The Striker Portfolio q-3

by Adam Hall

  His face rocked and his eyes closed as if I'd physically hooked one on him and I knew how important it was that he should save my skin but I wasn't interested because it was his conscience he was trying to save and so far as it suited my book he could stew in it.

  A man came in with a briefcase and Benedikt heard the door and opened his eyes and stared at me again because he daren't look round: he was using my face for a mirror. He was pretty far gone so I said: 'What've you got on paper? Memos, documents, anything useful? Any micro stuff? We can decode it, don't worry about that. Come on, Benedikt.'

  The manager was at the far end of the food-bar staring at him and then staring at me. Benedikt looked ill and he was wondering why I wasn't doing anything about it. He started towards us and then thought better of it.

  Benedikt was still watching my face.

  'Who just came in?'

  'One man. Only one.'

  Of course I would have got him away before now and handed him over to Ferris. But I'd made a mistake and I didn't want to do it again. I'd been so aware that they would come for me again that I'd fallen for an assumption: anyone searching my room must be an adverse party. It wasn't until I'd seen the collapse setting in that I'd known who he was. That had been a mistake.

  The next mistake I could make would be another assumption: that he was totally allied to me. You've got to mind your fingers when you give a dog a bone.

  'Look,' I said. 'We'll accept you. You can be in London by tomorrow. But I've got to have something more definite first.' Die Zelle. The Cell. He could have invented it off-hand.

  He wasn't listening.

  The restaurant was half-full now and getting noisy. There were no curtains; the headlights of cars coming in made a kaleidoscope of the opaque sculpted glass of the windows. The espresso machine shrilled.

  I looked at Benedikt. He sat like a sack.

  'You can still make it,' I told him. I had to lean half across the table because of the noise, But I could see I'd lost him now. It's something almost unnatural to witness: they just slip away as if they were drugged and you could time the process. Suddenly between one minute and the next they abandon interest in doing what they were recently desperate to do. (Ferris had said: They think it's someone trying hard to get across.) Final throw.

  'We'll go now. We might as well. We can talk later.'

  Some kind of consciousness came back. He said:

  'If it were as easy as that…'

  Headlights froze across the glass and dimmed away.

  'It'll get easier as we go along,' I told him. 'This is the roughest bit, that's all.'

  Then they came in and I knew he was right and that it was too late.

  Chapter Eight — THE PALLBEARERS

  'Is he all right?'

  'What did you say?'

  It was very noisy.

  'He looked ill. Is he all right?'

  'Yes. But bad news.'

  The beer was making them raucous. A lot of laughter.

  'What sort?'

  Headlights.

  'His wife.'

  'Teh! He talks always about his wife.'

  Leaving. Not arriving. But no one had come through here.

  'Are they lawyers?'

  'Who?'

  'The people who came to see him.'

  'Friends. Just a couple of friends,'

  Benedikt had got up and gone across to talk to them and they had stood there for a few minutes and there was no point in sitting somewhere else with my back to them because they knew I was here. Now they had gone up the stairs.

  'That's bad, then, if it's his wife.'

  'Yes.'

  'He talks a lot about her.'

  'I know.'

  The staircase came halfway into the room and was very modern with glass at the sides, the same thick opaque glass that the windows were made of. He'd made an effort before getting up and some of his colour had come back. He had just given me the name r of a place — the clockmaker's in Neueburg — and then he'd gone across to talk to them. I hadn't expected them to go up the staircase, all three of them, like that.

  I picked up the Kasseler-Zeitung he'd dropped on to the chair and looked through it because they were making it so obvious. All I had to do was walk out and get into the car and drive away.

  The manager had gone back to the food-bar.

  Lyon had beaten Hamburg 3–1.

  The farther away I got from them the less I'd like it. I preferred to keep in close because they wouldn't expect that. I waited another fifteen minutes and then went across to the staircase. A group of travellers stood at the bottom with tankards waving about as they talked. They'd had a good day and were pleased with it and wanted me to join them but I said I couldn't just now.

