The USA
‘Right out of the screws. Two-fifty yards. Not bad. Not bad at all.’
An unconventional swing, the arc flat, hands kept low on the shaft. But effective. Solid contact with the ball, a long drive. Coaching, practice and determination had ensured consistency, gave an edge, allowed for bragging and running commentary. The police captain sipped from his cup of iced water and watched. Damn it, every time he played PGA West, Palm Springs, he lost to this guy, the man who was two up after three, who boasted of the courses he had played, cheated with impunity, who fazed rivals into duffing and dunching shots and never let them forget it. He drained the cup and crushed it for disposal. Stress-relief. Pleasure and business rarely combined during meetings with Ted Bell. The white supremacist even drove the caddy cart competitively.
‘Nice shot,’ the officer murmured, repositioning his cap, anticipating the advice that would be proffered. Master race, master of both shots, the concept of dominance and superiority came easily to Bell.
‘Mighty long par 4. You wanna watch that water, Jack.’ You wanna go fuck yourself, the cop thought. ‘Carry as much as you can if you’re going for the green with your second. You’ll need everything you got.’
All I need is a bit of goddamn quiet. The response came in angry body-language, in the reddening flush about the neck as the captain turned to select his club. ‘Right.’
‘You could play safe with an iron and be sure to hit the fairway.’
Temper-control was part of being on the LAPD roll. He employed his skills-base now, leaning to place the tee. That sonofabitch Bell used his short game to keep a low handicap. It wouldn’t be enough to save him on the fourth hole. Bet on it. He lined up, drove. Shit. The ball sliced a little, curved into a bunker to the right of the fairway.
‘Came off that one slightly, Jack. Could be worse.’
Not by much. The captain let out his breath slowly, calming himself. It was barely worth getting upset over. Just a game, just an al fresco operational conference. The cart was parked up on a slight incline, handbrake applied. Potential there for a runaway situation, for diversionary tactics and escape.
A hand clamped on his shoulder. ‘Those funerals must be unnerving you, Jack.’
‘I’ll cope.’
‘Nine fellow officers buried? Thought you were only used to seeing earth shifted when you swung a three-iron.’ Bell liked that one, really liked it.
The cop stowed his club and turned to face him. Nine grieving widows, nine gun salutes, nine flags folded. Quite moving, for the men had been martyrs in ways neither they nor their families would have ever anticipated. MacArthur Park was important, set the scene and the tempo, the precedent, the reference point for future news broadcasts, the justification for any coming action. It would happen. You didn’t shoot a uniformed officer and expect a mild reprimand; you couldn’t gun down a cluster of them and expect your community to go unscathed. From Rampart to Ocean, the force were hurting. The hurt would be excised.
‘So, what’s the mood?’ Bell was asking.
‘What do you think? Nervous, angry, uncompromising, uncomprehending, festering.’
‘Infectious.’
‘Extremely.’
‘Good. It’ll keep the law off the streets, their heads down until they’re ready for blood. Allows us to up the pace without interference.’
‘Allows the niggers to think they rule the sidewalks.’
‘I’m happy with that. They’ve already taken the prisons since the Aryan leaders got aced. Gets Caucasians scared, the negroes pumped. And the higher they walk, the harder they’ll take it when they fall.’
‘Pressure-cooker stuff.’
Bell tipped his shades. ‘We could be judged a bad influence on American race relations, Jack.’
‘Lucky we’ll never be judged, then.’
‘The Feds?’
‘Panicking, as lost as the cops. And the mayor, the governor and Washington biting at their asses. Got their two caped crusaders and drafted teams hard on the case, snooping.’
‘Special Agents Althouse and Wood?’ Bell wrinkled his nose. ‘They’ll wish they stayed in Gotham City by the time we’ve finished.’
‘By the time we’ve finished, the President of the United States will wish he’d stayed circling at 40,000 feet on Air Force One.’
‘It’ll improve his view. Red sky at night, cities alight.’
The captain went to climb into the passenger position. ‘How d’you want the FBI pair dealt with, wet or dry?’
‘What are their primary vulnerabilities?’
‘Mortality.’
‘Goes without saying. The woman’s white, she’ll be leading. I need to know our leverage.’
‘Not much. Her teenage daughter’s predeceased.’
‘Pity. Kids are handy.’ He climbed in and rested his fingers on the wheel.
‘This one had her accident before we got to her. Drugs and metal-jacketed rounds don’t mix.’
