Spy Sinker (31 page)

'Yes, I know,' said Fiona, and Werner realized that she had taken it as a reproach. He found it difficult to have a conversation with Fiona these days. She could be damned touchy. She was worn out. He'd told the D-G that over and over again. She said, 'It might be easier if I were in Moscow or China, but it is impossible to forget that everything I love is so near at hand.'

'Soon you'll be home. Here everything is changing,' said Werner. 'I even see diehard communists beginning to discover that man does not live by bread alone.'

'Nothing will ever change,' said Fiona. 'You can't build a capitalist paradise upon a Leninist boneyard.'

'Why so glum, Fiona?' She seldom revealed her personal views.

'Even if you waved a magic wand and declared Eastern Europe totally free, it would not stir. Bret's sanguine ideas about the economy don't take into account the human factor or the immense difficulties of change evident to anyone who comes and looks for themselves. He talks about "the market" but all Eastern Bloc economies are going to remain dominated by the public sector for many many years to come. How will they fix market prices? Who is likely to buy decrepit steel works, ancient textile plants or loss-making factories? Bret says the East will revive its private sector. How? Eastern Europeans have spent their whole working lives slacking off in over-manned jobs. No one here takes risks. Even in the KGB/Stasi office I find people are reluctant to take on new responsibility or make a decision. Forty years of socialism has produced a population incapable of decision-making. People here don't want to think for themselves. Capitalism will not appear just because there is no longer any law against it.' She stopped. It was an unusual outburst. 'I'm sorry, Werner. Sometimes I think I've been here too long.'

'London think so too. The D-G is going to pull you out,' said Werner.

She closed her eyes. 'How soon?'

'Very soon. You should start to tidy things up.' He waited for a stronger reaction and then said, 'You'll be with Bernard and the children again.'

She nodded and smiled bleakly.

'Are you frightened?' he asked, without really believing it was true.

'No.'

'There is nothing to be frightened of, Fiona. They love you, they want you back.'

For a moment she gave no sign of having heard him, then she said, 'Suppose I forget?'

'Forget what?'

She became flustered. 'Things about them. I do forget things, Werner. What will they think of me?' She gave him no chance to answer, and moved on to other things. 'How will it be done, Werner?'

'It might be changed, but at present the plan is to leave a car parked in the street outside. The keys will be under the seat. With the keys there will be an identity card. Use it only as far as the Autobahn then throw it into a ditch somewhere where it won't be found. You'll drive down the Autobahn, dump the car at the roadside and get into one with British plates. The driver will have a UK diplomatic passport for you.'

'You make it sound simple, Werner.' London always made things sound simple. They believed it gave agents confidence.

He smiled and twirled the hat on the finger of one hand. 'London want you to list your contacts here, Fiona.' For years she'd thought of Werner as some soft woolly creature, hen-pecked by his awful wife. Since using him as her contact with London Central she'd discovered that the real Werner was as hard as nails and far more ruthless than Bernard.

'I have none,' she said.

'Contacts: good and bad. I'd give the bad ones careful consideration, Fiona. Office staff? Janitor? Has anyone said anything to you, even in jest?' He pinched his nose between finger and thumb, looking up at her mournfully while he did it.

'What sort of anything?'

'Jokes about you working for the British… Jokes about you being a spy.'

'Nothing to be taken seriously.'

'This is not something to gamble with, Fiona. You'd better tell me.' He placed his hat on the floor so that he could wrap the skirt of his overcoat over his knees.

'Harry Kennedy… He's a doctor who visits Berlin sometimes.'

'I know.'

'You know?'

'London has had him under surveillance since the day you first came here.'

'My God, Werner! Why did you never tell me?'

'I had nothing to tell.'

'I was with him today. Do you know that too?'

'Yes. London tells me of his movements. Working in the hospital means he has to make his plans well in advance.'

'I'm sure he's not…'

'There to monitor you? But of course he is. He must be KGB and assigned to you. Kennedy arranged that first meeting with you in London; Bret is certain of it.'

'Have you talked to Bret? I thought Bret was in California.'

'California is served by scheduled flights, phones and fax.'

'Who else knows?' she asked anxiously.

He didn't answer that one. 'Kennedy is a party member from way back. Don't say you haven't checked him out, Fiona?'

She looked at Werner. 'Yes, I have.'

'Of course you have. I told Bret that you would be sure to. What woman could resist an opportunity like that?'

'That sounds very patronizing, Werner.'

'Does it? I'm sorry. But why not tell me the truth right from the start?'

