The Oktober Projekt (35 page)

Reaching in the back pocket of his jeans Gottfried pulled out
his wallet. From a clear plastic flap he lifted out a photograph; taken in
colour in a photo booth, the curtain not properly drawn because a blaze of
light swam across their faces so they seemed as pale as prisoners. Three faces
in rapture, Gottfried on the swivel seat a girl squeezed either side; Sabine
and a beautiful blonde who cast a radiant laugh at the camera.

‘That’s Franziska?’ asked Nick.

‘Sabine’s best friend,’ said Gottfried with a smile, ‘Sabine’s
sister.’

In some ways Nick’s world fell in on itself at that very
moment; not only from Gottfried’s disclosure regarding Franziska, but also at
the realisation that the DVD Sabine staked her salvation on would probably
contain footage of Franziska entertaining her special clients. Franziska told
Sabine she’d banked something for the future, remembered Nick, and Sally Wynn
was never allowed to collect it.
I got a part in helping her make it happen,
she got a crazy deal arranged, but it’s all top secret
, Sabine had told Nick.

‘Did she say what she was going to do with the DVD?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me, only that I had to wait and we’d all be
free.’

‘Has anyone else called asking for Sabine?’

‘You mean Tolz?’ said Gottfried and shook his head. ‘I knew
about her and Tolz,’ he admitted. ‘Sabine told me, he was part of her past,
part of what she was leaving behind.’

‘And no one else?’ pressed Nick calmly.

‘An American was here, but Emmerich dealt with him.’ Amused or
troubled by the recollection, Gottfried twisted his hands tighter.

‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘And what did he look like?’

‘This guy can take care of himself, for sure. Big, stocky,
mid-forties maybe, his hair was short, grey at the sides. He only walked past
me and that was enough. His eyes, they don’t give you a second chance.’

‘No one else?’

‘No.’

Gottfried bowed his head, thought, then finally found a grin.
‘We had great times together.’

‘She was a good person.’

‘But no one knew or cared,’ said Gottfried with a prolonged
sigh.

Back outside Nick lit a cigarette. In the alley the bus stood
trembling and rattling like a tank as Emmerich headed up the company in a
shivering chain as they loaded away what they could of the theatre, working
all-out under the considerable eye of Anke. Walking up the alley Nick heard her
shout after him, a long stabbing call made for inferiors. Turning up his collar
in an act of defiance, he kept going into the thickening snow. I’m the
perpetual latecomer he thought, deeply troubled how Mitch Harney was on the
trail of Sabine so quickly.

At an Aldi store on Eiffestraße Nick browsed the salads and
cold meats, buying some meagre provisions to take back to his hotel room in
Sankt Georg. He knew she hadn’t been there when he entered, but now she was
waiting outside the store for him when he left; pretty and deadly serious, a slim
woman in her thirties, she’d pure clear skin and hair mowed close to her skull.
She wore tight jeans, combat boots, a ski jacket and the same smile he
remembered from shared operations. Setting off from where she’d taken up
position, Erika carried off a classic brush-contact drop, a folded square of
paper pressed into Nick’s waiting hand so deftly that he hardly felt it land.
Erika, one of Ernst Sargens’ team; a private consortium made up of specialist
ex-intelligence and military officers who had proved their value with Nick and
CO8 in the past. Erika’s background was with the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the
German equivalent of the Service. Taking to what any curious observer seemed a
cursory check of the provisions in his carrier bag, Nick noted the address on
the paper.

• • •

From a maze of low wooden sheds tannoy
voices boomed out across unloading basins, as though trying to prove a point.
Nick moved quickly through the quays unchallenged. He kept going until he came
to a row of grain silos, silver bullets aimed at a pewter sky, and crossing a
swing-bridge he entered an alley recovering from the night. At the end of the
alley the light ran out altogether, and he descended a narrow flight of steps
into a courtyard strewn with cans and rocks. It resembled a battlefield waiting
for the dead to be added in strategic places, the final touches to complete the
tableau. A group of kids with swollen eyes and pale skin swarmed round him,
asking his name, his purpose, pulling his sleeve, touting for their junkie sisters
or mothers.
 

