‘I doubt it. If they wanted to undermine or destabilize Great Britain, they would send across anthrax, genetically modified foot-and-mouth, computer viruses or further waves of asylum seekers. This?’ He toyed with the box. ‘This shows motivation, a personal interest.’
‘Personal grudge.’
‘Everyone needs a cause.’ The one-time BfV officer, ex-HVA agent, winked.
The person, or persons, unknown, had read or predicted the situation, attempted to foster it, seen blood in the runes and in the street. Police officers gunned down in London, in Los Angeles, the authorities jumpy, citizens edgy, incidents spiralling. It did not help having a race-motivated serial murderer at large in Kemp’s home city. Uncaught, the killer had already become a symbol of racial intolerance, of police impotence, ineptitude or institutional bigotry. On air-time and at prime-time, communities were at risk, were hurting, listeners and viewers were told. Protect yourselves, was the message, take action was the message. Cause and cause célèbre had been found. Everyone needs a cause. Ethnic and equal opportunity lobbyists made claims, accusations, held conferences, collected petitions, threatened boycotts and demonstrations. Posturing and positioning. The deaths of serving police officers were incidental. Everywhere conspiracy – or at least the theory. An oncoming torrent, and Kemp was asked, encouraged politely by Aubyn St Clair and the Security Service, to wade through it and find the source.
A telephone sounded, the Colonel stretching a hand for the receiver, cutting off the soft insistence of its monotone ring. ‘Ja?’ The conversation was brief. A few questions, and the handset was replaced. Another cigar was prepared before the old defector made eye contact again. ‘Did you bring company?’ he asked casually.
* * *
Tactical Area of Responsibility. Situation developing. They were tailing him. He wondered where they had first picked him up, started their surveillance. Berlin, Dessau, the autobahn, the airport, by chance, through design. He maintained speed, his mind circulating through the possibilities, retracing his inbound route, examining his memory for cars and people. They might have been waiting for him, staking out the Colonel’s building; it was just a passing interest, he an opportunistic target. Too easy, too comfortable. There was a shadow-taste of Bushmills and cigarettes in his mouth, the remembered atmosphere of smoky ops rooms in Northern Ireland, the damp tension-prickle between the shoulders of driving through bandit country in South Armagh and along West Belfast’s Stewartstown Road. The senses were always strained, always alert. It was how one stayed alive.
Quietness, oppressive on the air and ear, hung as it had done in those Irish Republican border strongholds of Newton Hamilton, Bessbrook and Crossmaglen. Familiar territory, atmosphere, the same impression of watchful, shuttered eyes and darkened windows looking out from blank mugshot faces and grey identikit housing. His stomach cramped, fingers tensing on the wheel. Adrenal anticipation thrown up by the past. In those days, as he traversed the A25 to meet the undercover teams working the forward areas, or slipped up the B133 to confer with military command, he was prepared for ambush, for checkpoints thrown up by PIRA hitmen, for the crack of gunfire. Terrorists resented interference, hated disruption to their cross-border murder runs between Dundalk and Newry. At least he had been armed, had Kevlar armour in the door panels, an MP5 at his side and 9mm Browning Hi-Powers in the glove compartment and shoulder-holster. Here, now, he was as naked as a bare-knuckle fighter.
The Volkswagen saloon stayed back. He had overtaken it earlier, noted its two occupants, its plates. One minor counter-surveillance manoeuvre, a cut-through between disused garages, and he checked his rear-view. Still there, clinging on malevolently, hanging discreetly behind. There would be others, satelliting, vectored in by radio or tracking device. It was the oldest trick in the lexicon, the favoured tool of the disbanded Stasi, spray-tagging dissidents with radioactive scandium-46 or firing silver wire isotope emitters from air-rifles into car tyres. Follow the glow, follow the clicks on the Geiger counter. The wing-mirror showed a motorcycle, then a second – double headlights – steady in a distant holding pattern, preparing to peel off to his blind side. Ahead, a row of crumpled mid-rise apartment blocks loomed, dirt-dismal, their lower reaches smeared with graffiti and uninspired murals. The Big Five. A vision of West Belfast’s Lenadoon estate – its grouping of five hardline nationalist towers – superimposed itself. Long Live the IRA! flickered up across his brain. He had known those areas well, their players, their Tricolours, their Armalite and hand-drill justice. German paramilitaries would be just as dedicated. He drove on, vignettes crowding in: observation posts high in the Divis flats, an informer pulped with axe handles, youths kicking a football about the grim open ground at Twinbrook, British squaddies handing out candy to jostling children on the trashed streets at Poleglass. How they gathered round. Instant human shield. No Republican could risk letting off a sniper shot, detonating a litter-bin, with the local offspring present. Great advertisement for confectionary; less hearts and minds, total fucking with their minds. That was community spirit, self-preservation.
