CHAPTER NINE – HELMSTEDT
Sunday mornings are always down times, but hungover Sunday mornings are really dire. Lindsay woke, and blinked, and looked around him, and blinked again. He was in a strange room. It looked like an hotel room, and quite a good hotel, but it was certainly not the Berlin Interglobal. His mind searched, and began to assemble snippets of memory. A taxi, and Alison, the girl from The Observer, and Delahaye. He rolled over in bed, and glanced lazily at his watch. It was just before eight, and the sky outside a window on the far side of the room was a bright blue. He wondered whether to sleep some more, but blue sky called, and he swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked around, to feel a moment of sudden panic.
All his clothes bar his underpants, neatly laid out on a chair, had vanished. He padded round the room, opening cupboards, found his suit, neatly hanging on a clothes hangar, and nervously searched his inside pocket. His envelopes and his passport were wholly intact. He padded again, and found a large sheet of paper on a table, with a message in continental script.
‘You will find your shirt and socks outside your door, sir. Please call Herr Delahaye through the hotel reception when you are ready for breakfast. Please enjoy your stay.’ The paper had a Berolina Hotel heading. He was in East Berlin’s flagship hotel.
Lindsay opened his room door cautiously. The corridor outside slept, but his shirt was on the carpet, freshly washed and neatly folded into a cellophane bag with his tie and socks, and his shoes gleamed. Ten minutes later he felt like a new man, ready to take on the world, and reached for the bedside telephone.
Delahaye answered Lindsay’s call almost immediately, but sounded shattered, and his voice was raucous. ‘Richard, I don’t think I have slept.’
Lindsay heard what sounded like a playful giggle in the background.
The phone was silent for a moment, except for some fumbling sounds, and some muted exclamations: it sounded as though the silverhaired man was trying to cope with unseen complications. Then he returned. ‘OK, Richard, I see you in half an hour, in the restaurant.’ Then the line cut off suddenly, as though someone had deliberately blocked it.
The hotel diningroom was almost empty, with rows of lonely tables stretching away across a large hall. A spotty middle aged man and a very plain woman sat at one graced by a small Union Jack on a little stand. Lindsay helped himself to a couple of rolls, some ham and a hardboiled egg from the buffet in the middle of the room, putting as much distance between himself and the Union Jack as he could. A waitress brought coffee, and he practised his German. He was not brilliant. But he could make himself understood.
He was mopping up crumbs when Delahaye arrived with Alison. The silverhaired man had a grey sort of look about him, as though he had been put through a powerful mincer, but The Observer girl looked as though she had the world at her feet. She waved gaily at the Union Jack table. Both breakfasters made a point of ignoring her.
She beamed at Lindsay. ‘You went out like a light.’
Delahaye lowered himself wearily onto a chair. ‘Did you sleep well?’ He lookeds himself as though he had not slept for a moment.
Lindsay could not but laugh. Delahaye made a face, gesturing to Alison to fetch some breakfast. ‘A roll, some butter perhaps, some ham.’ He waited until she was out of earshot, and rolled his eyes. ‘My God, what a woman. She was unersaettlich, what do you say in English? Insatiable, absolutely insatiable. She had no mercy at all.’
They ate in silence. Alison had a satisfied, almost smug, look about her, and seemed to be reliving something good. Delahaye drank a deal of black coffee, and sighed from time to time. Neither he, nor Lindsay, mentioned the Hilton. Some things were best kept quiet in the presence of journalists.
Then, when he had finished his third cup of black coffee, Delahaye got to his feet.
‘We must go and discuss your next move.’ He spoke carefully, with one eye on The Observer girl.
Lindsay followed him out of the hotel, and they stood enjoying the sun. Delahaye stretched. ‘She says she plans to spend three days in Berlin.’ He groaned. ‘I don’t know that I can handle it.’
Lindsay tried to keep his jealousy out of his eyes.
‘So, anyway.’ Delahaye sighed, pulling himself together a little raggedly. ‘Go for a little walk. I will meet you here in half an hour, and I will have a nice car for you, and diplomatic papers. We will take your photo, and you will travel as a citizen of the German Democratic Republic: you will be all right as long as you keep your mouth shut. You must take the car to Brussels, to the European Commission headquarters, and a man will be waiting for you. You give him the car, and then you are on your own.’ He smiled the smile of a sacrificial victim. ‘I will spend the next three days in a bed, and I think it will finish me quite completely.’
