by Adam Hall
'Would you, in my place? Think straight. I've got too much on and bloody little time to do it in so for Christ's sake get off my neck.'
'You're being,' he said slowly, 'a wee bit proud.'
'All right, I'm rotten with it. At least it's something you can understand. I represent an Intelligence service whose present interests happen to line up with yours and if you want me to co-operate it's got to be level pegging and if you think I'm going to start by licking your boots you've got another think coming.'
He kept me waiting again. Then on the line I heard a faint sound that brought his face suddenly into my mind, the puffy eyes in the crumpled tissue-paper skin, the long thin mouth with its hint of private irony. He was using his flask.
In a moment he said: 'What's your field?'
'Czyn.'
'Same old thing.'
'I told you, didn't I? London wants me to do what I can to help keep the peace for the talks. You've been clearing the streets as quick as you can but there'll still be a nasty lot of T.N.T. going up on Wednesday because there are one or two units left intact and you won't ever find them.' When I'd counted up to five I said: 'I know where they are.'
Something snapped, near where I was standing. The woman had broken the handle off a cup she was drying, her nerves in her fingers making them clumsy. She put the handle on to the zinc draining board; it looked like a bit out of a puzzle picture.
'Oh, we'll find them all right.'
I'd expected him to say that. He couldn't have said anything else. I'd laid my ace and he'd trumped it.
'And the best of luck.'
'Of course,' he said reasonably, 'that, doesn't mean we wouldn't be able to do it quicker, with your help.'
'I'm not helping you, Foster, so get it straight. I don't trade with your type. Our interests are parallel, that's all, so you're in luck.' The line went fuzzy and the sweat came again; this thread was so thin and it was all I had. 'Listen, you can do something practical as a kick-off. Ten days ago the U.B. pulled in someone from Czyn and we're going to want him.' I gave him the name. 'He's got a head full of essential info that you won't get out of him: they grilled him and drew blank. But he'll tell me.'
'What sort of info, old boy?' Tone rather lazy.
'Don't be bloody silly. Put it this way: we're trying to open a safe and he knows the combination.'
'If they got him ten days ago he'll be across the frontier by now.'
'Of course. Get him back.'
'I know it sounds easy, but he's just one of — '
'Find him and fly him in, use a snow-patrol chopper. I don't care how you do it, that's your headache. Hold him for me till I'm ready.'
It was all I could do now but I believed he was hooked.
'Sorry, old boy, but it won't work. It's all so awfully vague, you see. If you could just give me the odd pointer.'
The wooden boards under my feet started vibrating and the whistle came from the distance, a muted shriek. It would be small at first but it was coming fast and would grow gigantic, a black mountain on the move towards me.
'I'm ringing off now, Foster. You've had your chance.'
'Just the odd pointer.'
The thunder gathered, beating at the windows; a glass on the shelf tinkled against another. An express from the north, from Olsztyn, running through to Warsaw Central.
'Where's your pride?' I had to shout a bit above the noise. 'You're asking an intelligence officer in the other camp to give you clues and pointers, you know that? Christ, you're far gone, no wonder you got yourself blown!'
He was saying something but I couldn't hear properly, something about surveillance
'What?'
'We'd have to keep you under surveillance.'
I let my eyes close. I wanted to sleep.
The train went through and smoke billowed against the windows, dimming the light as my eyes came open.
'As long as they don't get in my way. Tell them that. Tell them to keep their distance, and no tricks. For your own sake, you get that?'
I handed the receiver to the thin man.
The sound faded. The floorboards were still again. 'Yes,' the thin man said. 'Yes,' he kept saying. 'Yes, Comrade Colonel.'
They were all standing to some kind of attention because they knew who was at the other end.
An honorary rank. He must have hated that, to have his brand of subtle and specialised intelligence brought by implication to the level of the bovine military mind; but they'd thought it was a compliment and his courtesy wouldn't have let him refuse. A private Englishman, Colonel of the Red Army. His own bloody fault.
