The Striker Portfolio q-3

by Adam Hall

  The body of Homo is provided with various compensatory mechanisms. One is the carotid sinus, located in the neck.

  'Zu gross.'

  'Sind Sie sicker?'

  When a man becomes angry the released adrenalin raises his blood-pressure throughout the system, putting incidental pressure on the carotid sinus. This triggers off a flow of nerve impulses to the brain which produce a calming effect in compensation. That is why the most heated anger cools the most quickly.

  'Probieren Sie diese an'

  I put them on and walked round. They were unpolished stag-skin, high at the sides. The serration on the soles was only half-worn and they were dead quiet on the floor: that was important.

  'Ja, die passeri?

  The place was stuffed to the rafters with masculine accessories: shot-guns, fishing-rods, field-glasses, skis, windbreakers, boots and shoes. High in the gloom there was a diver's helmet. On his desk was a quarryman's detonator. It was a pity that I needed only shoes. You can do a lot with a quarryman's detonator.

  'Tragen Sie die gleich?'

  'Ja.'

  They had buckles instead of laces and I took them up a notch. I was pleased with them, certainly not angry, but the carotid sinus works also in reverse. Low barometric pressure outside has the same effect as high blood-pressure inside. Since it can't tell the difference it sends the same nerve impulses to the brain, calming it down. Some people say: 'I'm sleepy, it must be the weather.'

  He looked at my split shoe with a shrug.

  'Fertig.'

  'Fertig.' I nodded.

  He dropped them both into an upturned fencing-mask and I gave him 60 DM, 20 for the shoes and 40 for the pair of x6 Zeiss I had found on a shelf. He counted the deutschmarks in the light from the doorway. Over the Harz range the sky was a purple bruise. It was going to be a spectacular storm when it came, and this was why I felt sleepy.

  Or it was the after-effects of the crash or the inadequate sleep at Nitri's or the nervous tension of the police trap. Or I was getting old.

  'Auf Wiedersehen.'

  I went back to the car, walking normally for the first time since I'd left the motel. The left shoe felt too tight but it had two notches on each buckle the same as the other one: the foot had already tried to adapt itself to a split upper and now it would have to relearn.

  'Certainly,' I had said, but it had been a nasty five minutes. The air was cold so I made a show of feeling the contrast, blowing out my cheeks as I left the car, one hand in my pocket for warmth, the other finding the right key as though it didn't have to think about it but it had to think about it bloody hard because it wasn't far from the driving-door to the boot and I was doing it one-handed and they were watching me and I knew that.

  The latest arrival had doused his lights but it was still awkward having to keep one foot arched so that it sounded normal: it was trying to drag like a slipper. They both came with me, the young one holding the torch and aiming the beam at the boot-lock for me. It was the right key because there were three on the ring and the ignition and the door were the same pattern: one was a spare. But it didn't turn easily because the boot-lid was spring-tensioned by the rubber moulding and you normally had to press down a fraction with the left hand so the choice was to do it with the elbow and show I was injured or go on forcing the key till it snapped. If either happened it would finish me because they were looking for an injured man and if the key snapped they'd think I'd done it on purpose so that they couldn't look in the boot and see Walter Martin curled up there.

  But there's a law of averages and my run of bad luck was stretching the odds a bit and the key turned and I raised the lid and they looked inside and that was that.

  'Did you give anyone a lift at any time during the night?'

  'No.'

  'Did you see anyone thumbing you for a lift?'

  'No.'

  'Very well. You can proceed.'

  Still very careful though, testing the lid to make sure it was properly locked, taking my time, there was no hurry. Because that's when they, go on watching you in case you fall prone and give thanks to Allah for getting you off the hook. It still wasn't easy even then: the other group didn't like the way the truck-driver kept on saying 'Nein — nein!' with so much emphasis and now they were helping him open the big double doors and the pig was laughing on both sides of its face. This meant I had to do a series of shunts between the two trucks before I could turn out and I had to do it one-handed, keeping the wheel locked over with my knee while I shifted the gears.

