by Adam Hall
'Well, I'll be on my way.'
'What? Yes. Yes, very kind, thank you.'
The creeping of dread because however much you're aware that you're inviting attack, however carefully you're playing it by the book, the shock of a close call reminds the psyche that its death is sought, its extermination, eagerly sought; and there's something horribly personal in this, horribly intimate, and it reaches down into the secret confines of the personality and plunders it, and leaves its effect, which can finally be devastating. It's this feeling that brings a man back from a mission with a shut face and slow speech as he sits in one of those small stuffy rooms with his operations director and signs his name on the form, request no further action in the field.
Walking on, bumping into someone — Verzeihen Sie — then finding equilibrium again, walking past the line at a bus stop at 4:15 in the afternoon with the dark down and the tops of the buildings lost in a creeping fog.
It had been like a shark.
More people in the streets now, the traffic bunching at the lights. Another hour and work would be over.
Like a shark, that thing.
Yes, like a shark, shuddup. The end of the working day would be over and they could get into their coats and line up for the buses and the trams and the trains and go home.
With its jaws open when it came past.
Oh for the sake of Jesus Christ shuddup, it's over now and we're still alive, it's not the first time you've come close to blowing it. Stamping their feet at the bus stop, breath like steam, going home, sweet home, with all the evening in front of them, a nice hot dish of sauerkraut and spuds, or would you like to see a movie tonight?
4:20 in the afternoon and this one man moving among all the others, not of them, not of their company but isolated, an outcast, threading his clandestine way through the city on his own surreptitious purposes, while the Mercedes turned again at the Andreasstrasse intersection and started a loop for the second time, and the man in the black wool coat and scarf kept pace on the other side.
I would like to see a movie, yes. I would like to see a movie very much.
Walking a little quicker now; the scenario required it: I still had a rendezvous to keep and I still had to throw off the surveillance before I could keep it.
Waited ten minutes for a bus and got on and saw the Mercedes three vehicles behind and the Lancia parked near the U-Bahnhof with its engine running: I could see the exhaust gas.
This at least I knew now: they wouldn't try for a snatch in the hope of' grilling me. They were here for a kill of whatever kind — at close quarters or with a hit-and-run attack or a premeditated set-up involving precision. The shark thing had just been impulsive, but it proved their intention: death in the afternoon.
At 4:38 I got onto a train at Ost-Bahnhof and took it as far as Ostkreuz, with one of the men who'd been in the cafe getting on soon after me and sitting with his back turned at the end of the compartment, facing a glazed poster with useful reflection. Back in the street at Ostkreuz I walked south along Markgrafendamm with the same man behind me and a BMW cruising in from a side street: the people on foot would have been using their radios but there hadn't been time for the Mercedes or the Lancia to get here — they wouldn't have known where I was until I got off the train and they had the signal. They'd brought in the BMW from somewhere closer; it had pulled into the traffic twice and stopped twice, keeping its distance.
At Straulauer Allee I went into a cafe and used the phone. Steamy windows and the smell of stale cigarette-smoke and a litter of crumbs and slops on the plastic tables, two cab-drivers with a jug of coffee and a sandwich from the machine, a man in the corner, possibly a tag, his attitude too casual, a man coming in, certainly a tag, the one who'd been on the train.
'Hello?'
'I still can't throw them off.'
'What? This is Frau Hauffman.'
'All I can do is phone you when there's a chance.'
'Who are you, please?'
'Don't leave the phone; I'll call you again soon.'
I believe you have the wrong number, so forth; neither of them moved when I walked out of the cafe into the Allee and across to Elsenstrasse and the bridge.
The feeling of dread persisting, haunting the nerves, the bruise on the hip a reminder of how close they'd come, how close they would come again.
The traffic across the bridge was light; there was no one walking: it was too cold. Below the balustrade the black waters of the river glittered from bank to bank with the lights of the city, and the air was freezing, here in the open away from the buildings. I walked steadily, meaning to go as far as Puschkin Allee and then make a loop and turn back on my tracks and make a run for it, a very fast run that might bring just one of them, only one of them close to me where I could work on him; but they were getting impatient now and I could see three of them ahead of me at the far end of the bridge and when I looked behind me there were two more and the profile of the BMW gathering speed and I felt the rush of adrenalin and the sour taste in the mouth at the onset of fear as I reached the middle of the bridge and they began shutting the trap.
13: PICKPOCKET
Smell of burning flesh; it clung to my coat.
'Have you got anyone in the field?'
More police cars were going in to the bridge; I couldn't see them from here but I could hear their sirens.
'I did have.'
Cone.
There was still the glow of the fire on the wall of the building opposite.
'Have you got anyone in the field now?'
I was furious.
'I can't say.'
Bastard was stonewalling.
People standing outside the apartment block, staring in the direction of the bridge, the light of the flames on their faces.
'Look, I want an answer.'
'I haven't got one.'
The more you push Cone the harder he is to move. But then they're all like that, the directors in the field, because part of their job is to handle their executives when there's a flap on and they're halfway up the wall.
'Why not?'
