'So far I'm impressed,' Dale whispered.
Malloy used his legs to hold himself and scaled the rope one deliberate pull at a time. Just under the lip, as he considered the prospect of fighting his way over and maybe falling back to his death if he slipped, Ethan and Kate took him by his armour and lifted him up to the ledge. At least they left him the dignity of climbing over the railing on his own. Whilst he did, Kate pulled the rope up and stowed it neatly away.
The balcony was set off from the kitchen and was only large enough for trash and compost and a few utensils. The door was made of wood and glass, secured with a latch. Ethan used a handheld pry bar and cracked the lock with a single twist of his wrist.
Keeping the lights off and using their NVGs, they examined the floor plan in order to get a better understanding of the layout of the adjacent flat. This was easily accomplished. There were two rooms besides the bathroom and kitchen. From the hallway at the front door they would have visual access to most of the living room and bedroom. The kitchen and bathroom doors lay opposite the bedroom - next to the front door.
After having a look, Kate signalled them back to the kitchen. 'You go in first hard and fast,' she told Ethan, 'I'll come behind and take the bedroom door. T. K. can watch the stairwell.'
'I want the bedroom door,' Malloy told her.
'That's the hotspot, T. K.'
'Have you ever seen a photograph of Helena Chernoff?'
'I can't say that I have.'
'I looked at a few hundred last night. I'll take the bedroom. You hold the stairwell.'
The front door of the flat they had entered could only be
unlocked with a skeleton key, but the key itself was missing.
Rather than waste time looking for it, Ethan knelt down and
began tinkering with a set of lock picks. It was pretty standard stuff and within a few seconds the tumblers rolled and the deadlock snapped open. Like the breaking of the wood at the balcony door, the metal snap of the lock sounded like a gunshot inside the darkened flat. Such noises rarely woke city people, who were accustomed to all manner of nocturnal disturbances, but there were always exceptions. And Helena Chernoff, a fugitive for two decades, was probably one of them. So they went through fast.
Kate settled just outside the door at the bottom of the stairs. Ethan crossed the landing immediately behind her and kicked the outer door open. Malloy followed close behind him. As he moved he got his bearings. On his left he saw an open kitchen door and a closed bathroom door. Opposite the front door was the living room. Facing the kitchen was the closed bedroom door. Malloy, never breaking stride, tapped it with five rounds from his
Kalashnikov.
Dale heard the clicking of high heels on the sidewalk across the street even whilst Malloy was still struggling to get up the rope. He got his first glimpse of the streetwalker's pale skin and straw-blonde straight hair when she lit a cigarette at the kerb. She took a moment to consider whether or not to cross the street and then noticed him standing in the shadows.
That would have been enough for a civilian to stay on that side of the street, but she was in the life, and headed right for him. Dale had long ago lost interest in women who sold themselves. Up close to it, as he was, there was no romance or mystery to the oldest profession. Mostly it was laziness and low self-esteem. Sometimes it was hatred in the mask of subservience. And sometimes it was slavery or drug addiction. Take your choice: anyway you looked at it prostitutes of either gender were bad news. This one was in the middle of the street when he realised that under her coat she wore nothing besides a garter belt and stockings.
Impervious or not, Dale Perry was still a man. He pulled his
gaze from her dark pubic mound and tried to study her face. He got only vague outlines. Sometimes Hamburg streetwalkers were like street prostitutes the world over, too young to have much choice about their conditions or too old and hard-bitten to afford better circumstances, but sometimes beautiful women worked the streets. This one wasn't young, but she wasn't rough trade either.
There was just a hint of tightrope walking in the swinging motion of her hands, but once she was on the sidewalk and about ten metres from him, he could smell the booze. 'You looking for a good time, honey?'
Saying this she pulled her coat back, in case he hadn't noticed her skin under the glare of the streetlight. Her body was gorgeously tight and enticing, and she knew it.
