Quiller KGB q-13

by Adam Hall

  'When did the tag get onto me?'

  'When you left here.'

  'Shit.'

  I'd checked for tags when I'd got to the Club but not when I'd left, because I'd been too busy watching the girl and keeping her in sight. 'Why did you have me tagged?'

  'You told me you were expecting Volper to have a go.'

  'Then why didn't you tell me?'

  'You wouldn't have liked it — ' looking up from his nails '- would you?'

  'Oh for Christ's sake, let's get some tea sent in.' Whatever they'd given me to pull me out of the hypothermia thing had left me as dry as a wooden god. 'If I'd wanted someone in support I'd have asked for it.

  'It's not like that,' he said, 'this time,' and picked up the phone.

  'It's so bloody dangerous.'

  When your own cell puts some kind of support in the field without telling you it can lead to a whole lot of trouble: three years ago in Mexico City I'd spent half the night coming round full circle on a tag and when I'd got him on the floor of a hotel boiler-room with a near-lethal lock on his throat and started asking questions he'd turned out to be an extra-curricular peep tacked onto me by an over-anxious local director and it'd set the mission back by two weeks because I'd lost track of the objective.

  'It's a calculated risk,' Cone said, and switched to German and asked for some Earl Grey, putting the phone down and getting out of his chair and standing with his shoulders forward, leaning into that bitter wind of his. 'My instructions are to protect you whenever I think it's necessary.'

  'I can look after myself. You know my record.'

  'You've survived very well, so far. But you've been lucky.'

  His eyes came to rest on mine, which was unusual. He'd won a major point and I think he was watching me for my reaction.

  'We all need luck when a wheel comes off but that doesn't change anything.'

  'It does, this time. This time, it's Mr Shepley.'

  'He's a soldier, and they can only think of making a move with a mass of troops in the field.'

  It looked something like a smile; the skin tightened on his face and his eyes lost their look of unbreakable concentration just for a second. 'I wouldn't call that man a soldier, not the way he works. What you've got to realise is that this time we're expecting you to cooperate with us. I know that doesn't come easy, but this time we're trying to protect one of the two most powerful men on the planet. It'd be nice if you could get perspective on that.'

  I gave it some thought: I had to. It was no good asking what the KGB was doing if their top kick needed protection because I knew what they were doing: they'd sent Yasolev in to ask us for liaison. Volper was a British national and the Bureau was digging up enough ground in London to bring the place down before they could find his tracks. What Cone meant was that I still hadn't got a grip on the size of this thing and he could be right, but there was only one way I could work and they'd known that when they'd called me in.

  'All right, try this. Whenever you put someone in the field with me I want to know about it. I want to know who they are and where they're deployed and what their instructions are.'

  'That's a tall order.' There was a knock on the door and he loped across and opened it and we didn't say anything before the boy had left the tray on the round plastic-topped table and gone out again.

  'No, I mean in the field with me actively. I know the place must be full of lamplighters.'

  'You wouldn't believe how many. You want it straight up?'

  'Yes. Actively — all right?'

  He brought my tea over and I went halfway to meet him and wondered if he caught the symbolism.

  'All right, you'll be told. There's got to be trust, hasn't there, like with Yasolev. Got to meet each other halfway.' The skin tightened again and a spark came into his eyes and I had the impression that this man Cone was deeper than I'd thought, quicker, harder, more implacable, and with the power, perhaps, given only to people in the very top echelon: the power to break me in an instant and throw me to the dogs if he thought I looked like endangering the mission. It occurred to me that the KGB connection wasn't the only thing that could cost me sleep: I was expected to 'co-operate' right across the board, and I could believe they'd given me a director in the field who'd wipe me out if I didn't. This time, yes, things were different.

  He held his cup in both hands, stooping over it, though it wasn't cold in here. 'And that works both ways, doesn't it? If you make any kind of move where you think you're going to need some luck, I want you to tell me.'

  'I don't have to. They'll come for me again, whether I make a move or not.'

