The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin (33 page)

There was a number stenciled in faded black paint on the front of the box. It wasn’t the number we were looking for, but it was close.

638427–73621

“Tell me I’m not imagining things,” Victoria said, panting.

“Not unless I’m imagining them, too.”

“There have to be more boxes like this one, right?”

“It’d be nice to think so.”

“Higher or lower?”

We went higher. We took it floor by floor, consulting the combination I’d input into the prepaid mobile to make sure we didn’t make a mistake. It turned out there were two fuse boxes on each level, fixed to opposite sides of the stairwell. The boxes were numbered sequentially and we found box number 638427–73629 on the fifth floor, one level below the main listening dome.

By the time we tracked it down, I was breathless and sweating and feeling more than a touch faint. I can’t pretend the height of the tower didn’t play a part in that. I’m not crippled by vertigo, but I can appreciate the downsides of nose-diving from the fifth story of a building onto a flat concrete roof as much as the next man, and when the building in question is somewhat lacking in walls, not to mention slick with rain, it does tend to grab one’s attention.

The wind felt a lot stronger up here, as if a rogue gust might be capable of shunting me toward the crumbling edge against my will. The rain was pelting down ever faster. It was blasting in through the shredded tarpaulin, splattering against the concrete, and tumbling in thick rivulets from the level above.

“Open it,” Victoria said.

I pocketed my mobile and set Buster’s cage down on the floor, shielding him from the soggy gale with my legs, and then I snatched open the fuse box to reveal several rows of large plastic fuses. There was plenty of cabling, some brick dust and masonry debris, a couple of faded maintenance stickers, and not a lot else.

“Well, that’s bloody typical,” Victoria said.

I said something a lot ruder.

Then I backed away and rested my hands on my hips and glanced all around us.

“What are you doing?” Victoria asked.

“Maybe it points to something. Maybe it directs us somewhere else.”

“Yes. To London.” Victoria bent down and lifted Buster’s cage. “If ever there
was
something here, it’s been gone a long time. We’re far too late.”

“Patience, Vic.”

“No, Charlie. I’m leaving. Are you coming?”

“Just a few minutes more.”

Victoria shook her head and made for the stairs. I thought about following, but I turned back to the fuse box instead. I tipped my head and studied the thing closely. Then I reached inside my coat for my spectacles case and removed my penlight, shining the beam inside the metal box.

I saw just what I’d seen before. Plastic fuses. Thick black wires. Dust. Debris.

Wait a minute.

Brick
dust.
Masonry
debris.

I pushed my face closer and raised myself up on my toes. I yanked cables to one side and angled the penlight in behind them.

There was a cavity in the wall. And there was something inside it. Something shiny that reflected the light of my torch back into my eyes.

I tried to reach it with my hand but the stiff cables were in the way. I returned to my spectacles case and removed a screwdriver. There were four screws holding the fuse box against the wall. They were old and mangled, and removing them took a good deal of effort. But I had the scent of success in my nostrils and I worked hard at the screws, grunting and grimacing, twisting and turning, until the final one fell out of the wall and tinkled on the ground by my feet.

I braced my foot against the wall and yanked on the fuse box and after a few determined tugs I managed to pry it away and tilt it to one side, shifting the cables with it.

The gap that had opened up wasn’t big. I cupped my hand and fed it in very carefully between the cables. I gripped the object tightly and eased it out.

It was a petty-cash box. The metal exterior was a bluish-gray, though it was aged and patched with rust and corrosion. There was a dinky pin-and-tumbler lock on the front. The lock was engaged.

I shook my head. It was beginning to feel a bit like I was dealing with a set of Russian dolls. I’d opened up one metal box and found another metal box inside. Who was to say there wasn’t another, even smaller box after that?

I returned once again to my trusty spectacles case. The pick and the torsion wrench I needed were the smallest ones I carried. It took me a moment to locate them, but once I had them, I went down on one knee, propped the cash box on my thigh, rubbed some warmth into my hands, and probed away at the lock. It was stiff and I could immediately tell that it hadn’t been turned in a long time. But I tickled it. I tweaked it. I whispered sweet nothings to it. And when the final pin had tumbled and the lock was putty in my hands, I wedged my thumb under the lid and prepared to pry it open.