'Today he said how wonderful it would be if I were Mata Hari escaping to the West with him. Or some tosh of that kind.'

Werner tugged at his nose, got up and went to the window. It was night and, under floodlamps, workmen were decorating the Frankfurter Alice with the colourful banners and flags of some African state. All visiting dignitaries were paraded along this boulevard to see their colours thus displayed. It was a mandatory part of the Foreign Ministry's schedule.

In the other direction, the whole sky was pink with the neon and glitter of the West. How near it was, as near and as available as the moon. Werner turned back to her. Fiona was still as beautiful as she had ever been, but she had aged prematurely. Her face was pale and strained, as if she was trying to see into a bright light.

Werner said, 'If Kennedy happened to be here at the time you were pulled out, he'd have to be neutralized, Fiona.'

'Why would he be here at the time I am pulled out?'

'Why indeed?' said Werner. He picked up his hat, flicked at the brim of it and put it on his head. Fiona climbed up on the chair to connect the microphone again.

Berlin. June 1987.

It was his wavy hair that made 'Deuce' Thurkettle look younger than his true age. He was sixty-one years old but regular exercise, and careful attention to what he ate, kept him in good physical condition. He put on his bifocals to read the menu but he could manage most things without them, including shooting people, which was what he did for a living. 'Steak and salad,' he said. 'Rare.'

'The Tafelspitz is on today,' said Werner.

'No thanks; too fattening,' said Thurkettle. He knew what it was, a local version of a New England dinner: boiled beef, boiled potatoes and boiled root vegetables. He never wanted to see that concoction again. It was what he'd eaten in prison. Just the sight or smell of a plate of boiled beef and cabbage was enough to remind him of those years he'd spent cooped up on death row, waiting for the executioner, in a high-security prison along with a lot of other men found guilty of multiple murders.

'Perhaps I shouldn't eat Tafelspitz either,' said Werner regretfully. 'Rare steak and salad: twice,' he told the waiter.

It was Sunday morning. They were in West Berlin: Leuschner's, a popular barn-like café, with gilt-framed mirrors on the whole of one wall and a long counter behind which one of the Leuschner brothers served. Coming from the jukebox there was a Beatles tune played by the Band of the Irish Guards. The jukebox used to have hard rock records but one of the Leuschner's had decided to refill it with music of his own taste. Werner looked round at the familiar faces. On such Sunday mornings, this otherwise unfashionable place attracted a noisy crowd of off-duty gamblers, musicians, touts, cabbies, pimps and hookers who gathered at the bar. It was not a group much depleted by church-going.

Thurkettle nodded his head to the music. With his bow tie, neatly trimmed beard and suit of distinctly American style, he looked like a tourist. But Thurkettle was here to commit a murder on the orders of London Central. He wondered how much Werner had been told.

Werner's task was to show him some identity photos and offer him any help and assistance he might require. After the job was done Werner was to meet him on the Autobahn, in the small hours of the morning, and pay him his fee in cash. 'You have transport arranged?' asked Werner.

'A motor bike: it's quick and nicely inconspicuous for this sort of caper.'

Werner looked out of the window. People in the street were bent under shiny umbrellas. 'You'll get wet,' said Werner. 'The forecast says storms.'

'Don't worry about me,' said Thurkettle. This hit on the Autobahn is just a routine job for me. Rain is the least of my problems.'

It had been a sudden last-minute decision and a rush to get it all arranged. A message from Erich Stinnes had come announcing that a consignment of heroin had arrived at East Berlin's airport. He would bring it through tonight. Once he knew this, Thurkettle sent a signal to London that Fiona Samson could be brought out of East Berlin tonight. Werner had sent affirmation that Fiona was ready.

'These are the people you will see at the rendezvous.' Werner produced photos from his pocket and passed them across the table. What exactly was going to happen, who was to be murdered and why, Werner had not been told. His presence at the rendezvous was not required. It was just as well, for tonight he was committed to a big celebration at Tante Lisl's: a fancy-dress party with all the trimmings. Just about everyone he knew in West Berlin would be there. But now the evening would be spoiled for him: he'd spend all the night worrying about Fiona Samson's escape.

Thurkettle pretended to study the passport-style pictures, but he had seen all these people before at some time or other. Thurkettle prepared carefully for each job, that's why he was highly paid, and that's why he was so successful. After a minute or two he passed the pictures back.

Werner tapped the photo of Stinnes. This is your drug peddling contact. Right?'

Thurkettle grunted assent.