'Yes,' the thin man said. Then he put down the telephone and turned away from me, speaking to the others. Two of them left, by the door to the street. The rest didn't move.
I went out to the platform and noticed Merrick on a bench, sitting alone and crouched over his gloved hands, staring at the ground; he didn't look up; he may not have heard me. I walked past the dark-windowed saloon and came to the open street.
The first pair were already ahead of me, looking back sometimes; the other two had taken up station behind me. It was a box-tag and we don't often meet with it, especially towards the end of a mission, because when the heat's on there's no time for either side to formulate rules; but this was a specific situation and the rule was that if I didn't try any tricks they'd leave me alone except for overt surveillance.
I led them to the Hotel Kuznia, thus blowing my new cover. I wouldn't need it again. By the time I'd reached Room 54 they were checking the register at the desk and getting the passport number of the anglik who'd just taken his key, very well, the West German, yes, Karl Dollinger, this one. By the time my shoes were off and I was propped on the bed they were passing my cover to Foster. That was all right: he had to feel reassured until I was ready to start the thing moving. It would have to be tomorrow and I didn't care for that but it was fragile and haste could break it.
Thought began streaming. I couldn't signal Egerton that the untrained novice he'd sent me to look after was a double agent for the K.G.B. because my only communications were through the Embassy and through Merrick himself. There was nothing wrong with the cypher-room staff: when Foster had bottled me up he hadn't left the cork out. The cork was Merrick. They would have been content to sit back and wait for me to spring the trap but when I'd asked Merrick to get me three people from Czyn as a back-up team he'd passed it on and Foster had decided not to risk anything: he'd been afraid I'd got some kind of coup lined up, fancy him thinking a thing like that.
Merrick himself hadn't known they were going to pick me up or he wouldn't have bothered to give me the signal from London.
My hand moved and I stopped it, have to do better than that. The phone wouldn't be bugged: they'd just put a man in the switchboard room and leave him there. I'd have to do it from outside in forty minutes from now at 16:00.
She was there and all I said was that I'd phone her again tomorrow on the hour or the half-hour. She sounded edgy about something.
'You all right?' I asked her.
They watched me from the corner by the state supermarket. The others were across the road.
'Yes. But the police came here.'
'When?'
'Not long ago. An hour ago.'
'Your papers were all right.'
Nothing could have happened because she was still there but I had to relax my hand on the receiver, do it consciously.
'Yes.' She'd been unnerved, that was all. 'Yes, they looked at them, and went away.'
'They come to see you, or was it just a routine check?'
'They checked everyone in the hotel.'
'Fine. You won't see them again. You know it's all right' now, you can rely on your karta.'
They stood like penguins, their arms hanging by their sides and their heads raised slightly. They were damned good, I knew that; on the way to the phone kiosk I'd thrown a feint, doubling and using a street repair gang for cover, nothing too patent because it didn't have
to look like a test, and they'd closed in very fast and revealed a third pair on the flank across the road: it was a six-box and it wasn't going to be easy when the time came.
She said goodnight. For me to take care, and goodnight.
On the way back to the Kuznia I slipped on a patch of packed snow, just in front of a parked taxi, and the driver got out to see if I was hurt.
'Where do they go?'
'To the Hotel Cracow.'
'Nowhere else?'
'Always to the Hotel Cracow.'
I hit the dirty snow from my coat. 'I won't need you again.' After I'd gone a dozen paces I heard the loose thrust of the starter.
The forecast had been right: snow began falling on the city before midnight, the wind bringing it from the forestlands in the north.
Wtorek. Tuesday.
The streets had become altered, the new whiteness covering the soot and making the sky seem lighter. During the morning I went out twice and made a show of telephoning, talking with the contact down and using the chance of thinking aloud, going over the major points and looking for trips, not finding any. I couldn't give it much longer now and the nerves were playing up because once I'd hit the switch the pace was going to be fierce and there wouldn't be time to rethink. I'd give it till noon.
