Quiller KGB q-13

by Adam Hall

  'Is there anything,' Cone asked me, 'I can do?'

  'Yes. I'd feel easier if you could man that phone constantly until I can stabilise things.'

  'I'll have my food sent in.'

  'If you've got to leave the phone, get Yasolev in. But he can't signal London and we might need to do that, any time now. I don't — '

  'I'll be standing by without a break. Is there anything else?'

  'No. I'm going to ground and I'll phone you when I'm there.'

  Another police car, cruising slowly. I turned my back to the street.

  'I'd like,' Cone said quietly, 'to send you some support. I've got six men.'

  'Offer them my respects.'

  I rang off and waited until the police car had crossed the intersection and then I walked into the alley and reached the next street and got into the BMW and for a moment sat doing nothing, thinking of nothing, letting the muscles go limp and feeling the mood deepening towards the alpha state, and the benison of not caring, not knowing, not being afraid.

  Then after a little time I began thinking again, going over things carefully, assessing the damage, trying to plan the future. I didn't know how many people there'd been in the Airforce building when I'd gone through the window. I'd heard shouting on the seventh floor and that had probably been Melnichenko and the other two as I ran for the emergency stairs and hit the walls at the corners on the way down and went through the door on the sixth floor and pressed the elevator button to delay pursuit and took the stairs again to the ground floor.

  There were police code lights flashing outside the front entrance and some people in the lobby and I went back into the stairwell and opened the door to the street and found it clear. There was a window and I twisted round and took a look at my back; the leather coat had been slashed by the breaking glass up there but there was no blood and in East Berlin you can get by on the streets with worn clothing and not attract attention. I could feel some blood that had started from cuts on the nape of the neck but it was already clotting and I left it alone and pulled up the collar and started looking for a phone box on the way back to the car.

  I'd left the BMW the prescribed distance from the work-scene — the Luftwaffe Building — three or four blocks. It's dangerous to leave a car closer than that because if you think there's going to be any problem about getting clear you're going to do it on foot because the sound of a vehicle starting up will bring them running and if you leave the car near the scene without using it you won't get back to it that easily: the police will normally set up a watch in the area and check any vehicle standing unattended.

  The street was clear and I switched on the parking lights and got out and checked them front and rear. It wasn't far to the safe-house but I could be stopped anywhere along the way by police for a dead bulb and that could be fatal.

  The lights were all right and I got back in and started up and moved off and stopped again at the intersection until the signals went green but there was a police car standing in the middle of the road with its lights flashing when I tried to turn right, so I kept straight on and tried the next street but there was a barricade with an officer manning it and I kept on again and tried the next left and got through until the next intersection. Two Vopos and another barricade to the right and straight ahead, the officers waving their batons to show me the way I had to go.

  By now the BMW was one of a dozen vehicles working through a maze — Bruderstrasse, Unterwasserstrasse, Spittelmarkt, Gertrstrasse — with the Airforce building as its centre.

  The centre of the trap.

  The night had been quiet; now it was loud with the sound of running engines and the shouts of the Vopos as they directed the swell of traffic into the net. I checked two alleys as I passed them but they both had a guard; the whole area was being sealed off and I stayed where I was, rolling the BMW forward a yard at a time between halts as the police PA system started up.

  You will switch off your engines. Switch off your engines, please, and stay inside your vehicles.

  I'd come full-circle and the Luftwaffe Building was directly ahead at the next intersection. Lights were flashing in front and behind me and green-uniformed police were taking up positions wherever there wits an exit from the street.

  Switch off your engines, please.

  Yes indeed, comrades, petrol is expensive at 20 marks a gallon and we don't want to sit here in a cloud of asphyxiating bloody exhaust gas until you're ready to check our papers and flash a torch in our face, do we, this is a trap, we don't want to sit here choking on carbon-bloody-monoxide while you take your time turning over all the little minnows the net to find the one you want, do we, this is a trap -

  I know.

  We can't get out.

  I know.

  You can't show your papers -

  Shuddup. Leave me alone.

  Panicky little bastard, the rotten little harbinger of doom, won't let you alone, this is a trap, I know it's a trap so shuddup.

  Stay where you are. Do not leave your vehicle.

  I wouldn't dream of it. Get out of this car and take one step and there'll be a Vopo closing in, two or three of them closing in like sharks that've seen something in the water: I'm going to stay exactly where I am, comrades, sitting in my sweat.

  Coloured lights flashing wherever you looked, lights reflected in the windscreens and the windows and the metalwork of the 280 SE in front of me, in the driving-mirror and the chrome strips along the dashboard, lights wherever you looked, but no sound now except for the movement of boots as the police deployed themselves and the trap was finally shut.

  'What are they doing?'

  Girl with light hair and green eyeshadow and a red mouth, a cigarette in her small white fingers as she leaned out of the window of her Lancia alongside the BMW. I couldn't see who was at the wheel.

  'It's a police block.'

  A look of surprise, 'Well, yes, but I mean — '

  It's a trap.

  Shuddup.

  Fireman.

