by Adam Hall
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 every 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.
Chapter 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 -‘
‘On the Pabst matter?’
‘Yes. It’s unsettling - she was highly respected and devoted to the Party. Does anyone feel a draught?’
‘Draught?’
‘Yes, this window’s not quite shut.’
A bus halted at the lights.
The window was shut now; the latch had clicked home.
Traffic was slowing behind the bus: two or three cars and a taxi.
I could still hear voices but they weren’t intelligible now that the window was shut.
Cold. It was very cold here.
The lights went to green and the traffic moved off, the bus leaving a cloud of diesel smoke drifting across the street. I couldn’t smell it from here.
The ledge was less than a foot wide. I had to angle my feet.
He would be Melnichenko, the man who said he was going over to Werneuchen. He was the only one with a Russian accent, and the others wouldn’t be interested in whether Lena Pabst was devoted to the Party or not. So it would have been strictly no go if I’d stayed in the room - Melnichenko’s own office. But this might not be any better: I was seventy feet above the street and I could only shuffle sideways and if I put any pressure at all against the concrete behind me I would lose my balance, finis.
The windows of Room 60 had plastic blinds but they weren’t totally opaque so I’d crabbed my way along the ledge until there was a wall behind me. I suppose if I felt the onset of fatigue or vertigo I could shuffle back to the windows and knock on them and think up an acceptable reason for being out here and look for a chance of getting clear while the military police were taking me along for questioning, but I didn’t like throwing in the towel without trying to find a better way out - an unfortunate metaphor, yes - if you threw a towel from here it would go floating and curling and dipping lower and lower until it met the street. A body would go straight down.
So Melnichenko was reported to have a file on Trumpeter in Room 60 and Lena Pabst had been got out of the way because she’d been infiltrating Trumpeter and Melnichenko himself would be at Werneuchen making enquiries. I was glad I’d phoned Yasolev. If I came unstuck from the side of this building at least I’d reported on Melnichenko and it might give them a clue, even provide a breakthrough.
Bitterly cold. I didn’t put my gloves on because I wanted to feel things with my fingertips: the rough concrete and the next window-frame when I worked my way along there. The only chance I’d got was to keep moving and hope to find a handhold somewhere before the tension brought on fatigue and I tipped forward. That could happen at any time, minutes from now, an hour from now.
Nothing below me but the street: no balconies, canopies, guttering, nothing to break a fall. This was a new building with a flat modern facade and only a single ledge jutting at each storey.
The cold alone could finish me, inducing torpor. In still-air conditions it would have been more tolerable, but there was a wind that came in sharp gusts, tugging at my coat.
Move, keep moving. And don’t look down. I could hear the traffic and that was all; the wind was taking the exhaust gas away before it reached this height, and bringing in the river smell from the west.
There’s a difference between a tight-rope and a ledge along a wall: on the rope you can swing from one side to the other to keep your balance; on a ledge you can only keep still, and even though this one was wider than a rope the wall itself was the danger because when you feel yourself losing your footing you instantly reach out for support but if I let my hand touch the concrete with more than the slightest pressure it’d pitch me into the void.
I don’t like heights. I’d seen a man go down, once, from the twenty-first floor of a construction site. They say you scream but you don’t. They call it going down the hole, the construction workers, and when one of them does it the rest of them are told to go home for the day because it’s unnerving and therefore dangerous.
One foot, then the other. The ankles had started aching and I wanted to angle the feet the other way but it would mean shifting the body’s equilibrium and the nerves were already under stress; I was beginning to feel that the wall had started leaning towards the street, and the ledge tilting. This was normal: fear begets illusion; but it would have to be dealt with, combatted.
Like a crab. Moving like a crab along the wall. A dull ache had started at the top of the spine. I was keeping my head to one side, to the left, the way I was moving, because when I turned it to the right the building across the street swung across the vision field and affected the sense of balance.
A captain of the HUA?
I was now certain that it would have been safer to stay in the room and face it out.
What department are you, Captain?
It would have been dangerous to let them put me under interrogation but less dangerous than this dizzying height in this killing cold.
This is Commandant Melnichenko, Adviser to the Airforce Directorate. I have a Captain Kurt Heidecker here, with the HUA, service number D/435-05. Is he known in your department?
A gust of wind came and my shoulders met the wall and I froze and contracted the leg muscles and waited, for a moment sickened. If the wind got stronger in the night there wouldn’t be a hope in hell: it’d blow me off the building.
He’s not known in your department?
And there would have been no explanation he would have accepted when he asked what I was doing in his office; compared with a commandant of Soviet Military Intelligence a captain of the HUA had no authority.
But there would have at least been a chance, even in the hands of the GRU. I couldn’t have given them Yasolev’s name because Yasolev was using me to infiltrate Trumpeter and Melnichenko had a file on that operation in his office and he would have had me shot, just as someone had had Lena Pabst shot. The situation here in East Berlin forty-eight hours before the arrival of the General-Secretary of the USSR was ultra-sensitive. Yasolev was here on a secret assignment known only to his immediate cell within his department; he’d made it a condition of our liaison that I didn’t expose either him or his assignment to East German Intelligence; and the GRU had an adviser buried in the Airforce’s HQ with a file on Trumpeter in his care.
In addition there was the London connection, and if I ever got close to blowing my own cover the Bureau would expe
ct me to use the capsule and I would do that.
Window.
I’d been watching it for minutes now, trying to see if there were any chance of using it. When I’d got out of Room 60 I’d left the window open an inch so that I could have climbed back inside after they’d gone, and it was conceivable that another window somewhere had been left open by mistake and I could - watch it, you’re losing rationality. It was not conceivable that any window of this building had been left open in winter conditions with the heating system going full blast.
Glass. Perfectly smooth glass and a frame less than an inch proud of the wall, drawing blank so move on, keep moving. Given a wider ledge, wider by only a few inches, I might have jabbed an elbow against the glass and smashed it and gone through. On this ledge there wasn’t enough room for leverage.
Wind gust and it tugged at me and I froze and waited and longed to shut my eyes but without a visual reference the balance would have gone. The gust had rocked me sideways a little before I’d had a chance to contract the muscles, and the buildings opposite tilted back and that was when the vertigo began, the real thing, and for the first time I realised there wasn’t necessarily a chance of reaching the corner and making the turn and finding some kind of purchase on the next face of the building.
Keep still.
The street steadied and held and then shifted again, and all I could do was try to keep still, but vertigo is not just a sensation, not just a fear of heights: it’s the primitive fear of falling, of dying, of taking time to die, of being cut off from the safety we have known since we crawled across that solid floor and began to know on the subconscious level that it would always be like this; there would always be the safety of solidity beneath us, the arms of the Earth Mother.
Keep still.
But it was here to stay, now, the vertigo, and I was keeping still because I couldn’t move any more, unless I could deal with the enemy within the gates, within the mind.
Breathe deeply, slowly, call upon prana.
The consciousness of known values was diminishing, slipping away, and soon there was no mission to be accomplished, no action to be accounted for; London was the shred of a thought, a name for a place where a man called Shepley lived, had once lived, in the past. Another man, with the name of Melnichenko, floated through my mind as a figment, a ghost seen moving through a hall of mirrors, of reflections, as reality seeped away and took with it the demands of normal life, that I should somehow make my way along this ledge and find a place where I could be safe, and pick up a telephone and say, I am safe now, I am safe.