by Adam Hall
‘Where is it?’
‘I don’t want you sending people around. Listen, I’m going to get all the information I can, and I’ll phone you again in an hour, at 7:45. If I don’t, call the British Ambassador and tell him that Pollock, his cultural attaché, is in the Trumpeter cell, and by the look of it I’d say he’s running things. But do not give that information to anyone unless I fail to call you. I don’t want to blow this operation until I know what’s happening, and there’s an awful lot of stuff hitting the fan. With this man Pollock involved we’ve got a second UK connection, so we don’t want to make any waves.’
Cigarette smoke drifting on the air. The driver came down the steps with a red plastic bucket with the Kronnenburg logo on it and started to clean up, making a lot of haste.
Cone: ‘You can’t do this.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve got to signal London. You must realise that.’
‘I’m not stopping you.’
‘But I’ve got to tell them you’ve successfully penetrated Trumpeter, and -‘ on a thought ‘- you are in charge there, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s very nice, but I can’t tell Bureau One that you’re in contact with me but you’re totally alone in the centre of the opposition cell and refuse to let me know where it is.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, I’ve had a long day. I’m -‘
‘I know, but you’re not listening. What sort of director will I look like?’
I thought about it while the driver took the bucket up the steps, boots banging. I suppose it was the only way Cone knew he could break me down, by appealing to my respect for him.
‘It’s not your fault if I don’t do things by the book.’
I heard him let out a breath. ‘You are in -‘ no contraction, articulating carefully ‘- the centre of an opposition cell and may at any time find yourself compromised, and when questions are asked later I shan’t be able to explain why my executive lost all trust in me and refused all confidence.’ His voice went very quiet. ‘It’s not a question of not doing things by the book. It’s a question of manners.’
Oh Jesus Christ, he was as bad as Ferris: we were only ten days into the mission but he’d learned exactly how to manipulate me.
In a minute I said, ‘You go straight for the groin, don’t you?’
‘That’s better,’ he said.
The driver came down again and went over to the man on the floor.
‘Hold on a minute,’ I told Cone, and put the phone down and got the gun from the bottom step and swung the chamber out and dropped the bullets into my hand and threw the gun into the corner of the room; then I did the same thing with the one I’d borrowed and picked up the handcuffs and gave everything to the driver. ‘You’ll drop these bullets down the nearest drain in the car park and put the handcuffs into the van.’ The man took them but looked across at Schwarz and I told Schwarz: ‘Order him.’
‘Do as he says.’
‘Sir.’
He got hold of the other man and helped him onto his feet. He was fully conscious now and in a great deal of pain.
I looked at the driver. ‘Can you manage the steps?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Quick as you can, then.’ The movement wasn’t going to help the pain and I didn’t want any more mess in here.
I picked up the phone again. ‘Something I had to see to. All right, but you’d have to give me your word that you’ll send no one into this area unless I fail to make that call.’
It took him a few seconds. ‘I will send no one.’
‘Fair enough. I’m in the cellar underneath Charlie’s Club. Got that? If I don’t make the call, you can send in a whole platoon of the KGB and blow the place open.’ I was watching Pollock as I said that, and he looked very surprised, though he kept most of it blanked off. I was beginning to think he was a. spook of some sort, running his own thing. ‘Look,’ I told Cone, ‘I don’t want to handle this on my own for the moment just for kicks. The thing is it’s so bloody sensitive that I want a clear field to work in until I know which way we’re facing. But I’ll give you everything I’ve got as soon as I’m ready. I hope you can accept that.’
A question of manners.
In a moment, ‘Yes, I can live with it for now.’
‘I’ll phone at 7:45.’
Rang off.
Pollock hadn’t moved; he was standing on one leg with his back and his other foot against the wall, his cigarette half through. Schwarz was moving up and down, less tall than he’d seemed before: it had been in comparison with the other pilot; but he was much thinner and his face was hollowed and his eyes strained, his mouth tight, a nervy man, his own cigarette-end already in the tin ashtray on the floor by one of the chairs.
