The Striker Portfolio q-3

by Adam Hall

  It was well organized: they expected fast motoring along this stretch and though the 17M was piling on through the 130s I didn't fetch any squeal from the treads pulling up. There were two long-haulers and a private V.W. standing in a queue, with some police cars drawn in on the margin. Of course there had always been this consideration: the choice when I'd left Hanover had been to make a really fast run and reach Neueburg with as little daylight driving as possible or take it slowly and allow a chance of dodging a police block by trying to see them before they saw me. It would have been practicable at a slower speed to pull up quietly with the lights doused and do a soft-shoe turn and get the hell out, give or take a few degrees of luck.

  I had opted for the fast run on the assumption that nobody would find Benedikt before daylight at the earliest and that when they did find him there'd be a decent time-lag before the Kriminal-polizei were notified and the motel manager gave them the name and description of the Englander who had joined the deceased for his last meal and had since left without checking out at the desk. I'd made the wrong decision, even in that moment of elation when my faith in myself had burned brightly in the surrounding gloom.

  The one on signalling duty just pointed a gloved hand at the queue and I closed up on the rearmost truck, leaving the engine running. If he told me to switch it off I would switch it off but on principle I left it the way it was because if there's a chance in a thousand you might as well be ready to take it.

  Probability: the manager had gone up to see if he could do anything for Benedikt soon after I'd left. He'd been worried about him during dinner: 'He looked ill. Is he all right?' That would have brought the K.P. into the picture long before I'd reached Nitri's apartment but they wouldn't have decided on road-blocks until a bit later. Coming south from Hanover I had passed Linsdorf five kilometres to the west and was now heading away from it. That was why there hadn't been a police trap until now: they expected Martin to be moving away from the scene of the killing. There was probably another trap north of the Linsdorf loop-road along that side of the autobahn and I had passed it but not seen it because of the anti-dazzle screens along some sections of the centre strip.

  It was a cold-storage truck standing in front of me, Frankfurt-registered: Vollmond Gesellschaft. Twelve delineation lights and the company's trade-mark: a full moon framing a laughing pig, so happy to be knifed in the abattoir and minced into sausages for the friendly bipeds to eat.

  'Your papers, please.' Local, by his accent.

  A cloud of diesel gas spread out from the long-hauler at the head of the line as it lumbered away. The uniformed figures stood half-obliterated.

  I gave him my papers.

  If the probability were correct and the manager had in fact gone up to see if he could do anything for Benedikt he might have decided to knock on my door — it was only the third along — for the sake of immediate human company because he would have been white and shaking by that time, or he'd thought I might have some sort of clue about what had happened since I'd been dining with Benedikt only half an hour ago. It could have started from there: Herr Benedikt dead and Herr Martin missing. Polizei 'When were you born?'

  '17 February, 1924.'

  He was young and very military, keeping his head up and holding my identity card straight in front of him, only his eyes going down to read it.

  'Where?'

  'Hamburg.'

  Glare began bouncing off the back of the truck and the laughing pig was slowly lost in it. The shadow of the patrolman appeared there like a gaunt secretary-bird, black and beakless. His colleague with the lamp hurried past and the sound of nearing thunder came from behind me and the light grew strong in the mirror.

  'Switch off your engine please.'

  I switched off my engine.

  His torch clicked on and the beam caught me full in the face. What with that and the glare off the truck and the mirror I felt we were about ready for camera.

  The thunder rolled loudly and there was a crash of gears. It sounded like a fifteen-tonner with trailer to match and I began wondering if he'd manage to pull up in time because if he chose this moment to leak some hydraulics Fd be no better off than the laughing pig, crashed, minced and canned in one labour-saving operation.

  The torch-beam flickered back to my papers and then on to my face again and I grasped at a small hope: he was less efficient than he looked because if you shine a torch full into someone's face his eyes are going to screw up and they won't be screwed up in the photograph. He might make other mistakes.

  A monstrous hiss came from the long-hauler and then the brakes dragged again and there was the shunt of heavy couplings. He'd dipped now and I could see better. What I could see most was the shine on the patrolman's holster just about eye-level from where I sat. He turned as another one walked up, an older man in Hauptmann's uniform, very smart-looking and big in the body, his head like a sculpted rock. They stood looking at my papers and suddenly I was unnerved and it had nothing to do with them.

  I had missed a trick and that wouldn't do, it wouldn't do at all. The subconscious had been working busily during the crisis and now it presented its findings. Cancel all probabilities: it hadn't been the motel manager or anything to do with him. It had been the adverse party and this was their third try: they'd stopped my run at this section of the autobahn as surely as if they'd set up an ambush.

  The front of the long-hauler filled the mirror and the lights went out. Voices. The diesel clattered to silence. Ahead of me the group of police stood back and the Volkswagen pulled away.

  They had managed to go down into the trees and look inside the wreck of the N.S.U. and when they saw it was empty they'd beaten around a bit and then gone up and used the nearest emergency phone and told the Kriminalpolizei to check on an Englander named Martin who had been staying at the motel in Linsdorf where a man named Benedikt was now lying dead in his room. They should also check up on his car which they would find alongside the autobahn. The informant's name was Schmidt and he was telephoning in the interests of justice. It had begun then.

