by Adam Hall
There were no flowers in the room, and no bowls of potpourri anywhere that I could see, but there was a faint perfume on the air, as if a woman had been here recently, or came often.
I assumed they'd brought me to the headquarters of Nemesis.
It would please London, give them something for the board, pick up the bit of chalk, then – Executive has maintained cover, infiltrated opposition headquarters, three cheers for the poor bloody ferret in the field, that'd teach them to give me a clown like Thrower for my DIF, but we're getting petty, aren't we, a touch spiteful, that's the way it goes, though, in this trade – they've got so much raw naked power over us, those bastards in London, because the only way anyone can turn himself into a professional spook and work for an outfit as sacrosanct as the Bureau is to sell them his soul and submit to a degree of discipline that would put a regimental sergeant major straight into shock. We're expected to -
'So!'
Klaus.
I hadn't heard the door open. Perhaps he hadn't meant me to.
'We must shake hands, mustn't we, Herr Mittag, now that I know who you are. Sit down, please, sit down.'
He wasn't wearing the smoked glasses now. His eyes were very dark, would look black in some lights: I thought he might be using coloured contact lenses, because his hair was so blond in contrast. He sat on the edge of the settee, leaving me one of the silk-brocade chairs; he sat facing me directly, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. 'We must have dinner later, and you'll stay the night, of course. Hans Mittag… I'm surprised I haven't heard your name before, if you're important enough to deal in the kind of armament Inge mentioned – we can speak freely here, of course.'
Not really.
I said, 'I use several names.'
'That explains it, of course, I expected it to be the case, yes. Now tell me about the Miniver NK-9.'
'Are you in the market for it?'
I didn't lean forward to face him; it was a wing chair, and comfortable, and I felt like taking it easy after that garage thing.
'I am in the market for it, yes,' Klaus said, 'otherwise I wouldn't have had you brought here. But I need details.'
His face was open, attentive, but the bright obsidian eyes had an intensity that reminded me that although I'd come out of that garage with a whole skin my cover was still my only protection. For as long as I stayed here at the centre of Nemesis I was a fly on a web, and one wrong word could send it trembling.
'I'll give you the most important detail first,' I told him. 'My price for one fully-primed Miniver NK-9 complete with electronic detonator is one million US dollars, cash.'
He lifted his square heavy-looking hands from his knees and dropped them again. I think it was a gesture of impatience.
'You must know,' he said, 'that the details I'm asking for concern the missile and its capability. 'We'll discuss the price later.'
'Surely I don't need to tell you, Herr Klaus, what a missile with a nuclear warhead will do. I've already given Stoph and your man Geissler an adequate idea. You could reduce the Eissporthalle, for instance, where you were sitting tonight, to radioactive ash, if you wanted to, and turn the entire district of Charlottenburg into a wasteground for a century to come, if not the whole of Berlin. The funds must be placed to a Swiss account, by the way, within twenty-four hours of your decision to buy the Miniver, if that's the decision you're going to make.'
He said nothing, went on staring at me. That was all right: I wasn't in any hurry. It was quiet in the room; there were logs burning in the hearth but the flames were soundless, at least to my ears. I hoped the effects of the piezo siren weren't going to last too long: I needed the full use of my senses.
Klaus said in a moment, 'I should tell you that I don't actually require the complete missile. I require only the warhead.'
'The price is the same.'
His hands lifted again, dropped. 'I assume the warhead can be used by itself? It would become, in effect, a bomb?'
'Oh yes. It could be detonated electronically in just the same way, or by a conventional explosive charge or by remote control. Yes, we'd be talking about a.1-megaton nuclear bomb.'
And a first, a real first for Nemesis in the annals of international terrorism: a nuclear Lockerbie. He had a sense of the dramatic, Dieter Klaus. You didn't need a Miniver warhead to bring down a 747 with two hundred and fifty people in it: you could do it with a teddy bear. But it would attract a lot more attention to have the rescue crews and investigators go into the scene wearing protective masks and clothing and armed with Geiger counters.
'You mean,' Klaus said, 'one-tenth of a megaton?'
'Yes.'
'That is a lot of power.'
'Yes.'
I waited for him to put the next question. He hadn't moved since we'd started talking, just his hands; he was still sitting forward, right on the edge of the settee, giving me all his attention. The only difference I could sense, as we watched each other now, was an added vibration in him: I could feel its waves. He'd begun to want the Miniver with great intensity, to lust after it. But he still didn't put the question: how could it be taken aboard a commercial jet?
'And when could you deliver the warhead?' he asked me instead.
'When do you want it delivered?'
'As soon as possible.'
In a moment I said, and with the greatest care, 'You know, of course, that this kind of bomb has got its drawbacks. You couldn't, for instance, get it through an inspection area.' It was as far as I could go. 'It's not like a bit of Semtex.' It was as far as I could go because Inge had told Willi that these people were planning a Lockerbie thing, and Inge knew that Willi had talked to me. I'd be lighting a short-burn fuse if I mentioned an airport.
'That's no problem,' Klaus said.
