Quiller KGB q-13

by Adam Hall

  Black Audi going very fast towards the blaze, underestimating its closeness and braking hard and slamming against a sandbin and bouncing off and spinning and getting control and coming back past the other side of the truck. I twisted on top of the fuel tank until I was lying with my back to the street, a black polythene and fabric bundle in the half-dark as the truck lumbered through its forced detour and another came up alongside, one of the drivers shouting something to the other.

  A police car neared from the intersection with its lights splashing against the buildings and I waited until the truck was moving close to a wall and pulling up and then I dropped and rolled underneath, reaching for a handhold on the cruciform chassis beams, heaving myself up and hanging on as a wash of light flowed across the road surface And the wheels of a private car rolled past at a walking pace and then halted and turned as one of the Vopos shouted.

  I shifted over as the big propeller-shaft of the truck began brushing my arm but the handhold was too smooth and I had to cling on to a brake cable, swinging with both feet lodged against a cross-member. The truck slowed again and turned between two rows of wooden platforms, coming to a halt as a man dropped from the cab; all I could see were his legs. The wheels of another truck were rolling to a halt behind us and I hung there taking slow shallow breaths as the diesel gas clouded from the exhausts.

  Dropped, crawled under the platform and lay there among a litter of crates, pulling the nearest ones around me for cover.

  Take stock. I was in a freight-yard and the trucks were coming in to unload for the markets that would open for shopkeepers, probably at first light. There would be Volper's people moving through the area, checking everywhere before they assumed one of two things: either the grenade had finished me or I'd managed to get clear. Then they would leave, moving in larger circles with the truck depot as their centre.

  There was still a chance of making the switch: of keeping one of them in sight and waiting until he moved away and moving after him and staying on his track until led me to base, to the objective for Quickstep, to Horst Volper.

  Must've been a drunk!

  Or a stolen car, going that speed!

  Truckers calling to each other they came alongside and began work on the ropes and the tarpaulins, big men in big coats, in from the country, mud on their boots.

  Makes you sick, with him still in the car.

  A woman, maybe.

  Worse, then. Hans! Gimme a hand with this rope, the knot’s frozen!

  I began checking the environment. There must be ten or fifteen platforms in the yard, a hundred feet long, with twenty or thirty trucks crawling between them and pulling up, the rattle of their diesels dying one after another and leaving only the shouts of the men and the banging of their boots as they moved about, stowing the tarpaulins and pulling the crates on their backs, the crates, baskets, sacks and bundles, dropping them onto the platforms.

  What's he coming here for?

  Give us a talk about bloody Lenin, what else?

  He's all right, Otto, he's shaking things up over there!

  Pity he doesn't knock the Wall down, now that'd be something!

  Below the platforms, a backdrop of red brick walls and store fronts, doors, windows, sandbins, street lamps, two cars standing within fifty yards of where I was lying in cover, a man moving away from a BMW and coming into the depot, looking at no one, talking to no one, hands shoved into the vertical chest-pockets of his black anorak, his head turning left, turning right. I wasn't in hazard: this was good cover among the debris of broken crates and cardboard boxes, with the light factor so low as to be shadowless. I could lie easy, letting the body go through its healing processes and the nerves relax — I'd skinned a hand when I'd hit the door of the Merc open and pitched out, and my back had twisted as I'd started my run, falling and getting up and falling again and finding my feet and lurching towards cover; I didn't know what I looked like from the back, whether the rush of flame had actually seared the plastic jacket, how much attention I'd attract when I finally walked out of here. There was a lingering degree of shock from the instant when I'd known what they must have thrown into the car, worse than when the thing had blown up because I'd been expecting that. Relax, then, relax and observe.

  The scents of damp earth and greenstuff came on the air, sweet after the man-made reek of exhaust gas, the smell of the country drifting in to the stone and steel and concrete mileu of the man-made city. The smell of black tobacco as the truckers lit up again as they worked.

  Within the next ten minutes I counted four men moving about in the area, the one from the BMW and three coming in from the street that ran at right-angles, their figures silhouetted against the last of the blaze as the fire crews worked with their hoses and extinguishers. Black smoke drifted as thick as black water from the mouth of the street, coloured by the lights of the police cars and the fire-trucks, and one of the men coming across here was coughing the whole time, probably because he'd stayed close to the burning car, trying to see if the driver were still inside.

