LITMIR.BIZ

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       CHAPTER EIGHT

      Benz had dreads and looked older in the flesh than his thirty-four years, even from a distance.

      Bone-cold, I’d followed a procession of around four hundred people – young, middle-aged and old – from Alexanderplatz to the Brandenburg Gate. You didn’t have to speak German to understand what they were chanting. Many held ‘Pro-Deutschland’ banners, and anti-Muslim slogans with ‘Stop Islamiserung!’ One guy brandished what looked like a red traffic sign with a symbol of a mosque on it, crossed out in black. He had a big belly, white hair and venom in his eyes. I didn’t like these people. It seemed I was in good company. Most passers-by spurned offers of leaflets by screwing them up and dumping them on the road.

      I clapped my gloved hands together and narrowed my gaze against a fine film of sleet. Up ahead a small platform had been erected and Benz, with a group of shaven-headed heavies in front of him, blasted away through a megaphone. To my British ears, he sounded unhinged, but the assembled seemed to like him – lots of grunts of approval, knowing nods and the odd cheer. This was no French affair, with water cannon and riot police and flying fists. Despite the verbal trash and racist views on offer, everyone was polite and well behaved, maybe because of the chill wind factor and a sky sheeting snow, or because cops in khaki lined the route. Having a deep-seated aversion to the law, I burrowed deeper into the crowd. I wasn’t happy. If anything kicked off, I’d be caught in the crush.

      I was just mapping how I could creep closer to the action when I became acutely aware that the mood music had suddenly changed. Familiar with trouble, I knew how to read the signs. Benz’s diatribe had increased in volume. The cops, with their watchful eyes and neutral expressions, stirred as one. Mounted police and guys in black with white helmets and visors – the riot police – emerged out of nowhere. Police dogs, not in evidence before, barked with the type of intensity that says I am going to rip your head off. The crowd, which had been largely dormant, collectively woke up. It was positively tribal. I craned my neck. Other voices, other faces and bodies flooded in from Strasse des 17 Juni, ironically named after a bloody uprising, as a counter-demonstration of Turks and others took to the street. Fuck.

      Riots have a peculiar kinetic energy all their own. Scuffles will often break out on the fringes of a big crowd and large groups will sheer off and clash head-on with others. But at its core, a big bunch of people throbs with accumulated heat and violence. In that dark second, I felt as if my life was in imminent danger.

      In mindless confusion, we moved as one. The lucky ones got knocked and jostled; those who weren’t were done for. Staying upright was my main preoccupation as the baying crowd surged forward, funnelling in one ugly direction amid screams and shouts and the clatter of horses’ hooves, policeman shouting, helicopters circling.

      Something hit me hard on the back of my head. My teeth rattled. Warm blood trickled down into my collar. A huge man with wide, terrified eyes gripped my elbow for balance, almost knocking me to the ground. Trapped, I needed to escape and escape quickly, but I could hardly breathe for people, moving human flesh and the collective body odour of fear. Any attempt to push my way through, to catch the slipstream, seemed doomed. Instead, I bowled along, letting the flow take me, like an uprooted tree caught in a river torrent.

      People went down. Other people trampled them, their handbags and footwear scattered like unspent grenades. I grabbed a young guy who’d lost his footing, set him straight and kept him moving, one fluid motion. The noise was deafening. Terror stalked the streets, ugly and loud.

      I estimated that at any moment now CS gas would make an entrance. Bang on cue, my eyes burned with stinging heat. I was breathing in tight bursts, wheezing and coughing as an acrid cloud of tear gas burst above our heads. By some miracle, I kept in motion, with no idea where I was heading. It was like being trapped in a smoke-filled room with all your bearings gone.

      Snow fell in big heavy flakes. It was treacherous under foot. The looks on people’s faces reminded me of one of those weird paintings of chaos by Bosch or Blake. I couldn’t work out how this would end, only that there would be a heavy price to pay in blood and injury. I didn’t know whether German police had adopted the very British habit of ‘kettling’. I didn’t know if there was method in the madness. All I knew was that I was not in control, and for a man accustomed to calling the shots – no pun intended – this was bad news.

      Looking up, I caught sight of the pentagonal-shaped exterior of the Philharmonic and Chamber Music Hall. We were moving west, towards Potsdamer Platz. Then, without warning, the depth of people abruptly thinned, and I and another guy made a break for it, popping to the surface after being caught in the deep. It felt good. I felt loose and free. As I looked about me, a thin malicious whistle of cold air passed by my left ear, followed by a dull thud.

      I glanced down. Red so bright that it hurt my eyes stained the fallen snow. The guy next to me was on the ground, sprawled in a way I instantly recognised. Eyes open. Body twisted. Blood spreading out and pooled around his head from where a bullet had passed through the base of his skull.

      A bullet meant for me.

      Fear briefly stammered in my chest. Fear is good. It proves you’re not stupid. Screams and shouts sliced through the cold. The cute move would mean another gunman up ahead, the same way a bomber sets off a secondary device to catch those fleeing the first blast. I didn’t waste time searching for the shooter. I didn’t wait for the cops. I didn’t even pause to breathe.

      I ran.

       CHAPTER NINE

      I didn’t return to the hotel. It took me two hours to fight my way through a lockdown of the city centre and bribe a taxi driver to drive with all speed to the airport. He could run as many red lights as he wished.

      Lady Luck on my side, I caught the next flight to Bristol. I’d have gladly flown to anywhere in the British Isles. As certain of the intentions of my fellow passengers as I could be, I settled back in my seat, a large gin and tonic to hand, my brain hissing with numerous possibilities.

      These were: McCallen had tipped off Mossad; McCallen, through her connections, had unwittingly turned the spotlight on me; McCallen, for reasons best known to her, had me targeted deliberately; Mathilde had been got at, either by Benz or persons unknown, or someone from my past had taken an opportunistic pot shot.

      I took a deep drink, savoured the bite of gin at the back of my throat and swallowed. Mossad didn’t stack up for one blindingly good reason. They don’t miss. Added to this, the technique was crass. They’d never take such a risk in a public place, with the possibility of innocent casualties. If they wanted me removed, it would be my body lying in the dirt, thanks to a poisoned hypodermic, or another less high-vis method.

      This did not let McCallen off the hook. She’d got me into this imbroglio in the same way she’d entangled Lars Pallenberg. Whether or not she’d deliberately set me up I didn’t know. Trust was in short supply where I came from. My pathological distrust of others had saved my life on more than one occasion. I wanted to believe McCallen for all the obvious reasons, but I couldn’t swear on my heart that she was worthy of it, and I was still angry with her for deceiving me about her relationship with Pallenberg. A guy doesn’t propose to a woman with whom he hasn’t had a close and intimate relationship, especially when he’s ditching the girl he was supposed to marry. Neither does he set her up to be killed, I had to concede.

      Unless it was part of a double-cross.

      I took another huge gulp of gin. Someone could have seen me with Mathilde, perhaps at the restaurant, and made the connection. The thought of her being threatened clawed at my gut. I supposed it was possible she could have stage-managed my removal, but she’d had little time to make the necessary arrangements and her exact motivation eluded me.

      I stared out of the window at the grey light, its impenetrability mirroring

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