Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

Had this been a German woman, she would probably have reached out her hands, held his cheeks and kissed him. It happened often. This woman’s expression remained stoic and her fingers stayed clasped on her lap. He thought her beautiful. She might have been the price of his marriage and have cost him a place in the upper echelon of Lubeck society. Others now would be sitting in his waiting room, showing, perhaps, less fortitude.

‘If you ring my receptionist this afternoon she will advise you of a schedule. We will need details of how the account will be settled and will give you a breakdown of costs. In the meantime, you should hope the weather clears so that you can enjoy the old quarter of the city, but do not tax yourself too greatly. I will see you to your car.’

He stood. The man – an Engineer who made bombs that killed and mutilated troops far from their homes – blubbered like a child, but she was composed.

The tide was sliding away and the beach showed a damp ribbon of sand. He stood where it was dry and could see miles along the coast line… as he had that day. It was where the border had run from alongside the Dassower See, and its shore, then cut across the peninsula at its narrow point, leaving Priwall in the west, Rosenhagen and Potenitz in the east. It had come down from the sand dunes, now a nature reserve: Naturschutzgebiet – Betreten verboten. Then, the wire, the minefields and barricades had crossed the beach and gone far out into the waters of the Lubeckerbucht. It had been an early-summer day, with a brisk wind but clean sunshine.

The pastor had brought him.

The Lutheran priest had worn jeans, an open-necked checked shirt and heavy sandals, while the youthful Len Gibbons had dressed in grey slacks, lightweight brogues and a sports jacket of quiet herringbone. It had been the pastor’s invitation. He wants to see you once more, see the man he works for whom he trusts. His friend’s cousin is a border guard and it is arranged, but you must give no signal, and you will see him only very briefly, but it will be, for him, as if you touched hands. They had walked on the beach and had gone towards the fence, where it dropped down into the dirty Baltic water. A watchtower overlooked that section, and a patrol boat was out in the Bight. It had been a naturist’s beach, and they had gone among the flapping bosoms and shrivelled members of elderly males and had seen the guards, behind the fence or up in the towers, clicking their cameras; there had been a joke about porn stocks in the guards’ camp being low. They were the only clothed people on their side of the wire.

On the far side, every man was uniformed and armed, big dogs had howled at them, and Gibbons had seen him. Maybe for a half-minute, and at a distance of some three hundred yards, a young, slight-built figure had come from the gorse behind the dunes and walked towards the sea with a guard. Antelope had stopped close to the waterline, and gazed towards the barriers, then turned away. Gibbons and the pastor had gone back through the naturists and the young SIS officer had felt bonded with his asset, more trusting.

Two months later, the message had come through that new courier arrangements were required and Gibbons, to his desk chief, had spoken up on behalf of the asset’s request. Contacts had been supplied. Three at least, because of Gibbons’s naivete and his superiors’ lack of due diligence, were dead, and their lives would have ended unpleasantly. The experience had made Len Gibbons – surviving by fingernail grip – fight as he had been fought. He had been taught, in a front-of-the-class seat, the value of ruthless application of his government’s policy. No sentiment intruded into his professional life, no qualms were permitted. Morality? He wouldn’t have known how to spell it.

So cold. Near his feet there was an old, pockmarked railway sleeper, with heavy chains nailed to it. It would have been a tiny part of the underwater system with which the East German state had sought to defend itself. Pathetic people, wiped from history… Eleven summers before Len Gibbons had come here, a teenage international swimmer from the east, Axel Mitbauer – 400-metres freestyle – had gone into the water up the coast, having anointed his body with petroleum jelly, and had swum fifteen and a half miles before reaching a bobbing buoy in the Lubeck Bight. Gibbons always took that story as proof of the superiority of his country, his creed, his calling. He still felt it as strongly as he had when he had last been on this beach those years before. He had never worn patriotism on his sleeve, but it was warming to be on a winner’s team.

The wind whipped him. Pretty shells crunched under his feet. He looked at his wristwatch. It might already have happened, or would be about to happen. He thought it time to start the journey home. He had done well. It was a triumph and would be recognised as such by the few inside the loop. Good to have been at this place of failure when a success was acted out.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur Lubeck 24.11.2011 09.12 Police report fatal shooting on the campus of the university medical school.

The Cousin heard it on a news flash on the local station – he had tuned in on his car radio for that purpose. ‘That’s my boy,’ he murmured. He ignored the No Smoking sign in the car, lit a cigarillo and drove a little faster down the wide highway. He felt good – like after the best sex or a decent dinner – and he’d stay with the station for updated news.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Lubeck 24.11.2011 09.29 Eyewitnesses at the university medical school of the UNESCO heritage city of Lubeck report two dead and one injured in a gun attack outside the neuro-surgery unit of the teaching hospital. A confirmed fatality is Steffen Weber, a consultant at the hospital, who was shot on the building’s steps. An unidentified gunman fled from the scene of the attack. Police have now cordoned off the hospital grounds.

The swap had been done, vehicles switched – the clothing and the weapon would go back to Berlin for disposal – and the Friend drove carefully within the speed limit towards the ferry port on the road to Travemunde. He knew these people, had had experience of them for more than thirty years of his working life. He had been on the periphery of the teams that had gone into Beirut for the revenge killings after the Munich Olympiad, and those hitting targets in North Africa, Rome, Paris, London and Damascus. He would have said he could read the feelings of the trigger men, whether they fired pistols at close range or detonated bombs remotely. This one was extraordinary. The man beside him was quiet, relaxed and had yawned a couple of times. He showed no sign of having spent a bad night on a cot bed in an outer office at a local synagogue. It was on the radio, made a news flash and interrupted an item about the preparations for the Christmas fair and the hope of a boost to the city’s economy.

‘They have not spoken of him yet.’

‘They will. Give them time.’

Deutsche Presse-Agentur Lubeck. 24.11.2011 09.43 A Lubeck police spokesperson said that Steffen Weber, consultant in neuro-surgery, was pronounced dead at the scene after being shot on the steps into the building where he had his office. Also killed, she said, was a foreign national, as yet unnamed, and a driver from the Iranian embassy in Berlin was wounded – but with no life-threatening injuries. The unidentified gunman is believed to have escaped from the hospital grounds in a commercial black Nissan van driven by an accomplice.

She sat on a hard chair in a corridor. Her husband’s body and that of the consultant were beyond swing doors. Twice she had tried to breach them and twice she had been gently, but firmly, refused entry. No one spoke to her. If she spoke to them, her language was not understood. Many hurried past and the swing doors flapped open for them, but not for her. There were policemen, doctors in gowns, nurses. She was not offered tea, coffee or water. She was forgotten. A woman came past her, escorted by uniformed men and bureaucrats in suits. She was blonde, expensive and boot-faced. Naghmeh assumed her to be the wife of the man who had tried, and failed, to shield her husband. Her head hurt, where her hair had been wrenched and there was blood on her face and hands, but no one seemed to see it.