'You got rid of one,' he said quietly, 'but there might be a few others in your zone. I can't say for sure unless one of them signals. What happened?'
'One of the tags got snatched.'
'One of their tags?'
'Yes.'
In a moment, 'How close were you?'
'I was halfway across Elsenbridge and they got him at one end.'
'Car?'
'Yes.'
'Police car?'
'It could've been, yes, unmarked.'
I hadn't seen anything close. The car had come past the BMW accelerating hard and then it had slewed to a halt by the three men and then there were two. The BMW had done a lot of wheelspin and got there in time but the other car had swung full circle and hit the tail-end and sent it rolling, and that was when the tank had gone up.
'Was there any other action?'
I told him.
'Do you think they might've been going to rush you?'
'Possibly.'
'Then what are you complaining about?'
'Oh, for Christ's sake, you know the operation I'm doing and you know how it works. If — '
'I haven't got a vehicle of any kind,' he said, 'in the field.'
'Then it must have been Yasolev.'
'Not necessarily.'
'Who else?'
The glow had gone from the building, and the people were going back into the apartments. But that awful smell was still on my coat, sickening me. I'd walked past the burning car on the other side of the bridge when the fire crews were working there, and the air had been heavy with smoke and fumes. One of them had been trapped inside, one of Volper's men.
'I don't know who else,' I heard Cone saying, 'but we've got a lot of interested parties, haven't we? The KGB, the HUA, and whatever other enemies Horst Volper might have in the field. We can trip over anyone at all in the day's work.'
It sounded as if he were putt
ing smoke out, covering tracks, steering me away from the subject. I didn't know Cone very well but it sounded like that.
'Look, I want you to see Yasolev. I can't talk to him direct because I haven't got time. There are three tags still with me and I'm going on trying.'
One of them across at the intersection using a parked van for cover; two of them in the opposite direction, a little way along Puschkin Allee, one on each side of the street.
'What do you want me to tell him?'
'This is the thing: Yasolev could've decided to use me as a decoy to draw those people into the street, with the idea of snatching some of them. That's what might have happened just now on the bridge. The man they took is probably in an interrogation room now, being worked over. If that's what Yasolev is doing I want you to tell him he's cutting right across my operation and breaking our agreement. Tell him that we'll stay out here for just as long as he keeps his word and no longer.'
An ambulance turned off the bridge and headed south from the intersection; it wasn't using its codes; there'd be only the burned corpse inside. I didn't know whose it was, who the man had been, but he was possibly one of the tags I'd seen before on foot, or one of the two who'd followed me into the cafe. Life was that short, this afternoon, and the work wasn't finished yet.
'Would it be that bad an idea?' Cone said.
'Using me as a decoy?'
'Yes.'
'If all Yasolev wanted was a decoy he could've used any one of his peons, half a dozen at a time if they got wiped out.'
'But they wouldn't, would they? They wouldn't have your status. Volper's afraid you might infiltrate his operation and destroy it, so he wants to get you first — it's that simple. So you're the only decoy worth sending his people out for.'
''That's all I am, then? A fucking duck?'
'Now there speaks a proud man.'
God damn his eyes.
'I like to think,' I said, 'that I've got more effective uses.' But it didn't carry conviction because he was right: my professional pride was getting in the way.
'Look at it like this,' Cone said quietly. 'You didn't get much out of that man Skidder. I think Yasolev feels that one of his people could've got more. You stand a chance of nabbing one of those tags today and grilling him, but so does Yasolev, if his idea is to do it first, using you as the decoy. And I'm not sure you'd agree that the KGB doesn't know how to interrogate people.'
Cold. By Christ it was cold standing here at this bloody telephone, the air coming in waves from the freezing river. But that wasn't the worst of it; the worst was the chill of horror creeping through the nerves. Not horror, quite — revulsion, a feeling not coming from the brain stem but the neocortex, philosophical, sophisticated; an awareness of the difference between driving myself to the brink of extinction on my own responsibility and being driven there by someone else, Yasolev, as a matter of cold-blooded expedience.
'You've got a point,' I said, 'but if that's what Yasolev is doing he should have put it to me first and asked for my approval instead of breaking our contract. Tell him that. Tell him my life's on the line and not his. And tell him that if he wants to use me as a pawn across the board he's got the wrong man and he'll have to get another one for Quickstep — if he can.'
Silence for a while, except for scratchy background on the line. The tag on the other side of the intersection wasn't alone any more.
'Understood,' Cone said at last. 'But I've got a question. What are you going to do now?'
'Keep going. I've got them in the zone and there's still a chance of bringing one of them down.'
'Keep in touch,' he said, and rang off.
It was past ten o'clock when they tried again.
Earlier, I was hungry, and had some potato soup in a place in Baum-Schulenweg further down the river. Earlier, I was cold and afraid, and went into a library for warmth, to experience the feeling of air that didn't paralyse the face, and to experience the atmosphere of the social norm, wherein ordinary people sat reading books or the papers, instead of seeing a movie, or instead of walking the streets from shadow to shadow, cold and afraid.