‘Remind me of that if we ever play host to the mother. Krista Althouse – siblings, parents, lovers?’
‘Divorced, single, dedicated to her work. Ex-husband’s a limey, lives in London. Her parents are alive and growing old in Santa Barbara.’
Bell scratched his chin. ‘I’d hate to knock the status quo.’
‘Keep them in reserve.’
‘They won’t lose value. We can always think of something special for the federal fuckers who executed McVeigh.’ He lifted the brake, allowing the cart to accelerate weakly. ‘Meantime, we’ll throw enough off-trail bait and jail decoys to keep Krista occupied and breathing.’
‘She and her office won’t recognize the landscape at the end.’
‘Friend, landscape won’t be in the vocabulary.’
Beyond, the mountain crags were desert-indigo against the lush fakery of Coachella Valley. Swimming pools and golf courses catered for the rich and retired, restaurants, malls and clubhouses for the idle and fat. A nice place to be, a nice place in which to be pampered. Los Angeles and its problems were to the west, a coastal junkyard whose stench and unpleasantness never travelled this way or this far. Only the right sort blew in, transported by the gulfstream and Learjet, only the high-earners and high-rollers stayed. They dwelt in their low-rise, strato-cost villas nestling in exclusive reserves or dotting the sides of the spectacular fairways. Pay-for-view, and they had paid multimillions. The well-watered drives and courses had yet to be browned by the summer heat; the skin of the residents stayed over-taut and perma-tanned all year.
Bell drifted the cart to a halt on the track, climbed out slowly to savour his partner’s bunker woes and lend passive psychological discouragement. The captain ignored him, played out from the steep face with a sand iron and lifted the ball high to safety. His next shot delivered it to the green with a dramatic 3 wood drive for the flag. Classic swing, excellent balance and body turn, decent follow-through. He was fighting back.
‘I’m impressed, Jack. Truly.’ Nope, he was pissed. Truly. The police officer rotated the club in his hand, honour restored, contentment quotient paralleling Bell’s rising irritation. They moved across. The real estate tycoon was pacing, concentrating, deciding tactics. ‘It’ll have to be a 4 iron. Slight left to right breeze, so I’ve gotta draw this one back in from starboard. I’ll make it low.’
‘If you say so.’
The shot was poor – fat – kicking up the turf and leaving the ball some sixty yards short of the green. A shrug of contrived nonchalance, followed by the obligatory excuse. ‘Knew it was a 3 iron job. Came to me at the top of the backswing. Shouldn’t have taken it.’ Rage appeared in the colour of his knuckles.
They made their way on in silence, itinerary and conversation stalled as Bell focused on more pressing concerns, a simple pitch to the green. The captain was grateful for the respite. Decision time. Bell would not be hurried. It was a choice between a high wedge with backspin to sit it down beside the pin, or a lower-trajectory run-up with a punch from a 7 or 8 iron. He was bound to go for the lofted shot. Parkland players always did. Selection made.
Not bad, not bad at all. Advantage Bell, yet again. He would reach the hole in a single putt; the captain was looking at two. The mood relaxed. It was best to concede, to allow Bell his match-play victories early on.
‘What’s the British situation?’ the officer asked.
‘Need to know. But I can tell you it’s fluid, developing fast. They’ve had their own fatalities.’
‘Azania?’
‘Steeped in it. He’s over there soon to sponsor more trouble, declare the second front open.’
‘Sounds as though his Tigers are doing it for him.’
‘They play their part, exploit the fault-lines. As do we.’
‘Spread a little happiness.’
‘And a whole lot of confusion. See, Jack, it’s a snowball. It gathers speed, gets bigger, uncontrolled, picks up dirt and ice, attracts new layers, becomes an avalanche. Everyone’s caught up, carried away.’
‘And no one remembers the original source, that rogue snowball.’
‘Too busy digging out the wreckage, defrosting their tits.’
They reached the green. The captain took his putt. Bell smiled, crouching for a line-of-sight assessment. An easy play. Race war was coming, he a chief instrument, yet he would make time, create space, to worship on the fairways. Here, he was safe, on hallowed ground, could receive briefings and hand down commands; here, he could commune. The pumice-smoothed grass and sculpted shrubs had an order to them, reason, a pattern to inspire and challenge, with which to restore and transport the mind. Wilderness tamed. He admired the architects, valued their vision. The sky was blue and limitless, the future cloudless and unbounded. He too had vision and design, he too would carve a new nation from the wastelands. Perfectly judged. A sharp tap, the ball travelled and dropped in. He saluted his own success. One day, many would salute him, hail his achievement. There would be smiling white teeth set in smiling white faces, broad avenues, marching bands, monumental edifices and chiselled topiary, and strange fruit hanging black and abundant from the branches of poplar trees. His harvest, his Forresters to tend it.
