by Adam Hall
We were going very fast now and the street was wide and I thought it could be Karl Marx Allee again. They'd flushed him out of the side-streets into the open and that was another worry because he was a clear target and they could bring in a dozen more patrols if they wanted to, fifty if they wanted to, and fill the whole of the avenue and shoot his tyres off and wait till he spun and crashed. The speed felt like something close to a hundred kph and the backwash of the slipstream was tugging at my clothes and I thought that if he smashed the Mercedes now there wouldn't be any question of forcing anything out of him and I had a sudden feeling of rage because we were only two days into the mission and Shepley was manning the signals board for Quickstep and all he'd get from Cone was the routine phrase for a terminal situation, shadow down, and upstairs they'd punch the uncoded equivalent, executive deceased.
Sirens were sounding everywhere now and sending echoes from the buildings and there was a wash of headlights flooding the street. He gave it one more block and hit the brakes and brought the speed down and then used the throttle to swing into a side-street but we were still going much too fast to do it cleanly and he lost the rear end and it hit the kerb and bounced back and hit it again as he tried to correct and then we were skinning the shop windows with a scream of metal against stone and glass that hollowed out the night and left conscious thought blanked off because of the overload. Then we were clear again and I caught a glimpse of a street sign and saw that we hadn't been in Karl Marx Allee before we'd changed direction because this was a side-street off Stralauer and we were turning back in our tracks. We'd lost the Vopo patrols but I could still hear some of their sirens in the distance and it'd only be a matter of time before they picked us up again.
I was having to get my mind off the fatigue in the wrist muscles because they were burning now and unless I could shift forward and get one elbow inside the window I wouldn't have more than a minute, a minute and a half before I had to let go and drop. I waited for him to use the brakes and let the momentum take me forward but he was accelerating the whole time now and the strain on the wrists was intensified and there was another factor coming into play — I was beginning to lose the ability to process the data coming in because I'd been bombarded with a massive input of light and sound and movement for a long time now and the stress was nearing the point where I'd start hallucinating and that would be fatal, finito.
Thing was to hang on. Thing was to focus the sense of reality on this one objective, to forget why it had to be done, to ignore all other considerations and reduce everything to the simple facts: these are my hands and they must keep their hold on the edge of metal here and anchor themselves to it and become one with it, my fingers are made of iron and nothing can bend them, the car swinging wide suddenly and lifting on one side as he tried again to shake me off, my wrists also are made of iron and they cannot tire so I have no fear, the momentum of the swing taking us against a parked car and slamming us sideways into it and bouncing off again with one wing torn half away and caught against a tyre, there is nothing the organism has to do but remain where it is, with its iron fingers hooked over the metal and its iron wrists taking the strain without effort, a sudden burst of acceleration with the rear wheels spinning and then some kind of shout from him, from the man at the wheel, before the front end tilted and a strange quietness came in with only the singing of the torn wing against the still-spinning tyre and the dying note of the engine and the sensation of flight, of weightlessness and then a waste of still water as the car tilted and went on tilting, a waste of still water with distant lights reflected in it as we dropped and hit the surface and I was flung away from the white explosion of the impact and instinctively began treading water.
'I don't know.'
'Volper? Is his name Volper?'
'I don't know.'
I pushed his head down again and he began struggling. It was like drowning a dog.
Cold. Freezing cold.
Sirens in the night, sounding a dirge, their cadences orchestrated, rising and falling and rising, their echoes wailing across the flat still water. I thought I could see the humped roof of the Mercedes in the shallows near the bank of the river, and they'd see it too before long, the Vopos, so I'd have to hurry because once they found us he'd be taken out of my reach.
'What's your name? Your name?' In English. I'd started in German with him but he hadn't understood.
'Skidder.'
Nickname. 'Listen, I want to know who's running you.'
He didn't answer. I pushed his head down again and felt him struggling under my hands. It's not an exact science, half-drowning a man to make him talk, and even a doctor wouldn't have known exactly when to stop, when to let him snatch another breath. He'd been much stronger, before, when I'd found him swimming towards the bank, and he'd thrown an arm round my neck and forced me below the surface — a big man, he was a big man, and frightened because of the sirens — and I'd had to work on his nerves with knuckle strikes to get him docile.
Struggling like a madman under my hands, not frightened by the sirens any more, frightened of drowning, dying. I let his head break surface and waited until the worst of the choking was finished with.
'Skidder, I want information and you want to live. Is it Horst Volper you work for?'
I think he was trying to nod and it sounded like yes but it could have been his breath hissing as he tried to snatch at it. I would ask him again later. 'Skidder. Who is the target?'
Oh Jesus Christ it was cold in the water here, it was cold enough to kill. He didn't answer so I pushed him down again. God damn his eyes he was wasting my time and freezing me to death. Struggle, then, go on, you'll get the message quicker this way. Five seconds, ten… Up.
Blowing out water, half-choking.
'Who is the target? Come on, who is the target?'
He made a sound.
'What?'
