Quiller KGB

by Adam Hall

  ‘We should be there within the hour; it’s the nearest I can say.’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ he said.

  It looked like a thieves’ kitchen - concrete floor, bare brick walls, no window, a ceiling festooned with cobwebs, naked light bulb hanging down from the middle, two drunken-looking chairs and a pile of cardboard boxes in the corner, stained from the rain that came in. But there was a phone rigged up, perched on a directory on the floor.

  ‘You can have these back.’

  I threw them over to him but he didn’t pick them up or even look at them. Cone had stuck him on one of the chairs and he was just sitting there with his head up and his eyes gazing at the wall like a bloody zombie.

  Cone stood squinting at him for a minute, hands in his mac pockets, his scarecrow body hunched forward.

  ‘We’re going to leave him locked in here,’ he told me, ‘and then remote-control the bomb.’

  We were looking at the man in the chair. No reaction, so we went on speaking English; not that there was anything sensitive to say.

  ‘I’ll need some more clothes by the morning.’

  ‘I’ve brought some. You said you were messy. They’re in the car.’

  ‘Thank God; these stink. And you’d better tell London they owe the municipal authorities of East Berlin three of their street-maintenance vehicles.’ The Bureau was punctilious about damage compensation during a mission.

  ‘Are they total write-offs?’

  ‘Burnt out.’

  ‘You’ve had a busy night.’

  ‘Been a long one. Started at lunch-time.’

  ‘What’s your condition?’

  ‘Active. But I’ll have to look in at a hospital; someone stuck a knife in me, nothing dramatic.’

  ‘They ask too many questions,’ he said, ‘in the hospitals here. I’ll get the doc along from the embassy when we get to the hotel. It’ll wait till then?’

  ‘The bleeding’s stopped.’

  Cone nodded and looked at the man in the chair again and said in German: ‘Name?’

  No reaction again. The man had come to in the cab but hadn’t said anything. He looked fully conscious now but by the way he was holding his head up and staring straight in front of him he was the die-hard type, wouldn’t even need a capsule, you’d have to break him and even then you’d get nothing.

  Cone went closer to him and stood looking down for a minute; then without taking his hands out of his mac he went into a crouch and stared straight back into the man’s eyes.

  ‘What is your name?’

  His tone was quiet enough to chill. It reminded me that I didn’t know much about Cone; he could have a reputation for strangling mice for kicks, like Ferris.

  ‘Dietrich.’

  ‘I want you to tell me something, Dietrich. Where is Horst Volper?’

  Nothing.

  ‘The British government will guarantee your safety, Dietrich. We’ll get you out of East Germany with official sanction from the Democratic Republic, and find a job for you. If you’ve got a family, you can take them with you. Now, where is Horst Volper?’

  Nothing.

  ”Then give me a yes or no. Will you answer any questions?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, here’s another “yes or no” for you. Is there anything that would induce you to answer my questions? Money? Information that we wouldn’t mind exchanging? Anything at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When I say money, I’m talking about one million pounds sterling.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’ Cone straightened up and took a turn and came back to the man in the chair. ‘The East German secret police snatched another of your people tonight. He didn’t want to answer questions either. He’s in an intensive care unit at the moment, and everything’s being done for him, but he’s not expected to live.’

  I didn’t know if it were true, but if Yasolev had ordered that snatch he would have done it through Karl Bruger. It is essential, he’d told me at our meeting in the woods, that the HUA is not informed that my department is operating in East Berlin on this particular case. Bruger alone had his trust.

  ‘We need you to answer questions,’ Cone was saying, ‘just as we needed the other man to answer questions. If you won’t do it for me, I’m not going to hand you over to the HUA. I’m going to put you into an interrogation room with an officer of the KGB.’

  Got a flinch. Just a slight one. It’s always like that over here: you can threaten a man with an intensive care unit and he won’t necessarily break, but mention the KGB and you’ll make an impression.

  Understandable.

