The Vault Page 13
*
The air was much cooler outside and a damp mist had descended, closing around them and reducing the visibility so that he could only just see to the end of the street. The woman got into the passenger seat of a black Saab and told Jimmy to get in the driver’s seat. He did, putting his bag on the back seat and closing the door.
“We couldn’t talk in there?” he asked.
“There were people listening for the Stasi,” she explained.
“I didn’t see anyone. Who?”
“They have a hundred thousand people working for them,” she said. “Easier to say who isn’t working for them.” She put out her hand. “I’m Oksana.”
“Jimmy.”
“How much has our mutual friend told you?”
“About you?” She nodded. “A little.”
“That’s for the best.”
“I know you work for the Russians.”
“That’s right. The Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti.”
“The KGB?”
“Very good, Jimmy.”
“And you’re going to arrange a meeting with Sommer.”
She nodded. “I am. And, let me say, you’re a brave man.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Sommer is a dangerous man.”
“It might be brave if I had a choice.”
“I see. Our friend didn’t explain your relationship.”
Jimmy wondered if he had said too much. “Our relationship doesn’t really matter. He said you could arrange it.”
“And I have,” she said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow evening.”
“You can get me over the border?”
“That’s the easy part. I have papers for you.”
She reached for the glovebox, opened it and took out a bundle of papers. She handed the bundle over.
“You already have your passport. I arranged the visa. It is a Tagesvisum—a day visa—good for twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll need longer than that.”
“You will,” she said. “A Tagesvisum is the easiest to arrange. You will need to go to a Reisebüro office tomorrow and arrange for an extension. It will be a formality. You must also change a minimum of twenty-five Deutschmarks into Ostmarks for every day you are in the East. You will also need to register with the Volkspolizei so that they can add a residence stamp in your passport. Again—you need to see to that tomorrow. The hotel concierge will do that for you.”
He flipped through the papers and found a typed letter. It had been signed with an extravagant stroke of the pen. The name beneath the signature was KARL-HEINZ SOMMER. “What’s this?”
“It’s from the general’s office, noting your meeting with him. It should smooth the way, should you need it.”
“Are you coming with me?”
“Not now,” she said. “It would be difficult to explain why a KGB agent took a British citizen over the border. I’ll meet you at the hotel. The address is in your papers. Drive straight there as soon as you have made the crossing.”
There was a road atlas in the glovebox, and Oksana took it out. She flipped the pages until she found the one she wanted.
“We are here,” she said, laying a finger on the map. “The crossing is here, on Friedrichstraße. It’s the only gateway where the GDR allows westerners to pass across. Checkpoint Charlie.”
Jimmy looked: they were close.
“There are two agencies who guard the border. Both wear the same uniform, but they sometimes have different agendas and they don’t like each other. The ones without weapons work for the Kontrolleinheiten. They are part of the Stasi. The others are border guards, from the Ministry of Defence. There can sometimes be clashes of jurisdiction. You just need to be respectful and do as they tell you and everything will be fine.” She looked over at him. “Any questions?”
Jimmy shook his head. He had plenty, but he would ask them another time.
Oksana gave Jimmy the key and he started the engine and flicked on the headlights. Jimmy realised he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was seductive in a way that made him feel uneasy. Like he didn’t trust himself around her.
“I will be at the hotel when you arrive.”
She opened the door and stepped outside. Jimmy glanced at her reflection in the mirror as he pulled out; she had already turned and was walking away.
40
Jimmy set off, following the route that Oksana had shown him. It wasn’t far, and as he turned a corner, he saw it. Checkpoint Charlie. The crossing was marked by a grey hut in the middle of a wide road. He couldn’t see much beyond that with the mist, but he saw the sign on the right-hand side of the road.
YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR.
The crossing didn’t feel American to him, even when he saw the men in US military uniforms crowded around the hut. He looked out of the windscreen at the border ahead. There was a row of guards and a watchtower beyond them. The guards were all armed and he had no doubt that there were snipers in the tower. Getting across the border was one thing; getting back again might be a challenge.
There was a line of cars at the grey shed and Jimmy pulled in at the back. There were separate windows in the shed, each marked by the flag of the country that operated it. Jimmy saw the Stars and Stripes, a French tricolore and the Union Jack. A soldier indicated that Jimmy should wind down the window and Jimmy did as he was told.
“Where are you from?” the man said.
“Belfast.”
“Papers.”
He held out his passport and visa.
“You know you’re at risk if you go over there?”
“I do,” Jimmy replied.
“No support if you get in trouble.”
“I understand.”
“Your funeral.”
