by Adam Hall
'All right,' Cone said, 'this is your base.'
I went with him into the hotel and he waited while I registered. In the lift he pressed for the third floor and took his dark glasses off but didn't look at me; he had a slight squint or a glass eye, something not quite right.
'Have you met Yasolev?' I asked him.
'Oh yes. We're knocking on his door first. Protocol: he wants to show you into your room. The KGB are paying, so technically he's your host. He’s in 308, you're in 357, I'm two floors up in 525. Best we could do the place is crowded.' He gave me a key. 'This is for my room, a spare one, if for any reason you want to duck in there instead of your own. I'll be available most of the time but if I've got to go out I'll let you know.' He spoke in a monotone as if he were reading aloud, and there was a dry harshness in his voice, maybe an echo of the wind he couldn't escape.
Yasolev opened the door in his shirt-sleeves, hurrying. 'Come in — you're earlier than I expected.' He looked at me hard with his nicotine-brown eyes, assessing me. A lot had happened since we'd last met. I'd turned the mission down and then changed my mind, and he'd have got the news about Scarsdale. 'Have a drink, gentlemen.' He gestured towards a side table and got a jacket out of the closet, shrugging into it. 'Or a chocolate.'
Personal traits, it said in the dossier they'd given me in Clearance. He's prone to sinusitis in the winter, hates homosexuals, is allergic to cats, has a collection of Samurai swords from his stint in Tokyo. Fond of sushi, oysters, chocolates.
'I'll show you your room.' On our way out he stopped to give me another straight look. 'My department appreciates your instructions that Major-general Solsky was to be released, and so, of course, do I. That was a bold move.'
'It's the only way we can play.'
'I agree. But still a bold move.' He took us along the corridor, leading the way, energetic, rebuttoning his black jacket because in his haste he'd done it up the wrong way. 'You have the key?'
I gave it to him and he unlocked the door and pushed it open and stood aside. 'I hope you will be comfortable.'
Not really. It was a modern hotel and this was the third floor with a sheer drop to the street, no fire-escape, guttering, drainpipes, creeper, no ledges below the window, just a view of the Wall with its floodlit wire and watchtowers and gunposts — they wouldn't have that on the postcards they sold in the lobby.
Cone went straight over to the phone while I was looking round. 'Binns, will you come up?'
Yasolev stood with his hands behind him for a moment, then went across to the bathroom and looked in, I suppose to see if the towels and things were there as they should be. Cone didn't introduce Binns when the man came in; there wasn't really time before he opened his black zippered bag and got out a transmitter detector and started sweeping the walls with it while Cone opened the closet and showed me the clothes he'd got for me; they would have been bought locally.
'I'm not sure of the shoes — you've got a narrow foot. Better try them. When you've got out of the clothes you're wearing, put them in that hag and I'll deal with them.'
There was a tray with some beer and glasses on it, but no opener. 'We're out of vodka,' I told Yasolev. 'What about a beer?'
'No. I have had enough vodka.' He gestured with the flat of his hand up to his neck. 'I was anxious, I might tell you. I might tell you, I was anxious.'
'You didn't think I'd come?'
'Not after what happened.'
To Scarsdale. 'It was a setback,' I said, 'that was all.'
'But quite a big one. I understand he was in possession of valuable information on Horst Volper.'
'So we'll now have to get it ourselves.'
Binns was taking the lamps to pieces.
'Then you have other leads?'
'No,' I said.
Nothing showed in Yasolev's eyes but he tilted his head an inch, and I was beginning to read him. In this case it meant Jesus Christ. 'You have no other leads?'
'Not really. We've got to find a different way in.'
It was eerie. Yasolev was in effect my host, but we were having the guest room swept for bugs. He was a KGB officer but I was talking to him about the mission I was working, and he wasn't sitting on the other side of a two-hundred-watt lamp with its shade cut in half, forcing the information out of me. Pauling had warned me about this in Final Briefing. 'I'm sure you've considered it, but you'll find things a bit odd over there. This is the first time London has ever liaised with the KGB and you're the guinea-pig. But Yasolev's going to find it odd too. We're running you in a field where the KGB connection's going to give you a window on their system, and you'll be bringing back information it'd take an entire infiltration job to get hold of. And if anything goes wrong it'll he his fault because it was his idea.'
