by Adam Hall
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
Quiller’s Run
Quiller Book Twelve
Adam Hall
CHAPTER 1
SMOKE
The whole place was tight with tension when I got there, people huddled in hushed groups along the corridors and hanging around the Signals Room, Croder standing outside Codes and Cyphers with one of the cryptologists, his eyes pinning the poor bastard against the wall and his voice like a knife being sharpened: Then why the hell didn’t you get me on the phone, I don’t care what time it was, you ought to know that by now? I went on past them and thought, for God’s sake if Grader’s lost his cool then something big must have blown and the fallout was still coming down - but the thing was, the thing was, you know, I couldn’t have cared less.
Loman had asked me to meet him at six in his office but he wasn’t there and I had to stand listening to Radcliffe talking on the phone with his mouth tight and his face pasty under the lights.
Tensing is no longer in service.’ He glanced up at me and gave a nod and went on talking. ‘No, officially we’re calling it suicide.’
Now that was spelling it out, wasn’t it, not pretty but at least honest - ‘no longer in service’ was one of those coy little euphemisms coined by the bureaucrats on the third floor: why couldn’t they put us down in the records as dead when we came unstuck, or was there something offensive about the idea, something not quite nice, not to be talked about?
‘Of course we are,’ his pale fingertips drumming on the desk. ‘We’ve called Howatch in from Belgrade and Johns from Rome and they’re trying to locate Hockridge through his director in the field.’
I stood with my raincoat dripping - it’d been drizzling the whole day again, bloody spring for you - they’d called Johns in, what on earth for? The last I’d heard of him he’d been passing the hat round to the sleeper agents right across the communist bloc for any leftover scraps of information they could give him because there’d been five red-sector contacts supporting Sable One when it had come apart and left them ‘terminally exposed’, as those snotty-nosed twits on the third floor called it.
‘No,’ Radcliffe said, ‘he’s still unaccounted for.’
I got fed up with waiting and went outside and along the corridor to see if I could find Loman anywhere, and if I couldn’t I’d check back at his office and if he still wasn’t there he could go to hell. But when I got to the stairwell I saw him standing against the banisters on the floor above, talking to someone. Then he suddenly looked down and saw me.
I stood with my hands in the pockets of my raincoat, staring up at him, waiting. If the bastard wanted to talk, he’d have to do it now.
Calthrop was with him and they came down the stairs together. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t in my office,’ Loman said, ‘but there’s a lot going on.’ Short, dapper, smelling of shoe-polish, I could have killed him on the spot and he knew that. ‘Let’s go in here, shall we?’
It was a room next to the janitor’s closet, no number on the door, no name, just like all the other doors in this anonymous building. No one was in here; it was used to store things in, by the look of it - empty filing cabinets and some worn leather armchairs and a coffee urn inside a torn cardboard box, someone’s bike with the tyres flat and the chain hanging slack, Loman shut the door and turned to look at me. ‘It was good of you to come.’
I didn’t answer, didn’t look at either of them. Calthrop was here, I knew, in case Loman needed protection. He might.
The room was quiet, with only the rain dripping on the windowsill outside.
‘Why don’t we take a pew?’ Calthrop, very smooth, almost jolly, pouring lots of oil. He slapped the dust off one of the armchairs and dropped into it, crossing his legs, looking up at me with an amiable smile.
Loman went to sit down but stopped when he saw I hadn’t moved. ‘We feel we owe you an apology, Quiller. We - er — deeply regret the circumstances that obviously prompted you to hand in your resignation, and very much hope you’ll reconsider.’
The rain dripped, dripped on the windowsill.
From his chair Calthrop added gently, ‘You mustn’t think you’re not still among friends, you know. We’re -‘
‘Friends?’
Loman flinched, though I hadn’t shouted or anything.
He recovered fast, annoyed with his show of nerves. ‘Oh, come now. You know perfectly well that every shadow executive has to be considered expendable, in justifiable circumstances. After all, you signed the clearance forms as usual before the mission.’
His face made me sick and I turned away and looked at a picture on the wall instead, a faded photograph behind cracked glass, the Queen at the Trooping of the Colour, sidesaddle, upright, plumed and in full scarlet. There was a dead moth lying on the top edge of the frame. When I was ready I turned back and looked at Loman again with a dead stare.
‘Yes. I signed the forms.’
I said it quietly but he knew my ability to keep control, to contain even rage if I had to, with none of it reaching the eyes. It’s what they expect of us, isn’t it, the shadow executives? Total control. We’re required to behave like deadly reptiles out there in the field and then turn up here at the Bureau and comport ourselves like civilised people. And we do.
‘I signed the forms. I also defused the bomb. And if I’d known you’d had it planted for me I would have brought it all the way home at the end of the mission and blown this whole fucking building apart.’
