At 9 p.m. on the last day of February, Mason drove the Porsche with studied legality through the streets of East Berlin. He was in uniform. He had dined with a cavalry friend at an echt Berliner restaurant with an unpronounceable name. The occasional shabby Trabant loomed up in the gloom, and the white faces of the drivers stared at the Porsche with palpable hostility.
Mason passed through Checkpoint Charlie on his ID card, joining Heerstrasse just beyond the Brandenburg Gate. The wide and ramrod-straight Heerstrasse is governed by synchronized traffic lights. If you cruise at a constant thirty miles an hour you can travel its entire length without having to stop. Mason had quickly cottoned on to the principle that sixty miles an hour was a simple mathematical progression. When that speed had succeeded without a hitch, he wagered and won fifty pounds from brother officers by covering the same distance at 120 mph.
Two minutes’ drive to the north of Heerstrasse, Mason arrived at Wavell Barracks, home to a major portion of the British Berlin Garrison which, in March 1977, included a parachute battalion, a battalion of the Welsh Guards and a cavalry squadron. The armored might of the British in Berlin totaled twelve tanks. Their allies, the French and the Americans, were similarly equipped while, ranged against them, were the 12,000 battle tanks of the Warsaw Pact. The fatalistic attitude of Mason’s CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Guthrie, and most other Allied officers in Berlin was understandable.
Mason was scornful of the neighboring Allied forces, the French to the north with their canteen full of cheap and nasty wine that ate through its plastic bottles after three weeks in storage and, for the most part, thoroughly useless conscript soldiers. He made an exception of their regular officers and NCOs, many of whom had been crack Foreign Legionnaires in their day.
The Americans to the south he briskly summarized as “lots of possessions, lots of money, and enormously fat wives with a nonstop diet of fries and junk food.”
The Porsche growled by the battalion sties where the battalion pig-corporal was feeding his charges on battalion swill. Mason parked outside the officers’ mess and shivered in the raw Berlin chill.
He glanced at his pigeonhole in the foyer of the officers’ mess. Nothing there: nobody loved him. He went upstairs to the anteroom. Even the snooker table was deserted. Guardsman Coleman appeared from nowhere, smart as a laundered penguin, and gave him a gin and tonic without being asked.
“Message for you, Captain Mason, sir. About an hour ago. Please contact your uncle in London.”
Mason’s only “uncle” never went to London. He sighed but experienced the familiar prickle of anticipation that went with a call from Spike Allen. He picked up a copy of the Times, determined to enjoy his drink for five minutes.
His moment of peace was interrupted by two tiresome second lieutenants who flung themselves into neighboring chairs.
“Nearly made it with Angela last night,” one said in an undertone, preening himself in an especially nauseous way that Mason detested.
“Bad luck actually,” the subaltern continued. “Just as the adorable Angie was stretching out those quite wonderfully long, brown legs, one of those bloody wild boars from the Grunewald executed a raid on the Everleys’ dustbins directly below her room.”
The Everleys were a married couple from one of the resident units whose nanny from Kent was then the rage of most unmarried officers in Wavell Barracks. Quite how the hugely unimpressive subaltern had attracted the girl was a mystery to Mason. The last time the garrison had been called out at night for a “Rocking Horse” (the NATO code name for a rehearsal response to a Soviet attack), Angela’s current lover had failed to appear and was accordingly confined to barracks for three months.
Mason’s bete noire continued his lament. “The Everley children woke up and screamed at the crashing bins. Angela froze on me. She quite dried up. Those damned pigs ought to be shot.”
Mason grunted, mentally congratulating the dustbin-loving pigs, and left the room to book a call from the phone booth beside the anteroom. Because of the late hour, he was put through almost at once. Spike explained the background to the Muscat mission. Mason was obviously suited for the job. Spike had provisionally reserved him a seat on the 10 a.m. flight from Heathrow on March 5. Could he make it?
“Your timing is as lousy as ever.” Mason cursed his luck. He was due to start his annual leave on March 4. He and another officer would be skiing in Italy for a fortnight. There was no way, he knew, that he could hand over his Berlin duties until midnight on March 4. On the other hand he tried never to let Spike down. He made up his mind.
