The Midnight Swimmer (23 page)

Arlekin spent the rest of the voyage lying on his bunk – and trying not to worry.
He knew that what he was doing was a terrible risk, but not taking that risk could be even more terrible.
He had changed a lot since he was a young man.
Winning was no longer all.
Winning could mean that everyone loses.
The problem was that not everyone understood what was at stake.
And people still used out of date words like appeasement and patriotism – and treason.
And what was honour?
A pointless duel where you shoot each other’s children, until someone has the sense to shout, ‘Enough!’
But these were inner thoughts he had to keep to himself

The thump of the steam engine suddenly changed pace and a shudder went through the ship.
They seemed to be stopping.
Arlekin got up and looked out the porthole.
It was dusk, but he could still make out a flat coastline without any lights.
The engine then clunked back into gear and the coastline came closer.
He could soon discern a line of sandy beach and a clump of driftwood.
As they approached the narrow entrance there was a flashing red light on the end of a breakwater – and then, as unexpected as grace, a windmill as white and ancient as a ghost.
Both banks of the waterway were bound by dark woods.
A few minutes later, the woods were replaced by the cranes of Świnoujście Harbour scoring the sky.

Świnoujście was the outer harbour.
The main harbour, Szczecin, was further inland on the other side of the Oder/Szczecin Lagoon.
Both harbours had been German before 1945 – and known as Swinemünde and Stettin.
When the borders changed, the former German residents had to shift thirty miles to the east, to the new Deutsche Demokratische Republik.
And in turn, the newly
christened
harbours were repopulated with Poles who had been
displaced
from the parts of western Poland which had been annexed by the Soviet Union.
Arlekin knew it was pointless to care too much about these things.
There were far worse fates than packing bags and learning new languages.
Peace was more important than just and fair solutions for all.
But so was power.

The plans were not completely clear.
But the important thing for now was complete secrecy.
One option had been for Arlekin to leave the ship at Szczecin.
But apparently Mischa wasn’t happy about that one.
The Szczecin option meant that the UB, the Polish
Intelligence
Service, would be responsible for taking him to the DDR border and turning him over to minders from Mischa’s own East German State Security Ministry.
It occurred to Arlekin that Mischa had abandoned the Szczecin option because he didn’t trust UB
security
.
When Arlekin’s clandestine visit had been negotiated, Mischa’s intermediary had bluntly asked if Polish intelligence had been
penetrated
by the Western allies.
Arlekin gave the usual safe answer.
He said he didn’t know.

The
Lech
proceeded slowly past the Świnoujście cranes and docks as if waiting for instructions.
For a while the navigation lights of a smaller craft motored abeam of the
Lech
as if lining up for a
rendezvous
, but then gave up the game and disappeared into the dark.
The lights and cranes of Świnoujście then faded away and it was as if the ship had dropped into an underworld.
Arlekin strained his eyes to make out something, to get a bearing, but there was only blackness.
Finally, there was a green marker light that illuminated the end of a retaining wall.
It looked like they had reached the end of a canal.
A moment later there was a break in the clouds.
A brief burst of
moonlight
revealed a broad lagoon of open water so vast that you couldn’t see land.
The ship continued at a slower pace than ever before; cloud extinguished the moon and a gust of wind pelted the porthole with icy rain.
They appeared to have stopped.

The ship seemed suspended in a netherworld where time had
stopped.
The stasis was suddenly broken by a roar of engines coming from the west that grew louder and louder.
Arlekin put his face against the porthole and strained to see what was happening.
He finally managed to make out a line of white wake cutting across the black waters of the lagoon.
A second later a searchlight from the bridge of the
Lech
began to sweep across the waters until it found a black high-speed boat heading in their direction.
The boat, still tracked by the searchlight, yawed sharply as it hove alongside the hull of the
Lech
.
A voice from the boat shouted something in German, and then another voice shouted even more loudly in Russian – and the searchlight was quickly extinguished.
There was then a clunky sound as a boarding ladder was lowered over the side.

Two minutes later Arlekin heard the sound of heavy boots approaching in the corridor outside his cabin.
They stopped outside his door, and there was a pause as someone cleared his throat.
Arlekin waited, but no knock came.
For the first time, he was
frightened
: none of this was part of the plan.
Just as he was about to call out, the door flew open.
It was a tall man dressed in dripping black oilskins and sea boots.
His face was masked by a dark scarf that only revealed his eyes.
The man gestured and Arlekin followed.

There were no crew about as the pair made their way to the upper decks.
For a second Arlekin wondered if the Poles had been
imprisoned
in a hold or forced to walk the plank.
The emptiness was eerie.
He followed the tall man in oilskins along the deck to the
boarding
ladder.
The ship was in complete blackout mode; even the
navigation
lights had been extinguished.
The man gestured for him to go first.
As Arlekin stepped over the ship’s side onto the ladder, he had a sense of déjà-vu.
It was a repetition of going over the harbour wall the day before in Bremen.
His fear dissipated.
Boarding strange boats in the night rekindled the mysterious allure of childhood adventures.

