The Lucy Ghosts Read online

  'What evidence?' asked Nowak, taking his jacket off, followed by his tie and shirt. 'Your people in Cannes. What evidence did they find?'

  'Something you wouldn't be looking for.' Sorge stood up and started to undress.

  'The police, and our people, combed the whole beach. They found nothing. What sort of weapon is that good that...' Nowak had kicked off his shoes and was now unzipping his trousers.

  Mary watched him, her legs still open as he knelt between them.

  'Trust me,' interrupted Sorge.

  'Too much coincidence.'

  'No. Not enough coincidence.'

  'Langley is worried about our asset base. It's something neither side has turned their attention to.'

  'So who's going to be the first to call in their sleepers?'

  Nowak shrugged as he slid his trousers off, his hardness not affected by the discussion with Sorge. The American kept his eyes on Mary's face, not wanting to lose the heat that drove him.

  'Is it time to bring our people in from the cold?' asked Sorge, now almost completely undressed.'

  'That's not our decision.'

  'But we need to know what your people want.'

  'That's what I was asked to find out. What you want. It's a fucking stalemate. I mean, who's going to be the first to make that decision. And how do we monitor it? Who's going to believe the other's pulled all his sleepers in? ' Nowak stood up on the bed, straddling over the whore. 'You want to go first?' he asked.

  'No, no. After you. This one's on me.'

  'Ever the diplomat, Dimi. Ever the diplomat.' Nowak lowered himself over Mary's face, knelt over her and pushed his penis into her mouth. 'We need to know what's going on out there, Dimi. We need to know.' His voice was urgent and breathless, not because of the content of his words but because the whore sucked him hard into her.

  'It must be stopped. Before it gets out of hand,' muttered the Russian to a disinterested audience.

  Sorge climbed onto the bed, behind Nowak and hoisted the whore's hips up with his arms, positioned her so he could enter her as she occupied herself elsewhere. He looked at the American's moving back, admired the firm muscles and wished the girl wasn't there. With Mary's legs now firmly wrapped round him, trapped by his bulk, he put his arms round Nowak, knew the American would think he was only holding him for support. Then he pushed with his hips and grinned as he heard her squeal as he claimed the hell hole for his own. She tried to yelp with the sharp pain, but there was little she could do, jammed to the bed by the weight of the two big men, both pumping at her as they worked towards their release.

  Outside the candle lit window, the first snows were starting to fall on the streets of Washington. People rushed by, cars were driven impatiently, the last few jets took off over the Potomac from Washington National Airport as travellers looked forward eagerly to the warmth and comfort of their suburban homes.

  Hosanna. It was going to be a white Christmas.

  Ch. 13

  San Diego

  Southern California.

  There was no snow that Christmas in San Diego.

  There never was, apart from what was sprinkled on the trees in the windows of the downtown department stores.

  Billie Wood had never seen a white Christmas, except on television. She had once spent Christmas in Atlantic City. There had been no snow, only wind and rain and a bone chilling cold that made her yearn for her native California. Her companion, an early lover after she had split with her husband, was as wet as the weather and spent most of his time at the dice table. She had left him there, spending the fortune he never had and was trying to win, and caught the only flight available back to San Diego. It was Boxing Day and she spent a lonely holiday by the TV set wondering where Peter was. And who he was with.

  'You want some grapefruit juice for breakfast?' Billie called from the kitchen as she poured a herbal tea into the pot.

  'What d'ya say?' Gary shouted back at her from the exercise room.

  'Do you want grapefruit juice?' she replied, louder so that he could hear.

  'Yeah,' came the muffled reply.

  She poured two grapefruit juices into the tumblers and put them on the large tray, next to the pot of tea, the two cups and the Swiss muesli that was all ready milked in the two bowls. She picked up the tray and left the kitchen, walked through the sitting area and bedroom and into the exercise area that opened onto the balcony.