'Gor — chev — '
'Gorbachev? Did you say Gorbachev?'
'Ess,' nodding, 'Ess,' choking up water.
He was getting heavier and I was warned. Our feet were grounded in the shallows so I didn't have his full weight on my hands but he was weakening and I'd have to watch it because this half-drowned hulk could give me the access for Quickstep and perhaps save time, later, lives, later.
'What's the operation, Skidder? Listen, you give me some answers and I'll pull you out and get you to a hospital but if you waste any more of my time by God I'm going to push you under and keep you there, now do you understand that?' Heavy on my hands, now, he was heavy. 'What is the operation?'
The sirens were louder now and I could see headlights slanting across the water as one of the police cars swung in this direction.
'What?'
He'd said something.
I waited but he didn't repeat it so I pushed him down and dragged him up again.
'Come on Skidder, I want information.'
But I wouldn't have to push him down again if it came to that, and I didn't think it'd do much good if he told me what I wanted to know and I got him to a hospital; he was a dead weight on my hands now, with his legs jack-knifing under the water. I was losing alertness myself by this time: the water was freezing the blood, numbing the limbs, and all I could think about was getting out while there was time.
I waited but he didn't say anything more.
'Come on, Skidder!'
Didn't say anything more.
Sirens close now, and headlights along the river, a mobile spotlight throwing a beam across the water, passing over the hump of the Mercedes and coming back, fixing on it and then moving again, sweeping, suddenly dazzling, blinding.
'Skidder!'
Anything more.
There was just the white flare of the light playing on us and his face, Skidder's face close to mine with its eyes open and its mouth hanging slack, his dead weight on my hands, and voices now, voices calling from the top of the bank, a door slamming and a man running, more lights as another car swung from the higher road and
pulled up with its siren dying.
Conscious thought slipped into illusion: I was aware of the police cars and the men coming down the bank and the man in my arms and the dark flat surface of the river reaching forever beyond the brilliance of the lights, but they were all unreal, a chimera, and the only reality was this gripping cold, sapping the strength and numbing the mind, turning me into something immovable, an entity that was losing its significance — watch it — and now the beginning of euphoria as the will to move gave way to the comfort of deciding to make no effort — move, for God's sake, move — no more effort, just the feeling of letting go, with the water lapping against my throat now, against my mouth — move move move you're drowning — and a man with a peaked cap and other men, uniforms; 'it's all right, we've got you, hang onto me now' and the bright lights spinning and the man's face watching, watching me from slightly above, nodding, making a note.
'You were pretty far gone, yes, when they found you.'
'Oh Jesus, it was so cold, I tell you.'
Nodding again. 'And you remember being brought in here?'
'Yes. Most of it. I mean there was nothing very specific about it; I knew they'd dragged me out of the river but I was shaking badly and I didn't want to take much notice of anything. Hot drink, beef broth, I think.'
''They did a good job.' He switched off the recorder. forced that man too hard and got nothing from him, or next to nothing, rage, too, about what Cone had done, rage and depression because of a death on my hands, and above all the knowledge that because of all these things I'd left Quickstep to founder out there in the night-dark waters of the river.
9: TEA
Umdrehen auf dein Magen, bitte.'
I turned over onto my stomach and she began again, a huge woman, huge hands, but experienced, feeling the exact degree of pain she was giving, keeping it under control.
'No. Not for a few days.'
Cone was sitting on the edge of the chrome-framed vinyl chair near the bed, the phone in his hand.
'Entspannen, bitte, loslassen.'
I went as limp as I could. It was mainly the right shoulder, where I'd been thrown against the rear quarter of the Mercedes. The rest consisted of abrasions and wasn't serious, wasn't hampering.
The curtains were open and the glow from the floodlit Wall was on the ceiling, like the reflection of snow.
'I'll ask him, sir.' Louder, 'Morale?'
'Not very high,' I told him. 'We'll have to talk about that.'
I couldn't see his face from where I was lying on the massage table but he was quiet for a moment before he spoke again, repeating what I'd said to Shepley. A bruised shoulder and a few abrasions and the lingering effects of hypothermia didn't amount to anything major, considering how close I'd come, but the morale of the executive in the field is vital to his operation and if I couldn't deal with the angst it was quite likely that Shepley would pull me out and replace me before I endangered Quickstep and the critically sensitive Bureau-KGB relationship.
'Bleiben entspannen fur zehn Minuten, bitte.'
'Ja. Danke, Fraulein.'
'Bitte.'
I rolled off and went over to the bed and lay there while she folded the legs of the portable table and went lumbering out with it.
That bloody Audi: he'd have to explain that.
'Sir? No, the opponent was lost. Yes, I'll be getting a report for you. No, the only product amounted to a few words. There was — 'he broke off and listened and then said, 'Ash, can you take the phone?'
I sat up on the bed and he gave it to me.
'Executive.'
'What did you get out of him?'
This was going over scrambled: that man Binns had hooked up a T3 to the phone. 'He said the target is Gorbachev.'
'And that is all?'