Nick pushed through not speaking and a stone hit him squarely
on the shoulder. He didn’t look back; going on towards a blighted tenement
struggling warily up in the frail light, the remains of a crude barricade
blocking its entrance, a motorcycle without wheels and the bodies of
supermarket trolleys stocked with rubble. Climbing over them he waited for the
next stone or fist to land. On concrete stairs starved of light, he smelt vomit
and trapped smoke from a previous fire lit to cleanse or repel unwanted
callers.

On the top landing there were a dozen doors, most of them
boarded along with the windows, the last two without padlocks. From one, a
young squatter with reserved eyes followed Nick’s progress. When Nick drew
level the door slammed and music started up, pounding through the slab walls in
their own decadent beat. I am the intruder he thought, knocking loudly on the
last door, I represent all in life that there is to hate. Dominik greeted him,
another of Ernst’s troops on loan, in jeans and T-shirt, his blond hair short
and tufty.

‘Long time, Nick,’ he said kicking the door shut and sliding
the bolts. ‘Welcome to our nice little place, all the comforts of home. It
stinks, Nick, but we’re happy to be here.’

They were in a long confined hall plagued by the damp. A ship’s
barometer showed fair on a wall shedding its scrolled paper and mould covered
the woodwork in a rash of black spots. It might have belonged to a dozen
students or squatters Nick thought, Harry would have seen to that, put word
about, even bribed the young killers in the courtyard. Nothing had the
permanence of a residence. In each room as Dominik conducted a guided tour, he
found the impermanence of spying, the litter, the throw away artefacts of life
taken a day at a time. A couple of ex-army issue blankets divided off the
lounge and Dominik escorted Nick through it like an honoured guest. Sat at the
window Erika waved without bothering to turn, her attention locked through a
pair of binoculars mounted on a tripod providing security.

Opposite her, Juergen, another of Ernst’s happy troupe sat on a
cracked leather couch that someone had disfigured with permanent marker,
drawing graffiti of a very sexual nature; crude bodies in basic poses, and the
same theme had been carried down one wall in felt tip, but here the bodies had
bled in the damp. This is the sum of my team to take on Moscow thought Nick, a
collection of specialists borrowed from Ernst, plus Danny and good old Harry
Bransk.

A net curtain ran across the window threaded on a piece of wire
hooked on nails cutting down the glare, damping the reflection for anyone
outside showing too much interest.

‘There’s a number of targets that we need to keep under
surveillance,’ said Nick, when Freja, an expert on the acoustic stealing of
sound appeared with coffee in stainless steel mugs.

‘How do you want us to run it?’ asked Dominik.
 

‘Foot and car,’ said Nick, ‘changes of clothes and personnel,
nothing static for too long. Images where possible.’

‘Ernst told me to confirm with you that he is already making
provisional preparations in Winterthur,’ announced Erika over her
shoulder.
 

‘I’ll call him later,’ promised Nick

Stretching out as though relaxing on a beach, Juergen rubbed
the warmth from an oil heater into his fingers. His left hand first then his
right.

Suddenly the room became too much for Nick, the heater with its
noxious scent, the anticipation of imminent action. ‘Let’s go over our plan of
attack,’ he decided.

Seventeen

Illusions of Spying

Hamburg, December

A
taxi had collected Nick and driven him through Hamburg as though they were
heading for a fire. Waiting for him, a small reception party grouped together
on a remote quay off Roßdamm; Jack Balgrey, Döbeln and one more. Who might that
be? Nick asked himself, paying off the taxi that had ferried him here in
response to uncle Jack’s quixotic demand. Well, isn’t that a surprise, it’s the
cavalry, my old worst friend Mitchell Harney.

‘I was ready to give you up,’ Mitch said as Nick ambled up.

‘Jack and his friend taking you out for a midnight feast? A few
glasses of blood before you get back into your casket?’ Nick said, the cold
working on his fingers, no feeling at all; just numb as though his dentist had
practised injections on them.

