The Scorpion Signal q-9

by Adam Hall

  The operator flicked the switch for direct contact with the base director and started talking, but I didn't hear the rest because a light started winking on our unit and the man with the chewing-gum opened the signal and set to scramble and clarify.

  'A-Alpha. Channel 3. Clarifying.'

  We waited. The light went on winking.

  'Croder.' There was a long pause. 'The weather's closing down everywhere, and the London flight was laid off.' His voice was thin and precise, the scrambler giving it a metallic echo. 'Have you brought Quiller in?'

  'Yes, sir.' The operator slipped out of the padded chair and motioned me to take it.

  I sat down. 'This is Quiller.'

  'Ah yes.' A couple of seconds went by. 'You were on leave, I understand.'

  'I still am.'

  There was a much longer pause. 'Yes. I am on leave too. But I want you to listen very carefully. I don't think I can reach London with any immediate predictability, since a lot of flights are either being cancelled or diverted. But I can reach Berlin before midnight, according to current reports. I would like you to meet me there, as soon as you can get a plane.'

  In a moment I said: 'Look, I'm still on leave and I need to relax. It's too soon.'

  I felt Tilson move an inch, beside me.

  'I understand that,' the thin, precise voice came from the speaker. 'But something rather exceptional has happened, and we've got to deal with it as soon as we can. Or if you prefer, I've got to deal with it. I was rather hoping you'd agree to help me, but — what can I say? You are on leave.'

  The silence was so long that I thought he'd gone off the air again, like some kind of ghost, fading and reappearing. I was very cold now, and sat with my hands folded into my arms and my neck hunched into my coat. There was something weird about this whole thing: Croder was sitting on some sort of time bomb and he was having to use an awful lot of control in the way he handled me. He wasn't used to that. Finally I couldn't stand the silence any more.

  'Is it a mission?' I asked him.

  'It is a rescue mission. We — I — have to get someone out.'

  I waited for more, but he'd stopped. T didn't ask him 'out of where' because that didn't make a lot of difference. He meant out of trouble.

  The air in the room seemed to shiver suddenly as the sharp voice came from the main console across from us — I tell you we can't hope to go in without a shield.

  Tilson moved again beside me, unnerved. He's normally a stoic type and can keep as still as a lizard for hours.

  I said to Croder: 'Why can't someone else do it?'

  He came back a little faster this time. 'Of those people available, I think you stand the best chance. If there's a chance at all.'

  'I'm not available. Listen, I came off the last thing two weeks ago, didn't anyone tell you that? Two weeks.' My voice had risen a fraction and I didn't like that, but it might give him a clue as to the condition I was in.

  'I know that, yes.' He paused again. 'You did rather well.'

  I left that one. Every word he said was a baited hook.

  'A very great deal depends, you see, on whether we can do anything for this man. It touches all of us.'

  He was being as specific as he could, on the air. It was no use asking him to spell anything out: he couldn't. He was trying to get me to read between the lines and I wasn't interested. I didn't want to know.

  The operator with the chewing-gum was on my other side, opposite Tilson, and I swung my head up. 'Would you go and spit that bloody stuff out for Christ's sake? I can't stand the smell.'

  My hands were frozen. I was afraid of what Croder was going, finally, to make me do, by pricking my conscience, or my pride. I listened to the rain beating at the row of narrow sooty windows and wondered who the poor bastard was, and where. We have to get someone out. He couldn't be done for, yet; he was lying on a rooftop somewhere in the pouring rain with the patrol lights sweeping the streets, waiting till he had to show himself; or hunched between rocks in a frontier zone like a wild dog with a broken leg and no hope of food or shelter or mercy when they found him; or sitting in a basement propped in an upright chair with the bright light probing into his eyes till he couldn't see them any more, could only hear what they were asking him, feel what they were doing when he didn't answer. It touches all of us.

  The man with the chewing-gum had moved away but I could still smell the stuff, like toothpaste.

  I spoke into the console. 'Is it Shapiro?' Tilson moved again.

