Quiller KGB

by Adam Hall

  Melnichenko was very good; he could keep his eyes blanked off and he could keep his hands perfectly still but he hadn’t got any control over his parasympathetic nervous system and the beads of sweat were gathering on his naked head and glistening under the light, and it was cold enough in here to emasculate a brass monkey.

  But he made an attempt. ‘I was called here at short notice, as you know. Perhaps if you’d give me a day or two before we meet again? I can then confer with my contacts in Moscow.’

  Couldn’t learn.

  Pollock came in at me fast - ‘Look, you’ve talked about getting the KGB in on this, but we’re not at all sure you can do that. I mean frankly, both sides need assurances, don’t you agree?’

  They’d had their five minutes and I finished the tea in my cup and poured some more and got up and went across to the telephone.

  Cone picked up on the first ring.

  I asked him, ‘Is Yasolev with you?’

  ‘No. He’s at the embassy.’

  ‘His own?’

  ‘Yes. What’s the position?’

  ‘They’re being uncooperative, so I’m going to throw them to the dogs. I’ll keep you well informed.’

  I think he was going to ask something else but I rang off. ‘Commandant Melnichenko, how long have you been here in East Berlin?’

  ‘Almost three years.’ He was looking particularly bland, but his head was glistening.

  ‘Then you see quite a bit of the Soviet ambassador.’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  ‘And you’re familiar with his private telephone number.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was sitting near enough to the phone to be able to see what I was dialling, and that was all I wanted.

  ‘Chancery.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Ambassador Polyakov.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but he is dining now. May I take a message?’

  ‘Tell him Liaison is on the line.’

  He asked me to repeat it and I did; he was confused because it wasn’t a name.

  Pollock got up and started mooching about. I was sorry for him: he’d had his mission blown from under him, but it was his own fault. He shouldn’t have given these pilots such a free hand; they weren’t in intelligence and didn’t know how to operate.

  ‘Polyakov.’

  ‘Your excellency, let me apologise for disturbing you at dinner.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, because in any case the duck was a disaster. I requested flambé, not incinere. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Do you know a Commandant A. V. Melnichenko?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Is he here in an official capacity as a member of the GRU?’

  ‘As far as I know. He’s an adviser to the Airforce.’

  ‘Thank you. Is Colonel Yasolev there this evening?’

  ‘I’ll call him to the phone.’

  Pollock was still on the move, hands dug into his pockets, fists pushed out. I put a hand over the mouthpiece.

  ‘Colonel Yasolev is KGB. He’ll be your chief interrogator; it’s his specialty.’

  I’d spoken in German so that Melnichenko and Schwarz could pick it up.

  Laughter broke out faintly from the rooms above, an odd sound, surrealistic in this context.

  ‘Yasolev.’

  ‘Good evening. Let me ask a question. Would you be ready to put two people under intensive interrogation immediately?’

  ‘But of course.’

  Pollock had stopped walking about, and was staring at the floor. Melnichenko was wiping his face. I was speaking in Russian, and Schwarz wasn’t getting anything, but he was watching the other two, and that was good enough.

  ‘As you know,’ I told Yasolev, ‘we haven’t got much time left. You may have to be very persuasive.’

  ‘These people are with you now?’

  ‘Yes. But they’re refusing to talk. I know you’ll be more successful.’

  ‘Is it a suitable place?’

  ‘It’s a cellar, but it’s not really soundproof. You can do it at KGB headquarters, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then I’ll have them available for you to pick up. I’d suggest four men and a van. I don’t -‘

  I broke off because Pollock was looking at me.

  ‘No KGB,’ he said. ‘Full disclosure. Deal?’

  ‘If you don’t change your mind.’

  ‘It wouldn’t make sense, would it?’

  ‘Yasolev,’ I said into the phone, ‘go and finish your dinner and I’ll call on you again when everything’s ready.’

  ‘But I insist on knowing what’s happening. Are these two of Volper’s people?’

