by Adam Hall
Scared to death because I hadn’t wanted to mount this operation and I’d done it reluctantly and that’s infinitely worse for the nerves. I knew that Shepley was pushing the Bureau to the limits trying to locate Horst Volper and I knew that Yasolev and his cell were doing the same, and at any time they could come up with some kind of access for me that would take me off the street and put me into a new direction. But they hadn’t found anything and all I could do was sit here in this bloody place and hope these two would try an attack so that I could nail one or both of them and wring some information out of them, sit here and hope at the same time that they’d decide not to attack because it could easily go their way instead of mine and they could walk out of here a minute from now or an hour from now and leave me curled up in the cleaner’s closet or one of the cubicles in the lav with my head on my chest and my eyes looking at nothing, nothing at all, while the blood - oh Jesus Christ this is the trade you’re in and this is the way you want to play it so don’t bloody well whine.
Got a bun.
Went and got a bun from the filthy cracked marble counter and paid for it, a huge woman, face like a po, her eyes already mourning a lost future, sat down again and started on the thing though I wasn’t hungry - I needed fifteen more minutes in here and it was something to do, but at least I’d got a glimpse of him, the one by the door, in the mirror behind the counter, and that was a plus because it could be very important indeed if later the same man - if I got out of here - the same man came close to me in a crowd; I’d be able to recognise him and get a chance of jumping the gun.
But let’s not talk about guns. Right - I never draw one when I’m going through Clearance because they can be dangerous: it’s not just professional caprice. Carrying one of those things can make people nervous and they’ll pay you a lot more attention and try for an overkill before you can do any useful work; but let them know you’re unarmed and in their opinion harmless and they’ll come up quite close and then you can go in with the hands and do a very great deal more damage than a bit of hot copper because you can be selective, picking on the right nerve for the job, producing paralysis or producing pain, the intense pain that’s guaranteed to cool them off and get some answers out of them.
But it’s like seat belts: they’re effective eighty per cent of the time and for the other twenty per cent you’re on your own. One of these people could pull something out and use it from where he was sitting, dropping me like a bird off a bough. The risks are calculated, and they’re the only kind I ever take.
The one in the corner had gone to the phone when he’d come in here and that was why they weren’t making a move. One of two things was on the programme: he’d got instructions to wait here until I left and keep up the tag, or he’d asked for someone else to get here very fast indeed because they had me set up and were ready for the kill.
It really was a bloody awful bun. This was East Berlin, not West, none of your delicate mille-feuilles or rum babas, just this rotten lump of crud straight out of the granary, rat-shit and all.
At 3:16 I began looking at my watch. The time wasn’t critical, not important; it was just that the chances of doing anything in here weren’t very good. The situation was far too static: when the time came for me to move in on them it’d be when things were suddenly starting to go very fast, so that I could work with reactions and reflexes, find a totally unrehearsed opening and take it on the wing, because the only way you can work this particular operation is in hot blood and with the system full of adrenalin.
At 3:27 I got up and went over to the phone on the wall and dialled at random. The two tags hadn’t been joined by anyone: the only people who’d come in here in the last eleven minutes were two women and a man with one arm.
Ringing tone. Five, six, seven. Not at home.
‘I can’t be there at the time we agreed on.’
Waited.
‘I know, Heinrich. I’m sorry. I’ll call you again as soon as I can.’
I put the phone back and said Auf Wiedersehen to the big fat woman and walked out of the cafe and turned left without hesitation and had to go half a mile before a bus slowed at a stop and some people got off and it pulled out again and I kept on walking until the rear doorway was abreast of me and I ran flat out and just made it.
‘You shouldn’t do that!’
Verboten, so forth.
Pitching a bit as the thing changed gear.
‘I could have you arrested!’
Abuse of petty authority; it was all the rage because these poor bastards had no authority, by grace of their Soviet overlords.
‘Have a heart, comrade, my wife’s ill and I’ve got to get home.’
But I could have got myself killed, peaked cap and a righteous glare, and then I wouldn’t have got home at all, would I, so forth.
Paid the fare and took a seat and used the windows and saw the four-door 230 keeping station at a circumspect fifty metres behind. It had been standing near the cafe in support of the two tags and they’d either climbed in before it moved off or they hadn’t; it made no difference: Volper would have a dozen men in the field.
‘Is it the flu?’
‘What?’
‘Your wife.’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s going around. Plenty of rest.’
‘That’s right.’
There was a chance that they’d try driving me into a corner somewhere and make a snatch instead of a killing. Not a big chance but I couldn’t ignore it. I’d come out from London and I’d been holed up with Cone and Yasolev and we’d been in signals and Volper might decide I’d be worth snatching first and grilling before he had me put out of the way. It didn’t worry me too much at this stage; they wouldn’t find it easy and if I got it wrong then I had the capsule and I wouldn’t think twice because there was enough information on the Bureau inside my head to blow it clean out of the European intelligence community.
