The Vault Read online

  Sonya was Isa­bel’s sis­ter. They had a boy, Lo­gan, who was the same age as Sean. Jimmy swal­lowed again; he wanted to see his boy be­fore he left, but now it wouldn’t be pos­sible. It wasn’t Isa­bel’s fault; it was his own. His own stu­pid­ity and cred­u­lous­ness had landed him in this mess.

  He held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I was ar­res­ted. The man I was work­ing for—he fit­ted me up. I woke up in Scot­land Yard.”

  She reached up to touch his cheek. “They did that to you?”

  “We had a little dif­fer­ence of opin­ion,” he said. “I was try­ing to get home. They didn’t want me to.”

  “But you sor­ted it out?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re here now. You’ve fixed it? Noth­ing’s go­ing to hap­pen?”

  “Not quite.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve got to go away.”

  “Where?”

  “Scot­land.”

  “Why do you need to go to Scot­land?”

  “A man came to see me in the cells this morn­ing. He works for the gov­ern­ment. He said the charges against me would be dropped if I do some work for them.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “I don’t know,” he said hon­estly.

  “For how long?”

  “Two weeks, then I’m home again and we can go back to how we were be­fore.”

  “What do I tell Sean?”

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “Maybe that I’ve a job to do, and I’ll be back as soon as I can—tell him I’ll bring him a present.”

  “You’re go­ing to buy him some­thing and hope he for­gets you’ve left us for two weeks?”

  “Come on, darling,” he said. “I’m do­ing my best. I don’t want to go.”

  “So don’t.”

  “I have to. If I don’t, they’ll charge me. They got me bang to rights and they’ll throw the book at me. I’m sorry—I have to go.”

  She looked away, turn­ing her face to the side so that she could wipe away the tears without him see­ing that she was cry­ing. “This has to change,” she said. “I can’t do this any more. I worry; every time you go out to work I worry that you’re not go­ing to come back. I thought some­thing had happened last night. I thought you’d been hurt or worse. I…”

  The words petered out, re­placed by a sob. Her shoulders juddered as Jimmy pulled her against him, wrap­ping his arms around her and hold­ing her tight un­til the cry­ing sub­sided.

  “It’s go­ing to stop,” he said. “It’ll be dif­fer­ent when I get back.”

  “You’ve said that be­fore,” she said, her voice raw.

  “I mean it this time. No more jobs. I’ll go straight. The house is paid for—I’ll get a job. Some­thing kosher. I prom­ise.”

  He heard the blast of a horn from out­side.

  “Who’s that?” Isa­bel asked.

  “The man who got me out this morn­ing. I have to go with him now.”

  She held onto him tighter, bury­ing her face into his neck. He could smell her tears. He gently reached down and re­moved her arms from around his shoulders. Her face was streaked with mois­ture; he reached down and wiped the tears away.

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “And I don’t want to go, but I have to. Tell Sean I love him. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He held her face with both hands and kissed her. “I love you,” he said.

  He turned away from her be­fore he changed his mind, opened the door and walked across the garden to the pave­ment. He could feel the wet­ness in his eyes and blinked it away; he didn’t want Mack­in­tosh to see him cry­ing. He got to the Jag­uar and opened the door.

  “Ready?” Mack­in­tosh said.

  Jimmy nod­ded, not trust­ing him­self to speak without the emo­tion chok­ing his words.

  Mack­in­tosh put the car into gear and pulled away. Jimmy watched in the mir­ror as they nudged into the traffic. Isa­bel was at the door, watch­ing him leave.

  18

  Mack­in­tosh took the cof­fees to the table that Walker had se­lec­ted. He put them down and lowered him­self into the spare seat. He looked at Walker. He had given the Ir­ish­man a change of clothes and he had put them on in a bath­room when they ar­rived: a black sweater with black jeans and boots. He had been as­sess­ing the Ir­ish­man dur­ing their drive to Heath­row and he watched him now. Mack­in­tosh hadn’t spent time in the secret ser­vice, sta­tioned in some of the most hos­tile and dan­ger­ous cit­ies in the world, without de­vel­op­ing the abil­ity to quickly size a per­son up. Were they trust­worthy? Frightened? Would they do what they had prom­ised to do? After a while, he had not even needed to go through the pro­cess of a formal eval­u­ation; he just knew.

