Quiller KGB

by Adam Hall

  ‘When did you get in?’ His voice quiet, no expression.

  ‘Ten minutes ago.’

  He watched me in the wash of light from the boards, looking for any signs in me that I was nervy. I didn’t show anything. He’d thrown an ultra-grade operation into my lap and put me into a rendezvous with a KGB colonel east of the Curtain and I’d turned the whole thing down because of cold feet - he knew that - and changed my mind and put my neck under the sword and he was looking for any sign that it had built up my stress level to a point where I couldn’t be sent out. He didn’t know me personally, had never seen me before the meeting in the underground garage in Berlin, and all he’d got to go on was my track record and he wasn’t a man to make a major decision without checking me out at close quarters and with a lot of eye contact. The interrogation cells - the really effective ones - had people like this in them and I knew their style.

  Softly, ‘What made you change your mind?’

  Anyone else, even Croder, would have taken me somewhere else and asked things like that in private. There was no traffic on the boards at this precise moment and you could hear even this man’s voice quite clearly. The others in the room were listening hard because this was Bureau One they’d got in here and it amounted to a priority-alert phase at the end of a grinding mission.

  ‘Personal pride.’

  His head turned a degree more to the left, favouring his right ear, ‘Oh really?

  ‘Yes.’

  He went on watching me obliquely with his washed-out blue eyes while I spent the time trying to guess what his next question would be, but it was difficult because it wasn’t just a stare he was giving me; I had that feeling again that he was thought-reading, tinkering with the cerebral energies.

  ‘Very well.’

  No more questions, then. I felt a palpable break between us, between our personae, when he turned away and stood with his hands in his side-pockets, the glow from the signals boards highlighting his straw-coloured hair.

  ‘Mr. Croder, what’s your position?’

  ‘The executive’s in a tight red sector, sir, and I’ve asked the embassy to see if they can get him clear.’

  ‘Do you believe they can?’

  Beat.

  ‘No.’

  Shepley turned his head a little. ‘Is he a married man?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Three years.’

  Shepley looked across at Costain. ‘What about your operation?’

  ‘Malone’s gone in, sir, and he’s well placed. We’re looking for a winner.’

  ‘Malone. He was in Keyhole?’

  The signaller glanced across at Croder, who nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Shepley looked at the man running Quarry. ‘What about you?’

  ‘We went into the end-phase early this morning, sir. I’m waiting for completion.’

  ‘What are the chances?’

  ‘First rate, sir. I won’t be handing over at this stage.’

  Shepley took a step closer to Pineapple, and Croder moved with him. ‘Mr. Croder, where is Fosdick?’

  ‘Milan, sir. He’s on standby, with contact through one of our sleepers.’

  ‘And Stoner?’

  ‘I’ll need to ask.’ Croder went across to the central phone console. Shepley took another step nearer Pineapple, scanning the chalked lines of information on the board: running-time, status, phase, target, with map references and a quickscan chart of the executive’s environment; backups, contacts, communications, travel patterns.

  Quarry.

  ‘Yes - yes?’

  Shepley’s head turned and Croder looked across at the board from the phone console.

  I’ve put him in a car for them.

  ‘You’ve got him?’

  That’s right. He’s a bit dopy but he’ll be back to normal by the time they reach the border.

  I was watching the black plastic speaker-grille on the console. We all were.

  ‘His papers are good?’

  They’re perfect. Calthrop did them for us.

  Holmes glanced across at me and back to the board. Croder wasn’t talking on the phone, just holding it with the contact down. I’d never been here in this room when a mission was running clear through the end-phase to the objective with the voice of the executive himself on the speaker. We’re usually in the Caff, hanging around on standby between missions, when we get this kind of news at second hand: Winthrop’s moving in but Control says he’s taking too much risk. Someone told me Fanfare’s coming apart but they’re sending Kennedy in to see if he can patch it up. And Donavon’s bought it in Beirut only last night. But it’s never reliable.

  ‘Can you pull out okay?’

  No problem. Clean up the base, send a little smoke out, then I’m leaving. All right with you?

  ‘Yes, but keep in contact.’

  The signaller flipped a switch and Shepley asked, ‘Who is the executive?’

  ‘Roberts, sir. Sending a dissident across.’

  Slumped in a car with false papers, a couple of our people with him, their faces calm but their stomachs cold as they neared the frontier and the checkpoint and the end of their mission - the end of Quarry, whether or not they got the man through. I didn’t know who he was, but he wouldn’t be small fry if the Bureau were bringing him across.

  A Soviet dissident, whose name is being withheld for the sake of his family and friends, reached London last night from West Germany, after successfully crossing the frontier from the east. His application for asylum is being considered by the Foreign Office, and is expected to be approved.

  And tomorrow, and the days, the weeks after tomorrow, the debriefers would be sitting around the table, going through the wads of paper the man had brought with him, their hands shuffling them with the avarice of men seeking gold, while somewhere else, in the stuffy little offices of Her Majesty’s government, other men would be clearing their desks with their hands shaking, the quiet and industrious little moles blown out of their skins and with only a dog’s chance of getting across the Channel and running for home.