I got out at Strausbergerplatz and walked as far as Blumenstrasse and they came very close and I felt the air-rush and bounced off the side panel of the front wing and went spinning across the pavement while the tyres squealed and someone caught me before I could go pitching down, the rooftops reeling across the vision-field and the stink of exhaust gas and the terrible fear that they’d stop and get out and finish me off, catch me while I was off balance and unprepared.
‘Are you all right?’
Said I was, trying to get focus back, trying to get ready in case they stopped and came for me.
‘He must have been drunk!’
Eyes watching me, full of concern, hands on my arms in case I fell.
‘Yes. Must’ve been.’
‘Are you hurt anywhere?’
‘No. I’m - ‘
‘You were lucky.’
‘Yes. I’m all right now. Thank you. Good of you.’
‘Do you want to sit down somewhere?’
‘No. No, thank you.’
And at a deeper level of consciousness below the polite exchange the creeping of dread, because it had been extremely close and yes indeed I’d been lucky and if they’d come an inch or two nearer they’d have spun me round with a smashed spine and left me face-down on the pavement with my arms flung out, finis, the unfortunate victim of a dastardly hit-an-run accident involving a black Mercedes saloon for which the police are now searching assiduously, so forth, and a signal to London, shadow down.
‘Well, I’ll be on my way.’
‘What? Yes. Yes, very kind, thank you.’
The creeping of dread because however much you’re aware that you’re inviting attack, however carefully you’re playing it by the book, the shock of a close call reminds the psyche that its death is sought, its extermination, eagerly sought; and there’s something horribly personal in this, horribly intimate, and it reaches down into the secret confines of the personality and plunders it, and leaves its effect, which can finally be devastating. It’s this feeling that brings a man back from a mission with a shut face and slow spee
ch as he sits in one of those small stuffy rooms with his operations director and signs his name on the form, request no further action in the field.
Walking on, bumping into someone - Verzeihen Sie - then finding equilibrium again, walking past the line at a bus stop at 4:15 in the afternoon with the dark down and the tops of the buildings lost in a creeping fog.
It had been like a shark.
More people in the streets now, the traffic bunching at the lights. Another hour and work would be over.
Like a shark, that thing.
Yes, like a shark, shuddup. The end of the working day would be over and they could get into their coats and line up for the buses and the trams and the trains and go home.
With its jaws open when it came past.
Oh for the sake of Jesus Christ shuddup, it’s over now and we’re still alive, it’s not the first time you’ve come close to blowing it. Stamping their feet at the bus stop, breath like steam, going home, sweet home, with all the evening in front of them, a nice hot dish of sauerkraut and spuds, or would you like to see a movie tonight?
4:20 in the afternoon and this one man moving among all the others, not of them, not of their company but isolated, an outcast, threading his clandestine way through the city on his own surreptitious purposes, while the Mercedes turned again at the Andreasstrasse intersection and started a loop for the second time, and the man in the black wool coat and scarf kept pace on the other side.
I would like to see a movie, yes. I would like to see a movie very much.
Walking a little quicker now; the scenario required it: I still had a rendezvous to keep and I still had to throw off the surveillance before I could keep it.
Waited ten minutes for a bus and got on and saw the Mercedes three vehicles behind and the Lancia parked near the U-Bahnhof with its engine running: I could see the exhaust gas.
This at least I knew now: they wouldn’t try for a snatch in the hope of’ grilling me. They were here for a kill of whatever kind - at close quarters or with a hit-and-run attack or a premeditated set-up involving precision. The shark thing had just been impulsive, but it proved their intention: death in the afternoon.
At 4:38 I got onto a train at Ost-Bahnhof and took it as far as Ostkreuz, with one of the men who’d been in the cafe getting on soon after me and sitting with his back turned at the end of the compartment, facing a glazed poster with useful reflection. Back in the street at Ostkreuz I walked south along Markgrafendamm with the same man behind me and a BMW cruising in from a side street: the people on foot would have been using their radios but there hadn’t been time for the Mercedes or the Lancia to get here - they wouldn’t have known where I was until I got off the train and they had the signal. They’d brought in the BMW from somewhere closer; it had pulled into the traffic twice and stopped twice, keeping its distance.
At Straulauer Allee I went into a cafe and used the phone. Steamy windows and the smell of stale cigarette-smoke and a litter of crumbs and slops on the plastic tables, two cab-drivers with a jug of coffee and a sandwich from the machine, a man in the corner, possibly a tag, his attitude too casual, a man coming in, certainly a tag, the one who’d been on the train.
‘Hello?’
‘I still can’t throw them off.’
‘What? This is Frau Hauffman.’
‘All I can do is phone you when there’s a chance.’
‘Who are you, please?’
‘Don’t leave the phone; I’ll call you again soon.’
I believe you have the wrong number, so forth; neither of them moved when I walked out of the cafe into the Allee and across to Elsenstrasse and the bridge.
The feeling of dread persisting, haunting the nerves, the bruise on the hip a reminder of how close they’d come, how close they would come again.