  ‘No. You can ask Cone about it: I’ve got my hands rather full.’

  I told him I’d keep in close touch and rang off and dialled Extension 525 at the hotel.

  Second ring.

  ‘It’s time you came down here,’ I told Cone. ‘Bring the tape recorder and five sixty-minute tapes, plus the mains charger.’ I looked at Pollock. ‘Where exactly is the door to this cellar?’ I’d had the bag over my head when I’d been brought here.

  ‘It’s on the east side of the building at the end of the car park. Green door, next to some railings.’

  I told Cone. ‘And listen, this location is strictly covert. Strictly.’

  I didn’t want to mention Yasolev’s name again and let Pollock know that I was keeping him uninformed. It was simply that it wasn’t the time to let the KGB loose on Trumpeter; it sounded much too sensitive.

  ‘Understood,’ Cone said. ‘Shall I tell Jones?’

  ‘No. It’s not his concern.’

  He was just making sure I wasn’t in fact a captive and phoning him under duress to bring him into a trap: I’d told him earlier that I was in the Trumpeter operations room. If I’d said yes - tell Jones - he would have had this place surrounded straight away and put under siege conditions.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ he said.

  ‘Can somebody open that door?’

  Place was stinking of cigarette smoke, getting in the eyes. There’d been a bit of hope a couple of hours ago when Pollock had thrown his empty packet of Players’ onto the table, but he’d called the barman upstairs to bring another one. I hadn’t stopped him because I’d wanted his nerves kept sedated.

  Schwarz went up the steps to open the door.

  It was gone three o’clock and the place was littered with plastic plates and the remains of bread and blood-sausage and sauerkraut and hard-boiled eggs and everything looked in a real mess but we’d got Trumpeter nailed down, the whole thing.

  And Pollock was perfectly right: if we let this one go forward to completion it could change Europe, and the world.

  ‘I shall have to inform London,’ Cone said at last.

  He’d been edifying to watch, sitting there for hours in the seedy plush chair with his thin chilblained hands folded on his lap and his eyes squinting from one to the other as Pollock and Melnichenkov had answered the questions, listening with great care and sometimes asking for repetitions, sometimes trying to trap them into conceding they were holding something back, once or twice succeeding and leading them on again, bringing in a whole string of questions about Cat Baxter and her critical role in the operation, cornering Pollock once or twice and carefully bringing out the relationship between him and Melnichenko. Pollock answered most of the questions, using fluent German, but now the Russian got out of his chair and loomed over us, wiping his face the whole time.

  ‘But why must you “inform London,” as you put it? Who is “London”?’

  ‘My department,’ Cone said.

  ‘Your department of what intelligence agency?’

  Cone looked at me and said, ‘I think we’ve got all we want here. Unless you’ve got any questions?’

  He’d been hitting the pause button on the recorder a dozen times a minute for hours on end, editing out inconsequential material as he went along. His finger was on it now.

  ‘It
’s out of my field,’ I told him, ‘at this stage.’ I’d blown Trumpeter and it was for Cone to give a brief outline to Bureau One and let him take it from there. ‘You might want to question Bader some time. He’s the second pilot.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In hospital.’

  ‘What’s his problem?’

  ‘He got injured.’

  ‘Very well.’ This was Melnichenko, having another go. ‘Very well, it is for you to ask the questions. But I fail to understand why you should inform your government. This operation is strictly to do with the USSR and Germany, as you must surely realise.’

  Cone said nothing, sat watching him.

  ‘We’ve done our best,’ Pollock told Cone. ‘This has been a very thorough debriefing. I think you owe us consideration.’