Pollock: ‘I think we could use a drink, couldn’t we?’
With care I asked him: ‘Where is Horst Volper?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Look, I can play it two ways. I can pick up the phone and get the KGB here and give you over to them for exhaustive interrogation under a very bright light or I can get all the information I want out of you here and now and in relative comfort, if that’s your choice. But if that’s your choice, don’t think you can piss me about.’
Pulling in smoke, blowing it out. ‘We really have no idea where Horst Volper is. He’s nothing to do with us, but I know he’s in East Berlin on an operation of his own, and I personally know that you’re working his case.’
Secret Service idiom, not Bureau. Meant Volper was my objective.
‘Who’s your chief of station at the embassy?’
‘Technically, Saunders.’
‘DI6?’
‘Yes.,
‘But they’re not running Trumpeter.’
‘No, that’s mine.’ The back of his head was against the wall too, and he was sighting me along his nose. He looked relaxed. He wasn’t. ‘When I say mine, I mean I’m just coordinating it all from this centre.’
DI6 idiom again. ‘As a freelance?’
‘Of course.’ Sudden bright smile. ‘They wouldn’t do anything like this.’
I knew that. ‘Lena Pabst,’ I said. ‘Whose orders?’
It brought him off the wall and he went over to the ashtray, not looking at me. ‘No one’s orders, and certainly not mine.’ I heard anger in the tone.
‘Who shot her, then?’
‘Bader.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘The man you messed up.’
‘The pilot who’s just left here?’
‘Yes. I pitched into him over that.’ Putting his hands into his pockets, pushing his fists out, the old school habit. ‘In fact I said I was going to drop the whole thing.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
He took a deep breath. ‘Melnichenko said I’d have to stay in and see it through. He said it was too important.’ In a moment: ‘It is.’
‘Too important to let a little thing like killing a woman bother you.’
Self-righteous bastard, I was as guilty as anyone, sending her into an infiltration exercise that I should have known might be lethally dangerous.
‘I’m sorry about that part of things,’ Pollock said quietly. ‘Very sorry.’ He switched to German and looked at the pilot. ‘What happened when I heard about Lena Pabst?’
A shrug. ‘You hit the roof.’
‘What else? Be more specific.’ I heard the edge to his tone and the authority in it. The clean white smile of his was just something he flashed on and off when he was being cultural attaché to the British embassy.
‘You said you were finished with us,’ Schwarz said.
Pollock looked back at me. ‘Make up your own mind.’
‘She must have been doing very well. Getting very close.’
‘That’s why Bader panicked.’
‘Is he anything more than a bomber pilot?’
‘He’s not in intelligence, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I m
ean precisely what I. said. Is he anything more than a pilot? I want straight answers, Pollock, so don’t fuck me about.’
Not keeping my cool terribly well, no, but in the last hour I’d been In handcuffs with a hood over my head and absolutely sure I’d taken the final calculated risk and then I’d found I was right in the nerve-centre of Trumpeter, and there was a lot of work to do before I could move into the end-phase and find Volper and put him away before the Soviet leader landed in East Berlin with a massive protection screen that would still be penetrated by Volper’s operation unless we could stop him, so I wasn’t in the mood to put up with less than straight answers.
‘Bader’s no more than a bomber pilot,’ Pollock said evenly. ‘Except for his involvement in Trumpeter.’
‘What about this bloody fool here?’
I was watching Schwarz and his eyes didn’t change. I wasn’t being rude: I wanted to know if he understood English, to know that when he said that Pollock was ‘finished with them’ he hadn’t just been picking up from what Pollock had said earlier, that he’d been going to ‘drop the whole thing’.
No reaction from Pollock either; he knew what I was doing. ‘It’s the same with him. He’s just in the mission with us.’
‘And what is the mission?’
Dead silence while the tension in the room hit infinity, and this was understandable. Of the hundred or two questions I was going to ask tonight, that was the ringer.