  'Yes,' Croder said. I could tell by his tone that I wasn't meant to know. I wanted to say well what about O'Rourke and Wallis and Jessop, shouting the bloody odds all over the Caff down there? Security stank, in this place, always did, half the staff trying to keep the lid on things and the other half yelling their heads off.

  Shapiro. A small quiet man with sharp pointed ears and a passion for chess and a girl in Brighton and a scar the length of his forearm where the knife had got him before I could throw the rest of them off and reach him in time, glass all over the place from the explosion and the sirens coming in, Tenerife, with a full moon and the night temperature still in the nineties and Rosita sobbing her heart out in a bar at the end of the jetty because they'd got Templer, nothing we could do. 'I'll take this one,' he'd told me the night before; 'they know you, but they don't know me.' But it was just that he'd been frightened, and wanted to prove that he wasn't. We've got a few things in common.

  So he wasn't dead.

  'What theatre?' I asked Croder.

  'Europe.'

  That was all I'd get. There wasn't anything more I could ask him. He could have switched to selective code but he obviously wasn't prepared to. In a couple of seconds he said: 'You know him quite well, I understand.' Shapiro.

  'Not too well. But I know him.'

  The bloody thing had been ticking all the time and he'd stood looking at it with his small gnome's head on one side: 'the best thing'd be to disarm it, don't you think, take it apart, before it can do any harm.' He'd worked at it for nearly three hours without a break, his pale grey eyes wide open, staring at God all the time while his nicotine-stained fingers stroked and caressed the matt-black metal components and the sweat ran off his face and dripped on to the bare boards where I sat waiting, hunched into my own ghost and unable to look away. 'I think that's it,' he said at last, and pulled the detonator clear and reached for a cigarette and put it into his mouth with fingers that shook so badly now that he knocked the flame out and I had to strike another match for him.

  Shapiro.

  Say this much: he was a professional.

  'You know his work, at least.' Croder's voice came insistently.

  'Yes.'

  'What would be your opinion of him,' in slow and reasonable tones, 'as an executive in the field?'

  I felt Tilson listening, beside me. I thought of lying, then realized I didn't have to. In the end I could refuse, I could refuse, repeat it like a litany, I could refuse.

  'First class.'

  'Quite so. You wouldn't,' Croder said with a certain silkiness, 'consider him expendable.'

  Like a dog with a broken leg.

  'No.'

  Stonewall the bastard, don't give him any rope.

  'All I would ask is that you would at least meet me in Berlin, so that I can give you the details.' Three seconds, four. 'That is all I would ask, for him.'

  The lights glowed on the console. I could hear the voice of the man in the field coming faintly across the room, where they were running Flash point. Tilson hadn't moved. The smell of peppermint had gone now, or I was getting used to it. I leaned forward towards the console so that Croder would hear me clearly, and know by my tone that I meant what I said.

  'I'm on leave. I haven't got my nerve back yet — it was close to the crunch, that time, and I'm lucky to be here. So you'll have to find someone else, because I refuse.'

  I got out of the chair and went past Tilson without looking at him and opened the door and threw it shut behind me and walk
ed down the green-painted corridor to the lift and pressed the button for down.

  It was a deluge outside and there was a traffic block near Hyde Park Corner and I sat waiting for fifteen minutes before I took the phone off the clip and got Tilson and told him I wanted a police car to get me out of this mess and I wanted a flight to Berlin, the first he could find for me. And tell Croder.

  2: TEMPELHOF

  Blinding sleet and the runway lights floating up from the dark as the wheels hit and we bounced and they hit again and we bounced again with the airframe shuddering.

  'Was, zum Teufel, macht der Pilot?'

  A few uneasy laughs but at least we were down.

  Bitte behalten Sie Ihren Sicherheitsgurtel an.'

  A fat man sat leaning forward with his face white and his head down; I hoped he'd found the bag. Sleet washed past the windows in a bow wave.

  'Mon Dieu, it est impossible meme de voir la tour d'observation!'

  'Esperons que nous n'allons pas s'enfoncer contre elle!'