‘So, you’ve made it.’ The man leant against his cart, trim in pale lemon Ralph Lauren and Footjoy golf shoes.
Bell rested the putter on a shoulder, unsurprised at the intervention, and squinted. ‘You prepared to join our game?’
‘Depends on the odds.’
‘Improving by the day.’
‘Then consider me in, gentlemen,’ Professor Duncan Pitt replied.
* * *
Third interview, third prisoner. The man was escorted in by four guards, his hands and feet manacled, and was forced to sit. Not a word was spoken. It was routine for inmates and officers. Maximum security, San Quentin-style. Krista affected aloofness, kept her eyes remote but engaged – the best way to counter attitude, to meet a multiple rapist and third millennium fascist. She would not back down. Odd how some people sucked the light from a room. His head was carried high, its angle defiant, eyes black, hair shaved close to the scalp, expression the penal hybrid mix of aggression and fear. Fear of losing face, of losing more than face, fear of painful death and a wasted life. Offence was the surest form of defence. He had committed many. Scar tissue would lie hidden far behind the combative stare.
Directed energy. The guards had retreated, leaving the two alone together. He was locked in place, irons attaching him to the embedded chair, his gaze travelling, assessing. Temporary silence and an interview table lay between them, two lifestyle choices represented by a distance of a few feet. Whatever their record or reputation, however odious the crime, in her experience inmates came without exception or variation in the single category marked Inadequate. Fiction would have it otherwise, film sought to lionize, but she had yet to find the yearning souls, genius poets, tortured and misunderstood artists hidden among the shuffling herds migrating through the US penal code. Stripped of excuse and legal jargon, shorn of mitigation, most were merely unpleasant dumb-asses – sad, colourless, cerebrally sterile dumb-asses – who had been caught. The coming race. She hoped not.
‘Don’t often get visitors without an army standing close by,’ he said eventually.
‘Took a lot of paperwork.’ She showed her ID and flipped a packet of Winstons across. ‘Smoke?’
He eased out a cigarette, lit it with a match from the strip she pushed over. ‘My favourite brand. Nicotine that comes with a nice little pink hole.’
‘Prisoner that comes with a shrivelled, insignificant little penis. That’s my type.’
He blinked, reappraising, his thought-processes transparent. Second attempt. ‘You want to get out your titties for me, lady?’
‘I’d rather put my face in the way of a nine-millimetre parabellum round.’
‘If we was on the outside, I’d arrange both.’
‘Then it’s lucky you won’t be seeing trailer-parks again for at least three more decades.’ She pulled up her own chair and sat. ‘So save your domination bullshit for the sisters in here. You’re in no position to lay it on me.’
‘And you’re in no position to speak without my lawyer present.’
‘We’re not dealing with legalities, we’re dealing with your survival.’
A long drag on the cigarette. ‘Thought so.’
‘Your Aryan friends getting erased in the mass cull. Must leave you feeling kind of insecure.’
‘Are you threatening me or making an offer?’
‘Making conversation.’
‘I was in solitary at the time. Still am.’
‘What happens when you’re not? Who’ll watch your back?’
‘We’re better prepared.’
‘We?’
‘Pays to have friends.’
‘Obviously Johnnie Gill, Bubba Noakes, Felix Nash, Freddie Coombs and Hank Patrick didn’t pay enough.’
The sneer carried exhaled smoke towards her. ‘You feds, you representatives of the Zionist Occupation Army, are all the same. You believe you can pick up intelligence from me, persuade me to snitch, penetrate to the inside?’
‘As I said, I’m making conversation.’
‘I don’t care if you manufacture fucking jelly. This.’ He twisted his hands in their cuffs to unbutton the top of his shirt and reveal the tattoo on his upper chest. ‘And this.’ The shirt sleeve was pulled up with difficulty. ‘That’s what protects you behind the wire.’
‘Glad you have such a rich inner life.’
He lay his fingers flat on the table. ‘We intend to hit back, that’s all you need to know.’
