Quiller KGB q-13

by Adam Hall

  Eyes watering a little from the thick cigarette smoke at the club, the smell of it on my coat, 12:41 and the thought persisting that I'd handled things correctly, holding off when she'd mentioned Volper, giving her nothing.

  I mustn't lose her.

  Right onto Karl Marx Allee, 12:45 and the streets almost deserted; another police car cruising north, passing us on the far side. The Audi was still with us but it peeled off a block later, leaving the mirror blank.

  12:49.

  '98.3.'

  It can't be ninety-eight point three. That isn't any kind of time at all.

  'Pulse normal.'

  The smell of cigarette smoke on my coat, and of something else. 'Blood-pressure 125 over 83.'

  Antiseptics. Smell of antiseptics. Terror.

  'All right, you can take him off the drip.' The terror of disorientation, of not knowing. 'Lights,' I said. 'Can you turn off the lights?'

  Blinding me. I was enveloped in some kind of passive restraint. Blankets.

  'Did he say something?' Cone's voice.

  'Yes, he's conscious now.'

  Conscious? Jesus Christ, of course I'm conscious.

  Said, 'Of course I'm conscious.'

  It had gone almost dark now, just one lamp burning, like a moon in haze.

  'Feel all right?' Cone's face with its eyes squinting and its gash of a mouth, hovering over mine.

  'God knows what I feel.' I tried to sit up but the girl in the white linen coat put her hand on my shoulder and I wasn't strong enough to resist.

  'You can't get up yet,' a man said in German. Also in a white coat.

  'Are you a doctor?'

  'Yes.'

  Someone else standing there looking down.

  Yasolev.

  Said, 'Is this a hospital?'

  'Yes,' the doctor said.

  Some kind of amnesia, then.

  'Am I functional?'

  'Please?'

  'Functional, for God's sake. What injuries?'

  'Take it slow,' Cone said. 'You're all right. There's nothing broken.'

  Furious now. Panicking. 'Tell me what condition I'm in.'

  The sharpest fear of the executive: to become unfit and lose the mission.

  'You've come out of hypothermia,' Cone said, 'and there was some concussion and various bruises and some skin ripped off. There's nothing serious.'

  'Hypothermia. Cone, fill me in, will you?' Excessively polite, monumentally patient, because my head was full of bells ringing and lights flashing and fireworks going off — the nerves, in other words, had been rubbed raw and the brain was screaming out for information so that I could find my place again in reality. So I had to keep the lid on things, strictly essential.

  'You were nearly drowned,' Cone said. 'The police pulled you out of the Spree. The other man was already dead.'

  Sensation of black water rising against my face, filling my mouth, blocking my throat — Oh Christ -

  'Nurse.'

  'Yes, doctor — '

  'Take it slow,' Cone said, and the nurse held me by the shoulders, some sort of paroxysm, choking fit, hadn't expected it. 'You swallowed the wrong way, that's all.'

  It was a minute before I could speak. 'Out of the Spree? What was I doing there?'

  'We're hoping you can tell us.'

  There was a sense of oblivion coming into me, of a void. It was enough to chill the blood and I stayed with it alone for as long as I could before I asked for help.

  'Doc,' in German, 'I had concussion, is that right?'

  'Yes. Mild concussion.'

  'Any shock?'

  'Shock too, yes, because of the hypothermia and because of the other trauma.'

  'I see. Well I — listen, what about retrogressive amnesia?'

  'You're having difficulty in remembering?'

  I didn't answer right away. When it's necessary to fight panic off you can't think of anything else. It came at me in waves, freezing the blood, stilling the mind, blocking the breath. After a long time, I said, 'Cone.'

  He leaned closer.

  'The last thing I can remember was looking at the clock on dashboard, at 12:49.'

  He watched me for a moment. 'That was twelve hours ago.'

  Mother of God.

  'What is being said?' In Russian.

  Cone turned to Yasolev. 'He's got a memory lapse.'

  The doctor glanced at them, not understanding, and I remembered,I hadn't answered his question. 'Yes,' I told him, 'I'm having difficulty recalling what happened between 12:49 this morning and when I came to a few minutes ago.'