And that was when a voice from behind me shouted, “Oh, no, young man. I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

FORTY-ONE

I listened and I obeyed. I didn’t open the box. There were a couple of reasons why. One was that the man issuing the instructions had his arm coiled around Victoria’s neck, squeezing her throat. The other was that he was holding a knife blade against the corner of her left eye.

Victoria was bent at the hip, her head clamped beneath the man’s armpit. Her face was awful to see. It was scarlet, and her lips, cheeks, and eyes were bulging. Her skin was pinched and very white around the knife blade.

Her hand went limp and she dropped Buster’s cage. It crashed to the floor and tipped onto its side and rolled away in an aimless half-circle, spilling wood shavings on the sodden ground. Buster squawked and beat his wings in panic, bouncing and thrashing off the metal bars.

Victoria stared at me wildly, imploring me to do something. The wind and the rain blasted against my back. Time stuttered and lagged.

I didn’t move.

I didn’t move because I knew exactly what this guy was capable of. He was the man I’d seen throttle Jane Parker in the apartment in the Tiergarten.

There was not a shred of doubt in my mind. He had the same tall stance. The same powerful build. The same dark woolen coat and black hair and prominent ears. And the same alarming tendency to squeeze the life from a woman with a relentless conviction.

“Put the box down,” he said, with all the poise and command of a true English gent. “Cooperate, and the lady won’t be hurt.”

The lady was already hurt. But I didn’t want it to get any worse.

I set the box down on the floor. Then I used my initiative and backed away from it. One step. Two.

I gazed up at him and was about to speak for the first time, but Buster beat me to it.

“Ooh, Ambassador,”
he squeaked, leaping around fitfully inside his cage.
“Buster says hello. Cooee. Buster says hello.”

I glanced between Buster and the tall man with the knife. I breathed for what felt like the first time in a long while.

“Mr. Ambassador,” I said, and cleared my throat, “you can have the box, by all means, sir. You’re very welcome to it. Just let my friend go.”

“Damn bird,” he spat, from the corner of his mouth. “Never will shut up.”

“Cooee,”
Buster squawked.

“See?” he growled.

“With respect, sir, I had a feeling it was you,” I said. “Not that I care. Not that I’m the least bit interested in you or the contents of this box. I just want you to release my friend. We’re leaving Berlin today, sir. We won’t trouble you in the slightest if you let her go.”

Part of me really believed it. Problem was, I didn’t get the impression the ambassador was quite so sure. He hadn’t eased the pressure on Victoria’s neck in the slightest. One slip of his knife would have the most terrible consequences.

“Sir,” I said again, “it’s time to let Victoria go.”

He disagreed. He squeezed harder. Victoria tried to pry his arm away, but her movements were becoming weak and vague. She whined and she wheezed. He lifted her up by the throat. Her feet scrabbled against the concrete and she strained to balance on her toes. She teetered there, swaying at the knees, looking more stricken at every moment.

My thoughts turned to the aged pistol in my pocket. To the grenade I was still carrying. But I couldn’t see what good they might do. Just reaching for either weapon would draw his attention. One sudden move and he might stab Victoria in the eye.

I flexed my hands at my sides, like a cowboy gunslinger. My mind was racing. Go for the pistol or not? Suppose he didn’t react right away. What then? I wasn’t a crack shot. I wasn’t capable of picking him off. And I couldn’t afford a drawn-out confrontation. Victoria wouldn’t last that long.

He was still compressing her throat. Still tightening his hold.

“Come and take the box for yourself,” I said. “Release Victoria and that can be the end of it. You really don’t want any more deaths to contend with.”

Mistake
. The ambassador tensed instantly. He clenched Victoria even harder. She issued a choked, gargled squeak, and a thread of saliva slipped from her lips, stretching toward her knees.

The ambassador closed his eyes in a squint, peering down at me through the lashing rain.

“Jane Parker,” I blurted out. “I watched you kill her. I watched you strangle her.”