  Reverse thrust and we sat feeling the drag.

  'Are you all right, Audrey?' someone asked.

  'Sort of.' A breathless giggle, then she lit a cigarette and blew out a noisy sigh. In the rear of the plane a child had started crying.

  Tempelhof was packed.

  'Excuse me, but do you know where the information desk is?'

  'In the middle of that crowd over there,' I said, and she went hurrying off, trailing a flight bag with a broken strap. There were puddles everywhere, with people bringing slush in from the front of the building.

  'Haben Sie etwas zu deklarieren?'

  'Gar nichts.'

  'Keine Rauchwaren, kein Alkohol?’

  'Nein.'

  He didn't bloody well believe me, went right through my bag.

  'We were meant to land at Tegel,' a man with an astrakhan coat said to me, 'but there was too much stuff in the circuit.' I wondered if he'd got any other useless information.

  In the main hall people were milling around looking for friends, children, baggage, a porter to help them out of the chaos. Three North Africans carrying skis edged their way through the crowd, clouting people every time they turned round to look for what they'd lost.

  'Entschuldigen. Sie, Bind Sie Herr Wolsieffer?'

  'Nein,' I told him.

  A party of Chinese trotted past towards the main exit, their leader waving a little red flag to guide them.

  'Pardon, monsieur. Vous etes de Paris?'

  Non, mademoiselle, c'est le vol de Londres.'

  She went across to the information desk. Pretty legs.

  'Not a very nice evening.'

  'Not very,' I said.

  'What sort of flight?'

  'Bloody awful.' We started walking, looking for somewhere we could talk. 'Been waiting long?'

  'Half an hour,' he said.

  'Did what I could. London was a mess.'

  'Let's go over there,' Croder said.

  'All right.' There was a lot of water on the floor below one of the big windows, which had sprung a leak, and we stood there with our backs to the dark glass watching the people near us. I didn't know whether he'd got here without any tags on him; as a rule the London directors aren't too good in the field. He stood with his hands in the pockets of the big military coat he was wearing, its buttons plain now and the marks still showing where the insignia had been taken off. It looked too big for him: he was a slight man, thin-boned and pallid, with a head like a skull and the hands of a skeleton and only the eyes alive, brooding in his face as if they were trapped there under the taut parched skin, their black luminescence shadowed by heavy lids. He hadn't looked at me yet.

  'Good of you to come,' he said formally. 'I was surprised when they said you'd changed your mind.'

  'So was I.'

  He made a smile with his small teeth, like a rat nibbling.

  'We nearly missed each other. They had to get back to me through Interpol.' It was a reprimand.

  'Where's Shapiro?' I asked him.

  He didn't answer for a moment. There was a lot of noise from a bunch of people over by the doors, and Croder gazed at them steadily. 'East Germans,' he said. 'They were going into Schoenefeld but an engine was out, so they came into Tempelhof instead.' His small teeth made a token smile. 'Half of them are demanding asylum. Wouldn't you? We don't know where Shapiro is,' he said without looking away from the group. 'His cover name is Schrenk. Forget Shapiro. Schrenk.' He spelt it for me. 'He was in Moscow for two months, working very well, then they uncovered him and put him through interrogation in Lubyanka. Then he escaped.'

  For the first time he turned and looked at me with his black contemplative eyes and I thought, Christ Almighty, only Shapiro could have got out of Lubyanka by the midnight express. Only Schrenk. 'He got as far as West Germany,' Croder said, 'and we had him put straight into a clinic. I don't think he would have made it as far as London — he was in a pretty bad way.'

  'Were you running him?'

  I didn't think he'd answer that.

  He looked back at the group of East Germans. 'It doesn't matter who was running him. He was in the clinic for nearly three months, and recovering steadily. They were going to discharge him before long, as soon as he was fit enough to stand up to debriefing. But the K got him again, and one report says he's back in Lubyanka.'

  There was a chill coming into the air; I felt it against my skin: possibly the sweat was starting to creep, setting up refrigeration. I have never been inside Lubyanka, but I've talked to people who have. There aren't many of them at liberty. North had got back from there, the night he blew his brains out at Connie's place.

