by Adam Hall
Men shouted to each other in the frosty night.
Then panic came and all I knew was that my hands clawed earth away from under me and pain began spreading from their fingers into my arms as the hard clods broke away and the smell of moisture rose. The sound was the worst: the innermost core of reason, remote from the tumult of disordered thought, heard an animal burrowing. There is cunning of a kind in panic. Earth was falling across my back, across my legs. My hands shovelled at it, hurrying to make a grave for the living. The only sounds now were the grunt of my own breath and the scrabbling of my own hands: no one was near and this was my world here in the middle of ploughed land and there was work to be done, the quarry to be buried so that the hunters should be deceived as they swung their lights and looked for a running man and gave no thought for worm or mole or this lowly beast whose only shelter was the earth.
Pain swamped my senses and I was lying still, drowning in an ebb and flow of light and dark while the bellows of my lungs reminded me that something was yet alive here, its breath rasping in the hollow of night. Then brilliance swept overhead and lit the ridge of clods my hands had churned. It swept again and I shut my eyes and the panic that had moved me to frenzy now held me paralysed.
Clear thought began. The situation was reviewed. There was nothing more to do: the final decision would now be made by circumstance, by the direction of their lights and the ability of their eyes and the line of their reasoning: they had hunted me before and knew how best to go about it but their very confidence could count against them.
The earth went bright, went dark. The engines throbbed. They turned and backed, sweeping the ploughed area with light, turning and driving on again to probe the trees. Then they sounded to be more distant and the field was dark. And I moved now because the threat in the air had become active: and this danger was the worst. The barking had changed in tone and was more widespread.
They would have given them my coat to scent.
The ruts ran in the direction I had first taken, away from the asylum and towards the thickest of the trees. I knew a road was there: the whole of the ploughed area was ringed. But there was no light showing ahead of me and I scattered earth as I rose and moved at a lurching trot, pitching twice, the horizon spinning, moving on and once halting in an attempt to steady my legs, control them. It was the uneven ground, that was all, the uneven ground: you’re far from gone. Get on.
The baying was behind me now and closer.
Light arced across the land to my left and fixed on the low scrub there. The beam appeared to be bouncing but it was my own movement. The ground was bad for running: the frost had crusted the surface and my feet broke through and were caught by the soft earth beneath. I went down again and lay where I fell, listening to the dogs, awareness of their danger blunted by the body’s reluctance to get up and go on: it wanted to lie here with its pain and hunger and thirst, to sleep, so as not to feel them.
The dogs must be under the leash still, their handlers making sure it was a true scent before they slipped them, certain of a kill. They were close now.
I was moving again in a drunken run for the dark, for the trees. Brilliance flooded the field’s edge and I saw figures grouped. Men’s voices mingled with the crying of the dogs.
Somewhere near the trees I fell again, one shoulder hitting the metalled surface of a road. It was very dark here but the shape of the car was visible, massive above me: I had nearly run into it. It had been waiting here with its lights off so that I wouldn’t see it. One of its doors swung open. She said: ‘Get in.’
Chapter Eighteen
HELDA
My head was against the floor.
We crawled in the dark and then stopped, backing and waiting. The sound of the dogs was muffled by the bodywork. We turned and there was faint light. I heard the snatch of the universals under the floor. Voices called.
Then we accelerated and turned at speed, pulling up suddenly. The dogs were far away. We started off and settled down to cruising on our way back to the asylum. This was a definite move, a decision, writing off all the uncertainties, and my brain was satisfied and let oblivion come.
‘How long have I been out?’
‘Half an hour.’
I hadn’t moved. My head was still on the floor. I moved and lightning struck through me. I waited before trying again. I asked:
‘Where are we?’
‘Near Mulhausen.’
‘You’re lying. You always lie.’
I moved again, my teeth clenched. Faint light was inside the car, pulsing. She got out and opened the door at the back and I felt her hand supporting the side of my head. She knew her stuff: the head is the heaviest bit when you’re trying to get off the floor, it’s as bad as a ball and chain.
‘I don’t want your bloody help.’
She went on helping me so I put a lot of effort into it because I wanted to do it for myself. Millhausen was nowhere near the asylum. It was towards the Frontier. The lying bitch.
I was sitting on the seat, head lolling about. She was trying to keep my head still so that I could drink. She had a flask. They always brought you a flask before they put you through the mincer. After three days they were suddenly lousy with the things. But I drank.
‘It’s empty,’ she said when I’d finished. As if I didn’t know. But I suppose she said that because I was still hanging on to it.
‘Where are we?’
‘Near Mulhausen,’ she said carefully. Towards the West German Frontier.’
‘Leave that alone.’ She was trying to find the end of the bandage among all the mess. It was humiliating. I pulled my hand away.
‘Clench it,’ she said. ‘Keep it clenched. You’ve been losing blood.
‘What the hell’ve you brought me here for? Give the dogs a longer run?’
The light from the dashboard had stopped pulsing. She was watching my face. ‘How long can you hold out?’
