He heard a metallic clink. Toll had extracted his bunch of skeleton keys from his coat pocket. God knew how long it would take him to unlock that gate. Five minutes was the expected duration of the blackout to be organized by the crew in the tower he was gazing at, a blackout caused by deliberate shorting of the electricity.
`Best night for a month for crossing,' Toll hissed. 'No moon. Heavy overcast forecast. No wind. You'd hear trouble a kilometre off.'
`You said it before,' Newman whispered back.
And he had. Toll was repeating himself Sign of nerves. He had good reason. God knew how many regulations he was breaking — a senior BND officer coming right up to the frontier.
Newman felt he should be grateful. All he could think of was the route he had to follow beyond that gate. When the lights went out. With luck the bloody lights wouldn't go out. That would abort the operation.
`Feeling nervous?' Toll asked.
`Just concentrating on the job.'
Newman handed back the glasses and his voice was ice-cold. That worried Toll. If they felt nervous they would have maximum alertness. Overconfident, they always took risks. Something he could do nothing about. Toll quenched his last-minute doubts.
Newman began to feel the cold seeping into him. They were standing behind a copse of trees, peering round the thick trunk of one giant fir sheering above them. No sign of mist. That was one thing to be thankful for. No mist, please. Not until I'm across — over the dummy minefield.
If
it was still a dummy. Markus Wolf had a habit of changing the defences without warning.
`Any minute now,' Toll said.
`They're late.'
Newman had checked his watch. Five minutes past midnight. What had gone wrong? His right hand felt the shaving kit inside the pocket of his raincoat. Minimum equipment. Ordinary razor, packet of East German blades — like the razor. Small brush. Piece of soap. Also manufactured in the Democratic Republic. Democratic. That was a laugh...'
The lights went out.
Newman temporarily lost his night vision. He'd made the mistake of watching the lights too long. Toll reached out a hand, grasped his arm. He spoke so softly Newman only just caught what he'd said.
`Grab the back of my coat belt...'
They stumbled forwards to the gate, placing their feet carefully. Tufts of grass threatened to bring them down. Newman blinked several times. His night vision began to come back. They were at the gate. Toll raised the handle, prior to trying the first key. The gate opened, moved inward silently on well-oiled hinges. Toll was taken aback. He stood holding the handle, listening, and then he spoke.
`Gate unlocked. Something's wrong..
`Get out of my way. I'm going through.'
It had been over four years ago. His training with the SAS unit. He hadn't thought about it until this moment. Everything came -back in a flood, filling his mind. The sergeant who had drilled him unmercifully.
`Sometimes you'll get lucky. Grab it in both hands. The luck. You'll get one chance only. Don't hesitate. Not for a second. Do it, man...'
Newman had never known his name. He'd come from the Manchester area — judging from the way he spoke. Newman never knew where any of them came from. Bloody nightmare it had been. But a thorough bloody nightmare. 'Just call me Sarge...'
`You won't see it coming. The lucky break. When it comes see it. Grab it. Do it...'
Newman was through the gate and walking straight ahead, crouched low. Behind him Toll closed the gate, decided against trying to lock it, headed back for the parked car, long legs striding over the ground, downhill, fast. Once a man was through you left him to it. He was on his own. Just get well clear of the border — and hope and pray. He was too bloody confident, Toll said to himself and shrugged his shoulders.
Beyond the gate Newman was shit-scared.
The tower loomed up in the night like some alien, a Martian out of H. G. Wells. It was the guidepost. Walk straight ahead, pass the right-hand side of the tower, don't look up, keep moving at a steady pace. That much Toll had known.
Still crouched low, placing his feet flat, he thought he saw a shadow coming towards him. He blinked. Those damned contact lenses. Then he remembered Sarge again. 'Danger. Even a hint of it. Sight. Smell. Sound. Drop flat. Don't think. Drop fucking flat!'
Newman dropped flat, took the impact of the fall on his forearms, sprawled full-length behind a low patch of gorse, buried his head between his arms, head turned sideways. Then he began worrying. Had he done the right thing? Five minutes' duration of blackout, Toll had said. He was wasting precious time ….'
