Quiller KGB q-13

by Adam Hall

  This was at 4:13 in the afternoon and at 4:46 I walked into the Airforce administration building in Bruderstrasse and showed my police card to the man at the desk and went across to the elevators and started work.

  17: ROOM 60

  He was watching me.

  The ideal scenario when you go into a building to search one of the offices is that everyone leaves by five o'clock and the doors are shut and there's only the janitor in the basement and you come out of the cleaners' cupboard and start work, but on this particular night there were still some people in the building at six o'clock and it occurred to me that since this was a military administration headquarters they might run a night shift.

  Or at least he seemed to be watching me — it wasn't easy to tell. The whole place was a honeycomb of glass and brushed aluminium panels and wherever you looked there were reflections.

  I didn't move.

  I was sitting in Room 60 and the name of the man who worked here was on the plate outside the door: A. V. Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Directorate. I didn't know what he looked like. If he looked anything like me at a distance of fifty feet through a series of windows and their angled reflections it might go well: here was Comrade Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Directorate, still sitting at his desk and catching up on his work. But if he didn't look like me, and I started moving about and opening drawers and going through the filing cabinets it wouldn't go well at all: that man at the desk in the office across the corner would be in here to ask who I was and what I was doing, and a captain of the HUA had no right in this place because the military took precedence, and even if I said I was here on some kind of liaison work I'd have to name the officer in the Airforce administration who'd allowed me in here.

  In addition to which, this was the office of the Soviet Adviser, and he would be no lightweight: he would be a member of the GRU.

  The man across the corridor wasn't in uniform; nor were the others I could see in the more distant offices. My camouflage was thus in order: I'd put on a dark suit and tie, and this at least gave me a chance. And he was on the telephone, the man who seemed to be watching me, and when we're on the telephone we tend to stare at things without really seeing them. On the other hand he might have noticed me after he'd started talking, and might have decided to wait until he'd finished before he came across the corridor to find out who I was.

  I suppose it sounds like a harmless intellectual exercise but if that's what you think then you're dead wrong. I'd only been in here five minutes when that man had walked out of the elevator and gone into his office and switched the lights on and sat down at his desk; and when he'd looked up he'd seen me through the glass panels and there hadn't been time for me to drop out of sight and in any case that might have been a mistake because once out of sight I couldn't suddenly appear from nowhere.

  The thing is that if anyone came in here and asked who I was it wouldn't be easy, because the military don't get on with the civilian intelligence departments or the secret police and the least they'd do would be to ask me to show my identity card and they'd check on it by phone and find it was false.

  Yasolev: The HUA are on no account to know that you are liaising with the KGB.

  Someone came out of an office halfway along the corridor and went into the one where the man was at the phone and he looked up and shielded the mouthpiece and this was when he would ask his visitor to go across and check on that man sitting at Comrade Melnichenko's desk, if he were interested.

  I waited.

  The only man I could call on in the HUA was Captain Karl Bruger, if I had to get out of a sticky situation, and he might not be available or he might have had instructions to deny knowledge of me and I couldn't even call the Soviet ambassador because that would expose the KGB connection and if I blew Yasolev I could blow Quickstep.

  Waited.

  It wasn't cold in here but I felt the chill. I could possibly get away from the police escort if they tried to take me along for interrogation but they'd know my face again and there'd be an all-points bulletin put out immediately and I'd have to go to ground and stay there, and I had a very definite intuition that even if Yasolev panicked his chief directorate into sending the KGB into East Berlin en masse to escort General-Secretary Gorbachev when he arrived in less than forty-eight hours they wouldn't be able to protect him.

  Horst Volper was a professional and he was a specialist and he was believed to be here in this city with the single intention of assassinating Gorbachev and he would expect his target to be heavily escorted and protected, as at all times on foreign soil, and he would make his plans accordingly. The only way to protect the General-Secretary was by finding Volper and incapacitating him.

  Incapacitating, Jesus, I was as bad as those snotty-nosed scribes stuck up there in their stuffy little offices in London — killing, yes, we have to kill Volper, get him out of society's way.

  'The man at the telephone was still talking to the other one who'd gone into his office and his hand was still blocking the mouthpiece and I still didn't move and it had started to be a test of the nerves, and the sweat was making my scalp itch and I couldn't scratch it, the immobility of my right leg was bringing on cramp and I couldn't move it, well either tell him to come and see who I am or don't.

  It was as if he'd heard. He nodded and took his hand away from the mouthpiece and started talking into the telephone again and the other man went out of the office and shut the door and came along the passage with two of his ghostlike reflections moving together across the windows and merging as he got to the corner and turned in this direction, looking down at something in his hand, looking up again and not stopping, not going into any of the other rooms, coming straight on and turning his head to look at me through the glass until he reached the door and opened it.

  'Where's Melnichenko?'

  'He said he'd be back shortly.'

  Looked at the folder in his hand. 'I'd like a word with him.'

  'I'll tell him that.'

  A nod, turning to go, turning back. 'Have I seen you before?'