  ‘Tell him to report here,’ I heard Croder saying at the phone console, ‘as soon as he can. This is fully urgent.’ He came back to the signals board where Shepley was waiting. ‘Stoner’s in London, sir. They’re calling him in right away.’

  Shepley nodded slightly. ‘Very well. Meanwhile, get Fosdick into Prague, very quickly indeed.’ He took another pace and put a hand on the signaller’s shoulder, dropping onto the stool and opening the transmission.

  ‘This is Bureau One. Please acknowledge.’

  Hear you, sir.

  ‘I am obliged to shut down on your mission, and this is the last signal you’ll receive. But I’m sending two agents to your sector with all possible despatch. They are highly experienced in these situations, and it’s vital you remain where you are. Be of good cheer.’

  He touched the switch and got off the stool and went over to Croder at the central console. Croder had a phone in his hand but cupped the mouthpiece. ‘Get those two people into the sector,’ Shepley said, ‘and tell them to gun him clear if they have to. Who’s chief in here?’

  ‘Myers, sir.’

  ‘Tell him I want that board cleared and reset for my own operation. What’s the next code name available?’

  ‘Quickstep.’

  ‘Very well. I want it operational as soon as Myers can do it.’ He turned his head. ‘Quiller, we’ll go in there.’

  It was one of the crew rooms, the bed made under an army blanket and the signaller’s things scattered around: windcheater, track shoes, a pair of five-pound weights, copy of Omni, couple of paperbacks, one of them by P. D. James. He’d be the man running Quarry through the end-phase: first rate, sir. I won’t be handing over at this stage.

  ‘All right,’ Shepley said, and pushed the door shut. ‘Personal pride. I suppose that’s the only reason we ever do anything, anything worth doing. But why did you turn Yasolev down in the first place?’

  He pulled the small upright chair a
way from the desk and put a foot on the seat, resting one arm across his knee. I didn’t want to sit on the bed, the only place left. In the short time I’d known this man I’d learned to stay on my feet in his company: you can’t sit down and relax when he’s busy fine-tuning your reflexes.

  ‘Yasolev’s a career man,’ I said. ‘He’ll sacrifice me without even thinking about it, if it suits him.’

  ‘I don’t doubt he’d try. But you’ll be given very considerable protection. I’m at present hand-picking your support in the field.’

  ‘I expected that too, sir. The thing is, I don’t like a lot of people around when I’m working. Ours or theirs.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to adjust, at least on our side. There’s no other way, if you want the mission. We also have the hostage. He took a lot of getting.’ I felt that snapping of tension again as he took his eyes off me for the first time, looking down at his hands. ‘I’m assuming your change of mind was final, or we wouldn’t be in here.’

  ‘Whatever the terms.’

  ‘Very well. As a matter of fact they’ve improved. When I talked to Yasolev on the phone while you were airborne, he believed he’d lost you. He was therefore ready to listen when I made a few demands on your behalf.’ His head swung up. ‘What would they have been, if you’d made them yourself?’

  ‘Contact with Yasolev alone, with no KGB people in the field.’

  ‘I’ve got that for you.’

  A lot of weight came off and I took a breath. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘I thought you would be. What else?’

  ‘Signals direct from me to London, not through his field posts.’

  ‘I’ve got that too. So you’re beginning to see how keen he is to have you. What else?’

  ‘My option to drop the whole operation and get out, given your own sanction.’

  ‘Yes, he wasn’t terribly keen on that one, but I managed to get it for you. What else?’

  ‘That’s all. That’s first class.’

  ‘Thank you. Now there’s a man called Hood. That’s his real name, but we believe he’s using the cover name of Horst Volper in East Berlin, where he may be using very deep cover as a German national. Don’t you want to sit down?’

  I shifted the paperbacks and dropped onto the bed. ‘He’s my objective?’

  ‘Yours and Yasolev’s. We know very little about him. He’s a lone operator, linked by underground rumour to the Aquino assassination and that of the Swedish prime minister in 1986, also with various high-level wet affairs in Paris, Rome and the Orient. He is known to have been in London until three years ago, a socialite moving mainly in government circles as an international financier, under a different name.’ He’d begun reflectively massaging the pockmarked skin below his left ear; I’d seen him do it in Berlin. ‘We know he left London at that time en route for Geneva, where he sank without trace. We’d been keeping a record on him simply because he’s a major figure in clandestine operations, even though he covers his tracks with the greatest efficiency. The next we heard of him was a week ago when the KGB got in touch with the Foreign Office through the Soviet embassy. A request was made to me personally to find, fix and strike, by whatever means.’ He’d said that last bit slowly. ‘Questions?’

  ‘Is there a dossier?’

  ‘For what it’s worth. They’ll give it to you when you go through Clearance.’

  ‘When I find him, whose responsibility is it to cut him down?’

  Shepley looked away. ‘That will depend on the circumstances. You might have the option of handing him over to the KGB or taking care of it yourself. Again, you might not have any choice at all. You know better than I do that we can’t foresee the situation.’