'Thirty Euros straight. Twenty if you just want head.' She spoke with a hint of
Plattdeutsch
, as if she had originally come from the farm country surrounding Hamburg. 'We can do it right here if you want. I'm not picky.'
'Get lost,' Dale told her.
'What are you doing back here?' she asked, coming toward him. Her spiked heels sank into the soft dirt and she nearly fell. 'You with someone?' She looked round as she caught her balance. 'You with a man?' She giggled and then lurched wildly as the other heel sank into the dirt. 'I'll do you both for forty.' She caught her balance, but she looked ready to faint or vomit.
Dale swore and took a step toward her. He was going to have to get her out of here, and he wasn't sure how easy that was going to be.
'Thirty Euros straight,' she muttered. When he took her arm, she didn't resist, but neither did her arm and body seem quite connected. He could smell cigarette smoke clinging to her coat. The sweet stink of booze on her breath and skin was overwhelming. 'Twenty for. . . anything you want.' She seemed loose and unstable - like a sack of water. How could a woman like this let herself get that drunk?
At the sound of a Kalashnikov discharging from somewhere
inside the building Dale turned instinctively. He was still touching the streetwalker's arm but otherwise forgot her. Then he heard the blast of two shotguns and more automatic fire.
Her muscles did not tighten as she moved. Her free arm simply snaked up toward his neck as her body seemed on the verge of collapsing. Still processing the sounds of gunfire above him, Dale felt something sting his neck.
No. Not a sting. She had cut him!
His first reaction was anger, and he pushed the woman away. Instead of letting herself get tossed to the ground, the prostitute tightened her body and stayed close, her free hand suddenly holding his wrist. It was then he realised she was not at all what she seemed. He tried to cock his wrist so he could fire his Uzi into her side but she held his hand in an iron grip. Held him and looked into his eyes - happy to watch the life in him bleed out. Only as her eyes danced did he understand that blood was pouring over his shirt and armour.
Dale tried to recall her name - the woman who had just killed him - but the only thing that came to his panicked thoughts was the word
Stasi.
The East German police had been gone from Germany almost two decades, but the word itself was still synonymous with midnight raids, torture, terror, and murder. Stepchild of the Gestapo and KGB, they were as relentless as the latter, as efficient and without scruple as the former. And this one, Dale thought, as his knees buckled. . . this was the last of them. But her name eluded his clouded thoughts. If he had had the blood for one more thought he might have wondered how his wife and children were going to handle his death - a lifetime buried in the underground and coming to this ignominious end without their ever knowing it was all just a cover, that he was in fact something far more honourable and decent than they had ever imagined.
As it was he had no time for regret or even a fleeting thought to give to his family. There was no passing memory of his homeland. Nothing at all could crowd past that all consuming idea of the cold, efficient and deadly
Stasi.
*
The shotgun boomed from inside the kitchen and hit Malloy in the back just as he shot the bedroom door. Ethan turned into the opening with his AKS-74 on full auto. He saw the man who had shot Malloy. The shooter was pumping another shell into the chamber. He was wearing a vest, but it wasn't going to do him any good. . .
Before Ethan could close his finger on the trigger, he got hit in the back with the blast of a shotgun. He only understood what had happened after he had been slammed facedown into the floor - his armoured back and bare right arm hit.
The gunman he had been about to shoot stepped over him. Ethan twisted up to face him. His gun gone from his hands, he reached for his knife, thinking wildly that he might just twist out of the blast. For a moment he did not understand that the chaotic clatter that rang over the shotgun blasts came from Kate's weapon. He saw the splinters of masonry and wood inside the kitchen, then the explosion of the cabinets behind the man who was about to kill him. And then he saw the man's face torn apart.
Rolling to his feet, Ethan saw Malloy was still down. Wounded? Dead? He could not tell. Kate had killed the woman who had been hiding in the living room - the one who had shot Ethan in the back - and now kicked open the bedroom door. Malloy pushed himself to his hands and knees. Kate came back out of the bedroom.