  The young one swung his torch to guide me away and the officer saluted. The nerves began their reaction-phase and for the next kilometre I felt as if I'd drunk too much coffee.

  None of the other shops were open yet: Munden is a small town and it was nearly full winter. I'd seen the old man swinging back his shutters and stopped on the off chance. It was probably his only life in there among the skis and divers' helmets: they were his toys.

  The shoes were excellent and the left-foot clutchwork was normal again and I drove five kilometres without stopping while I worked out the situation and when I'd worked it out I turned into a minor road and found the right kind of spot and ran the 17M as deep as I could into a copse where raindrops still fell from the trees.

  Situation: there might be just the two traps, one on each side of the Hanover-Kassel autobahn, or there might be a dozen, a quickly thrown net around Linsdorf. One of them was certain to be farther south towards Neueburg and I would hit in full daylight. No go. It would be safer to reach Neueburg by dark in any case: the guide book gave the population as under 5,000 so it was a place where a stranger would be suspect.

  I set each window to an inch gap at the top and tilted the seat back and let sleep come.

  Ferris had done a full coverage but there was nothing that he or Philpott or Dr Wagner or Nitri hadn't either told me or led me to consider.

  List of witnesses. NB: These were sifted from several hundred and are believed to be the most reliable.

  There were sixty-two names and full addresses. Farmers, postmen, bird-watchers, coastguard observers. Mostly farmers, like the one with the red tractor at Westheim. My own name wasn't among them: Ferris never joked on duty.

  I just heard a whining noise, and looked up.

  There weren't any flames as far as I could see, but the sun was partly in my eyes and shining on the wings, so I won't commit myself on that.

  It was almost vertical and so close that I began to run. I remember thinking: 'Poor devil.' (I meant the pilot.) The most common factor was the attitude.

  Straight down. Vertical, or nearly vertical, I would say. He came down like a stone.

  Chronologically there was no pattern. Thirty-six Strikers had crashed within three hundred and forty-two days. Average: one per 9.5 days. Longest interval between two crashes: 13 days. Shortest: 7.

  Geographically there was no pattern. Out of ten main Striker bases each had experienced a crash: i.e., no squadron had been immune. Lowest incidence: 1. Highest: 5. (There was a slight tendency for high-incidence bases to appear in the north and Ferris hadn't missed it. Frequency of accidents at Bederkesa, Quakenbruck, Oldenburg and Hankensbuttel is considered possibly due to weather conditions aggravating unknown effects. NB: Striker is sensitive to severe temperature change.) In the Background of Dead Pilots section there were several common factors but none were unexpected: each had a history with indications of what Dr Wagner called 'Striker psychosis' with attendant periods of anxiety states and hypertension. All had been sent once or more than once to Garmisch-Partenkirchen for two weeks' mud-baths and psychiatrical sessions. Confidential information on their private lives — so far as it could be obtained — showing nothing significant. Marital disturbance slight. Financial worries normal. Professional qualities well above average for front-line tactical squadrons — NB: These pilots were picked from among all operational branches of the Luftwaffe in view of the technical sophistication and high cost of the Striker SK-6. They thus represent the
elite of the German Air Arm.

  I went through the folder twice and used a pencil in the margins and filled the back cover with averages, common factors, consistencies, anomalies. Blank.

  Some time during the afternoon I heard movement and kept perfectly still. I had slept from early morning till one o'clock and was ninety-eight per cent alert and two per cent under the continuing influence of the barometric pressure: the storm still sagged across the mountains, slow to break. The movement went on and sometimes the low leaves trembled within yards of the car. I saw him only once, crossing a clear patch: a wild boar, black, compact, full in tusk and high at the shoulder. He swung his head and then stood rock-still, catching the unfamiliar smell of rubber and petrol, then vanished as if the leaves had drawn over him. He would have slept through the height of the day as I had, and would soon move through the night as I would, and I wished him well.