He heard the faint crackle, like the sound of a foot breaking a twig. He lay motionless, listening. The shadow had been a man, a man walking stealthily towards him. He flexed his hands. Was he going to have to kill before he had even crossed the belt?
Another crackle, closer this time. Had he been seen? Was this an armed guard checking? He imagined the cold muzzle of a pistol pressed against his head. At least he was turned the right way. The cautious footsteps — they were now definite footsteps — were much closer. The stupid bastard might tread on him...'
Newman blinked. He was staring at the side of a man's hiking boot, the type with spiked soles. The foot remained still. He knew, like himself, the unknown man was listening. Newman dug his elbows deeper into the hard earth, ready for springing to his feet.
Then he recalled something Toll had said.
This crossing is also used by the East Germans sending agents into the West. We always let them through, never follow them
. Something like that.
He was staring at the boot of an agent heading for the West. Hence the unlocked gate which had so worried Toll. By an extraordinary coincidence agents from each direction were passing at the same moment. Coincidence. He remembered something else Toll had said. Only a few minutes ago.
`Best night for a month for crossing. No moon. Heavy overcast forecast. No wind...'
That explained why Spiked Boot was coming out. The boot began moving again. Newman froze. The footsteps grew fainter. Heading for the gate. He couldn't waste another second. Very slowly Newman rose to his feet, glanced over his shoulder. The vague silhouette of the retreating shape had almost disappeared in the dark. Newman walked forward, aiming for the base of the huge watchtower rearing above him.
He paused by the side of the concrete circular pillar, looked up, saw the overhang of the cabin at the summit dimly protruding like a gigantic umbrella. From here he had to walk straight forward to the electronic fence where Falken should be waiting. He started walking, again crouching.
He stopped. Sweat streamed from his armpits. His right foot had trodden on something. He looked down, not moving the foot. It rested on a small mound shaped like an anthill. But this was no anthill. The sole of his shoe had felt unyielding metal beneath it. It rested on an anti-personnel mine.
The damned things detonated under pressure, the pressure of a man's foot. Was it a dummy? Toll had mentioned dummies. Or had the agent moving to the West known where the live mines were? He took a deep breath. Only one way to find out. Lift the foot with care, great care.
He used the heel, still resting on the ground, as a pivot, lifting the sole as though raising it from something live. Nothing happened. He walked on. Watch where you're putting your bloody feet. So much to watch. The tower. His rear. What might wait for him ahead.
On the East German side the minefield belt was lined with more fir forests, a solid black wall. He trod slowly among clusters of grass tufts, round stunted gorse bushes, watching for another of those hard-to-see mounds. He checked his watch. Seven minutes. He was late. The blackout was timed to last five minutes.
He kept moving. At any second the whole area might be flooded with light, those damned searchlights probing. He'd be a sitting duck for one of those swivel-mounted machine-guns. He saw a vague barrier, lower than the wire he had left behind. He had reached the electronic fence.
Don't touch!
Where was the flaming gate? They were supposed to be opposite each other, the gates on either side. He had taken great care to walk in a straight line. Or so he thought. So easy in the dark to veer off course. He came up to the fence. No gate. To the left — or to the right? He had to guess correctly first time.
Newman glanced behind. He could just make out the tower. It was a little to the left. He moved along the fence to his right, keeping a distance of about a metre from it. He nearly walked past the gate, constructed of the same mesh as the fence. He checked his watch again. God! Ten minutes.
The gate opened away from him as though of its own volition. Startled, he paused. A tall figure stood holding the gate on the far side of the fence. Newman stiffened his right hand, ready to strike a blow with the side of his hand. The tall man called out, softly.
`Bismarck...'
`Rhine Falls,' Newman replied, completing the password Toll had given him.
`Hurry!' the voice whispered in German again.
Newman slipped through the gate. The tall man closed it and took Newman's arm, pulling him away from the fence. He must have had sixth sense. As they melted into the forest a glare of lights flooded the belt behind them. Searchlights began to probe, moving more swiftly, scanning the forbidden zone. He had made it by less than thirty seconds.
Fifteen minutes after midnight. Wolf looked up from his desk in surprise but his expression remained blank. Lysenko had entered the room and Wolf sensed he was still in a bad mood.