  The corridor was all right: there were no recesses. But his room was towards the far end and that was unnerving. It meant full exposure in confined quarters for something in the region of fifteen seconds and there was sweat inside my hands when I reached the door. The light was on in the room but there were no voices.

  I gave it a minute and tried the handle and pushed the door open and gave it another minute before I went in. A gust of laughter came up the staircase and I shut the door so that I could think better. The curtains were drawn and I left them like that. There was almost no point in looking around because I couldn't see any signs of hurry and unless they'd been in a hurry they would have done a thorough search, but you never know your luck and I saw to the furniture first. It didn't take long: most of it was built in and I wasn't checking for hollows or magnets because he didn't live here permanently.

  There was only one valise and most of the stuff was dispersed in the room and I checked the shaver-case and squeezed all the tooth-paste into the wash-basin. The black box he kept the figurines in gave nothing. It had come open for some reason and the only two pieces that had been inside — a faun and a shepherdess — were smashed on the floor near one of his outstretched hands. It looked as if he'd been taking them out of the box when they did it.

  There were hollow sections among the bits and I checked them: the head of the shepherdess and one half of the log she was sitting on, the hind quarters of the faun. But they were empty. Finally I searched the body: pockets, linings, heels, inside the watch, inside the lighter and the three pens, going through the full routine while the hooded eyes went on looking at the fragments.

  As I stood up I wondered whether he might not have been happier, more fulfilled really, selling these things between Hanover and Kassel instead of trying to slip the skids under people who travelled in violence. I believed even at that stage that Benedikt had never been first-class agent material. Ideology isn't enough. It seems enough: it's blinding and belongs to the heart. But it won't save you from being found one fine day on the floor with a cheese-wire mark on the throat.

  It had occurred to me to telephone Ferris.

  The night wasn't much above freezing and I was glad of the sheepskin coat. My breath was grey in the sharp air as I stood looking about. Everything seemed all right. If in point of fact it were not all right I wouldn't get more than a few yards. It was fairly bright in the parking area and when I walked across to the N.S.U. I would present a slowly moving target with good fore-lighting and a clear outline against the motel windows.

  The more deserted a place appears the more it is peopled by the nerves and this could be discounted. Further, the headlights had been those of a car leaving, not arriving, and the two men had not gone out through the restaurant: the inference was that they had used a side-door, perhaps the one I had used. And finally: if they had wanted to deal with me they wouldn't both have gone up with Benedikt.

  So I walked across to the N.S.U. and discounted another possibility as I went: there could be a third man waiting outside for me. That was just nerves again, stomach-think.

  Brain-think: Benedikt had run it too close. They had come here to deal with him, not with me. He may have realized that when we had sat talking at the table. Being not only a potentia
l defector but a double, he had broken down. In cases like his there is a defeat mechanism: the psychic system suddenly can't take any more because it's overloaded. Coming across to the other side presents a hazard comparable to jumping a chasm. It may be only a short jump but when you're in the middle of it you feel the onset of doubts, you distrust all the arguments that have driven you to the act. And you can't turn back.

  This had been in Benedikt's face. The outward physical sign of psychic collapse.

  The N.S.U. seemed all right. There would have been time for them to rig it, blow me up when I touched it. But that wasn't logical. Even so I held my overnight case in front of me when I opened the door, as a gesture of man's need to survive.

  I hadn't checked out at the desk. They would find enough for the bill on the dressing table. (London is particular about things like that, and one fine day and with any luck the A-positive in Accounts would check with the Rhesus-negative in Mission Reports, to confirm. They slang you harder for not paying bills than for trying to sting them for expenses.) It would make no difference to the motel manager, the fact of my not checking out conventionally. He would still have reported it as unusual if I had gone through the correct motions, because I'd given no prior indication of leaving tonight. Either way I would be suspect number one as soon as the police were told about Herr Benedikt. Apart from my sudden departure there were prints all over the room that tallied with those in my own. But the German police were thorough and would busy themselves also with suspects two and three. The one real problem was the N.S.U.: its Hanover matriculation was duly noted in the reception book.