The soldier handed him back the passport and visa and waved him on.
Jimmy rolled forward along the road until he reached the border. A barrier blocked the way ahead. Jimmy waited in line as the two cars ahead of him were checked. He saw a dozen soldiers in greyish brown uniforms, some of them armed. They examined the cars and spoke to the drivers, eventually allowing both vehicles through.
A soldier with an AK-47 beckoned Jimmy forward. Jimmy remembered what Oksana had said: he was a border guard. He trained the rifle on him and called out that he should stop.
Jimmy pulled up at the barrier and waited as a second soldier, this one with ginger hair, stepped out of a guard hut. The red-haired man was unarmed; he made a circular gesture with his fist, indicating Jimmy should wind down the window.
Jimmy looked ahead. The guard was still aiming the rifle at him.
The red-haired officer waved for the border guard to lower his weapon. The younger man did as he was told, bringing the weapon down. He held it ready, his finger close to the trigger.
Jimmy wound down the window.
“English?”
“Irish.”
“Passport and papers.”
Jimmy handed the papers to the red-haired man. He took them and stepped back, examining each one in turn.
The tension was thick and cloying. Jimmy felt a long way from home.
The guard leaned down. “Step out of the car, please.”
Jimmy opened the door and stepped out with great care. He turned his back to the red-haired officer and put his hands on the roof. A group of armed border guards appeared and began to inspect the car. They opened the rear passenger doors and got in; the boot and the bonnet were thrown up. Jimmy felt a hand on his shoulder, easing him b
ackwards. He raised his hands and went with it. More guards appeared and got into the front of the car.
Jimmy felt like he was back in Belfast. He had been stopped by the British at checkpoints before. He tried to relax. It wasn’t easy. He sensed someone to his left, and when he looked, he saw the young border guard with his rifle pointed at him again.
Jimmy clenched his fists. He looked at the cobbles, biting down on his lower lip.
The search of the car and its contents, including Jimmy’s bag, went on for several minutes. One of the guards came over with a sniffer dog. The hound was led through the vehicle, its nose poking into every crevice. A guard used a long telescopic pole with a mirror on the end of it to inspect beneath the vehicle. Another unscrewed the fuel cap and inserted a long dipstick into the tank, ensuring that the stick went in far enough.
They were thorough.
The red-haired agent handed the passport and visa back to Jimmy.
“You can go,” he said.
Jimmy climbed back into the driver’s seat and put his hands on the wheel to stop them from trembling.
He was over the border. Beyond the Iron Curtain.
He was in East Germany.
41
Mackintosh went back to his small apartment in the streets behind the British consulate. He had lived here for the last two years. The apartment had been provided to him by the government and was functional rather than comfortable. He had no problem with that. He had always preferred a Spartan life and, save a few photographs and books that he had shipped over when he had been given the posting at Berlin Station, he had done very little to soften the bare white walls and the polished floorboards.
There were a few concessions to sentimentality.
He had framed the only photograph he had of himself with Élodie and had placed it on the table. They had had it taken in Austria when they went to visit Hochosterwitz Castle; the story was that it had inspired the castle in Snow White, and Élodie had told him of her childhood love of that film. The picture was taken on the funicular railway that brought visitors up the mountain to the top.
They had taken ten days’ vacation for that trip. They had started in Austria and then driven south to Venice, then Milan, then finally north into Switzerland. Their final day had included two hours at Lombard Odier, the famously secretive bank on Sihlstraße in Zurich. Mackintosh had opened a private account and had deposited the two hundred thousand francs that the DGSE had paid him to provide what they euphemistically referred to as ‘updates’ on British intelligence across Western Europe.
Mackintosh picked up the photograph and looked at it. Élodie had been the agent who had recruited him. It was professional at first, but she had told him that it had grown into more, and he had believed her. She had been so happy on that trip; he had been happy, too. She had been the one good thing in his life, the suggestion that he might be able to forget the things that he had been asked to do in Belfast, the men he had broken, the lives he had ruined… and now she had been taken from him.
He shuddered, swallowing down on a throat that was suddenly thick and blinking away the tears. He put the photograph face down. What was the point of torturing himself?
He went into the kitchen, took a dirty saucepan from the sink and washed it under the tap. He dried it off, opened a tin of soup, poured it into the saucepan and warmed it on the stove. He wondered how Walker was doing. Mackintosh had taken a table in Café Adler, the establishment near Checkpoint Charlie that offered a view of the crossing. He had seen the Saab that Oksana had provided, and had watched with barely concealed trepidation as it had slowly made its way over the border. Mackintosh had been too far away to make out what had happened as the Saab had paused outside the East, and had hoped that the delay was just another routine check. He had allowed himself a sigh of relief as the car had continued on its way. Now, though, Mackintosh had no real idea what was happening. Oksana had not reported back to him, and further intelligence would be sparing, if there was any at all. Walker really was on his own.