  I didn't know how much sleep I'd had in Nitri's apartment after I'd passed out: it wouldn't have been more than four or five hours and it had been recuperative and not restorative but that was no excuse for missing a trick on this scale. Instead of being so perversely content that every man's hand would soon be against me I should have assumed it was against me already: should have assumed the people who had finished Benedikt would automatically try to pull off a double by sounding the alarm before I got too far.

  I should have come south from Hanover like a mouse with a cat in the room.

  This wasn't very good and I sat in my sweat and watched them checking the papers. Situation: they stood about five yards from the car and they weren't looking at me and there was a flush of light rising from behind the long-hauler as someone else came homing in on the trap and in ten seconds or so they'd be dazzled by it if they looked in my direction so it wasn't a question of yards but of seconds and increasing candle-power.

  The main police group was vetting the Vollmond truck in front of me, one of them climbing into the cab to have a look round: the theory they would be working on was that Martin might have thumbed a lift somewhere in the Linsdorf area after crashing the N.S.U. and might have offered the driver a fistful of deutschmarks to shove him under the seat if anyone turned nosey. The patrol with the lamp would be back there signalling the new arrival to halt: I could see his shadow stretching across the road-surface as the light brightened. Both trucks and the 17M had their engines switched off the newcomer was already producing a bit of background noise that would get louder until he stopped. No one would hear me open the door and I didn't have to slam it shut after me.

  I turned my head and saw a couple of yards of empty road-margin and a line of thick brush. It was naked thorn but then they wouldn't like it either and its main value was visual: it would be like shooting through a smoke-screen.

  A faint shrilling began and the shadow on the
road was waving the lamp more insistently and I now had very little time to make the decision and my right hand was already reaching across to the other door because that was the way I'd be going out if I went out at all but the chances were about fifty-fifty. I knew I could get through the first of the thorn and break across open ground before they could draw and fire and the initial surprise phase would give me time to go a fair distance towards the next cover, but a loose shoe is more laming than a leg-wound and it would take up to three seconds to wrench both shoes off and a barefoot run across rough terrain would slow me critically.

  And I would be committed.

  The new arrival had stopped behind the long-hauler and the scene went dark. The last clear image on the retina was of the two uniformed men moving towards me, the senior holding my papers, I took my hand away from the door. It had been mostly stomach-think, not brain-think: the instinctive need of a trapped animal to free itself, the temptation to go as the hare had gone, ears flat and feet together. Brain-think had warned me. There had been a fifty-fifty chance of getting clear but my very freedom would' have comprised another trap: I would have been committed, exposed as the man they were looking for. Martin. There was still a fifty-fifty chance of getting clear by sitting here with my nerves and sweating it out and if they finally let me drive away I would be uncommitted. Rodl.

  'Good-morning.' A punctilious salute, the big hand swinging to touch the rock-like head, a hand that would come down with hammer-force if it sensed a wrong move.

  'Good-morning,' I said.

  'Where have you come from?' The robot tone of a speak-your-weight machine.

  'Hanover.'

  'Where are you going?'

  'Munden.'

  'Why are you on the road at this hour?'

  'To avoid the traffic.'

  I played it dead straight, not making a joke. Anyone trying to avoid the traffic and fetching up jammed between thirty tons' worth of truckage might think it rated a laugh but he wouldn't see it that way. Making a joke is fatal unless the worst thing on your mind is a duff rear-light because if they think you're not taking them seriously they'll have your shoes off and check them for hollow heels just to show how serious they can get.

  It had gone very quiet now. Last man in had been told to switch off his engine. The Hauptmann was tapping my papers on the joint of his thumb. He said:

  'What is the advantage of a hemispherical head?'

  I looked a bit thrown, as if I hadn't quite caught on, because being too quick on the uptake can be as suspect as making a joke.

  'Well, it cuts down turbulence, and if you've got twin overhead camshafts you'll want to incline the valves anyway so a hemispherical head's almost obligatory.'

  'Have you any opinions on water-vapour?'

  'In the carburation? I'd say it's a help in most conventional engines, in fact Schneider make a limited suction-feed system that anyone can fit. When my friends try to argue about this I always ask them why their car seems to run smoother on a wet day.'

  The sweat was on my face now and I hoped he wouldn't notice. If he were going to keep me waiting five seconds before he spoke again it was going to be five seconds of purgatory, like waiting for the exam results. He wasn't only trying to find out if Karl Rodl, Mechaniker, knew his stuff on engines. He also wanted to test my German for mistakes in technical terms because any good linguist can come unstuck on words like camshaft. And the ice had been wafer-thin: the Striker wasn't internal-combustion and I hadn't needed this kind of terminology since the Nurburgring mission and the memory had had to pull it out of some very cold storage.

  Visual accommodation was improving now and in the light of their torches I could see the group by the truck talking to the driver and his mate. One of them was still in the cab. The driver was shaking his head all the time — 'Nein, nein!' The trouble with police traps is that even though they might be set up to intercept a man on the run they'll do what business is offered from an out-of-date licence to a crate of cocaine stowed under the seat and that means delay for everyone in the queue.