The time factor didn't balance. I had to go slow to keep him happy, letting them observe and report, letting him see that I was ostensibly in contact with Czyn; and I had to go fast, bringing the deadline back as far as I dared: to noon. The waiting was unpleasant and I sensed being caught up in the feverishness that today had come to Warsaw, showing in people's eyes, in the sudden movement of their heads when they believed someone was near them, in small accidents as the snow thickened and the traffic tried to keep up speed, impatient with the conditions, in the increasing efforts of the police to search out the last of the suspected hostile elements: a man in the Hotel Kuznia itself, going with them peaceably through the lobby and then making a bid at the doors, glass smashing and shouts and a shoe wrenched off and slithering across the pavement and under the wheel of a bus as they crowded him and threw him limp into the back of the saloon.
The fever had a name: Sroda.
At 10:40 I was in my room and used the phone to book a call to London so that the man in the switchboard room could confirm what I'd told Foster: that I was in direct contact. The delay was estimated at two hours and that was well across the deadline so I made it the Foreign Office, Governmental Communication Headquarters, and told them to give me what priority they could.
At 11:00 I blanked off mentally and let the subconscious review the whole set-up without disturbance while I thought of irrelevant subjects: they'd probably done it with photographs and I'd have to deal with that; it had been a light brown shoe with arrowhead indentations on the sole for better grip, still lying there when they'd driven away, would they find a pair his size? Foster hadn't telephoned me although he knew my room number: I'd half expected him to get through, how are things going, old boy, to remind me that I was entirely in his hands, but perhaps he'd found a bit of pride at last, didn't want me to think he'd started panicking, afraid of losing me.
At 11:45 I rang the switchboard and asked if they were giving my London call priority. They said there was nothing they could do: there were many visitors here for the coming conference and the pressure on the lines was heavy. I asked for a precise time-check and rang off and set my watch.
No point in packing anything: washing tackle could stay where it was on the shelf over the basin, g chance, a thin chance, of coming here again. Check shoe laces and making double knots. Couple of glucose tablets. All.
Sweating a lot. Stress reaction developing hypothalamic stimulation, pituitary and adrenal cortex, secretion of cortin, pulse rising, the organism responding to the brain's warning of danger to come. Normal therefore reassuring.
At noon I left the room and took the stairs and handed the key in at the desk and went through the doors and down the steps into the street and began walking.
15: BREAKOUT
They came with me, two ahead and two behind, keeping their distance. I checked the flank and saw two more and it threw me a fraction because they wouldn't have left the rear of the hotel uncovered. It was an eight-box. He really didn't want me to do anything that he didn't know about.
The snow fell from an iron-grey sky and in a lot of the windows the lights were on. I took the yellow Trabant at the head of the rank and told him the Dworzec Warszawa Glowna and as we pulled out I saw a black 220 making a U turn across the station gates. It tucked in and waited and I leaned forward with my arms on the front squab so that I could square up with the mirror. It was an eight-box with mobility. We passed two of them walking back to the Kuznia to cover the point of departure, routine and predictable. Two others were using an M.O. telephone point to report movement.
You can't plan anything specific when you have to flush an overt surveillance complex but you can't rely on luck either: the compromise is to watch for breaks and take them and play them as they develop. The difficulty is built-in: with a covert tagging operation the assumption is that you don't know they're on to you and if you sense and start flushing they won't risk showing themselves but in an overt situation they'll close in and block your run the minute you start anything fancy. because they've nothing to lose: you already know they're working on you. So it has to be done very fast and the danger is that when you choose a break it's got to be the right one because it's going to be the only one you'll get.
In this case there'd been a gentleman's agreement between a rat and a ferret and when I broke the rules and made my run they'd go for an immediate snatch. Those were their orders because Foster was taking' a chance and he knew it. My offer was quite a big one or he wouldn't have listened: they knew that even if they decimated the population of Warsaw by midnight tonight there'd still be a few isolated Czyn groups ready to shed their blood across the barricades and I'd told him I knew where they were. But he didn't trust me: he wasn't a fool. The risk he'd taken was calculated and he'd imposed a break-off point: the point where I went out for a flush.