‘They’ll be expecting it.’
‘Will they? They think we’re pussies, off balance, they think we’re leaderless. They don’t know how much punishment we can take, how much we can give. Those niggers sure will be surprised.’
‘You’re outnumbered.’
‘Quality is what counts. Superiority.’ He pointed to his forehead. ‘In here.’
‘Is that what they taught you at Nazi summer camp?’
Flecks of red had appeared in the grey-blue prison complexion. It meant she had got through, gained his attention. ‘I’ve learned more ’bout ethnics, more ’bout blacks, more ’bout Jewish America, than you will ever do with your computers, your databases, your instruments of oppression, your conspiracy to sustain the weak, your profiling, your lies.’
‘Want to expand?’
‘You didn’t pick up much at Quantico, did you, Special Agent?’ He was shaking his head with mock regret.
‘I tried.’
‘Try harder, try realizing it’s all about tribalism and living space. Prison turns evolution on its head, prison’s the only place where an Afro-American is in a majority, where he thinks he can rule. So he gets beyond himself, loses perspective.’
‘And perspective is what you’re adding?’
‘Too right. A reality check, a realignment. It’s coming. The negro is out of control. He’s proved it, acting as an agent of the liberal Jewish rulers to pollute society, being used by the law to discipline us in our cells with gang-rape, to cut down the leaders of our white brethren in the penal institutions. He has provoked.’
‘While you’ve survived.’
Final draw, and the two hands descended together to mash the cigarette butt. ‘Fortunate, huh?’
‘Coincidence, or you’ve got bitches in low places.’
‘No one owns me. No one. Specially not the enemies who targeted my fellow pure Americans.’ Her comment had cut, was intended to.
‘That’s what confuses me. Your concept of purity.’
‘You’ve been round the bastardized mongrels of modern society too long.’
‘I didn’t have the advantage of chilling with you and your Nordic supermen.’
‘You don’t have the advantage. Period.’ He leant and blew the tobacco residue towards her. ‘Ash is what you’re gonna see.’
‘Why California? Why the max-security institutions here? Why not Idaho, Alabama?’
‘Relax, Special Agent. It’s not so difficult. California’s the epicentre, the first state in which whites are the minority, the state into which almost six million immigrants have flooded in twenty-five years. Next on their hit-list – Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois.’
‘You can’t beat demographics.’
‘You can beat most things if you put your mind to it. If we lose in this state, we lose everywhere, we surrender to the blacks, chicanos, the Armenians, anybody. It’s the domino-effect.’
‘Same argument got us into ’Nam.’
‘Same pink-coloured defeatism as yours, same communist, faggot-loving, gook-sympathizing, limp-dicked, Hebrew media-motherfuckers, got us out of it. And I’m speaking as a patriot and former serviceman.’
He was pumped, primed, the condition in which she wanted him. Fanatics, conspiracy-junkies, liked to talk, searched out platforms and audiences on which to practise. She would lend a willing ear, a covert microphone, plug into his stream of consciousness and racist chatter. Winnowing and analysis, the search for leads, would come later, in advanced or early hours holed up with Fletcher Wood, the office over-lit and under-aired, the ideas prolific and caffeine-fertilized. For the moment, she listened, attentive, face closed. He had a mission to convert, she to uncover. She had heard the slogans from a thousand mouths, derivative prejudice offered as sacred truths. The race hate and race relations industries – flip sides of the same currency – trading on resentment, purchasing grievance, raising the price of intolerance, banking a whole lot of trouble to come. Dirty money, and many made a living from it. She was just doing the audit.
‘Want my opinion?’ he asked. A retrospective ban was unenforceable. ‘Put a nigger in spectacles and they call him a genius. Put him in a box, I call it a start.’
‘I don’t do opinions.’
‘This – the coordinated killings – is way too big for the blacks. They were helped, had their hands held. Usually they’d fuck it up, open their mouths, brag. And on their biggest action of all, they don’t? Someone’s behind it.’
‘Your federal-government-as-the-arch-enemy theory again.’
‘Got to be. They want us weak, want us picked off. You come to give me my last rites?’
‘Nope. Enjoyed meeting you.’
A hostile stillness. ‘Special Agent, I could kill you in under a second.’
‘I could have you taken out of solitary, I could have you transferred, I could let it be known you’ve cooperated, I could tell the crews of the late Johnnie Gill and Freddie Coombs that you abetted in their homicides to improve your own position.’