  He opened his hands, fingers spread. 'It sometimes happens after an accident. The mind protects itself from unpleasant memories. I wouldn't worry. Perhaps nothing very important happened.'

  But, Jesus Christ, I'd been tagging someone who'd connected me with Horst Volper and she could have led me straight into access to the target and it would have swung the mission from phase one into a totally new situation with a chance of going in and reaching Volper and completing Quickstep in a matter of days, hours. Nothing very important?

  'Cone. You said "the other man". What other man?'

  'We don't know who he is.'

  It was for me. For me to know.

  'Where is he?'

  'In the mortuary.'

  'Aren't you trying to find out who he is?'

  'Yes.'

  'What time did they find us in the river?'

  'It's down on the incident report as 01:15.'

  Twenty-six minutes. That was the gap.

  'Where was the car?'

  'Your car?'

  'Yes.'

  'Two blocks away, in a side street off Karl Marx Allee.'

  'But that's — what d'you mean, my car? Was there another one?'

  'You must allow him to rest now, please. He — '

  'You mean I walked as far as the river? But that's over — '

  'There was a car in the river, where you were found.'

  'In the — I got into someone else's car?'

  'We think so. A Mercedes.'

  'So why did it go into the river?'

  'We don't know.'

  'But for Christ's sake, were the tyres shot off, was it hit by another — '

  'That is enough.' The doctor stepped between Cone and the bed and signalled the nurse. 'Gentlemen, you have to leave now. My patient needs to rest.'

  Yasolev said something about getting a tape recorder but Cone interrupted him.

  'I)oc, this is very important. We need — '

  'Nothing is as important to me as the welfare of my patient. Please understand that.'

  'Give me thirty seconds more,' I told him, and he looked down at me.

  'Very well. But don't get excited, please.'

  'Cone,' I said, 'call the doctor at the Embassy and ask him if he's ever used hypnosis. If he can do it for me, I'm ready. I'd ask this man, but it's got to be in my own language. It's the only chance.'

  'Pretty long shot.'

  'Look, it's all in here, inside my head, and all we've got to do is get it out. Nothing's lost.'

  Cone looked at Yasolev and said in Russian, 'Hypnosis. What do you think?'

  'Yes,' nodding emphatically. 'Yes, yes.'

  Cone picked up the telephone and asked the operator for an outside line.

  'Can you take yourself down to the alpha level?'

  'Yes.'

  'Good. You've been hypnotised before?'

  'Couple of times.'

  His name was Cosgreave, been at the embassy six months or so. 'Won't have me in the West, I'm too Commie for their liking.' Not a smile in him anywhere, very intent, dark, still smouldering from some kind of conflagration in his past. What were they thinking of, for God's sake, keeping a leftist at the embassy this side of the Curtain? I suppose he'd been to Cambridge, one of us, you know.

  'Have you any ideas on induction?' he asked me.

  'I use the image of a brass pendulum.'

  'Never fails. Big, slow?'

  'Yes.'
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  'All right, are you comfortable?'

  'Let's hit those lights.'

  He signalled the nurse. 'You want her to stay?'

  'I don't mind.'

  The main lights went off and I felt the eye muscles relaxing. I was still smothered in blankets but not too hot any more; a sense of overlying comfort with a tendency to break through it and worry, worry like hell because this might not work and if it didn't God knew what we were going to miss but it'd be something vital: who was the man in the Mercedes and what had he said to me?

  Cosgreave pulled up a chair. 'When you reach alpha, just lift a finger.'

  I closed my eyes and relaxed, went limp, listening to the settling of the pillow as the neck muscles lost tension and the head grew heavy and the brainwaves slowed and the ticking of a watch came in and I eased it away to silence, silence and the deepening dark as the mind drifted, floated, drifting, floating as I lifted a finger and let it fall again, floating, drifting… as his voice came in quietly…

  'So you're watching the big brass pendulum… swinging… swinging to and fro… to… and fro… with the light catching it as it swings… the light flashing softly… flashing softly as it swings… to and fro… to… and fro…'

  My head settling lower on the pillow, lower, as I drifted in the darkness, drifting, floating, his voice still soft but clearer now, my mind opening gently, intent, attentive.