By ten o'clock I'd gone from Treptower Park to Konigsheide and north again to Baum-Schulenweg, waiting for twenty minutes in a U-bahnhof and checking my watch, making it seem that I was so desperate for the rendezvous that I was taking risks, making three phone calls and speaking the correct lines from the scenario because an efficiently-trained tag is taught to lip-read.
I still can't throw them off, so forth, I'll make contact when I can.
And now I was in a crowd outside a bowling-alley, huddling among the people for warmth and company and the chance of a close encounter that could give me what I wanted: information.
'I don't know,' I said. 'I think there's room for fifty but they're short of bowls.'
'Well, I'm not surprised. They're always short of something.' A man in a leather jacket ripped at the shoulder, his hands dug into his pockets to keep them warm.
'They should either let us in or tell us how long we've got to wait.' A thin girl half-buried in her boyfriend's arms, her nose raw from rubbing with a handkerchief.
Another bus stopped and people got off, some of them joining us, blowing into their hands, jogging up and down on the cold pavement.
'Can't get in?'
'They said they're short of equipment.'
'Then why don't they — '
I didn't hear any more because someone had moved against me and I brought an elbow down on that side and paralysed his wrist but the knife had already gone in and I could feel the warmth oozing under my clothes. Minimal pain because the shock had brought the endorphins flooding to the site.
I hadn't expected a knife in a crowd because it'd be difficult for anyone to get clear but he'd taken the chance and we were still close together — he was in a half-crouch because of the pain in the smashed wrist-bone and the knife was on the ground. He came up at me and I'd been waiting for it and I dropped him with a jab to the carotid nerve and he sank down again with his knees folding and I began easing my way out because there was no chance of getting him away for questioning — the others would be too close.
'What are you — '
'Pickpocket — he's a — '
'Is it a heart attack?'
'Tried to pick my pocket!'
'I think he's ill — '
'I'll get an ambulance — '
'Look, there's a knife — '
Everyone fussing and it kept them busy and I got to the edge of the crowd and kept walking, pain creeping into the nerves on my right side he'd gone for the liver and it could have been penetrated for all I could tell because the effects wouldn't be immediate, just a feeling of violation for the moment, dark physical mischief: I never see action with a blade of any kind without thinking of Macbeth and his mad frenzied thrusts in the lamplit chamber because a knife is so very personal, so very intimate, a feeling of violation, then, as I walked to the corner and turned, keeping to shadow, a hand pressed to my right side, how sordid, if this were going to be the last of this lone ferret, a knife-wound received in a crowd outside a bowling-alley on a dirty winter night, felled by a chance hit and not even ready for it, shadow down, and how ignobly, but what do you expect in this trade, for Christ's make, a volley of grapeshot as you stand with breast bared beneath the tattered banner at the barricades with time for the utterance of your famous last words?
In this game you get what you pay for and life's cheap.
Not oozing any more, or I wasn't aware of it, was perhaps getting used to it, the slow letting of blood. It was venous, not arterial, otherwise I'd have been soaked by now and weakening. I tried to walk as upright as I could because they might not have been near enough, the others, to know what had happened, but they'd catch on soon enough if I looked winged and then they'd make a rush to finish me off while I couldn't defend myself, though they'd be wrong there, my good friend, you will kindly refrain from composing my bloody epitaph while I'm still on my feet, and if you've e
ver tried chewing on a turkey's gizzard you'll know what I mean.
Narrower streets, these, running off Treptower Park, with the Wall half a mile away, less than that, a floodlit concrete dam strong in the night, strong enough to hold back the flow of humanity that would otherwise surge to meet its kind. If only someone would blast a hole in that bloody thing and let the world get on with its business, no one behind me when I turned a corner and looked back, no one, and that was a worry because there was no reason for them to leave my tracks; even if I'd gone for the throat instead of the carotid and dropped him to a quick death they wouldn't have gone near him: casualties were to be expected on this busy night.
A patch of waste-ground with a big rubbish bin against a rotting fence, and I moved into its shadow and sat on the frosty dirt and made a wad of my handkerchief and opened my coat and pulled up my sweater and put the wad over the wound in my side and held it there until it stuck to the blood; I wouldn't see much if I tried to look: a wound is a wound and if it looked big enough to need medical attention it'd have to wait in any case until this night's work was done.
I still couldn't see them anywhere near; in the sour light from the street lamps here I would have picked out movement but there wasn't any. I was alone.
I was alone and one of two things must have happened: either I'd put too much power behind the half-fist when I'd gone for that man's carotid nerve and he'd never got up again and they'd decided that two dead in the field was enough, or Yasolev had ordered another of them snatched and they'd been called off, which was exactly what I'd warned Cone could happen, Gott strafe them, this was a solo operation and I didn't want any interference.
It was half-past ten and I moved from the shadow of the rubbish bin and crossed the street and found cover at the corner of Richterstrasse and checked the environment and it was blank, still blank. But the light was tricky because at some time or other there'd been a spate of escape attempts in this area and I was within a couple of hundred yards of the Wall and the searchlight they'd installed there was sweeping the ground and flickering across the buildings and the gaps between them with the intermittent effect of a strobe.