They were. There was no sign of the BMWs when their driver pulled up outside a white-painted, unmarked building after negotiating a criss-cross of storage hangers, outbuildings and warehouses, most of which were identified with company names. There was no sign, either, of any special attention around a building the Bundeskri-minalamt had known about for more than two hours, which Charlie found both unsettling and reassuring and told himself he was a bloody fool who couldn’t have it both ways. All around there was the rumbling of arriving and departing planes at a still-operating airport.
Turkel’s driver and the customary bodyguard entered the building through the small pedestrian door but in minutes swung open just one of the two main doors sufficient for their three vehicles to drive in. Apart from their cars the warehouse was totally empty. It also, strangely, appeared to have no separate side or back entrances. They were driven to the far end and each car turned to face the only exit. Everyone got out. Charlie walked the length of the building, as if anxious for the first sight of the Russian arrival. The doors were reinforced with an inner lining of what looked like steel. Running from top to bottom of the divided halves like the trunk of a straight tree was a central metal pole attached to which at intervals, tree-like again, were cross-branches. With one door open the cross-branches lay straight down and parallel with the trunk. When they were closed, he realized, they could be swivelled by handles from the bottom to knit into a series of rigid cross-bars. There was a single cross-bar already in place across the small pedestrian entry. He turned to see something resembling a marching platoon, four Iraqis and four Russians, approaching the open door to form an outer guard. Sobelov and Turkel remained standing at the far end. The rest lolled around the cars. Two Iraqis had remained inside the middle car. Charlie had still counted only seven in Turkel’s party: perhaps the other three in the German count were the examining experts. Something Sobelov called was lost beneath a louder shout from outside and from outside the huge door was pushed open just enough for the BMWs to drive in. They swept past him but stopped short of the other vehicles, roughly in the middle. Sobelov and Turkel got there before Charlie, who wasn’t hurrying. He checked the time, stopping as far away as he felt he sensibly could to watch the newly arrived Russians get out. Only one man looked unwell, grey-faced and sweating. He said something to Sobelov who shrugged, disinterested. Turkel was on his mobile telephone, gesturing with his free hand for the door to remain open. Almost at once the missing three entered, one behind the other. The one leading was bespectacled and elderly. The following man carried a satchel larger than Hillary had taken to Kalisz. Charlie decided he wouldn’t have to play amateur physicist. He took a step towards the more easily opened pedestrian door, letting the technicians get between him and the BMWs. In the language Charlie recognized from the Wannsee visit the elderly man spoke to Turkel, who replied in the same tongue. No one was paying the slightest attention to Charlie, who edged a little further from the now surrounded cars. It put him ten metres away, maybe a little further. It had been six minutes since the cars came in. The elderly man was accepting from the satchel carrier a hand-held counter similar to the one Hillary used. Any minute now, thought Charlie.
And then there was a shot.
There was a lot of noise from overhead aircraft and no one noticed it but then there was shouting and several more shots and a thump against the door from the outside, as if someone was banging to get in. Inside there was brief but absolute panic. All the Russians except Sobelov had guns, mostly Markarovs, and began to move towards the door but then stopped, looking back to be told what to do. The elderly man, still holding the Geiger counter but no longer bent over the cars, said something shrilly to Turkel who babbled back, just as hysterically. Sobelov looked at Charlie and said, confused, ‘What is it?’ not accusingly but as a question to be answered.
‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie but the words were lost beneath a sound much louder than any aircraft, even far away but it didn’t stay far away but grew ever louder, the whining, low-geared roar of a huge engine and then there was an echoing, ear-pounding crash against the door, which shivered and dented inwards but held. The roar went on, the tone fluctuating between gears and there was a second and a third and then a fourth crash against the door. It began to buckle, not from its central tree but from the side hinges, to the left. One of the Russians fired at it and the bullet ricocheted bee-like off the steel lining.
Sobelov had recovered but Charlie couldn’t hear what he was shouting and doubted anyone else could, either. The Russian had a gun now and gestured with it for one of his men to bring a car from the back. The rest were actually crouched around the rear of one of the BMWs. Charlie didn’t know if it was the one in which he’d unscrewed the cylinder tops. Turkel was going back towards the cars, too, herding the cowering nuclear experts ahead of him.
Charlie couldn’t decide what to do. He wanted to be down by the door when it collapsed, quickly to get out, but that would put him literally in the crossfire when the shooting began. And if he fled back to the neatly parked cars he’d set himself up like a funfair target in a shooting gallery to the people who’d within minutes be pouring through the now sagging door. Still safer at the back, he determined, remembering his thought as he’d come into the warehouse: not in a car but behind it. To hide until the shooting stopped. As he got to the rear of the building, two of the cars surged forward, isolating him with the remaining vehicle. Turkel was driving one and Charlie wondered how his feet reached the pedals.
With a groaning crash the doors finally gave way, lopsidedly, under the battering from what looked like a tank equipped not with a gun and turret but with a bulldozer scoop. Black-suited commandos surged in. They all wore helmets and Charlie realized why when the first stun grenade reverberated. It made his ears sing, deafening him, but it didn’t knock anyone unconscious and neither did the second because to be effective the space had to be enclosed and the building was too large. To think of escaping by car had been panicked and stupid. Both Mercedes had slewed to form a barrier with the BMWs and the windscreens and windows of every vehicle shattered under the concentrated automatic fire. Glass burst all over Charlie from the car he was sheltering behind. Four commandos dropped, despite their protectively metal-padded suits, and four men – Charlie couldn’t tell if they were Russian or Iraqi – went down as well, one screaming. He saw the tiny Turkel crawl from his bullet-pocked car and, still on his hands and knees, scurry to the back. There he sat on the floor with his back to the vehicle and the invading soldiers with his eyes closed, as if everything would stop and go away if he didn’t look at it. A man Charlie did recognize to be Russian suddenly threw his hands up and tried to run towards the assault group and Sobelov shot him, twice, in the back and then brought down a commando who’d stopped firing to accept the surrender. But then Sobelov was hit, in the shoulder but not badly, spinning him also to the back of a car where he slumped, shocked, in a sitting position close to Turkel. There seemed to be a lot of bodies around the cars and without either Sobelov or Turkel the resistance became sporadic. Although his ears were still blocked by the grenades, Charlie heard the amplified loud-hailer demands in Russian that they give up and guessed it was the same message in Arabic. The firing did stop, although the men remained crouched behind the cars and Sobelov began scrabbling, crab-like, to get up.
And then others came in, too quickly, behind the assault group. Charlie saw Roh and Schumann first, then Popov ahead of Gusev. And then Kestler. They all had guns – Roh a machine pistol – but only the Germans had flak jackets. Sobelov was on his knees now, levering himself up, hidden from them like three other Russians to whom Sobelov spoke were hidden.