Northlight q-11

by Adam Hall

  'No,' Fane said, 'don't come to the hotel. It's too far from where you are now and most of the roads are blocked.' I watched the snow still falling across the black grimed glass of the window. 'There's a warehouse half a mile from the apartment complex along the harbour road. One storey, steel construction, the number 19 painted on a board above the main doors, which are exactly opposite a weigh station with its harbourside window broken and boarded up. I shall be there in one hour, at ten o'clock.'

  I thought about it. 'Are there lamps there?'

  'Not near the doors.'

  'What about harbour security? What about militia patrols?'

  Short silence. 'When did you last go outside?'

  'I got here yesterday evening.'

  'The snow hasn't stopped since long before then. This city is dead. So far they've managed to keep two of the runways clear at the airport but the roads are blocked solid. The last militiaman I saw was dozing over a coke stove in the middle of the Kulinin-Terechovo crossroads. You'll see what I mean when you go outside.'

  A frisson passed through my nerves. I was beginning to feel the squeamishness of the burrowing animal for the light of day. It was night out there but there would be lights in places and I didn't want to pass under them.

  But I had to see Fane.

  'All right. Ten o'clock.'

  We synchronized watches and I rang off.

  Place stank of fish.

  There'd been lights along the harbour road and I'd had to walk under them because the only alternative was to clamber across man-high snow drifts.

  'Is this safe?'

  'I told you, the city is dead.'

  Bad choice of words. The bruises, I suppose: pain all over, total reluctance to move, to have to move, to have to move fast if anything happened, if anyone came here.

  'Have you got a gun on you?' I asked Fane.

  'Why?''

  'I want to know.'

  I always want to know if people near me are carrying weapons but my reasons are different. With Karasov it had been because I wanted a quiet run to the rendezvous and no fuss when we got there. With Fane it was because I would know what to do if anyone came here and we had to react. I would let him draw fire and get clear if I could.

  'Yes,' he said.

  'All right. I just wanted to know.'

  'Try and calm down.'

  I bit off the first thing I thought of saying and watched him light one of his bloody cigarettes with a gold Dupont — Jesus, this man was unreal — and blow out smoke that went drifting across the oblong of pale blue light coming through one of the high narrow windows from a lamp outside. If you stood facing the light the rest of the place was dark but if you stood with your back to it you could make out some of the environment: crates of dried fish, two trolleys, a loading gantry rearing like a gibbet. I stood with my back to the light and made Fane move to face it.

  Freezing in here.

  'Do you want debriefing?' he asked me.

  'What for? We've shut down. Leave it for London.'

  My eyes were accommodating after the lamps outside and I could see the expression of long-suffering patience on his face. 'All the same, I'd like to hear about Karasov.'

  'I told you.' My breath clouded in the light, as substantial as the smoke from his cigarette. 'He was selling product to Peking as well as to us.' I brought the cassette out of my pocket and gave it to him. 'This is the duped tape.'

  He glanced at the labels and put it away. 'It could still be of some use. Did he confess quite freely?'

  'You could say that. I didn't use any pressure — I hadn't any idea what he'd been doing.'

  Fane looked away. 'No one did. This was why he didn't ask us for help the moment he went to ground, I imagine.'

  'He was bargaining with Peking through their Rinker cell.'

  'Yes.' Ash fell from his cigarette.

  Something was wrong.

  A ship's foghorn sounded a long way off and it sent a flicker along the nerves. I watched Fane. He hadn't even noticed. He was standing perfectly still, looking at the dirt floor of the warehouse, not actually seeing it. It was as if I weren't there.

  There'd been something wrong with this mission from the very beginning and I still didn't know what it was and it frightened me because I wanted to stay alive and get clear of this bloody country and it might not even be important to them, to London, to Fane, to help me, to do this last thing for me, to bring at least one thing home from Northlight, if only a bruised and defeated executive.

  Perhaps he was having to get used to the fact that I was here at all: he'd thought I was dead. That was why the phone had gone on ringing when I'd tried to call him. Not his fault: it's routine. When the executive's compromised beyond saving, his control has to close down the whole cell — bases, the safehouse, courier lines, cyphers, contacts, cutouts, every facility in the system that the executive might have given away under interrogation. Fane would have done that, and started for Moscow or Leningrad to get on a plane for London; then he'd heard from the embassy that I was still in the field.

  That would have pleased him, until I'd told him the objective was dead. I suppose it was a bit of a nuisance having to get me home, bit of a chore.

  He was looking up at me now, still not saying anything, watching me in silence. And then, because of the light in his eyes, because of the angle of his head or because of a thousand infinitesimal impressions that were streaming into my consciousness — then, because of all these things and most of all because he hadn't asked me that one specific question over the telephone, I knew suddenly what was wrong, I swear to God I knew, even before he spoke.

  'Fane. Who blew the rendezvous?'

  A slight catch of his breath.

  'I did.'

  22 TIGER

  'DON'T,' He said.

  I suppose I'd moved.

  He hadn't gone for his gun — I wouldn't have given him time. He'd just taken a step back.