  But I couldn't telephone Ferris from the motel. The best idea was to use one of the emergency phones along the autobahn. Then I could peel off eastwards and head for Neueburg where Benedikt said there was the clockmaker.

  Lights swung across from the road just as I started the engine and it was unsettling for an instant because it didn't have to be a rocking detonator: they could have connected it with the ignition. Any kind of disturbance — sudden moving light — can be unsettling when you're not certain it's just the ignition you're switching on, when you're ready to believe you can be switching on Kingdom Come.

  But I didn't like it. You shouldn't have to justify being unsettled. If you think there's a bomb linked with the ignition key then don't touch the bloody thing.

  Some people got out of the car that had swung off the road and I watched them cross to the motel. Then I moved off, heeling her over a bit on the springs to displace anything if it were there and have it done with. But everything was all right so I went on worrying because everything shouldn't be. When you get in their way they don't just leave you alone.

  Between the motel and the filling station on the autobahn loop-road there was too much traffic to make observation worth while: the mirror was never clear of lights and I didn't do anything about it because it was only a two-lane strip and nobody would have wanted to overtake even if I'd invited them, with so much stuff coming the other way.

  I wasn't sure how I was going to put It to Ferris, over a telephone. There was a lot I still didn't know about the Benedikt situation and all I could give him were the facts without throwing in any assumptions. Then he would have to tell London and they'd have an immediate baby. Ferris had said London wanted him badly: the contact, the man who'd told Lovett when the next Striker was going down. And now they couldn't have him. They would say I should have got him for them, kept him alive and sent him through, and they would be absolutely right. I might even have done that if the material had held up but the simple fact was that it hadn't. Benedikt had been dead before they took him upstairs and he would have been no use to the Bureau even if they hadn't put the cheese-wire on him.

  It's happened before with people like Benedikt: they collapse internally and go on running like a headless chicken until someone switches them off or they do it for themselves as Lazlo did. Parkis wouldn't have got any sense out of Lazlo even if he hadn't swallowed the thing and hit the floor and Parkis had known it. That was why he was so annoyed.

  It was an Esso station. There was enough on board for the run to Neueburg but I might have to go on from there and places in deeper country would be closed.

  Anyway it was for Ferris to tell them. One of his functions was to keep London off my back.

  'Vierzig.'

  His hands were raw in the cold.

  The stars were very clear and the moon was above the Harz Mountains, its outline sharp even on the eastern curve. The pump droned. A boy ran out from the building and sprayed the screen and began wiping it.

  Did it go well, with the rotary engine? They both asked the same thing at the same time, and laughed. I said it went well. There weren't many RO-80s on the road yet and people were interested. The screen began shining.

  Twenty litres had gone in by the time the Mercedes 300 pulled in behind. It could have come up on the other side of the pumps but apparently it didn't need petrol.

  The boy went to see to him.

  If it rained later tonight, the man said, the road would freeze. I said I didn't think it would rain, the moon was too clear.

  The driver of the Mercedes had got out. I couldn't see his face because the overhead floods threw shadow from his hat-brim. He wanted his screen cleaned, he told the boy. Sound carried easily on the cold air. Was that all he wanted? That was all.

  'Stop at twenty-five,' I said.

  'Didn't you ask for forty litres?'

  'Yes. But stop at twenty-five.'

  We worked a lot of instinct. Sometimes it's all we have.

  The pump stopped droning.

  There was a second man in the Mercedes. He was just a vague shape behind the screen at the moment because the boy had sprayed it and hadn't wiped it yet. The engine was still running.

  How about the oil?

  I said he could check it. Instinct was wholly in charge now but confirmation was available. It would take longer for the man to check the oil than for the boy to finish the screen of the Mercedes and once it was finished they would tip him and drive away. But I didn't think they would do that.