The phone rang and Cone took it. Yasolev wasn't interested. He was watching me with his head still on one side, waiting for me to tell him how I was going to find access to Volper. There was only one way but I couldn't tell him that.
'Everything is very nice,' Cone said, and put the phone down. His German accent was a shade off, but I'd been briefed that his Russian was good enough to follow what Yasolev and I were saying.
"That's it,' Binns said. It was the first time he'd spoken. 'We're all clear.' He shoved the transmitter detector in the black bag and went to the door. Cone thanked him and Yasolev gave an energetic nod.
'I insisted,' he told me. 'I insisted. We wish you to be comfortable here.'
'Civil of you.'
But no one was taken in, Binns included. He could sweep this room forever and pull the wallpaper off but he couldn't tell if anyone were aiming microwave beams at the windows to catch voice vibrations on the glass, and without X-rays he wouldn't know if some of the bricks had bugs or crystalline mikes put into them when the hotel was built, and he'd have to dismantle the walls to find non-metallic optic fibres hooked up to amplifiers in another room. Yasolev was simply making a diplomatic gesture to show his trust and we were meant to accept it.
'Now I shall leave you to settle in. We'll talk when you gentlemen are ready. My room number is by the telephone.' He inclined his head and left us.
'He's nervous,' Cone said, 'but you don't need me to tell you that.'
'He's not the only one.'
'You'll be all right. You've got massive support.'
And the thing I couldn't tell him was that he was wrong. I would keep him as my director and go through the gestures but I was going to run Quickstep on my own. I'd never manage it with a horde of Bureau people and a horde of KGB agents tagging me through the streets wherever I went.
'A few numbers for you,' Cone said, and gave me a memo pad. 'Karl Bruger is the HUA captain who'll support your cover if needs be, and this is his office number. This one's the direct-line number of the military attache at the Soviet Embassy. You can call him if Yasolev isn't available and you need official assistance, urgent or otherwise. If the military attache isn't available this is the direct-line number of the Soviet ambassador. The code-intro in both cases is Liaison. And this one's the direct-line number of the cultural attache at the British Embassy, Dickie Pollock. He's been here for three years and he knows his way around, so he'll be your most useful contact. And here are some mugshots of Horst Volper.'
'When were they taken?'
'During the last two years.'
I put them away.
'All right,' Cone said, 'I'll let you try some of these clothes on. Let me know about the shoes especially. Might need to break into a trot here or there.' He said it deadpan. At the door he turned and levelled his squint at me and said, 'Yasolev's going to ask you how you'll be planning your access to Volper. Will you tell him?'
'No.'
'Do you know?'
'Yes.'
He took his hand off the door-knob and came back into the room a little. 'Are you prepared to tell me?'
'You wouldn't like it.'
He watched me steadily. 'How much protection are you going to need?'
'None
.'
'My job,' he said, in his dry monotone, 'is to get you through Quickstep with a whole skin. I'd rather you didn't make it difficult for me.'
'Look, it's out of our hands. Put it this way: they went for Scarsdale and they got him. They thought it'd warn me off, but it didn't, so now they'll go for me. And that's the only access we've got, and I'm going to use it. Don't worry, they won't be long.'
7: AMNESIA
'Are they tarts over there?'
A man in a black leather coat rocked our table as he squeezed through.
'Verzeihen Sie.'
Place blue with smoke.
'Tarts?' Pollock said. 'I don't think so. I've never been propositioned, anyway.' A clean white smile, his glasses reflecting the coloured lights over the miniature dancefloor. 'I think they're just here for a good time.'
'Any swallows?'
