by Adam Hall
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 Quickstep 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.
We were going very fast now and the street was wide and I thought it could be Karl Marx Allee again. They’d flushed him out of the sidestreets into the open and that was another worry because he was a clear target and they could bring in a dozen more patrols if they wanted to, fifty if they wanted to, and fill the whole of the avenue and shoot his tyres off and wait till he spun and crashed. The speed felt like something close to a hundred kph and the backwash of the slipstream was tugging at my clothes and I thought that if he smashed the Mercedes now there wouldn’t be any question of forcing anything out of him and I had a sudden feeling of rage because we were only two days into the mission and Shepley was manning the signals board for Quickstep and all he’d get from Cone was the routine phrase for a terminal situation, shadow down, and upstairs they’d punch the uncoded equivalent, executive deceased.
Sirens were sounding everywhere now and sending echoes from the buildings and there was a wash of headlights flooding the street. He gave it one more block and hit the brakes and brought the speed down and then used the throttle to swing into a sidestreet but we were still going much too fast to do it cleanly and he lost the rear end and it hit the kerb and bounced back and hit it again as he tried to correct and then we were skinning the shop windows with a scream of metal against stone and glass that hollowed out the night and left conscious thought blanked off because of the overload. Then we were clear again and I caught a glimpse of a street sign and saw that we hadn’t been in Karl Marx Allee before we’d changed direction because this was a sidestreet off Stralauer and we were turning back in our tracks. We’d lost the Vopo patrols but I could still hear some of their sirens in the distance and it’d only be a matter of time before they picked us up again.
I was having to get my mind off the fatigue in the wrist muscles because they were burning now and unless I could shift forward and get one elbow inside the window I wouldn’t have more than a minute, a minute and a half before I had to let go and drop. I waited for him to use the brakes and let the momentum take me forward but he was accelerating the whole time now and the strain on the wrists was intensified and there was another factor coming into play - I was beginning to lose the ability to process the data coming in because I’d been bombarded with a massive input of light and sound and movement for a long time now and the stress was nearing the point where I’d start hallucinating and that would be fatal, finito.
Thing was to hang on. Thing was to focus the sense of reality on this one objective, to fo
rget why it had to be done, to ignore all other considerations and reduce everything to the simple facts: these are my hands and they must keep their hold on the edge of metal here and anchor themselves to it and become one with it, my fingers are made of iron and nothing can bend them, the car swinging wide suddenly and lifting on one side as he tried again to shake me off, my wrists also are made of iron and they cannot tire so I have no fear, the momentum of the swing taking us against a parked car and slamming us sideways into it and bouncing off again with one wing torn half away and caught against a tyre, there is nothing the organism has to do but remain where it is, with its iron fingers hooked over the metal and its iron wrists taking the strain without effort, a sudden burst of acceleration with the rear wheels spinning and then some kind of shout from him, from the man at the wheel, before the front end tilted and a strange quietness came in with only the singing of the torn wing against the still-spinning tyre and the dying note of the engine and the sensation of flight, of weightlessness and then a waste of still water as the car tilted and went on tilting, a waste of still water with distant lights reflected in it as we dropped and hit the surface and I was flung away from the white explosion of the impact and instinctively began treading water.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Volper? Is his name Volper?’
‘I don’t know.’
I pushed his head down again and he began struggling. It was like drowning a dog.
Cold. Freezing cold.
Sirens in the night, sounding a dirge, their cadences orchestrated, rising and falling and rising, their echoes wailing across the flat still water. I thought I could see the humped roof of the Mercedes in the shallows near the bank of the river, and they’d see it too before long, the Vopos, so I’d have to hurry because once they found us he’d be taken out of my reach.
‘What’s your name? Your name?’ In English. I’d started in German with him but he hadn’t understood.
‘Skidder.’
Nickname. ‘Listen, I want to know who’s running you.’
He didn’t answer. I pushed his head down again and felt him struggling under my hands. It’s not an exact science, half-drowning a man to make him talk, and even a doctor wouldn’t have known exactly when to stop, when to let him snatch another breath. He’d been much stronger, before, when I’d found him swimming towards the bank, and he’d thrown an arm round my neck and forced me below the surface - a big man, he was a big man, and frightened because of the sirens - and I’d had to work on his nerves with knuckle strikes to get him docile.
Struggling like a madman under my hands, not frightened by the sirens any more, frightened of drowning, dying. I let his head break surface and waited until the worst of the choking was finished with.
‘Skidder, I want information and you want to live. Is it Horst Volper you work for?’
I think he was trying to nod and it sounded like yes but it could have been his breath hissing as he tried to snatch at it. I would ask him again later. ‘Skidder. Who is the target?’
Oh Jesus Christ it was cold in the water here, it was cold enough to kill. He didn’t answer so I pushed him down again. God damn his eyes he was wasting my time and freezing me to death. Struggle, then, go on, you’ll get the message quicker this way. Five seconds, ten … Up.
Blowing out water, half-choking.
‘Who is the target? Come on, who is the target?’
He made a sound.
‘What?’
‘Gor - chev - ‘
‘Gorbachev? Did you say Gorbachev?’
‘Ess,’ nodding, ‘Ess,’ choking up water.
