The Oktober Projekt (36 page)

 
A couple of metres
up the road he took a taxi from a rank of Mercedes used by seamen with the same
frequency as liberty boats. Drained yet alert with a sense of urgency, he rode
silently into Hamburg; swept up along the Kohlbrand Bridge, then plunged under
the river on the E45 autobahn. Nick with another dead face to remember and
Hamburg didn’t even care, a city of traffic and human pleasure too busy to even
slow down for the loss of a minor player named Oskar.

• • •

From his obsessive, and as it turned
out to be, deadly fascination with all things espionage,
Oskar had taken to practising the tradecraft of real and
fictional spies he’d studied on film or read about, and had turned into a
recluse. To keep clear water between him and his imaginary opposition he stayed
for a couple of months in small hotels, paying up front, conscious of every
footfall outside his door. Though his real reason for this elaborate subterfuge
was that his wife had given him no option when she discovered he was having a
string of affairs with women he’d duped into believing he was a secret agent. A
woman of strong Lutheran conviction, his wife cast out his clothes onto the
street rapidly followed by Oskar. Since then he’d been hiding from her lawyers
and the last address he’d taken was on the key fob in Nick’s hand; a rooming
house on Molingstraße, its number faint after years of frost and sun.

A caretaker was hunched over a portable television in his foyer
booth when Nick strolled past, lifting his eyes only for a second, a seasoned
veteran of knowing who to challenge, who to admit; he concentrated wisely on
his programme.

Locking himself in to Oskar’s final sanctuary, Nick surveyed
the wreckage. Across the carpet a deep earthy brown strain similar to blood,
though once on his hands and knees Nick discounted it as human and thought it more
probably wine, and confirmed it when he rolled out the bottle from under
Oskar’s bed. As he straightened, brushing fluff off his knees, long quick steps
clumped towards the room. He checked his breath not moving, his back against
the wall. A key scraped in a lock opposite followed by a racking cough and a
door slamming with a decadent bang.

He followed a path already set away from the wardrobe; a pair
of jeans outstretched on the floor, one leg bent ready to sprint; socks, boxer
shorts and a Press Club tie scattered in an uneven line.
Eliminating the items as evidence of an unprofessional search,
Nick went over to the washbasin and medicine cabinet screwed off-centre onto
the wall. Razor, soap and toothbrush were dumped around a sliced open tube of
dental paste. There was a power lead for a laptop but Nick couldn’t find it and
knew it would be gone.

On a table used as a desk Nick went through Oskar’s homework in
the form of magazines, maps and printed documents from a dozen security
websites. Spilling from a laminate wardrobe, pairs of shoes ripped from their
soles, collars and shirts torn clean to the seam. Sifting through other bits
and pieces, part of his mind searched and another part listened for the return
of those who’d made a mess of Oskar and his room; rung to be warned by the
caretaker that he had a stranger nosing around, not a resident but someone he
hadn’t seen before. Come quick and you’ll catch him.

And they might be on their way round right now for all Nick
knew. He moved faster his hands picking up pace. By a broad window he stopped.
The view didn’t interest him much, a plain standard paved square a few floors
below didn’t exactly take his breath away, but the red window box drew his
attention. The room’s light had picked something out in the compacted soil and
clumps of weed. He wrenched back the clasp easing up the window and took a
closer look. Of course it could be anything; foil, sliver of glass, anything
bright would glint in this light. He scraped back the soil and lifted out a biscuit
tin; oblong and new, not buried for very long. Carrying it over to the bed, he
noted how its price tag was blistered and so too was its enamel.

Placing it on his knees Nick eased off its top, emptied strips
of paper, and folded squares of newsprint until he found a dead pigeon that
stank to high heaven. Tipping the pigeon out there was another bed of paper;
beneath it a sealed postal packet inside a plastic bag. Thumbing open the stuck
down flap he shook out a DVD. And Nick sat there holding what Sabine had died
for and Sally Wynn was fatally prevented from retrieving. And poor Oskar for
once had something that could really have made him into a legend, turned him
into a genuine living and breathing secret agent as Harry Bransk’s contact;
Oskar and his latest girlfriend from the Brazillia never realising how badly
they’d get burnt.