I waited. Everything depended on this. I could blow Trumpeter and they knew it, but I wasn’t ready to do that until I had a lot more answers. One thing stuck out from the rest: I couldn’t see this man Pollock involved in an operation against Mikhail Gorbachev.
In a moment: ‘Difficult to say.’
‘Then get Melnichenko here.
‘Right-o.’ He sounded almost relieved.
As he went to the telephone I said, ‘Pollock, this is exactly what you’ll say. Can you come here immediately? It’s urgent. Repeat that.’
He did, and got it right.
‘If you slip in any other word, I’m going to tell the KGB to take over, and God help you.’
‘Point taken.’ He picked up the phone and dialled.
I listened carefully and he got it right again and rang off before Melnichenko could put any questions.
‘Is this an extension line?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s separate.’
‘Then you can ask the people upstairs to send down whatever you want to drink. It’s going to be a long night.’
‘I rather think it is.’ He was trying to relax, but wasn’t managing; the quick clean smile didn’t work anymore. ‘What’ll you have?’
Black Russian tea, no lemon.’
‘Jurgen?’
‘Beer,’ Schwarz said, and dropped into a chair. He was worried about Bader; I assumed they were close friends.
When Pollock put the phone down I asked him: ‘You’re still officially in DI6?’
‘I suppose so. I mean, yes, I am, but if they knew what I was doing they’d throw me straight out.’
‘What have you been doing officially?’
‘Oh,’ he sat down too, leaning forward, playing with his hands, ‘mostly I’ve been feeding stuff from some of the AIPs here to the desk. Then I did a special for them, last year. The Ericson exchange.’
‘You supervised that one?’
‘I initiated it. We -‘
‘From which end?’
‘Moscow.’ He sounded quietly pleased. He should be. ‘I asked them outright who they’d take in exchange.’
And they’d said Komoroff and Bulgin, who weren’t all that much of a catch anyway. We knew about that one - everybody did.
‘Nice work,’ I said.
”Thank you. It wasn’t that difficult.’
‘You’ve got some good friends in Moscow.’
”They’re all right. They want watching.’ Quick smile.
I made a mental note to ask Cone to hit the computers in London with a question: Who handled the Ericson swap? Pollock could be lying in his teeth. But from what he was telling me and the idiom he was using I knew at least that he was either in DI6 or liaising with them from some other official department.
‘So what made you go off the rails?’
His hands stopped playing. ‘I wouldn’t quite put it like that, if you’re talking about Trumpeter.’
‘How would you put it?’
He didn’t answer for a second or two and I knew why. I’d told him I was going to open up this operation of his and look at it very hard, and I’d told him that if he didn’t cooperate I’d throw them all to the KGB to do it for me. The only thing he could do now was to appear to tell me everything and at the same time try to tell me nothing.
And the very best of luck.
‘Trumpeter,’ he said, ‘is an operation that’s going to change Europe, and -‘ he gave a little apologetic smile ‘- I hope this doesn’t sound too dramatic - and change the geopolitical world, overnight.’ He must have remembered what I’d just told Cone over the phone, because he said, ‘You can’t judge the size of an operation by the furniture.’
‘Touché.’
‘There’s only one thing wrong with Trumpeter.’ His voice had gone terribly quiet, and I noticed his hands were unsteady.
‘I’ve blown it,’ I said.
‘That’s right.’
Chapter 23
MORNING
A big man, big-bodied, not overweight, his head totally bald and pear-shaped, widening downwards to a heavy face, his eyes very alert indeed, especially now, his mouth fleshy and pink, his ears flattened against his balloon-smooth head, his neck thick, with a double chin, his flushed skin shining from the top of his head to his collar, washed, polished, giving him a baby’s glow.
He came down the steps quickly.
Melnichenko.
And stopped. Wrinkles developed across his forehead as his eyes moved to take in the scene. To me, in German with a Russian accent, ‘That was you, wasn’t it, in the building?’