  A rat ran close to my face as I lay perfectly still, a huge rat, a city rat here for the feasting, and another followed, scampering across my leg and stopping, its feet splayed as it sniffed; and I moved slightly and felt it leap in alarm and heard it scuttle away; it had felt flesh underfoot and suspected I was carrion. Feast, my good friend, but not on me.

  Ten minutes more and two of the men had passed along the row of trucks behind me: I could watch both rows by turning my head at intervals. It may have been a subconscious concession to social convention that stopped them going through the debris under the platforms; the truckers would hardly notice them as they walked past, but they would have attracted attention if they'd started scavenging. And they were looking for a man on foot, the silhouette or the shadow of a man loping in the distance from cover to cover, someone they could give chase to and run down and kill. If this yard had been deserted, I think they might have made a thorough search, taking their time, taking an hour, two hours, before they were satisfied.

  Get it, Heiner!

  Don't move!

  Clang of a metal bar, maybe a tyre-iron, as one of the rats leapt and vanished in the half-dark.

  Another ten minutes and a truck started up at the front of the row and moved off, the sound of its diesel drumming within the walls of the yard, the gas from its exhaust creeping across the ground.

  There was only one man now, the one from the BMW that stood fifty feet away near a fire hydrant. He was moving towards the area where I was lying, checking the trucks for the second time. He would be my last chance for making the switch, and it worried me.

  There was no other vehicle in sight and even if there had been it would have been locked and although I could smash a window and get in, the key would almost certainly not be there and I wouldn't have time to hot-wire the ignition and take up station behind the BMW.

  The BMW was the only car I could use, and if this man were the last of the hit-team left in the area I wouldn't have to follow him anyway. I would have to take him with me.

  He was coming along the nearest row between the trucks and the platform and was within thirty feet of me. I got a glimpse of him now and then between the slats but his face was strange; he wasn't one of the tags who'd been with me through the streets the day before. A blunt face with short black hair, worn leather jacket, not a big man but strong, wide-shouldered, thick at the wrist. He was ducking to look under the trucks now, then turning and looking under the platform.

  There was deep shadow here, the flat white light of the street lamps blanked off by the trucks, but he would see me if he looked under the platform and was close enough.

  If I couldn't do the switch there was only one option left to me. It was something I have never done before in any mission, on principle and because the Bureau disallows it, but I believed as I lay there among the mess of broken crates and beer cans that I would have to do it now.

  Not now, later. But prepare it now.


  Paul, canyou shift up a couple of metres?

  What for?

  I've got to let the tailboard down.

  Half a jiff.

  Another truck was moving off at the end of the row behind me and a crate dropped off the platform and split open, spilling green apples. Paul's truck started up, and the huge twin wheels rolled as the man, the man with the blunt face, stood back. Small flat-beds and vans had started coming in from the street as the shopkeepers arrived to load up. Engines were running everywhere in the crowded yard, and the air was thick with carbon monoxide.

  All right, that'll do it!

  A tailboard slammed down against the rubber stops. The man was close now, two or three metres away.

  Heinrich! Where's Veidt?

  Haven't seen him.

  I've got his quota!

  The door of a cab clanged shut and boots hit the ground. The section of platform above my head took the weight of potato sacks as they were swung from the truck. The man ducked and looked under the platform, closer still now, but didn't see me among the debris.

  Veidt's not coming!

  Why not?

  He's off sick.

  Shit!

  The engines rumbled. The big wheels rolled. The truckers shouted. Then the man looked under the platform again and saw me.

  25: END-PHASE

  It was a long way.

  A minute ago a police car had gone past the entrance to the freight yard with its lights flashing. I suppose it was one of the patrols which had gone to the scene of the bombed-out Mercedes. I didn't want any police near me.

  A long way, maybe fifty metres, dragging him behind me through the litter, through the mess.

  It had been an easy enough strike because he hadn't been ready for it and couldn't reach his gun. He'd given a shout as I'd pulled him down but there were shouts going on all over the place and no one took any notice. It was a 9mm Mauser and I'd emptied the magazine and scattered the bullets and wrapped the gun in some newspaper and dropped it into a crate. They're dangerous, and can hurt people.

  I'd put the keys in my pocket.

