The Striker Portfolio q-3

by Adam Hall

  'I will call you Martin because that is the name we have known you by — ' he put the two identity cards together and pushed them aside — 'since you arrived in Hanover from London.'

  I had never seen him before tonight but I recognized him now. With only the face to go on it would gave been difficult. The left eye was artificial but a perfect match and I wouldn't have suspected it if the original injury had been less massive: the face on that side couldn't have been damaged to that extent without the eye going too. The rebuilding had been beautifully done: the surgeon was a portrait artist and it was the very excellence of his technique that showed the change. One side of this man's face had continued to age and the new side was still young: Dorian Gray and his portrait all in one.

  'Do you know where you are?'

  'I've got a rough idea.'

  You don't have secret police guarding the gates of an asylum for the criminally insane and you don't send a secret police colonel to pick up couriers at the Frontier and bring them here if your sole business is to look after manic depressives.

  'This is Aschau.' He wasn't interested in my rough ideas. 'Have you heard of it?'

  'Yes.'

  'Where?'Rather quickly.

  'The big slob mentioned it.'

  One of the committee moved his head and I got the feeling that people weren't meant to talk like that to the Herr Direktor.

  He didn't seem to mind. When you've caught a winged pigeon you must expect the odd drop of lime on your hand while you examine it. (It wasn't because Aschau was meant to be an asylum that I sensed a certain medical aspect in his character. Perhaps he'd spent so much time in hospital that he'd taken on the air of the surgeon: efficient, tolerant, a little abstracted. And in his case wholly indifferent.) 'Aschau is in part a political re-education centre. I am its director. My name is Kohn. Have you heard of me?'

  'No.'

  'At Aschau we receive people who stray from the Marxist-Leninist line and we persuade them to rethink.' He watched me the whole time. They all did. 'What made you come here of your own volition?'

  'I got the feeling I was straying a bit from the Wilson-Powell line so I thought you could fix me up.'

  His eyes were stone-blue and expressionless, the kind of eyes that looked through the glass at guinea-pigs dying of clinically induced cancer.

  'I will ask you that question once more.'

  He was sitting absolutely still but even so I knew I was right: it wasn't of course Kohn himself that I had recognized, but someone else with these mannerisms and this tone of voice, this way of sitting so absolutely still with the head a fraction on one side and a fraction forward. The walk had been the same, passing through the hall, and if ever he uttered a laugh I knew what sort it would be. But I didn't think Kohn would ever laugh again, even cynically.

  'You needn't have asked me at all,' I said. I might as well play it straight and volunteer the information he already had. 'I was sent out from London on a sabotage-investigation job, find out why the Strikers are making holes all over the place.'

  He went on watching me and I left it at that because I didn't know how much the Kamerad Oberst had told him and even if they've got a fistful of aces there's no point in playing your two of spades.

  'How much do you know of the political situation concerning the two Germanies?'

  'Is there one? I thought Ulbricht had walled it up.'

  He never moved, ever. They might as well have stuck a computer in front of me except that I would have expected this degree of inhuman indifference in a computer: in a live man it struck chill and I decided not to remember the sound I'd heard while we'd been hanging around in the hall.

  'I assume you are close to Whitehall.'

  'More towards Clapham, really.'

  'You decline to admit the extent of your political knowledge and connections.'

  'No. They're nil, that's all I mean.'

  But he wouldn't just accept that. He was an East German and in East Germany they scratched at their ideology till it bled. If you told them there was a place called Hyde Park where you could stand on an orange-box and shout to hell with the government they'd send you to an asylum for the criminally insane. Perhaps that was why they'd brought me here.

  He said: 'Fifteen months ago in his closing address to the Eighth German Party Congress in Berlin, First Secretary Ulbricht took the preliminary steps towards the eventual re-unification of Germany. Since that time there have been overtures made in secret between the two republics. Bonn is expected shortly to withdraw its claim of being the capital of the only legal German state and this will be the signal for overt negotiations to re-establish Germany under a central government whose leaders will be drawn from both sides.'

  He paused long enough to let me comment but I didn't say anything because either there'd been a lot going on in both Berlins while everyone else was busy with Czechoslovakia or Kohn was betting on sudden money. You wouldn't find anyone in Whitehall or Clapham for that matter who'd agree that overt negotiations would be the order of the day until the red flag was hoisted at the White House, which didn't seem likely this century. Probably he was just trying to do what I'd done with the big slob: make me correct him.

  He put on the other side. 'It is vital that those leaders of the New Germanic State should be neither Eastern lackeys of the Soviet Union nor Western idolaters of the U.S.A. For some time there has been a growing need for the creation of a nucleus of potential government: a consortium capable of assuming control of the New Germany. Such a nucleus now exists.'

  Die Zelle.

  And bloody Parkis was right again. He didn't know the details but he'd made a blind swipe and come up with the general idea. Die Zelle was not only 'existing': it was in gear and on its way, knocking out the opposition on the other side of the wire — Feldmarschall Stockener and Bundesminister von Eckern et alia — and crippling the military structure so that West Germany would have to get out of NATO and surrender any claim to a nuclear role by virtue of an effective air strike-force. Otherwise the U.S.A. would want a lot of say in the election of the New German Government.