  A door opened somewhere behind me and a man got out and a Vopo moved in from the building. 'You will stay in your vehicle, didn't you hear?'

  'But what are you stopping us for?'

  'You are to stay in your vehicle.'

  And you'd better get the message, Fritz my good friend, where the hell are you from, West Berlin or somewhere? You don't question the police on this side of the Wall: they question you.

  Fireman, yes. This was an identity parade and every one of us would have to be cleared by the fireman somewhere up there at the end of the street, the only man who knew my face.

  This is the one?

  I think so.

  Take a good look. Make sure.

  Staring at me from the top of a ladder one minute, seventy feet in the air, staring at me in the street the next minute, in the middle of a horde of police. Life is a game, my friend, life is a cabaret.

  And this is the man with no papers?

  Yes, captain.

  Then bring him along, two of you.

  Thirty minutes, at an approximate estimation. Thirty minutes from now.

  You will now leave your vehicles and form a single line. Please leave your vehicles.

  Doors opening and slamming shut like a fusillade of shots along the street, the echoes bouncing from the buildings. The lights still flashing in the eerie silence that came down now, except for the shuffling of feet.

  'Are they searching them?'

  A small man beside me suddenly, keeping his voice low; he was on his toes, trying to see the front of the line.

  'I don't know,' I said. 'Why not leave it in the car?'

  He flicked a look at me. 'If they're searching us, they'll search the cars too.'

  Not the first time he'd been caught in a drug bust. But that wasn't what it was.

  It's a trap.

  I don't need telling.

  It had probably been Melnichenko who had started this. As a high-level member of the GRU he'd carry a lot of clout and he'd use it.
He would have put two and two together when he'd found the window still open an inch and seen the fuss in the street: the man he'd seen later, running for the stairs, might have been in his office earlier and been surprised there. He would think immediately of the Trumpeter file and pick up a telephone very fast indeed. The file would still be there — he'd check on that — but he would want to know who'd been in his office and what they were looking for.

  I want police blocks set up immediately and the area contained. I want everyone searched and questioned. I shall remain in my office in the Airforce Building and you will please report to me there.

  Thy will be done.

  Move along, please. Keep the line moving.

  It wasn't, at this end. We were a stationary herd, twenty or thirty of us in the immediate group, standing around the cars. The police kept well back against the buildings, hands behind them, guns on their hips, their peaked caps turning slowly as they watched the crowd.

  'I think they're going to search us.'

  'Try dropping it between your feet.'

  I moved away from him; he might try something cute, and I didn't want them to find a bag of cocaine in my pocket.

  It wouldn't matter.

  You're perfectly right.

  There was another man.

  'You'll be late for the party.' The girl with the red mouth.

  'Yes,' I said.

  'You want to take us along?'

  This was the other girl, the one who'd been at the wheel, a mane of black hair, gold earrings, hips tilted, one leg dipped at the knee.

  'If I ever get there,' I said.

  The other man was looking around him, though not obviously, not obviously at all, just taking a quick glance as he shrugged deeper into his coat, as he brushed ash off his sleeve.

  'If you're too late for the party, would you like to come home with us?'

  'Very much.'

  And you cannot, my good friend, say that I was lying.

  He'd been standing close to the pagoda-top Mercedes until a few minutes ago, but now he was deeper into the crowd, not so isolated.

  'We'll give you a good time.' The hips tilting the other way. 'I'm Lili, and this is Marie.'

  'Delighted.'

  He was worried, the man in the crowd. The police weren't likely to notice it because they had to keep so many of us under observation, whereas I could watch the man with more concentration.

  'What's your name?'

  'Mickey Mouse,' I said, and they both laughed.

  When I'd got out of the car I'd done the same as the man, taking some quick glances around the environment; I'd no need to check it again. Behind us there was the intersection and a police car was stationed there and a barricade set up. In front of us was the group of police and the head of the line. There were doorways along the street but none of them offering cover. The only exit was a narrow gap between two of the buildings, not wide enough to call an alley; perhaps only a passage where dustbins were kept. Two Vopos were stationed there.

  'Are you married?'

  The man had a belted coat on; he was middle-aged, medium height, with a fur hat and a good pair of gloves. He wasn't a businessman, because of the soft rubber shoes. He wasn't, had never been, an official, despite the belted coat: he carried no air of authority, nor even a semblance. The car he'd got out of was the black pagoda-top Mercedes, an old model but light and fast; it suited him.

  'Yes,' I said. Married.

  He could conceivably be an agent of some kind; not necessarily a spook but an entrepreneur in one of the intelligence services; or freelance.

  'What's your wife's name?'

  But he didn't have nervous stamina.

  'Minnie Mouse.'

  Got another laugh. By nervous stamina I mean that he was visibly beginning to break down. His head was turning more often now as he looked for a way out, and the colour was leaving his face. This is the way a trap will work on you, bringing the onset of panic by infinite degrees; and every time you look around for some way of escape and don't see one, the nerves go through another little death. I could see what was happening to the man over there because it was also happening to me.

  Movement, near the Lancia.