‘If someone hadn’t already beaten you in Moscow, I would have,’
growled Harney, a senior American National Clandestine Service officer, the
Director for Europe, his lair in London.

‘Sent you on a training mission, Mitch? Come to see how us pros
do it?’ Nick taunted him. For Harney always seemed to cast a shadow on CO8
operations, trying to muscle in; turn agents, make his own bed without lying in
it.

‘You’re not even in the same league,’ yelled Harney.

‘What league would that be? The one reserved for losers that
you’re always top of,’ snapped Nick as Balgrey stepped safely away.

‘We have business to attend to,’ Döbeln reminded them
officiously.

Mitch truculently faced Döbeln and shook his head. Under the
branched stems of a crane Harney cast an imposing presence, the grey suit, the
unbuttoned navy overcoat, the red scarf; all stirring Nick’s memory of cold
Virginia mornings when the unfaithful were summoned to attend CIA briefings to
clarify perspectives, as they used to term it.

‘This way,’ proposed Döbeln setting briskly off, padding
towards a long low morgue of grey brick; a squat building damp from layers of
snow, a building not requiring windows because the river police post next door
had all those. Behind them Balgrey kept his own pace and counsel, his work
completed.

‘Could be Oskar, could be a mistake,’ spat Harney.

‘How did
he
get
involved?’
 

Harney never replied, only glared as they strode on. Oskar,
Nick remembered him well; a thirty-three year old freelance journalist working
out of Hamburg who always fancied himself as a spy. A loner who used maps,
travel guides, magazines, newspapers, internet global security sites, even
declassified CIA documents to manufacture his own fake sources and worthless
intelligence. His very own secret bricolage that he believed would buy him entry
into the secret world. No one ever took Oskar seriously and Nick couldn’t
understand why Mitch suddenly would.

‘You go on,’ Balgrey called. ‘I’ll wait out here, stay in the
car, feel a bit queasy truth told.’

Together Nick and Harney entered through swing doors held by
crooked springs. Official edicts in gruesome colours warning about Aids and
rabies hid the cracks in the reinforced glass. Then the smell hit them in a
sickly rush, river and formaldehyde in a lobby spotlessly clean with polished
floor tiles in sea green, reflective cream walls and a dozen stacking plastic
chairs with red seats and back pads.
 

Two river policemen were dealing with a Chinese captain, one of
them peeled away and came forward; the end of his shift in his eyes, reporting
to a weary officer in plain clothes, taking him to one side, words low,
confidential, a mouth close to the detective’s ear. ‘Sailor...Filipino...
missing for a watch....stabbing.’ Nick picked up the basics, a radio drama with
the sound a tad low. Busy night in the morgue he thought, as an interpreter
came with a jug of water for the captain. Through an opened office door Nick
saw a pathologist in cream boots and a blue patterned hat swing from the hip,
answering a question from someone farther back. The calmness and ordinary way
these people went about their duties made Nick uneasy. Mitch shrugged at him
another routine to be completed, nothing more taxing than filling in expenses.

‘Gentlemen.’ Döbeln cleared the little sad group writing up
murder details. ‘Please.’
 

In fast lurches he sauntered into an office laid out for
administration containing four desks of grey metal arranged in a square. At one
a middle-aged clerk in a white coat retreated into her seat when Döbeln
squatted on a tip of her desk. She had a flushed face, shoulder length hair
missing a wash, and hesitant eyes behind hornbeam glasses; all of her crushed
low into a defensive ball as Döbeln loomed over her. Entering their visit, date
and names in neat capitals, her pen nib crackled louder than a welder’s torch.
She gently folded the ledger closed and invited them down a passage where
fluorescent tubes hummed and stuttered.

Embarrassed, uneasy, Nick concentrated on the floor tiles
noticing how the colour was derived from masses of individual flecks, counting
them as they went. Three hundred and eighty tiles in all, before they gave way
to carpet in a viewing room, nothing more than a hot cubicle sprinkled with
plastic flowers and potpourri in plain wide lipped bowls. She asked them to
wait and clumped out, letting the formaldehyde in. Mitch flopped in a chair his
face a shield, no sentiment showing or permitted.

