by Adam Hall
They were going into one of the lifts and I turned to stamp the snow off my shoes and then went to the desk.
'Would you have a private suite for one week beginning next Wednesday? For two people.'
A quick glance down. It didn't matter how well trained they were: mention that day and there was a reaction. He was wondering how I'd manage to reach here through the barricades.
Reading upside down is a fraction easier than mirror-reading because you don't have to dissociate from the familiar and the brain recognises that if you turn through a hundred and eighty degrees you'll be out of the wood, whereas mirror-writing remains gibberish until you've done a mental switch. All I could see was that his name wasn't among the thirty or so on the one and a half filled pages of the register unless of course he was now A. Voshyov or K. Voskarev, the two possibles among the several Russian entries. He was on one of these open pages if he'd booked in officially because they went back to January 14 and he'd been flown in to vet me on a night flight of the 15th.
'On the third floor, sir, overlooking the court.' He added without any expression: 'It will be quieter there.'
It wasn't important: I hadn't come to look at the register; it’s just that the eye of a seasoned ferret notes the lie of every grassroot on its way through the warren. Voshyov or Voskarev could be the agent and Foster's base somewhere else. The important thing was to expose as much data as possible in the short time left and my real concern was the obscene-looking Moskwicz outside: the courtyard was the area we could possibly work in, facts needed collecting.
He hit the bell but I told him I didn't want to see the rooms now: I would return and confirm.
The pivotal fact was that when the Moskwicz dropped its passengers at the Commissariat and at this hotel the driver and escort remained on board. They were there when I walked down the steps, backed up to the wall between the end window and one of the griffons, the engine shut off and the louvres closed and their faces watching me from behind the reflected light on the windscreen.
On the way back to the Hotel Kuznia I stopped the taxi at a telephone kiosk and spoke to Merrick.
By nightfall I'd gone over the whole thing again and it looked all right: risky but all right. Most of it stood up so well that the one critically weak point seemed less of a hazard. It was to do with the guard. There was a single police guard on the Commissariat but today was Niedziela, Sunday. and it could be that on weekdays when every department was functioning and there were more visitors it carried the normal double guard I'd seen on other official buildings. If tomorrow they doubled the guard it'd be no go.
13: SIGNAL
Poniedzialek. Monday.
They doubled the guard.
It was getting too close to the limit now to do anything except hack out a last-ditch alternative operation and it took till midday to do it and when I'd done it I knew it would only work if the opposition movement patterns remained constant. And if it worked at all the main objective would be gained: but nothing more. I would blow up their programme by springing the trap but there'd be no hope of survival.
I don't like suicide missions. They're for the angels.
Rethink.
Findings: the only other thing to do was to let the time run out to Sroda and get a plane when the heat came off and take Merrick back to London where he'd be safe and let them put it in the mission report at the Bureau: objective unaccomplished.
So out of sheer stinking pride I set the thing running.
One hour's wait. A lot of the major planning overlapped instead of throwing out the whole of the original operation I'd lopped the dead limbs and done some grafting.
When the hour was up I telephoned Merrick and made an immediate rendezvous and then went down to the street where the taxi was parked. I'd paid him a day in advance and he was filling the Wolga with cheap Russian tobacco smoke.
'When they come back keep an eye open and follow them when they leave again, find out where they go. Does that gauge work?'
'Sometimes.' He tapped it.
'Fill up the first chance you get. You can lose people that way.'
I walked on towards Wilenska against a low wind; the sky was blue-black in the north and they said there was heavy snow falling across the forestland and that the city would get it before morning.
He was late of course.
Trucks banged and the echoes rang under the great sooty roof. A mail van was parked on the slip-road that ran parallel with this platform and they were slinging the bags in; on the far side a short-haul tender was butting at a line of freight. A dozen people waiting, their backs turned to the M.O. patrol. No one else.
After twenty minutes he came in from the street and began looking for me among the group of people because the poor little bastard had only had two weeks' training and he didn't know that when you make a protected rdv you don't use cover: it wastes time. When he finally saw me he started a half-run towards me and the M.O. patrol turned their heads so I called out to him in Polish: 'It's all right, it hasn't come in yet. They say there's snow on the line.'
I waited till he got his breath.
'I'm sorry,' he said. He was always having to say that.
I took him into the buffet. Three men, four women, a kid with a red plastic guitar, his fur hat over his eyes. Steaming urns, a door to the street, telephone. I asked for czosneksoup.
'What happened?'
He sat opposite me at the table, pulling his gloves off and blowing into his hands. 'Someone tried to get asylum, just when I was leaving the Embassy.' His eyes were in a stare behind the glasses, still bright with shock. 'They followed him up the steps and tried to drag him away but he got free and came inside. There wasn't anything I could do; none of us could help him. But he didn't seem to believe it. We just had to — to kick him out.' He fished the thing from his pocket and covered it as best he could with his cold long-fingered hands. 'Excuse me.'
