by Adam Hall
Instinct: go home.
It was nine kilometres and I took a taxi as far as the Lankwitz-strasse and walked from there. Two of them kept up the tag while the third questioned my driver. A light burned in the doorway of the Hotel Zentral and I went in by that entrance and not through the courtyard where the lock-up garages were.
The night-porter was brushing a pair of shoes and looked for my key on the board. I said I had it with me and he said I ought to leave it at the desk when I went out and I said I must remember to do that.
I locked the door and looked around. The room had been searched but nothing was missing. They had even probed the tube of toothpaste for microfilm: the needle had raised a ridge from the inside.
There was a chance in a thousand of posting a report to Eurosound so I spent twenty minutes at it, locating the Grunewald base and giving a resume of the Sprungbrett affair. The main section of the report dealt with my ideas on what I had now come to think of as the Parallel Assumption, reference the Rothstein document. The fake Sprungbrett file had confirmed some of these ideas and there was quite a bit of underlining in my report, because the thing looked weird on paper and London would give it a very sidelong glance.
The factors on which Phoenix would have to work were (1) opportunity, (2) local situation in main attack area, (3) availability of armed forces in strength and (4) security. Therefore the Med was out. There was only one area in the world where the armed forces of East and West were looking down each other's gun-barrels on a cold-war footing, and where opportunity+local situation+availability of strength could trigger off a small-scale but developing war. Berlin. The fourth factor – security – was the only doubtful runner, partly because I myself was busy trying to break down the Phoenix security to a point where they could no longer risk launching an operation of any kind in any place.
If I could post this report it could be decisive. Wipe out Phoenix and the Nazi elements of the German General Staff would be left without central direction.
It was clear that if this were not so, Phoenix would not be concentrating on me so fiercely.
The chances against successful transmission being a thousand to one, I didn't waste too much time in neat phrasing. The facts would have to do.
Twenty minutes with feet on the bed. Brain think session. Dark specks crossed the trellis-pattern wallpaper and I closed my eyes. Findings: must disregard likelihood of my death. Must not put the Bureau at risk by simply sending a signal (thus committing suicide), and counting on my people making the overkill, because they might not have the time. If suicide-type signal sent, it must be phoned in direct, because if this report were seen to be put into a box they would smash open the box, note the address and start a careful investigation of the Eurosound staff until they found our man; then they would grill him till he spoke or broke. Consider possibility of phoning Captain Stettner: tell him to phone Control for me. Result: tags would go through the routine, kill me off, phone their contact in the Polizei, get him to ask the Exchange what number I had called, find it was Stettner's, and send in a party to snatch him and grill him. (Danger here particularly great since their Polizei contact would probably be higher in rank than captain and would simply order the man to repeat my message.) Consider other possibilities. There weren't any.
Time was 04.35. Eighty-five minutes (it was coming down to minutes now instead of hours) before dawn. The rush-hour wouldn't start until eight o'clock but they wouldn't wait for that because they knew that I would wait. If I hadn't flushed them by first light I'd have the sense to cool my heels until the rush-hour began and then have another go. That would be Oktober-thinking.
My brain had to be geared to Oktober-thinking or the bastard would do for me.
Oktober-think. Brain-think. The bruised knee was throbbing. The specks flew quietly across the trellis-pattern like slow bullets.
We have arranged a cover man for you.
I don't want a cover.
What happens if you get into a corner?
I'll get out again.
Too bloody confident, that was Quiller.
The room was getting smaller and I got up. The sweat was starting. Eighty minutes.
There was only one thing to do and that was the thing I hadn't succeeded in doing for the past five and a half hours. I had to signal Control without their seeing me do it.
Paramount consideration: protect the Bureau from risk. Worst eventuality: death and no signal sent, my people back where they began. (Who would replace me? Dewhurst? Disregard likelihood.)
Programme: send signal by direct phone if absolutely certain unobserved. If impossible, wait for the bullet in the neck and try to – (Disregard).
I left the glove on the bed. Very fast driving and maze-tactics would be hampered by uneven hand-control. The glove chanced to fall palm upwards on the coverlet and it looked like an appeal though I couldn't think for what. More time perhaps. Seventy-nine minutes.
The layout of the hotel had been studied the day after I'd moved in. Main entrance, double doors to the terrace single door from the kitchens, single door to the courtyard. I left the room without a sound, taking five or six minute with the handle. The corridor was carpeted. There might be one or more adverse parties inside the building, might not. They knew where I'd gone and they knew they'd see me come out again. The phone would be wire-tapped but although they'd searched the room they hadn't miked it, so there wouldn't be anyone looking after a speaker or tape.
The hollow coughing of the shoe-brush was the only sound on the stairs. He had the lot to do: the night-porter and Boots combined.
It was possible to reach the single door to the courtyard without going within sight of the desk and I moved only when the brush sounded, freezing in the intervals of silence. The door was locked but the key was on the inside. A white chef's coat hung on the door.
Chill air. The surface of the yard was concrete and I put my shoes on again and left the door unlocked on principle: ensure availability of exits and entrances.