From the way the room was searched and how Oskar and his friend
were dealt with, Nick knew it wasn’t Moscow’s style, but Blümhof. At Oskar’s
table Nick found Sellotape and a thick black marker pen. Resealing the postal
packet, he wrote FEO – For Eyes Only – adding Rossan’s name in
capitals below; before quickly checking the room for anything else he might
have missed. As he pulled Oskar’s door closed after him, a racking cough followed
him down the corridor, the postal packet snug in his pocket.

Eighteen

Twisting Jack’s Arm

Hamburg, December

From
the rooming house Nick took a taxi to the Neederdorf Grill on
Deichstraße, delivered by a chubby round driver with nailbrush hair who pulled
up with a suicidal lurch for the kerb. He found Jack Balgrey at a corner table
and joined him without an invitation. Keeping her distance at a banquette by
the door, Erika didn’t even raise so much as an eyebrow in Nick’s direction as
he walked by.

‘Drowning your sorrows, Jack? Been a pretty rough day back at
the old import and export business has it?’ Nick asked.

‘Piss off, old son, can’t you see I’m busy.’

Jack had ordered his second bottle of house red and Nick helped
himself to a glass, his first long sip ran sleepily through his body.
 

‘That’s not the way to treat an old friend. I thought we could
have a few drinks together, our way of saying goodbye to Oskar.’

‘Really,’ grunted Balgrey, topping up his glass.

Stranded on a small stage in a corner a comedian finished off
his routine, and a pianist took the spotlight, running through a standard
repertoire of cocktail songs. Polite laughter and candle smoke, a happy melee
as office parties unwound preparing for the festive season and compulsory
family reunions.

‘Your tradecraft is slipping Jack,’ offered Nick. ‘Seems to
have gone a little rusty,’ Nick added. ‘I heard a rumour that Hawick was in
town, that you and him had a tête-à-tête.’

‘Someone’s pulling your chain, load of old guff,’ blustered
Balgrey. ‘The Deputy Chief wanting to meet with me, pure cobblers old son, one
hundred per cent cobblers.’

‘Yesterday, St. Pauli Landungsbrücken,’ said Nick, pushing a
photograph captured by Erika and Freja across the table. One clear black and
white image from a series taken in front of a ticket office offering harbour
tours; framed against the impressive backdrop of the free ancient Hanseatic
port, Jack and Hawick neatly caught cold.

‘Chance encounter, old son, one in a million,’ suggested
Balgrey, sliding the photograph back.

‘Don’t get me angry Jack.’

Through the grill’s full windows a row of pretty merchants’
houses gleamed in the night. They offered ample distraction to pull away Jack’s
thoughts from having to explain, though by now he realised there could be no
more evasion, and Jack’s wayward stare as good as saying he knew he’d no
options remaining.

‘Putting pressure on me wasn’t he,’ Balgrey stated pouring more
wine, in desperate need of an anaesthetic. ‘Hawick was implying that my pension
would be well and truly up the Swanee if I didn’t comply with London’s
wishes.’
 

From Jack’s grim expression, Nick read a sense of hopelessness,
a severance of another bond with his past.
 

‘What do London really want?’ asked Nick.

Glass cubes held small round candles and Jack’s heavy face was
covered in licks of dancing light. ‘Your every move, who you met with, what you
planned, even probably what you had for breakfast knowing Hawick.’

‘And how did they expect you to do that?’

‘I have my ways,’ said Balgrey with a seasoned drinker’s sly
wink.

‘Would that include our mutual friend Harry?’

To what extent Harry Bransk featured in Jack’s equation seemed
to require a further stimulant, and another bottle of wine was duly ordered. He
made the wine his focus, a quarter of the bottle gone on Jack’s lamentations of
his career shortcomings, his fragile marriage and uncertain future. They had
the corner to themselves by an open fire, the flames reflected on oak panels as
dark as ebony.

‘Harry’s been on the payroll since day one,’ said Jack, sullen,
not bothering or caring to lift his eyes from his glass, turning it round and
round on the tablecloth. ‘He’s another one to add to your list of certified
double dealers, old son. And you can thank London for the intrusion,’ he said,
a sneer flung in no definite direction.

‘Who authorised all this? Who’s running the show, Jack?’ Nick
asked, politely.

‘Comes under the eagle eye of a Special Operations Directorate
they’ve had running for a while,’ Balgrey moaned. ‘His Hawickness with
Blackmore and Stratton all peering over my shoulder.’

‘London has put you in an impossible position,’ said Nick.

