The Istanbul Decision (7 page)

So far he'd been lucky. In the two hours he'd spent in the Eastern Sector he'd encountered no one. Unlike its western counterpart, East Berlin is virtually deserted at night. Except for a few main thoroughfares, even the streetlights are turned off. He'd managed to walk the mile and a half to the Brandenburg Gate, slip in a side door, ascend the wrought-iron staircase to the roof, stash his cylinder, then slip away without being seen. The only person who might have noticed him, the guard stationed atop the gate to watch the wall, which was only a few hundred yards away, never stopped chewing his sandwich.

Now all that remained was to find Mariendorfstrasse, assess the security, then maybe get a few hours of sleep on a bench somewhere before the actual confrontation with Kobelev. According to Kliest, Mariendorfstrasse lay only two blocks north of his present position. He could walk it in a minute, except he had no wish to be seen, and his coal-stained clothes and blackened hands and face would certainly arouse suspicion.

A door opened in a building across the way, and an oblong of light spilled into the rain. Two men and a woman, singing a drinking song and laughing, staggered over to a car, pulled open its doors, and got in. Then the driver rolled the car into the center of the street, turned left, and disappeared. Carter waited until he heard them shifting into third in the next block before he pulled his coat collar up and started down the street.

No doubt a trap had been laid for him in Mariendorfstrasse. He expected it. He'd have lost respect for Kobelev if one hadn't. The trick was to reconnoiter early, figure a way to spring the trap without getting caught, and in the process get close enough to Kobelev to get off a shot.

It was a good bet Kobelev would show. If the information about his slipping prestige was accurate, it would mean he couldn't entrust killing Carter to a mere minion. He'd have to come himself to make sure the job was done right. And when he did show, Carter would kill him. This time there would be no mistake.

Mariendorfstrasse was dark, darker even than the other streets he'd passed through. It was after four-thirty by this time, and in other streets lights were coming on as people began to make ready to leave for work on the early shifts in the factories along Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden that opened at six. There were no such lights here, though. Here everything was black as ink.

Even the house numbers were invisible. If it weren't for the street sign at the corner indicating this was the unit block, he'd have no way of knowing where to find number fourteen. Carter assumed number one began on the south side and number two on the north as it did in most cities, and he began counting off the numbers as he walked.

There was something strangely quiet about this street. His footsteps sounded hollow against the pavement, and the houses themselves, which were little more than black outlines against the slightly grayer background of the night sky, seemed to float like ghost ships in a sea of black.

"Eight… ten," he counted, then his foot struck something on the sidewalk. He bent down. A stone or rather, as he examined it, a brick, broken in half. Odd, he thought, in a country that was normally so clean to find a broken brick lying out in the street. Then a trickling of realization began to pass through him, coupled with a premonition of disaster.

He ran to number fourteen. He got a few steps up the walk, then fell headlong into a pile of bricks and boards and chunks of plaster.

Bricks and boards and chunks of plaster — rubble! From his hands and knees he saw the house windows were nothing more than gaping holes with gray sky behind them.

Kobelev had tricked him! There was no safe house here. The whole street was nothing but a graveyard of bombed-out shells that hadn't been cleared since the end of World War II!

But why? Why send him on a wild-goose chase to East Berlin? To keep him out of the way while Kobelev ran an operation somewhere else? That had to be it. But where?

Dijon! The thought hit him with such certainty, he knew it had to be true. Somewhere there was a hole in the dam. Somehow, through some source no one had ferreted out yet, Kobelev had tumbled to where they were moving his "daughter," and he'd decided to snatch the bait before they could spring the trap. Security there wouldn't be battened down for another twenty-four hours. If he moved now, he could waltz in and waltz out without firing a shot.

Carter scrambled to his feet and started running, his mouth dry with fear. He had to get back as quickly as possible, because it wouldn't be long before Kobelev found out it wasn't Tatiana he'd snatched.