  'Not unless you've ever visited the Commandant at GRU Headquarters in Moscow.'

  Head went back an inch and he opened his mouth but didn't seem o know quite what to say, went out.

  I'd spoken German with a Russian accent to make the whole thing plausible but it had been very close and if anyone else came in here they might not be so impressed.

  Sitting here like a fish in a bowl and I hadn't expected it, wasn't ready for it. Question of choice at this stage: get out of here and don't stop moving until I hit the street, or stay where I am and ransack this room and risk exposure at any minute. Question of urgency, too: Lena Pabst had said there was a file on Trumpeter in this room, so I was infinitely closer than I'd ever been to finding Volper or blowing his operation. Urgent, then, that I should stay here and take the risk of blowing Quickstep first.

  There was also the temptation of picking up the phone and calling Cone.

  I'm in a red sector and if I can't get out of it you should be informed that the man who works in Room 60 is A. V. Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Directorate, presumably GRU.

  It would then be up to Cone to work out why the file on Trumpeter was in the safekeeping of an officer of the GRU. Two possibilities: the GRU was simply watching the operation and waiting to blow it up, or Trumpeter had nothing to do with Horst Volper.

  I opened the top left drawer while the last thought went through the processing stage; then it came back very fast indeed. Play it again:

  'Trumpeter had nothing to do with Horst Volper.

  Nothing to do with the assassination.

  Then what was it to do with? Something of major importance, because soon after Lena Pabst had started infiltrating it she'd been found shot dead.

  No question now: pick up the phone.

  While I waited for the, ringing tone I watched one of the reflections of the man in the office over there; he wasn't interested in me: he'd put the phone down and was writ
ing.

  Five rings.

  Eight.

  Someone came into reflection from the direction of the elevator and his images merged and then split apart again. I watched him.

  At the tenth ring I pressed the contact down and waited and let it up again. Dialling tone.

  He was coming in this direction and I closed the top left drawer.

  Ringing.

  Where did Cat Baxter come in?

  Four rings.

  I know I'm taking a risk. What had she meant? A risk of what?

  He came past the door without turning his head, a young man, uniformed, lower rank. You do not, if you are lower rank, glance in at the offices of the directorate.

  'Yes?'

  Yasolev.

  'Liaison.'

  'Well?'

  'For your information, Room 60 is the office of A. V. Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Airforce Directorate. I assume he's GRU, not KGB, this being a military headquarters. It — '

  'Wait.'

  Making notes.

  'Yes?'

  'It could be possible that the Trumpeter operation is not being run by Horst Volper, and has nothing to do with our main concern.' A KGB officer with a room in an East Berlin hotel uses a telephone that is totally free of bugs, but I shied at mentioning the name of Gorbachev as the target of an assassination project.

  'Perhaps Melnichenko has acquired the file and is observing the operation.'

  'Giving it rope, yes, that's possible. But I phoned you because if the other possibility is fact, there's got to be a major switch in our thinking. We've got to infiltrate two operations.'

  In a moment: 'We already suspected this.'

  Because Dietrich, under the intense pressure of interrogation, had known nothing about Trumpeter.

  'Yes. This seems to confirm it. I'll leave it to you, all right?'

  'Yes. I shall go to work on it immediately. But I am concerned about your position. If you are found in that building — '

  'I've been in hazard before. You'll hear from me as soon as I'm clear.'

  'Very well. I hope — ' I could see him shrug.

  'Over and out.'

  I rang off.

  He wouldn't waste any time. Immediate signal to Moscow: Require all possible information on A. V. Melnichencko, believed to be a member of the GRU. Also try the personnel files of the KGB. Request immediate and most urgent attention.

  My hand went to the drawer again but I froze on another thought. I'd just told Yasolev that it was possible that Trumpeter had nothing to do with "our main concern", simply because it was nothing to do with Horst Volper. That could be dangerous thinking. Crows are black but all black birds are not crows.

  Were there two independent operations with Gorbachev as the target for both of them?

  Mother of God.

  You must understand that inside the Kremlin there are factions opposed to the Comrade General-Secretary's policy of perestroika. Yasolev, in that chill dawn among the trees. Inside the KGB there are factions similarly opposed.

  Hand on the drawer.

  And inside the GRU?

  I would have liked to talk to Cone. He'd said that if I couldn't reach him at the hotel I should try the Soviet Embassy but he might not be there either and I didn't want to spend any more time on the phone; I wanted to rip this office apart and find the Trumpeter file and get clear before someone else came in here and asked if he'd seen me before and refused to be put off by the Russian accent.

  There came to me, my good friend, as I sat here at Comrade Melnichenko's desk in this hall of mirrors, in the centre of this critically red sector, the feeling that I had also arrived at the centre of Quickstep, at the point where the entire mission had become focused, its components coalescing into a gem-hard reality. It was a good feeling. The wounds I'd received out here in the field, the underlying grief for those who had met their death — Scarsdale, Skidder, Dietrich, the man on the bridge, the smouldering distrust I felt for Yasolev, even Cone, even Shepley, the paranoid suspicion that they were setting me up, all of them, and running me through this city like a rat in a maze — all these things were leaving my mind, so that my attention could become focused, like the mission itself, on the immediate and paramount objective. The Trumpeter file.