  'If I were you,' I said, 'I'd shut the windows of your car.'

  Marie turned her head. 'What?'

  ''That chap's trying to get rid of some stuff.'

  'What stuff?' Then she saw him, the short man; he was standing right against the Lancia and she took straight off like a good gal and clobbered him with her handbag and I turned away because one of the policemen had caught on and was coming across from the buildings and with the all-points bulletin out for me I couldn't afford to let them come too close.

  'What's going on there?'

  The poor little bastard had dropped the package he'd been trying to shove through the Lancia's window and stood there with one arm up as a shield against the handbag.

  Everyone turned to look, except the man with the belted coat, and he was using the chance to move nearer the gap between the bank and the library and I decided to head him off but it took a good ten minutes, stamping my feet quietly to keep them warm, shifting them backwards an inch at a time, watching the comedy going on near the Lancia — a cop, two tarts and a drug-pusher, what a cast — and finally I made the distance and got between the man in the coat and the alleyway and stood there with my back to it, blowing into my hands, slapping my shoulders.

  Keep the line moving. Keep moving.

  You must be joking, we haven't budged for the last fifteen minutes.

  He looked at me now, just once, his glance passing across me and away again, and by now his face was bloodless. I would have said he'd got more on his mind than a packet of snort, though God knew what it might be. Both his hands were in the pockets of his coat and I noticed that the right one seemed a little larger, as if he were holding something.

  Keep the line moving. Keep moving, now!

  The PA horn wasn't close but its sound hit his nerves and he flinched. And then we were off at last, shuffling towards the checkpoint, and he broke and swung round and started his run and I got in his way and he tried to dodge round me and I let out a shout and he pulled his gun as the nearest policemen came away from the buildings very fast in a crouching run with their own guns out and I moved backwards out of their way and got to the alley as the first shot sounded and then a fusillade so I suppose he'd fired first and they'd just wiped him out before he could hurt anyone, they're very efficient in East Berlin.

  20: BLIND

  Staring at his face.

  Mission status: the executive is clear of his red sector and has gone to ground. He is maintaining contact with his DIF.

  The face in the photographs.

  Clear of his red sector, so forth, yes, but it didn't get us very far, did it, just saved our skin, all that work and all I'd got was the Melnichenko-Trumpeter connection because the file was in his personal office.

  Volper's. Volper's face.

  Smooth, flat-looking, featureless except for the eyes, their being further apart than the norm, and the nose, dead straight and with almost no bridge.

  He was somewhere in this city and within the next twenty-four hours I would have to find him, and there was only one way and it was deadly because it meant taking to the streets and that was where the police patrols would be.

  I telephoned Cone at eight o'clock in the morning, with the hydrogen peroxide stinging in the cuts at the back of my neck.

  'I’m at the safe-house.'

  'What's your condition?'

  'Active. There wasn't a lot of trouble. Few cuts. I got some sleep.'

  'What do I report for the board?'

  I told him, gone to ground, so forth.

  'Do you need anything?'

  'Yes. I need funds placed at the Ost-Deutschbanke in Dmitroffstrasse in the name of Gunter Heinrich Blum and made available to him on demand. The amount should be the replacement cost of a Mercedes 280SE.' I gave him time to make notes.
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  'How old?'

  'Last year's.'

  That'd get the dust out of their bustles in the Accounts department

  'Is there a rush?'

  'Make it within two days.'

  He didn't ask for any explanation because if I wanted to give him one I would do that. We'd got twenty-four hours left to bring home Quickstep and if I could do it for the price of a second-hand 280SE they'd call it pocket-money in London.

  'More?'

  'I want official freedom of passage from East Germany to the West in the name of Frau Hilda Marlene Blum. Her identity number is 325-A-467-10, date of birth July 9 1937, place of birth, Berlin. Ask — '

  'East or — ' then something like oh, come on. He was feeling the strain.

  'Ask Yasolev to see to it. There's no immediate rush, but before this time tomorrow the shit's going to hit the fan and I'd like things in order as soon as possible.'

  Making notes.

  'The pass should be left at the bank together with the funds, in an envelope with the KGB seal on it.'

  'One or two?'

  Not Cone. Gunter, in the doorway.

  'Two.'

  'What?'

  'I was talking to someone.' Eggs.

  'Am I going to be able to reach you?'

  'Only by phone.' I gave him the number and he sounded relieved. 'I commend your fortitude,' I said.

  'You know you can get me thrown out, don't you?'

  'Yes.'

  He wasn't joking. The director in the field is expected to keep control of the executive in terms of his whereabouts in every phase of the mission providing the executive can remain in signals with him. I was going to remain in signals but I wasn't going to tell him where I'd gone to ground and that left him way out on a limb and Bureau One could cut off his career the moment he got back to London for final debriefing.

  Hiss from the kitchen as the eggs went into the pan. 'Look,' I said carefully, 'I think you know when any given DIF runs me through a mission he's likely to lose track if that's how I want things to go. Shepley knows it too. I don't think he'll come down on you if I can't bring this one home. And if I can, you'll be an overnight saint.'