‘Strung up by my balls,’ growled Jack. ‘You don’t know the half
of it.’

‘But you don’t have to take it lying down, Jack.’

‘Really, and how do I do that, old son?’ Balgrey flared, glass
in hand. ‘Got a solution for your uncle Jack have you?’

‘As a matter of fact I have,’ said Nick, sharing out more wine.
‘From now on you’re working exclusively for me.’

‘For you?’ Balgrey laughed, his heavy shoulders rocking. ‘I
thought I was doing that already, old son. Giving you a lead on Oskar and
Harney. What was that, a dream?’

‘That was you doing as your man from Cologne suggested. Working
for me might just keep you alive long enough to collect your pension,’ said
Nick, looking over his glass at Jack. ‘You can start by arranging a meeting
with Harry, your usual routine, nothing to alarm him.’

‘What if I don’t want to be part of your team?’

‘That’s not an option you should even consider,’ said Nick

For the first time since he arrived Nick smiled, but it wasn’t
what Jack regarded as friendly. ‘I want this to go priority to London, tonight,
for Paul Rossan only,’ Nick advised him, sliding the postal packet from Oskar’s
across to Balgrey as he rose to leave.

• • •

Mid-morning in Hamburg and Harry Bransk
stoically waited for Jack Balgrey, kicking his toes against the polished floor
in the Kunsthalle on Glockengießerwall. Harry displaying total concentration,
affecting knowledge that he didn’t have. His hands rammed up to his wrists in
his pockets, his head tilted at an angle pointed at Friedrich’s
Wanderer
. He hardly shifted his gaze as Nick came softly to
his side.

‘You haven’t been straight with me, Harry.’

Faster than Nick anticipated Harry darted off, only for his
exit to be blocked by a guided party entering from another gallery. Without
ceremony or a word Nick took Harry’s arm and walked him quietly away, setting
out on their own exclusive tour.

‘On my honour, Nick, I don’t know what you’re talking about, okay,’
Harry complained in a whisper, arms outstretched to emphasise his case. Nick
sighed. He could smell Harry’s potent aftershave clinging to the purified
filtered air around them; Finnish, aromatic, tossed on with liberal goodwill.

‘Jack tells me you’ve been working for him from the moment I
arrived.’

‘Nick I need my regular clients okay, you come through once
every now and again and I work with you. It’s a question of supply and demand,
of me earning enough for a decent crust.’

‘That include selling me out?’

‘What you mean?’ Harry demanded, deeply affronted.

‘They seemed to be expecting me at the casino,’ Nick said,
steering Harry on a new course. ‘Who got to hear about it? Care to tell me
that, Harry?’

Angry, close to revolt, Harry cut in front of Nick ready to
stop him by force. But Nick drew up by himself without a trace of familiarity
on his face.

‘Nick, what is it with you?’ Bransk pleaded. ‘You had a tough
reception, that it? Okay, I appreciate the casino was not going to be a piece
of cake. But I swear on everything I love, okay, everything that I own, I swear
on all of it, that I don’t tell a soul.’

‘Was Oskar making arrangements for my officer?’

A school party advanced on them streaming through from one
idiosyncratic block of contemporary art as a finale to their tour, a couple of
children mocking a set of black plastic shapes until a reproach from their
teacher cracked louder than a whip.

‘Sure,’ agreed Harry as
though he’d just had personal confirmation.

‘Oskar’s dead, so is his girlfriend. An escort from the casino
told me they knew I was coming, I had to be dealt with. She’s dead too.’

Harry’s face was set like stone, nodding once that he’d
received and understood. Though how far Nick had been involved in the deaths,
Harry for reasons of personal safety was not prepared to follow up. ‘Someone
else tipped them off, obvious,’ said Harry with an awkward smile.

‘That’s good Harry, I like that.’

Moving without routine or by a route suggested in the
catalogue, they took cursory interest in the art strung up about them on the
walls; passing quietly from one century to another sublimely unmoved as one
‘ism’ replaced its detractor.

‘It’s bad for business, Nick, I get you killed, my reputation
takes a dive, huh?’

‘You trying to sell some material onto another interested
party?’

They stopped in front of Makart’s
The Entering of Emperor
Karl V. in Antwerp
and whether Harry shook
his head at the attack on his probity or sheer scale of the painting, Nick
couldn’t quite tell.
 