Lindsay strolled off towards the Unter Den Linden. All the shops were closed, and the wide avenue was a small sad oasis of commerce, not a patch on the busy garishness of the Ku’damm on the other side of the Wall. He strolled towards the Brandenburgerplatz and the light grey line of the Berlin Wall curving across the square, and it held no menace at all, though it had been a place of executions. The thought depressed him, and he returned to the Berolina. He had been gone exactly thirty minutes.
Delahaye waited with a man holding a camera. The cameraman backed Lindsay up against the hotel’s outside wall and took several pictures, before trotting off.
‘Okay, now we have another coffee, then everything will be ready.’ Delahaye looked round, as though to make sure they were not being watched. ‘I told Alison I would meet her for lunch, then I will take her for a boat trip on the Spree.’
Lindsay looked benevolent. ‘Sounds nice.’
The silverhaired man took a deep breath. ‘It is the only way I can cope with her. I never knew an Englishwoman could be so…’ He was plainly searching for a word.
‘Verschlingende?’ Lindsay used the German word for ‘devouring’.
Delahaye nodded gloomily. ‘I fear I will be all eaten up.’
They stood waiting for a little while, and then the cameraman returned, carrying a black briefcase. He handed it to Lindsay, and the case was quite bulky. The man said a few words to Delahaye, and the silverhaired man nodded. Then he walked off again.
Delahaye looked pleased with himself. ‘Right, now we have a car.’ He led the way to a short street at the back of the Berolina, and stopped by a big, beautiful, shiny black Mercedes-Benz. Lindsay could hardly believe his good fortune.
‘Ok, get in.’ Delahaye sat himself in the front passenger seat and took the briefcase. ‘Right, this is for you.’ He opened the case to take out a fat envelope. ‘Here’s some spending money, in deutschemarks and American dollars: it will get you back to England and help you start a new life across the Atlantic.’ Lindsay stuffed the envelope into an inside jacket pocket that was already bulging. ‘Also your papers.’ He handed Lindsay a second envelope. ‘The car has diplomatic registration, so you don’t have to submit to any border controls, but you will have the papers as well, just in case.’
Then he reached further into the briefcase, to pull out a small automatic pistol in a black nylon shoulder holster. He weighed it in his hand. ‘The money and the papers are official, they come from my bosses, they want you out of East Berlin. But this is from me: you might call it a small present, to mark my gratitude. You fasten it under your jacket, for difficult situations.’ He eyed Lindsay quickly. ‘Do you know how to use it?’
Lindsay weighed the gun in his hand. ‘Is it loaded?’
‘Six shots.’
Lindsay secured the black nylon into place. ‘I hope I won’t need it.’
‘You never know.’ Delahaye held out his hand, gazing directly into Lindsay’s eyes. ‘I wish you the very best of luck, Englishman. Enjoy your trip to the Bahamas. Maybe one day we will meet again.’
A moment later he was gone. Lindsay settled himself comfortably, and gunned the engine. The Mercedes purred into life, and the engine was barely audible as he switched on the car radio and tuned to AFN Berlin, the American military station. The music was Country, the announcer was bushytailed. Lindsay eased the car gently into gear, heading east to catch the Karl Marx Allee and the main link to the autobahn circling the city.
Half an hour later he was out of the city and heading west, overtaking long lines of olive green Red Army trucks and convoys of British and American military vehicles as he swept along across a landscape shimmering from horizon to horizon in golden swathes of corn. The autobahn was bumpy and pitted, but the Mercedes swallowed it effortlessly. Cornfields gave way to pine forest, and pine forests changed back to cornland, and occasional small villages nestled in the hollows of the land. Lindsay felt like a king. He was rich, with a smart car, and he was on his way home. A sign loomed up, warning East German drivers of an approaching forbidden border zone, and Lindsay slowed a little. He was nearing the Iron Curtain, a strip of high floodlit wire fences and watchtowers and minefields stretching nearly all the way from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, dividing two halves of the world. Now it was time to be careful.
