by Adam Hall
Any more clear thoughts? Fabian. I'd heard that name, in the medical world. Dr. Fabian… someone. One of the top kick psychoanalysts. Trust Phoenix to use the best.
The light was spangled on the gold face of the watch and a twin spark echoed from the inlay of the console table.
"What's your name? " the quiet voice asked.
Said nothing.
He was going to miss. I was going out slowly and there wouldn't be much time to get anything coherent if he didn't start soon. Might not be pentothal. Think clearly: what do they want to know? First, my set-up, location of Local Control Berlin, names of operators, current code-systems, so forth. Second and more vital, the extent of my knowledge about Phoenix. Third, the exact nature of my present mission. They wouldn't ask me directly. It would be the classic technique of the leading-question aimed at forcing me to dodge and lie and cover up, so that a mere hesitation would give me away. The technique was difficult for extracting names.
"Inga."
My breath hissed and I heard it.
Red sector. I was going under. It had only been a few seconds since he'd asked "What's your name? " Not ten minutes, as it seemed. I'd been concentrating consciously on the need to think clearly (and combat the sedation), and the typical pentothal reaction had begun subconsciously: hidden psychic material was coming to the surface, pushing past all thoughts of danger and reticence and control. And she was there in the twilight, my lean black succuba, uncurling in my mind.
He said without surprise, "Your name is Inga?"
"Yes." Outsmart the bastard.
First onset of doubts: you think you can outsmart this team? A tried and proved narcotic flooding the walls of your will, and a narcoanalyst with an international reputation?
Yes. It had to be yes or nothing.
Eyes were closing. Reaction setting in very fast now so one thing left to be done. She was dominating the id, or I wouldn't have said her name, so let her loose, do what she will, let her queen it over all the other dormant images and see how Oktober would like that. He would have to tell his Fuhrer that he couldn't learn anything about the Quiller bureau but he'd learned all there was to learn about her litheness and lightness and darkness in the still rose room that surprised him, the keys in his face, his poor dying face,
Solly look out!
Elbow slipped. Wink of gold, twin wink of gold, the white of her throat and the men very small, seven small men my name is Quiller and her name is Inga tell you about her tell you all in black so black you long to see the white of her long lean body in black but is she a woman or the life of something dead or still a kid with the stink of burning flesh in the Fuhrerbunker my clever Fabian she's in love with the Fuhrer straddled on the black Skai slabs and rutting with ghosts in the night-beat music, Inga my love my hate, enigma, shadow in body, your body in black and the glass empty to see you again because I have to and have to stroke your skin my love my hated love tell you Fabian you shit I'll tell you tell you tell you!
Better than I'd imagined, or worse, with the bitter taste of the aftermath already souring the sweetness and the scent of her heat, long-reaching and straining, no sound but the sound of our breath, nothing to show for it but the slip of sweat and the writhe of limbs, all heady pleasure and the Damoclean blade: she'd rather do this with a short-arse with a small moustache who's dead and a goof to boot, how's that for your pride, my whoring rake-hell! But take what you can and then get out and no regrets but the stain on the Skai and the stain inyour mind because you swore you'd never try it and now you have and you can never get back to where you were before, clean of her. Lie still, and lie still under me. Dissociate. You are a woman before you are a bloody necrophile, and I've had you where you are a woman and nowhere else. Now get out,,Quiller. Get out. But where will you go?
I was surfacing but everything was mixed as if three or four negatives were superimposed: her face floated in the frame of the console table, the man in front of me had a mane of silver hair and a small dark moustache; the images of the real and unreal were jumbled. She had scratched me. My upper arm was stinging.
Then the doubts came. What was real? Was anything? The faces floated: Pol's, Hengel's, Brand's – they were faces I had seen only once. Or had I seen them, ever? Who was Pol, Hengel, Brand? I must have imagined them; they had come and gone without meaning to me. I began being afraid of being mad.
The gold winked on the watch-face. My arm stung. She had – no! The needle… not her nails. They'd used the hypodermic again while I was under. Stung. The stuff was flowing in my blood now, creeping towards my brain. A tightness on my other arm. Gasping noise. Not Fabian. Pumping up the constrictor. A hand on my pulse – throw it off! No strength.