`Why have you come back?' he asked.
`Couldn't sleep,' the General growled. 'Any news?'
`Yes, there is. Contradictory reports. I don't like contradictions. The phone has been busy.'
`What has happened?' Lysenko lit a cigarette and stood with his hands in his trouser pockets.
`You know we heard the British reporter, Robert Newman, flew from Hamburg with Tweed to England?'
`Of course I remember that...'
`Kurt Franck has just reported he saw Newman at the Movenpick Hotel in Lübeck this afternoon. He was disguised — wearing dark glasses and a Tyrolean hat. That is, yesterday afternoon.'
`Franck could be mistaken.'
`Franck is never mistaken. He is one of my most reliable men. So now we have two Newmans — one in London, one in Germany. I'm wondering which is the real man.'
`What do you think is going on?'
`There has just been another report,' Wolf continued in the same monotone. 'From the Harz district. Someone short- circuited the electricity supply to the watchtowers. There was a blackout from midnight for exactly ten minutes.'
`Power failure?'
`With the system locked in to a back-up generator? I think not.'
Wolf stared at Lysenko without a trace of friendliness. The Russian stared back at the eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses. Lysenko often recalled a picture he had once seen of Mount Rushmore in the United States, the great cliff where the images of four American presidents had been carved out of rock. Wolf's graven image reminded him of one of those impassive rock faces.
'It is complex,' Wolf continued. 'We had an agent passing over to the West at that point. A blackout had been arranged for midnight...'
'Then surely that explains it,' Lysenko snapped.
'If you would be so kind as to let me finish my report without interruption? The blackout was arranged from midnight to precisely 12.05 hours. Seconds before my man operated a switch the whole system — including the back-up — was short-circuited. The black-out lasted ten minutes. Not five as planned. When my operative pressed the switch again to reactivate the system it didn't work. Five minutes later the system came back on for no apparent reason.'
'A technical hitch?' Lysenko persisted.
'I think not. The missing five minutes worry me.'
God, Lysenko was thinking, these bloody Germans, they have minds like Swiss watches. Probably that was why they almost defeated us during the Great Patriotic War. They aren't men — they're machines. He had come back to make his peace with Wolf, and here they were, at daggers drawn again. He decided to go on the offensive.
'Well, if you're so cocked up about it, what are you going to do?'
'I have already done it. The three men inside the watchtower facing the exit gate have been arrested. They are under interrogation. In any case, they will not return to that tower.'
'Wolf, tell me what you think really happened?'
'How do I know? The two reports — one from Franck, the other from Border Control — only came in a few minutes ago.'
'But you seem to link them. This so-called blackout and the mystery about Newman.'
'I phoned Moscow just before you came back on the special line. I held on while they checked Newman on the computer.' Wolf paused. 'He speaks fluent German. I have just issued a nationwide alert. Photos of him will be here by morning.'
Twenty-Three
The blurred glow of the border searchlights penetrated the darkness of the fir forest just enough for Newman to get a glimpse of Josef Falken before they had walked into pitch blackness. Tall and slim, he had a long face terminating in a pointed jaw. There was a hint of humour round the corners of the firm mouth, in his pale blue eyes. He spoke in a light-hearted way as though they were embarking on a leisurely hike in friendly territory.
`You ride a bicycle, so Toll informed me?'
`I can, yes. And after three days I will be crossing back over the same route?'
`Toll always plans ahead. The cycles are less than a kilometre from here. Your German is very good. You could pass for one. In fact, you may have to.'
Again the same buoyant note, an apparent total lack of stress. Newman decided he liked Falken. Then he stopped, reached out his hand and grasped the German's arm. He pointed into the forest to their left away from the narrow path they were following.
`Something — someone — moved up there...'
`Yes, my flank guard. Gerda is watching over us. You only need to know her first name. She is carrying an automatic weapon — and she can use it. First lesson for you, my friend,' Falken continued as they resumed walking along the uphill path winding through the forest. 'First lesson,' he repeated, 'this is wartime. We are the underground fighting an alien regime. We are Soviet-occupied territory — The Zone.'