He slowed again, until the Mercedes rolled no faster than a man could run, and swept majestically round a bend to an East German border checkpoint. A red and white pole barred the road, and he slowed to a halt, but the East German border guard manning the pole saluted smartly, waving the Mercedes through, and it was plain that Lindsay was expected. A second border guard also saluted, and he was waved past a long queue of vehicles waiting to be searched, whilst the drivers stared at him and wondered who he might be to receive such preferential treatment. He swung the Mercedes past a series of barriers placed to prevent potential escapers ramming trucks through to freedom, and a succession of border guards saluted and waved him on, until he was approaching a thick white line across the autobahn that marked the precise border between East and West. A Russian soldier stared at him curiously, thumb hooked into the strap of his kalashnikov automatic rifle, and then Lindsay was in West Germany, passing an Allied military police hut, and on a first class highway heading straight for Brussels.
His stomach began to rumble, and he saw a large sign ahead marking the entrance to an autobahn service area. He slowed. He had only eaten a small breakfast, and it was coming up lunchtime. He fancied something nice in the way of a big fat bockwurst and a good helping of potato salad, coupled with an ice cold beer. He could stop, and eat, and stretch his legs for a moment, and then drive on.
He parked the Mercedes neatly, in a slot shadowed by the bulk of the restaurant building where it would stay cool, locked the car and stretched. Then he sauntered into the cafeteria, took a tray, and joined a line of travellers waiting to be fed. Self service was always less complicated than waiting. He also scanned the restaurant hopefully. But sadly there seemed to be no pretty girls looking for lifts.
Juro Kraicsons worked for the CIA as a demolitions expert. He had come half way across West Germany on his big BMW to reach Helmstedt bright and early, and had already been waiting for the best part of two hours. He had clear instructions. A black Mercedes bearing diplomatic licence plates would cross from the East at some point during the day bound for Brussels, and stop somewhere between Helmstedt and Brussels to refuel. He was to shadow the car, unbeknown to the driver, and take it out when it stopped, preferably using a delayed device allowing at least forty minutes between arming and explosion. The device must also be Soviet in design and make, and the Mercedes, together with its driver, must be totally destroyed.
Kraicsons smoked a small cigar and counted cars as they passed the Russian watchtower just to the east of the white border line, wondering how long he would have to wait. He was unobtrusive, a biker parked under a tree in anonymous black leathers, with all his kit prepared for action. The job would be easy, and he was bored. Suddenly he stiffened and kicked his bike into action. A big shiny black Mercedes had crossed the border line without stopping, and he knew instinctively that the car was his target. The Mercedes passed the Allied checkpoint, and he saw that the licence plates were the plates for which he had been waiting. He waited for it to pass, and slipped into place behind a big truck, only to see the Mercedes veer off into the Helmstedt service area. The truck pulled off the autobahn as well, and they made a little convoy, and Kraicsons was jubilant. He would only need a few minutes to complete his assignment.
He watched the car roll into the restaurant carpark and select a slot in the lee of the restaurant building. The driver had picked the coolest spot, and also the least visible.
Kraicsons pretended to busy himself removing his helmet as the driver, a man in a dark blue suit, locked the car and made for the cafeteria. Then he moved into action. He closed on the Mercedes at walking pace, parking his BMW between the car and the restaurant building wall where it would be well shielded and almost invisible to any casual passer-by, before taking two small Soviet KM197 magnetic mines out of one of his panniers, arming them for detonation after a fifty minute delay, and fixing them head to tail against the side of the Mercedes fuel tank. Then he attached a third mine to the inside of the front offside wheel, armed for the same delay. The forward detonation would sever the Mercedes’ front axle and spin the car into the air like an exploding top, and the exploding fuel tank would turn the car into an impressive fireball.
He looked at his watch and smiled thinly. The whole job had taken him less than ten minutes. He returned to his bike and cruised it across the service area carpark to a point where he could watch the exit road back onto the autobahn. He had allowed his target a comfortable half hour for lunch, plus enough travelling time to see him some way down the road. He would follow at a safe distance, confirm the Mercedes’ destruction, and then return to base.