‘Nick, I swear, I have no other deals running. I made all the
arrangements as requested. You got to Otto and you’ve got a place for the team
in the port. That not good enough, huh?’

‘One last chance, Harry,’ offered Nick.

‘Sure,’ said Harry. ‘One chance is all anyone needs. You paid
for a gold standard service and Harry is nothing if not totally focused on
client satisfaction. So what Nick wants Nick receives, gratis, no extra fee, on
the house.’

‘So how about earning what I’m already paying you. I want an up
to date location for a photographer called Tolz.’

‘He’s mad,’ offered Harry.

‘I don’t want a psychological assessment, I want a location.’

‘Sure, I was just adding background.’

‘I’ll need a car and a 9mm, both clean, both untraceable.’

‘No one will know they were ever made,’ Harry promised, his
hand providing a magician’s flourish.

‘Remember Ernst?’ Nick asked.

‘Sure, he’s totally committed, I worked with him before.’

‘Well, you’re going to work with him again,’ said Nick, handing
Harry a train ticket for Zurich. ‘You leave this afternoon and Ernst is going
to make sure you behave yourself.’

‘No problems Nick. Me and Ernst, sure, we make a good team.’

‘You don’t want to let me down, Harry.’

‘Okay, sure, Nick, relax, I’m now officially on the team. I
don’t want you to start getting jumpy.’

‘Harry, I don’t get jumpy, I just get mad.’

‘Sure, I remember,’ said Harry with a grimace. ‘Count on me
Nick, Harry can be relied on to deliver. Five star treatment okay, I’m totally
devoted to our partnership for sure. You worked with Harry before, remember.
You think there is some other way, just let me know. Sure, we got to look out
for each other, we a pretty talented pair for one thing. Basic rules okay, but
they work just fine.’

‘Basic rules, Harry.’ And far from convinced Harry would keep
any of his pledges, Nick walked away.

• • •

After a restless night wondering how
much Jack had shared with Harney, Nick slipped out of his hotel with extreme
caution. The early morning snow thick in his face, the time not yet quarter to
eight. As Nick reached an underground car park close to the Reeperbahn a group
of pimps were already trading their girls; an auction that he barged right
through. His mood dark and festering, inviting one of them to throw a comment,
a punch, but they never did, content to let him pass unmolested. The lower deck
was empty as he dragged his feet through the slush melted in heaps at the
bottom of concrete stanchions. In front of him, the Passat was waiting for him
as Harry promised. Nick switched from one bay to another, weaving low in the
shadows; running out of the artificial night to the car, its bay deliberately
darkened the bulb smashed, its filament hanging in a question mark. Crouched by
the bonnet splinters of glass cracked under his feet. He found the keys double
taped inside the front bumper, the documents and licence tucked up behind the
sun visor. When he tried to push back the driver’s seat, it jammed on a paper
bundle that tore as he tugged it free. Wrapped in pages from the
Frankfurter
Allgemeine
, a 9mm Heckler & Koch lovingly
oiled. He pushed it in the glove compartment. The engine started first time.

Left and right, glancing in his mirror, Nick set out driving
northwards already decided against the autobahn, the window down, the cold
smarting his face. On the horizon a barrage of cloud running in the opposite
direction; in his mirror Hamburg disappearing fast, its green turrets, tiles
and modern glass towers twinkling and sinking without a trace. A December mist
hung over the fields on a morning still incompletely formed, a cautious sun
pushing for its first showing. Through the villages he kept the speed down, his
anger burning like a slow fuse, the cold fierce, unrelenting.

In Kiel Nick bought a carton of Camel cigarettes, two large
mineral waters and a bottle of the strongest vodka he could find from a
convenience store. From a twenty-four hour pharmacy, Nick selected a box of
glucose and condoms, the counter assistant never engaging his eyes. He paid in
a hurry and drove northeast, across a featureless land rolled out as flat as it
would go.

Going north, a couple of weeks shy of Christmas and no bright
star showing him the way, only the lights of houses in protective clusters
huddled behind sea walls shone brightly. Holding the car against the sandy wind
he headed on, folk songs on the radio, a festival filled by childish fluted
voices. Laboe came and went, its U-boat welded to crutches and its brick
conning tower of a marine memorial craned eagerly for the sea. Curling out
inland the road whisked him on and on, an outcast searching for somewhere to
call home. And by some geographical trick, the Baltic waited for him again at
the end of an exposed finger pointing accusingly at Denmark.