He got an A for that: he could only have caught a glimpse of me as I’d run for the elevator. I didn’t answer.
‘You were in my office?’
I didn’t say anything. Pollock had got out of his chair and the pilot, Schwarz, was on his feet too.
‘Aleksy,’ Pollock said, ‘this is Mr. Ash.’ To me: ‘Commandant Melnichenko, GRU.’
I said good evening. He inclined his head, his pale blue eyes engaged. Then a glance to Pollock.
‘I was in the middle of dinner.’
I didn’t know whether he resented the interruption or was excusing himself for not getting here sooner.
Pollock ignored it, anyway. ‘Mr. Ash wants to ask us some questions.’ He glanced at Schwarz. ‘Jurgen, would you mind getting another chair down here?’
‘Make it two,’ I told him.
Then someone else came down the steps with a big pewter tray and Pollock told him to get a bottle of Smirnov too and a shot glass. It was very busy for a bit and I noticed Melnichenko trying to pick up whatever he could from Pollock’s expression, which was strictly non-committal, the spook’s language for extreme caution, his eyes deliberately not meeting the Russian’s but just looking casually all over the room.
The two extra chairs and the bottle of vodka arrived and Pollock was nice enough to pour me a cup of tea and I held my hands round it because it was so bloody cold in here.
‘Commandant,’ I said, ‘I’m in British intelligence and I’m out here to assist the KGB, at their request. I want to know everything about Trumpeter. If you won’t answer me, you’ll have to answer the KGB.’
Lovely hot tea.
‘What is the exact position?’ he asked Pollock in Russian.
Jesus Christ, that wasn’t very clever.
‘The exact position,’ I said in Russian, ‘is that you’ve got to do what I tell you, because I’ve blown Trumpeter and you might as well face up to it and cooperate.’
But I w
as only feeling my way. In this situation anything was possible: Pollock was running a rogue operation, but the GRU could be working with him unofficially but with direct orders from someone extremely high in the Kremlin.
‘I feel it is a little too early.’ He’d switched back to German.
‘Too early to cooperate?’
‘Well, yes. I would require official assurances, for instance, as to your bona fides.’ His chubby smile was like Pollock’s, an automatic reflex.
‘You’re not in a position to require things,’ I told him. ‘Your only hope is to assist me - and my government - to the point where you might save yourself from the high displeasure of the Kremlin.’
I waited. Pollock’s hands were restless again; he couldn’t keep them still, because when he stopped playing with them I could see they were shaking.
‘Aleksy,’ he said quietly, ‘I can vouch for what Mr. Ash has said. He is in fact an agent in British intelligence.’
‘Then we can conduct discussions on an official level.’
I decided to give him five more minutes, because in those five minutes I might get him to fall with his pink polished face flat in the doo-doo, which would give me a real kick because these people had handled me as if I’d been a bloody amateur, guns in my guts and all that.
‘If you were in a position to conduct discussions on an official level, Commandant, what are you doing in a freezing cellar underneath a club run mostly for the top brass in the black market?’
I suppose Pollock had thought I hadn’t noticed, when we’d had lunch together; but he wasn’t worried about that now. I’d got Melnichenko into a corner and he knew it and he was smart enough to try another gambit.
‘The thing is, we don’t see why you should be taking an interest in Trumpeter at all. It’s basically a Soviet operation.’
‘I’m taking an interest because it’s patently clandestine and there’s an Englishman “coordinating things” - as you put it - from this centre and that man Bader will shortly be up on a murder charge because I’m going to see that he is, and the objective of my own mission is the protection of General-Secretary Gorbachev and I haven’t got the slightest assurance that Trumpeter is not in point of fact aimed at him. And if what you’re doing is liable to change Europe and the geopolitical world then my department is going to inform the Prime Minister very quickly indeed.’ I took another swig at the tea. ‘And you know what she’s going to do? She’s going to get Mr. Gorbachev on his private line and make absolutely certain he’s informed.’