The chandelier swam in the sky, a million stars.
Panic, then control: anger. Angry because I'd panicked. Time-check time! No go. His arms were by his sides, not folded. Dirty trick. A thought came: think out what the sting means. Steady up or they'll have you, Quiller. Think.
Pattern was: Past – one injection, effective period twenty minutes, soporific, probably pentothal. No memory of interrogation except asking for my name. (Problem: why no interrogation? Immediate amnesia?) Present-surfacing from unconsciousness, memory of dream-copulation with Inga, probable verbal running-commentary, no memory of questions. Future – the effects of the second injection and my reaction to them. Terribly important to work out what technique they were using, and so combat its effects. Or try.
"That was a good sleep you had."
Sound helped vision. I was surfacing very fast now, coming up like a rocket from the depths. This wasn't the normal effect of pentothal. Everything was coming in loud and clear: the light steadied and his face was etched against the mouldings of the ceiling; his eyes were luminous. Heart-beat quickening-chest rising and falling – onset of anxiety -
Dear Christ Iknew now what they'd done!
"You feel more yourself now, Quiller. Tell me how you feel."
"I feel fine." I'd answered before I could stop myself.
So it wasn't pentothal. It was the sleep-kick trick gradual narcosis with sodium-amytal then a shock dose of benzedrine or pervitine to kick the sleeper awake. My brain was so clear that I could remember the exact words the lecturer had used in 1948: the brutal awakening makes the verbal objectivisation of psychic contents most urgent, so that they come into the speech phase with an explosive force hitherto unknown.
My body was shaking and the nerves were tingling as if a network of galvanised wires covered my skin. The light was diamond-bright and the sound of his voice had the clarity of a bell. The strength flowed through my limbs and I wanted to shout with it, with the ecstasy of it, of being so strong. I raised my hand to smash down the chandelier at a blow, and knew that my face had gone slack and stupid because my hand hadn't moved. They'd put straps at the wrists and ankles, knowing how strong I'd be, strong enough to fell ten men. Then the schism came: I was mighty, but powerless to move. I longed to talk but I mustn't. Result of the schism: anxiety. The tongue tumescent and aching for the orgasm of speech that must be held back. Hold back. Allyou've got to do. Hold back!
Battle stations.
"Now you can tell me all you want to, Quiller."
"There's nothing to tell."
"I'm listening -"
"I'm not talking, Fabian. There's nothing to tell you."
"But I'm interested and there's a sympathy between us -"
"Listen you can keep me here till I'm black in the face but it's no go, it's no bloody go!" I'd switched into English but he was with me, switching too.
"We don't want to keep you here long because your Control will be worried about you. You haven't reported for a long time -"
"I don't report, don't have to report, they -" Hold back!
"But you can't lose touch with them -"
"There's Post and -"
"Yes?"
"Postman always rings twice." Sweat pouring from under the arms, breathing like a pair of bellows.
&n
bsp; "We've told your Control you'll be out of touch with them for a few -"
"You don't have to stamp – stamp your foot, Fabian, I say bloody well stamp your foot, man!" Madness, a kind of madness, you murder and then blurt it out. Switch back into German and try muddling thought-processes. "Listen, there's nothing to tell you – you think you can sit me in a chair and pump me full of dope and expect me to squeal on people like Kenneth Lindsay – Solly Joe, poor Solly Joe it was my fault, my fault, just as I told him but he didn't hear because he was dead – you think he'll ever forgive me, you think he will, ever ?"
Shaking all over. Stink of sweat. The schism again but a different kind: perfectly aware, acutely aware of what they were trying to do – make me give them names and ciphers and details of missions – yet acutely aware too of the necessity of holding back, of safeguarding lives and the entire existence of the Bureau. And all the time the overwhelming urge to spill it all out and be done with it. It was the schism of the alcoholic: the hand reaching for the bottle and the mind trying to stop it, and failing.
