by Adam Hall
Eyelids flickering. Posts and stanchions, a forest of them reaching to infinity, charred shadows against the ashen frost - 32 LG-RR/4I45/42SILCB-T/6/45/5 - Bearing 3: 2nd post Left of Guard-hut to line with Right edge of Ruin, Spaces, 45° to Bearing 4: 2nd stanchion from 1st post Left of Central Bush to line with Tree, 6 paces, 45° to Bearing 5 - the earth cold against my back, my spine a perfectly articulated thread of life lying at an unknown angle among perfectly ordered points of potential death, a man seeking on ancient principle his own survival, men seeking by remote artifact his extermination.
Who are you?
Quiller.
I mean who are you?
This bit of gristle cast up in no man’s land where no man safely goes, nursing a bandage full of blood and the high ambition of crawling through a wire where the cows come to scratch their backs and where the hemispheres of the planet Earth divide. The sky flickering. Get up. Get on your bloody feet.
53RT-LF6/45/61S2LCB to Bearing 7.
Keep still.
‘Poor sod.’
Still. Reference shifting: second marker seventh series had T doubled. There was no tree there before. R3-check and make four paces.
‘You’d not think it were worth it, would you?’
Voices low. Assimilate new situation and discount alien markers and proceed. Prominence - watch it. Feel its edge. Stone.
It had brought the sweat out.
‘He’s not the only one that’s tried. It must be bad over there.’
The gleam of their guns.
To line with Left edge of Guard hut, 4 paces.
But I was weakening now and the second marker swayed and I couldn’t get a true fix on the background reference but it was no good flaking out again because the next time I’d fall on top of one and I didn’t want that, all I wanted was sleep.
‘Come on, son, you’ll do it yet.’
I suppose so. I suppose so. Bearing 10.
The hiss of the frost underfoot, 6 paces.
The wire. The barbs bent under with pliers. Now don’t fall over. There’s no need.
‘Are you - are you blokes Rhine Army?’
‘Christ - he’s English!’
One of them caught me.
Chapter Nineteen
FINAL APPROACH
They put me in the back of their Jeep and one of them slung his greatcoat round me. They were already calling up base as we drove off. The wind cut cold. I shouted against it.
‘I left a car here. Can I pick it up?’
‘You what?’ They talked together. ‘You can’t drive it because we can’t authorize you, see ? And we can’t drive it because no one can authorize us, get it ? So I should just sit tight and look happy. We shan’t be long.’
They were in good spirits. It wasn’t often they picked anyone off the wire.
At the B.A.O.R. unit a captain questioned me and went into his office next door to use the phone. I could hear most of it through the pinewood partition. A very odd bod indeed. Thorough bad shape but lucid enough. Is Mister Bates there?
A corporal brought me a cup of tea.
I dunno, frankly. He wants to talk to someone in Hanover. Yes. Thing is, do we let him?
I burnt my lips but went on drinking just to feel the heat The corporal was passing on the news somewhere outside: He’s in there now. Caught him on the Strip. Eh? No, English. Honest!
Fair enough. We’ll hold him for you.
Boots in the passage. Thomson!’
‘Sir?’
‘Bring some tea for this chap, soon as you can.’
‘He’s got some, sir.’
‘Fair enough.’
The door opened. ‘You can phone Hanover but we have to listen in, that do you?’
He took me into his office and I gave him the number. We waited for the connection. Tall, clean, pink-faced, very interested, a boyish smile. The last customer we had was two months ago. I mean a live one.’ That was how they must come to see the ‘Strip’: as a wire where birds perched, some of them falling.
When the phone rang he used the extension, watching me the whole time as I talked.
‘Sapphire.’
‘Needle.’ He listened for bugs.
‘All right’ I said: ‘Company.’ Third party this end.
‘Understood.’
‘I’m in B.A.O.R. Bucholz. Get me out, will you?’
‘This time of night?’
He was giving himself time to think. The Rhine Army wouldn’t pick anyone up unless they were right in the Zone.