  L-201 — 1-136 — 5-19. The identification figures were prefaced with a letter for each air base: Linsdorf — Mich — Spalt. I went through the whole picture again and came up with nothing and put the folder away and took it out again on the spur of frustration.

  Bederkesa — Quakenbruck — Jolich — Bruchsal… North, Northwest, West, South-west. It was consistent but this thing was full of consistencies and I was looking for anomalies, trying to see if the pattern broke anywhere. That might be a mistake.

  Laubach — Linsdorf — Hankensbuttel — Oldenburg… East, North-east, North-east, North. It, was consistent again and the pencil had made a ring on the map from North round the clock to North. I must have been over-concentrating because it was a minute before I got it. The names of the Striker bases made a geographical ring but I'd begun with a time-factor, not a space-factor. Ferris had called them pattern-crashes but he couldn't have known about this. In terms of sequence the Strikers had been crashing in a geographical ring round the map, North-West-South-East-North.

  It practically spelled a name but I couldn't go back to Linsdorf: I was cut off from there and all I could do was file it.

  I put the folder away.

  Chapter Thirteen — THE FRONTIER

  Neueburg was gnome-Gothic, a frontispiece for Grimm. The population must have been mostly pastoral because there weren't more than a hundred or so houses to the village. Pointed roofs, latticed windows, the glint of cats' eyes in doorways: even the weathervane over the pharmacy was a witch on a broomstick. Perhaps it was to mark her birthplace.

  The early hunger of the day had passed off during the afternoon. It would return before midnight and I was tempted to pick up something to conserve but I didn't want to show my face anywhere. It would have to wait: in any case a light stomach would be an advantage if things got rough at the clockmaker's.

  I didn't know. Benedikt hadn't told me whether the place were a safe-house for Die Zelle, a contact point of his own or a Zelle address where he was still accepted as loyal.

  It was near the end of the main street. I assumed there was only one clockmaker's in Neueburg, otherwise Benedikt would have been more precise.

  It backed on to a chapel so there wouldn't be a door at the rear. It made a corner of a T-section and if there were a second entrance it would be the door at the side, the first one along. I took the 17M past at normal speed and turned at the end of the village and came back, coasting to a stop just within observation-view of the front entrance and the door at the side. It was only ten minutes to five but the winter dark had already come down. The street-lamps were all right and I spent some time with the x6 Zeiss after wiping the grime off the lenses.

  In the next half an hour two people went in and came out. There was nothing about them to suggest they weren't fetching their alarm-clocks. I was in no hurry.

  There are a few simple rules about visiting an indicated address and they add up to the one general idea of vetting the place carefully before going in. That was why I'd thought the Zeiss would be useful. After the first half an hour I had some data collected, mostly about the best way of getting out of the building if I found myself on the second or third floors and didn't want to use the front entrance. There were at least two people there because a light had gone on upstairs about fifteen seconds after someone had entered: there wasn't a lot of time to reach the third floor and the clockmaker would probably be talking to him in the shop itself.

  Apart from general rules there were specific considerations. I might be recognised the instant I went in, either because they were in close touch with the Zelle unit in Hanover or because my face was probably now in the papers. There could be a dozen people in there — contacts, couriers, operators, radio-signallers — and I could walk straight into a spring-trap especially if Benedikt had talked before he died: if they knew he'd given me this address they'd expect me here.

  General rules, specific considerations, instinct. The precise formula for doing the right thing in a given situation. But mostly instinct. The antennae weaving sensitively around and touching on hair-fine contacts, correcting and recorrecting the plan of approach, the conscious and sub-conscious gathering and relating of random data, computing, presenting, counselling telling me whether to cross over there and walk in now or wait another ten minutes or another sixty, whether to give the clockmaker Benedikt's name and assess his reaction or try one of a dozen other gambits that would leave us both with a way out if there were people there and it was dangerous.

  Because I had to start with an assumption, a likelihood, as a blueprint. And I assumed that he was aware (1) that Benedikt had tried to defect and (2) that I knew it.