I gave him a minute because he wouldn't even know what I was saying.
'Listen, Merrick. They didn't turn up.'
When I'd phoned him last evening on the way back from the Hotel Cracow it was to ask for three men, part of the original plan and still part of the new one. I still had to have them.
'They didn't?' He frightened so easily.
'I waited for another hour.'
'They were properly briefed. I told them — '
'They've been picked up. That was the risk we took.'
'I'll recruit another three. The Ochota unit's still — '
'No. There isn't the time.'
Looking down at his hands he said numbly: 'I did my best — '
'It wasn't your fault.' Because he was doing it again, with his numbed words and his raw schoolboy hands and his pathetic eagerness to please and his utter inability ever to manage it, uncovering something again that I thought had been long ago buried in me: a sense of compassion.
He looked up with a slow blink and stared at me as if I'd surprised him and maybe I had; I suppose it was the first civil thing I'd ever said to him.
'What about the cypher-room staff, you got any leads?'
'Not yet, but I — '
'Anything positive, anything negative? Come on.'
He drew back on his chair, tender as a sea-anemone. 'I haven't been given much time, and they're making it very difficult. I think they've taken offence.'
Christ, the world was full of them.
Then he was pulling something else, out of his coat and I knew instinctively that he'd forgotten it until now and was hoping I wouldn't realise.
'This is from London.'
I didn't open it straight away. 'You told London to give you a hand?'
'Well yes, you said I must.'
'They given you any leads?'
'Not yet.'
'Because I've got to send signals and if you think the cypher-room's monitoring your stuff then I'll have to risk a direct line.'
Carefully he said 'There's nothing positive. That's all I can tell you.'
&n
bsp; I ripped the envelope.
It was fourth series with first-digit dupes. P.K.L. was instructed to furnish full interim report and itemise all info on opposition activities.
I read it twice.
It's always useful and sometimes essential to control nervous reaction when the mind, within a hundredth of a second, is galvanised; but it's difficult not to let something show, just a fraction of the shock that has suddenly taken over while the eyes must remain contemplative and the hands perfectly steady and the voice expressionless. It's hard not to blink when lightning strikes close.
I didn't want to. scare Merrick. He had enough to deal with.
'London wants a report.' I put the signal away.
'Yes?' His hands cupped the bowl of garlic soup and he finished it; he looked less chilled now, less frightened by what he'd seen at the Embassy.
'They'll be lucky to get it. Don't they know we've enough to do?' I thought I'd better put something on record. 'Look, don't worry about the Czyn people I asked for.'
'I can try — '
'Won't you ever bloody well listen?' He flinched, his hands pulling away from the empty bowl, but I didn't care, I was fed up with them, Egerton and the others who'd been scraping away at this poor little bastard's nerves till I couldn't even tick him off without shocking him. 'I said don't worry about it. They were to give me support while I tried to break out of Warsaw but there's no need now.'
He nodded contritely. 'I see.'
Looking at him across the table, at his pale boy's face, at the misery that dulled the eyes and turned the ends of the mouth, at the pain that held him still in case movement would aggravate it, I decided to use his innocence for my own ends. 'I might as well tell you, so that you can stop worrying, that I'm now in direct touch with London. You know why.'
He stared at me for a long time, wanting to find the right answer because if he got it wrong I might hit him again.
'You think the cypher-room isn't safe.'
'That's right.'
He blinked slowly, thankful. 'I suppose you — you've got a kind of instinct about these things.!
'I'm a ferret. I've learned to see in the dark.'
He smiled faintly at my little joke.
I said: 'Listen to me, Merrick, I'm telling London to pull you out. Till you get their signal, keep away from Czyn. They're done for and there's nothing more we need to know. I've had new orders and as soon as I've cleared the pitch I'll be pulling out too. At the moment you're all right, you can sign off at the Embassy and get on a plane, just another second secretary being recalled for reasons of diplomatic expedience, but if you go near Czyn again and get caught in a raid by the Polish secret police they'll make a fuss and you'll be kicked out publicly for inadmissible conduct and it'll look messy.’
'I see, yes.' He was sitting very still.
I got a pencil and made out a slip. Fleou qoanptn skkmao plqcv mzoplexk. 'Put this last signal through for me.'
He took it and folded it. 'Through the cypher-room?'
'I've switched the code.'
'I see.'
First series, prefix and transposed dupes. Now going into red sector. It was one of their bloody rules: when you found a hole you'd got to go into without any chance of getting out again they wanted to know. Among the riff-raff rank and file of the shadow executives it's known as the clammy handshake and we call it that to make fun of it because it scares us to death.
'Make sure it goes out.'
With that fledgling courage of his he said: 'You can rely on me.'
I got up and paid for the soup and he followed me to the door. 'We shan't be in contact again.' I told him. 'See you in London some time.'