‘A long time. I was thirsty, that’s all. Who are you?’
‘My name is Helda.’
‘I mean who are you?’
But one or two pointers were presenting themselves for my inspection. When I had got into the car she’d crawled in the dark at first so by the time she’d put her lights on she’d have been some distance from where the dogs were milling about at the end of the scent-track. Then she’d backed and waited, floodlighting the field, keeping up the search like the rest of them. Then she’d driven off hard for the next search-area.
The water was cold in my stomach. My whole body was drinking there. I said:
‘You’ll be missed by now. Better shove on.’
She was watching me attentively. ‘When did you last eat?’
She knew when I’d last eaten. Three days ago.’ Maybe she didn’t.
‘Nothing since then?’
‘You think I fancy salt-beef sandwiches? I’m used to caviar.’
The bronze eyes lit and softened and suddenly she looked as she had when I’d thought about her as a change from thinking about blotting it all out. It was relief, that was all. I was a mess but it sounded as if the inside of my head was still operating and obviously there were things we had to do.
‘Drink this.’
Plastic bottle. ‘What is it?’
‘Glucose and milk.’
I took it and she unscrewed the top. Compared with the water the milk was warm: she’d had it in the pocket of her flying-coat. While I drank slowly she left me and got behind the wheel. I climbed out and dumped myself in the front beside her partly to see if I could do it and partly so we wouldn’t have to shout. But she didn’t say anything until we were through Mulhausen and into the minor roads.
‘I’m taking you to the Frontier.’
‘Out on a limb, aren’t you?’
‘It’s my affair.’
Shivering had set in and she noticed it: ‘I couldn’t bring your coat.’
‘No. The dog-handlers had it.’
I still heard the baying and would hear it
for a long time. Delayed shock was trying to start but it wouldn’t have much luck because I was too interested in what was going on. After a while I said: ‘We haven’t got long.’
‘It wasn’t just bad organization,’ she said. ‘My duty was to pick up Guhl. They were waiting for his report on the Benedikt situation. I couldn’t do anything except hand you over. I couldn’t even talk in the car because of the driver. I could only plan to get you away as soon as I could do it. That should have been much sooner but the sky was clear until tonight and they would have got you before you’d gone a yard, I’m sorry.’
‘You’re taking a chance even now.’
‘But it’s at least a chance.’
She drove deftly: her nerves showed only in the way she spoke, a few brief phrases broken by short intervals of silence. I said: ‘Who are you with?’
‘No one you would know. We had a cell established in Zagreb.’
I waited but that was all. I couldn’t ask anything else because it wouldn’t be ethical and anyway she wasn’t going to tell me anything more than we would both need to share for the sake of security. But I thought I had it: there’d been someone in Zagreb recently who’d had to do a bunk and it had stirred things up a lot. Two people had shown up in London soon afterwards and we’d vetted them in case they had any value for the Bureau. All we’d learned was that the Zagreb base was blown and that three of their regional cells were cut off. It happens a lot: it’s bound to. It can’t happen to the established networks: the American C.I.A. has a hundred thousand personnel and you could drop a multi-megaton buster down their chimney and no one would get cut off anywhere because their outfit is fully diversified, but there are thousands of pint-sized private-enterprise groups working the clock round from Leningrad to Lisbon and they haven’t resources wide enough to cushion the crunch if it comes.
‘You did pretty well,’ I said.
‘No. We -‘
‘I mean it’s not everyone who can fix up a secret-police cover and live too long.’ I didn’t want her to explain how pretty well she hadn’t done. It can happen to the best of them: they’ve nowhere to go once their base is blown and the best of them just go on operating in the hope that somehow they can bring it off alone. But they can’t do that if they come down to the broken reeds among their number. People like Benedikt.
‘We were cut off,’ she said and there was a sag in her voice because she was only now recognizing the defeat that she’d refused to face before.
‘It can happen to anyone. But why send a man like him to a place like Hanover when you had at least two other people right inside London?’
She looked at me and away again. I was knowing too much. That wasn’t awkward: it was just embarrassing. She said in a moment: ‘I couldn’t trust them.’
That fitted. Benedikt had broken but he hadn’t sold out. He’d left them safe.
‘But you didn’t drop the idea. I mean of calling on London.’
It wasn’t the first time a group had signalled for help. A lot of them were the nuclei of resistance cells and refugee organizations and even though times had changed and the hot war had gone cold they were still of the generation that once had nothing to sustain them in the twilight of the attics and the cellars and the boarded-up cupboards but the voice among the static prefaced by the four notes of the V-sign: This is London. But it was the first time my own Bureau had mounted a mission and sent out an agent within hours of a contact. We get a lot of contacts and most of them are duff but just as soon as Lovett tipped us off about an imminent Striker crash I was lying on my back on top of a chalk quarry with that very aeroplane performing overhead. And there’d been nothing to go on. Lovett himself hadn’t known who the contact was.
I suppose people loathe Parkis because he’s always so bloody right She said: ‘If London couldn’t do anything, you’d tell me now, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
We were running through flat country: a few hedgerows and then nothing but the far horizon. The car slewed sometimes across frost’ but she held it well enough.