‘Wake people up,’ I told him.
‘Yes. Which way are you facing?’
‘Home.’ He wanted to know if I were going across or coming back.
The young captain tapped my arm: ‘It’s getting a little obscure. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to -‘
‘All right,' I said.
‘Anything for me?’ Ferris was asking.
‘Practically the lot.’
‘Oh yes?’ He was very good at not sounding galvanized. ‘Anything for London?’
‘Not yet’
‘I ought to give them at least a rough -‘
‘Look, stuff London. Just get me out I want one more day.’
‘Where?’
‘Linsdorf. Do I need smoke out?’
‘No. We fixed that.’
The captain reached across and cut us off. His smile was rather strained. ‘I do apologize, but you see my position. Most of that was in verbal code and I’ve already stuck my neck out letting you phone at all.’
I gave him the receiver.
‘I appreciate that.’ The heat was off now and the need for sleep was urgent. ‘Appreciate it a lot. Don’t worry, there’ll be no kickback.’ Up to Ferris, the rest of the night.
‘That’s fine. But the thing is, you could be Commander Crabb or someone.’
‘He’s got brown eyes, didn’t you know?’
They woke me just before dawn and I let them take me along to the sick-bay to get the hand re-stitched.
‘There’s not so much room left for making new holes, that’s the trouble. What have you been doing?’
‘I had to go on all fours for a bit.’
‘Taking pots, were they?’ The M.O. laughed gustily. They all knew where the ‘very odd bod’ had been. It was a routine patrol unit and I was as good as the telly.
The captain took me back to his office.
‘Well I’m not quite sure what’s going on but we’ve had a call through and my orders are to release you and offer limited facilities.’ He sounded frustrated: he wasn’t averse to letting me go but he realized that he would never know who it was who had gone. ‘Perhaps you’d give me some idea as to what facilities you need.’
I didn’t ask for much: some biscuits, a duffle-coat, some petrol and a ride in the Jeep as far as the ruined military depot.
The 17M was still there, stuck in the bush, and they filled the tank while I scraped the frost off the windscreen. The tank had been split on the blind run from Neueburg and I didn’t want to go dry. I made sure the engine would start before I let them go, then while it warmed I stood looking east across the wire and the flat grey land beyond. The light seeped from a cold sky and there were crows about: it was morning, and I had a warm coat with biscuits in a pocket and I hoped the night had gone well for her, as it had gone for me.
The front wing rattled but the roads smoothed out when I cleared the Zone and headed north towards Linsdorf.
Brian? This is George. Listen, something’s come up and we’d rather like your help. Well apparently there’s one of those chaps -you know? - struck a spot of trouble in Western Germany. Yes Name’s Martin and he’s officially attached to the Accidents Investigation Branch working at an airbase called Linsdorf. Now this is what seems to have cropped up, you listening hard ?
I ate the biscuits slowly, a crumb at a time.
Number Three? This is Beacon Nine. Will you be in Bonn tonight? Well you’ll see General Schmidl, obviously. Subject: an Englishm
an, Walter Martin, has become wanted for murder since early hours this morning. All we need is that the good Herr General is tipped off that his K.P. branch is wasting its time: Martin was not, repeat not, responsible. They’ll thus avoid unproductive search tactics. M’m? If it could be done officially I wouldn’t be asking you, would I? No, we’re relying on Schmidl’s confidence in our integrity and that should suffice. Finally, if the Kriminalpolizei require the said Martin as witness at a later date, we guarantee his availability. Now I’ll give you what details I have.
My left hand was no more than numb beneath its fresh analgesic dressing. I had slept for nearly three hours at the Rhine Army unit but there was a certain amount of natural dope trying to put me out again because I was still about twelve hours on the debit side. I kept all the windows down.
Liebermann? I have some confidential information for you. I can give you nothing of its source but I would suggest that you accept it as most reliable. Further, I would invite you to take such action as will become clear to you when you know the facts. Please listen to me carefully.