When we came on to the platform I saw four of them, K.G.B. types in civilian clothes, standing in pairs, two on the left and two on the right, their hands in the pockets of their black coats, facing towards me. Along the platform, parked behind the mail van, was a dark-windowed saloon.
I looked back through the glass doors of the buffet and saw that two other men had come in through the other door, from the street. Then I looked at Merrick.
He stood rather stiffly, his face white and his head down a little and his eyes squeezed half shut as if he were expecting me to do something to him though he knew I could do nothing. It wasn't much more than a whisper and I only just heard.
'I'm sorry.'
14: DEADLINE
'This is Bodkin.'
'Oh hello, old boy. How are things going?"
The line wasn't very good.
'Mustn't grumble.'
'That's the stuff.'
I heard someone being sick, outside. It was probably Merrick.
They watched me the whole time, rather like crows when you cross a field. They weren't dangerous now. They would have been dangerous if I'd tried to run or throw some of Kimura's pet numbers at them but there wouldn't have been any point: it would have been a waste of time and I had a lot to do.
I suppose they didn't expect me to pick up a telephone: it had floored them a fraction and one of them had got excited, showing me his gun. Guns are no bloody good, they only make everyone jump.
'This line's lousy,' I said. 'Can you hear me all right?'
'On and off.'
Give them credit: they hadn't actually let me make the connection myself in case I was calling the Navy in. I gave the receiver to the thin one who looked as if he was in charge and said if he didn't get me Comrade Foster in double quick time he'd lose his rank when they found out from me he'd refused. It was nice to realise that Foster hadn't bothered to change his name, though the nearest the thin man got to it was Vorstor. In London it had meant another cosy party with lots of booze but in Moscow it made a much bigger noise. That was where I was now, right in. the middle of them; I might as well be standing in Red Square.
He wasn't at the Commissariat. He was at the Hotel Cracow.
A stray thought came: they'd probably done it with photographs.
'Look,' I said, 'you're rocking the boat.'
'Sorry about that, old boy.'
'You should be. It's your own boat.'
'Ah.'
He sounded quite interested. The helpful thing was that I was talking into a brilliant brain that could add up things for itself once it was given the data. If I'd had to talk to some cow-eyed clot they wouldn't have understood what I was saying and that would have been fatal.
'Let me know if you can't hear me, Foster, because this is important to both of us.'
'Loud and clear at the moment.'
'I assume you know your little lot's just ganged up on me, do you?'
'We thought it best, considering.'
'You couldn't be more wrong. You know what I'm doing out here.'
'Do I?'
'I'm nosing around the Czyn situation to see what's in it for John Bollocks.'
'More than that,' he said, 'I think! The line crackled like someone frying. 'What about the diplomatic support that's expected from the U.K. if — '
'Oh for Christ's sake, if I'm going to save us both a lot of trouble you'll bloody well have to talk sense like I am.' He only wanted to find out how much I knew. 'It was Merrick spreading that guff around and you know it, you gave him the orders. Now listen to me a minute. I've been in direct contact with London since you chose to start blocking my signals through Merrick, and my orders are to drop everything and try to make sure there isn't a revolution here next Wednesday. In other words the reports we've been sending in have given them a nasty turn and they're frightened the talks are going to come unstuck. This means in effect that you and I are now on the same side and although quite frankly I'd rather work with a dead rat I've no option.'
We were the only people in here now. The men and women and the kid with the red plastic guitar had cleared out as soon as they'd seen what was happening. The woman who'd brought our soup was behind the counter again, washing up; her face was gentle and motherly, reminding me of Mrs Khrushchev's; I think she was quietly praying there wouldn't be a
ny shooting because the place had just been redecorated.
'Any questions?' I asked him.
The silence went on for a bit and I let it. My impression of him in the Moskwicz saloon had been that he was a civilised person with a soft core of morality that wasn't giving him any peace: he'd be sensitive for a long time, perhaps all his life, about how the Brits thought of him, and at this moment he was probably taking his time to swallow my last remark. That was all right because I'd made it deliberately to persuade him I was 4n a position of strength and we could talk on equal terms.
But I didn't like it, the silence on the line. I had to sell him cold in the next couple of minutes or lose the whole thing: a compromise wasn't possible because the set-up I'd worked out would still function and the timing was a bit near the hairspring.
'You'd better come and see me,' he said.
'There's no time.'
'Pity about that.'
'You're not being very bright, you know. I'll give it to you straight: call your people off and let me go on doing my thing and as soon as I can I'll hand you the lot. Those are my new orders from London. Or you can shove me in a cell and three days from now you'll find out you've been losing your grip and you won't like that, a bloke with your reputation in Moscow. Incidentally you'll cost the lives of quite a few of your own people and that won't go down so well either.'
The line sizzled again and I began sweating badly: it'd be damned silly if I lost the mission just because the Polish telephone system had got dry rot in the selector units. My left eyelid had begun flickering to a rogue nerve: I must be getting old.
'Perhaps you'd just give me a clue, old boy.'