  'Hi, babe,' panted Gary, a gleaming muscle machine, strapped to an exercise bench with weights above his shoulders as he pumped iron, the weights sliding up and down in the iron frame as he pushed himself beyond the limit.

  She smiled warmly at him and put the tray on the table by the sliding doors. She turned to watch, admired his twenty five year old body that was his pride and joy. His short jogging shorts were glued to his body by the perspiration he generated, his muscles straining as he lifted his inner self beyond pain and physical limits. She compared him to Peter, he of the burnt out and wasted muscles, the bloated waistline and the thinning hair.

  He'd be in his 'I want to be younger, designer clothes' now. The girl on his arm his latest accessory. Designer woman to go with his designer clothes.

  Go away, Peter. This day has nothing to do with you.

  She walked over to Gary, letting her short housecoat fall open and reveal her nakedness, apart from a white G-string panty. She knelt by his head, pulled her stomach in and fondled his blonde locks, ran her fingers through his hair. California blond. It's how she liked her men. Except for Peter, damn him.

  'You okay, babe?' she whispered in his ear, gently blowing into it.

  'Easy, baby. I gotta finish.' He was in his own world, trying to crash his own barriers, irritated by her interruption.

  But she wasn't prepared to be dissuaded. It was Christmas. Even if there wasn't any snow.

  She slipped off her housecoat and moved further down the bench, watched the sweat running off his chest and stomach muscles. She loved the smell of his body juices and she rubbed her face over his skin, tasted its salty wetness with her tongue. He ignored her, concentrated on his task. She moved lower, her tongue still probing as she neared the top band of his shorts.

  'I gotta finish,' he gasped as he pushed the weight upward once again.

  'Later, baby. Do it later.' She reached down and slid his shorts down to his ankles. It wasn't true what they said about body builders. They were as big, if not bigger than most others. She reached towards it, tentatively and full of wonder. It always surprised her how this small tube of flesh grew and developed into the hard manhood that she craved for. It was a magic moment, that short instance between limp futility and hardened ecstasy. She leant forward, her mouth about to absorb his softness.

  'For Chris'sake, Billie!' he shouted, the weight banging down on its stops as he let it go. He sat up suddenly, his anger obvious. 'I gotta finish my programme. You know I gotta do that every day.'

  'You killed the passion!' she yelled back, picking up her robe as she stood up. 'It's Christmas, damn it. What's wrong with that. Fuck your programme. Just for one stinking day. Can't you do that for me.'

  She wrapped her robe round herself and rushed to the door. She turned and looked at him, the hurt and humiliation wrenching at her.

  'You look fucking ridiculous,' she derided him. 'Lying there, working out on your body, your pants round your fucking ankles.'

  He swung his legs off the exercise bench and attempted to pull up his shorts, but they had twisted in their dampness and he struggled, tripping over them and crashed to the floor. He swore loudly as the pain stabbed at his knee and he gripped it tightly, the entangled shorts now forgotten.

  She was suddenly concerned for him and she rushed forward to help, but he pushed her away.

  'Fuck off!' he shouted. 'Don't treat me like shit. Just 'cos you pay all the bills. Don't....'

  'I'm sorry, Gary baby.' She despised her own pleading, but couldn't stop herself. 'I didn't mean it. I just wanted you. I just.....'

&n
bsp; 'I could've busted my knee. Damn it, I could've been hospitalised.'

  'I'm sorry. I just wanted to share something with you. It's Christmas.'

  'You should've waited.'

  'I just wanted to be with you.'

  'You just wanted to fuck. That's all you think I'm worth. Just someone to fuck.'

  'No, that's not true. That's not.....'

  'That's it. That's all it ever was.'

  He stood up and pushed her away, knocking her to the floor. He managed to pull his shorts up and left her in her misery. In time, when she had composed herself, she rose and went to the window and looked out on the Californian coast.