  Walker looked dis­trac­ted now. There was a win­dow next to the table and it offered a view of the run­way. He was star­ing at a jumbo as it sped up and, gradu­ally, rose into the air.

  “James.”

  He was dis­trac­ted, even a little wist­ful.

  “James. Jimmy.”

  Walker looked away from the win­dow.

  “You’re com­ing back,” Mack­in­tosh told him.

  “Two weeks,” Walker said, par­rot­ing what Mack­in­tosh had told him earlier. “Why don’t I be­lieve that?”

  Mack­in­tosh didn’t an­swer. It was pos­sible that they would be able to do what he in­ten­ded in two weeks, but there were vari­ables. And, of course, com­ing back again as­sumed that they were suc­cess­ful. There was cer­tainly no guar­an­tee of that. His plan was au­da­cious, very dan­ger­ous, and, if he was hon­est, the odds were against it.

  But he couldn’t tell Walker that.

  “So where are we go­ing?”

  “Ber­lin.”

  “What?”

  “West Ber­lin, to be pre­cise. You haven’t been there be­fore, have you?”

  “I’ve never been out­side the coun­try.”

  “I know,” Mack­in­tosh said. “You don’t have a pass­port, do you?”

  “Never needed one.”

  “Here.”

  Mack­in­tosh reached into his pocket and took out an en­vel­ope. Walker opened it and took out a brand-new pass­port. He flipped to the back; he looked at his own pho­to­graph.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I pulled some strings.”

  Walker opened the en­vel­ope and emp­tied it: two more doc­u­ments and a wad of bank notes.

  “There’s a board­ing pass for the flight,” he said.

  Walker ex­amined it. “One way?”

  “We’ll sort the re­turn out later.”

  Walker held up the fi­nal piece of pa­per. “The Ber­lin Hilton,” he read.

  “You’ve got a re­ser­va­tion there.” He laid his fin­ger on the bank notes. “And a thou­sand Deutschmarks. Enough for everything you need. When you land at Tem­pel­hof, get a taxi to the hotel. Check in and make your­self com­fort­able. I’ll come to your room to­night and we can talk about what we’re go­ing to be do­ing to­mor­row.”

  “What are we go­ing to be do­ing?”

  “A little re­con­nais­sance. We’ll talk about it to­night.”

  “Why am I go­ing to Ber­lin?”

  “You’re go­ing to have a meet­ing with a man. You’ll take the meet­ing, find out what I need to know, and you’ll be on your way back home again with a clean re­cord and the thanks of a grate­ful gov­ern­ment.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Mostly,” Mack­in­tosh said.

  “You’re full of it,” Walker said with a de­ris­ive chuckle. “What else?”

  “I’ll brief you to­night,” Mack­in­tosh said. He de­cided to change the sub­ject and poin­ted to the cof­fee. “Fin­ish that and go to the gate. You’re leav­ing in thirty minutes. It’s two hours to Ber­lin. Did you sleep last night?”

  “Not much.”


  “Try and get some on the flight. You’re go­ing to be busy.”

  Part III

  19

  The ticket to Ber­lin was in his name and the wo­man be­hind the counter at check-in pro­cessed him with the slug­gish bore­dom that one might ex­pect from someone who had re­peated the same mono­ton­ous task over and over all day. He made his way to the gate and saw that the flight had been delayed for an hour. He had seen a bar on his walk through the ter­minal and so he re­turned to it and ordered a pint. He drank it quickly and ordered an­other. The cus­tom­ers around him were un­re­mark­able: couples trav­el­ling to­gether, busi­ness­men dis­cuss­ing the meet­ings that they would take in Paris, Milan, Vi­enna and Bonn. Jimmy sat at the bar and con­cen­trated on his pint. He felt out of place and un­com­fort­able. Mack­in­tosh had been right; he had never had a pass­port be­fore. He had never even set foot on an aero­plane. The pro­spect did not con­cern him, but it gave him a feel­ing of in­feri­or­ity that he found dif­fi­cult to ig­nore.

  He fin­ished his second pint, ordered and drank a third, and, fi­nally be­gin­ning to feel the ef­fects of the drink, made his way back to the gate. Board­ing had com­menced and, after re­liev­ing him­self in the bath­room, he presen­ted his board­ing pass and pass­port to the mem­ber of staff who was work­ing her way through the queue and made his way down the air bridge and onto the jet.