'Stinnes will arrive with this woman.' Werner indicated Fiona Samson's photo. 'She will depart with this man.' He indicated the photo of Bernard Samson. 'Probably this man will also be there.' He showed him a photo of Harry Kennedy.

Thurkettle looked at Werner, at the photos, and then at Werner again. 'I'll take care of them.'

Werner said, 'Don't take care of the wrong people.'

'I won't,' said Thurkettle with a cold smile.

'Bernard Samson and Fiona Samson. Make sure they are safe.'

Thurkettle nodded. Now he felt sure that Werner Volkmann was not a party to the real secret: the way that Tessa was to die and change identity with her sister.

'The Brandenburg exit,' added Werner, who was anxious that there should be no misunderstanding.

'No sweat. I know the place. The half-completed highway widening work. I went there yesterday and took a look-see. I'll have a shovel, overalls and a can of gas.'

'Gas? Petrol?' Werner put a map on the table.

'To torch the car. The guy in London, who gave me my orders, wants the car burned.'

'Afterwards you'll meet me here.' He showed Thurkettle on the Autobahn map. 'The cash will be in a leather case. If you don't want to carry a case, you'd better have something to put it in. When you are paid, come back up the Autobahn and through the Border Control Point at Drewitz into West Berlin. You'll go through without any trouble. In Berlin phone the number I gave you and say the job is finished. From then on you are on your own. You have the airline ticket? Don't go back into East Berlin.'

'I won't go back to the East.'

'Have you arranged about a gun? I was told to make sure you had a gun if you needed it.'

'The last time I found myself without a gun was in Memphis, Tennessee. I strangled two guys with my bare hands.' He put a cardboard box on the table. 'Here's one of them,' he said, loosening the lid and holding it open an inch or two.

Werner looked into Thurkettle's cold eyes trying to decide whether it was a joke but, unable to tell, he looked down into the box. '
Gott im Himmel!
' said Werner as he caught sight of the contents. It was a human skull.

'So don't baby me,' said Thurkettle, closing the box and putting it beside him on the chair. 'Just have the dough ready.'

'I will have the money ready.'

'If you want to call it off, this is your final chance,' said Thurkettle. 'But once the job is done I'm like the Pied Piper of Hamelin; if I don't get paid I come back and do the job all over again. Get me?'

'I get you.'

'Used fifty-dollar bills,' said Thurkettle grimly.

Werner sighed and printed circles upon the table with his wet beer-glass. 'I told you: I will have it ready, exactly as I said.'

'You do your thing the way you were told: I do my thing the way I was told: we get along just fine. But if you foul up, old buddy…'He left the rest of it unsaid. He'd not yet encountered anyone so dumb as to default in payment to a hired killer. 'Just one more time: I meet you on the Autobahn, direction west. I take the exit marked Ziesar and Görzke. You'll be waiting on the exit ramp. Going off the Autobahn is illegal for Westerners, just wait at the bottom of the ramp.'

They'd been all through it before. 'I'll be there,' said Werner. He wondered if the skull was real or one of those plastic ones they make for medical students. It certainly looked real: very real. He was still wondering about that when the steaks arrived. They were big entrecotes, seared and perfect, cooked and delivered to the table by Willi Leuschner himself. He put down a big pot of home-made horseradish sauce, knowing that Werner liked it. Willi had been at school with Werner and the two men spent a moment exchanging the usual sort of pleasant remarks. The Leuschners were both coming to Werner's fancy-dress party that night. It seemed as if half of Berlin were planning to be there.

'More beer?' asked Willi finally.

'No,' said Werner, 'we both have to keep clear heads.' Willi scribbled the account on a beer-mat and dropped it back on the table.

Deuce Thurkettle left Werner to pay the bill. His BMW bike was outside. It was a big machine with two panniers in which he stowed all his gear. The engine roared and he gave a flip to the accelerator before settling into the saddle. With a quick wave of the hand as he passed the restaurant window he sped away.

He had a lot to do before getting to the rendezvous on the Autobahn, but seeing Werner was necessary. Thurkettle made a point of threatening his clients in that way. It was a part of the fastidious attention to detail that made him so effective.

Another reason for his success was knowing when to keep his mouth shut. Whoever had briefed Werner Volkmann had obviously told him some fairy story. The briefing that Thurkettle had been given by Prettyman in a fancy suite in the London Hilton had been rather more complete and certainly more specific. Prettyman had told him that under no circumstance must anyone be left alive except Bernard and Fiona Samson. No one left alive. Prettyman had been very insistent upon that.