‘Hard and soft. I like that in a lady. Almost makes me hard, if you know what I mean.’
‘Save your energy.’
‘Oh, I am. We’ve got combat a-comin,’ and we’re ready. Timing’s the only issue left.’
She believed him, had gained as much take as she ever would. The interview was heading for conclusion. ‘I might be the one person who ensures you don’t end up with a blade in your throat.’
‘By standing beside me in the showers?’ He puckered his lips and blew her a kiss. ‘You couldn’t even save your daughter, Special Agent Althouse. Tell me, did she have her cherry popped before her brains forced the exit hole?’
* * *
Germany
The dark side. It was how he had always viewed East Germany, through image-intensifiers and telescope optics, snatched glimpses or lengthy surveillance from clandestine observation scrapes along hundreds of miles of Cold War border. Occasionally, the agents of Markus Wolf and his Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung intelligence agency made mistakes, were seen dropping off microfilm, drinking in bars or heading out for hillside rendezvous. Kemp had followed them, joined British, American and West German colleagues in missions to wait and see or grab and turn. So much energy expended, so much trade in bluff and betrayal, and the only remnants were incomplete memories, collapsed bunkers, decaying watchtowers and a tightness in his chest and gut as he crossed the old demarcation line.
So, this was what defeat looked like. Abandoned plant and abandoned people, the decrepitude left by economic breakdown, communist meltdown, by a generation of deceitfulness and tampered production statistics. Difficult to invent a worse screw-up, a more convincing ruin. Certainty had gone, even the certainty of being lied to. They had moved from National Socialism through Marxism and on to nothing, nothing with the trappings and texture of a federal democracy. Small wonder so many yearned for the past, for its order, its authoritarian values. The seedlings of intolerance grew everywhere. Kemp drove southwest from Berlin, the grey-stained landscape unfolding around him, Soviet-era apartment blocks squatting and stranded among the empty factories and echoing warehouses. Dessau, a town as ugly as its neighbours, as dejected as the rest. It was where the Colonel had chosen to reside since defecting.
He had plainly been waiting. The door opened while Kemp climbed the last flight of uncarpeted steps; an outsize figure was framed in the entrance, arms stretched wide, voice booming a familiar greeting down the stairwell. He was a big man, hair and eyebrows thick and frosted white, grey eyes both open and sly, set in an alcohol-aged face that remained alertly handsome.
‘Hallo, du altes Arschloch!’
‘Wie geht’s dir, alter Drecksack?’
‘What did you expect – a red carpet, you stinking bourgeois capitalist?’
‘Stairs that supported my weight would be enough.’
‘It would undermine the meaning of struggle.’
Kemp reached the landing. ‘You always chose the hard way, Herr Oberregierungsrat.’ They hugged, the instant warmth of old friendship and shared history swapped in a lengthy bear-embrace. The Englishman extricated himself to hand over the bottle of Scotch single malt. His passport. It was held aloft for examination. ‘Anything more, and you would have accused me of bribery.’
‘Anything less, Kamerad, and you would have been asked to leave.’ He ushered Kemp through with a slap on the back. ‘I blame the Russians. They taught me how to drink and savour depression.’
‘They taught East Germans how to put up shit buildings like this.’
‘What can I say? I’m an idealist.’
He was far from that ideal, from his career in former West Germany’s BfV counter-espionage organization. Rated highly, ranked highly, he had been tipped as a future director, given responsibility for monitoring and meeting the mushroom-spread of European far-right groups and subversive cells backed by the East Germans. He was good, damn good, his instincts, encyclopaedic knowledge and imagination marking him from the rest, the pedestrian journeymen who crowded every level of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Most were concerned simply with protecting their own backsides. Not the Colonel, hero and giant-slayer. Seconded from MI5 to the British forces’ security organization, Kemp had met him in the early 1980s, liked him, worked closely with him. There was mutual respect, an enjoyment of the chase, of the danger-thrill in blowing wide the careful plans and complex legends of the opposition. They had run Western bloc academics and computing specialists through East German electronics institutes in order to test the enemy’s recruiting methods – embarrassing, in the process, Dresden-based KGB officer and future Russian president Vladimir Putin. They pursued HVA officers who had posed as census-takers and travelling salesmen to mount training assassination-runs on NATO military figures. And they had mapped the safe houses, cut-outs and logistics sources of several nascent terrorist bodies. A partnership, one that ended the night the Colonel vanished across the border and returned to his original paymasters. Several of his predecessors, including Otto John, the first director of the BfV, had done the same, helping to enhance the service’s ongoing reputation as the most penetrated security apparatus in the West. But, for once, the Colonel’s judgement sucked. The Berlin Wall was to fall a year later.