  She hated her loneliness, knew he was right. But it wasn't just the sex; like most women she could live without that. It was the loneliness. It was the emptiness that comes from going home and having no-one to share the day's gossip with.

  She wished she could go to work. If only there was something worthwhile to go to work for. She'd got no further with the task Langley had set her, and now Tucker had called to say she was expected to nursemaid a scientist. She wondered if they knew what they were doing.

  The dread of that awful memo on her desk, still not answered, sent her into a deeper depression. It wasn't right, taking away her job after all these years. Damn it.

  It was a miserable Christmas.

  In Washington the DDA put the phone down.

  He was surprised the Exec Director had agreed so readily to his plan of action. He knew the DDI would be against it, which is why he'd gone directly to his superior.

  The Exec Director had told him he would ring London direct.

  The DDA hoped there'd be an answer by Christmas evening. He wanted to see the look on the DDI's face. He grinned as he imagined his colleague's discomfort and angry reaction.

  He heard his wife calling. The first of their many guests were arriving.

  Then he went through into the dining room to carve the Christmas turkey, to slice it as cleanly as he hoped his news would slice the DDI.

  Ch. 14

  Dresden

  Germany

  They buried Willi Kushmann in the city of his birth on the day after Christmas. It was a cold, bitter morning, still dark at six a.m., with storm clouds threatening a rain that never seemed to come.

  The cemetery was on the southern outskirts of the old city, an overgrown place that had been little tended over the years. Many of the gravestones had been broken and lay littered over the three acre site. Its appearance was of a disused and forgotten spot, not something amiss in an East Germany that was busily being re-unified.

  Dresden, like East Berlin and Leipzig and most of what was East Germany, is a city where time has stood still. Its architecture, that which was left standing after one of the most devastating bombing raids of the last war, is a mixture of 1950's drab and fine German baroque

  The strength of the city and its people was their link with the past. Not so much in what Germany had once been, but what it could once again become. Their past was their hope. If they had achieved greatness before, then they could achieve it once again. The shining example of West Germany was their torch, the memory of pre-war days their ambition.

  Unlike the West, without the freedom of a democratic society, many of them had secretly clung to their heritage. To them, the war had finally finished when the Wall came down and the Russian troops had evacuated their land. There was now an urgency to redress what was lost, a need to wear their nationalistic badge proudly once again.

  Because of this stubborn conviction, there were now many separate nationalistic groups, embryo political parties who wanted a slice of power for themselves and felt they deserved a bigger say in a united Germany's future. Not all of them believed in the Western system of democracy. Some of these groups were secretive in their intent and their membership. Unlike their fellow countrymen in the West, who they saw as softened by the extravagances of a modern society, the new freedom was the first step to their rightful place as the world's most powerful nation.

  Old habits die hard. Especially when they've been suppressed for nearly fifty years.

  Willi Kushmann had belonged to such a group and been one of its most influential members. A lawyer by profession, he had concentrated on corporate legislation as soon as he realised that the two Germanys were to be united. He realised, unlike his own experiences in the communist environment, that economic power was supreme. The major corporations had a major say, if not controlled, the prosperity and destination of the more powerful states.

  West Germany was one of those powerful states.

  In his view, East Germany must join ranks with her sister country and become the most powerful state. His destiny lay in the West, so he concentrated all his efforts to that end. Within a surprisingly short time he had joined a major law firm in Frankfurt and was put in charge of a department that dealt solely with the legalities of corporate reunification. Mergers and takeovers became his speciality, he was the expert everyone turned to.

  His list of contacts increased and he was seen at all the right functions, all the correct social gatherings. He became part of the establishment and no-one questioned why he had climbed the ladder to success so rapidly. But he knew, and more important, understood the significance of his link with the past. It was a chain that must never be broken.

  Reunification wasn't just about the East Germans swopping their Trabants and Wartburgs for Mercedes and BMWs. It was about a dream that had been stifled fifty years earlier. A dream that passed through the generations, lost for some but deeply yearned for by others. A secret shared over the years between many powerful people both in East and West Germany.