"You don't have to stamp the letters in the post? We know that." A gentle voice, almost hypnotic. "We don't know how you receive the signals. That must be very clever for people not to know -"
"How the hell can people be allowed to know what we're doing when the whole object is strict hush? You think our kind of organisation could go on running against people like Phoenix if half the administration weren't geared to finding out ways of sending and receiving hush-signals without putting Pol in the box and Win – winter – winter windsay Jones keeping up with her bloody stinking necrophilia when she leans across like that if you won't tell you I won't tell you Naumann the snowman -"
"Winter wind?"
"Stuff it!"
"Oh, I know the box you mean -"
"You don't you never went there -"
"Poll? Polling-booth? Box?"
"She's dead bones I tell you -"
"Jack in the box? A toy-shop? Spielleugladen?"
"Think again -"
"You've got me guessing -"
"Guess again then Arabian guess again Fabian forgive me Solly my fault!"
Acute awareness of danger, acute awareness of drift. No immediate amnesia, knew what they were doing, picked me up on winter straight away and dear God help me I let Pol come out. Hold back. Or better, let it rip. Main psychic contents, three things: Inga (sex), Kenneth Lindsay Jones (shock of his death) and Solly Rothstein (guilt). Could play on these because they were clamouring for attention and confession. Safe, because two were dead and she was death itself.
Still shaking. Chair like seat in a roaring roller-coaster swinging round the sky. Mouth full of tongue and the only thirst was for words – tell, tell tell! "Flowers on the pavement – I'll throw flowers over the wall for Solly in the event of my death please send this container Flores for Solly Las Ramblas personally – I said personally, you hear me, you bloody well hear me?" Shivering and feverish now, swinging along and a hand on my wrist. "How am I, Doctor? How am I?"
A glass vase tinkling somewhere near because I'd shouted it loud as I could, bellowed it out at the globe of stars. If only he'd co-operate!
"That's Barcelona. We know that.
"Don't know everything."
"We know the avenue called Las Ramblas, in Barcelona.
"What number is it?"
"Spanish inquisition new-style with amytal these days is it, oh but you're damn clever see the bull-ring, ever see the bull-ring? She stands like a matador feet together and hips forward till you want to horn her like a bull would if she stood like that in a bull-ring but -"
"But we've forgotten the number in Las Ramblas "
"You never knew it and never will -"
"We know it isn't fifteen -"
"Men to mow, men to mow a meadow -"
"We have to send them the container, you see, and we don't know the number -"
"Go and shit."
"Where is your Control? Not in Barcelona, surely? "
"Keep control."
Keep control. Christ, not easy. Shivering all over blast their eyes he'll never forgive me. Breath like a bellows, slanting light like arrows at the eyes blast their eyes. You have the advantage. Use it! Invincible – Quiller the Killer!
The down-curve. I could feel it. The down-curve, glory to God it was coming. I was over the bloody top and on the way down and what had they got? Four names: Pol, Jones, Solly, Inga. Jones dead, Solly dead, Inga mad. Pol left. A dozen Pols in the Berlin directory, fat lot of use to them that was. What else? Post, and stamp, don't have to stamp the letters. In the event of my death. Container. Las Ramblas. A lot of stuff about that lean black cacodemon. Nothing important.
Over the top and on the way down. Play it cool now.
"We'll send the container to Barcelona for you and your man can pick it up in Las Ramblas. What could be simpler? Just put the number on the container and -"
"Yes yes yes. Jawort!"
Say anything. English or German or French. Anything. Watch it, though. Easy does it. In English: "They never got me, though, because I linked up with three others, a Jew and a Dane and a Pole and a Dutchman – nine others, that's right. Proper old beanfeast – how's your idiom, friend Fabian? "In German: "We are not concerned with reaching a particular line on the map but with the extermination of living forces, in other words plain bloody murder and you know who said that? Hitler the fidget, and may the good Lord rot his soul in hell." In French: "They dropped parachutes that night and Barney got shot dead before he hit the ground. It didn't make any difference, there were ten of us. If we'd -"
"There are two lines of trees, and they sell goldfish and puppy-dogs in the middle – now where are we?"
