It was almost one-thirty before Charlie was sure Hillary was asleep. The bed creaked and groaned with his every movement to get out and he kept stopping, the excuse ready, but she slept on. He’d laid out his clothes when he’d undressed, finding them easily. The floor creaked, although not as loudly as the bed, on his way to the door and he waited for several minutes on the inside, listening for a change in her breathing. It continued on, undisturbed. There was scarcely a second’s flash of light, as he went out into the corridor.
The lobby was still as busy as Charlie had known it would be and the side bar smokier, although the noise had dropped. No one paid him the slightest attention. The pliers and the torch from the Mercedes fitted easily into his jacket pocket but the tyre lever was awkward. His feet hurt like they always did at moments like this, as well as from all the walking he’d done that day.
He spent a lot of time watching the Atilia before approaching it. Most of the cars had gone, although there were still a lot of lights in the building and through the windows he could see people moving around inside. When he did move, he kept close to the building, to play the hopeful late-night drinker if there was a sudden challenge. It was coal-black beneath the trees and he didn’t have to move cautiously any more. The standard method of springing boot locks was with a sharp downward blow momentarily to free the catch hook simultaneously with driving in the outer lock so the hook failed to engaged when the lid lifted again. Unable to risk the noise of the thump, Charlie tested with several pressing movements to ensure there wasn’t a hidden vibration alarm, and then actually sat upon it, levering himself sharply up and down from the bumper at the same time as forcing the tyre lever between his legs against the lock, close to sniggering at how ridiculous it would look. But it worked. The boot lid came open with only a vague click, although he thought he heard the cylinders inside shift. Momentarily Charlie remained gazing into the dark interior, trying to make out the shapes, suppressing another snigger. Enough atomic material to destroy a city – certainly this city – kept in a car boot that could be opened by bouncing up and down on his ass. But where else could it be kept? The canisters could hardly have been carried up to the reservation desk or put in a bureau drawer, along with the spare shirts. And a guardian preferring to sleep in the back seat instead of a hotel bed would have made a lot of people far too curious.
He limited the torch, using it only to find the split-pins in the gauge nuts and get the pliers in place. Without being able to see what he was doing when he applied the pressure the pliers kept slipping off, sometimes with a sharp click when the plier teeth snapped together. The handles were slippery, too, where he was sweating, which was nerves, like the sniggering. Twice he had to stop, ducking behind the vehicle and pulling the boot lid down at the shouted departure of people with vehicles nearby. Once a man came out and urinated steamily against the wall and on another occasion he had to stop altogether for several minutes while a woman in a see-through nightdress stood at a window, appearing to look directly at him. She had very hairy armpits.
It must have taken him almost an hour finally to loosen two of the split-pins. There was almost another snigger at the ease with which each notched valve unscrewed. Charlie abandoned the remaining two cylinders, shifting to the second car. It was much more difficult bum-bouncing the lid open. The woman came back to the window and another group departed, halting him. He’d virtually decided to abandon it when the catch finally sprung. Here he tried jamming the tyre iron across the releasing handles and wrenching sharply and again they gave almost immediately. It took Charlie fifteen minutes to release three. Satisfied, he softly pressed the lid shut. Momentarily he paused against the car, forcing the breath into his body to recover until he realized what he was actually leaning against and jerked hurriedly away. There was a shout from the hotel as he went through the side parking area but Charlie kept walking and it didn’t come again.
No one noticed his arrival back. On his own floor Charlie did use the bathroom, needing it, and rinsed his face and hands clean.
He listened carefully outside the bedroom door and then again directly inside. Hillary’s breathing was undisturbed. Charlie creaked across the room, let his clothes lie where they dropped, and edged into bed. The bed sounded his arrival but it wasn’t important any more. He knew he would be cold so he didn’t let himself touch her, lying on his back in the darkness.
‘Where have you been?’
Hillary’s voice, unfogged by sleep, so surprised him that Charlie physically jumped. ‘Toilet.’
‘Bad bowel problem?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I heard you leave. Three hours ago.’
‘I couldn’t sleep. When downstairs for a drink. Thought I might as well go and check their cars again.’
‘Something I don’t think I mentioned about those gauges. From what I’ve read, the design was updated on the later cylinder models for the secondary protection system to operate if the valves are disturbed. It was only the prototype that was entirely controlled by temperature.’
‘What were the ones we saw in Moscow?’
‘The updated version.’
‘Good.’ He had to tell her: partially at least. She’d learn in the end but by then it would all have worked. ‘I’m trying to protect myself.’
‘Protect yourself!’
‘I’ve got to link Sobelov and Turkel. And then get them with the cylinders. I need a way to get out. Otherwise I’m trapped with them, when the shooting starts.’
‘You didn’t know the secondary protection came in automatically?’
‘No,’ he admitted.
‘So you were happy to kill people, to give you an escape?’
‘I’m not asking you to approve. Just understand.’
‘It’s difficult.’
‘They know what they’re carrying. And that it could kill hundreds.’
‘I’ve never gone for the God-like judgment argument.’
‘It’s done.’
‘I guess I knew you were a bastard. But not this much of one.’
Charlie didn’t speak.
‘You just damaged the meters? You didn’t do anything else?’
‘No,’ lied Charlie.
‘You going to stop at Poznan?’
‘No.’
‘I’d like to get back to Berlin and forget about this.’
They left early and reached Berlin by late afternoon. Hillary didn’t speak for a lot of the journey and said she wasn’t hungry and wanted an early night.
Gunther Schumann was furious and insisted Roh and other agency chiefs were even angrier. ‘We bent rules for you, particularly over that damned Zurich bank account.’
‘The Zurich thing is quite separate: you want it as much as I do,’ reminded Charlie, rejecting anger with apparent anger. ‘This is different. We had an agreement. Roh broke it, not me. The other agencies too, probably. You wouldn’t have got this far without doing things my way and this might be as far as you do get. The Russians are on their way: I’ve checked them. And should be at Poznan on time. Anything that goes wrong there or from now on is down to you, OK?’ Arrogant son-of-a-bitch, he thought, remembering Hillary’s accusation.
Charlie hadn’t expected the glad-handing appearance of James Kestler, whose interruption ended the dispute. As annoyed as he still was, Charlie wasn’t sure Schumann would go along with their previously arranged, all-working-together explanation that it was a German operation against the Iraqi and Sergei Sobelov, but the German did. Kestler said Jesus H. Christ and it was as lucky as hell Washington had sent him in early and that he wanted to be included, which Charlie and Schumann had also discussed and which had been agreed at Wiesbaden.
‘The Russians, too,’ added Charlie.