  'That's how you see yourself? A sitting duck?'

  'Don't you?'

  'Yes.' Squinting down at his tea. 'That's unavoidable. And you're prepared to draw their fire?'

  'It's the only way in. I've done it before.' Moscow, West Berlin, Prague. 'It's a classic, you know that. It's the fastest way in.'

  'They'll want,' he said, 'to make sure, next time.'

  'The greatest risk is that one of your people gets in my way. The whole thing's very hair-trigger and I could lose him by a knee-jerk reaction before he'd got time to identify himself. I wish you'd see that.'

  He put down his tea by the phone and got his briefcase and found an envelope and ripped it open.

  'I've got five men on standby. Here are their faces.' He gave me some photographs. 'I don't use them all at once. There was only one of them behind you when you left that club. Keep these somewhere safe.'

  'What are their code names?'

  'You don't need to worry about that. They won't ever come out of the background unless something happens, and then you won't be interested in their names.'

  I put the prints away. 'All right, that's a help. D'you think Yasolev's got people out there too?'

  'He gave you his word. I don't know how much it's worth.'

  I let it go. 'What about the police?'

  'We haven't asked them to look after you. He might have.'

  I got myself some more tea. 'What are they doing about the Spree thing?'

  'Yasolev asked them to put out smoke. They did. You won't be questioned.'

  'But it's woken them up, hasn't it? He wiped out at least two of their cars and finished up on a slab.'

  'We can't help that.' The phone was ringing. 'We've got to leave the HUA to Yasolev.' He picked up the receiver.

  I was getting gooseflesh, the more I thought about it. Cone had got five men in support and the Spree thing had shaken Yasolev badly and lie could easily decide to bring in some KGB support of his own and on top of that the East German police could just as easily decide to take an interest in me after what had happened, despite Yasolev's request to leave me alone: this was their pitch we were playing on. But the only way we'd got of reaching Horst Volper was by letting him come for me again and he wouldn't do that if it meant taking on an army: he'd realise I was bogged down and no longer a danger.

  I'd known I'd have to find a safe-house and go to ground and work Quickstep solo, but I didn't know I'd have to do it so soon.

  'He wants to see us.' Cone was putting the phone down.

  'Yasolev?'

  'Yes. Sounds worried.' He loped across and took the lid off the big brass teapot to see how much there was left.

  'What did he say?'

  'Just wants to talk.' He went to the door and opened it and left it that, a small gesture of courtesy. 'He's on his way.' The chrome art deco clock on the wall was at 11:05. An hour earlier Yasolev had phoned us and said he was turning in.

  'He must have had some kind of signal.'

  'That's conceivable.' He lowered his voice. 'Before he comes, there's been another instruction from London. We're to check on Cat Baxter. She's coming out here.'

  'The rock star?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why do we have to check on her?'

  'Now that's a very good question.' He took his cup into the bathroom and rinsed it out and dried it on a towel and came back, and then Yasol
ev was suddenly in the open doorway in a worn red dressing-gown, his thin hair untidy as he looked first at Cone, then at me.

  'I have just received information that General-Secretary Gorbachev — '

  'Door,' Cone said, and jerked a hand.

  I went past Yasolev and shut it and came back.

  'Thank you — that General-Secretary Gorbachev will make an informal visit to East Berlin.'

  'When?' Cone asked him.

  'He arrives on the 17th of this month.'

  In a week from now.

  'There's some tea,' Cone said, 'if you'd like some.'

  10: LIBIDO

  ' They shot him.'

  Closer, now, the Wall.

  'They shot him in the back.'

  Looming against the south sky, the Wall.

  'What made him do it?'

  It was all you could see through the window here: the Wall, floodlit, towering, though it's not all that high, fourteen feet, but towering because of what it is, what it means. And because of the barbed wire, the watchtowers, the machine gun posts.

  'I suppose he wanted freedom,' I said.