I didn't show any surprise. The Miniver warhead wasn't all that big: it'd go into a suitcase; but you wouldn't get it through an X-ray unit. It worried me a little; Klaus was deviating from the script, and I didn't know why.
I asked him, 'Will you need a conventional explosive charge to provide detonation?'
'No.'
He'd got one already: teddy bear. 'You can deposit the funds in Geneva within twenty-four hours?'
'Yes,' he said and got up suddenly and walked about, marched almost, energised by his new-found lust for that bloody thing. 'Half down, half on delivery.'
'Here in Berlin?' 'No. In Algiers.'
Oh really.
'I haven't any plans,' I told him, to go to Algiers, so I won't be there at the delivery point.'
He stopped his restless pacing and turned and faced me. 'If we are to complete this deal, Herr Mittag, I'd prefer you to remain within my organisation as a respected guest until delivery is made. Then if there are any problems you'll be there to take care of them and receive the final payment.' He was standing very still, watching me. 'I don't insist on it, but I would prefer it. What do you say?'
I got out of the chair and turned away from him, took a step or two, turned back, because it'd seem natural for me to want a little time, to give it a little thought. But I didn't need any time and I didn't need to think. It was a trap, because he was giving me a choice and he didn't have to.
There was no good reason why I shouldn't stay with his organisation through the performance of the deal; it's often done in cases like this when the final payment is to be made at the delivery point. I could refuse, but if I refused he'd know I was frightened of something or that I wasn't on the level and it'd be tantamount to blowing my own cover and he'd forget the Miniver and tell Geissler to put a bullet into the back of the head and take me across to the East side and leave me there for the garbage collectors to pick up.
But if I agreed to stay with his organisation until the warhead was delivered it'd be the same thing as going to ground: I'd be cutting myself off from my director in the field and from London, and Cone would assume I'd bought it and they'd put me down on the Signals board as missing, missing or deceased, and it might not turn out to be a lot
different from the truth because the strain of keeping to my cover in an organisation, like this one even for another twenty-four hours would be critical – get a word wrong or forget something I'd said and finis, finito.
He was waiting for my answer, Klaus. But I hadn't any choice.
'If that's what you'd prefer,' I said, 'I'll stay, of course. See the deal through.'
Chapter 15: VOLVO
Klaus went across to the door and pulled it open – 'Schwartz!'
There were guards, then, within call.
It would be difficult, difficult in the extreme, for me to leave this house during the night, if I wanted to. At the moment I didn't want to.
Klaus came back into the room, energy almost shaking him: he looked caged. But it wasn't that: I think I'd moved in on Nemesis at a time when their operation was ready to run, and had given it a sudden unexpected boost – the promise of nuclear augmentation. And Klaus was getting impatient now, wanted to press the button, see it all happen. Certain things about him seemed familiar to me, rang bells.
The man in the doorway fetched up short as if he'd run here.
'Herr Klaus?
'Schwartz, I want a secure telephone line. How long will it take you?
'Ten minutes.'
'When you've got it, call me with the number, then bring the car here.'
The man's heels came together and he ducked his crew-cut head as he swung the door shut.
'Will you drink?' Klaus asked me.
'Don't let me stop you.'
He went to the bureau and poured some schnapps, tilting the glass towards me. 'Your health.'
'Thank you. I ought to tell you, Klaus, that if you're going to drop the warhead from a plane, you can't do it from less than five thousand feet without catching the flak.'
'No problem.'
'As long as you know.' I hadn't got any idea what the actual safety distance was; I was trying to find out if he meant to drop the nuke on something from the air instead of bringing a plane down with it. 'I imagine you also know that it's not something you can put aboard a commercial aircraft in the normal way. It's bigger than a bit of Semtex.'
'What gives you the idea that I'd want to do such a thing?
I shrugged. 'ltd be trendy.'
He gave a short laugh. 'I don't follow trends, Herr Mittag.'
I got out of the wing chair and wandered about, took a look at the bar. 'In terms of weight,' I said, 'we're talking about forty-two kilos.' I found some Schweppes and poured some. 'Cheers.'
'You told me you wouldn't drink.'
'It was discourteous of me not to join you. It's fairly rugged, but the detonator's rather fragile, have to watch bumps if you're going to take it overland across rough terrain.'
'No problem.'
And not much headway. It looked as if the plans he'd already got on the board would accommodate a Miniver warhead without any changes. I suppose that was partly why he'd begun lusting after it: the project wouldn't be held up.
I gave him a few more statistics and he wanted to know about critical temperatures, contamination zones, half-life figures. It was all in the faxed specifications I'd got from London. He hadn't asked me to get on the phone yet, because he wanted a secure line. He was efficient, Klaus, had been well-trained, and the way he was talking, the way he'd handled me so far, had that familiar ring to it: I'd been handled like this before, and it had been inside Lubyanka.
The telephone rang and he went over to it.
He'd worn a uniform, once, had wielded authority, like the KGB colonel who'd put me under intensive interrogation in Moscow. Klaus had the same stamp: I put him down now as a reasonably high-ranking ex-officer of Stasi, the former East German secret police; five or six hundred of them had gone to ground after unification and counter-espionage were still looking for most of them.
