Skydancer (33 page)

The Russian officer shifted awkwardly. He was only a messenger, unable to answer such questions.

‘He will be returned to you,' he began again, ‘but there is someone special who must collect him.'

He pointed to a folded sheet of paper that had fallen from the envelope.

Puzzled, the major spread it open. It was a short letter.

‘But . . . but this is addressed to the Chief of the Defence Staff!' he exclaimed. ‘I'm not sure I should read it.'

‘You must transmit it now!' Borodin insisted. ‘It is very urgent.'

With increasing astonishment the major cast his eye down the page, scanning the conditions set for Anderson's release from the East.

‘Well . . . I shall deal with it right away, Captain. We'll communicate with you in due course. Where, er . . . where should we address our reply?'

‘I am at our mission. I shall wait for you to come.'

‘Very well.'

The major stood up. The Russian saluted again, turned on his heel and strode out.

When Peter entered the field-marshal's office, following an urgent summons, he found the defence chief grimfaced.

‘I've been talking with our security people,' Buxton began. ‘We've had a message from Berlin about Anderson, to which we have to respond. Everything I say to you has been cleared with both MI5 and MI6, so there are no dissenters. We're all agreed as to the action we have to take.'

Alarmed, Peter said nothing.

Buxton took a deep breath.

‘We want you to go to Berlin.'

‘What?'

‘The Soviets seem to be holding Anderson as some sort of prisoner, but say they will hand him over tonight, but only to you. Don't ask me why, I just don't know. We received a signal from our mission there this morning, relaying the contents of a letter signed by Oleg Kvitzinsky!'

‘Good Lord!'

‘Yes. It's all quite mystifying. He says the handover will be at a small crossing-point in the wall sometime after midnight, but it can only take place if you're there.'

‘Why on earth would they insist on that?' Peter frowned. ‘Do you think they're planning to grab me as well?'

‘We thought of that, of course. They won't get the chance, though. You can be sure of that. You'll have an armed escort from our garrison, and there's no way the Soviets are going to start a shooting incident over this business. They're showing all the signs of wanting to keep it very quiet and discreet.'

‘But what about the Skydancer plans?' Peter was thinking on his feet. ‘Presumably this means that the Soviets think they are calling our bluff, that they believe the plans Anderson gave them are fakes and they want to rub our noses in it! Or does it?'

‘God knows!' Buxton sighed. ‘The big question is why Kvitzinsky should be involved? Presumably they got him to Berlin to cast his expert eye over the blueprints, but why he insists on seeing you is far from clear. My guess is that he is going to demand some further information as a final price for Anderson's release! You'll tell him nothing, of course – I hardly need say that. Our colleagues in the secret service have a different idea. They're quite excited! They seem to think he's going to defect!'

Peter whistled softly. That would be a remarkable bonus if it happened.

‘Well, are you saying we've little to lose by doing what they want, and there's no real alternative anyway?'

‘That's about it. You'll go, then?'

The same flight that had conveyed Alec Anderson to Berlin the previous day took Peter Joyce to the divided city. With him went a somewhat monosyllabic representative from MI6, to be present if Kvitzinsky did indeed defect, and who would also escort Anderson back to Britain. The two men sat in different sections of the aircraft; the intelligence man wanted to smoke, and Peter did not.

The sky was clear throughout the flight, but darkness had descended as they neared their destination. With twenty minutes to go before they landed, Peter looked out of the left-hand window and saw a line of lights stretching north as far as the eye could see. Suddenly he realised it was the inner-German border dividing East from West, capitalism from communism. He could imagine the lines of fencing and barbed wire that marked that border with its watchtowers and guard dogs, designed to keep the population of the East where it was.

The engine note changed and the Boeing began its descent towards West Berlin.

They were met at Tegel Airport by the major from the British military mission.

‘Alan Howlett,' he introduced himself briskly. He had a pointed face with a receding chin, and looked both nervous and excited at the prospect of being involved in what looked like his first real spy drama.