  *

  The flight was un­event­ful. Jimmy had a seat in eco­nomy and it was too un­com­fort­able for him to think about sleep­ing. He took out one of the ten-Deutschmark bills that Macin­tosh had given him and bought a gin and tonic. He drank that, ordered an­other, and then picked at the taste­less sand­wich that the at­tend­ant had brought him.

  He looked out of the win­dow as they passed over Europe and wondered what Isa­bel and Sean would be do­ing. He had hated to leave his girl like that, and had hated the idea of leav­ing without see­ing Sean even more. But what choice did he have? The po­lice would have been able to have him con­victed if that was what they wanted. He had been done up like a kip­per; they had him on tape dis­cuss­ing an armed rob­bery, and there was evid­ence in his car that would be im­possible for a jury to ig­nore.

  Jimmy knew, too, that what Mack­in­tosh had said was true: men like Mack­in­tosh would be able to drip their poison into the ear of the judge re­spons­ible for sen­ten­cing and would be able to en­sure that Jimmy re­ceived pun­ish­ment at the up­per end of the tar­iff. Ten years? Fif­teen years? Jimmy was not pre­pared to coun­ten­ance that. He was thirty now. The thought of throw­ing away the best years of his life and miss­ing the chance to see his son grow up was some­thing that he could not bear to con­tem­plate.

  He had no choice.

  He looked down at the lights that prickled the land­scape be­low and tried to ima­gine what the next few days might bring. He was find­ing it dif­fi­cult to pro­cess what had happened to him since he had left his house earlier that morn­ing. Mack­in­tosh had him ex­actly where he wanted him. Jimmy didn’t know what would be re­quired of him in Ber­lin, but he knew that there was no go­ing back now.

  20

  The flight landed ninety minutes be­hind sched­ule. Jimmy thanked the win­some flight at­tend­ant who had flir­ted with him as she de­livered his drinks and then dis­em­barked and made his way into the ter­minal. He had no lug­gage to col­lect and so went straight to im­mig­ra­tion, where he presen­ted his pa­pers to a ta­cit­urn man work­ing the queue from in­side a glass-fron­ted cu­bicle.

  “What is your busi­ness in Ger­many?” the man asked him in stac­cato Eng­lish.

  Mack­in­tosh hadn’t told him what to say. Jimmy found him­self un­usu­ally self-con­scious. “Busi­ness,” he said.

  “Where are you stay­ing?”

  Jimmy re­membered the pa­pers. “The Ber­lin Hilton,” he said.

  “You have a one-way ticket.”

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll need to be here for,” Jimmy said. “Prob­ably a week.”

  The man looked down at his pass­port, looked up to his face again and then, without an­other word, stamped the empty page and handed the doc­u­ment back to him. Jimmy thanked him and, be­fore the man could say any­thing else, made his way between the booths and into the bag­gage col­lec­tion area. He con­tin­ued through the ter­minal, fol­low­ing the il­lus­trated signs un­til he loc­ated the taxi rank out­side. He waited in line and, after five minutes, stepped into a car.

  “I don’t speak Ger­man,” he said as the driver pulled out into the traffic.

  “No prob­lem,” the man said. “Where do you want to go?”

  “The Hilton,” Jimmy said.

  The driver set off, plot­ting a route into the heart of the city. Jimmy watched as the land­scape changed: they passed through an in­dus­trial area into streets that were lined with res­id­en­tial build­ings and then a cent­ral area with ho­tels and of­fice blocks.

  The Hilton was a spec­tac­u­larly ugly build­ing. It was al­most as if it com­prised two sep­ar­ate build­ings: the first was beige con­crete, a slightly taller struc­ture that was topped with the hotel’s name in bold, con­fid­ent cap­it­als; the second, main part of the build­ing was dec­or­ated like a chequer­board, white con­crete slabs al­tern­at­ing with black win­dows to cre­ate an eye­sore that loomed over the hotel’s park­ing lot and the road, Mohren­straße, that ran along­side it.

  “Here we are,” the driver said, pulling off the road and park­ing next to the en­trance.

