The Helsinki Pact Read Online Free PDF Page A

where to break through.
The building was old but also had been put up during a period of
cost cutting and shoddy construction and the floor carried the
characteristic crack pattern of a poorly controlled initial mix,
perhaps worsened through frost damage during some of the severe
winters when the basement was largely unused.
    “Come on! Come on! We gotta train
to catch and it won’t wait. WhooooHoooo! WhooooHoooo! Let’s get
this baby goin’!” Kai sang. He pointed to a spot close to the west
wall of the room, facing towards Alexanderplatz, where the cracks
were more numerous and deeper and where a few small plugs of
concrete had pulled out and left conical dips two or three
centimetres across running in a rough arc. “What about
here?”
    “Sure. Seems good as anywhere.”
Bernhard propped up the alarm box where he could see it, pulled on
the ear muffs and mouth mask, plugged in the jack drill and
switched on the power at the socket. “Better put your fingers in
your ears if you plan to stay. This is loud!”
    He held the cross bar firmly in
his left hand, grasped the other handle with his right, pushed the
bit into a small cavity in the floor and pulled the
trigger.
    Despite the warning the volume of
noise in the small room shocked Kai. The roar of the powerful motor
combined with the harsh thumping screech of the bit pounding and
turning on the concrete blasted off the room’s hard surfaces,
bouncing and echoing around them, defeating his fingers in his ears
and setting his teeth on edge. “Jesus Christ!”
    Almost immediately the red light
on the alarm box glowed and went off. Bernhard switched off the
drill and the three stood listening.
    “You two wait here till I find
out what’s going on. Maybe that woman’s back early. Best I go and
check with Ulrike.”
    The corridor was empty as Kai
left the room and he found Ulrike half way up the stairs looking
worried. “God! Kai. What was all that noise? It sounded like you
were demolishing the building.”
    “That’s a bit awkward if it’s so
noisy. Let’s see what it’s like in the hall.”
    They walked up the stairs, opened
the door at the top and stood in the empty hall. Frau Schwinewitz’s
apartment door was firmly closed and they had to assume she was
still out being debriefed. Ulrike pressed the button on the alarm
device three times in quick succession and in a moment the dull
roar of the drill began again, reduced by the distance and the
closed doors but still clearly audible.
    “Music! That might help. You stay
here in the hall Ulrike. They might as well get on with it but
watch out for anyone coming. Send the signal if any of the doors
open.”
    Kai ran up to the apartment and
returned quickly with the ghetto blaster, taking it down to the
basement. The drilling noise stopped, replaced by the first track
of Never Mind the Bollocks played at full volume, the sound
penetrating the hall, somewhat muffled but still powerful, then
stopped.
    “Klaus complained! Said that
racket was worse than the drill.” Kai laughed as he reappeared. “I
told him he could stand in the corridor if he didn’t appreciate
great music. Let’s hear it with the drill. Bernhard’s going to run
it more slowly to try to cut the noise down.” He pressed the button
on the alarm device three times and the shoe stamping of Holidays
in the Sun broke out, overlaid with what might have been mistaken
for an eccentric and rapid boot stamping variant, a crazed cover
version, had it not gone on insistently through the following
tracks. Kai stood listening for several minutes, walking about the
hall and up to the first floor.
    “Hmm. It’ll do, I suppose. Have
to. At least it hides it a bit and maybe it won’t take too long to
break through the floor. You’d best stay up here. I bet it’ll be
Braun from the first floor who’ll come nosing around, though,
complaining about ‘that racket’ if he hears anything. You know the
one I mean, him always going on about decadent youth