"Las Ramblas."
"Yes, but what number?"
"Five."
"Five?"
"Six. Seven. All good niggers -"
" Fifty-six?"
"Jawort!"
Tiring. Splendid sign. The pressure coming off. Everything quite clear, quite lucid, but the fever going. Fox them.
"Nona fia buro-ki muldhala im bhano-jhim, sembali vadha."
Sitting up there with his Fowler's, never get his D.Lit. in Rabinda-Tanath. "Darmha valthala-mah im jhuma! " Sense not important. Tree tall, man very dead, fire-cart kill quick, just let it come. No word, oddly, for bullet. "Varstra-las! "
"Is that Indian?"
"Ink."
"The American infantry used to take Cotapeeke Indians with them on the battlefield in Normandy, so that orders could be shouted without the enemy understanding them. I expect your Bureau got the idea from that, didn't it?"
"Burro. Donkey. Speak Spanish?" Had to answer, had to. Verbal diarrhoea. Say anything. Urge to speak. Question of time now.
"I always speak Spanish in Las Ramblas, yes. Shall we contact your man in Barcelona by radio for you?"
"They're up today. Yesterday they'll -" watch it! "Be boiling over. Look, if you think you're going to -"
"Why are you still in Berlin?" There was an edge on the tone for the first time.
"The new generation is making its breakthrough to a kind of music that has never been heard before. A ballet of intricate patterns that bespell the eye. Try me on -"
"We thought you were flying out -"
"Pigs might fly, phoenixes fly, the higher they fly -"
"Phoenix? Phoenix, yes. How did you hear about Phoenix?"
"Phone, you tapped my phone, you sods. Listen, there's no talk, no turkey -"
"What was Solly's mission?"
"My fault – my fault -"
"What was he researching on?"
"German war, it wasn't fair -"
"Germ warfare? Oh, we know that. But what will your man in Barcelona do with that container?"
Say nothing. Still dangerous: the answers were coming out mixed up because of the need to inhibit them at source, but he was piecing the images together like an expert. He had to open me up soon or it'd be too late and he knew that – some of the ques
tions were even direct: what was I doing in Berlin, so forth. Showed he was fighting hard, gloves off.
Coming down the far side now. Worst over. The tingling on the skin had stopped. Sweat drying on me. Anxiety on the wane, normal lucidity returning (more real than the glaring superlucidity of the hepped phase).
He said: "We've just had a call from your Control and you are ordered to make an immediate report. Begin, Quiller."
Then I was out again, whole, and still sane.
There is a dawn area coming between the nightmare roller-coaster phase and the daylight of normalcy, and I was in it now, and knew it.
"Begin your report, Quiller!"
Physically I was all right: a shoulder bruise and some thirst, that was all. Psychically stable: disinclination to plan anything, sense of loss (psychic contents had been spilling), nothing worse.
I could make a check now, and defeat the last enemy, my own disinclination to plan anything. I had to plan. If I were going to live, it'd be on my wits.
The guards were still strung across the far end of the room with their guns out of sight. Oktober hadn't moved. I got a look at the gold wrist-watch as Fabian turned to him. 10.55. It had been a ninety-minute ride, then.
Start thinking. Why had Fabian turned to look at Oktober? They were both moving away from me to stand half-way down the room. I heard them murmuring. Nothing intelligible. So they'd given it up. Fabian had been reduced, in the end, to trying simple extortion: Begin your report! Hoping to tap some remnant source of psychic response. No go.
The room was still and no one moved. The murmuring went on. The smell of ether was on the air, and the taint of the guard's vomit. I wasn't thinking about anything. But I must. Make an effort. Why wasn't I thinking about anything?
Because I knew.
It was the only thing they could do.
Oktober had turned and was coming towards me. He stopped and stood looking down at me. His hands were clasped behind him and the eyes had the stare of glass; and I remembered a man who had stood like this, neatly-tailored in black, his hands behind him, saying, I am due back inBrucknerwald in one hour, for luncheon. The stamp was on all of them, and it was most marked when they were about to do what this one was to do now.