The craft at the bottom of the ladder was a steel-hulled military assault boat powered by two enormous outboards.
There were two crew, also dressed in black oilskins with their faces hidden.
They cast off without a word and the boat was soon planing at thirty knots an hour across the lagoon.
It was bitterly cold, but Arlekin found himself enjoying the fast boat ride in the utter blackness.
The only illumination was the compass dial.
Forty minutes later,
the helmsman cut the speed and pointed the boat to the south.
For the first time since leaving the
Lech
, Arlekin was able to see
coastline
: the silhouettes of trees and the roofs of houses and barns.
The helmsman cut the speed to walking pace.
Someone was signalling with a light from the end of a jetty.

The crew made fast and the man who had fetched him nimbly mounted a rickety wooden ladder.
Arlekin followed.
The air was quiet, less cold than before and smelt of farm manure.
They were now alone again; the crew had remained behind in the boat.
Arlekin’s
companion walked off the end of the jetty and up on to a turf dyke that protected the farmland from flooding.
He stopped and turned at the top of the dyke.
The boat crew had revved up the engines and were casting off.
The tall man, his face still hidden, gave them a large wave of thanks and they were gone.
Arlekin turned around to look for the person who had guided them in with the light, but saw he had set off in the boat with the others.
Arlekin suddenly realised that the two of them were alone in a sleepy rural landscape that looked like a Dutch painting.
His doubt and anxiety disappeared: he felt in safe hands.
As Arlekin climbed the dyke wall, the other man unwound the scarf from his face and spoke to him for the first time.
‘Welcome to the German Democratic Republic.
My name is Markus Wolf, but everyone calls me Mischa.’

Arlekin looked closely at Wolf.
He was as others described him.
There were no photos, so Arlekin tried to take a mental one.
Wolf was angular, languid, patrician.
He had the bearing of a lean, tough, intelligent aristocrat: the sort of noble Roman who served the state as well as he used it.

‘There were,’ said Arlekin, ‘several last-minute changes of plan that I found worrying.’

‘I never take unnecessary risks,’ said Wolf in a tone that was firm and polite.
‘I use all the same precautions when I visit the West.
Last-minute
changes often decrease rather than increase risk of exposure.’

There was a logic to altering plans, but Arlekin still felt uneasy.
‘How many people know that the plans were changed?’

‘Fewer than knew about the original.
We put out a secret notice to say that the visit was cancelled.
And no one knows your identity other than myself and, of course, the most important person, the reason for your visit.
Three of his deputies will meet you tomorrow, but for them it will be a surprise.’

‘Who were the men in the speedboat?’

‘They’re not even in the Ministry.
They’re
Grenzpolizei See
,
Maritime
Border Police.
They think it was just another interception and boarding exercise – we’ve put them through several.’

‘And what about the Poles on the ship?
One of them was awfully nosey.’

‘Don’t worry about them.
It was still much safer than a train or coming by air.’

The use of the word ‘still’ seemed a caveat, but Arlekin was
finished
quibbling.
It had, however, been necessary.
He could see that Mischa was also a man used to getting his own way and not being queried.

‘Did they give you something to eat?’
said Mischa.

‘Only breakfast.’

‘Then you must be hungry – we should get going.’

They walked along a track to where a black Wartburg 311 was hidden in a barn.
‘We’ve got a long drive,’ said Wolf as he slid behind the wheel.

‘Is the conference still planned for Kartzitz?’
Arlekin was
referring
to an isolated manor house on the remote Isle of Rügen.

‘Don’t worry.
Security there is absolute.
That’s why we use it.’
Wolf started the engine.
‘The car is safe too.
It’s only got seven moving parts.’

‘All of the others are going to be Russians?’

‘Yes – except maybe for one more.’

‘Can they be trusted?’

‘Absolutely.
There are no people more secretive than Russians – it’s not a question of character, it’s a question of history.’

‘Sure.’

‘You sound doubtful.’

Arlekin frowned.

Mischa looked at him hard.
‘You don’t know Russia.
But I do.’

‘Of course I don’t.
You grew up there.’

‘What you must understand is that Russia has tragedies with
seasonal
regularity,’ Mischa paused, ‘and sometimes their attempt to deal with a tragedy leads them to precipitate an even greater tragedy.’

‘Other people do it too.’

‘But this time what began as a Russian tragedy could destroy us all.
What happened last year at Baikonur Cosmodrome has set off a chain
reaction that has shaken the Kremlin more than any event since the war.’
Mischa paused.
‘There has been a fundamental change in policy.’

‘Is he really going to do it?’

‘Ask him tomorrow.’

It was late morning when the quiet stillness of Kartzitz was broken by the sound of a helicopter.
Arlekin had changed into a lounge suit and was alone in the kitchen drinking coffee at a large table.
The files he had brought with him in the duffel bag were open next to him.
It was all part of the deal, all part of the peace process.
Arlekin had now removed his fake goatee, contact lenses and washed the black dye out of his hair.