He took another step. Abruptly he was in open water and the reed beds were behind him.
Foxy realised he should have discussed with Badger how best to approach the spit where the microphone was. He should have worked his way further to the right and nearer to the bund line where he would have avoided the deeper water. But he hadn’t – he had been too proud.
Another step, and he lost his left boot.
He could have screamed, but took another step.
The church was a fine building of weathered red brick. Len Gibbons had walked down the hill from the old border-crossing point, past homes with gardens scoured by frost and a snow shower. He had hugged shadows and felt that the journey to Schlutup was a demonstration of indulgence and weakness. He remembered it so clearly. Sometimes Len Gibbons would meet the part-time pastor, status never quite defined, inside the church, and sometimes outside. They would talk close to the old lifeboat, preserved and mounted on wood blocks above gravel, and the renovated clock, with gold-plated hour symbols and hands, would chime. The church of St Andrew had seemed a safe, reliable, trustworthy place to meet, and the pastor had seemed a man of integrity… The young Len Gibbons had seen an opportunity for advancement and had wanted to trust. He went into the churchyard and passed ancient headstones. There were lights inside, a final blaze of organ music. He had wanted to believe, and urged his seniors to accept his judgements. Many said later that it was against their better judgement that they had acquiesced, and had shifted the blame for the catastrophe to the slight shoulders of the young Len Gibbons. But an asset in the telephone exchange at Wismar was of prime importance. An old lesson had been learned; great danger hounded intelligence officers if they believed only what they wished to believe.
The clock struck the hour, the doors opened and light flooded out. The music was finished but voices came through the doorway, clear and bright.
He could not have said why he was there, why he had driven out from Lubeck to the place that had altered his working life and reconstructed his values. At first, the pastor had been able to travel into and out of the German Democratic Republic. Stories had been planted of elderly parents living behind the Curtain and to the south of Schwerin, and passes being issued by an official who was a long-standing friend of the family. The pastor had brought back printouts of the numbers called by units of the Soviet Army, Air Force and Navy. Useful? It had hardly mattered. The presence of the agent, Antelope, in such a sensitive position, was important.
He watched the doorway, and the first of that evening’s congregation emerged and stood for a moment on the step, their breath vivid in the cold. They shivered but did not break off their conversations.
There had not been sufficient rigour applied to the asset and the story he had told. The pastor had announced, one May day, that he would no longer be able to travel back and forth into the East, as the official had been transferred. Was it possible that the asset, Antelope, could deliver his stolen material to a courier regarded as honest and reliable by the spy masters? Over the following five months, three couriers were identified, then names and addresses given for the pastor to pass them to the asset.
The man came out of the church in a small group, talking earnestly. Gibbons stayed back, let no light fall on his face. The silhouette of his body was masked by the trunks of the plane trees. Then, the man had always shaved closely and his hair had been cropped short. Now he wore an old coat against the evening chill, and his hair was in a ponytail held by an elastic band. His beard grew randomly across his face. The last he had heard of the man, still recognisable, was that he had started a sentence of six years’ imprisonment at Hamburg’s Fuhlsbuttel gaol. The end of the first week of October was Republic Day in the East. On that day the decision to arrest a pastor had been taken after joint consultation between British and German intelligence officers: the British in Bonn had gone cap in hand to their ally and grovelled on the failure of an operation that had cost the freedom, perhaps the lives, of four couriers. The information had been unwillingly accepted that Antelope was a sting operation conducted by the Stasi from Berlin, that a treacherous telephone operator in Wismar had never existed. Maybe the gullibility of Gibbons’s seniors had saved his own skin. Others would have gone with him to the guillotine had he been too heavily punished for the capital crime of naivete. He had survived by a thread, but was an altered man.
He did not spring forward to greet the man: How the devil are you? Looking well, considering. In work, or dependent on hand-outs? Do you still believe in the clapped-out empire that faded to dust overnight? Was it all worth men’s lives, the ones you condemned to years in cells or for hanging? He watched the man, once a pastor, go out through the gate, and those around him laughed at something he said… All so long ago, but relevant to Len Gibbons.
That night, he had met the man, had walked away with a package in his hand, then lit a cigarette, which was the signal. German police, plain clothes, had come forward and snapped on the handcuffs. He had killed, in his soul, any last trace of humanity. He no longer believed in mercy. Now, a servant of the Service, he obeyed orders. It was why he had been chosen. All agencies in this field of work needed men like Len Gibbons.
He turned on his heel and went back to the car park where he had left the VW.
Foxy reached the mud spit. He had fallen once. The booted foot had tripped against the one that wore only a sock and he’d gone down into the water where it was shallow. His head would have gone under if his hands hadn’t found the bottom, but water – foul-tasting – splashed onto his face.
He was there. Foxy sucked in air. There was a flap in his face, desperate. The bird’s wings beat, but it failed to launch itself. There was no one for Foxy to ask what the fuck was happening. He had no idea why the bird just flapped its wings hopelessly. He might have figured it out if his mind had been clearer.
It gave a croak, like a death rattle, and he had his hand up, protecting his eyes from the wings. The cable whipped against his cheek. His fingers found it and ran along its length, then collided with the bird’s body. It went into spasms of action, then was still. The beak hit him.
The African Sacred Ibis was snagged by the cable. He let go of it and the bird rose a foot off its perch. The cable tautened. The ibis croaked, and the claws on its feet came against Foxy’s hands and ripped at them. The flesh tore. The beak came back at him, was used as a spear. He grasped the cable again and the bird hung from his arm.
Foxy lashed out with his free hand. It didn’t matter to him that the bird was endangered, that its presence was a jewel in the eco-system of the marshes. He struck out, used full force. He couldn’t see it beyond the vague shapes of the wings as they beat at him but he recalled a long, slender neck – he had seen it when the bird had flown in, and while it had cleaned the feathers on its chest. He knew that his target was the neck, and the blow was hard.
He was Joe ‘Foxy’ Foulkes: he had taken on the full might of an African Sacred Ibis, worshipped as a deity in the civilisation of the Pyramids and pharaohs, and had broken its neck.
It hung from his hand. There were no reflexes, no shuddering death throes. Foxy had killed it. It hung from the entanglement of the cable. It had seemed large when the wings had beaten, the feet slashed and the beak stabbed, but now it was shrivelled.
He heard only the lapping of water, maybe against the reeds behind him or away to his right. He heard rippling. Maybe the wind had risen with the darkness. He tried to pull the cable free but it gouged against his palm and the limp carcass prevented him tugging it free. Foxy knelt on the mud spit. He could hear his heart, his breathing and the rippling of water, but could see nothing except the patch of white, the wing feathers and the back of the bird. He started to disentangle the corpse from the cable. It would have realised it couldn’t lift off and had sat still, hoping that the approaching beast would somehow avoid it. Only at the last, when the cable around its left leg and body had tightened, squeezing air out of it, had it reacted.