‘It wasn’t bad organization,’ she said and I knew she was worried about it. ‘They must have gone to have another look at you soon after you’d left. I was counting on at least one hour before that happened. We couldn’t -‘
‘Look, I’m here and I’m not thirsty any more. Well for God’s sake.’
‘All right.’
‘Did you send Benedikt across on a specific mission or was he just meant to check on the Hanover cell ?’
‘He was to take over the Striker operation.’
Of course. So he’d known when the next one would crash. And had told Lovett. I said: ‘Can you fill me in on Kohn?’
The roads were narrower here and the tarmac was broken in places. The terrain was taking on the wasteland look of the Frontier Zone.
‘Distinguished flying record, the Iron Cross as a lieutenant, 1944. He was cut off after a crash-landing near Poznan a year later and taken prisoner by the Soviet troops in that area. He never saw his family again and he didn’t know at the tune that his wife was killed in the bombing of Cologne. When they released him he began working for privileges as a pro-communist -‘
‘Why didn’t he go back before 1961 ? He could have. There was a child, wasn’t there?’
She said reflectively: ‘I think it may have been his pride, or -‘
‘Oh I see, yes.’ At that time his face would have been still in the healing stages and frightening to a small boy.
We began slowing and she switched to low-beam. The dark mass of pines loomed on our left and at its fringe were the trees I had memorized as markers on our way across.
Time was so short.
I said: ‘You’re going straight back?’
‘As soon as I know you’re through safely.’ She slowed to a crawl and drove on sidelights between hedges of thorn. ‘They’ll have widened the search by now and I’ll join them.’
I didn’t ask what the risk was: she would have been absent for two hours. I said: ‘Who are the people we have to deal with? The ones at the top with Kohn ?’
‘There are others. Gross, Langmann and Schott. Langmann is based in East Berlin. The others are at Aschau.’
‘Langmann - what’s his cover?’
‘Secretary of Trade Agreements in the S.E.D.’ They’re the all-highest? Those four?’
‘If they were brought down,’ she said, ‘the whole of Die Zelle would collapse.’
She turned off the sidelights before the thorn gave way to scrubland and we went forward at a walking-pace through the faint light from the sky. She said:
‘Kohn, Gross and Schott go by road to Berlin once every month for conference with the political re-education secretariat. They are normally escorted by one military vehicle.’
‘Oh really.’
‘I tried,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
There are only three of us and there’s so little we can do. Aschau is a network of microphones and every second man is an informer.’
‘You’ve done well enough to survive.’ Aschau was a Chinese Box: within an asylum for the criminally insane was the legitimate but undercover political re-education complex. Within that, Die Zelle. Within that, Helda’s group, a potential detonator.
‘Survival isn’t enough.’
‘It’s kept open the way in. You know that.’
She cut the engines and we coasted, bumping over rough ground where the track ended. Then we stopped.
I said: ‘If my people decide to have a go they’ll want to look over Aschau. I mean as well as fix the convoy on the Berlin run. There might be some confusion when it all hots up so we’ll have to arrange a code-intro.’
We couldn’t see much of each other now because the facia lamp was out. We spoke more quietly.
‘Might you be there ?’ she asked.
‘No. It’s not in my field.’
In a moment she said: ‘What is your name?’
‘Quiller.’
‘All right.’
‘We shall use the English pronunciation.’
‘Yes.’ There were a few German words that would sound similar if the ‘u’ were spoken as V.
We were accommodating visually to the dim light and I could see the dark shape of her mouth and the glow of her eyes. I could feel her warmth. I said:
‘You’ll have been absent for two hours. How big is the risk?’
‘It’s calculated.’
Kohn would give the orders and they would arrange it discreetly and the glow and the warmth would be gone.
‘Come across with me now. You’d be given immediate asylum.’
She moved her head, looking through the windscreen at the distant posts where the wire ran. ‘No. It would mean letting them down. My friends. And if your people decide to go over there I shall try to have material available. Documents, rosters, everything they’ll have come for.’ She looked at me again. ‘I tried to get your papers back, and the key-plan of the mines. It wasn’t possible.’
‘I took bearings.’ The chill air flowed in as I opened my door. ‘Go straight back.’
‘I shall wait until I know.’
Sharply I said: ‘There’s no point. If I make a mistake there’ll be nothing you can do. Go straight back.’
‘Very well.’
Looking in at her I said: ‘We met late, didn’t we?’
‘Yes.’
I shut the door and began walking.
I was more than halfway across before the tension got so bad that I had to rest. The danger was in the need to concentrate: there comes a time when the mind refuses further discipline and argues that luck will get you through. Marksmen at the range find that their aim deteriorates after a certain point and they put it down to fatigue but it isn’t the whole answer.
There was no deliberate intention to rest: suddenly I was lying on my back, face to the curdled clouds, eyes closed, my nervous reserves already plundered - I lay down without caution, not caring whether or not my head was blown off.