  He took another gulp of schnapps, puckering his mouth over it, squeezing his eyes shut, a drop of clear mucus gleaming at the end of his nose under the bleak white light. You could even see the reflection, in the glass of the china cabinet opposite the window, the reflection of the Wall. It shut us in, squeezing us into the small overheated room between its floodlit expanse against the window and its reflection on the cabinet. It was all they talked about in these rooms, these buildings, along these streets: the Wall. Twenty-seven years ago it had leapt like a tidal wave and frozen solid, cutting a city in half.

  Gunter Blum, sixty, cab-driver: 'It's not so bad here.'

  'No

  'We're better off here than what they are in Poland or Czechoslovakia. 'There's industry here, goods, stuff in the shops. You can earn a decent living.' He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. 'So why did he do it?'

  'Those things aren't freedom,' I said. 'Perhaps that was what he wanted. How old was he?'

  'Thirty-two. Still a young man.'

  This place was near Spittelmarkt, and we were on the second floor. The other apartment was next to this one, next to his. He just had the two.

  'When did it happen?'

  'Three years ago. Three years and seventeen days.' He rubbed at a blister on his hand. 'She tried to kill herself.'

  'Your wife?'

  'His mother. More his mother than my wife, you know? He was everything to her.' Small jerk of his head. 'It's the way it is, sometimes, mothers and sons.'

  This was the fourth place I'd seen. I hadn't looked at the small ads in the local papers because I wanted somewhere close to the hotel, close to the embassies. I'd spent two hours getting rid of a tag, not one of Cone's people because his face didn't match any of the photographs, possibly one of Yasolev's if he'd decided to break faith, possibly one of Horst Volper's. Then I'd gone on foot, looking for the Zimmer zu Vermieten cards in the windows.

  'Where is she now?'

  There was no sign of a woman here.

  'She's living with her sister in Strausberg. She — we couldn't get on, after that.' Jerk of his head. 'She shouldn't have tried to do such a terrible thing. I didn't, and he was my son too, wasn't he? She still had me, didn't she?'

  The cheap schoolroom chair creaked as he tossed back the last of his drink; he was a big man, his arms tattooed, his fists resting on the table, bunched, angry, his eyes glancing up at the window every so often as if he were keeping watch on an enemy.

  'I read about it,' I told him.

  'A lot of people did. It caught attention.' He reached for the bottle of schnapps and then changed his mind, looking at the tin-framed clock on the shelf over the sink.

  The story had caught attention because of its irony. Paul Blum had almost made it to the West: he'd been poised on the top of the Wall when they'd shot him, and it was only his body that had dropped to freedom on the other side.

  'Why did he do it?' Couldn't get it off his mind.

  'He was making a statement,' I said.

  'They don't shoot to kill, these days. If only he'd waited.'

  'His statement still stands. There are plenty of others crying out for freedom. He spoke for them too.'

  'Hero, then. He's a hero? They didn't think so when I went to the checkpoint. I didn't know he'd been going to try it. I saw the papers, next day, and I went to the checkpoint, out of my mind, hit some of the guards, went crazy.' Eyes on the window again. 'They beat me up and shoved me inside for twenty-four hours. Common criminal they said he was, a criminal, betraying the cause, all that Party bullshit.' His glance was on me, now, wary. 'I don't know you, don't know who you are.

  'They're no friends of mine. I'm in the market.'

  He looked away. 'Do a bit myself.'

  They all do. 'So you never see your wife?' I needed to know.

  'Once in a while.' Jerking his head — 'I still love her, but I'm not sorry she keeps away. Breaking her heart, you see, and I can't stand for women to cry. Wants to visit his grave. I think if she could ever do that, she'd start mending.'

  'They buried him over there?'

  'I've got a cousin. I sent him the money. He sent us some pictures — Paul's in a cemetery in Grunewald. Pictures aren't the same as seeing, though, being there. I'd do anything, but they won't even look at our applications. He was a criminal, is how they think of him. God in heaven — ' he hit the top of the table with the flat of his hands and got to his feet and kicked the chair aside '- he was born there, you know that? They killed him trying to get into his own country!'