  I didn't look up at the officer. I'd said my bit and now I was taking an interest in how the truck-driver was making out because he was being very emphatic about something and there was nothing else here to interest me.

  'Very well.'

  He handed my papers back. I turned my head after a second as if I'd just remembered them.

  'Thank you.'

  It wasn't the all-clear yet but the sweat began drying up. There were only two things left to worry about: they might ask for the car papers and they might ask me to get out. If they saw the car papers they'd want to know why I'd had to borrow the 17M in case it was because I'd had the bad luck to wreck an N.S.U. last night. And if I got out of the car I'd have to keep my bandaged hand and my split shoe out of sight and that wouldn't be too easy. It wasn't a black-and-white question of was I or was I not an Englishman named Martin. It was a question of watchful suspicion on their part, a trained eye open for minor irregularities, small inconsistencies, something not quite as it should be: a thread, however fine, that they could get between finger and thumb and pull and go on pulling till it thickened to a rope.

  My chances were those of any candidate in an exam: they could ask the right questions (the ones I could answer) or the wrong ones (the ones I couldn't).

  Light was spreading again. Someone else was closing on us from along the autobahn. I hardly noticed. I hardly noticed because the whole situation was presenting itself logically in my mind, perhaps as an antidote to fright. It went like this: Ferris would already be in signals with London and as long as the Bureau thought I was still of use they would move all available mountains to help get the Kriminalpolizei off my back. They had set me running and they wanted me to go on running in case by luck or acumen I found my way finally into what Parkis called the storm-centre. (There's an appalling amount of luck in the conduct of any mission however much acumen you try to bring it to: witness the collapse of Benedikt at a critical phase.) Of course the Bureau could do nothing officially: it didn't exist. But no network on a world scale is ever isolated: there's always a fringe overlap especially when something big is on the programme and any given agency will bump elbows with most organizations from the national civil police authorities up through the C.I.D. Special Branch, M.I.5., M.I.6. and the various select departments whose chiefs are known only to the P.M. and the Home Secretary. On an overseas mission you won't get far before you cross lines with the S.I.D., the C.I.A. or the Deuxieme Bureau according to the area being worked. Interpol will often come into the picture because it has ninety-eight member-countries and that doesn't leave many places where they don't operate. (Interpol would at this moment see the name Martin coming up on their alert-programme because he was a British national in a foreign country and their main concern is with people crossing frontiers.) Unofficially the Bureau would tap the odd grapevine here and there until they got a response from some organization they happened to have assisted at some time or other and if they could ease the right word through to Kriminalpolizei, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, a few telephones would ring and the heat would come off Martin even if he were being grilled in a cell on a murder charge.

  But there was a limit to what action the Bureau could take and that limit was the line beyond which the Bureau would risk self-exposure. Of the sacred and unwritten laws that governed its constitution the most holy was that no one, however high, must in any circumstances, however grave, ever by word or deed or implication jeopardize the prime virtue by grace of which the Bureau was enabled to operate in areas and with resources outside the reach of other factions: the virtue of non-existence. Among the lower echelons where the ferrets ran we called it the Rule of the D.T.M.: otherwise Don't Tell Mum.

  So the Bureau had a limit and so had I and it was the same one, the same precisely defined invisible line: because if these people asked to see the car papers or asked me to get out and open j the luggage-boot and it led to a cell and a charge and a trial I! wo
uld have to deal with it alone. From the moment of an official charge the Bureau would drop me like a dead rat. That was all right: it was in the contract. But my defence would already be spiked. To prove I hadn't killed Benedikt I would have to answer every question put by the prosecution and there'd be some I couldn't answer because it would mean crossing the line, exposing the Bureau.

  When did you join the Accidents Investigation Branch of the Air Ministry, Herr Martin? What were you doing before then? Where did you train as an aviation psychologist? You can't answer? But surely you can tell us about your past? Your background? You'll be telling us next, Herr Martin, that you don't exist? Correct.

  They'd have it made. Acquaintance with the deceased — absence of alibi — fingerprints on the deceased's watch, lighter, pens — hasty departure from the motel — failure to complete accident report at hospital — acquisition of false papers — attempt to pass through police block under assumed identity. And finally the.refusal to answer questions in court.

  They don't hang you in West Germany these days. It would be a life sentence. But that wasn't the worst. Appeal. Tell them to look for the two men: the ones the manager saw with the deceased. If that was no use then I could stick it out till a chance came and I had a hacksaw blade and if the chance didn't come I could try to make a break from a working-party and if I couldn't make a break I could use a dinner-knife on the wrists and cut the rest of the sentence away. But all the time I was waiting for chances in there like a tethered goat I'd have to live with the thought that the Bureau was still running and the missions were still going out and there was one I hadn't finished. This one. That was the worst.

  The flood of light grew brighter from behind and the shadow of the man with the signal-lamp moved sharply across the road. I tucked my papers away and looked up at the officer to see if that was all.

  He said: 'Please open your luggage compartment.' He stood away from the door to give me room to get out.

  Chapter Twelve — TO GROUND