Chapter 10
They drove out from the new centre of Berlin.
Carrick had come off duty in the anteroom. He had missed breakfast and had been on his bed for perhaps an hour. Then Viktor rapped hard on his door and told him to be dressed, ready to leave in ten minutes. He had sensed a different mood in the man; something smug, contented, as if a decision had been taken.
Viktor was at the wheel and Carrick was beside him, the Bossman on the back seat. No talk. Viktor concentrated on traffic, the tail end of the rush-hour, but they were going away from the commercial district of glass, steel and concrete towers, and went through old streets. Many of the signs there were in Turkish, and a street market, a long line of stalls that backed on to a canal, had appeared. The day was starting up. Clothing was being hung on rails, meat was being displayed, vegetables and fruit carefully heaped in pyramids. Music wailed from radios and speakers. Carrick did not know where he was because he had no knowledge of Berlin. Neither did he know where they were headed because he had not been told; it was not right for him to ask. He sat beside Viktor, eyed the pavements and acted the role of bodyguard.
He thought his Bossman was subdued and that, in contrast, Viktor had found confidence. He reckoned that the route and destination had been agreed by Josef Goldmann and the minder, but he was not inside the loop.
Carrick sensed growing danger, but could not identify it so could not respond. It was what they talked about endlessly in SCD10. The sensing of danger and the response to intuition were subjects they chewed at daily. It was an unwritten law, at SCD10, that the safety of the officer was paramount — but he’d thought the law had no writ over Golf, who had lectured and humiliated him in the office-block doorway. At SCD10, there was a laid-down tactical approach of specifics and generalities. The agent was not expected to hazard his security in pushing an investigation the extra mile. Where possible, meetings with targets should be in public places, restaurants, bars and hotel lobbies, so that the back-up could be close enough to intervene; and there were those dark times of uncertainty when an eyeball view of the agent was not available, and it was said that those times, for the handlers, were like the old space shots when the returning capsule was on re-entry and radio contact was lost, and they must wait for the call sign to be given, the sight again of their man. They also said, in the Pimlico office, over tea and coffee, that the first rule for an undercover was to hatch an idea of his exit route. Where was the door? Where did it lead to? Carrick didn’t know, now, where there were firearms in close support — whether they even existed — and he had no idea of where his exit route should be, but his sense of danger cut the silence in the car.
They had gone past the street market.
The buildings around him were more dilapidated.
There was the greyness of neglect. Shadows fell further and deeper.
Women, kids, old men wearing caps, fags hanging from their mouths, stared at the big car crossing their territory.
Then they were beyond the blocks and the rain fell harder on the windscreen, the wipers working faster.
Into a cul-de-sac. There were steel security railings topped with spikes and rambling coils of razor wire. A gate was open. A man stood by it and waved Viktor inside. Carrick could not see the man’s face because he had a scarf across his mouth and cheeks. In the mirror, the gate was closed after them. The first rule of the Pimlico office was to know the exit route: he did — it was that gate set in a spiked, wired fence. He thought that, behind him, Josef Goldmann’s breath came faster and, beside him, that Viktor smirked. The car braked in front of an old brick-built warehouse. Some of the windows were open to the elements, the glass panes smashed, and some were boarded up. Water cascaded from two useless gutters, and grass grew from the space under the eaves. A small door was set in the brickwork where Viktor had stopped the car
They walked through, his Bossman first, then Carrick and Viktor … Guys came to SCD10 and lectured. A few were from the FBI but most were older men who had packed up doing undercover for a living. Some dealt with it — what was going through Carrick’s mind and louder than the alarm beside his bed — and some spoke of it only when questioned. Yes, they all looked for exit routes. No, they had never used the cop-out and run. Yes, they had all felt the instinct of danger. No, they had never quit, thrown that bloody lamp through the window, or made an excuse, gone out through the door and turned their back on the business. The last FBI man to come to Pimlico had used the word ‘iced’ to describe an undercover pulled out because the danger was thought too great … No chance that the head honcho, Golf, would lift him out — no damn chance.
Their feet crunched on broken glass, and once his Bossman slipped on the corridor floor. Carrick thought he might have stepped in a dosser’s shit, or a dog’s.
They went through a door hanging crazily and on to the floor space that had once been a factory with machinery, all stripped out. More rain came down from the high roof’s skylights, spattered and bounced. Must have been the noise they made, but when they were in the middle of the open space there was a shout that echoed in the emptiness. His Bossman turned towards it.
A partition of wood sections was in front of Carrick. The shout came again. His Bossman looked behind him, seemed to bite his lip, then headed towards it. At the end of the partition, Mikhail waited for them. He stood in front of Josef Goldmann, made him check his step then pointed to the side. The eyes glistened, were on Carrick, and he gestured behind him. A chair was in the centre of the space.
There was no exit route. The chair was screwed to the concrete floor and had thick, strong arms. It was like the one his grandfather had had in the dining room where the family had eaten only on Sundays after morning worship, but his grandfather’s carver did not have leather straps with buckles nailed to the arms. There were dried stains at the feet of the chair that had not been scrubbed away. Mikhail gestured for Carrick to go to the chair. He saw a table with a cordless drill on it, and a small chain-saw half under it.
Reuven Weissberg sat close to the table and Josef Goldmann went to him. Carrick saw that the light, life and blood had gone from his Bossman’s cheeks.
He stood in front of the chair, Mikhail before him. Carrick saw a wart on the right side of his nose, a scar on his cheek, and all the places where acne scabs had left craters. He smelled the man’s breath and thought Mikhail had eaten strong salami not an hour before. His arms were yanked out, and Mikhail’s foot went between his legs to kick them a little further apart. He was frisked. Thick muscular fingers were under his arms and at the small of his back, the waist of his trousers, fingering the stitching, and down to the crotch, pushing up into Carrick’s groin. It was as good a search for a wire as would have been done by police. There was no wire, no microphone, no recorder or transmitter, no battery pack for him to find. Mikhail stepped back and motioned for Carrick to sit.
Carrick did not sit.
It had been what they called in SCD10 a ‘dust-down’. The instructors preached that any undercover must expect to be searched for a wire, and they taught a response. The response was hammered at recruits.
There was a moment when surprise clouded Mikhail’s face, and he tried to push Carrick into the chair. His fist brushed Carrick’s chest.
No exit route. No way to call for back-up. Carrick took a half-step forward, fast and sudden.
Reuven Weissberg saw the blur of movement and the shock spreading on Mikhail’s face. Saw it, and enjoyed it. Two fighting cocks put against each other, or two starved rats, and good sport — except that the matter was more important than play-acting.