'We've got to get out of here now,' shouted the one he didn't know.'
'Schiller, control yourself!' screamed Frick. He turned to Kaas. 'You failed. They're all alive.'
Kaas ignored him and came level with Adam. Kaas grinned at him, then shook his head. He pulled his gun from his shoulder holster and lifted it slowly, pointing it at Adam's head. 'Goodbye, Englishman.'
Then he turned his hand and shot Kragan dead, just blew his face away.
Frick was screaming behind him as Kaas turned and the next bullet buried itself in his skull. Before his head had exploded with the impact, Schiller was shot in the back of his neck as he turned and tried to run away.
Then there were no more booms, no more noise, just the resonance of quiet returning. Someone started to hammer on the locked door. As Kaas turned, he saw Adam lift his gun towards him. 'Don't be stupid,' he said. 'Just go home, Englishman. And next time, don't play in someone else's game.'
Adam pulled himself to his feet as Kaas threw his gun down and walked to open the door. Adam was on his feet when the door was opened and the young policeman burst through.
'Everything's okay, it's…' Kaas started to explain.
'He's armed!' The policeman panicked, raising his HK 54 sub machine gun towards Adam.
'No!' screamed Kaas, trying to knock the policeman's weapon away.
But the bullets exploded from the barrel, triggered by the policeman's jumpy finger; they sliced through Adam's waist, punctured him, threw him backwards with their impact.
'No!' yelled Kaas once more.
Marcus. Billie. Please, Marcus. Not now. I want to live. I want Billie. Not now, Marcus. There's got to be something more.
Then the shooting stopped and the corridor was silent once again for the second time in two minutes.
The face that Kaas saw looking back at him was still alive, a permanent question formed on Adam's lips as he tried to comprehend what had happened. It was always the same when those who didn't fear death finally died. The coming of death was real, yet so unexpected that it was beyond realisation.
Kaas knelt down next to Adam and held his hand under the Englishman's head, tried to ease the pain of it with a look of warmth and understanding.
He heard Adam speak, but couldn't make it out. He leant forward, tried to hear the words. But they were less than a whisper, blurred in the last few gasped breaths.
He saw the blackness of death sweep over as Adam was lost forever.
Kaas laid the Englishman's head gently on the floor and closed Adam's eyelids and took off his own coat and laid it over his head.
Pandemonium broke behind him as others burst into the small corridor.
He squeezed Adam's hand.
He hoped, one day, someone would do that to him, if he was ever to die in such an awful way.
A warrior deserved better.
Then he slid Adam's hand under the coat, got up and walked away.
They took Adam away in a black plastic body bag.
The stretcher squealed in protest down the corridor as the paramedics wheeled him away.
She saw the body bag being carried down the steps of the Reichstag.
She didn't know it was him.
She had waited for two hours watching the television, watching the scenes at the Reichstag. Then the DDI came and told her what had happened. She remembered the body bag and wondered if it had been him.
Then he told her the rest, and when he had finished, reminded her that she was still an operative in the CIA and that what she now knew was for her ears only.
'They're closing down your section in California. No point anymore,' the DDI finished. 'But we're transferring you. More responsibility.'
She didn't reply. Somehow, her job didn't seem that important any longer.
The next day, Billie Knutsford flew home to California and the divorce lawyers who were waiting for her.
No mention was made on her record of her flight with the Englishman from New Orleans to Berlin.
That, as the DDI reminded her, was classified information.
Ch. 82
The crowds had long since drifted away. The traffic jams were everyday jams, going nowhere, clearing up as quickly and as mysteriously as they had started.
Berlin, long used to the abnormal, had quickly returned to normal.
The Director felt uncomfortable as he entered the modern, rectangular church. He'd never trusted religion, always felt that a man's destiny lay in his own hands. That, after all, was the core of his communist beliefs. He smiled to himself. He'd almost meant communist religion.
Rostov was kneeling at the at the end of a long line of pews, his head bowed in prayer. The Director crossed the stone floor and slid into the seat next to him. He leant back and waited for his deputy to finish. As he did so, he looked round the simple, undecorated church. A concrete memorial, not at all pretty. Not at all what he expected. They sat in the lower church, to the front and above them was the church proper, with the whole of the chancel wall covered with a fresco of an apocalyptic vision by Georg Meistermann.
Most of the worshippers and tourists were in the upper church; back here it was quiet, a place of peace.
Rostov finished his prayers, sat up and turned to his superior.
'I thought it wiser that we meet here, rather than at the embassy,' he said.
'I enjoyed the walk,' smiled the Director. 'The last time I was here we had that bloody great wall up. Was always a mistake. Nobody understood that we weren't just keeping their schpion out, we were keeping ours locked in. It made espionage very difficult. No, it was strange. To just walk in to West Berlin. No guards, nothing. Very strange.'
'This church was built in 1960.'
'Very symbolic.' He suddenly recalled where he had been when the Wall went up. It was like people always remembered where they were when Kennedy was assassinated.
'It was built in memory of those who were killed by Hitler when he came to power in 1933, and to the rest of the German dead up to 1945.'
'Even more symbolic.'
'This church is roman catholic. A place of confession.'
'Am I to be your priest?'
'A priest is bound by his vows never to disclose what he learns in the confessional.'
'Do they pass judgement?'
'If they do, they keep it to themselves.'
The Director laughed. 'Then I'll be a good priest. Too curious, my mother always said. I've always loved the intrigue.'
'You said I was to deal with it in my own way. That I stood alone.'
'It goes with the responsibility.' He didn't need to add that he himself had often stood alone, had risked all to carry out the unsaid orders of his superiors.
Rostov sighed deeply as he collected himself. Finally, with his head now facing the front, he started. 'When I was on the Washington Desk, a long time ago, I decided to understand my enemy. So I went out to the social functions, and, in time, got to know people who worked for western intelligence. Two of them, one American and one British, became good friends. We never crossed the lines of loyalty, but we often shared our hopes, our visions. Usually over a bottle of scotch, or vodka or a Jack Daniels.' He smiled. 'Even our drinking habits were of a partisan nature.'
'I, to my shame, have always preferred their beer to ours,' the old man said lightly.
Rostov continued. 'I learnt a lot in those years. Because I understood them, it was easier to take them on when I came back to Moscow.'
'You stayed friends since?'
'The odd letter. The occasional Christmas card. That is, until this thing broke. I couldn't see what the Americans, or the British, could gain by attacking our sleeper agents. They're foolhardy, but they don't go out looking for trouble. Not their way.'