He frowned. How could I have seen? How did I know?

And in that moment of confusion, in that instant of self-doubt, he relaxed by a crucial half fraction and Victoria used the last of her strength to make her move.

First, she grabbed for the knife and yanked the ambassador’s arm down and away from her face. Then she twisted at the hip and drove her right knee hard into the ambassador’s groin. He howled and crumpled, and the knife slashed through the sleeve of Victoria’s tracksuit, then continued on an inward arc toward the ambassador. He was bending low, covering his groin instinctively, and with a final desperate shove from Victoria, the knife plunged deep into his gut.

He uttered a pinched, fractured scream, and collapsed to the floor, clutching his belly.

Victoria scrambled away on her hands and knees. She bowed her head and drooled on the floor, croaking raggedly as she searched for a lungful of air. She gasped. She heaved. Then she collapsed sideways and rolled over onto her back, and her chest arched up as she finally managed a groaning breath.

The ambassador wasn’t going to be recovering any time soon. He was sprawled limply on the ground, his long legs wide apart, the handle of the knife sticking out perversely from his midriff. His lean hands were clasping his stomach hopelessly. They were coated in blood. The blood was thick and inky and pooling freely between his fingers.

I drew the gun from my coat. I held it in a two-handed grip and edged toward him, aiming for the center mass of his chest.

He looked up at me distractedly, eyes roving in his head. “For God’s sake, man,” he spluttered. “Help me.”

Oh, I was going to help him, all right.

I reached behind him and grabbed a knuckleful of collar, then dragged him hard across the ground. He yowled. He hollered and screamed. Buster had nothing on the racket he was making, but I didn’t ease off at all. Moving him took a lot of effort. A lot of strength. But I was humming with adrenaline and rage and conviction.

I pressed the gun muzzle to the back of his skull and kept dragging until we were close to the edge. Then I tugged one last time and propped his upper body against the thin steel cables running around the circumference of the tower. I peered over the side. The drop ended in the flat concrete roof of a building sixty feet below.

I braced a foot on the bottom cable, the sole of my baseball shoe squeaking on the soaked wire. I added some weight. The cable was old and it had some flex in it. It began to sag. The ambassador slumped backward. He yelped, then grimaced. The wind and the rain whipped around us.

“I should let you fall,” I shouted, into the gale. “For what you did to Jane. For what you’ve just done to my friend. What kind of man are you, anyway? You’re supposed to be respectable.”

No,
he mouthed. He was too panicked to speak. Or maybe the blustering wind snared his words and stole them from me.
Please.

“Please? You’re asking for mercy? The kind of mercy you showed to that poor woman I watched you kill.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the great depths of swirling nothingness behind him. The wind tore at his hair. Rain splattered his face. “You don’t understand,” he stammered. “You don’t know what’s at stake.”

“So tell me. What’s in the box?”

I could have looked for myself, I suppose. I could have taken my time over it, too. But I was done with searching for clues, with secrets and codes, with mysterious packages and concealed hiding places. I wanted answers and I wanted them now.

“Names,” he breathed, closing his eyes against the fear and the pain.

“Just names?”

I pressed down harder on the wire. He slumped some more, breathing sharply as the movement shifted the blade around in his gut.

“Names of informers,” he managed, his jaw clenched tight. “British agents.”

I laughed. “Spies?” I yelled. “Come on.”

“Not spies. Just people with information.” He panted. Caught his breath and glanced in horror at his bloodied hands. “People of influence.”

“In Berlin?”

“Some.”

“And the others?”

“Moscow. Paris.” He looked at me with utter desperation.

“The States?”

“Yes,” he said, insistent now.

“Really?”

I was having trouble with the concept. The cash box looked like it had been in the hole behind the fuse box for a very long time. The dated code that had revealed its rough location had been scrawled on yellowed paper in faded ink. I found it hard to believe that the information could be relevant today.

“Are you saying these people are still active? That they’re still cheating on their countries?”

“Some. Why not?”

“And the rest?”

He spat blood from his lips and groaned in panic. “Please. I need help. A hospital.”