They passed along a weakly lit, mud-coloured corridor, through a double set of armoured doors and into a galleried hallway with an atrium roof set three storeys high. An extraordinary contrast. Discreet lighting set off works of modern art and picked out sculptures placed in alcoves; exotic plants grew in profusion from intricate ceramic and earthenware pots alongside black, low-set furniture. Cutting-edge interior design melding with palatial intentions, all masked by a building façade of unmitigated drabness. Betrayal must pay, Kemp mused.
‘Gangster chic. What do you think?’ his host asked, the voice accentless.
‘You haven’t lost your knack for camouflage.’
A good-natured laugh. ‘Nor you for irony.’ He crossed to a recessed lacquer drinks cabinet, added the whisky and extracted a different bottle. ‘Schnapps. The reunion demands it.’ He filled two shot glasses, handing one to Kemp. They were emptied, recharged. ‘You look well, Josh.’
‘You look prosperous.’
The Colonel beamed. ‘Ach. Put it down to practical Marxism and practising entrepreneurship.’
Reconciling, then fusing, ideological inconsistencies, was part of the man’s charm. He had backed the losing side, was obliged to be pragmatic, phlegmatic. Kemp could not begrudge him his material comforts. The past was another game. Scores had been decided, settled, a long while back, the players retired or moved on. It was unprofessional, unsporting, to harbour bitterness. They had behaved according to the rules of that period, the climate and terrain – they were expected to break many of those rules. The Colonel had done so with aplomb. It was pointless judging; the only true referee was history. Even the Bonn government had kissed arse, currying favour with the GDR – Ostpolitik was Deutsche-speak for sycophancy. Each to his own.
‘The environment suits you,’ Kemp observed.
‘Happiness and hypocrisy can coexist, Josh. This?’ The hand was waved in an expansive arc. ‘Proceeds of smuggling, mostly. For local people, it’s the chief sport aside from giving illegal Vietnamese cigarette-sellers a kicking.’
‘You’ve still got security contacts.’
‘It’s why I’m a free man. I keep the Bundeskriminalamt informed of important events, and my assets report on East Berlin fascist gangs around Prenzlauer Berg and Weissensee or charging round Schorfheide in combat fatigues. In this region, my intelligence machine is superior to the entire Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz.’
‘Hardly a contest.’
‘But a reminder why I decided to serve Markus Wolf and his professionals in the HVA instead.’
‘So, licensed piracy?’
‘Even Henry Morgan became governor of Jamaica.’ And then drank himself to death, thought Kemp. A wry smile from the German. ‘It’s cost-effective.’ Particularly for a government in Berlin terrified of a resurgent far right.
‘In from the cold. Congratulations.’ Kemp tipped the glass to his lips.
The Colonel reciprocated. ‘And Krista?’
‘Your rehabilitation was faster.’ It had, after all, only involved espionage, international intrigue, competing belief systems and geo-politics. Personal relationships, emotions, were more problematic.
‘Pity. I got you together, remember?’
‘You won’t be forgiven.’ He drained the glass, felt the fire alcohol burn its way to his stomach. ‘And I thought jumping across the border was your biggest error.’
The Colonel wiped his mouth and indicated a soft-furnished area in a far corner. ‘You have not come all this way to reminisce with an old friend and present a bottle of vintage single malt.’
‘Swept?’
‘Daily. By my own team.’
They walked across to the leather sofas, past a group of abstract and obscure granite statuary, the Colonel with an opened bottle of Pilsner in his hand. Business or social gathering, alcohol was his thought-laxative of choice, his favoured weakness. The CD was proffered, taken and inserted into the flush-mounted player beside the arm rest. For fifteen minutes they listened, the German leaning back, eyes closed, sipping thoughtfully at the bottle or fingering the button controls to replay or fast-forward. Mood music – and the mood from the tracks, in between the tracks, was ugly. The recital ended on the downwards punch of an index finger.
A cigar was found, beheaded and lit, the Colonel reoccupying his semi-recumbent position, smoke wreathing lazily from his mouth. One word summation. ‘Slick.’