  'What is the last thing you remember, then? It really doesn't matter if you can't think of it; we can always try again later.'

  'A street. Karl Marx Allee.'

  'You're walking along the street? You're — '

  'Driving. Driving along Karl Marx Allee. I'm following another car, with a woman driving it.'

  'What do things look like? Feel like? It really doesn't matter if you can't remember.'

  'There are just the street lights, and sometimes the reflection of my own lights in a shop window at the intersections, the sound of the engine and the smell of cigarette smoke, that's about all. We'd turned onto the Allee a few blocks ago, and the time on the dashboard clock was 12:45. Not much in the streets, not much traffic. Police car cruising the other way. There was another car behind me, a black Audi, but it peeled off after a while and left a Fiat in the mirror. When I looked at the clock again it was 12:49.'

  Silence.

  12:49.

  'Aren't you going to ask me anything more?'

  'I don't think so. It's really not important. Just go on talking, if you want to. Just go on talking.'

  12:49.

  'If you like, but I'm not sure — '

  'Just go on talking.'

  'We were driving along the street, that was all. I'd fallen behind quite a bit now because the taxi had peeled off earlier and I didn't want her to see me close enough to identify the front-end profile. Then I looked at the clock again because I wanted to keep a check.'

  'What time was it?'

  '12:49. No, 12:50.'

  'Good, Go on.'

  'I was just keeping station. It was a routine tag. Then. she began slowing, soon after Strausbergerplatz, and turned right onto a side-street, Andreasstrasse. I sped up and swung onto the same street and saw her tail-lights ahead of me as she turned left into a car-park.

  This was tricky because I wasn't certain she was going to park there but I took a chance and put the nearside wheels of the Lancia onto the pavement and switched off and got out and began walking, listening as I went, and heard the engine of the VW throttle up and then cut off.

  Slam of a door and then she was within sight and I held back and used a rubbish bin as cover. She was walking away from the car, not hurrying, not looking around her, and I closed the distance to something like a hundred feet before she picked her way across a patch of waste-ground and turned into an alleyway with one street-light at this end. I was fifty feet behind her and using cover as I went — doorways, rubbish-bins, a section of fallen fence — because if she turned she'd see me. There were brick walls on each side now, high ones, with almost no cover, and I held back, taking the risk of losing her if she went into one of the doorways further down. It couldn't be helped and in any case it made no difference because the sound of an engine exploded in the silence and I spun round as a flood of blinding light leapt in a wave against me.

  8: SKIDDER

  There wasn't a chance because the width of the car was filling the alleyway and there was no door I could reach and the walls were too high and there was nothing to climb so I waited until the headlights were close enough and then jumped and hit the bonnet with the flat of my hands and pulled my legs up and got thrown against the top of the windscreen and over the roof, hitting the CB antenna in the centre of the boot and feeling it flex and break but the base held and I got one foot against it and used it for leverage and smashed the rear window with a heel-palm and got a grip on the frame and held on while the car accelerated through the alley like a bullet down a gun barrel and burst into the street and began weaving from side to side with the tyres shrilling and the suspension taking the shock and the bodywork heaving and recoiling and heaving and throwing me from side to side as my foot lost its hold against the base of the antenna and I clung on with one hand, side to side, weaving and bucking as he sped up and zig-zagged from kerb to kerb.

  He'd been sure he could shake me loose but I found purchase again on the antenna base and he went down on the brakes and my shoulder hit the window frame and I got both hands on it now but he was going to pull up and get out and come for me and he'd have a gun and if I dropped off and tried running clear he'd shoot me down at close range and my skin began crawling because this was going to be it, finis.

  Lights.