The Brandenburg exit – the place arranged for Fiona Samson to change from one car to the other – was on East Germany's section of Hitler's Autobahn, built to connect Berlin to Holland and all points westwards. As well as being a major East German highway, this was one of the authorized routes along which Westerners were permitted to drive to West Berlin.

On this flat region immediately to the west of Berlin the rivers have spread to become lakes. It is a region of farmland and forest, and once outside the towns the traveller finds little cobble-streeted villages where little has changed since the Kaiser's photo hung in the schoolrooms.

Even one of East Germany's two-stroke motor cars can get there from Berlin in well under an hour; for Thurkettle's powerful motor cycle it was nothing. He arrived before dark. The workers from the construction site had gone: their earth-moving machines were neatly lined up, like tanks for an inspecting general.

Thurkettle broke the lock off the door of the portable hut used by the construction gangs. He used a flashlight to check his guns and ammunition and the stainless steel butcher's hacksaw he'd brought with him. Then he put on his coveralls and plastic medical gloves and looked at the skull and its neat dentistry. That done, he sat down, watched the pouring rain and waited patiently for it to get dark.

These things never go exactly according to plan. That was the most important of the lessons he'd learned over the years. Prettyman had told him that Erich Stinnes would be collecting Fiona Samson and bringing her to the rendezvous. Someone like her would remain there.

Thurkettle had been told that someone of exactly the same build as Fiona Samson must be killed and left at the rendezvous. It was Thurkettle who thought of the idea of using Fiona Samson's sister, and he was pleased with that. She was a drug addict, and such people were easy to control. His task was to put Fiona Samson into the car with her husband and let them depart alive. He then had to kill Stinnes and the sister, bury Stinnes in the excavated ditch the roadworkers had so conveniently provided close by, and burn the car with the sister's body inside it.

The Soviet investigators would never find Stinnes' body because by the time they realized that Stinnes had not gone over the frontier with Samson, there would be a hundred tons of solid concrete and a section of Autobahn over the burial place. The burned body would be identified as Fiona Samson because the two women were very much alike except for the dentistry, and the skull he'd shown Werner had been prepared for exactly that deception. The trickiest task was decapitating the sister, but her head would have to go in the ditch with the Stinnes corpse. Otherwise the forensic team examining the car would find a burned body with two heads, and that would alert even the doziest laboratory assistant.

It all went amiss; right from the very start. Tessa – unreliable in the way that addicts usually are – did not arrive on time. Despite everything Thurkettle had arranged, she went off to Werner's fancy-dress party. Tessa should have arrived first. Thurkettle became so anxious that he went off on his motor cycle, but came back when he recognized the car with Fiona and Stinnes in it. When finally Tessa did arrive, it was in the back of the Ford van with Bernard Samson. Stinnes had arrived in a Wartburg bringing Fiona Samson and Harry Kennedy too. And who could have guessed that Bernard Samson would arrive with some lunatic from London Central who perhaps thought it would be amusing to come directly from Werner's party wearing his fancy dress? A gorilla costume! Their Ford van was there within five minutes of the Wartburg, and parked in what Thurkettle approved as a good getaway position. The Wartburg was parked nose-out, with its sidelights on. Thurkettle expected Stinnes to bring the heroin consignment out of the car but no one emerged.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen. Thurkettle remained in the darkness and watched. He was standing behind one of the bulldozers when it all started: a slim man, dressed as a gorilla, leapt from the Ford van, and started jumping around, shouting and waving a gun.

A gorilla. It looked so damned convincing for a moment that Thurkettle thought it was a real gorilla. It took a lot to surprise Thurkettle but that took him off guard. It must have taken Stinnes, or whoever was in the driver's seat of the Wartburg, off guard too, for someone switched on the car's full beams to see the gorilla more clearly.

The gorilla raised his pistol and was about to fire at the Wartburg. Thurkettle suddenly saw his reputation threatened and his fee in jeopardy. The Samson woman had to get away safely. Prettyman in London had been most specific about that. If Fiona did not arrive safely in the West, no fee would be paid beyond the small initial 'contract' payment.

So Thurkettle fired at this crazy gorilla. His silenced gun made no more noise than a carefully opened bottle of wine. But by this time Thurkettle was rattled and his shot missed.

Then the gorilla fired. He must have heard Thurkettle's shot, for he was virtually in line with the barrel, where the silencer has least effect. The glass of the Wartburg's windscreen smashed and Thurkettle thought Fiona Samson had been hurt, but then he saw her get out of the car. She shouted something, and then her doped-out sister came floating into view. Tessa came dancing, arms outstretched to display a long yellow diaphanous dress that was some sort of fancy costume.