  ‘So will you answer my questions,’ Cone said, ‘or his?’

  He waited.

  God it was cold in here.

  ‘Yes or no?’ Cone asked him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’

  Cone went over to the phone, then turned to me before he picked it up. ‘This might take a little time. Do you want running to the hotel right away?’ Squinting steadily; I suppose I looked tired.

  ‘No.’ I might be able to help.

  He picked up the phone and dialled.

  I thought of going out to the car and getting into some clothes that didn’t stink of fish but I didn’t want to miss anything; I’d been to a lot of trouble getting Dietrich here and Cone might get just one clue out of him that could push Quickstep forward. Time was running out.

  ‘Good evening,’ Cone said in German; he didn’t give the parole because Dietrich was listening. ‘We’ve got one of Volper’s people here and he doesn’t want to say anything. I’ve told him you’re ready to interrogate him, so I think you’d better come and pick him up. You know where we are.’

  I was watching Dietrich. He must have known a bit of Russian because the blood was leaving his face. Cone wasn’t messing about, I knew that. We needed answers.

  The Bureau’s ruling on interrogation is perfectly clear: no director or executive in the field is to force any opponent to talk, other than by verbal means. With Skidder it had been different, a case of dog eat dog. I’ve been inside Lubyanka, locked in an interrogation room with a major of the KGB, and it wasn’t nice; but as I watched the man in the chair I didn’t feel any compassion for him. He’d tried to get me killed tonight, and if you think I was taking things too personally I don’t give a damn, it was my life on the line, not yours.

  When we heard a car stopping outside, Cone went over to the man in the chair again. ‘Before he comes in here, Dietrich, I’m going to tell you that he’s a colonel in the KGB, highly experienced and effective as an interrogator, and with a reputation for being completely ruthless when people don’t want to talk. I happen to be a different type myself and I’d like to save you a lot of misery, so if you want to answer questions now, I’m listening.’

  For a second or two there was nothing but fear in the man’s eyes; then they changed, as he got the better of it. ‘I appreciate your offer, but this time he will not succeed.’

  Cone gave a brief nod. ‘It’s your life,’ he said, and went to unlock the door.

  Yasolev came in alone, and took in the scene immediately, staring at the man in the chair for a moment and then giving us a nod. ‘He still refuses to speak?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have searched him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was no capsule?’

  ‘Just a knife.’

  ‘Where is the knife?’

  Cone gave it to him.

  ‘Thank you.’ He looked at me and asked formally, ‘Will you place your prisoner in my hands?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Then you may leave him with me. Stay if you wish, of course, but -‘ he left it.

  ‘I think we’ll be off now,’ Cone said, and we went out to the car, and as I heard Yasolev locking the door of the garage the shivering began, partly because man’s inhumanity to man during the interrogation process always worries me and partly because of delayed shock after the c
ar-park thing: I’d been expecting it.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Cone asked me.

  ‘It’s so bloody cold.’

  ‘We’ll get you into a nice hot bath.’

  ‘There’s no need to be personal.’ Little joke, to take my mind off the garage.

  ‘It’s the fish,’ he said, and started the engine. ‘You fall in a rubbish dump or something?’

  ‘You must be psychic.’ Shivering like a leaf. ‘Do you think he’ll make that man tell him anything?’

  ‘Cross our fingers.’ He turned left towards Spittelmarkt. ‘Meanwhile I took a call from Renata.’

  Lena Pabst.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Just after three this afternoon. She asked for you and I said you weren’t available and gave her the parole. She’s been doing some work. There’s some kind of operation being set up at Werneuchen Airforce Base with the code-name of Trumpeter. Three of the bomber crews are involved but she hasn’t been able to identify them. The best thing she gave me was that the whole operation’s on file, if we can only get to it. She -‘

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s in Room 60 in the new Airforce administration building in Bruderstrasse. She thinks the man behind Trumpeter works there as an administrator. Room 60’s his office.’