‘I've got my car here, so we'll go straight to my HQ for a briefing, and take it from there.'

The MI6 man snorted quietly to himself at the army's preoccupation with ‘briefings'.

Peter had never been to Berlin before. It was raining; a steady downpour flowed off the car's windscreen like a river. The wipers made little impression on the blur of water; the garish neon lights of the city were magnified and distorted by the wet glass.

As they set off from the airport, Major Howlett tried to make conversation with the two men, but their lack of response discouraged him from further efforts.

Once inside the Military Mission they were taken straight to a conference room, where a young captain, introduced as ‘the briefing officer', gave them an illustrated lecture on the divided city of Berlin. From time to time the MI6 man yawned loudly, to show his own familiarity with the subject, but to Peter much of what he was being told was new.

Then the major took over.

‘So much for the general picture,' he began, looking down at his notes, ‘which we thought we'd give you just in case you weren't too familiar with the city. But, now, on to tonight.

‘The Soviets have named Kirchenallee as the place where Mr Anderson is to be released. It's not normally in use as a crossing-point. The boundary between the Russian and the British zones runs along the western edge of a railway track which is down in a sort of cutting. Because of lack of space on the western side, the Vopos built their wall on the east of the track at that point, even though the railway line is actually theirs. Here . . .'

Major Howlett clicked on the light of an epidiascope, which projected a vu-foil map on to the screen. He
indicated the area involved with a billiard cue.

‘As you can see, Kirchenallee crosses the railway line here over a narrow bridge. The wall is at the eastern end, with a solid iron gate across the road, and at our western end there is a chain-link fence, with another gate in it, padlocked from their side.

‘Now, I've not done one of these before, but looking at the records of past handovers, the procedure seems to be this: we turn up and wait in our cars on our side of the bridge. They give us the once-over through their binoculars from one of the two watchtowers on the other side; then they open the iron gate in the wall, walk across the bridge and undo the padlock on the chain-link gate on the western side.

‘They check our papers, then let us walk with them to the middle of the bridge. It's their territory officially, but for events like this the bridge is considered no-man's land. Then, in theory, they bring across the man in question and hand him over. Bob's your uncle!'

‘What are your security plans tonight?' the MI6 man demanded suddenly.

‘Ah, yes. There should be no problem there. We'll have a platoon with us who will take up firing positions just in case it turns nasty, and a couple of military policemen will escort you on to the bridge as well. We're not expecting any trouble, though.'

‘Why are they going to such lengths?' Peter asked. ‘Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff? Why not just shove him across Checkpoint Charlie if they want to get rid of him?'

The major looked at him in surprise.

‘I have no idea, sir. I rather assumed you knew the answer to that question.'

Peter felt the MI6 man was laughing at him inwardly. The bastard had seen it all before.

‘Well, if there are no more questions,' Howlett continued, conscious of the awkward silence, ‘then I'll take you to the mess. We've got rooms for you for the night, and after you've had a wash and so on, we could gather for a drink and some dinner. Our rendezvous with the Russians isn't until two o'clock in the morning, I'm afraid.'

Oleg Kvitzinsky hated Berlin. The Germans might be Soviet allies, but they despised the men from Moscow and did not mind showing it.

He had flown to the city, accompanied by two burly ‘specialists' from the GRU, to examine the blueprints of the new British nuclear weapon system which the HVA claimed to have captured.

He had spent most of his time there sitting in the Soviet embassy, exhaustively examining the documents that Alec Anderson had delivered, and comparing them with the preliminary analysis of the Skydancer warhead test in the Atlantic, which had been telexed to him from Moscow.

From the top floor of the embassy building, he could see the endlessly-flashing neon lights on the other side of the wall, set up in prominent positions as a deliberate lure to those in the East. To Oleg it was a cheap capitalist trick – distasteful even – to try to tempt people with bright lights and baubles into a society that was attractive on the surface but which was rotten and crippled by unemployment underneath.

