More on POV: Chapters 1&3 of “Blood Summit” are from the POV of the protagonist, Helen Gale. Chapters 2&4 have different POVs.
More on POV – Point of View
Chapter 4 of my Berlin thriller Blood Summit is an illustration of introducing a third point of view, or POV, into a thriller. If you are interested in finding out more about POV, you may like to compare:
- Chapter 1: Helen Gale POV
- Chapter 2: Uli Wenger POV
- Chapter 3: Helen Gale POV
- Chapter 4 (below): Dieter Kremp POV
The Reichstag dome. Warning: bad things happen here in “Blood Summit”
More on POV: Dieter Kremp
How did Dieter Kremp, Deputy Head of the Summit Security Unit and a macho package of anger, “exquisite, toned musculature” and chauvinism, become the lover of Helen Gale – a Cambridge-educated top diplomat? How did the US Secret Service almost stop the Summit happening?
Find out more about Dieter and Helen, and more about POV, now.
BLOOD SUMMIT: CHAPTER 4
As he ran towards the Summit Security Unit command bunker, Dieter Kremp was reminded with a jolt how much he hated the logo for the Children’s Summit. A Berlin bear on its back, for Christ’s sake, balancing a cute kid on each of its sharp-clawed paws. The bear grinned playfully – hungrily, more like – as it performed this unnatural act.
Dieter scowled. The politicians claimed that the package of economic reforms the Summit would agree was so revolutionary it would transform the lives not only of today’s children but of their children, too. So they had invited a hundred kids from across the world to attend the opening ceremony. Dieter didn’t care about that. But he hated the fact that one of the two-metre-high bears-with-children had been stuck to the steel plates that formed the perimeter of the Safety Zone. It made him curse each time he entered the Bunker: a mess on the metal, like bird-shit on a Porsche.
He placed his eye to the retina scanner and the door slid open, releasing a chill blast of air. The stupid logo, Dieter could tolerate. Helen Gale was harder. Half the time he wanted to kill the blonde Englishwoman. The rest of the time he wanted to screw her. Either way, she drove him crazy.
Only one officer sat in the Bunker.
Katia Vonhof was monitoring the main security console. With her unkempt mane of black, shoulder-length hair and gaunt features, Katia barely registered with Dieter as a woman. But she possessed a legendary understanding of computers and video surveillance technology. Where did Johann find these people?
Yet again, Dieter was filled with admiration for the charismatic boss of the Summit Security Unit. Outside the counter-terrorism community, few knew the name of Johann Frost. When he had first been appointed, senior figures in the police and military had questioned whether someone raised in what had been East Germany would have the qualities and connections for such a vital mission. Johann had confounded them all by filling the SSU with the best counter-terrorism specialists the country had to offer.
It had been Johann’s idea to extend the trawl for the twenty-four members of the new Summit Security Unit beyond GSG 9, the elite anti-terrorist squad in which both he and Dieter had been trained. The SSU chief had spent months travelling around Germany, selecting recruits from regional police forces, army formations, and even the Ministry of the Interior. Bringing to bear extraordinary leadership, he had melded the disparate elements of the unit into a team the equal of anything in Europe or beyond. In exchange training, members of the SSU nominated by Johann had held their own with the best the US Delta Force and the British SAS had to offer. Two of them, the brothers Lukas and Philipp Klein from Mainz, had finished top in the sniping competition at Fort Bragg. Dieter looked at Katia Vonhof. If there had been a surveillance technology event in North Carolina she would have won it blindfold.
‘Who is at the British Embassy?’ he asked her.
‘Johann has gone there.’ The young SSU officer continued to scan the bank of monitors.
‘He went himself?’
‘Yes.’
Dieter sat down at one of the desks that ringed the room and keyed in his code. No-one had a dedicated terminal in the Bunker, any more than they had a single script to follow in the event of an emergency. Flexibility was the key. Flexibility, and vision. It had been Johann Frost’s vision to train a cadre so small and expert as to deliver omnipresent, yet invisible security. Once the delegations entered the Safety Zone, the only armed forces on the ground would be the SSU team.
Almost. The trouble had started there. Within hours of the German government circulating the security concept for the Children’s Summit, the US Secret Service had stated that they must assign their own armed agents to protect the President inside the Reichstag or the President would not attend. End of discussion.
Dieter called it an insult to Germany; to the Summit Security Unit; to Johann Frost. But the Federal Chancellor had rolled right over. It was more important that the President attended the Summit than that Johann, the man responsible for security, ran his own show. Both Johann and Dieter had tendered their resignations. But when Interior Minister Tilo Pollex had called personally to ask them to stay on, the leader and deputy leader of the SSU had swallowed their pride.
Once they had got their way with the Secret Service agents, the Americans had begun to push everyone around. The next battleground had been the Threat Assessment Committee.
There, Dieter had first met Helen Gale.
Threat assessment formed part of the planning for all international gatherings. The idea was to pool intelligence of possible dangers from terrorism and civil disturbance and assess the implications for security. It was meant to be a routine round of meetings and paperwork. Johann had delegated the job to Dieter without hesitating. But the Committee had been a nightmare.
The British alone had sent two representatives each from the Secret Intelligence Service and the Security Service, plus a bluff policeman with rolled-up sleeves from Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorist unit who’d looked as if he would happily kill with his bare hands any terrorists he came across. This herd of experts had been corralled by the sixth member of the delegation: a freckled blonde in a short skirt from the British embassy in Berlin. Dieter had assumed Helen Gale to be someone’s secretary. Only later had he realised the magnitude of his mistake.