'Yes.'
'Do you consider it was worth the consequences?'
He meant Skidder's death. 'It confirms who the target is and it's knocked out one of their hit-men.' I thought I was going to stop at that but the anger needed relief. I didn't raise my voice. 'If you think I should have got more out of him I'll remind you that we weren't sitting in a cosy interrogation room; we were up to our necks in freezing water and he didn't break easily.'
'I implied nothing. Have Cone come to the telephone again, will you?'
I passed it to him and tuned out what he was saying. It wasn't totally unlikely that Bureau One would order him to pull me out of the mission for mishandling the Skidder thing and letting it affect my morale.
'Something for us to work on,' Cone said, when he'd put the phone down. 'One of our sleepers out here got his wavelengths crossed with someone's transmitter and picked up Werneuchen Airforce Base as the site of a clandestine operation. Mr Shepley suggests you do some work on it.'
I opened my eyes. 'Volper's operation?'
'They don't know.'
'Werneuchen,' I said, 'is a bomber base.'
'See what you can find out. But I need your report before we do anything else. Feel up to it?'
I said yes and he got the recorder and put it on the edge of the bed and pulled his chair closer and switched the thing on and said, 'Report on terminal incident, DIF Cone, executive Quiller.' He gave the time and the date and sat back.
'The loss was unintended,' I said into the recorder. 'I had to judge how far to go with the subject, and how fast. This was difficult because there was very limited time and we were both feeling the onset of hypothermia.'
His blunt, heavy face bobbing at the surface of the water, his eyes not looking at me, though we were face to face.
'There was no personal element involved. It's my feeling that if I hadn't pressed him he would have lost consciousness before I got anything out of him at all. Or he would have gone on blocking.'
The weight of his body under my hands as we swayed together in that freezing river, both of us near death, thrown together like flotsam on the tide of circumstance and performing our little danse macabre to the tune of sirens in the night.
'I have no compunction. I feel no remorse.'
But I'm depressed, I tell you, I'm bloody depressed.
The compunction and remorse bit's always asked for in these reports because some of us can take a man's life like swatting a fly but others find it affecting their work, the mission, and they're often pulled out.
'The subject had been trying hard to kill me and that had been his intention; the trap had been set specifically to accomplish that. Hence no remorse. I regard it as having been in the day's work, but I admit to a feeling of depression and this is normal for me after a terminal incident.'
Words, words, oh my God words, it does matter when you cut down a human life and the fact that he was trying to wipe me out had got nothing to do with it. There was that awful sound, the gurgling, and that had got everything to do with it, the sound of someone drowning like a dog while I went on pushing him under and blocking the force of my natural instinct to save him.
'I contend that I got as much information as was possible in the circumstances, and that I didn't hasten the loss by poor judgement.'
Bullshit, but they wouldn't know that. All those snivelling bloody clerks want is what they call a clear picture, just give us a clear picture, told boy, can you, so they can peck it all down on their neat little keyboards and go home to their steak and kidney pudding and watch the telly, damn their eyes, do they really think you can give them a clear picture when you were up to your neck in a river and freezing to death and trying to decide just how much to put the fear of Christ in a man to make him squeal? They don't -
'Anything else?'
'What?'
'Is that all?'
'Yes.' A killing, nicely wrapped up. Oh my God how I hate bureaucrats.
'Did you look for any identification on him?'
'No. There wasn't time — the Vopos were coming.'
In a moment: 'How do you feel now?' But I noticed he switched the thing off before he said that.
'Bloody awful.'
&nb
sp; Rather vague, yes. This man was my director in the field and it was his job to support, nurse and succour his executive, test him out at every major phase of the mission and decide whether he was still operational, still competent to go ahead, unaffected by fear, guilt, remorse or emotion of any kind. And if he thought fit, to warn London to pull him out.
'What sort of bloody awful?' Squinting at his nails.
It'd need time. I got off the bed and moved around, checking things out — pain in the shoulder but only when I moved it; other areas, left thigh, left shin, rib cage, where I'd been flung around on the back of the Mercedes; but nothing wrong with the feet or ankles: I could still run flat out if I had to and that's the first thing you worry about when you've come through the wrong end of the mangle — whether you can still run fast enough if you've got to.
'For one thing,' I said, 'I'm pissed off. Was that your Audi?'
'Which one?'
'I.ook, when I went to meet Pollock at Charlie's Club I checked the area very carefully and it was clean. So how did you know I'd gone into the river?'
'We don't use an Audi, as far as I know.'
'It was a blind?'
'It could have been.'
'So you did put a tag on me?'
'Yes.'
Gott straffe the bastard.
When the traffic conditions are too light for comfort in a vehicle-tag operation you can slip a third car in the middle with instructions to stay there until some innocent vehicle gets in between, and then peel off and come back when it's needed again. The object is to make sure there's always something between the tag and the target and that could've been why the Audi had gone down a sidestreet when the Fiat had come up, but it was academic now: Cone had said yes, he'd ordered someone in.