A glass roof covered half the yard, running from the wall of the hotel to the row of lock-ups. Observation was possible only from the hotel windows and the four windows of the house opposite the yard gates. Five minutes to allow the eyes fully to accommodate. Five minutes to check each window. There was no lamp burning in the yard and I stood in eighty per cent darkness, stars giving the only light.
There was no observation. The thought was chilling. There should be observation. Re-check windows, shadow areas. No observation. Disregard.
The lock-ups were communal and had two big double doors facing the hotel wall at some sixty feet. Both sets of doors had the same key. The 230SL pagoda-top was inside the doors nearer the gate and street. It would be possible to open them quietly but not silently; I had oiled the lock, hinges and swing-bar staple the first time I had run the BMW in here. But there was no point in taking pains. If they were going to open fire as I drove through the gates they'd have plenty of warning because of the noise of starting up. To open the doors quietly would reduce the warning period by a good ten seconds (time taken to go through the open doorway, get into the Mercedes and start up). But they would still have fifteen left (time taken to engage reverse, back out, stop, engage first and move off to the gates). And you can raise a rifle on target from across the knees in one second flat.
But my chances were so slight that I took pains with the doors. A chip of stone got jammed underneath the second one and made a soft screech that echoed under the big glass roof. I was in a way relieved. I had shown my hand and there might be reaction from them, establishing known conditions. I walked from the doors to the gates, to get some idea of what these conditions were. There was no risk in this that I wasn't already faced with. Either they would let me drive the car out or they wouldn't. If they wouldn't, I'd be sitting in it, here at this spot, my hands on the wheel, dead, two minutes from now. That was the risk and it wasn't increased by standing here exposed. If they meant to let me drive the car out they wouldn't fire eit
her now or when I was behind the wheel.
Luminous dial at 05.03. Fifty-seven minutes left.
Oktober-thinking was no go. Even he was sometimes faced with a choice of decisions. He – or his Reichsleiter would now be deciding whether to let me use the car (so that they could tag me and see me signal Control) or to switch off the risk the moment I got into the car (so that they could relax and think out a new way of locating my base – perhaps using my successor).
The night was still calm. Very far away the throb of a Diesel truck sounded; even more distantly there was a shunt going on in the freight yards. In my area there was total silence. I stood between the gates with the horror coming into me slowly and when I tried to keep it back it made ever faster return. The left eyelid began.
They had been called off.
Nobody, not even the least efficient field-scout in the most tumble-down intelligence service, could fail to see me framed in these gates with the light of a street-lamp on me. And to see me they must show themselves, by however small a fraction. The terrain was bare and geometrical, a pattern of ground-surface, walls, doors, windows and roofs; and I gave it a one-hundred-per-cent examination. There was no window open even an inch. Every door was shut. The lamp-stanchion was less than a foot in diameter except at the base, which stood two feet from the pavement no cover. The outline of the estate-car parked on the other side of the street was utterly distinct and unspoiled. The horizon line was unbroken from roof to roof.
In ten minutes I had re-observed. Nil.
Known conditions had ceased.
Eliminate two considerations. (1) They were not waiting for me farther off, at each end of the street, because there was no absolute guarantee of picking off the driver of a car accelerating at full bore and tyre-targets were tricky. The 230SL would be pitching up eighty k.p.h. in third gear by the time it reached either end of this street. (2) They wouldn't be set up to fire from behind a closed window (where reflection could mask them in this light), because deflection is always a risk, the structural quality of the glass being variable. Nor would they be absolutely certain of drilling the pagoda-top roof dead on target from any height. If they were going to fire on me from a closed window they'd do it now, because the door of the garage had raised enough sound to travel through the glass of any window in this area and they'd know my intention: to use the car.
They had been called off.
The eyelid was bad now so I stopped thinking and moved back across the yard and went into the garage through the wide-open doors. The same factors applied: there was no increased risk in walking through these doors if in fact they'd posted a man in here with orders to kill me off if I tried to get into the Mercedes.
No shot. No sound. No sign.
The awful thing was that I wanted badly to get clear and they were going to let me and I didn't like it or trust it.
Perfectly still. Breathe shallow. Examine.
Sound: the last of the Diesel throb, fading north. Metal on metal from the freight yards. All.
Vision: blurred outlines, three cars, oil-drum, wall-map, tap and trough. All.
Scent: petrol, oil, rubber, sacking, timber. All.
Nothing out of place.
Only the voice inside me saying I don't like this, I don't like this. Shuddup. Brain-think not stomach-think, getting old, old enough to die.
Luminous dial at 05.24. Thirty-six minutes to go.
Brain-think: make all usual checks and then re-check; and then get out, win or lose.
I travel light but sometimes life or lesser but important things depend on vision at night so I carried a pen-torch with three long-life cells and an inverse lens for needle focus. The hood slid up without a click on the felt-lined barrel. The thin beam began moving about. Doors not tampered with. Check interior: all switches and levers in position as left. No foreign odours.
Ten minutes on the interior. Then I opened the luggage compartment and checked contents. Cleared. The engine cover made a slight noise because of the sprung catch and I stood still for three minutes listening.
The ray probed the engine. Check for recently-laid wiring, unfamiliar components, foreign odours. Cleared.