He accelerated, rubber tread protesting as he swung the wheel and aimed for a narrow, litter-strewn alleyway. Enclosure, the walls high and near, cutting out the light, the engine-tone changing with confinement. Here, he was hidden. But they had his location and would seal him in. Even gunshots would not carry. Dead-end, dead trouble. The lane opened into an empty and pitted service courtyard, its sides climbing to thirty feet, its cube-uniformity broken only by steel shutters drawn down on random storage bays and a row of plastic-draped openings on the second level. Access denied. He stamp-braked the BMW diesel side-on to the entrance, exited low and crouched behind the engine block. Movement beyond, the echo and throttle-rev of the motorcycle scouts leading in the posse. Cars came behind, the slow approach of the execution squad purring and well tuned. He imagined their departure, as satisfied and purposeful, his body left where it fell or wrapped and stowed in a boot. There was something contained and neat to this place, a location customized for no-miss, no-mess confrontations. He glanced about him, vision roving for inspiration and improvised weapons; nothing to mind, nothing to hand. Might as well walk himself over to the wall and stand above the conveniently sited drain.
Footfalls diverging, the opposition spreading to fill the space and bring maximum fire to bear. Negotiations off, safety-catches off. Not long to go. The lightness had percolated from his intestines to his head, had pushed him to the realm of acute awareness. This was living. Point zero, point-blank.
‘Stand up. Slowly. Hands above your head.’ The command came in English. They were well informed.
He rose – tips of his fingers, then his palms, taking him after them. Full view, eight of them with clubs, automatics and sub-machine guns. A one-sided equation in which he was alone. The motorcyclists were on the flanks, helmeted and in leather, the centre filled with a collection of unsmiling and crop-haired toughs in tracksuits and dark casuals. Not pretty, not clever. The leader was older, thick-set, hair thin above a starch-white face. He was comfortable with weapons. The stub barrel of the Skorpion moved briefly.
‘Move out from behind the vehicle. Step towards us. Do it now.’
He complied. Terrorists just loved their toys, he reflected, could never resist using them. The men remained motionless as he shuffled to his left.
‘I suggest everyone remains where they are. Drop your weapons. You are surrounded.’ Trap sprung. The Colonel’s voice, accompanied by the crash of rising security blinds, the simultaneous appearance of figures above and around. ‘Your escape is blocked. The decision is yours. Die or surrender.’
Hesitation, the teetering of decision and calculation. Kemp watched the eyes, the hands, for commitment or climb-down. It would take a single shot, a trigger-pull ordained by fervour or nervous response. A side-arm was turned and laid on the ground, then a second. Capitulation. It was swift and complete. The leader nodded, an acceptance of inevitability, and unslung his own weapon. From his vantage point, the Colonel stood in a Loden coat, the Remington pump-action resting in the crook of an elbow and angled away from his body.
‘He’s ex-Bundeswehr,’ he called down to Kemp. ‘NCO. Been through the Franz-Josef Strauss paratroop barracks at Altenstadt, paid-up enthusiast of the Right Republican Party.’
The man would be the main focus of interrogation and the ad hoc justice system presided over by the Colonel. It was brutal, yet effective. There would be no records kept, no defence counsel provided, the limits to punishment dictated by willingness to talk and ability to absorb pain. A key rule of vigilantism: there were no rules. Kemp would not intervene. The session was for his benefit, the show-down in his honour. It would be churlish to ignore the chance of ready intelligence, foolish to involve due legal process. The captive was an outlaw, beyond the law. Beyond help. He was bound and dragged up a flight of metal stairs to a disused office, the initial bout of questioning accompanied with truncheon blows. Basic facts were corroborated. Name, date of birth, military, political and criminal records, the 17 August attendances at Danish rallies to commemorate the electric-flex suicide of Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess, the attempts by neo-Nazis to ‘re-Germanize’ the area around Kaliningrad and establish country-wide national liberation zones free of foreigners, liberals and homosexuals. Two dummy-drops from a ledge, and the prisoner broke. Fantasists confronted with the reality of concrete usually did.
‘Nothing original,’ the Colonel said as Kemp was ushered through. ‘He’s one of 7,000 on BfV records willing to employ violence for right-wing ends. Another 30,000 to 40,000 have links to nationalist and Nazi groups.’
‘It’s the link to me I want to know about.’
‘You speak the language. Ask him.’ The Colonel was unscrewing the top of a hip-flask. ‘Incidentally, he has confirmed that he had orders to kill you.’
Kemp pulled up a chair beside the drooped figure. Blood caked the face. Flesh wounds, superficial. He could barely sympathize with a thug whose chief task that day had been to execute him.
‘Who?’ he began.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why not?’
‘We never met. He telephoned, paid money.’
‘Nationality?’
‘Not German. Foreign.’
‘What kind of foreign?’
Saliva and blood trickled down to the floor. ‘At first, I thought … American.’
‘Now?’ The man’s eyes were puffed, the lids raw. His speech was drifting. ‘Now?’ Kemp repeated. ‘What do you think?’
‘Overseas white. Australian, South African. I’m not sure.’
‘Be sure.’
‘South African. Yes, South African.’
‘When did they telephone? When I landed in Berlin, arrived in the area?’
The face rotated towards him, its expression devoid of pity or self-pity, communicating vacant acceptance, complete insignificance. Neither would survive the campaign, the message read. Delivery was slow. ‘I was contacted before you left London.’
CHAPTER 6
The USA
Mood change, carried on the wind, in the press, in the way people walked and the manner of their talk. Los Angeles was a leading indicator, the warnings vague but understood. Steel shutters were more evident, graffiti political and polemical, gun stores doing improved business. There was a pessimism and glumness that the early onset of summer could not dispel, recession skidding to nervous depression and a city-wide listlessness. Highly contagious.