He rounded the comer into Friedrichstrasse, which was lit up like Fifth Avenue at Christmas, and flattened himself against a building. The city was starting to come alive. A few yards away a baker was unloading his truck, and at the next intersection cars were passing. He couldn't use the main thoroughfares any longer; he'd have to stick to the back streets and hope he wasn't seen.

He doubled back into Mariendorfstrasse and scaled a mound of rubble between two of the houses. In the next street three houses had lights on, and in front of one a man was trying to grind a battered BMW to life. He cut between two houses that were still dark and started to scale a chain-link fence. He was poised on top of it, about to jump into the adjoining yard, when a fierce barking sent a jolt of adrenaline to his already racing heart.

He let himself down cautiously, pulling the Luger from its holster. The barking hushed to a low menacing growl. The dog was somewhere in the shadows, and although it was impossible to see it, the animal sounded big. Carter inched to his left, hoping to draw the beast into the light, but it held its ground.

As nearly as he could make out, he was in a narrow courtyard, the two long sides of which were brick walls. The ends, one leading to the alley and the other to the street, were fenced. The dog stood between him and the street end. He could always retreat the way he'd come, he thought, but there was no guarantee he wouldn't get half his leg torn off trying to climb the fence, and if he were going to have his pant leg and God-only-knew-what-else shredded, he might as well be going forward.

He began to move in that direction, hoping the low rumbling growl he was hearing was more threat man bite, when a light flashed on in a window overhead. The lock snapped open and someone began struggling to pull open the sash.

Carter dashed for the opposite fence. He'd mounted it and was about to pull his leg over when sharp teeth grabbed his ankle and wouldn't let go. By this time the window had been pulled open and the outline of a large woman loomed behind it.
"Wer ist da?"
she shouted.

Carter slammed the butt of the gun against the dog's head and the animal fell back.

Carter jumped and fell into a line of refuse containers mat scattered and rolled, clanging in all directions. Another light snapped on in the house next door. He scrambled to his feet and began running headlong down the sidewalk.

A sharp pain in his left leg forced him to limp, slowing him down, but this didn't worry him particularly. In a few minutes that dog's owner would realize her pet was knocked out. Then the alarm would be raised and the border immediately closed. He had a plan for getting over the wall, but it depended on reaching Brandenburg and the cylinder before dawn. A police dragnet between here and the gate might hinder him considerably. His only hope, then, was to cover the ground before the police could mobilize to stop him.

He turned into Friedrichstrasse, this time heedless of the lights, passed the kiosks and empty shops, and headed for Unter den Linden, at the end of which was the Brandenburg Gate. He wondered if there were such things as joggers in East Germany. He must be quite a spectacle, he thought, limping along, his hands and face blackened with soot from the coal car, but he hadn't time to let it bother him.

The bus and truck traffic had greatly increased even in this short time, and private cars had begun to appear. The clock on the side of the Ministerium für Aussenhandel und Innerdeutschen Handel read five o'clock.

He reached Unter den Linden, the street Frederick the Great had hoped to turn into a showcase of the Prussian Empire by planting four rows of lime trees up its middle, and turned left. The leaves had all fled, and the lime trees looked like scrawny black hands clawing the night sky. He rushed off the curb just as a heavy, freight-laden truck rounded the comer. Its horn blared, and for an instant Carter froze in midstride, not knowing which way to jump. The eight huge back wheels clattered against the pavement as the driver tried to get it stopped. He couldn't and swerved, running the truck into a park bench and uprooting a tree.

Carter watched, slightly dazed, as clouds of steam rose from the truck's massive radiator and became lost in the gray mist. The driver's door opened, and a big man with his shirt-sleeves rolled tightly across his biceps climbed out.

"Du
…
!"
he began.

Carter took off again. Behind him someone shouted,
"Halten Sie!"
and a shot sounded. A second shot, and a white streak suddenly appeared on the pavement just in front of him. Up ahead Brandenburg loomed in the mist, not more than two blocks away.