He had been shocked at what he had learned about Skydancer, shocked and dismayed. His decision to use Anderson as a bait to lure the designer of the weapon to Berlin had been an act of desperation. He was taking a considerable risk, but this was an
opportunity he could not afford to ignore.

He dreaded that meeting, now; there had been a catastrophe that afternoon. It had made his goal virtually unattainable.

The door swung open. One of the GRU men stood there, pointing at his watch. It was after one o'clock in the morning, and time to go.

They had driven well clear of that section of the city that keeps humming throughout the night with its countless bars and brothels. Peter Joyce peered through the car window down the deserted side-streets, catching occasional glimpses of the wall, which was thrown into stark silhouette by the brightness of the observation lights on the other side. They seemed to be driving parallel with it, the side-streets cut short by its graffiti-covered bulk. The emptiness of the streets was almost eerie, as if no one lived so close to this frontier; as if the contrast between east and west was too painful to bear when seen so close.

‘Not far now,' the major commented, trying to sound reassuring.

In front of them three Land-Rovers led the way, their thick tyres humming on the wet road. The red tail-lights of the last one sparkled in their rain-spattered windscreen.

‘They could have chosen a better night for it,' Howlett muttered. ‘It's ten to two now. We'll probably have a few minutes wait when we get there.'

‘I shall stay in the car, out of sight,' the MI6 man growled. ‘It'd have to be Gorbachev himself coming across to get me to stand outside on a night like this!'

The brake-lights of the Land-Rovers came on in
dazzling unison, and an orange flashing indicated a turn to the left.

‘Kirchenallee,' Major Howlett announced as they rounded the corner.

Ahead of them stood the chain-link fence, with the wall a little way beyond it, just as it had been described in the briefing.

Peter swallowed hard. He felt suddenly unprepared. He had no idea what the Russian scientist would say to him, nor what he would say in reply.

‘We're here,' the major said unnecessarily.

The car halted close to the wire gate. Its headlights briefly illuminated the road which ran beyond it, across the iron bridge, and the cold grey wall which finally blocked progress into the eastern half of the city. The drivers switched their headlamps off, plunging the road into blackness. Suddenly they became conscious of the two stark watchtowers on the other side, visible against the glow of the illuminations for the ‘dead' zone behind. Shadowy figures looked down on them.

Soldiers were jumping out of the Land-Rovers and spreading out. Rifles in hand, some entered what looked like a derelict building at the end of the row of houses, others crouched in doorways, the rain glistening on their waterproof capes.

‘Now we just have to wait,' Howlett explained quietly. The rain drummed on the roof of the car.

The major pulled out an electronic night-sight, and switched it on. After giving it a few seconds to warm up, he put it to his eyes.

‘Nothing yet,' he reported, focusing on the edge of the iron gate through which the Soviets would have to emerge.

Peter imagined the unseen soldiers around them lining up the same view on the night-sights of their
rifles, ready to kill with accuracy in the blackness, if ordered to do so.

There was a tap at the window, and the major wound it down a crack. ‘All in position, sir.'

Peter recognised the voice of the young captain who had given the briefing earlier. Peering through the window he could make out the shapes of two men, one of them carrying a radio-set on his back.

‘Right,' the major replied. ‘Oh, standby! We've got some movement. Gate's opening!'

The captain hurried off to take up his command position, ready to direct his platoon, if action were needed.

‘Vopo coming across the bridge. East German police. Better go and say hello. Stay here for the moment, if you don't mind, gentlemen.'

The major handed his night-glasses to the driver and cursed as he stepped out into the downpour.

A faint light from distant street-lamps made the wire-mesh gate just visible to the naked eye. Peter saw the German guard looming out of the darkness. With the aid of a small torch, he inserted a key into the padlock and struggled to turn it.

‘Fookin' rusty, I reckon!' the driver exclaimed in a thick Birmingham accent.