The French, Russian, Italian, Canadian and Japanese had delegations as bloated as the British team. But the Americans had sent three times as many: CIA, FBI, NSA, Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service – the list seemed endless. Maybe terror groups measured their success not in how many people they killed, but in how many experts wasted their days labouring on the futile treadmill that counter-terrorism had become. By that measure, the terrorists had already won.
Dieter’s telephone rang.
‘Johann here. Anything new on the embassy bombing? I am there.’
Dieter glanced at his monitor. ‘No-one has claimed it.’
‘Call me if they do. I am talking to the forensic people: if we can ID the bomb, we can ID the bomb-maker. Can you send back-up?’
‘Only Katia is here.’
‘What about Petra? She should be finished at the US embassy by now.’
‘I haven’t seen her.’ Dieter checked the duty log. Johann was right, as usual. SSU officer Petra Bleibtreu had been running through sniper positions with the Secret Service. But her meeting had been due to finish an hour ago.
‘Maybe the Americans wanted more information,’ Johann said.
‘They do not ask for much, the Amis.’
Johann grunted. ‘Especially not the Secret Service. A pleasure to work with.’
‘How does it look in the Wilhelmstrasse?’ Dieter said. ‘The British say they have casualties.’
‘I cannot move for ambulances.’
‘Good. Will you update the Interior Ministry?’
‘Sounds bureaucratic. You do it.’ Johann rang off.
Dieter returned to his computer screen. Reuters reported that the police had rounded up a selection of prominent Islamists. As if the bombers would be sitting around at home. At least the Berlin cops could act without consulting the Threat Assessment Committee.
If the size of the Committee seemed cumbersome, the meetings were disfunctional. The first few sessions had adopted a table-round format, each delegation vying to show that it knew more about the threats facing the Summit than anyone else. But it soon became clear that when it came to compiling blood-curdling intelligence, the Anglo-Saxons played in a league of their own.
Everyone knew that Washington and London devoted a grotesque proportion of their gross national product to amassing secrets. Some information came from actual human beings. But most came from electronic eavesdropping: by the National Security Agency on the part of the US, and by the Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, on behalf of the British. Dieter had never heard anything like it. By the time he had sat through the first recitation of the threats the CIA and SIS believed hung over the Summit, he found it hard to imagine that a single aggrieved individual, much less any terrorist group, had been left off the list.
Dieter Kremp and the Summit Security Unit found themselves engulfed in a tidal wave of advice on how to do their job. If one security airlock controlled access to the Reichstag, they needed two; if two, four. If SSU officers planned to wear body armour, had they considered the latest Kevlar products? And had the German authorities considered adding a second ring of barriers around the Reichstag to deter suicide bombers? At the third meeting of the committee, Dieter announced straight-faced that Berlin had decided to retrofit the city’s entire fleet of police BMW saloons with Chobham composite armour at a cost of one million euro per vehicle. Only one person had smiled at his joke. Helen Gale.
The British diplomat’s intellect and unpredictability made her formidable. At some meetings she barely spoke, but doodled on a pad or gazed at her laptop as if she didn’t give a damn what the meeting decided. Other times, she would raise some intercepted phone call by terrorist group X, and ask how Dieter proposed to respond. That was always it. How he proposed to respond.
Whatever the threat, you could be sure Dieter was hearing of it for the first time. And you could be certain that the entire 20-strong CIA contingent would speak right out in support of Helen Gale. The British and Americans would refuse to accept any response that didn’t increase security for the Summit. It became a joke in Berlin: if they added any more fortifications, the entire Reichstag would sink into the sandy soil.
Until three months ago, Dieter Kremp had viewed Helen Gale as more of a threat to the Summit’s success than any possible combination of terrorists.
Then Paris had happened. Helen Gale’s spook pals had let their distinguished Foreign Secretary step into a car outside their Paris embassy; allowed the ambassador, a security man and a driver to get in with him; surrounded the vehicle with diplomats; and covered their ears as four kilograms of what the French called le plastique ripped seven people to pieces. Thirty more had been hospitalised, many of them hit by flying debris. These were the experts telling the SSU how to run the Summit.
It would be too much to say that when the Threat Assessment Committee met the day after Paris, Helen Gale had been transformed. But for the first time, Dieter had seen her self-possession slip to reveal a hint of – what? Loneliness? Loss? Whatever it was, that glimpse of vulnerability had triggered in him a rush of desire. Might a dazzling, Cambridge-educated diplomat be within reach of the son of a metal-worker from the Ruhr?
Dieter Kremp always made decisions quickly. After the meeting, he had taken Helen Gale to one side and asked her out for a drink. He had been surprised when she had accepted; and astonished when, after a meal, a club and countless cocktails, she invited him back to her flat in the Voxstrasse. That night she had seemed desperate to have him. Maybe the bomb in Paris had shaken her; she had been willing to do anything that first night. Almost anything. In private, she turned passionate yet controlled; serious, but with flashes of deadpan humour; wild, yet determined to set the rules. Dieter had never before met a woman he could not dominate. Well, he had time. The British embassy in Berlin had been blown up, the day before the Summit
That was a tragedy. But for Dieter Kremp, it was an opportunity. Would Helen Gale feel vulnerable tonight? It would be wrong to let a chance like this go by.
(Excerpt ends)
Next steps
Blood Summit is on Amazon, as an e-book and as a paperback – feel free to pick up a copy.
My best tip to new writers is to keep honing your technique, including learning more about POV. You may also enjoy my writing tips category on this blog.
You can read the complete introduction to the novel at my Blood Summit page.
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