  They swept across the street's facade and flooded the rear of the Mercedes and he came off the brakes and hit the throttle and the tyres spun and then gripped and the rear went down and all I could do was hung on because if I dropped now I couldn't deal with the speed and there'd be no chance of shielding my head. A siren had started up and the flashing lights came on from behind us and the Mercedes began slewing again from one side to the other because this man's orders had been to wipe me out and this was the priority he wanted to take care of before the police could close in.

  It carried the same signature: they'd gone for Scarsdale in the same way but this time they'd assumed I'd be more difficult so the 'd chosen the alley and set up the kill with the girl for the lure and the timing precise and it must have looked certain and would have been certain if I hadn't got things right.

  I couldn't see where we were going, couldn't see street names because I was prone with my face down, one cheek sliding across the cellulose and my foot slipping, catching again and slipping with both hands burning on the chips of glass in the frame. I didn't know what the speed was in actual figures but he was moving flat out for the terrain and hitting the kerb and bouncing with the springs heeling, straightening and heeling as he shook the car like a ship beam-on to a running sea, the siren howling close behind us now and the reflection of the headlights dazzling on the bodywork against my eyes.

  We turned and the car slewed through an intersection with the tyres sending out a long-drawn whimper that echoed from the buildings and my weight shifted under the pull of the centrifugal force and my foot lost its purchase on the antenna base and my legs swung clear and one hand was tugged from the window-frame and I half-rolled with my hip smashing against the rear quarter as the brakes came on again and the lights of the police car grew suddenly intense and then swung away as it lost traction in a slide that took it across the kerb and into a glass window and the thought came into my mind that this would be a good place to chance it and let go and try to roll and minimise the damage because he wouldn't stop and come back for me with the police here and they'd pick me up and get me somewhere if I were still alive.

  But I had my priorities too and the chief of these was to move in on this man if I could and force something out of him, even if only a name, one name, or a clue, one clue that would to take Qu
ickstep a stage further towards the access I had to have, the access to Horst Volper.

  A siren sounded again, a different one from somewhere ahead of us: the Vopos had been using their radio and calling in some support and at this hour with the streets almost empty there'd be patrols cruising the city with nothing to do. Lights swept the intersection ahead of us and the driver braked and swerved to the right and hit the kerb and bounced into a wrenching U-turn and my legs were swung back and my foot caught the antenna-base and I got my other hand back to hook onto the edge of the window but I began worrying about muscle fatigue setting in before we hit something and I could move into close quarters with the man at the wheel. I was also worrying about the Vopos because if he smashed up the car and they came for him he'd probably pull his gun on them and then he wouldn't stand a chance because he'd be outnumbered and they'd blow him away and I'd never be able to ask him what I wanted to know. I was within minutes, inches of forcing answers out of him that would give me access to the objective but he was pushing himself closer and closer to death and taking me with him.

  Headlights in front of us and a siren howling and he swerved and grazed a lamppost and the Mercedes shuddered, rocking on its springs and heeling to one side before it hit the police car at an angle and the deceleration forces pushed me forward and I kept my foot hooked against the antenna to anchor me but it slipped free and I hit the rear quarter with one shoulder and lost all conscious thought for a while because the metalwork shrieked as the two cars glanced together and glass smashed and threw a shower of fragments across the Mercedes in a sudden hailstorm and the siren's volume rose until the eardrums went dead and all I could do was hang on and wait till it was over. A man shouted something and then we were clear and slewing across the road surface and swinging at right angles into the interesection, bouncing against the kerb and straightening with only the street lights ahead of us because one of the headlights had been ripped away and blown a fuse and shut the other one off. Stink of burnt rubber on the air from the torn treads of the tyres.

  He could see me in the driving mirror and one of the things I expected him to do was get at his gun and snatch a half-second to swing round in his seat and fire into me and there was nothing I could do to stop him except let go and drop off and leave it to happen that way instead of with a bullet. He was having to concentrate on driving char of' the tightening police net and he was hoping he could shake time off at some point along the way and leave me lying at the front end of a long red smear on the road surface, but even so I was beginning to wonder why he didn't go for his gun and one answer could be that he didn't have one: he could be a specialist with the hit-and-run routine and have a certain degree of contempt for side-arms, just as I do.