burners – normally small pots of petrol and sand, but probably mud here. Everywhere east of the Wall was ankle-deep in the stuff. The burners would have been laid out in an L, Second-World-War SOE-style. The base of the L was the threshold; Dex needed to land as close to it as he could to ensure he had enough grass to rattle to a stop. The long stroke gave him wind direction.
Spag was already up on his knees, headphones cast aside as if he had to jump and run under fire. He struggled to keep his balance at the same time as he hugged the bag to his chest.
Red Ken waved him down. ‘The crap-hat has been watching too many war films.’
Tenny convulsed again with laughter.
Spag didn’t like it. He stayed on his knees, ready to leap out and take on all-comers.
Red Ken wasn’t finished. ‘Who does he think he is? He’s a pencil-neck CIA desk jockey, not the fucking Terminator . . .’
Tenny rested a hand on Red Ken’s shoulder. ‘Give him a break. This is his first time. And he’s American.’
After Spag’s thirty-odd years as a desk jockey, he wouldn’t be auditioning for the job of Arnie’s stunt double any time soon. He looked more like the new cartoon character I’d been watching on the American forces’ network back in Berlin, Homer Simpson.
The Dornier slowed. Dex taxied to the threshold, swung the nose round so he was facing into the wind again, and closed down the props. ‘Just like the old days, chaps – the four of us together in the middle of nowhere. At least we don’t have to start spouting Pashto.’
Spag headed straight for the exit and scrabbled to get out.
Red Ken caught his arm. ‘No rush, mate. If we’ve got a drama waiting for us out there, we’ll find out soon enough. We need to take everything slow and calm.’ He swung the door open.
My nostrils were hammered by the stench of shit.
Tenny saw my face screw up in the dull red light. ‘Human fertilizer. Nothing gets wasted round here.’
Red Ken set off towards a thin torch beam that suddenly pierced the darkness.
Vladislav’s contact appeared out of the gloom. His fresh boot-marks met Red Ken’s in the frosty dew. They’d done a lot of business during his tour, but this was their biggest deal yet. They hugged like old mates and jabbered away to each other in German while Tenny checked our comms with Dex.
I didn’t know the contact’s name and didn’t need to. Tenny and Red Ken were here to look after Spag, and my job was to look after them. I tightened my grip on the two-foot steel Maglite. There were rules to this game, and one of them was that Brixmis went unarmed. If you were caught with a gun, you got shot, simple as that.
Apart from my torch, the only kit we had with us was the radio in Tenny’s day-sack and whatever Red Ken had in his. A couple of sharp rectangular shapes jutted against the thin nylon. I didn’t know what they were and I didn’t ask. If I’d needed to know he would have told me.
Our biggest weapon was secrecy. No one knew where we were, apart from those who absolutely had to. The KGB and the Stasi had no reason to be out here, sliding around in the shit. And if they were waiting to round us up with dogs and AKs, we were sterile.
Dex stayed in the cockpit. He tended to stick out in this part of the world. He’d be pissed off that he’d had to close down the engines. It was good for security, but bad for us all if he couldn’t get them restarted. That was how he’d got caught last time. He’d ended up being traded for a couple of newspapermen caught spying for the East.
The RAF rule was that he should have taken off again and come back in when Tenny called for a pickup. But Dex didn’t like doing that. He never had. He said it made him feel like he was running away.
4
Apart from the gentle whispers between Red Ken and the contact, it was quiet.
Red Ken’s German was far better than mine, but that wasn’t saying much. I was still at eighteen-year-old-squaddie level. ‘Pommes frites . . . Bier . . . Taxi . . .’ was pretty much my limit, with the occasional ‘danke’ and ‘bitte’ thrown in. If anything else I wanted wasn’t on display –