to climb out of the shaft.

  “Where are Foulkes and Fisher?”

  “Up­stairs. Wait­ing.”

  Mack­in­tosh swept his hands over his knees, try­ing to re­move some of the en­crus­ted mud, and then straightened up to work out the kinks in his back. “I won’t miss hav­ing to do that,” he said, in­dic­at­ing the en­trance to the tun­nel with a nod of his head.

  “After to­night you won’t have to do it again,” Élodie said.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  3

  Mack­in­tosh took a shiel­ded torch from a shelf and used it to light his
way up the stairs. He climbed to the ground floor with Élodie fol­low­ing be­hind. There was an empty apart­ment with a door that opened dir­ectly onto Strel­itzer Straße. There were two men wait­ing for them: Fisher was the other SAS war­rant of­ficer, younger than Cameron, easier to talk to, but sim­il­arly com­pet­ent; Nich­olas Foulkes was one of the other agents who worked Ber­lin Sta­tion.

  “Christ, boss,” Foulkes said. “You gave me a shock.”

  Foulkes had bright blond hair, al­most white in the muted glow of the torch. He was in his late twen­ties and was dressed in heavy black trousers and an over­coat. His role was im­port­ant. The West Ber­liners had a word for it: he was the Fluchthelfer, the ‘es­cape helper,’ po­si­tioned at the start of the es­cape route to start the pro­cess of cross­ing the bor­der.

  “What are you do­ing here?” he asked.

  “Change of plan,” Mack­in­tosh said. “I want to be here to get PI­CASSO across.”

  “I tried to tell him,” Élodie said.

  “It’s too im­port­ant to take chances.”

  Mack­in­tosh real­ised that that might be taken as a lack of con­fid­ence in the abil­it­ies of the men he had deputed to run the east­ern side of the ex­filtra­tion, but he was too on edge to worry about that. Foulkes brushed off the per­ceived slight; he was on edge, too, and Mack­in­tosh wondered if he had even re­gistered it.

  “Have you seen any­thing?” Mack­in­tosh asked Fisher.

  “No, sir. It’s quiet.”

  “Guards?”

  “No. Looks like the in­tel­li­gence was right. We haven’t seen any.”

  “We couldn’t have chosen a bet­ter night,” Élodie offered.

  “Maybe.” Mack­in­tosh took the ra­dio from his pack and pressed the but­ton to speak. “WINCHESTER,” he said. “It’s SALIS­BURY. Any­thing to re­port?”

  “No,” Mor­gan replied from the vant­age point on the other side of the Wall. “It’s quiet. I can’t see any­thing.”