The Striker Portfolio

by Adam Hall

  I leaned on the edge of the console, irritated at being out of breath, a lot of steps, fair enough, but I must be getting old.

  Geschwaderkommodore, Geschwaderkommodore. Antworten Sie bitte!

  Crackling static.

  Natural selection on Wagner’s part, I supposed. The Geschwaderkommodore was a danger. We’d all been standing there just after Paul Dissen had done his bang and Boldt had said it’s not the plane, it’s the pilot.

  Geschwaderkommodore. Horen Sie? Antworten Sie bitte!

  And Wagner had been there when Boldt had said that. Little Wagner, their shepherd, their saviour: You have a theory, I know. And Boldt had said: Several.

  Befehl - Sofortiger Ruckflug zur Staffel!

  The sky looked empty through the green glass.

  Horen Sie? Horen Sie?

  Just airborne when I’d reached the gates. Fifteen twenty minutes with Rohmhild. Take less than that to reach the ceiling but then he might not be climbing the whole time, it depended on what exercise he -

  Befell ubermittelt!

  Signal received.

  The controller nodded to me and I went out and down the steps. There were some pilots and one or two of the ground staff in a group outside the door of Rohmhild’s quarters and an ambulance Was nosing in.

  I didn’t recognize him at first, glasses glinting and straw-coloured hair bobbing as he walked. I hadn’t expected him! ‘What’s come up ?’ I asked.

  He was gazing cautiously around, typical of him, and some other people were coming past to see what was going on, so he walked me as far as the perimeter road. Of course I knew why he’d come: he’d been in signals, so forth. He said:

  ‘I had to tell London straight away and they said I ought to make contact. What’s that ambulance for?’

  ‘Tell them what?’

  He gave me his quiet nervous-breakdown look. ‘You said you were home and dry when you phoned me from Rhine Army. Well are you?’

  The sky was still empty. My eyes were getting tired staring up at it. I said: ‘They think I was going to lose the whole thing down a drain or something at the last minute? Bloody London for you.’

  ‘Well they’re anxious, you know. They didn’t expect you to crack it inside a week.’ His pale head was turning like a radar. ‘What’s the ambulance for?’

  ‘Bloke shot himself. The classic Prussian kaputt.’

  A whisper in the air, very high, like the one over Westheim. I listened to it.

  ‘Any immediate act-‘on?’ He was being very good, very offhand, but he knew the ferret was out through the far end and he was keen to see the rabbit.

  ‘Not really.’ I shielded my eyes. It hadn’t been so high as it had sounded: the shape was already forming in the winter haze, drifting into the final approach. I said: ‘What’s the date?’

  ‘Fifth.’ He’d seen the plane now.

  ‘There’s some local stuff. The bloke over there was in it but I got what I wanted out of him. There’s a man called Wagner you’ll need to bring in and there’s a clockmaker’s in Neueburg that wants cleaning out.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A clockmaker’s.’ I wished he’d go away. I wanted to watch the plane come down because there’d been nothing I could do about it at Westheim. ‘People need clocks, don’t they? So people have to make them.’

  Touch and bounce, then it tilted and slid very fast down the strip, the brakes coming on, slowing at the north end, turning.

  ‘Not pretty, are they?’ Ferris said.

  ‘That one is.’ It was coming in to the hangars and I turned away. ‘But the big job is an ambush over the other side, couple of vehicles on the move between a place called Aschau and Berlin. And a political re-education centre to clean out. The vehicles go up every month on the fifteenth so you’ve got ten days, that’s all right. Moondrop job, half a dozen assault specialists. How will Parkis do it, with internationals or what?’

  ‘He’ll probably hand it to Bonn. It’s really their pigeon.’

  I turned once and had a last look. Humped, ugly, bow-legged, stinking of kerosene. We walked on again.

  ‘Because I want London to send me with them.’

  ‘It’s not your field.’

  ‘Just for the ride, that’s all.’

  He was glinting at me sideways, hair all over the place, quite alarmed. A shadow executive mustn’t ever go and play with the rough boys down the street, it says so in the rules.

  ‘They wouldn’t let you. Anyway you’ve had enough by the look of things.’

  ‘Listen, Ferris.’ I was getting fed up: I wanted a bit of sleep that was all. ‘I cracked this one inside a week, didn’t I? My credit’s good, for once. So you’re going to fix it for me, all right? I mean that.’

  Behind us the jet whined away to silence.

  ‘I’ll do what I can. Someone over there, is there?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  THE END