  I've had this feeling before, and I've learned to trust it. It's a good feeling, yes. But do not be quick, my friend, with your congratulations. The centre of any mission is like the eye of the hurricane, and there was the warning in the blood, in the atavistic brain stem, that if I didn't leave this treacherous hall of mirrors while I had the chance I would lose the day, and all I would know would be the dying echoes of the explosion as Quickstep blew apart.

  Bang of a door and the nerves jerked and I watched the man going along the passage to the elevator, the man who had been in the office across the corner. His room was dark now.

  Only two others were still lit, but the passage itself was bright under the argon tubes. They would be left going all night, for the janitors.

  I could see six faces from where I sat, two of them substantial except tier the filming of the glass, four of them reflections. From where they sat they could see three faces, all of them mine.

  Movement attracts the eye at the periphery of the vision-field; nothing is actually seen, only movement, but it brings attention, and turns the head. It took time, therefore, to reach the filing cabinet in the corner, perhaps fifteen minutes. It wasn't important; but I'd had to move in the chair, lowering my body behind the desk, by imperceptible degrees, and by the time I was at the filing cabinet in the corner of the room the muscles were trembling from the strain. But there were no faces in the windows now.

  There wouldn't be anything on Trumpeter here in the cabinet; even if the drawers were locked it'd be dangerously accessible: there'd be a wall-safe somewhere and I would look for it. But this was the only corner of the room where I was invisible, so I could do some work here to pass the time. The man who had left his office wouldn't be the last; the other two would follow — there wasn't, after all, a night-shift here. If I were wrong then I'd have to rethink.

  The drawers were locked but I'd brought the keys I'd been looking for in the desk and I used them now.

  Aircraft deployment — States of Readiness — Estimated Scramble Delay.

  The second drawer held personnel statistics, the third drawer an inventory of ordnance and specialised weaponry, the fourth a breakdown of the fighter units and their strategical disposition throughout the Democratic Republic. The bottom drawer was more interesting: Werneuchen Base: Deployment of Aircraft — Availability of Optimum Strength — Personnel.

  It didn't surprise me that Werneuchen was featured and had an entire drawer to itself. My air base, Werneuchen, is in the front line of the war. Lena Pabst, her dark eyes shimmering. I am in the front line of the last war on earth, and when it's over I shall still be here to see the dawn of the new world.

  But for a bullet.

  Werneuchen: the focus of Trumpeter was on Werneuchen, and I left the bottom drawer unlocked in case there was a chance of taking anything with me when I left here. The whole cabinet was stuffed with the type of classified product worth mounting a specific documentation snatch on its own, but if I took away everything I came across tonight I'd need a truck outside.

  I moved to the next corner, where there were three more files, and I had the keys in my hand when a panel of light in the environment went out and I froze. Sound of voices, footsteps. I watched the six reflections and saw them come together and part again where the panels of glass formed a corner. The footsteps were fainter now. Sound of the elevator doors thumping open, thumping shut.

  Totally alone, and I got going in earnest, opening the three files and ransacking them for any material in code, because there'd be nothing on Trumpeter in plain text. I still believed there was a safe somewhere, in a wall or in the floor, and I slammed the last drawer of the third cabinet shut and began looking for it, and within the next half hour I'd sounded e
very inch of the walls and the panels of the desk and the base of the carved ottoman that was the only decorative piece of furniture in the room.

  Sound.

  Freeze.

  Elevators. Not the doors, just the machinery, the low whine of the motors.

  Doors now.

  This floor.

  I'd worked thoroughly but I'd covered my tracks and there was nothing in sight that hadn't been there when I'd first come into the office. From where I was standing now I could see two reflections of the elevator and the three figures in the corridor.

  Steady the breathing, stabilise the nerves.

  They weren't janitors: I couldn't see clearly through the reflecting panels but their peaked caps were distinct.

  Walking steadily, keeping in step, talking; I could hear their voices now.

  Didn't move. Watched. It would be ten or twelve seconds before they reached the corner and came into full sight of Room 60 and if one of them raised his head and looked straight in front of him he would see me clearly. One of two things was going to happen. When they reached the corner they would keep straight on and move out of sight, or they would turn and come in this direction and either pass Room 60 or come in.

  A gleam of brass on their caps: two of them were high ranking. A civilian in the middle — he could be Melnichenko.

  I waited. Tidal breathing, the itch of sweat as it gathered on the scalp. They were still talking. Then they reached the corner and turned in this direction and came on without stopping.

  Rat in a trap.

  18: VERTIGO

  'I would have liked to be presented to him.'

  'Of course. But it's my understanding that — Hans, will you sit here? — it's my understanding that the chiefs of service haven't been invited to the press luncheon. They're playing down the military side of things during this particular visit.'

  'I shall be over at Werneuchen that day, in any case. The — '