He was getting heavier and I was warned. Our feet were grounded in the shallows so I didn’t have his full weight on my hands but he was weakening and I’d have to watch it because this half-drowned hulk could give me the access for Quickstep and perhaps save time, later, lives, later.
‘What’s the operation, Skidder? Listen, you give me some answers and I’ll pull you out and get you to a hospital but if you waste any more of my time by God I’m going to push you under and keep you there, now do you understand that?’ Heavy on my hands, now, he was heavy. ‘What is the operation?’
The sirens were louder now and I could see headlights slanting across the water as one of the police cars swung in this direction.
‘What?’
He’d said something.
I waited but he didn’t repeat it so I pushed him down and dragged him up again.
‘Come on Skidder, I want information.’
But I wouldn’t have to push him down again if it came to that, and I didn’t think it’d do much good if he told me what I wanted to know and I got him to a hospital; he was a dead weight on my hands now, with his legs jack-knifing under the water. I was losing alertness myself by this time: the water was freezing the blood, numbing the limbs, and all I could think about was getting out while there was time.
I waited but he didn’t say anything more.
‘Come on, Skidder!’
Didn’t say anything more.
Sirens close now, and headlights along the river, a mobile spotlight throwing a beam across the water, passing over the hump of the Mercedes and coming back, fixing on it and then moving again, sweeping, suddenly dazzling, blinding.
‘Skidder!’
Anything more.
There was just the white flare of the light playing on us and his face, Skidder’s face close to mine with its eyes open and its mouth hanging slack, his dead weight on my hands, and voices now, voices calling from the top of the bank, a door slamming and a man running, more lights as another car swung from the higher road and pulled up with its siren dying.
Conscious thought slipped into illusion: I was aware of the police cars and the men coming down the bank and the man in my arms and the dark flat surface of the river reaching forever beyond the brilliance of the lights, but they were all unreal, a chimera, and the only reality was this gripping cold, sapping the strength and numbing the mind, turning me into something immovable, an entity that was losing its significance - watch it - and now the beginning of euphoria as the will to move gave way to the comfort of deciding to make no effort - move, for God’s sake, move - no more effort, just the feeling of letting go, with the water lapping against my throat now, against my mouth - move move move you’re drowning - and a man with a peaked cap and other men, uniforms; ‘it’s all right, we’ve got you, hang onto me now’ and the bright lights spinning and the man’s face watching, watching me from slightly above, nodding, making a note.
‘You were pretty far gone, yes, when they found you.’
‘Oh Jesus, it was so cold, I tell you.’
Nodding again. ‘And you remember being brought in here?’
‘Yes. Most of it. I mean there was nothing very specific about it; I knew they’d dragged me out of the river but I was shaking badly and I didn’t want to take much notice of anything. Hot drink, beef broth, I think.’
”They did a good job.’ He switched off the recorder. forced that man too hard and got nothing from him, or next to nothing, rage, too, about what Cone had done, rage and depression because of a death on my hands, and above all the knowledge that because of all these things I’d left Quickstep to founder out there in the night-dark waters of the river.
Chapter 9
TEA
Umdrehen auf dein Magen, bitte.’
I turned over onto my stomach and she began again, a huge woman, huge hands, but experienced, feeling the exact degree of pain she was giving, keeping it under control.
‘No. Not for a few days.’
Cone was sitting on the edge of the chrome-framed vinyl chair near the bed, the phone in his hand.
‘Entspannen, bitte, loslassen.’
I went as limp as I could. It was mainly the right shoulder, where I’d been thrown against the rear quarter of the Mercedes. The rest consisted of abrasions and wasn’t serious, wasn’t hampering.
The curtains were open and the glow from the floo
dlit Wall was on the ceiling, like the reflection of snow.
‘I’ll ask him, sir.’ Louder, ‘Morale?’
‘Not very high,’ I told him. ‘We’ll have to talk about that.’
I couldn’t see his face from where I was lying on the massage table but he was quiet for a moment before he spoke again, repeating what I’d said to Shepley. A bruised shoulder and a few abrasions and the lingering effects of hypothermia didn’t amount to anything major, considering how close I’d come, but the morale of the executive in the field is vital to his operation and if I couldn’t deal with the angst it was quite likely that Shepley would pull me out and replace me before I endangered Quickstep and the critically sensitive Bureau-KGB relationship.
‘Bleiben entspannen fur zehn Minuten, bitte.’
‘Ja. Danke, Fraulein.’
‘Bitte.’
I rolled off and went over to the bed and lay there while she folded the legs of the portable table and went lumbering out with it.
That bloody Audi: he’d have to explain that.
‘Sir? No, the opponent was lost. Yes, I’ll be getting a report for you. No, the only product amounted to a few words. There was -‘he broke off and listened and then said, ‘Ash, can you take the phone?’
I sat up on the bed and he gave it to me.
‘Executive.’
‘What did you get out of him?’
This was going over scrambled: that man Binns had hooked up a T3 to the phone. ‘He said the target is Gorbachev.’
‘And that is all?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you consider it was worth the consequences?’
He meant Skidder’s death. ‘It confirms who the target is and it’s knocked out one of their hit-men.’ I thought I was going to stop at that but the anger needed relief. I didn’t raise my voice. ‘If you think I should have got more out of him I’ll remind you that we weren’t sitting in a cosy interrogation room; we were up to our necks in freezing water and he didn’t break easily.’