  'Don't do anything precipitate.'

  He watched me steadily with his expressionless eyes.

  My neck pulsed: I could feel it. The carotid artery on the left side was palpable as the pressure went up, as the rage came.

  'You've got guts,' I said.

  He shrugged slightly. 'You had to know some time.'

  'You could have waited until there were other people around to protect you.' I studied his face with its smooth white skin and its perfectly regular features, its short nose and straight mouth, seeing it for an instant as it would have looked if I'd actually decided to turn it into a mess.

  'Save me the melodrama,' he said thinly.

  The voice of sanity. It's one of the things, in point of fact, that the director in the field is expected to do for his executive when a fuse blows or a wheel comes off. Keep the poor bastard sane.

  But he wasn't doing it very well because I moved again and only just managed to stop short and if you think it was lack of control you don't know what it's like when you're carrying some half-dead objective to the frontier and a courier-rendezvous blows up in your face and takes the whole of the mission with it and you find out it was your own local control who set it up, you think I'm a bloody robot or something?

  Besides, that wasn't all he'd done.

  'Be careful,' he said. 'I'm your only hope of survival. Don't make things difficult for yourself.'

  It wasn't all he'd done.

  'Fane, did you have that thing put in the truck?'

  He looked down, looked up again.

  'Yes.'

  I turned away and walked through the pale blue light and saw my shadow moving across the dirt floor, rippling over the debris as if I were walking under water, so there you are you see, I knew there'd been something wrong with this mission from the moment when they told me Ferris had refused it, and I should have known better than to let that bastard Croder set me up and set me running again — he almost got me killed the last time he ran me, in Moscow, I tell you that man simply does not care what he does to his executives prov
iding they bring back the product.

  Stink of fish in here..

  He was still standing perfectly still, watching me. From this distance he could have shot me dead and I suppose that was why I'd turned and walked away from him; I wanted to know the future and this was the only way to find out, Russian roulette, yes, but that's part of our trade, we're used to it.

  'Does that make you feel better?' he asked me.

  Fane is quite bright. Don't underestimate him.

  'You'd have probably missed.' I walked slowly back to him.

  'No,' he said.

  'You missed with that fucking bomb.'

  He lifted an eyebrow. 'I wish you wouldn't take it quite so personally, Quiller.'

  'Just natural reflex. It'll pass.'

  I forget exactly which page it's on in the book, the dark blue one, the first one they make us read, Structure of Employment, but I remember what it says, we all do. It should be borne in mind at all times during Briefing and Clearance that you are considered to be expendable, and that at any given moment during the course of a mission it may be decided that in order to protect security or to accomplish the objective, your freedom, welfare or even life may be forfeit.

  They lose quite a few of their recruits when they throw them that particular book in Norfolk — you can feel the draught. But there are substantial compensations to widows and so on, and some people feel it can't ever happen to them, while others get some kind of neurotic kick: the brink isn't enough, they like a sword over their heads as well.

  'What went wrong?' Fane asked.

  I stared at him. 'You don't know?'

  'I mean with the bomb.'

  'Oh. It's not the first time I've been near one.'

  'You mean you sensed it?'

  'Does it matter?'

  'Yes. If that man didn't set things up properly, Croder will want to know.' The man I'd seen on the train.

  'He did a good job.'

  Fane had the grace to glance down. 'It was the only way I could arrange matters. London made a deal with the Kremlin from the start.'

  'Before I was briefed and cleared?'

  'Yes.'

  'Bloody Croder for you.'

  Fane looked up again. 'You know the system.'

  Life may be forfeit, so forth. 'It doesn't mean I have to like Croder. What was the deal?'

  'We don't need to go into that now.'

  I stood close to him. 'This time I want to know.'

  He shrugged, dropping his cigarette-end and putting his foot on it. 'Both sides needed the summit, urgently. The Soviets knew that the American public wouldn't allow the president to meet them in Vienna, after they'd sunk the Cetacea, so a cover-up was agreed on. It was the only way they could protect the summit, and the only way the US would go ahead with it: by demanding vital concessions in the resulting talks as a form of penalization for sinking the sub. But there was a risk.'

  I 'Karasov.'

  'Yes. The Soviets knew we'd listened to the tape, but that was destroyed now. Karasov was still alive, and might talk to the world media, a living witness to the Soviet's guilt. Again, the American people wouldn't let the president go to Vienna.'

  Sound. Very slight sound.

  'The Soviets didn't know where to find Karasov. He was our own sleeper. So it was agreed that the moment we had him in our hands we would let them know, and let them despatch him.'

  'Kill him.'

  In a moment: 'Yes.'

  The snow on the roof, stressing it, making the slight sound.

  Rationalize.

  But I turned my head to the left. The right ear feeds aural input to the left hemisphere for logical analysis and I wanted to know more about the sound, and if it meant danger.

  'He was, after all, a Russian,' Fane said. 'And a traitor.'

  'And trusted us.'

  He shrugged.

  'Trusted us with his life.'

  He gave a sigh. 'Northlight was set up to protect world peace.'