Neueburg lay to the east now and I passed the turning, making directly north. Soon afterwards I saw a cruising police patrol and felt gratitude to Ferris. My journey to Linsdorf and my business there would have been impossible or at best very difficult in smoke conditions, but the heat had been turned off Martin and I could go where I pleased. It was one of the things a director in the field was expected to do for his agent but I felt good about Ferris because there were those who wouldn’t have kept up-the pressure on London until something was done.
I approached Linsdorf just before 10.00 a.m. A Striker SK-6 was going into circuit after take-off and the smell of kerosene tainted the draught from the windows.
He was in a bad way even before I told him, his nerves in his eyes, couldn’t keep still, the short laugh more cynical than ever.
‘We were wondering where you’d gone,’ he said.
In this kind of confrontation they are not always so vulnerable and it surprised me but it was too late to change tactics and I whipped it on him right away.
‘I’ve been at Aschau.’
We were alone in his quarters. I had noted his service revolver among some gear on a chair and I was standing where I could block him if he went for it.
Reaction wasn’t total. I hadn’t expected it to be. All he knew now was that I was a bit more than an aviation psychologist attached to the A.I.B. head tilted, a degree sideways and a degree forward. He knew who I was not; he didn’t know who I was.
‘Yes?’
I said: ‘Die Zelle is finished.’ But of course he would need more than that. He would want proof. ‘Kohn, Gross, Langmann, Schott, all of them. Finished.’
Total reaction now, much earlier than I’d expected because he still didn’t have any proof. But within half a minute I hardly recognized him: the shock had aged his face and sharpened its resemblance to his father’s.
‘Thank God,’ he said.
I had to think about that. The unexpected was coming up all the time and I tried to recognize familiar facts but there was only one with relevance. Nitri had said in the car: He’s enormously brave. For a man with his record of courage his nerves had needed a lot of tranquillizing: a woman a night, so they said.
Then I got it.
‘Pushing you too far, were they?’
He said nothing. His face had lost all colour and his eyes were vacant: in the way of a drowning man he was reviewing his life and if I had spoken again he wouldn’t have heard or understood.
After a long time he said numbly: ‘Yes. I tried to tell him. But he said a part of the new Germany was in my care. That was what he said.’
‘In your care?’ I was getting fed up. ‘And thirty-six pilots, one after the other - were they in your care too?’
Abstractedly: ‘That was Wagner.’
‘Oh really? Nothing to do with you? Christ, I wouldn’t want your conscience, Rohmhild.’
Wagner wasn’t much surprise. I’d already checked on him, coming into the airbase. He’d left here two days ago. Rotational duties: he’d be down at Hankensbuttel now, the next one round the ring.
‘I did it for him.’
‘What ? Oh, for Kohn. You’re all the same - you can never do anything for yourselves, there’s always got to be some kind of a tin god telling you what to do. Then you’ll do anything. When did they tell you, the Rohmhilds?’ Because it must have been like that.
‘When I was fifteen.’
‘Well that was a bloody silly thing to do.’
Puberty is no time to tell someone he’s got a genuine father lost on the other side of a lot of barbed wire: he’ll want to find him. I wondered if Kohn would ever have allowed that. He’d had no choice. The Rohmhilds had thought it was the right thing to do.
I said: ‘When did you first meet him?’
‘On my nineteenth birthday.’ But his answers weren’t coming as fast as that. He spent a lot of time staring at nothing. ‘I went across the Wall on a holiday pass and tried not to come back but he made me.’
‘Was that when it happened?’ He stared at me, trying to connect. ‘Was that when he offered you the sacred task of assisting in the re-creation of the beloved Fatherland and all that balls?’
Something like anger came into his eyes: I’d kicked half a temple over and there has to be a place to pray in when you worship a god. Distinguished flying record, the Iron Cross as a lieutenant, so forth. And a face to show for it: the face of the mutilated martyr. They’d had young Rohmhild-Kohn across a barrel.
‘It was later. A year later.’
‘What was your job? Recruiting Wagner?’
‘Yes.’