A truck with a conveyor on its rear bumper churning a steady stream of vegetable crates into a store blocked the sidewalk just ahead. To go around meant swinging wide into the street and giving whoever was behind him a clear shot. Carter elected to go under and dove headfirst, but before he could pull himself up on the other side, a strong pair of hands grabbed his shoulders. He came up fighting, about to slam his fist into the man's belly, when the man quickly said.
"Ich bin ein Freund."
Their eyes met, and Carter made an instant decision to trust him.

He turned Carter forcibly around and shoved him toward a stack of empty crates in the alley just off the street.

"Hierin!"
he hissed.

Carter squeezed himself into a crate as tightly as he could, his cheeks resting on his knees, his breath coming in short rasping gasps.

The running footsteps came to a halt on the sidewalk a few feet away. "Where is he?" panted a voice in terse German.

"Around the corner, sir," said the vegetable vendor.

"You're lying!" shouted the policeman.

"No, sir. Please."

"You're hiding him."

"I'm telling you the truth, sir."

Carter noticed imprints of one bloody foot leading across the sidewalk to the front of the crate where he was hiding. He inched the Luger out of his coat to have it in hand in case the cop should look down.

"He went to the corner and turned!"

Carter listened while the cop made his decision, his heart beating in his throat. Then the footsteps began again, and Carter saw him in his dull gray uniform, his revolver drawn, head down the street, reach the comer, and disappear.

When he was gone, the vegetable vendor casually walked over and peered into the crate. His eyes fixed on the Luger, then on Carter.
"Uber die Wand?"
he asked.

Carter nodded. Yes, he was going over the wall.

"Also, gehen Sie!"
With a jerk of his head he indicated Carter should get going.

Carter stood up and for an awkward moment wondered if he should thank the man. But the vendor seemed to have lost all interest in him. He'd turned his back and was throwing crates of cabbages onto a stack just inside the door.

Carter turned abruptly and ran down the wet pavement to the other end of the alley, paused to glance up and down the street, then went right toward the Brandenburg Gate.

The huge structure was clearly visible at the end of the block: a massive slab of mortar and marble held aloft by twelve stone columns bathed in spotlights. On the roof a statue of Peace drove four horses toward the heart of downtown Berlin.

He stopped by the cornerstone of a large building and surveyed the square. Nothing was moving. At the far end stood the Brandenburg Gate and beyond that the rolls of barbed wire marking the deathstrip that precedes the wall. Sirens sounded in the streets behind him not more than a few blocks away, and as he listened, he heard footsteps.

He sprinted across the open pavement, heedless of the pain in his leg. When he reached the side door of the gate's auxiliary building, he pressed himself tightly against the jamb and glanced back at the square. All was quiet. No sign of movement anywhere.

For a moment he stood there panting, thankful he'd made it this far and vowing to himself if he ever saw Kobelev again to make him pay heartily for this inconvenience. Then he tried the door.

He'd been this way earlier when he'd stashed the cylinder. He'd picked the lock, then when he'd returned, he'd jammed the bolt with a wadded piece of matchbook cover. As he pulled the knob now, it opened with only the slightest pressure. He slipped in and removed the cardboard wad to make sure the door locked behind him.

The room was pitch black except for a streak of light that shone out from under another door some twenty feet away. This was the storage room for the historical museum that was attached to the gate. Carter crossed to the second door, opened it, then crossed behind the display cases of the museum proper, and started up a wrought-iron staircase that led up through the ceiling.

He had found this stairway earlier and knew that it led up to the roof. He also knew there was an observation post up there manned by a guard with a pair of binoculars who kept constant vigil on the wall. He'd had no trouble slipping past him the first time, but no doubt the man had been forewarned by now that a fugitive was in the area.

Carter ascended the stairs as silently as he could, and when he came to the heavy metal door at the top, opened it slowly. Through the crack he saw a bunker of sandbags with a machine gun in its center mounted on a tripod. A portable radio played strains of popular music, and a book lay propped open to someone's place. All the accouterments of habitation and no inhabitant. Where was the guard?