  Normal data was coming in all the time and it could be vital or useless: seven cars driven through the village in half an hour, four of them Hanover-registered, two Frankfurt and one Stuttgart. A light-coloured Porsche had pulled up fifty yards ahead of the 17M and a man had gone into the shop and driven off again after five minutes. Thirteen people had passed me on foot and ten had gone by the clockmaker's, four of them looking in, one of them giving a wave of his hand. Two had gone in and come out again.

  An Opel Kapitan stopped a short way down the side-street and a man got out and went into the first doorway along. I'd had the Zeiss on him and so I was certain. I supposed he had come south as I had, perhaps going to ground as I had, and for the same reason: to wait for the police traps to be withdrawn. The manager of the motel would have described him to the Kriminalpolizei and he would know that. In the ordinary way it might not worry him: a verbal description isn't much to go on. So I assumed it had been important for him to reach Neueburg and the doorway over there in complete security. The death of Benedikt could have sent the entire network quivering and its controllers would be jumpy.

  He had left the Kapitan a few yards from the door and had walked along to it lightly on the balls of his feet, his shoulders forward. I didn't need to go across and put my head inside the car to confirm what I already knew would be there: a faint smell of almonds.

  He was in the house for an hour and during that time I twice decided to make a move and follow him through the side door and take it from there on an ad hoc basis and twice revoked the decision and tried to sell myself the idea that it wasn't because my left hand didn't want to get hurt any more.

  There were in fact practical reasons why I should avoid immediate risks. Up to an hour ago I'd had only one fine thread to follow: the name of a village where there was a clockmaker. If that information had turned out to be duff or if I'd made a mistake at the autobahn police trap my personal part in the mission would have been totally written off. Without this one fine thread there would have been no future: I was isolated now, cut off from Linsdorf and the ability to root around there under the A.I.B. cover. And there was nowhere else to go. It would have been the first time I had ever failed to report back to the Bureau without at least some bits and pieces for them to. look at.

  But now I had something for Ferris: the location of a Zelle safe-house, confirmed. If I went in there the chances of learning a lot more were high but the chances of bringing the in
formation away with me were not. If I stayed where I was I'd be sitting pretty and I didn't want to jog the barber's arm.

  One factor made the final decision. It was a factor that often influences an operation at any given critical stage and it is surprising because it is banal: it is the weather. Tonight over Neueburg the sky was still clear, with the storm-clouds piled and concentrated in the Harz range to the north. A haze was spreading eastwards from the centre but the third-phase moon was still at nine-tenths luminosity and its light would last until the storm broke. Without it I would have had to go in there and do what I could because there would have been no alternative.

  He came out alone and went straight to the Kapitan without checking the street and if Ferris ever saw one of us do a thing like that he'd have us underneath the Lowry for filthy rotten security. Perhaps that's why the Bureau had lasted so long.

  I gave him fifty seconds and started up and tagged him out of the village at long range, settling down at something like a hundred yards through the hedgerows south. I didn't expect it to be easy but it was worse than I'd let myself believe. Across flatter terrain the going would have been comfortable because his rear-lamps and the light thrown by his heads would have provided a continuous beacon for me but in this area the rise and fall of the road blotted him out at intervals and I had to use the moon alone. After the first few kilometres I could feel the ciliary muscles contracting and relaxing as my eyes adjusted to the changing light-conditions. That was all right: they could go on doing it and the exercise was good for them but the roads were narrow and there was often a temptation to flick the heads on for half a second to make sure I wasn't going to hit anything. Even the sidelamps would have been a help but from the moment I switched them on he'd pick me up in the mirror and start watching me and wait for me to turn them off somewhere and I wasn't going to do that.

  Nervous hallucinations set in after thirty minutes or so. They were bound to. When he topped a brow and vanished beyond it his image remained on the retinae and when he reappeared before it had time to fade out I could see two of him because he never showed up exactly in the same place on the vision-field. He wasn't going fast but it was too fast to take an accurate line through the bends and I clouted a bank before long and had to fight off the subsequent yawing-action that was set up by the springs.