“I will check out the timings, Spike, and phone you back in an hour or two.”
Mason made a number of calls and his mood began to improve. His second conversation with Spike was a reverse-charge call placed from a booth outside the barracks. The anteroom phone was anything but confidential.
“By absconding on my leave some seven hours earlier than permitted,” Mason spoke with some relish, “by bribing a Royal Military Police NCO and by driving extremely fast during the night of March 4, I will just about be able to make the flight. My skiing friend, if asked at some later stage, will insist that I was indeed in Italy with him drinking Gluhwein and scorching the black runs. He assumes, I imagine, I’m going to have two dirty weeks with some married woman.” Mason inserted a hardness into his tone. “So I’m all set providing that you, Spike, will bend some of your normal rules.”
Spike responded with a sigh. “If you are thinking of taking any items with you, as per Cyprus, forget it.”
“No item, no Muscat, I’m afraid, Spike. I have great respect for your maxim in the UK but I have risked life and limb for two long years in Oman and the reason I am alive today is my maxim of self-preservation.”
Spike never wasted time in pointless repartee. “I have told you to travel legally. If you have other intentions, I know nothing about them.”
“Good,” said Mason. “The other matter is my expenses. Travel, accommodation, two thousand Deutschmarks for a gift to my RMP friend, and all incidental expenses.”
“No problem,” said Spike. “I will use your second passport to process your No Objection Certificate through Kendall’s and have it ready for you at Heathrow along with a photograph of the Welshman.”
Mason placed a further reverse-charge call to a close friend, Patrick Tanner, at his London flat. He apologized for the late hour but he urgently needed Patrick’s help along much the same lines as the previous year and involving more or less the same equipment. After some good-natured banter, Tanner copied down a complex shopping list. Most of the gear was to be had from Mason’s own safe room on his parents’ Oxfordshire estate. Mason’s father was a touch old-fashioned and did not take kindly to strange civilian friends of his son turning up to stay overnight unless, of course, David was with them at the time. On the other hand he was immensely proud of his son’s service record and any brother Guards officer was always welcome. For this reason, the previous year David had ensured a friendly welcome for Patrick Tanner by having him stand in for an actual Guards officer named Douglas Erskine-Crum, whom his father had heard of but never met. Tanner agreed that he would again present himself as Erskine-Crum, and Mason called his parents to warn them of his arrival the following evening. He would be needing a bed but no breakfast, as he must leave in the small hours for Scotland.
Patrick Tanner’s alarm sounded at 4 a.m. He left a thank-you note to the Masons on his bedside table and descended to the study for the safe-room key. David had told him exactly where to find it. Quietly, lest David’s father should be a poor sleeper, he unlocked the heavy safe-room door, disabled the inner alarms and, with admiration and a touch of envy, surveyed the guns that lined the walls. He was thankful for the checklist David had given him the previous year. On that occasion he had retrieved the Colt Python. 357 Magnum revolver.
There were a number of shotguns-. 410s, 20-bore and 16-bore-but the prize items were a pair of 12-bore Purdeys with thirty-inch barrels and made in the 1920s, the best period for English game guns.