‘The motive?’
‘Gegen dumheit ist kein Kraut gewachsen.’ A German proverb, its delivery soft and slow.
‘It’s not enough.’
Exhalation and cloud-burst. ‘Racism is as natural to the rest of humanity as vulgarity, Torte, wood-carving and anti-Semitism are to the southern Germans.’
‘We’re not talking Bavaria, we’re not talking Jews.’
‘Josh, you ask me what the motive is when two days ago another ship carrying illegal immigrants was towed into Brindisi by the Italian navy.’
‘You’re saying the CD exploits an existing market?’
‘I’m saying people have real fears, real concerns. Legitimate ones. Outsiders arrive uninvited, wish to sup at the table, have no stake or roots in Western Europe, have paid no taxes, shed no blood, introduce foreign tongues, faces and values.’
‘Harmony not a possibility?’
‘More than a probability. We’re old world, not social experiments and global melting-pots.’
‘What about specifics – England – why are the music discs heading there?’
‘Because its centralized, a message travels fast; because English is a universal medium; because London is a sump tank for Third World population overflow; because the arrogant liberal power elite force-feeds the public a diet of multiculturalism. People are expected to swallow it or choke silently.’
‘Historically, the British aren’t moved by extremes.’
‘It’s true. Ultra-nationalists are more established in France, Germany and Italy. Makes your fellow countrymen more of a challenge, an untapped seam.’
‘There’s always our sense of fair play.’
‘There’s always prayer.’ The eyebrow was raised dismissively.
‘Why not a Kristallnacht against Asian shopkeepers? Why not attacks on Slovaks or Kurds?’
Gripped between thumb and forefinger, the cigar was deployed as a lecture tool. ‘Why are the blacks targeted? For the same reason an African in this town has a life expectancy of twenty-four hours. They’re easily identifiable, their skin is a common denominator, and their profile is high enough to make persecution worthwhile.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Josh, the Jew was despised for his relative success, the black for his relative lack of it.’
‘Doesn’t make sense. They’re well established in Britain.’
‘So, select them, knock them out, make an example, and the rest follow. There’s logic.’
‘And organization. The discs came from Europe. I need to know the prime players, the international links.’
They talked. Kemp drank coffee; the Colonel an alternating sequence of grape and grain. Both stayed sober, focused. Across the European continent, the extreme right was rising, intended to march, its representatives winning control of towns and parliamentary seats, its influence spreading and inciting. It was putting down roots, nurturing the young. In Saxony-Anhalt, the minority Deutsche Volksunion grew in popularity and confidence, set an example for like minds and like parties throughout Germany; in Italy, anti-immigration sentiments swung votes towards the Northern League and fascist National Alliance; in France, the Gaullists lost territory throughout the south to the National Front and its black-shirted DPS militia. Everywhere, herd instinct and the more cheerless aspects of populism. The message: foreigners pollute national identity. The means: evolving. Yet there were bodies – funded, prepared – which shied away from the banner-waving and ballot box, that opted instead for a path of confrontation and direct action. Leaders were low-profile or no-profile, avoided campaigning, kept their faces from posters, their fingerprints from databanks. Unsurprising, for they were godfathers of extremism, shadowy businessmen with publishing empires and media interests that stretched from websites, mail-order and American-printed pamphlets to medium-wave broadcasts transmitting neo-Nazi propaganda throughout Germany from stations in Russia, Poland and the Ukraine. Their positions were as entrenched as the former East –West divide, their techniques as sophisticated as the US and Russian listening posts which once graced Mount Wurmberg and the Brocken. Political process was not in their nature; neither was compromise.
Kemp was leaning forward, knuckles supporting his chin. ‘We’re agreed this goes well beyond Thuringian peasants roaming around in Waffen-SS hand-me-downs and yearning for a new Führer.’
‘Well beyond anything that is customary for European or American-backed neo-Nazis.’ The Colonel was examining the CD container. ‘No trace elements attacking Marxist-Zionism, the global Jewish conspiracy, the New World Order, nothing urging ethnic Germans to resettle in the Baltic states and reclaim north-east Prussia for the fatherland.’
‘And not a single word denying the Holocaust. Basic change of tactics?’
The German shook his head. ‘Too radical for these people. Their prejudice and methods are ingrained. No, Josh, we’re looking for a new player with a specific hostility, and a large budget.’
‘A government?’
‘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.’