The traffic across the bridge was light; there was no one walking: it was too cold. Below the balustrade the black waters of the river glittered from bank to bank with the lights of the city, and the air was freezing, here in the open away from the buildings. I walked steadily, meaning to go as far as Puschkin Allee and then make a loop and turn back on my tracks and make a run for it, a very fast run that might bring just one of them, only one of them close to me where I could work on him; but they were getting impatient now and I could see three of them ahead of me at the far end of the bridge and when I looked behind me there were two more and the profile of the BMW gathering speed and I felt the rush of adrenalin and the sour taste in the mouth at the onset of fear as I reached the middle of the bridge and they began shutting the trap.
Chapter 13
PICKPOCKET
Smell of burning flesh; it clung to my coat.
‘Have you got anyone in the field?’
More police cars were going in to the bridge; I couldn’t see them from here but I could hear their sirens.
‘I did have.’
Cone.
There was still the glow of the fire on the wall of the building opposite.
‘Have you got anyone in the field now?’
I was furious.
‘I can’t say.’
Bastard was stonewalling.
People standing outside the apartment block, staring in the direction of the bridge, the light of the flames on their faces.
‘Look, I want an answer.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
The more you push Cone the harder he is to move. But then they’re all like that, the directors in the field, because part of their job is to handle their executives when there’s a flap on and they’re halfway up the wall.
‘Why not?’
‘You got rid of one,’ he said quietly, ‘but there might be a few others in your zone. I can’t say for sure unless one of them signals. What happened?’
‘One of the tags got snatched.’
‘One of their tags?’
‘Yes.’
In a moment, ‘How close were you?’
‘I was halfway across Elsenbridge and they got him at one end.’
‘Car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Police car?’
‘It could’ve been, yes, unmarked.’
I hadn’t seen anything close. The car had come past the BMW accelerating hard and then it had slewed to a halt by the three men and then there were two. The BMW had done a lot of wheelspin and got there in time but the other car had swung full circle and hit the tail-end and sent it rolling, and that was when the tank had gone up.
‘Was there any other action?’
I told him.
‘Do you think they might’ve been going to rush you?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Then what are you complaining about?’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, you know the operation I’m doing and you know how it works. If - ‘
‘I haven’t got a vehicle of any kind,’ he said, ‘in the field.’
‘Then it must have been Yasolev.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Who else?’
The glow had gone from the building, and the people were going back into the apartments. But that awful smell was still on my coat, sickening me. I’d walked past the burning car on the other side of the bridge when the fire crews were working there, and the air had been heavy with smoke and fumes. One of them had been trapped inside, one of Volper’s men.
‘I don’t know who else,’ I heard Cone saying, ‘but we’ve got a lot of interested parties, haven’t we? The KGB, the HUA, and whatever other enemies Horst Volper might have in the field. We can trip over anyone at all in the day’s work.’
It sounded as if he were putting smoke out, covering tracks, steering me away from the subject. I didn’t know Cone very well but it sounded like that.
‘Look, I want you to see Yasolev. I can’t talk to him direct because I haven’t got time. There are three tags still with me and I’m going on trying.’
One of them across at the intersection using a parked van for cover; two of them in the opposite directio
n, a little way along Puschkin Allee, one on each side of the street.
‘What do you want me to tell him?’
‘This is the thing: Yasolev could’ve decided to use me as a decoy to draw those people into the street, with the idea of snatching some of them. That’s what might have happened just now on the bridge. The man they took is probably in an interrogation room now, being worked over. If that’s what Yasolev is doing I want you to tell him he’s cutting right across my operation and breaking our agreement. Tell him that we’ll stay out here for just as long as he keeps his word and no longer.’
An ambulance turned off the bridge and headed south from the intersection; it wasn’t using its codes; there’d be only the burned corpse inside. I didn’t know whose it was, who the man had been, but he was possibly one of the tags I’d seen before on foot, or one of the two who’d followed me into the cafe. Life was that short, this afternoon, and the work wasn’t finished yet.
‘Would it be that bad an idea?’ Cone said.
‘Using me as a decoy?’
‘Yes.’
‘If all Yasolev wanted was a decoy he could’ve used any one of his peons, half a dozen at a time if they got wiped out.’
‘But they wouldn’t, would they? They wouldn’t have your status. Volper’s afraid you might infiltrate his operation and destroy it, so he wants to get you first - it’s that simple. So you’re the only decoy worth sending his people out for.’
”That’s all I am, then? A fucking duck?’
‘Now there speaks a proud man.’
God damn his eyes.
‘I like to think,’ I said, ‘that I’ve got more effective uses.’ But it didn’t carry conviction because he was right: my professional pride was getting in the way.
‘Look at it like this,’ Cone said quietly. ‘You didn’t get much out of that man Skidder. I think Yasolev feels that one of his people could’ve got more. You stand a chance of nabbing one of those tags today and grilling him, but so does Yasolev, if his idea is to do it first, using you as the decoy. And I’m not sure you’d agree that the KGB doesn’t know how to interrogate people.’