  'So a few dead espions along the way don't count.'

  'Of course not.'

  'All right,' I said, 'I'll buy that.'

  'Jolly good show.'

  Tiger.

  'But why did you want me out of the way?'

  He lit another cigarette and blew out smoke. 'It wasn't quite like that.'

  Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the warehouse of the night.

  'What was it like, then?'

  'We had to-'

  Not a very big tiger but I put up an arm block as it sprang for me and bounced off and hit the floor with its ears back and its claws out and a sound of total menace going on in its throat like a distant police siren; I was quite impressed.

  'Pussy, you old bastard, stop that noise.'

  What surprised me most was that Fane had his gun out. Local directors aren't normally so nervous.

  'I think you're over-reacting,' I told him, and he put it away. The cat hadn't actually meant to attack me — they don't do that, it's not their nature. It had wanted to reach the fish crates and I was in the way. You can't always tell what's going on in their minds but I suppose it thought we were in here to open up the crates and there'd be a chance of nefarious pillage — the thing was near death from starvation, the winter and everything, and the locals in this region wouldn't keep these things for pets, they'd prefer them deep fried.

  'We had to flush Karasov,' Fane went on, 'and hand him over to the Soviets. They said they'd finish him off. That was the deal.'

  'But you didn't trust them.'

  'Of course not. Before they killed him they would have put him under implemented interrogation and got everything out of him — our Murmansk network and all that goes with it.'

  Fifteen agents, according to the background briefing I'd had in London. Fifteen agents and their communication channels and cover construction and courier lines and cypher modes: a major intelligence coup, not to be contemplated. I could see their point.

  The poor little bastard was clawing at the fish crates, well not little, for God's sake, it was the size of a wolf, but there was no flesh on it, just fur and bones.

  'Why didn't you put Karasov in the crosshairs?'

  'It had to look like an accident' Fane said. 'We had to flush him, but we couldn't kill him.'

  'You could have said it was the Rinker cell.'

  'The what?'

  'The Chinese.'

  'But we couldn't have proved it. There was only one way we could really convince them.' He looked down again, concentrating on his cigarette.

  'By blowing me up with him.'

  'Yes.'

  'Who-' but I left it at that. It didn't matter who'd thought of it, who'd given the final instructions, probably Croder but it could have been someone even higher than he was in the Bureau because even in our trade we don't regard the death of a shadow executive as a family joke and Croder would have needed the sanction of a special committee. Bloody vultures, who did they think they were, to put a man's neck on the block, to write his death certificate while he was still alive, while he was- Steady, lad, steady. They were the Bureau.

  'You'll never do it that way, Pussy, don't be such a bloody twit.' I went over and smashed my boot down across the fish crates, breaking a wire, smashing it down again and bringing splinters away while the cat shrank back with its ears flattened and its eyes huge in the gloom and that low wail in its throat as I brought my boot down again — 'Don't you swear at me, you old bastard, or I won't get your supper-' down again and ripping the whole side of the crate away as the fish came tumbling out — 'Go on then, bon appetit and all that.'

  I swung around to face Fane — 'So what the hell was that rendezvous all about, the one in the freight-yards, what was the KGB doing there right on time if we were both meant to be hanging from the roof of that fucking barn with our guts hanging out — come on Fane I want to know.'

  He drew in some smoke. 'That was just window-dressing. We told them you'd be there to meet the courier.'

  'What do you mean, for Christ's
sake?'

  'It was to cover the contingency of your getting caught and interrogated. You would have admitted the rendezvous, even though you weren't going to keep it.'

  Only Croder could be so meticulous.

  'What about Tanya?'

  'The KGB wanted you monitored. We agreed.'

  'She was KGB?'

  'Yes.'

  'What if I'd shown my hand?'

  He shrugged. 'I asked them about that. They said you were too experienced.'

  'Why didn't you tell me who she was?'

  'We couldn't. We would have had to tell you the whole set-up.'

  'What was she for, then?'

  'The Soviets assumed that when you found Karasov you'd let her know, and let her know where he was. Then they could have gone in for him.'

  'I called her, Fane.' I went close to him. 'I told her we'd found him.'

  He watched me carefully. 'We thought you'd do that, yes. But we knew you wouldn't say where.'

  'How can Croder take that kind of risk?'

  'There was no risk. You wouldn't have given away the objective. I asked you, on the phone, remember? And that's what you said.'

  'One day Croder's going to go so close to the fire that he'll blow the whole of the Bureau through the roof." 'I doubt that.' He shrugged as I turned away. 'And it's a compliment to you, after all. He was relying on your experience. On your… dependability.'

  'A compliment? From Croder?'

  'He thinks rather highly of you, Quiller.'

  'He ordered my death. But that wasn't what I hated him for. I hated him for his diabolical cold-blooded cunning, his ability to sit inside my brain as I went through the mission he'd set up for me, to know precisely the things I would do, could be relied upon to do, and the things I would not do, could be relied upon not to do, until finally he manoeuvred me into the position When I would complete the mission for him and turn on the ignition of that truck and ensure his success.