'Yes,' he said at the telephone. 'Give it to me.'
Some of them, the rabid Communists, had joined terrorist groups, mostly in Europe. This one had joined the Rote Armee Faktion and then broken away and set up on his own.
'Now bring the car here,' he said and rang off, and I took in a slow breath because as soon as the stolen car reached here I would have to use the phone in it, and it was going to be an appallingly sensitive call and the whole of the mission would pivot on the outcome and could easily crash.
'So,' Klaus said. 'When can you deliver?'
I took a slow swig of the Schweppes. 'You said you want it as soon as possible?
'Yes.'
'I'll have to see what we can do.'
A wash of headlights came sweeping across the curtains while we were still talking, and Klaus nodded.
'Well go down.'
I saw three guards on the way, one on the second floor and two below. They watched us but didn't come close. Our coats were in the hall and we got into them and I told Klaus, 'My partner's an Englishman.'
'And he doesn't speak German?'
'None too well.'
In good English Klaus said, That is perfectly all right.'
It was cold outside and there were bright stars pricking the glow of the city's lights. All I could see around us were trees, some of them with the last of the autumn leaves still clinging, trees and high walls and street lamps in the distance. But a plane was settling on its approach path, lined up with Sirius, and it confirmed what I'd thought before: the house was somewhere north-west of Tegel Airport, in or near Kreis Oranienburg.
The car was a Volvo 940 and Schwartz had the door open for Klaus and he got in and I followed. There was a pale blue headscarf on the seat and I put it into the glove compartment. The theft of the car was routine security procedure and I would have expected a probable former Stasi colonel to practise it. Up to a point he trusted me, but this house was his headquarters and any calls from it could be traced. Anyone trying to trace the call I was going to make wouldn't get any farther than a stolen Volvo, whereabouts unknown.
'You don't object,' Klaus said suddenly, 'to my listening in?'
'Of course not.'
The man Schwartz hadn't gone back to the house; I could see part of him in the offside mirror, silhouetted against the street lamps. There would be other guards in the grounds. It was fifty yards, sixty, from the Volvo to the black iron gates I'd seen when we'd come out of the house, and they would possibly be locked, certainly watched. Dieter Klaus was young, thirty or thereabouts, younger than Krenz, the man who had died in the Mercedes, and he was athletic, Klaus, walked with a spring, turned quickly. But that particular strike, made with the requisite speed, is close to instantaneous in its effect, however young the target, however athletic.
'You have the number?' Klaus asked me.
'Yes.'
He switched the ignition key to arm the ancillaries, and the telephone beeped and lit up.
And it's true of course that we are obliged, we the ferrets in the field, are obliged to take life solely in the defence of our own, and not, shall we say, in order to expedite the mission by removing the kingpin of the opposition, in order to save other lives by so doing, perhaps hundreds of other lives. We are required, by the strictest conceivable edicts of those who rule us, never to play God.
But temptation sometimes comes our way, and I sensed him beside me, Klaus, the kingpin of the opposition, the dark mind of Nemesis, could hear his breathing, could smell with a certain distaste the rather cheap cologne he used, would feel, if I moved my hand an inch or so, the pulse in his wrist, could destroy, if I moved my hand with the requisite speed, the source of its pulsation, life.
But then there were the guards and the gates and those pontifical bloody priests of the temple in far Londinium and we mustn't play God, must we, but there are times, my good friend, when we stay our hand, we the dirty little ferrets in the field, only because we know we haven't got a hope in hell of getting away with it.
Klaus was waiting.
Dial the number.
He watched me doing it, and could memorise the number if he wanted to, but it would have
looked suspect if I'd shielded the grid with my hand: the semblance of trust must be maintained, was vital.
I held the receiver to my left ear, the side where Klaus was sitting. I couldn't tell how much sound he could pick up from the earpiece, how accurately he could make out words. It wouldn't have to be important; we would have to pick our way through this conversation, the Englishman and I, as through a minefield.
'Hotel Sachsen.'
'Herr Foster,' I said. 'Der Englander.'
We waited. Sound came into the sky, and the strobes of a jet flashed across the driving-mirror through the rear window.
'Bitte?
I switched to English, gave it an accent.
'Is that you, Charlie?
Cone didn't hesitate.
'Yes. Who's that?'
'Hans. How's Mary?'
'She's fine.'
There are certain classic words and phrases in the Bureau's prescribed speech-code that light up the board when they come in to Signals, and I'd just used two of them. Is that you, Charlie? indicates that the caller is either being overheard or is an actual captive. How's Mary? is a warning that the caller wants the conversation to be played according to the leads he'll give, or attempt to give. I didn't need to throw in a signal for Cone to move out of his hotel as soon as he put the phone down: the Charlie bit had told him there could have been someone watching the number I'd dialled. He'd get out straight away, and my life-line to London would be cut, until he called me back.
'The client,' I said, 'is willing to deposit half the funds tomorrow into the Swiss account, and I'm to receive the other half on delivery, which is to be in Algiers. Is that all right with you, Charlie?'
'If you're willing to go there.'
'Oh, yes. Sign of good faith. The thing is, when can we deliver?'