  A bell­boy ap­peared from the foyer, his breath mist­ing in front of his face. He opened the door and Jimmy got out, put­ting his heels down and im­me­di­ately skid­ding on a sheet of black ice. He lost his bal­ance, but man­aged to stay up­right by grabbing the car and the bell­boy’s shoulder.

  “Nearly,” Jimmy said.

  “Eng­lish?” the bell­boy asked.

  “Ir­ish.”

  “It’s a cold one to­night.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Any lug­gage, sir?”

  “No.”

  “Very good. This way, please.”

  Jimmy fol­lowed him in­side. He handed his re­ser­va­tion to the re­cep­tion­ist, checked in and fol­lowed the wo­man’s dir­ec­tions to the lifts. His room was on the eighth floor, fa­cing out onto a bleak block that still bore the scars of the war. The build­ing had been struck by a shell and the dam­age had not yet been re­paired. Smoke rose from vents at the top of the build­ing and there were lights in the win­dows, sug­gest­ing that, des­pite the poor con­di­tion of the build­ing, it was still oc­cu­pied.

  He closed the blinds, took off his coat and shoes and sat down on the bed. He was tired and alone, a stranger in a strange city, his fam­ily hun­dreds of miles away.

  He found the min­i­bar, poured him­self a drink and waited for Mack­in­tosh.

  21

  Mack­in­tosh took a later flight. He would be re­cog­nised at the air­port and he didn’t want to risk the chance that Walker might do some­thing stu­pid and com­prom­ise op­er­a­tional in­teg­rity. The Ir­ish­man had no ex­per­i­ence, no trade­craft, and Mack­in­tosh couldn’t take the risk.

  He landed at ten, took a taxi to the con­su­late to read the latest in­tel re­ports and then found a pool driver to take him to the Hilton. The driver knew not to go dir­ectly to the des­tin­a­tion, and went in the op­pos­ite dir­ec­tion un­til he reached the sub­way. Mack­in­tosh hur­ried down onto the plat­form and got on the first train head­ing East. It was late and the car­riage was empty. He didn’t think that he was be­ing fol­lowed.

  He thought about the in­tel­li­gence re­ports that he had just read.

  They were ap­palling.

  Foulkes was dead. The re­main­ing agents were in­ex­per­i­enced, and their as­sets were a mix of busi­ness­men, bur­eau­crats, lowlifes and bor­der rats. The rats were Ber­liners wh
o flit­ted back and forth across the bor­der. Some of them were good at it and had even man­aged to smuggle East Ger­mans across. But their in­form­a­tion was nearly al­ways old, and, on the oc­ca­sions when it was fresh, it never proved to be wholly re­li­able. Mack­in­tosh needed to shake things up. And he had a plan for do­ing that.

  “Last stop in West Ber­lin,” the guard an­nounced.

  The line passed for a short time be­neath the Wall and into East Ber­lin. Mack­in­tosh gazed out of the win­dow as the car­riage passed through one of the Geis­ter­bahnhöfe, or “ghost sta­tions,” with an armed guard peek­ing at the train through a nar­row slit in a bricked hut. The train ac­cel­er­ated and they were gone, turn­ing back into the West once more.

  His thoughts turned to Walker. He knew that he would need to test him soon. There wasn’t go­ing to be a com­fort­able period of set­tling in. There would be no ac­cli­mat­isa­tion; there was no time for that. SIS needed to as­sert it­self against the Stasi and PI­CASSO was the means that had been chosen to do that. There was an un­writ­ten rule that the men and wo­men of the in­tel­li­gence ser­vices—on both sides—were off lim­its. The rule had held the line for years; there would be a blood­bath without it. What Karl-Heinz Som­mer had done was in­tol­er­able. Mack­in­tosh was go­ing to stamp down hard on him and the Stasi and teach them that there were con­sequences for the things that they had done.

  Easier said than done? Per­haps. But sit­ting back and tak­ing it was out of the ques­tion.

  The train rumbled into Stadtmitte. Mack­in­tosh col­lec­ted his bag and got to his feet, hold­ing onto the leather strap that hung down from the roof and wait­ing un­til the train came to a stop. The doors opened with a wheeze and Mack­in­tosh dis­em­barked. The hotel was a short walk from the sta­tion. Mack­in­tosh set off.

  22