This wasn’t right, decided Nick sitting back, Oskar working for
Mitch?

‘How did he die?’ Nick brusquely asked Döbeln, draped in a
chair opposite Mitch. They were waiting for the show to begin the body to be
drained, a dab of foundation added, holes stitched and darned.

‘Not pleasantly I think. A body in the water carries so many
disadvantages.’

‘Being dead’s one,’ said Mitch.

‘Perhaps working for you did not help,’ Döbeln declared
plaiting the spare ends of his trench coat belt, tying them, flapping them. ‘He
was vulnerable, yes?’ he asked, throwing a glance at Mitch. ‘Maybe you
exploited him too much?’ He sprang out of his chair with a sudden thought,
attending to something at a plexiglass window set in the wall everyone tried to
avoid.

‘Nice one,’ Nick said to Mitch. ‘Ace.’

‘No sweat,’ said Harney with a smile.

As a diversion Döbeln and a morgue attendant conversed through
the plexiglass, a flurry of waves from this side and a gloved thumbs up from
the other. What are they, wondered Nick, the warm up team? Wafting in, the
woman clerk produced a clipboard from the folds of her white coat. A master of
ceremonies with a shy greasy curl trapped between her spectacles and her brow.

‘Who is going to identify the body?’ she asked.

‘He is,’ said Döbeln and Nick in the same breath.

‘Very well.’ She tapped reprovingly on the plexiglass,
attempting to wake a guest who’d overslept.

In one busy dash Harney was over at the plexiglass staring in.
Craning his neck from different angles he took his time, nodded once as in a
goodbye, turned and said, ‘Sure, that’s him.’ Handing him a biro, the clerk
pointed on her clipboard where he should sign and signalled the curtains to be
closed again.

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ said Döbeln to Nick when Harney had
retaken his seat. ‘I would like to be absolutely sure.’

Nick caught Mitch’s eyes and Döbeln’s mealy little stare as he
moved up, both watching him suffer in their different ways. The nylon curtain
whisked away for a second time. I name this body... He stared through the
plexiglass, his mouth dry. Shrouded from the neck down Oskar lay on a chipped
enamel trolley. Shrivelled and crinkled his face still had a rugged dignity,
one he’d seen collapse into a smile, flare into a temper or look just plain
childish. In some countries Nick knew, they stitched eyes closed after they’d
been emptied by bullets; but here they’d no need with so little of Oskar left.
An uncanny tint covered Oskar’s peeling deflated flesh where propellers hadn’t
mauled it. What’s the rest of the body like if his head’s this bad? Very nice,
wonderful, someone will be able to tell his ex-wife that he looked at peace.
Colours and texture of corpses, he’d had the full range since that night on the
highway in Russia.

‘It’s Oskar.’

Out of her pocket the clerk took her biro and hoisted the
clipboard forward for Nick to sign, as though she needed his autograph.

‘He was married, yes, had children?’ Döbeln enquired, knotting
his belt for the hundredth time.

‘Split up, she threw him out,’ said Nick, remembering how Petra
had to routinely fend off Oskar’s advances as he bluffed and charmed her that
he’d something valuable to sell. ‘They had a couple of children, two I think.’

‘Is this her?’ Döbeln asked, taking a photograph out of his
pocket. ‘Have you met her?’

Was it official procedure that they could only view one corpse,
as though two would be too much? wondered Nick. He took the police
photographer’s profile of the dead waitress who’d served him at his table
before Sabine entered for her big scene.
 

‘Never seen her before,’ he said.

‘How about you?’ Döbeln asked Harney, taking the photograph
from Nick and passing it on.

‘One of Oskar’s sources, I guess,’ said Mitch. ‘I met her
once.’

‘How was she killed?’ asked Nick.

‘They were recovered handcuffed together,’ Döbeln disclosed.

‘Buddies for ever,’ said Mitch, his eyes dark and livid with
hate. ‘Can we finish this now?’