The Slasko-Dabrowski was a mess. A five-tonner was spreading sand and clinker-dust along the north side and the traffic was being diverted, a man with a flag at each end of the bridge. Someone had spun a Mercedes and put the tail through a gap in the balustrade and a crowd was there but it had happened some time ago because a small boy had lost interest and was throwing snowballs, lobbing them high so they'd burst on the roof of the car. A crash truck was crawling through the diversion lane with its heavy-duty chains throwing out clods of broken ice and we had to wait and my driver said it was very malowniczy, the snow in Warsaw, very picturesque, did I not find it so? The public services had been briefed by Orbis and tomorrow when visitors were running for cover they'd be told how exciting the city was, how very animated, did they not agree?
First-class chance of a break here with the five-tonner available for cover, and the crash truck turning through ninety degrees across our bows and if it had been the boy with the quick eyes in the beaten-up Wolga I'd have told him to get traction and beat the gap and keep going but this was the Trabant and I'd have to do it on foot and we were standing halfway across the bridge so there'd only be one direction I could use, no go.
The 220 had closed right up, not chancing anything. In the mirror I saw their faces and they could see part of mine and we looked at each other.
'It would be quicker for you to walk, I think.'
'Perhaps.'
It was tempting.
'What time does the train go?'
'In twenty minutes.'
Let him go through the gap when the crash truck had pulled over and get out and walk and use it for cover, a fair chance, a respectable chance.
'You could walk there in twenty minutes.'
'I'm not sure of the way. I'll stay with you.'
Because a fair chance wasn't good enough: it had to be as close to a certainty as I could make it. T
his was only the first step in the operation I'd spent twenty-four hours working out and the set-up was so flexible that even the Merrick thing had only called for a bit of tinkering and if I made a mistake as early as this I'd blow the whole lot.
Get out here on a bridge in daylight and I'd be a rat in a rut.
'We can go now.'
'There's no hurry.'
At the end of the bridge I saw an M.O. patrol car coming away from the kerb along the Wybrzeze Gdanksie and going through the amber in front of us, pulling in again while we stood idling at the red. They'd used a radio somewhere, probably at the Commissariat three blocks from the station: Yellow Trabant taxi registration 00-00-00 moving west across Slasko-Dabrowski survey and contain. You couldn't say he wasn't the cautious type.
It was going to be difficult.
'Have you got some paper, an old envelope or something'
He rummaged in the glove pocket 'Will this do?'
We cleared the lights.
The M.O. patrol was three cars ahead of us and the 220 immediately behind. It was a year-old leaflet, Jazz Gala at the Andrzej Kurylowicz Wine-cellar, but the back was plain. Writing wasn't easy because we were meeting with cross ruts at the intersections but he wouldn't be fussy. When I'd finished I folded it twice.
Warsaw Central Station.
'You only have five minutes.'
'There's time.'
'Get your ticket at the other end. It is permitted.'
Warsaw Central was busier than Wilenska and I began watching the breaks as soon as I was in the main hall, aware of conflicting needs: the need to make a quick flush because time was running out and the need to protect the overall operation from the risk of a precipitate move.
Two main entrances and three gates towards the platform area, upwards of a hundred people and a lot of them in groups of three or more, bookstall, Orbis kiosk, island cafeteria, static and mobile cover, say seventy-five per cent in normal conditions but he was being so bloody windy, wouldn't give me a chance.
There was another factor now coming into play: my movements were surveyed and they didn't have to be aimless. Take a taxi to a station but I couldn't just loaf around and walk away again: they wouldn't like that. On the other hand I didn't have anywhere to go except to the unknown place where in a minute from now or an hour from now I'd try for the break.