Patrick smiled as he read through the checklist. David was a connoisseur. The list was almost a homily: S amp;W. 45 ACP Auto, 9 shot. Good auto, quick firing, etc., but like all autos is more prone to jamming than a revolver. Walther PP. 32 caliber. Excellent small auto, but needs very accurate shot (or 2 to 3 rounds) to stop quarry. Any pistol with a smaller caliber than this is frankly of no use for anything other than firing into one’s mouth if one needs a new tooth filling. Walther. 22LR Semiauto rifle with sound moderator (silencer) for vermin (ideal for rabbits). Colt Python. 357 Magnum Revolver. Heavy and deadly accurate. I get four-inch groups at 100 yards. The best revolver made. Fires heavy 160-grain slug. Stephen Grant. 22 Hornet For slightly larger vermin. Deadly accurate up to 120-150 yards, then trajectory falls off quickly. Converted by J. Rigby amp; Co., from the original. 250 “rook rifle” caliber. Parker-Hale. 243 Rifle. Cheap but accurate. Good flat trajectory for vermin out of range of. 22 Hornet. Rigby. 275 Mauser action rifles. I have three of these, one with an extra-long barrel and two with standard barrels. Superb rifles, ideal for deer-stalking. One has a Zeiss 4? 40mm scope, one a Pecar 4? 30mm, and the long-barreled one has open sights only. Daniel Frazer. 303 Double rifle. Collector’s item. Very accurate. Rigby. 350 Magnum Mauser action rifle. Oldish (1920s). Very reliable. Open sights. For big game. Rigby. 375 H amp;H Magnum Rifle. Converted from. 350 special (an obsolete caliber). Marvelous rifle-will stop just about anything. Kick like a mule. 1.5-6? 40 Zeiss scope. Pair of Purdey. 450 Double rifles. Collector’s items (turn of the century). Rigby. 470 Nitro Express Double rifle. Fantastic weapon. Beautifully made (c. 1930). Mint condition-very valuable. Will stop anything. Makes a noise like a nuclear explosion when fired (500-grain bullet @ 2,150 fps). You will notice from the above that most of my rifles are made by John Rigby amp; Co. For a century now they have in my opinion been the best riflemakers of all (they still are) although in terms purely of accuracy rather than quality of workmanship there are quite a few other good names. Those are the rifles and handguns I have at the moment. As far as military weapons are concerned, my favorite is the Russian AKM assault rifle (brilliantly simple, no-nonsense design, never jams, small and maneuverable, lightweight ammo, etc.), and my least favorite is anything that has been issued to the British Army since they replaced the. 303 Lee Enfield rifle and Bren LMG, with the honorable exception of the L42 sniper’s rifle and to some extent the GPMG, although both would be better if they used. 303 ammunition modified to rimless, instead of. 308 Winchester (7.62mm NATO). The SLR, the Sterling SMG and the Browning 9mm “Hi-Power” auto pistol are all badly designed, fault prone, bloody awful weapons, although the silenced version of the Sterling has its uses…
Patrick folded away Mason’s note, unclipped the. 22 Hornet from its rack and removed sufficient materials and tools to make up ten rounds of. 22 ammunition from a box in the drawer immediately below. He selected a hardened-plastic rifle case from the relevant rack and spent the better part of an hour centralizing the smaller items on David’s ancillaries list. Finally he removed a battered brown suitcase containing clothing. Not all the gear Mason had requested was in evidence but Patrick had put together a shopping list to attend to later in the day. He replaced the keys, let himself out of the house and drove his VW camper as quietly as the gravel allowed down the driveway of Eynsham Park.
At 5 p.m. on March 4, having handed over his duties as early as was feasible, David Mason left Wavell Barracks in a hurry. He was technically seven hours AWOL since his two weeks’ leave did not officially begin until midnight. Fifteen minutes later he arrived at Checkpoint Bravo, entry point to the Berlin Corridor, and frowned with irritation at the line of cars awaiting document checks. He jumped the queue and flashed his ID card at a queuing burgermeister type who showed signs of indignation. The RMP duty warrant officer was immediately on hand and Mason passed him the two-thousand-Deutschmark traveler’s check to which he had previously agreed in return for keeping a space for 4:30 p.m. for Mason’s green Porsche 911, British Forces Germany registration number EZ 242 B. The warrant officer took details of Mason’s BFG license, his ID, and Green Card insurance cover. The Berlin Corridor system was rigidly controlled to ensure that no driver had time to spare, after leaving the checkpoint at either end of the corridor, to leave the road for nefarious purposes, such as smuggling locals to the West.
The regulations also ensured that no speeding could take place by stipulating a minimum time limit of two hours for the hundred-mile drive. Mason left the checkpoint at 5:30 p.m., not at 4:30 as stamped on his pass by the warrant officer. He was therefore able to average a hundred miles an hour along the potholed corridor and still arrive at the “correct time” of 6:30 p.m. at the Helmstedt Volkspolizei checkpoint out of East Germany.