  Kohn watched me. I still didn't say anything. He'd told me just enough to pitch me into an argument: if I'd had any 'political connections' he knew very well that I'd grab at the chance he was giving me: there were undercover factions in London who'd ally themselves with Die Zelle if they knew what he'd just told me and all I'd have to give him were their names. It was no use making them up: he'd check them first. I'd have to get out of Aschau under my own steam or do the other thing.

  'You understand my motives in revealing as much as I have, Herr Martin?'

  I was going to say yes but one of the lights on the wall-console was winking and he flicked a switch on the internal-communications complex. The voice was very faint in the room: it was one of those whorled-diaphragm speakers that focussed the output and beamed it towards a single listener.

  'When did he arrive?'

  It's up to the listener to frame his own speech according to whether he wants anyone else in the room to understand. Kohn was indifferent. If I ever left Aschau it would be on his terms.

  'Is Schaffer with him?'

  It could be the Schaffer they'd thrown out of East Berlin's Humboldt University a month ago. His paper had said that man's thought was the one thing beyond any form of applied philosophy. For 'applied' read 'enforced'. Professor Schaffer would be just the man for a bit of re-education at Aschau.

  'Offer him caviar.'

  The faint voice went on for a bit and Kohn said: 'Not unless it is essential.' Then he cut the switch and looked at me. 'I asked if you understood my motives. Heir Martin.'

  The whole thing was genuine. A man like this didn't have to frighten me with tricks. They'd really brought someone in and he was going to have to fight for his sanity just as I was. So I was getting worried and an idea was forming at the edge of consciousness: the people up there who made inhuman sounds hadn't been brought to Aschau because they were insane. It was the other wa
y round.

  I said: 'You want international support for Die Zelle. You want me to ferret around the political sewers in London and recruit whatever rats I can find who are willing to work for an outfit that's trying to set up the kind of Germany we had to cut into two so that it couldn't do any more damage. But the kind of new Germany that we all want — its own people included — isn't going to be set up on the dead bodies ot men like Stockener and von Eckern and the thirty-six pilots that Die Zelle has murdered so far and it isn't going to be run by people especially qualified to direct a political re-education centre using an asylum for the criminally insane as a front. If you'd like me to elaborate on that I'll do it but I think you get the point.'

  One of the other two men moved again uncomfortably. They reminded me of Guhl, the man who had liked marzipan. He had been gun-dependent: these two were Kohn-dependent.

  'Your thinking is wrong, Herr Martin, but we may decide at a later date to correct it for you. At Aschau we hold the view that every man is valuable, and that it requires only a little adaptation to put his values to good use. Meanwhile I will ask you to give me full information on the character, functions and personnel of the organization controlling you.'

  'Oh come on, be your age.' I was getting fed up.

  'You must remember that this is a re-education centre. We are giving you the opportunity of telling us what we require to know without first undergoing re-education. It would save time.'

  'I'm in no hurry.'

  'Perhaps you underestimate our persuasive abilities?'

  'No, I should say they're pretty good.'

  Then why decline to do something voluntarily that you will eventually do under duress? Surely that is a little unrealistic?'

  I got out of the chair. He'd given me a lot of info and I wanted to think about it undisturbed and if I stayed here arguing the toss I might forget some of the details that I would need to fit into the pattern before I handed it to Ferris, one fine day.

  It never does any good to consider that the only fine day you'll ever get is this one.

  'It's no go,' I said.

  They all watched me. I took a look at the other two but they weren't interesting. Kohn said:

  'Perhaps I can be of help to you by repeating — '

  'I don't need help.'

  'In your position any man would be glad of it.'

  'But not every man. Not this one.'

  I was trying to make him specify. If I could get some idea of the actual method it would give me a chance to prepare myself and start combatting it before it began. In London they'd put the 9-suffix against my code-name because I'd twice proved reliable under torture and although I'd stuck it out on those two occasions by the doubtful virtue of sheer bloody pig-headedness it had been Norfolk training that had saved me in the end and a lot of the Norfolk training deals with the efficacy of psychological preparation. If you can find out what kind of thing you're going into you've got a chance of containing the natural fear while you're still fit and in full possession so that when the breath speeds up and the skin goes cold the mind can be released from the worst fear of them all: of the unknown.

  'I must accept your decision,' he said.

  Still wouldn't name it.

  'Thank you. Now tell them to heat up the irons.'

  He pressed a switch but I couldn't hear anything. It was probably a light-signal outside the room. He said indifferently: 'Our methods here at Aschau are not those of the Spanish Inquisition. You will not be molested in any way, of course. Nevertheless you will shortly give us the information required — that is quite certain'.

  The big man came in and Kohn stood up when we left, which was civil of him.

  It was now well after midnight by mental reckoning and most of the building was quiet, but sometimes I heard voices and a crack of light showed under some of the doors as I was taken along the passages. It might have been Cambridge, a few people still talking in their rooms.