  Croder was gazing across the hall in silence, and I asked him: 'What's our timing on this?'

  'There's a flight for Hanover in forty minutes, and there's a seat booked for you.'

  'In case I want one.'

  He ignored that. 'Schrenk carried a capsule. It was part of the contract, on that particular mission. Obviously he didn't use it.' He turned away from the group of people and stood facing me, hunched into his big coat and saying with muted force: 'He would have saved us an immense amount of trouble if he had used it. An immense amount of trouble.' He waited for the message to sink in. 'Because what we have on our hands now is a potential disaster — unless we can somehow prevent it. Schrenk prided himself on his ability to survive the most gruelling interrogation by the use of practised and convincing disinformation; he had three or four different scenarios worked out and he rehearsed them every day of his life, in series. We know that. We had him tested at Norfolk, a year ago, and even hypnosis couldn't break him down, because he'd used autohypnosis himself, to move his scenarios down into the subconscious. That is the kind of man he is.' The heavy lids were lowered for a moment. 'But Norfolk isn't Lubyanka. We do not know, you see, how bad the position is, because we don't know how much he gave away.'

  He withdrew into himself again, staring at nothing, or maybe at Schrenk's insubstantial image, lost somewhere in the wastes of Soviet Russia. The sleet outside was turning to water on the window, and the light from the tall gooseneck lamps threw its translucent delineations against his face, so that his skin crept with rivulets.

  'What has he got,' I asked him, 'to give away?'

  'I'm sorry?' He swung to look at me.

  'You said you don't know how much he gave away. You mean something specific?'

  His sharp teeth bit at the air again. 'Yes. The Leningrad cell.'

  Mother of God.

  This was why Norton had been showing his nerves today, and why Tilson had looked scared behind the eyes. The Leningrad cell had taken eleven years to build up, and once established and running it had given us the Sholokof Project and the submarine dispersal pattern and the tactical analysis for the buried-weapons system for transmission to NATO and the CIA, plus satellite scanning, plus laser progress in the military-application laboratories, plus the whole of the missile-testing programme including the ultra-classified global-range ICBMs f
rom X-9 to the city-heat guidance Marathon 1000. That was the Leningrad cell.

  'But he couldn't have known,' I said hopelessly, 'much about it:

  'He worked there for two years, before he was seconded to the field-executive branch. He knows everything about it.'

  I didn't understand. 'But who could have let him — '

  'That is not your concern.' Spittle came against his lower lip, and in a moment he licked it away and said more slowly, 'For your information, it wasn't I.'

  I let it go. Someone had blundered, and disastrously, because once you're with a cell you stay there till your time's up: you don't go anywhere else and you don't get seconded to the field-executive pool, because you know too much of value and they won't risk sending you into the field where the opposition can pick you up and drag you in and take your brain apart. But someone had done that with Schrenk.

  'Your only concern,' Croder said with a lot of control, 'is to find him and pull him out — if indeed you're prepared to do that for us.' The need for control worried me, because this man was known for his cool and he'd lost it, and in front of the executive he was desperate to recruit. My nerves were jumping again. 'You would receive intensive support, I need hardly say.'

  'In Moscow?'

  'Right in the target area, wherever that may be. Cut-outs, back-ups, shields — '

  'No shields — '

  He shrugged. 'You may be glad — '

  'I said no shields.' My own control wasn't too good and I waited and counted three. 'I make my own decisions and my own mistakes and I won't involve anyone else.' Shields were dangerous; they could get in your way, and when the crunch came they'd save themselves, not you. 'What about the director in the field? If the timing's that close you can't — '

  'Bracken,' he said.

  'Bracken's in Singapore.'

  'We called him in.' He moved his eyes to the clock over the information desk. 'He is at present airborne with BAC, arriving Moscow at noon tomorrow, local time.' He waited.

  'I've never worked with him.'

  'He's first class, you know that. He directed Fenton in Cairo last year. He got Matthews out of Pekin. First class.'