The East German border guards were perfunctory in their check, and the British NCOs at Checkpoint Alpha passed Mason through without a second glance. He then settled down to some serious autobahn driving via Hanover, Dortmund, and the Belgian border at Aachen, passing through that unmanned border post at 135 mph.
He reached Zeebrugge at 10:15 p.m. and caught the 11 p.m. ferry. On board he purchased twelve rolls of Kodak Tri-X film and four rolls of Ilford FP4 film, both 35mm, at the duty-free shop and slept for two hours.
After clearing Dover Customs at 4:30 a.m., he set off along the A2 and M2 to London, then, via the M4, to Heathrow, where, at 7 a.m., he drew up behind Patrick’s VW camper on the access road to the long-term car park.
Inside the curtained and locked rear of the van the two men drank black coffee from Patrick’s vacuum flask and Mason lit up a cigar and placed the. 22 rifle, with all the other items that Patrick produced, on the camper’s kitchen table. He carefully explained to Patrick exactly what must be done over the next two hours.
Patrick switched on the car’s ignition to activate the extractor fan in the hope that it would deal with the cigar smoke before he died of asphyxiation and to ensure that their conversation was inaudible outside the van. A BBC newscaster wished them good morning with the news that thousands had died in an earthquake in Romania.
The rifle, Mason explained, had been manufactured by Stephen Grant amp; Son of 67a St. James’s Street, London, in the early 1930s. It had been made as a. 25 rook rifle and was later rechambered for. 22 Hornet bullets. The outside of its barrel was octagonal, giving it an antique appearance that belied its efficiency. The action worked from a side lever and opened like a modern shotgun, being single-shot, not magazine-loaded.
To dismantle the weapon, Mason removed the wooden fore-end piece in front of the trigger guard and, breaking the gun by pushing down the side lever, he hinged the barrel down and away.
The camper’s built-in cooker had two gas rings over which Mason held a twenty-four-inch length of one-eighth-inch-diameter 8 SWG steel rod, and in his other hand, the barrel of the rifle. Patrick heated a black candle so its melted wax dripped down into an eggpoacher.
Mason smeared a chewed wad of gum with engine oil and pushed it into the barrel’s muzzle end. He then held the heated barrel upright with its muzzle on the floor and inserted the twenty-four-inch rod into the twenty-six-inch barrel until it disappeared. He shook the barrel lightly and the rod rattled audibly. Patrick then poured the melted wax into the barrel through a funnel so it filled the entire area between the rod and the inside wall of the rifled barrel. Once the rifle and the rod cooled down, the wax solidified and the rod was rigidly sealed into position.
Removing the wad of gum, Mason applied varnish with an artist’s brush to both ends of the captive rod, dabbed on gun-black as a final camouflage coat, and tapped both ends of the rod with a screwdriver. The effect was that of a police-plugged barrel. To all intents and purposes the weapon was now merely a decommissioned antique. As such, it could travel legally and document-free as air cargo. Mason reassembled the rifle, having first removed the firing pin and mainspring. Then he locked it into the plastic rifle case and stubbed out his cigar.
“The next stage,” he told Patrick, “will take longer.” He removed four cassettes of Ilford FP4 film with their plastic containers and began to force their tops off gently with a standard bottle opener. “I wasted hours when I first tried this with Kodak cassettes. They come off okay but they’re buggers to reassemble. Also the hollow area inside the spools of these Ilford cassettes is more spacious.”
Mason used a modeling knife to cut away the main central portion of the take-up spool. He retained only the now truncated ends, each of which looked rather like a miniature black top hat. He set Patrick to work on a second Ilford cassette and turned his attention to the components of the ten. 22 Hornet bullets. First the empty cases, new and unprimed. These he prepared one by one with Eley primers by placing a primer onto a Lyman ram tool and pushing it firmly down into an empty case held in the slot of a Lachmiller priming clamp. When five of the cases were primed, he bound them into a tight bundle using surgical tape. He then positioned an Ilford spool “top hat” on either end of the bundle and forced it into the original Ilford cassette casing. The caps, which he had earlier removed by bottle-opener leverage, he now replaced by simple pressure until they once again mated over and around the “top hats.” Since the Hornet cases were exactly thirty-five millimeters in length, they fitted with precision into the space vacated by the film.