  But it was Aschau and I didn't like it because you can't correct a man's thinking unless you molest him and Kohn said you could and he ought to know: he'd done it before and was doing it now to the man who'd made that sound up there and you can only keep the 9-suffix until you meet someone who knows how to take it away from you and I believed that Kohn knew how. He was already applying the worst fear of them all: of the unknown.

  They had double-locked the steel door and I was alone.

  They didn't like you to have access to sharp things here and the beaker above the handbasin was made of soft plastic. I turned on a tap but it didn't work so I tried the other one but that didn't work either. Like everything else in East Germany the plumbing was shoddy. Then I realized this was wrong thinking, just — as Kohn had said: it was mere prejudice. The plumbing was perfectly all right, and I knew why he was so certain that I was going to tell him all he wanted to know.

  Chapter Sixteen — ORDEAL

  The scorpion, trapped, will sting itself to death.

  Estimation: it would be five days before they dragged me out of here with my tongue rattling. Then Kohn would put his questions and I wouldn't say anything and they would bring me back and leave me alone for another twelve hours and then drag me out again and I wouldn't say anything and they would go on doing it until it became humiliating. I would avoid that. Humiliation.

  There were various ways. The window was glazed on the outside of its recess and the bars were inside and level with the wall but I could just reach far enough to smash the glass and get hold of a splinter and use it. The actual flow would take time because of the dehydration and they might be quick getting to me but the chance was good if I went for both wrists and the groin.

  The two blankets on the bed were made of processed cellulose pulp stitched inside loose-spun fibre that didn't have any weave to it and even if I could make strips the knots wouldn't hold enough to bear my weight. The bed it's self was fixed to the wall with mason's rag-bolts and the handbasin was metal. But they hadn't thought of everything because the electric light worked and when I was ready I could just about bridge the distance between the lamp and the basin, a thumb pressed into the bayonet and a bare foot on the water-pipe.

  The other ways might work but I didn't spend too much time thinking about them because they weren't certain. The hand will do what it's told to do and blood-letting and electrocution depend on voluntary manipulation but in a deliberate backward fall with the neck angled the body itself will try to survive: we only have to trip and the hand goes out at once.

  Five days before they thought I looked ready, seven or eight before I had to pull the chicken-switch. That was a long time and there might be something I could do as an alternative from going slowly mad with thirst. But I didn't think so. They'd got it all worked out and I wasn't the first one to look round this room and see in everyday things the potential instruments of death.

  The air was cold and I checked the radiator. It had lost most of its heat and the tap was open so it looked as if they turned off the main system about midnight. The unit held something like twelve litres of water but the octagonal unions and blanking-plugs were encrusted with paint and it would need a 5-cm spanner to loosen them so I would have to forget it.

  I stripped off most of my clothes and dumped them on to the bed for a pillow. The thing was to work out a compromise between staying too warm and getting too cold: normal body-heat produced invisible sweat and I had to hold on to all the fluid I could. Excess cold would drive the blood from the surface and stimulate the kidneys into producing urine. Muscular effort would have to be cut to a minimum but that called for another compromise: there was just a chance that when they came in here again they might make a silly mistake and leave me an opening and I wouldn't be able to take it if the muscles were slack from disuse.

  The physical set-up was all right except that the shock-dose of saline in the caviar and beer was already drying the mouth: they had cut down the time-factor by a couple of days. But the problem wasn't only physical. Denied fluid, the body wi
ll slowly shrivel to a point where it can no longer support life, but between the onset of thirst and final desiccation there is the effect on the mind. The resolves I was capable of making now could be maintained only so long as I stayed sane.

  They were relying on two things. One: that I would be brought to the stage where I would sell the Bureau for a glass of water. No go. We are prepared at any time to do what the scorpion does. Two: that I would lose my reason and become a gibbering traitor. And of this I was afraid. The Bureau and all of those men whose safety depended on the law that secrecy was sacrosanct would remain safe in my keeping until the moment came when sanity was threatened. Before then, and in good time, I would have to blot it all out.

  But I was afraid because no man knows when his reason goes: once it has gone he can no longer reason.

  The north light came grey from the winter sky through the glass that would soon be smashed.

  My one task for the day was to find out if the room were miked because I didn't want them to hear my movements. I found it behind a section of wallpaper just below the ceiling and I tore a wad of pulp from one of the blankets and stuffed it into the gap. Never destroy a mike: it can sometimes be used to carry false information.

  The thirst was a worry now and at some time before noon I found myself at the basin making sure the taps were turned on.

  Someone might be stupid enough to open the main cock outside the room. I hadn't planned to check on this but it seemed all right, a natural thing to do.

  There was some activity in the afternoon: some cars arrived and once I heard a shout as if someone were trying to run free. There was no shooting but the dogs barked a lot just afterwards. Their sound was faint and it reached me through the building, not through the window, so I assumed they were in kennels somewhere at the rear.

  The big man came when the light began fading. I was prone on the bunk when he looked through the grille. He opened the door and stood there while the heavy-breasted girl in brogues came in with a waxed picnic-plate. She didn't look at me but just put it carefully across the corner of the basin and went out. There was something about her attitude that gave me the impression that she was afflicted, perhaps deaf-mute.