  The dream had been kept alive by the older ones, kept alive through their shame and disgrace of the Russian jackboot. It had been handed down to those like Willi Kushmann, passed down, not as a memory or a footnote in history, but as a flame to be kept burning as strong as ever.

  Willi Kushmann had been the bright hope who would turn that dream into reality.

  Except that now he was being laid to rest in a neglected graveyard in the city of his birth. And that at a time in the morning when few people were about, when the funeral would pass relatively unnoticed.

  For such a seemingly unimportant funeral in such a forgotten place there were many more mourners than should be expected.

  On the pot holed road that skirted the mortuary, there was a line of cars, an eclectic mixture of black Mercedes, Travants and Wartburgs.

  At the entrance to the graveyard, where a large wooden gate had once stood between the stone wall, three men waited, one of them sitting on the wall, his legs idly swinging beneath him. The other two stood on the path that led to the graveyard and the mourners hidden by the trees that masked the graveyard. They were big men, short cropped hair, skinheaded and brutish in appearance. They all wore dark grey overcoats, but that was so as not to draw attention to themselves. Underneath the topcoats, they were dressed in identical mustard brown shirts with military insignia in the shape of a cross with the ends linked up and with an eagle's head at its centre. The breeches were of a darker brown shade, tucked into knee length black leather boots.

  The graveyard was in the public domain, but no member of the public would be allowed to attend this funeral without the permission of those on the gate.

  There were seven other guards scattered over the area, most of them hidden in the trees. Unlike those on the gate and in spite of the cold, they displayed their uniform proudly, their topcoats on the ground beside them. You could see they carried no weapons, apart from the short police batons that were strapped to the back of their belts. Each guard also had a scout's hunting knife tucked in the top of his right boot with the same military insignia stamped in gold on its black handle.

  The funeral was over, Kushmann's coffin had been lowered into the earth and was being covered by the grave diggers. The mourners, some forty of them, wandered around the graves in small groups, looking for forgotten names amongst the headsto
nes. For many it had been the first time they had returned to the East, to this part of Germany that reminded them of their youth. Most of the mourners were in their sixties; some expensively dressed, the others in simple suits that had seen better days. Most surprising of all was that there were no women present.

  Grob Mitzer was amongst the mourners. The wealthy industrialist finished speaking to the priest before he moved away to a small huddled group who still lingered by Kushmann's grave.

  'A tragedy,' said one of the mourners, a bald headed stooped man in a threadbare suit.

  'It's over now. We must move on,' replied Mitzer.

  'Always it happens. Always so close and something happens.'

  'Nothing comes easy. It only needs more effort, one more push,' urged the wire haired man to Mitzer's left.

  'He's right,' added Mitzer. 'Now is not the time to lose heart.'

  'Who will replace Willi?' asked the bald headed man.

  'Whoever.'

  'Frick is the only one.'

  'That's up to the Council.'

  'It must be soon.'

  'It will be.'

  'We will have to have meetings. That'll draw attention to ourselves.'

  'Not if we're careful.' Mitzer's anger suddenly flared and he turned his fury on the bald headed man. 'Now is not the time to panic. We will replace Willi. We will succeed. Our enemies will not find out about us. Not if we keep our mouths shut.'

  The others were silent, cowed by Mitzer's outburst. He suddenly took a deep breath, brought his temper under control.

  'We are amongst old friends here,' he went on, calmer in his tone. 'Those who are alive and those who died, many in our cause. Let us not be disrespectful to them. '

  He turned to lead the group towards the headstones when the bald headed man spoke.

  'Und die Lucie Geists?'

  Mitzer swung round sharply, his venom obvious but hushed so that no-one else near the group would hear him.

  'Die Lucie Geists. I have told you. Never mention them in public. It is more than your life is worth.'