'What? I suppose they might be, some of them, anyway. We get a few KGB chaps in here from their embassy, though of course they call themselves attaches of some sort or another. In fact a lot of the people who come here are from the embassies — American, British, French, Soviet. It's in walking distance for most of them. Are you sure you won't have anything stronger?'
'I'm too thirsty.'
'This is my favourite haunt, actually. I mean, apart from the embassy connection it's close to the Wall — that's why it's called Charlie's. There's always some kind of intrigue going on.' Another clean smile. 'People talking about getting across, especially now that the guards have stopped shooting to kill.' He waved for the waiter. 'But most of the talk's political, and of course very pro-Gorbachev at the moment. They're hoping he's going to do something big for Germany.'
'For the DDR.'
'For both, actually. Dasselbe nochmals, Willi. Everybody's seized on the idea of seeing one Germany again. You know something? A couple of months ago I had the chance of Rome — second cultural attache — think of all that gorgeous art! But I turned it down. I've got a feeling something rather interesting's going to happen here before long, and I don't want to miss it. I mean, later I can always say, I was there.' Quick smile.
One of the girls was watching me from a corner table, under the amber lamp.
'You think he is going to do something big?'
'Our Miki? Absolutely.' The waiter banged another pitcher of Heineker onto the table and altered the tab. 'Danke schon. Of course he's taking a huge risk with his glasnost policy. I mean it's all very nice to hear him talk about "more flexible" relations between Moscow and the satellites but it's going to stir up the people in the streets. Once they get a whiff of freedom they're liable to want the whole thing, and we could easily see an outbreak of rebellions like the one here in '53 and the ones later in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Poland. That'd put Gorbachev straight out of office and bring the tanks in again. But you probably know all this.'
'Not all.'
'Does it interest you, or would you rather — '
'It interests me very much.'
Not actually watching me, just passing her glance across me now and then. Blonde hair, blue eyes, the archetypal Aryan, bare-shouldered in a slip of a dress, smoking the whole time. She'd come in soon after we had.
'Well, obviously,' Pollock said, 'the East Germans are fervently hoping for some kind of reunification, because so many of them have got relatives in the West and they've been cut off from them all this time by the Wall. On the other hand, some people are scared to death, because if Europe becomes denuclearised — which is the way things are heading — the US is going to withdraw most of its forces and that'll leave West Germany without a security umbrella — and she's liable to look for a new one in Moscow.' He spread his hands flat on the table and looked at me steadily. 'Can you imagine what the rest of Europe Would feel like with a reunited Germany as an ally, not a slave state, but an ally of Soviet Russia? That's why lots of people are scared stiff.' No quick smile this time.
'Jesus.'
'Didn't mean to spoil your evening.' He drank half his beer in one go and then looked at his watch. 'But anyway, I think they're wrong. I see a united capitalist Germany.'
'And anyway it'd take time.'
'Unless Gorbachev decides on a grand gesture. A symbolic gesture that would make its own statement and cut out half a dozen summit conferences.'
'You're thinking of something specific.'
'I am, actually. I believe it's on the cards, and that's why I'm staying on here, in case our Mikhail takes a sledgehammer to the top of that wall and knocks the first brick off.'
'You're serious, are you?'
'Absolutely. It'd be typical of him: he's a brilliant public relations man and a gesture like that would rate more live coverage world-wide than the Olympic Games. Go down in history, wouldn't he?' He finished his beer. 'Well, I've got to get some shut-eye. H.E. wants me up early for a meeting tomorrow. But I'd really like to leave you with something more interesting to drink.'
'I'm fine. I shan't be long myself.'
It was 11:13 when he paid the bill and told me to phone him if I needed anything and left me, pushing his way between the crowded tables and dodging a waiter's tray.
She came over within a minute.
'I didn't want you to be lonely.'
'I'm touched.'
'This is the first time I've seen you in here.'
'Yes?'
'My name's Hedda.' She pulled another cigarette out of the pack. 'What's yours?'
'Kurt.'
There was a lot of noise from the jazz trio and she leaned close to me over the table, her blonde hair hanging across her face. 'He's from the British embassy?'