  ‘This is very good.’

  ‘As far as it goes. She said she’d got some documents for us, but -‘

  ‘Did she ask for a rendezvous?’

  ‘Yes, but our luck’s run out, I’m afraid. She’s been found shot dead.’

  Chapter 16

  ROCK

  ‘That’s bullshit. I don’t lay down some kind of kinky funk-jazz hybrid like Billy Kid - I blow free, see, I give it a rush, a lot of pressure along the vertical and a lot of thrust on the level, you know what I mean? And I let them solo if they want to, guitar, sax, drums, whatever they want to do, you know? Musically I’m democratic.’

  Thin, small-faced, made up like a cat with the corners of her eyes drawn out across the skin, a white leather coat thrown open, tiny hands on tiny hips, a silver sweater and skirt, the skirt a thin tube stopping short just above the knees, the knees bare, alabaster, knobbly, the feet in silver boots, a thick belt made of her own plaited hair - Cone’s briefing - caught by a silver snake’s-head buckle, the hair on her head exploding like a mane, the colour of ocean surf. Cat Baxter.

  The reporter was making notes but stopped when she turned away

  ‘Wiz, get out of here will you, you’re stoned’ - and turned back. ‘Drummers … I work with hieroglyphs, see, and that’s where the song takes me, wherever it wants me to go. It’s free-wheeling, ethereal, a kind of unstructured take-off into the heights I haven’t flown before, and this happens every time, it’s not just sentimentality and it’s got nothing to do with the Protestant Work Ethic - that really makes my boil bleed. No, change that - it really offends my sense of the political, it’s so bourgeois, I mean, you can’t have a message in everything, talk shout the Sound of Mucus.’

  Pollock came over. ‘Well, well. Come here to get her autograph?’ Quick white smile.

  ‘Something I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it a coincidence that Gorbachev is flying in here at the same time that Miss Baxter’s giving her concert?’

  ‘Goodness. It never struck me. But we only knew he was coming the day before yesterday. I started fixing up her concert last month.’ Cone walked in and looked around the room and came across.

  ‘Last month,’ I said, ‘she did a concert in Moscow.’

  In a moment, scratching his head, Pollock said: ‘That’s right. That’s absolutely right.’ Quick smile. ‘I never thought about it. I mean, any connection. After all, there’s quite a lot going on in Berlin when important visitors fly in. Excuse me, I’m just making sure they’re looking after her.’ He went over to the phone.

  ‘I couldn’t come earlier,’ Cone said. ‘I was talking to Yasolev.’

  I felt the scrotum tightening.

  ‘Did he get anything?’

  ‘We’re trying to put it together in London. It’s a bit disjointed.’

  ‘Where’s Dietrich now?’ I didn’t really mean where.

  ‘It looks as if he had a weak heart.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Scarsdale, Lena Pabst, Dietrich. Every time we looked like getting some information it got cut off.

  ‘I don’t try any of that street-wise visionary stuff and I don’t try and get the fans screaming - that’s camp. I don’t use my pelvis, Christ, I haven’t got one - no, change that - I don’t use body language, I use my throat.’

  Pollock came away from the telephone and Cone said something to him and he shook his head. When I went closer he was saying, ‘And she earns something like a million pounds a year. I can’t just break it up.’

  Cone went across and spoke to Cat Baxter and in a minute the reporter put her notes into a briefcase and went out of the room and Pollock left just afterwards, giving me a wave. That left the man in the blue serge suit and dark tie.

  ‘Miss Baxter, we’d like a word with you,’ Cone said, ‘just by ourselves.’

  ‘It’s okay for Boris to stay. He’s my bodyguard.’

  ‘Is he KGB?’

  I’d thought so too.

  ‘Yes.’

  Cone went over to him. Colonel Yasolev of Department V would like you to leave us for a moment, so forth.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ I said to Cat Baxter.

