Then after a little time I began thinking again, going over things carefully, assessing the damage, trying to plan the future. I didn't know how many people there'd been in the Airforce building when I'd gone through the window. I'd heard shouting on the seventh floor and that had probably been Melnichenko and the other two as I ran for the emergency stairs and hit the walls at the corners on the way down and went through the door on the sixth floor and pressed the elevator button to delay pursuit and took the stairs again to the ground floor.
There were police code lights flashing outside the front entrance and some people in the lobby and I went back into the stairwell and opened the door to the street and found it clear. There was a window and I twisted round and took a look at my back; the leather coat had been slashed by the breaking glass up there but there was no blood and in East Berlin you can get by on the streets with worn clothing and not attract attention. I could feel some blood that had started from cuts on the nape of the neck but it was already clotting and I left it alone and pulled up the collar and started looking for a phone box on the way back to the car.
I'd left the BMW the prescribed distance from the work-scene — the Luftwaffe Building — three or four blocks. It's dangerous to leave a car closer than that because if you think there's going to be any problem about getting clear you're going to do it on foot because the sound of a vehicle starting up will bring them running and if you leave the car near the scene without using it you won't get back to it that easily: the police will normally set up a watch in the area and check any vehicle standing unattended.
The street was clear and I switched on the parking lights and got out and checked them front and rear. It wasn't far to the safe-house but I could be stopped anywhere along the way by police for a dead bulb and that could be fatal.
The lights were all right and I got back in and started up and moved off and stopped again at the intersection until the signals went green but there was a police car standing in the middle of the road with its lights flashing when I tried to turn right, so I kept straight on and tried the next street but there was a barricade with an officer manning it and I kept on again and tried the next left and got through until the next intersection. Two Vopos and another barricade to the right and straight ahead, the officers waving their batons to show me the way I had to go.
By now the BMW was one of a dozen vehicles working through a maze — Bruderstrasse, Unterwasserstrasse, Spittelmarkt, Gertrstrasse — with the Airforce building as its centre.
The centre of the trap.
The night had been quiet; now it was loud with the sound of running engines and the shouts of the Vopos as they directed the swell of traffic into the net. I checked two alleys as I passed them but they both had a guard; the whole area was being sealed off and I stayed where I was, rolling the BMW forward a yard at a time between halts as the police PA system started up.
You will switch off your engines. Switch off your engines, please, and stay inside your vehicles.
I'd come full-circle and the Luftwaffe Building was directly ahead at the next intersection. Lights were flashing in front and behind me and green-uniformed police were taking up positions wherever there wits an exit from the street.
Switch off your engines, please.
Yes indeed, comrades, petrol is expensive at 20 marks a gallon and we don't want to sit here in a cloud of asphyxiating bloody exhaust gas until you're ready to check our papers and flash a torch in our face, do we, this is a trap, we don't want to sit here choking on carbon-bloody-monoxide while you take your time turning over all the little minnows the net to find the one you want, do we, this is a trap -
I know.
We can't get out.
I know.
You can't show your papers -
Shuddup. Leave me alone.
Panicky little bastard, the rotten little harbinger of doom, won't let you alone, this is a trap, I know it's a trap so shuddup.
Stay where you are. Do not leave your vehicle.
I wouldn't dream of it. Get out of this car and take one step and there'll be a Vopo closing in, two or three of them closing in like sharks that've seen something in the water: I'm going to stay exactly where I am, comrades, sitting in my sweat.
Coloured lights flashing wherever you looked, lights reflected in the windscreens and the windows and the metalwork of the 280 SE in front of me, in the driving-mirror and the chrome strips along the dashboard, lights wherever you looked, but no sound now except for the movement of boots as the police deployed themselves and the trap was finally shut.
'What are they doing?'
Girl with light hair and green eyeshadow and a red mouth, a cigarette in her small white fingers as she leaned out of the window of her Lancia alongside the BMW. I couldn't see who was at the wheel.
'It's a police block.'
A look of surprise, 'Well, yes, but I mean — '
It's a trap.
Shuddup.
Fireman.
A door opened somewhere behind me and a man got out and a Vopo moved in from the building. 'You will stay in your vehicle, didn't you hear?'
'But what are you stopping us for?'
'You are to stay in your vehicle.'
And you'd better get the message, Fritz my good friend, where the hell are you from, West Berlin or somewhere? You don't question the police on this side of the Walclass="underline" they question you.
Fireman, yes. This was an identity parade and every one of us would have to be cleared by the fireman somewhere up there at the end of the street, the only man who knew my face.
This is the one?
I think so.
Take a good look. Make sure.
Staring at me from the top of a ladder one minute, seventy feet in the air, staring at me in the street the next minute, in the middle of a horde of police. Life is a game, my friend, life is a cabaret.
And this is the man with no papers?
Yes, captain.
Then bring him along, two of you.
Thirty minutes, at an approximate estimation. Thirty minutes from now.
You will now leave your vehicles and form a single line. Please leave your vehicles.
Doors opening and slamming shut like a fusillade of shots along the street, the echoes bouncing from the buildings. The lights still flashing in the eerie silence that came down now, except for the shuffling of feet.
'Are they searching them?'
A small man beside me suddenly, keeping his voice low; he was on his toes, trying to see the front of the line.
'I don't know,' I said. 'Why not leave it in the car?'
He flicked a look at me. 'If they're searching us, they'll search the cars too.'
Not the first time he'd been caught in a drug bust. But that wasn't what it was.
It's a trap.
I don't need telling.
It had probably been Melnichenko who had started this. As a high-level member of the GRU he'd carry a lot of clout and he'd use it. He would have put two and two together when he'd found the window still open an inch and seen the fuss in the street: the man he'd seen later, running for the stairs, might have been in his office earlier and been surprised there. He would think immediately of the Trumpeter file and pick up a telephone very fast indeed. The file would still be there — he'd check on that — but he would want to know who'd been in his office and what they were looking for.
I want police blocks set up immediately and the area contained. I want everyone searched and questioned. I shall remain in my office in the Airforce Building and you will please report to me there.