  ‘I’ll give you five minutes,’ Cone said, and looked at his watch. ‘It might take a bit -‘

  ‘This is a Soviet enterprise.’ Melnichenko was standing over Cone, his pink hands flat with the fingers spread, orchestrating what he was saying. ‘The Soviets alone are responsible for the consequences.’ Thumping his chest - ‘I am responsible for the consequences, not Pollock, not you, not your government. The action will take place on East German soil, the soil of a country under Soviet protection. Our intention is to advance General-Secretary Gorbachev’s efforts to bring the USSR into the open, into the world community; our intention is not to harm him, and we have made that plain enough. You say your mission is to protect him. So, indirectly, is ours.’ Spreading his hands, holding the crescendo - ‘Now, come, let each of us get on with our own business.’

  Cone sat thinking. Pollock lit another cigarette. I finished the tea in the pot; it was cold by now, and bitter, just what I wanted, an astringent for the tongue.

  ‘If this is a Soviet operation,’ Cone said at last, ‘who’s running it?’

  The pink brow wrinkled in surprise. ‘We are.’

  ‘Look,’ Cone said, ‘if you want my help, don’t give me any bullshit. It’s late and I’m tired. I want the name of the man in Moscow who’s holding the reins.’

  Melnichenko glanced at Pollock.

  ‘We’ve got to,’ Pollock said.

  ‘Very well. His name is Gregor Talyzin. He is a deputy chairman of the Politburo.’

  ‘Well well,’ Cone said, and looked at me. ‘And a close friend of Gorbachev’s.’ He looked back to the Russian. ‘Give me his phone number - his direct private line.’

  Melnichenko brought out a card and Cone took his finger off the pause button and noted the number and shut the machine off and got up and gave the card back and went over to the telephone and dialled, waiting.

  ‘If your operation,’ he told Pollock, ‘weren’t such a whizz-bang, I’d probably leave you to it. But there’s going to be an awful lot of fallout, and I don’t want to be in it.’ Into the phone: ‘Viktor, you can take these people now. Yes. Did he? Yes, a van would do nicely.’ He told Yasolev how to get here and put the phone down.

  Melnichenko said without much conviction, ‘But you have no authority.’

  ‘I know. You’ll be the guests of the KGB.’

  Cone stood in the car park watching the van turning onto the street, arms folded across his chest against the cold.

  ‘If they can do it,’ he said, ‘it’s going to shake a lot of things up.’

  ‘If the KGB lets them.’

  ‘It won’t be up to them. Ask me, Thatcher’s going to get on the phone to Gorbachev just as soon as Mr. Shepley’s told her the score. It’ll be decided at that level.’

  ‘You think they’ll let Trumpeter go ahead?’

  ‘God, how do I know? I’m just half-hoping they will and half-hoping they won’t.’ He got the keys of the car. ‘It scares me to think how close we are to making history. I prefer a good game of darts, actually, down at the Whistle.’

  We got in and he fished in the glove pocket and gave me a hotel envelope and I opened it.

  ‘Just in from London. The one marked B is the latest, taken three months ago.’

  Two photographs, 10 x 8, of Horst Volper, one without any grain at all, or at least not much. From this one alone I could recognize him, or perhaps it was because I’d looked at the others so often that his face had become familiar.

  ‘These’ll help,’ I said, and put them away.

  ‘Good show.’ He didn’t start the engine.

  ‘All I can do,’ I told him, ‘is whatever I can.’

  ‘I know.’

  The conversation was Pinteresque, loaded with all the things that couldn’t be said. He’d been worrying the whole time we’d been down there in the cellar.

  The clock on the dashboard showed 3:57.

  ‘Four hours,’ I said, ‘is quite a long time.’

  ‘It is?’

  Mikhail Gorbachev’s Tupolev was due in at 8:05. ‘It won’t take me any time to start things.’

  ‘No?’

  Just letting me talk.

  ‘They’ll start themselves. It’s a fast-burn fuse.’

  ‘What makes you think,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have any better luck this time?’

  ‘It won’t be a question of luck. Volper knows he’s only got four hours, too, and he’s going to throw the whole thing at me. He’s got to, or I’ll get in his way.’