  He moved in the room like a creature tethered, going in lumbering circles, trapped, his big hands hanging with their fists still bunched, his Bath heavy, his mouth puckered.

  'Do you think she'd come back to you,' I asked him, 'once she'd seen the grave?'

  Or stay over there. Either way, she'd feel better, start mending.

  'Why haven't you moved away?'

  He stopped dead. 'Where to?'

  'Just away from the, Wall.'

  He faced the window again, his square head going forward. 'No. I'm not turning my back.'

  I got out of the worn leatherette armchair. 'He wouldn't want that for you.'

  'I want it for myself. I want to go on hating them.'

  I let him talk some more, enough to do him a bit of good; then I got out my wallet. 'I'll take the flat,' I told him, 'for a month.'

  'The flat?' He'd forgotten why I'd come here.

  It'd be as good as I'd find and I'd run out of time; it was three days since Yasolev had told us Gorbachev was coming to East Berlin and we'd only got four left. From this floor there was an easy drop into the small littered yard behind the building and the window at the front wasn't overlooked — there was just the Wall. There was a staircase instead of a lift and good enough cover in the street outside: vans standing opposite the paper mill, loading and unloading; five doorways within plain sight and a long shop window diagonally opposite with a wide angle of reflection; a high fence alongside a demolition site where they were knocking a three-storey building down.

  I got out some money. 'I'll want privacy,' I said, 'just as you want yours. I'm not into anything risky, I just want to keep myself to myself. Is that understood?'

  'I'm not interested in other people's business.' He picked up the money.

  'I'm going to rely on that. Give me your wife's name and her sister's address, and by the end of the month I'll see she gets a permit to visit the cemetery on the other side.'

  He swung his head up. 'You can do that?'

  'I guarantee it. If you look after me well.'

  'Got my word.'

  Safe-house.

  'Didn't you see me?'

  She was in Airforce uniform, the greatcoat buttoned to the chin against the freezing wind, her hands gloved. First Lieutenant's insignia.

  'It was the brakes,' I said. 'They've been giving trouble.'
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  'What did you say?' She stood closer, pitching her voice above the din of a truck going past, its wheels churning through the slush. There'd been snow last night.

  'Brakes,' I said. 'They don't work.'

  'You admit responsibility?'

  'Yes. You'd better shut your door.' She'd left it open when she got out of the car to look at the damage. It wasn't much more than I'd done to the other two cars the night before: creased rear wing, smashed tail-light.

  She went back to the pagoda-top Mercedes and got a black briefcase and slammed the door. 'Show me your driver's licence and your insurance, please.' A bus came past, throwing out a wave of slush, but she didn't move when it hit her jackboots, knew how to concentrate.

  'Let's go in there,' I said, 'or we'll freeze.'

  She glanced at the steamed-up window of the restaurant, then at her watch, then back to me.

  'Let me see your identity card.'

  I showed it to her, the official one with the HUA insignia, and she gave me a closer look, dark eyes, pale skin, a hard straight mouth. 'Very well, captain.'

  The place was almost dark inside, either trying to look like a night-club or keep down the electricity bill. She put her briefcase onto a bench inside the door and zipped it open, her hands ungloved now, her movements deft. The other two women had been slower, less controlled. 'Here is my licence. May I please see yours?'

  We exchanged notes; one of her gloves dropped and I picked it up; she didn't thank me. The window shook as something big went past, and a man in a moth-eaten fur hat came in and slammed the door and banged his feet up and down to get the slush off; but I was more interested in the woman — First Lieutenant Lena Pabst, Werneuchen Airforce Base, thirty-two, status unmarried — and the way she wrote, quickly, vertically, the way she stood, straight, balanced, totally confident.

  'Thank you, comrade captain.'

  'I haven't eaten since this morning,' I told her. 'Will you join me for a meal?'