'Clear!' she told them. 'T. K.?' From his hands and knees Malloy tried to look up but couldn't quite manage it. 'Are you hit?' Kate asked him.
Malloy was moving slowly - his jacket torn apart at the kidneys. 'I think I'm okay,' he said. Kate looked at Ethan. Because he was standing she hadn't realised he was hurt. She saw something now and went toward him. 'You're hit!'
Ethan looked at his arm but the NVGs limited his periphery.
'Can you move your arm?' Kate asked, bending her masked face close and trying to see through the NVGs.
Ethan lifted his arm. Not broken - but hurting. Malloy got to his feet finally. His body swayed. He'd taken a kidney punch delivered with buckshot. 'I'm okay,' Ethan said, 'but I caught some buckshot in my arm.'
'We've got to get out of here now!' Kate told them. 'T. K.? Can you climb?'
Malloy staggered and looked at Kate, Ethan, and the dead man and woman. 'Farrell!' he muttered.
'Forget him. We're out of here -
now I
Can you climb?'
He bent over like an old man to get his gun and when he was standing again, he said. 'I'm okay.' It was not a very convincing statement.
'Boy?'
Ethan nodded. 'I'm good.'
They stepped into the hallway, glancing at the stairwell,
and then went back into the flat across the hallway.
At the sound of the guns, Jim Randal phoned Sutter. 'You hear that?' he asked.
'I hear it.'
'It's not good.'
'Sit tight!'
'I'm not moving, but I'm saying it's not good.' He clicked off and looked around. They had set him off half-a-block away in the shadows but he could be at the kerb in front of the entrance in a matter of a few seconds. The street was still empty but the gunshots brought a light on in the window of a flat another across the street from where he sat. Then he saw a movement in his rear view mirror. A woman in a long fur coat and high heels was running in something of a panic down the middle of the street. Randal scanned the streets again. She was alone, watching the apartment building as she ran. Her coat was open and Randal stared in disbelief. She was wearing nothing but high heels, a garter and hose! He swore quietly at the sight and at German mores in general, but he could not resist the show and watched her closely for the few seconds it took for her to
come almost up to his vehicle, seemingly unaware of his presence. He looked away finally, checking the streets. Then he heard her calling out to him in German. When he did not respond, she staggered toward him and pointed in the direction of the gunshots, still screaming in German - something about
sheezie
or
shizti.
Her coat was still completely open, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Randal was not sure what to do, so the first thing he did was hit his window switch. 'You speak English?'
He decided if she spoke English he would tell her to get lost, and if she didn't he would pull his service weapon and tell her to get lost, but as he was working through how he wanted to deal with her, Randal felt something hot hit his neck. Then he felt dizzy.
Ethan was first over the balcony. This time he used his legs, not really able to put any of his weight into his right arm. When he got to the ground, he saw a shadow and knew it was Dale. 'We've got a man down!' he whispered, pulling his weapon free and getting ready.
'What is it? What happened?' Malloy asked.
Ethan moved to the body quickly and turned the shoulder. 'It's Dale. His throat's been cut.' He spun, searching the shadows with his NVGs. He saw a woman's shoe prints coming and going. Coming there was an odd meandering aspect, but the tracks departed on a straight line. Ethan backed off and set his gun to his shoulder to cover the building whilst Malloy came down the line slowly. He was hurt, maybe seriously wounded. Kate watched the upper balconies from her position on the second storey balcony. For the moment she was trapped and could do very little from her position. Once Malloy touched the ground Kate flipped over the balcony, descending in a rapid hand-over-hand. There was a movement on one of the upper balconies as she finished. Ethan shifted his sights, saw a gun, and squeezed off a burst. He heard Josh coming in with the SUV. Kate ran past Ethan
and then turned, firing off several bursts at the building.