The finished cassette looked as good as new, although it now weighed thirty-three grams instead of twenty. When Mason had primed the remaining five empty cases, he fed them into the guts of the cassette that Patrick had successfully doctored. Cutting five inches of film leader from one of the discarded films, he inverted it to protrude in the normal manner. Loading the cassette into one of his Olympus OM-1 cameras, he made sure that the leader covered the camera’s take-up spool without actually entering the winder slot. After closing the camera he pulled back the film-advance lever a dozen times. Although the film itself did not move, the exposure-counter window now registered 12. He fed the second camera with the other five disguised bullet cases. On the security X ray, the intricate components of the cameras would disguise the presence of the cartridge cases.
Only the bullets themselves and the gunpowder remained to be dealt with. Mason used small balance scales to weigh out eleven grains of IMR 4227 gunpowder, which he poured into a small, square plastic bag labeled “Silica-gel Desiccant.” He sealed the bag with instant glue and repeated the process twelve times, allowing two extra bags for damage or wastage at a customs inspection. The bags went into a side pocket of Mason’s camera case. If inspected for drugs, the gunpowder was tasteless and, like silica gel, hygroscopic. The case also contained a fold-away developing tank, trays, chemicals, paper, and the parts of an enlarger.
The ten Hornady forty-five grain (2.9 gram). 22 Hornet hollow-point bullets fitted perfectly into the central space of two packets of Polo mints that Mason put into his trouser pocket.
Thirty more minutes were spent checking and packing all the equipment, and at 8:50 a.m. Patrick left Mason at the Terminal 3 Departure Lounge. The Gulf Air check-in counter took his large suitcase and the rifle case as cargo baggage and he passed through to Emigration.
At the X-ray machine, Mason placed his hand luggage on the conveyor belt and entered the walk-through metal detector, which bleeped loudly at him. A security officer had him empty his pockets onto the side table and try again. Next time the machine was silent but he was “patted down” and the contents of his pockets were checked item by item. These consisted of keys, wristwatch, steel Parker pen, coins, sunglasses, penknife, handkerchief and Polo mints. All were passed as innocent.
Mason’s hand baggage was opened by an efficient lady in a well-filled gray sweater. She switched on his razor, dictaphone, and radio and inspected his cameras and lenses with care. She ignored the silica-gel bags and various other small, harmless-looking items.
As soon as Mason finished with Security he headed for the toilets in the Departure Lounge, where he taped a polythene bag to the inside of one of the cisterns. The bag contained all his “guilty” items, including bugging gear, firing pin, Polos and doctored cassettes. He reloaded his cameras with genuine Ilford film.
No sooner was he seated behind a newspaper in the Departure Lounge than his name was called out on the Tannoy. He must return to Security. Once there he was taken to a side room and confronted with his rifle case. This he unloaded, explaining that the gun was a decommissioned antique for which he had an exchange-buyer in Muscat. He intended to bring back a six-foot-long matchlock if the sale went well.
The officers seemed satisfied but rechecked all Mason’s gear. This went ahead without a hitch and he returned to the toilets to retrieve his equipment. He recalled that the previous year he had felt guilty during the recheck en route to Cyprus. This time he had been troubled by no such twinges.
Davies had still not boarded by the time of the last call for their flight, but Mason spotted and identified him with considerable relief soon after it was made. The Welshman traveled First Class, Mason in Economy.
The TriStar was half full until Doha but then filled up, mostly with Asians, for the final legs to Dubai and Muscat. It touched down at Seeb International Airport shortly before midnight. The night air was cool, and Davies was met by a cab driver holding a name board. While Davies returned to await his baggage amid a milling bustle of Asians, Mason asked the Welshman’s driver if he was free.
“Sorry, sah’b, I take another man to Gulf Hotel. But no worry. Many more taxi outside for you.”
Mason relaxed. Spike already had him booked into the Muscat Gulf, the best of the only three available hotels in all Oman. There was now no need to worry if Davies’s bags appeared before his own.