The Crocus List

43

With a pistol nearly nine inches long and weighing over two pounds jammed uncomfortably in his waistband (but thank God it was November and the weather for hiu thick car-coat) it was difficult to feel much like Alan James Winterbotham. In fact, it was pointless, since no passport could explain that away. In a Marxist state private property has to be tolerated, but a private weapon is a denial of the state itself.

But _they_ don't know, he told himself, trying to lighten his step.

It was nearly four miles through the streets to Pankow, so he walked back towards the station, looking for the green Ladataxi. It wasn't there, so he stood consulting the Berlin map-the agreed signal-until it cruised past, stopped and reversed: just a hungry taxi-driver looking for a tourist with West Deutschmarks.

"Bist du Erich?"

"Ja. Herein."

He sat carefully on the uneven springs of the back seat."Nach dem Pankow S-Bahnof, bitte."

The Ladajerked away, and after they had gone a couple of blocks Erich held his hand over his shoulder with a snap of his fingers. Maxim dealt him two hundred West Deutschmarks, as agreed.

Erich wasn't entirely happy. "It is dangerous to drive you."

"Then drive carefully so that the police will not stop you."

"I have a wife, problems…"

"I have no wife, she was killed by a terrorist bomb. We all have problems. " It was odd how crisply he could saythat, a plain statement of fact. God rest you, Jenny, but I am alone in East Berlin.

Anyway, it shut Erich up. Maxim watched the streets settle down to a suburban evenness as they wriggled north, wondering for a while why the shops and office blocks seemed so drab, then realising it was simply the lack of advertising: neon signs and posters. Isthat the alternative to drabness? he wondered.

The suburb of Pankow had been badly hit in the war, less by bombing than by the Russian drive from the northeast which had been bitterly opposed. But shells and small-arms fire don't knock down the solid Berlin apartment houses, just punch a few repairable holes and chip the elaborate carved stone around the windows from which boys hardly older than his Chris had sprayed Russian tanks with half-understood and wholly ineffective submachine-guns.

Even the children who had lived would be in their fifties now, the trees-which had probably suffered worse casualties-had grown again along the pavements, and Pankow was back to being stolid middle class again, the undefeatable enemy of the class war no matter how much of its fancy stonework you shot away. "Drive me around," he told Erich. "Go left here." Ahead, the tubby shape of a Boeing 737 rose against the western sun, silent as it turned because the wind delayed its roar. They were almost on the right line. "I cannot just drive. It looks suspicious…"

"Another hundred." Maxim passed it over. "Keep moving, it won't look so bad."

"I am supposed to report what foreigners I take-"

"Let's hope they don't make me report, too, then." Beyond the S-Bahn tracks, the suburb thinned out to parks, cemeteries and sports stadiums. They weaved through them; there were few pedestrians and fewer parked vehicles. Another airliner rose out of the west, behind them now.

"Go right," Maxim ordered, "and right again." Something turned in behind them. Controlling his movement, Maxim looked casually back: a dark green van. The taxi shivered as Erich saw it. Maxim said: "Pull over and let them pass. "

The van slid past, its windows blanked with Venetian blinds. "Now follow," Maxim said.

"Followthat'? Do you see the number?"

"No…" Then Maxim did. The van had Russian military plates. Until that moment, such plates had been abstract, part of his training, but a part that had sunk in. He felt a shudder of fear.

But surely it had been a Volkswagen-or was it a UAZ452? He tried desperately to remember from his glimpse. Russian military colour and plates, and the Russians could easily have commandeered a Volkswagen and painted it up-but that was the safest cover for the Crocus List, too; the Volkspolizeiwould think twice about stopping a Russian military van.

Whatever it was, the van turned off down a road through a park full of trees shedding leaves in gusts down the wind. Erich didn't turn. Maxim laid his pistol alongside Erich's ear. "Stop. Back up."

The Ladawavered to a halt, then reversed jerkily and turned. The van was stopping halfway along the park, screened by trees from the houses a couple of hundred metres away on either side.

"Right up behind him."

Erich brought the Ladato a stop. "You are going to take us to prison for ever-"

"Wait."

Somebody stepped from the driving seat of the van; he wore a dark leather coat and a fur hat and the pause when he saw the taxi behind froze him into an arrogant military statue. Then he walked towards them. Erich jammed the Ladainto gear.

"Hold it!"

The man jerked open Erich's door. A second man, dressed the same way, was coming up on the other side. In accented German, the first man said: "Take this old thing away before-"

"Ja, ja,"Erich was in total agreement.

Maxim opened his own door. "Well, hello there, Mr Fluke. I don't know if you remember me from the Abbey-"

At that point, Erich and the Ladatook off. Maximtoppled on to the road, losing the gun and rolling to avoid Fluke's kick, then grabbing and twisting the foot so that Fluke cartwheeled over him and slammed on to the roadway. The second man was rushing at him, and Maxim sat up with the refound pistol and, with the slow motion that comes when you know you have just a fraction of a second on your side, shot him carefully in the leg.

In its way, it was a moment of victory. But Maxim couldn't think of anything clever to say, even if he had the breath to say it.

Fluke drove the van, wheezing and coughing from his own fall, and in the back Maxim bandaged the other man's leg. "It's going to hurt like hell until the medics get at it," he assured the man, "but it won't start bleeding again unless you begin dancing around, and I'm sure you don't plan to dance around. However, I'll take your passports, just in case."

With those, and their East German visas, in his hand, he had them nailed. They wouldn't last the night without identification. "So-I expect you've got some quiet place picked out where you can change the number plates back again? Fine, let's get there."

Fluke went no more than a mile, further north to where the houses petered out and there were whole blocks of allotment gardens, scruffy and deserted at that time of year. The Russian number plates came off in seconds and were dumped under a pile of compost. Then Maxim helped apply some colourful sticky-tape along the side of the van to soften its military look. That was the way they had brought it through the checkpoint, Fluke said, and Maxim accepted it. Nobody had anything to gain by getting held at the Wall.

Taking a last look around, he saw a small aircraft bend into a climbing turn a mile or so to the south-west, perhaps just over the Wall. Chubby fuselage, slender sharp wings, twin propeller engines… there could be two Jetstreams in Berlin that day, but it was a big coincidence in the timing: a glance at his watch showed just after three thirty. Ferrebee must have been stupidly trusting, or the Archbishop had overridden him or-The aircraft's shape blurred with smoke that streamed away behind it for a moment, then it pitched nose-up, rolled lazily on its back and dived in a smooth curve behind the skyline of houses and trees. A mushroom of black smoke bubbled up.

For a dazed moment Maxim was back in the desert watching Jenny die in the bomb-torn Sky van, wondering if that had really been a missile, then knowing it hadn't been, and neither had this.

"A bomb on board?" he demanded of Fluke, who was looking solemn. "A bomb? Was that your fallback? How was it fired?" He found he had the gun in his hand again.

"I was saying a prayer," Fluke said.

"For the Archbishop? I should keep it for yourself. "

"For Jim Ferrebee."