Loman turned and took a pace or two with his bright polished shoes, his black onyx cufflinks glinting under the light, his short arms held behind him. ‘The necessity,’ he said thinly, ‘was agreed upon, and at the highest level, as you may well imagine. The fate of nations was at stake. We -‘
‘It’s always at stake. That’s the type of operation you always give me.’
He shrugged. ‘There was the risk of your breaking under interrogation if you were caught.’
‘I had a capsule.’
‘We can never be absolutely sure, of course,' he shrugged again.
‘That we’ll use it?’
‘Quite so.’
‘Do you know how many missions I’ve completed?’
‘I acknowledge your experience, but -‘
‘You’ve directed me in the field yourself.’
‘That’s correct.’
I took a step towards him. ‘And did you find me to be the type of spineless wimp who wouldn’t even suck on a peck of cyanide to protect the mission? Did you?’
The cracked glass of the picture on the wall vibrated and the little bastard flinched again, and I felt sudden compassion for him, because he was locked into a system that sometimes demanded that Control deliberately condemned a first-class shadow executive to death, somewhere out there where the people in London couldn’t see him, where they couldn’t in fact make absolutely certain that his death was essential, with no choice but to order it done and cut
off a career and leave a corpse somewhere in hostile territory where it’d be found and treated as trash and tossed onto a rubbish dump, a feast for rats.
But there was one thing worse, perhaps, even worse for the people in London, and that was to have the intended dead come back alive, and curse them to their face.
‘We have to do,’ Loman said in a moment, ‘what we have to do.’
I didn’t answer that.
Calthrop spoke, gently. ‘On what terms, Quiller, would you perhaps consider staying on?’
‘None.’
Loman said, ‘We would offer you rather good ones, Quiller. Your sole discretion, for instance, as to backups, shields, signals, liaison, contacts and so on.’
I didn’t say anything.
Calthrop took over smoothly, ‘Including your presence at mission planning, with Chief of Control. And of course, -he tried to soften the crudeness of the next tit-bit with an apologetic smile - ‘a more appropriate retainer.’
The rain dripped on the windowsill.
‘How appropriate?’
Calthrop glanced at Loman, who said quickly, ‘Double.’
‘What makes me so valuable, suddenly, considering you tried to get my guts blown into Christendom out there in Russia?’
Loman looked trapped, but got out fast. ‘I’m sure the Directorate would feel - as indeed we do - that some measure of compensation would be in order. After all, they -‘
‘Bullshit. You think they’d try and buy me back?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite -‘
‘If you left the Bureau,’ Calthrop cut in quickly, ‘what would you do? Have you thought of that?’
‘There’s a life outside this bloody place, don’t worry.’
‘For someone like you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You won’t find it easy,’ Loman took over. ‘And once you’ve gone, we can never ask you back.’
‘That’s a bloody shame.’ I took a step towards him, and I suppose there was something in my eyes now that made him inch back before he could stop himself. ‘You could never send me into another mission with any guarantee that you wouldn’t do the same thing again, if you had to. So I’d always be looking behind me for some bastard with a knife - or a bomb. And it wouldn’t work. I’ve got to know where my friends are, and I’ve none here. They’re outside, and that’s where I’m going.’ I went to the door, and heard the creak of leather as Calthrop got out of his chair.
‘Quitter?’ I turned to look at him, and he brushed the air with his hand. ‘Sorry.’
I pulled the door open and it swung wide and hit the rubber stop with a little thump as I went into the hall.
On my way through the building to the rear exit I tried to avoid people, but Charlie saw me through the doorway of the Caff.
‘I thought you’d chucked it in.’
I went over to him in case he tried to get up: his last mission had left him with a smashed thigh and a few other things.
‘Just covering traces.’
‘You’d never be sure, would you?’ Charlie said, a burned hand hooked round the teacup.
‘Of what?’
‘Never be sure they wouldn’t try it again.’
‘That’s it exactly.” I touched his shoulder and went out to the corridor again. Michalina was going into Signals with a file, but she didn’t see me. A door came open near the staircase and Holmes came out, passing me absently and then stopping, looking back.
‘Someone said you’d resigned.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll go mad out there.’
‘That should be interesting.’
I went to the end of the passage and through the narrow doorway of the screened rear exit into Whitehall and splashed through the puddles on my way to the Jensen, not looking back at the building, not looking back at anything at all as I got into the car and started up and took it westwards through Kensington and Chiswick and out to the M4, turning the phone off and switching the wipers to high and flipping the radarscope on, pulling the slack out of the seat-harness and letting it snap back, putting the lights onto high beam with nothing in front of me now but the steel-grey veil of the rain as I pushed the throttle down and kept it there, wanting only to put distance between myself and London, and the bitter, acrid smoke of a burned boat.
CHAPTER 2
THE WORM
‘I’ can’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to be up bright and early.’
‘Are you flying?’
‘Not till noon.’ She kissed me for the last time, her hair falling across my face, cool and scented.
‘Then why not stay the night?’