  I didn’t take him up on it, though he probably expected me to. The only time I’d killed except in self-defence had been for personal reasons, to avenge a dead woman, and it had happened between missions. Shepley knew that, but there was no point in talking about it now. I’d make my own decision at the far end of Quickstep, and God knew where that would be or how it would come, or whether I’d still be alive.

  ‘Can I have Ferris?’ I asked him.

  ‘No. He’s been over there too often. I’m giving you a new man for your director in the field, cover name Cone. I’m sure you don’t need his credentials, since I picked him myself.’

  ‘Where do I meet him’

  ‘In Berlin. He’s there now, finding you a base.’

  ‘And a safe-house?’

  ‘Your safe-house at any given time will be the nearest KGB headquarters.’

  I didn’t take him up on that either. I’d find my own safe-house when I got over there. There are times when you’ve got to vanish, if you can.

  ‘This hostage,’ I said. ‘He’s a major-general?’

  ‘In the Red Army.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In Belgrave Square, technically under house arrest.’

  ‘I’d like him released and sent back.’

  Shepley tilted his head an inch. ‘Why?’

  ‘A major-general isn’t very big, with a mission this size on the board. And I want to get Yasolev’s trust.’

  In a moment, ‘Well, now.’ He got off the chair and pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and looked everywhere but at me, absorbing the idea and testing it out. His head lifting, eyes on the ceiling - ‘You like sailing close to the wind, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting it for a dare.’

  He looked down at me. ‘I realise that. So you believe Yasolev is a man of honour?’

  ‘I don’t think that matters. It’s a question of pride.’

  His pale eyes rested on me. ‘And you know all about pride, don’t you … The problem is, do I let you risk the mission. If -‘

  ‘It’d give us a big advantage, if I’m right. We’d be able to trust him, in turn.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong?’

  ‘I don’t think we’d lose anything. They’d sacrifice one little major-general if it’d pay them.’

  He turned away. ‘I’ll let you have my decision before you’re sent out. Have you any more questions?’

  ‘Is there a dossier on Yasolev?’

  ‘Yes. You’ll be given that, too, when you go through Clearance. Anything else?’

  ‘Not for now.’

  He moved to the door. ‘Please know that I shall be controlling Quickstep personally, from my office and from the signals room. I’ll be available to you at all times. At all times.’ He opened the door. ‘Phone me before you leave if you need to.’

  Doubts.

  ‘Weapons?’

  ‘No weapons.’

  She turned a paper on the desk. ‘Initial there, will you?’

  She gave me a pen and sat worrying her nose with a small rumpled handkerchief.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No. This box. Would you like an immunisation shot?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘So you don’t catch this,’ her watery blue, eyes concerned.

  ‘I eat too much garlic to catch a cold.’

  ‘Does that help?’

  ‘Never fails. Lose all your friends, that’s the only thing.’

  ‘Who needs friends like that? Beneficiary or beneficiaries, any change?’

  ‘No. Home Safe.’

  ‘I checked on that. They’ve gone out of business.’

  ‘Any other battered wives’ home, then. I don’t care which.’

  ‘There’s the Shoreditch Refuge.’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  She wrote it down. ‘Everything you possess?’

  ‘For what it’s worth.’

  ‘Sign here, will you?’

  Doubts, following me through the building as I left her and checked in at Codes and Ciphers, certain now that they were setting me up, both of them, Yasolev and Shepley, not necessarily in collusion but each in his own way and for his own ends.

  ‘Give me a plain substitution crypt.’

  ‘One of the alphas?’


  ‘No. A ten-character limit. An aristocrat.’

  He flipped through the clear plastic sheets, going from blue to red printing, the light from the window passing through one of his thick lenses and casting a pool across the file. ‘What about Little Mary?’

  I started to feel trapped, forced into using a code that could blow me if it’d been filched. This room had a steel door and a security man outside and you had to draw a special pass to get in here, but suppose this clerk had been got at by - oh Jesus Christ, is there an immunization shot for paranoia?

  ‘Look, give me Beta-3, the short version for the field.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He swung round and pulled a drawer open and gave me the pad. ‘Have you got the Cheltenham scrambler prefix?’

  ‘If I haven’t now, I never will.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m new.’

  ‘We’ve all got to start somewhere.’

  Walking through the corridors like a rat in a maze, the subject of an experiment, not a rat, a guinea-pig. It had been too easy; Yasolev had given in too fast - I did not believe a seasoned KGB colonel would partner an operation on East German soil with an agent from the West unless he’d got the entire field staked out with his own little army.

  Well, there was this: the instant I got one whiff of his people anywhere near me I’d use my option to pull out and ditch the mission.

  Medical room: ‘When?’

  ‘Three weeks ago, at Norfolk.’

  ‘Phyllis, no blood to draw. Where’s his chart?’

  A small room, too small, too confining. To paranoia you can add claustrophobia, but listen, this wasn’t normal at this stage; a show of nerves on the way through the access phase, yes, but this was too soon, too severe.

  ‘Heart rate’s up a little. Is that usual when you’re going out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Say yes to anything.

  ‘Diastolic’s a little high, eighty-one. Is that normal too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And why not Ferris for my director in the field?