'Who?'
'Your friend.'
'Yes.'
'I haven't got any friends.' Small, rather pointed teeth, a shred of tobacco on her lip, smoke curling as she spoke. 'I talk all the time about getting across, and it bores them.'
'About what?'
'Getting across.' She leaned closer, spoke louder. 'I'm completely fed up, you know? They call this a workers' and peasants' state but it's a two-class system — you've got West German currency or you haven't. The roof of the Metropole's full of Lancias and BMWs and all most people can afford is a Volkswagen. You're not here looking for somebody?'
'No.' I wasn't certain she meant a girl.
'I thought you might be.'
'What would you like to drink?'
'I've had too much. You can't tell?'
'It doesn't show.' If not a girl, then who?
'You know what I think? I think Moscow ordered a boycott of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles because they knew the DDR would beat them hands down.'
'It wouldn't surprise me.'
'Are you frightened of AIDS?'
'No.'
'That means you're either married or careful.'
'Careful.'
'Isn't it terrible, though? Everyone's too scared even to fuck.'
'Why did you think I was here looking for someone?'
'I thought — I was mistaken, that's all.'
Her eyes didn't make any connection with mine; she looked as if she were speaking on the telephone. She could be stoned. I tried a long shot.
'When did you start working for the KGB?'
'For what?' Smoke curling out of her mouth, her eyes meeting mine but without any expression.
'The KGB.'
'Are you out of your mind?' But they still didn't change; she was like talking doll. 'I saw a Soviet military truck make an illegal U-turn today across Unter den Linden, and one of our Vopos stopped him — but he didn't get a ticket. I hate those people; it's like they rape us every day. You're not looking for Volper?'
'Who?'
'Horst Volper.' Her eyes blank, indifferent.
I said, 'No.'
She pulled another cigarette out. 'You want one?'
'I quit.'
'I don't know how I'd live without them.'
I was losing a word now and then because of the noise. 'Have you got relatives over there?' Across the Wall.
'Yes.' A flicker of emotion came into the ice-blue eyes. 'My father. I've only seen him three times since I was five. Don't you think that's terrible?'
'He came through to see you?'
'Yes. God, it's like I'm in gaol, isn't it? But then I suppose I am. You know the worst thing? To me, the BDR is Deutschland. West Germany isn't a foreign country; it's German, and so am I. It only feels foreign because I can't go there. Don't you feel that?'
'I've got used to it. And we shan't have the Wall forever. Who knows, Gorbachev might pull it down one day.'
'I can't see that happening,' she said, 'in my lifetime.'
It was another hour before she said goodnight and left the club and I waited three minutes and went up the steps to ground level and saw her getting into a dark-coloured VW with a front wing smashed in and covered with adhesive plastic with the headlamp poking through. Five minutes later I was fifty yards behind her along Franzosischestrasse with a taxi between us and nothing in my mirror, the streets quiet and access to the target for Quickstep depending on the thin thread leading me through the night as the twin rearlights moved ahead of me and I sped up or held back, keeping them in sight.
Northeast along Werderstrasse with the same taxi and a small pick-up truck between us, a black Audi in the mirror: it had come up behind me from a side-street and I discounted it because we'd gone two miles from the club and it was the first I'd seen of it.
Turning right onto Spandauerstrasse with the clock on the dashboard moving through 12:35, into the early hours, and the Audi closing up a little: it had turned right as we had but I still couldn't take it seriously because it was too close. It couldn't be one of Yasolev's people because they'd have tagged me to Charlie's Club and I'd checked when I got there, taking a lot of care. Cone wouldn't have put anyone on to me unless I'd asked for support or unless he'd thought I was going to need it.
Left onto Grunerstrasse with the taxi peeling off and moving down a side-street, leaving the pick-up ahead of me and the rear lights of the Volkswagen showing whenever I veered far enough in the traffic-lane to make a check. There was almost no traffic at this hour and the only police car I'd seen was stationary, three blocks behind.