  The windscreen was starting to mist over because of our breath. The engine ticked sometimes, cooling down. Cone still had the keys in his hand, as if when he started the engine he was going to blow something up. I sat with my hands inside the chest-pockets of my padded jacket, not wanting to move.

  ‘And there’s nothing you need from me?’

  ‘No,’ I said. He meant support. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘How big,’ he asked in a moment, ‘is the risk?’

  Shepley had asked me the same thing, in the underground garage in West Berlin, and now I gave Cone much the same answer. ‘If I measured the risks, I’d never take them. Go back and sleep. But sleep by the phone.’

  He started the engine then, and drove out of the car park. ‘Where d’you want to go?’

  ‘Find a cab station, will you? I’ll need this car.’

  ‘All right. She’s three-quarters full.’

  I’d already checked the gauge. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be going far.’

  ‘I got you a BMW,’ he said. ‘It’s at the hotel. You said you wanted something fast.’

  ‘This’ll do me.’

  There were three taxis outside the S-Bahn on Unter den Linden and Cone pulled up and left the engine running and got out and I shifted behind the wheel. He leaned in at the window.

  ‘What shall I say, exactly?’

  I thought about it, not wanting to give a false impression.

  In a moment I said, ‘Tell them the odds are fair.’

  ‘They’ll want something more precise than that.’

  I gave it some more thought. ‘Tell them to keep the board clear. If Shepley can be there for the next few hours, I think it’d be wise, in case you need to flash anything that could help us. I’m in active condition, good morale, ready to go.’

  ‘No actual plan?’

  ‘I’m going to try doing a switch.’

  He was looking at the ground, or maybe the door-handle or whatever, I mean he was looking down, not at me. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ll tell them.’ Then he looked up quickly before he turned away. ‘See you.’

  Chapter 24

  TRUCKS

  The car was quiet. I’d watched his cab into the distance, and turned off the engine, and since then I hadn’t moved.

  It was like being frozen in glass, in a heavy glass paper-weight, the way they do it with coins and things. It was as if the billionfold nerve impulses investing the system had reached the synapses and couldn’t make the leap and had shut down, leaving the organism in a state of suspended animation.

  I just needed a minute, that was all, perhaps a few minutes. It was a form of meditation, of seeking the self within the se
lf and consulting with levels of wisdom beyond the norm. It was necessary because when I started the engine again, a minute from now, or perhaps a few minutes from now, I would be breaking through into the end-phase for Quickstep and nothing could stop it until they put one of two things on the signals board, mission accomplished or shadow down.

  They were busy now, in London, burning the midnight oil.

  ‘I really can’t say, sir. He sounded, I don’t know, depressed.’

  ‘That’s not like Cone.’

  Shepley, his washed-out eyes looking quietly into infinity while his brain went through a hundred scenarios, a thousand, trying to take an intuitive leap and find the best thing to do, the best way of guiding Quickstep through the end-phase with a shadow executive who had requested him to stand by the board ‘for the next few hours’, who had reported that ‘the odds were fair’, whose morale was good and so on but who had no actual plan in mind to bring the mission home between now and eight o’clock, Berlin time.

  ‘Cone has plenty of support for him?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He said he didn’t need any.’

  Holmes, going to get himself another cup of coffee and then not drink it, let it get cold.

  The other voices at other boards, quiet under the focused glow of the lamps, with people drifting in to take a look at the one for Quickstep, because the Chairman of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet was involved.

  And finally one of them would take the bit of chalk and scrape it across the board. Executive at point of initiating end-phase, no details.

  Executive, actually, sitting in a black and rather dirty 230 SE - it’s very difficult to get a car washed this side of the Wall - and looking along a deserted stretch of Unter den Linden with three-quarters of a tankful of petrol and his nerves shut down because he was staring at the brink; and even though he’d seen it before it still had the power to make him afraid, afraid to go forward.

  Is that really what’s happening?

  Probably.

  You’re not just trying to get your nerve back?