I stood for a minute to steady the breathing. Sweat was gathering at the waist. The knee pulsed. Eyelid calm because action was soothing the nerves.
Right – risk the rest and get in and drive like hell and hope for luck.
Never throw blind.
Back to the interior, checking beneath the facia panel for new wiring at the ignition and headlamp switch-points. Cleared.
Keep on working, take advantage of the analogy: I had thought of an analogy, excellent piece of brain-think. The ray probed along the cement floor, picking up chips of stone, ancient splinters rotted dark, the tarnished brass terminal of a sparking-plug, Bosche-type.
Then I got down flat on my back and pulled myself under the chassis and found it at once.
23 : SIGNAL ENDS
The needle ray of light made a circle on the plastic casing. The brass posts of the solenoids were flush-cut and the light gave them a gold shine. There was a slinging-eyelet cast integrally. Apart from these three features it was simply an elegant oblong six-by-three, about the size of a small pocket-lamp.
It was Japanese. The last time I had seen one was in Paris in ‘59when the Deuxieme Bureau handed over the FLN problem to the Main Rouge. It was the same type of bomb that they had used to remove Puchert, and it was the same method: he was blown to pieces in his car on the Guiollett-strasse, Frankfurt, at 9.15 a.m., March 3.
Now I was looking at one of these things again. Small, compact, beautifully-moulded, it could rock a street.
I had expected to find it – and had looked for it – because of the analogy, which was: they've cleared out of here as if there were an unexploded bomb in the place.
The chill of the concrete was seeping through my coat into my shoulder-blades but I lay there for half a minute to do some thinking. Oktober was a human computer and this idea would appeal to him. He didn't trust humans who were not computers. He had envisaged the remote possibility of my being unobserved when I finally got round to using the Mercedes in a last attempt to break clear. The orders were that if I had made no signal by first light I was to be switched off. Declining to chance even a remote possibility of failure in this, my death was to be arranged with precision: it was to be automatic.
The sweat was dangerous now and I wiped my hand on my coat before reaching up and taking the bomb from its perch on top of the exhaust-pipe. The set-up was that when I started the engine the vibration of the pipe would dislodge the bomb within the first few minutes of driving and it would hit the ground. Even at high speed the thing must fall immediately below the car.
I held it snug on my chest and slid out from under, standing up and listening from sheer habit. The night was mine.
The lock-ups were communal, with only three main partitions six feet high, and there was a side door at the far end, so I checked the gear for neutral and started the engine, moving round to the front of the car and resting the bomb on the slope of the bonnet about a third of the distance from the front edge, where the smooth plastic would slide on the smooth cellulose, given time. The engine was cold and the vibration at its highest. I stood and watched the bomb in the light of the torch. In fifteen seconds it began to slide and I kept my hand ready in case. Twenty seconds and it sped up and reached my hand.
I wanted roughly one minute, so I put the bomb a couple of inches higher than the first time and left it there, climbing the first partition and dropping over, climbing the second and dropping, kicking over an oil-tin and disregarding the noise, climbing the third partition and making for the side door. It had a Yale-type lock with a knurled knob and there was an interior bolt in addition; I had oiled them both when I had seen to the big double-doors two days ago.
When I was outside I shut the door after me and sat down with my back to the garage wall. There would be no breaching of the wall itself because of the par
titions, but most of the roof would get up and go and there'd be a certain amount of old-fashioned brick-dust and splinter fall-out.
I could hear the engine of the Mercedes throbbing very faintly. Sixty seconds had gone by. I went on waiting, and thought: London isn't going to like this. There was a lot of private property in the place. But Pol had said a million lives so London would have to lump it.
Ninety seconds. I had misjudged the slope of the bonnet, put the thing too high. The throb of the engine was settling, with the automatic choke easing off and the mixture thinning. The sharpness of carbon monoxide soured the air. Time-check: 05.49. Eleven minutes to zero but that didn't come into it now. Along the high wall that made one boundary of the courtyard there was the first light of the new day showing; a spire pointed its grey finger at a star. Far away the sounds from the freight yards were getting louder. Then the first cock crowed.
Two minutes. Either there was a resinous adhesion setting up between the plastic and cellulose or the thing had slid to one side and was lodged in the trough of the fairing. If it had lodged, it might stick there forever or it might go on creeping and finally drop. I didn't want to go and have a look. The engine was barely audible now; the temperature gauge would have moved out of the cold sector; oil pressure would be dropping a fraction.
There would be three phases. Initial percussion, audible blast and air shock-wave. Fire was a certainty because of all the petrol about.
Two minutes and a half. The sweat-glands began working again. There was absolutely no way of timing a check-up safely; the whole thing would have to be worked out by chemistry (plastic-cellulose inter-reaction, allowance for heat change due to warming of engine), kinetics (movement of bomb across slope of bonnet, references weight, momentum potential of mass, gradient of slope), vibration theory (effect of given rate of mechanical oscillation by metal of bonnet against given mass) and algebra (terms of deduction in all three spheres). A whole team of picked scientists could sit here for weeks without succeeding in telling me when it would be safe for me to go and find out what was happening to that bloody thing.