  The oil was all right, the man said.

  I gave him a note and he went into the building for the change: they don't carry a cash-bag at night as they do in the daytime.

  The boy was thanking the driver of the Mercedes and going towards the building. The Mercedes was black, an uncommon colour these days, rather old-fashioned, funereal. The man wore a black overcoat. He was getting into the car, not hurrying.

  What I really wanted to do was to go a short distance along the autobahn and use an emergency phone to tell Ferris what had happened, so that he could pass it on to London. It was only reasonable: they'd knocked another hole in the fabric, first Lovett and now Benedikt, and London would expect a report on that, however brief. Then I wanted to peel off and take a minor road south-east and then make east for Neueburg.

  Now things had changed and I could do a U-turn and go back the way I'd come, but they would certainly cling on and wait for an opportunity and then use it: the dark winding road would give them an advantage. In any case it wasn't what I really wanted to do.

  They hadn't got on to me by luck. They must have driven out of the parking area (I had seen their lights) and waited by the side of the road in case I were going to scarper. If I'd stayed at the motel they would probably have arranged it that the end came for me peacefully in my sleep, though it seemed less likely. There were several pointers to a single supposition: their orders were to make it look like an accident. Otherwise they could have dropped me with one careful shot as I crossed from the motel to the car.

  The man came out of the building.

  ' Vierzig-funfzig-sechzig.'

  I put the change away.

  They'd gone in quickly for Lovett. It had been an emergency: a leak had been exposed. The best they could do was to fancy it up as a suicide. They'd worked as fast with Benedikt the moment they'd seen the light. He had been the leak itself. But with me
they could take their time and make it look like an accident. Benedikt might have told me the lot or nothing: they weren't to know. But whatever I now possessed they were going to arrange that it would shortly amount to no more than a pattern of memory-traces fading on the surface of a dead cortex.

  I looked once towards the Mercedes. Its shape was a black glitter under the glare of the floods and behind the screen their faces were white in contrast with their dark overcoats. The car was very clean and they were dressed with the correctness of pallbearers. They sat without moving, upright on the seats and with the patience of those who await a ritual.

  I looked the other way along the perspective of the autobahn, a tapering ribbon of frost-grey under the moon.

  They would have more speed than I and they were heavier but I got in and started up because this was the only road to where I had to go.

  Chapter Nine — AUTOBAHN

  'Ferris? I'm somewhere along the autobahn.'

  He wouldn't say anything.

  'I made contact. But it was no go.'

  'Why not?'

  'They broke the shepherdess. But I suppose London ought to know. Ought to be told.'

  'Let me have the facts.'

  'Well they went in quick for him and she's one thousand two hundred and ten kilos dry-weight, lighter than the 300, not critically but it's no use comforting yourself. They did it with some wire.'

  'Where are they now?'

  'I don't know. You can work the whole thing out to a formula and that's what I did. I don't mean when they went in for him. I mean when they came for me. And heavy. It was the heaviness that I didn't like.'

  'Give me some more.'

  'Are you listening, Ferris?'

  I subscribe to Coue, Maltz and the Frenchman who said si tu veux tu peux. They all make the same point but Coue put it quite well: in any contest between the imagination and the will, the imagination always wins.

  We've tested this out in training sessions using alcohol, electric shock techniques, artificially induced fatigue states and varying degrees of auto-hypnosis. An example would be: if the ship's been sunk under you and it's a ten-mile swim to the shore you'll stand more chance of getting there by using imagination instead of willpower. You can grit your teeth and will yourself to do it but the command is conscious and your subconscious is on board for the trip and it can be a lead weight if it's left to its own little games: once it starts brooding about the black silent fifty-fathom void below your body the will-power is going to lose a lot of steam. But if you bring in the subconscious to work for you it means the imagination will be programmed in and in the place of a lead weight you've got yourself a propeller. Feed it the key-image 'shore' and you're there already, prone as a log and coughing up water but safe and alive.