More than that. For the past year he’d been Die Zelle’s contact inside the Luftwaffe, monitoring pilot-reactions, listening to the A.I.B. wreckage-analysts, checking on their West German counterpart team, passing it all through the wire with people like Guhl as a courier. Linsdorf was the main base where the Striker-crash investigations were going on.
‘How much longer were you going to keep it up ?’
‘It was not in my hands, after Wagner had worked out a way to-‘
‘Oh all right, but you had all the information, didn’t you, you knew who was next on the list ? What was it ? Drugs ? Hypnosis ? A nerve-gas?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Of course you know!’
‘He didn’t tell me!’
‘Damn your eyes - how was it administered?’
His head had swung away as if I’d hit him. From somewhere he was trying to rescue reason and re-arm himself but there was no defence against what I had told him: that Die Zelle was finished. The divine orders from the god in the temple had been to engineer the death of young man like himself who flew the same plane and lived the same life, and his subscription to opposing loyalties had finally cut him in two, just as all Germany was cut.
If I stopped now I’d never get it from him. ‘What was his method! Wagner’s method!’ Because London wouldn’t go in immediately: she’d said the Berlin run was normally scheduled for the fifteenth of every month, ‘It was a tablet.’
‘Where? Where did he -‘
‘In the tube of sedatives -‘
‘Oh Christ, as simple as that?’ They were out there rebuilding whole aeroplanes. ‘What was it, the fifth in the tube, the sixth ? How many sedative doses before the big kick, Rohmhild ? One every flight? How many flights a day? How many days?’
He stood shivering and I turned away. He didn’t have to answer: the answer was on the map, the ring on the map. Wagner spent an average of five days at every main Striker base. His duties were rotational and death was rotational: Russian roulette. He would alter his time-pattern so that he would never be present at any given base when a crash happened. Pick the next man and get out, just as you light a fuse.
And the stuff could be anything, a quick-acting depressant using the normal effects of high-altitude and oxygen-breathing as a catalyst: that wou
ld be essential because they had to come down hard enough to make analysis impossible. Ferris: You saw that crash so you can imagine what the pilot looks like afterwards. Quick-acting and short duration: I had asked Philpott what attitude the Striker would adopt if the pilot lost control and hadn’t switched to automatic. Nose down, four or five degrees. From sixty thousand feet, all the way into the ground.
He was standing looking out of the window but I knew that nothing was familiar to him anymore.
‘How long have you been at Linsdorf ?’
‘Six months.’
‘Got a transfer here did you?’
He said nothing more. But it was six months ago when the West German analysts and the A.I.B. had set up Linsdorf as the centre of their operations. The eye and the ear of Die Zelle had requested transfer.
‘Who’s next, Rohmhild?’
He didn’t answer, perhaps didn’t hear. His silence gave me time to think and suddenly I knew that I was missing something important: I didn’t know what it was but the natural thing happened and my thoughts focused on the one area still unexplained. Rohmhild had been so vulnerable when I had come here and I had assumed it was due to the strain of standing by and doing nothing while they came out of the sky one after another at Gunzburg, Spalt, Laubach, Linsdorf
‘Rohmhild.’ Wagner gone. Rotational. The taint of kerosene in the draught from the windows. ‘Who is next?’ I swung him round and his face opened to the shock of the attack: he’d even forgotten I was here, and forgotten why.
‘Artur Boldt.’
Geschwaderkommodore, Linsdorf. Now airborne.
I dragged at the door and began running and was halfway to the control tower when I heard the shot but kept on going, the odd thought flashing to mind that Nitri was off the hook now. The pilots heard it from the crew-room and came out to see what was happening and one of them called to me but I went on running. Concrete apron, dry ice in the shallows, a flight of steps, steel banister, the door.
They were surprised to see me. Green glass filtering the light. I told them to get him down, do it now, catch him before he reached his operational ceiling (because it could be a part of the trick, normal effects of high altitude as a catalyst), said I was with A.I.B. and we’d located the fault because they weren’t too quick but that one worked all right and they started calling him up.