No more hot leads for you to fabricate, Oskar, thought Nick as
they made their way back to administration, a fast procession returning to the
living. Nick and Mitch waited while Döbeln formally closed the proceedings, a
private affair conducted in a hush, the clerk smarting from the impropriety of having
two unofficial witnesses there.
 

‘Sign here,’ Döbeln said to Harney, his finger pointing to the
first box on a thin wad of four forms.

On a metal desk under a map of the port, all Oskar’s clothes
and possessions sorted into piles beside a clear evidence sack and an inventory
sheet still to be completed. As Harney added his details, Nick slid a long
metal key fob with the name of a rooming house stamped in red towards him.

‘You also,’ called Döbeln and as Nick added his name, the fob
was already securely in his pocket.

Outside, Mitch passed him a Marlboro as the port wandered on,
ignorant of one small tragedy and loss. Nick thought of Oskar and the time he
claimed to have a hot Middle East contact, only it turned out to be his
brother-in-law; now that was cheek, a real headache for Petra to untangle.

‘What’s that?’ Mitch asked, as Nick mumbled something to
himself.

‘A farewell,’ he explained,
absently. ‘For someone that I pretended to know.’

‘Sure.’

At a slipway they ran out of room to walk and the port purred
on, one loud animal hidden in the snow filled air. Döbeln left the morgue in a
hurry, a man coming from a restaurant, testing the night air and scanning for a
taxi. He spotted them and trotted across.

‘What’s the official verdict?’ Nick asked weary and weak, tired
heavy patches under each eye.

‘A stabbing, they both had stab wounds, but probably drowned.
Waste metal was used in their clothes as weights, but so many vessels in the
port create a whirlpool, a spa. Everything is pushed to the surface eventually.’
Döbeln said as though he didn’t entirely agree with the theory. ‘I have more
details to attend to. Please excuse me,’ said Döbeln trekking off across the
quay’s frozen expanses to his car.

‘We need to talk,’ said Harney, ‘away from interruptions,’ he
added nodding to Balgrey in his Volkswagen, before setting off for a quiet
corner of the quay followed by Nick.

‘You want to explain?’ demanded Harney over his shoulder as
they moved to the quay’s tip.

‘Meaning?’

‘Oskar,’ spat Harney. ‘Pretty convenient how he and his source
were neatly terminated after you show up.’

‘Coincidence,’ retorted Nick.

‘My ass,’ said Harney turning, his rugged face thrust forward
at Nick. ‘No one told me that this was an exclusive CO8 operation, you guys
think you’re some sort of goddamn elite.’

‘But
we
didn’t get Oskar
killed,’ yelled Nick pushing Harney out of his face. ‘You were so desperate for
a piece of the action you scraped the barrel dry with Oskar.’

‘We’re invited to the ball whether you want it or not, okay?’
Harney snarled, shoving Nick hard in the chest.

A silence divided them and took them apart as the wash from a
pilot boat patted the pier below their feet. Harney wheeled round. ‘We’ve lost
eight agents in the last year. Now I want some of the goddamned action. Jesus,
not think I’m owed even that?’

‘Join the queue and you’re owed jackshit.’

‘The deal’s already agreed, we’re in whether you like it or
not,’ Harney snapped, closing his shoulders on Nick, striding off.

‘Good to see you two getting along, old son,’ Balgrey shouted
as he brought up his car.

‘Go to hell, Jack,’ said Nick, lighting a cigarette.

‘Lift into town?’

‘Go to hell.’

‘See you there,’ laughed Balgrey, driving off.

A motor scooter with its throttle jammed madly back, came too
fast across a chained bridge separating docking basins. Flicking his cigarette
into breaking waves, Nick looked around. From the shore a dusky tint deepened
shoals of snow, and a thousand different noises bubbled around his head; cars,
trucks and generators, thrashing engines joined as one. Minibuses in shipping
line colours discharged solemn faces for the voyage out and sped off. And how
far will I have to go to find Lubov’s gold? Nick wondered, watching a police
launch churning through the Elbe, riding propeller surf from tankers and cargo
ships coming into the hafens of Steinwerder with the tide. He felt in his
pocket, his fingers closing round the metal key fob and made his way off the
quay in the falling snow.