‘I’ve got an interview at nine. I’m trying to get onto Concorde - wouldn’t that be fantastic? I mean, apart from the pay, I’d have the name on my uniform. All the other crews look when you go through the airport. Talk about prestige.’ She slipped off the bed and looked across the room. ‘Which door is it?’
‘That one. Guest towels on the left.’
‘God, I can hardly stand up. Are you normally like that?’
‘No. It was the way you kissed.’
She stood looking down at me, the light from the street catching the sweat on her skin, turning it to satin.
‘I always kiss like that, but it doesn’t normally set up a tornado.’
‘Then it should.’
She stood smoothing her thighs, maybe considering staying. That would be all right: I was feeling intolerably lonely.
‘What are all those bruises?’ She’d only just noticed them.
‘I looped a motor.’
‘Sounds expensive.’
‘If you’ll stay, I’ll cook up some eggs and bacon.’
‘That’s not what I’d stay for, but anyway I can’t. Tomorrow’s the chance of a lifetime.’ On her way to the bathroom she said over her shoulder, ‘But I’m based in London.’
I got off the bed and put some clothes on, with strange thoughts coming into my mind - should I look for someone to marry now, someone like this girl? Settle down, open some kind of business? I’d been getting ideas like those since last night when I’d got back to London in a hired Porsche, but they were alien to me, not because a wife and a normal job wouldn’t give me a certain amount of satisfaction but because ideas like that belonged to other people, not to me. It was like having a total stranger trying to get inside my head, and if I started to lose my sense of identity I could finish up in the funny farm.
You’ll go mad, out there. Holmes. And possibly that was what I was doing. But marriage wouldn’t work, or a normal life. I had to have absolute freedom. Satisfaction wouldn’t be enough: I wanted risk, occasional terror, life at the brink. And you couldn’t share a life like that with anyone.
‘What do you do?’ she asked me when she came out of the bathroom.
‘I’m between jobs.’
‘Are you an actor?’ She was watching me in the mirror.
‘No.’
‘There’s something different about you.’ She combed her long hair and then began putting it up into a chignon. ‘I mean, you looked after me absolutely marvellously in the restaurant, but I had the feeling that there was something on tout mind all the time. Have you been fired?’
‘Close. I resigned. Leave -‘
‘What from?’
‘Government work. Terribly dull. Leave your number, will you?’
‘If you like.’
It was gone midnight when we went down to the street; the rain had stopped at last, and I managed to flag down a cab straight away.
‘I hope you get the Concorde job.’
‘God, so do I. Imagine:’ She reached up and we kissed, while the cab’s diesel went on idling. ‘Thanks for such a good time, Martin. Give me a ring if you feel like it - I’ll be back in London next week. Next Tuesday.’
The flat felt deserted when I went back, which was odd, because I normally enjoyed its space and its silence. She’d scribbled her phone number on the back of a British Airways check slip;
it was lying on the dressing table under the lamp, next to a blond tangle of hairs, and I picked it up and tore it in half, and then in quarters, dropping them into the wastepaper basket and turning off the lamp. I wouldn’t be in London next week, next Tuesday. God knew where I’d be, but it wouldn’t be here.
‘Well, well…’
It was Pepperidge, hunched over the bar with a glass of Mescal in front of him, the worm curled at the bottom.
I didn’t want to talk to him, or anyone else; I’d come to the Brass Lamp to be alone, as a change from being alone in the flat; but I couldn’t just walk away now that he’d seen me. I asked the man for a tonic and bitters, and looked at Pepperidge.
‘How are things?’
He squinted under the brass-shaded light. ‘I suppose they’ll work out somehow.’
I hadn’t seen him for months; he specialised in picking up classified info at ground level - cryptographic key lists and cards, message traffic, communications data, operations orders, whatever he could get, working mostly at the Asian desk at the Bureau.
‘What happened?’ I asked him.
‘Bastards fired me.’ He watched me with cynical eyes, his thin hair lying untidily across his scalp, his moustache at a kind of angle, sloppily trimmed, his shoulders hunched. ‘I’m like you, old boy - sometimes I won’t obey orders.’ His hand shook a little as he picked up his drink. ‘And I don’t regret it, you know that? I don’t bloody well regret it. Is that all you’re going to drink?’
‘For the moment.’
He sat gazing into his small amber glass. ‘For the moment. I suppose that means you’re working.’
‘Not really. I walked out.’
He swung his head up to squint at me with his yellow eyes, taking time to focus. ‘Walked out?’
‘A little disagreement.’ I didn’t want to talk about it; the whole thing had been tearing at my mind for the last ten days like a pack of dogs.
‘Walked out of the Bureau?
‘It can happen to anyone, for Christ’s sake.’
He went on watching me. ‘But you’re one of their top shadows.’
‘Tell me about yourself.’
He ignored that. ‘You’ll go back, of course. I mean, after a while. Won’t you?’