The plan was a punt. Would it work? The odds were against it, but he had to try something.
Mackintosh poured the soup into a bowl, took a hunk of stale bread and a spoon and went back into the sitting room. He rested the bowl on the mantelpiece and took down one of the framed photographs. It was a picture of his mother and father. They had both been dead for years and he had no siblings. There was an uncle in Brunei, but that was it; he had been left with no family. He had no friends either, the acquaintances he had made during his university and army years quickly lost in the wilful obfuscation that had followed his transfer into the secret services. Mackintosh did not mind that. He had never been a particularly sociable man, and had always found the most satisfaction in solitude. Living here, in the enforced secrecy of West Berlin, suited his temperament. Élodie had offered something hard to find, the understanding that another spy could offer, and now that was gone.
He heard noises outside the door. The sound of footsteps. He wondered whether it might be his neighbours until he caught the briefest snatch of whispered conversation. He knew what was about to happen, but, before he could do anything, the door to the flat exploded inwards in a cacophony of noise: twisted metal as the hinges buckled, splintered wood as the lock tore through the frame, and a volley of shouted orders from the three men who burst inside.
The men were all armed. Mackintosh backed away and raised his hands above his head, very aware that they would shoot him if he gave them any excuse to do so.
“Don’t shoot,” he said. “I’m not armed.”
“On the floor!” the man in the lead bellowed. He spoke in English, heavily accented with German.
“Okay,” Mackintosh said. He lowered himself to his knees and then onto his stomach. The three men came all the way inside, converging on him and forcing his arms behind his back. He felt the pinch of cuffs as they were fastened around his wrists and ankles. His right shirt cuff was torn open, the button spinning away onto the floor boards, and the sleeve rolled up to his elbow. He knew what was about to happen, and knew that there was no sense in trying to fight it. One of the men produced a syringe and pressed the needle into the vein on the inside of his elbow. Mackintosh did not know which anaesthetic the Stasi were favouring—fentanyl, carfentanil, sufentanil—but felt it as it ran up his arm to his shoulder. His veins throbbed as though they were full of ice and his body pulsed with a dull ache until the light started to fade and his eyelids became too heavy to hold open.
Part VI
42
Jimmy followed the directions that Oksana had given him. The streets were dark and grey, with buildings decorated with Soviet propaganda. He passed a large cinema on which had been hung a portrait of Stalin in full military regalia. Banners alternately extolled the benefits of socialism and derided the West.
He drove to an old hotel in a district where bars and cafés were plentiful. The hotel itself was reasonably impressive, at least by the standards of its neighbouring buildings. It was flanked by red stone columns with a flight of steps that led up to a grand entrance. He parked the car on a nearby street and walked back with his bag slung across his shoulder. He climbed the steps into the lobby. The space was lit with oil lamps and furnished with rich green leather couches, antique tables and cabinets. The carpet on the marble floor was an inch thick.
Jimmy stepped inside and saw Oksana. She glanced over at him and then looked back down to
the magazine that she was reading. He went to the desk.
“Hello,” he said. “Do you speak English?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“I’d like to check in.”
“Of course. Could I see your papers?”
Jimmy handed over his visa and reservation and waited as the man filled out his information on a registration form. Jimmy noticed the small details that belied the hotel’s grandeur. The collar of the receptionist’s shirt was frayed and worn, and looked as if it had been sewn back on in the recent past. The floors were clean but unpolished. The flowers in the vases were plastic and dusty. Every member of staff––from the receptionist to the bellboy waiting to attend to Jimmy’s bag––looked as though their clothes were just a little too big for them.
“Very good, Herr Walker. We have a junior suite ready for you. Breakfast is in the restaurant between six and ten. The restaurant is open now or we’d be happy to send room service up to your room. There’s a telephone in the room. Please just call.”
The bellboy asked to take Jimmy’s bag. The man was older than Jimmy would have expected for the position, in his late fifties and with eyes that drooped in exhaustion or apathy. Jimmy declined and reassured the man that he would be fine holding his own bag. He asked for directions to his room and the man obliged, pointing to the lifts and telling him that he would need the sixth floor.
43
Jimmy opened the door to his room with a large iron key. The space inside was generous: there was a living room, a small dining table, a large marble bathroom and a bedroom with a huge four-poster bed. The suite was perfectly pleasant, if a little worn around the edges.