  She presented herself to me, and that’s the only way of putting it that I can think of: she turned her diminutive body in its hair and silverware and thrust it towards me no more than half an inch, but the air seemed to vibrate. Her eyes were wide and innocent, and I could even believe she thought it was the truth when she said she didn’t use body language.

  ‘Done well?’

  ‘You haven’t let it all go to your head.’

  ‘Meaning fame?’

  ‘That’s right.’ I heard the door shut, and then Cone joined us, and Cat took a step back and looked at each of us in turn. ‘My manager said you were from the Foreign Office.’ ‘Yes,’ Cone said.

  ‘You look so official.’

  ‘I suppose that can’t be avoided. Now this is Mr. Ash, and I’m going to leave you to do your talking alone. Nothing goes onto the record, don’t worry.’

  He nodded and went out. It had been agreed: we didn’t want her to feel outnumbered.

  ‘He looks as if he’s had a bad time,’ the girl said.

  ‘He’s in a difficult job.’ She didn’t ask me to sit down so I leaned against the wall alongside one of the windows. ‘I’m not going to keep you long. What gave you the idea of coming out here?’

  ‘I thought it was about time. Phil Collins brought Genesis right up to the Berlin Wall on the west side, and so did Dave Bowie, and the East Berliners practically rioted. The police wouldn’t let them get nearer than four hundred yards to the Wall. It was the most serious outbreak of public anger for years.’ She turned and took three crisp steps, turned again and threw her mane of hair back. ‘I don’t have to tell you that - you people keep tabs.’

  ‘We read the papers. Of course you wouldn’t have been allowed to come here before Gorbachev’s time.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. He’s fantastic.’

  ‘When the East Germans said you could come here, was there any Soviet connection?’

  She looked down. Step, step, step, turn, the hair. ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ve performed in Moscow.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’

  ‘We’re just interested in the way things are changing, over here.’

  ‘Let’s keep it straight, Mr. Ash. You were talking about a Soviet connection.’

  ‘I was simply asking. It’s interesting for instance that the KGB offered you protection.’

  ‘People like me get mobbed. We’d be skinned alive if -‘

  ‘The KGB, I mean, rather than the HUA - the East German police.’

/>   Turn, step, step, a sudden fast turn back. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’

  Getting somewhere.

  ‘Anything you can tell me about your relations with the Soviet government.’

  Threw her head back, force of habit, meant nothing. ‘Are you really Foreign Office, or Secret Service?’

  ‘You catch on quickly.’ Though I’d expected it earlier, because I’d been trying for it.

  ‘Look, I’m a rock star, okay? But I also went for a BA and got it, before I started singing.’

  ‘Pretty good.’

  ‘For a rock star.’

  ‘Pretty good anyway. What in?’

  ‘Political science.’

  ‘That explains a lot. The things you’ve said about human rights.’

  ‘You don’t have to be political to want people to be free.’ Looked away, looked back. ‘Are you here to jam up the works for me, Mr. Ash? I just want to know.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any works to jam up.’

  She was halfway through a step and she faltered and threw out a hand and it was the first time I’d seen her make this particular gesture. ‘I mean the concert.’

  She didn’t.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I think I’d better ask you something,’ she said. ‘Have you got any right to question me like this?’

  ‘No.’

  Threw out a hand again. ‘When my manager told me a couple of men from the Foreign Office wanted to talk to me, he said it was to help smooth out any problems for me over here. That’s what he said.’

  ‘That’s what we told him. D’you mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Feel free, but you haven’t got long.’

  ‘Just for a minute.’ I dropped into one of the chrome and velour chairs. It hadn’t been a good night; the knife-wound had festered and I was on antibiotics.

  ‘If you’ve any problems,’ I told her, ‘we’ll smooth them out for you. It was a genuine offer.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you, but I’m doing fine.’

  ‘It hasn’t crossed your mind that someone could be using you as a tool?’ Long shot.

  Step, step, step, turn, the hair. ‘You know you really have got a bloody nerve.’