  He must have caught his leg on something, one of the platform supports or a splintered crate, when I'd brought him under here with me, because sometimes when I looked back I caught the glint of blood across the ground. So I turned him over and went on dragging him to the end of the row.

  He was valuable. I prized him. He was the custodian of my enterprise, Quickstep. I didn't at this time dwell on the future, and what I would have to do.

  Against your precious principles.

  Yes.

  It's nothing to do with principles. It frightens you.

  If you say so.

  You know it's true.

  Shuddup.

  I was dragging him by the wrists and it wasn't easy because I was having to move in a crouch below the platform and it was a strain on the lumbar muscles. But to get him from here to the end of the row wouldn't be the worst of it.

  I felt his wrists jerk suddenly as he came to and tried to get free. I dropped him and did some minor work on the left side of the neck and then started pulling him along again.

  A wrecking truck went past the gates, its lights dappling the dark with colour. They would haul the burnt-out Mercedes away, like a dead elephant. It had been a nice motorcar: I like that particular model.

  And then we reached the end of the platform and I stopped work and rested a little, lying flat on my back, keeping one of his wrists in my hand so that I'd know if he tried to do anything.

  Just gone five, 05:03 to be exact. Less than three hours, then, to the deadline. It wasn't long. It depended on how things went, how effective I could prove, and what kind of man he was, how strong, how weak. Three hours wouldn't be long, because I also had to locate Horst Volper and deal with him, and in time.

  'Back off there! Get in the next line!'

  Green uniform. Green uniform and a holstered revolver and polished hoots, peaked cap. He was directing the trucks.

  Until he moved I couldn't bring my prisoner into the open. It was going to be bad enough with the other people around.

  'Get in behind that one — come on!'

  An engine gunning up.

  I watched his boots. I watched them for ten minutes, fifteen, and listened to him shouting, telling them where to bring their vans and their pickups and flat-beds. Then a bit of trouble started in the next row, a scraping of metal, and a lot more shouting than usual. I think one of them had buckled another's wing and they were arguing the toss. The policeman went over there.

  I got the man's wrists again and dragged him clear of the platform and began walking him to the gates with his arm round my shoulders and my own round his waist but his feet were dragging and it would have been easier to give him a fireman's lift but I couldn't do that because it would have looked very odd, something serious.

  Headlights sweeping across the yard as the shopkeepers kept coming in. If they saw me they wouldn't do anything; this was a narrow time-gap for them — they had to get the produce through the checkers and into their shops and on display before they opened.

  'What's the trouble, then?'

  'He fell and banged his head.'

  One of the truckers, sweating in the chill morning, his breath steaming as he stood fishing for his pack of cigarettes.

  'Tell the cop, he'll get an ambulance.'

  'He's not that bad,' dragging him faster, swinging him along. 'I’m getting him to the car — '

  'You ought to tell the — '

  'He's a friend of mine, had too much to drink — I don't want to get him in trouble.'

  'That's different,' grunt of a laugh as he lit up and clicked his lighter shut, turning away.

  Swinging him along, a dead weight, one of his feet getting in the way of my own, sweat on the back of my neck as I felt the cop's eyes on us — you there, what's the trouble? — don't let him turn, don't let him see us, swinging the bastard along, he would've shot me between the eyes if I hadn't been so fast, those were his instructions, his instructions from Horst Volper, come on you bastard lift your bloody feet up, come on.

  'Had a skinful?'

  'How did you guess?'

  Face in a window of the van going by, laughing.

  Crossing the street and I got the keys and let him slump against the BMW while I opened the passenger door and pushed him in, his eyes coming open but with no understanding in them. Coloured light flashing as a police patrol crawled past, pulling in to the kerb as the wrecking truck turned in from the next street, hauling the blackened shell of the Mercedes.

  05:37 on the dashboard clock, the fuel gauge at half. I started up and waited until the wrecker had gone by and the police car swung in a U-turn and followed it and then I took the opposite direction, turning left at the intersection to keep clear of the police crew throwing sand on the road where the fire had been.

  Heard his breath coming in a jerk as he recovered enough to realise the situation and instinctively tried to do something, lifting his foot and bringing it down as I used the edge of my hand on the knee-cap — I suppose he was trying to break the gear-lever or smash my ankle and hit the brake-pedal, something like that.

  His breath was hissing now and he was holding his knee.

  'Give me your name.'

  Didn't answer.

  Later would do, but the name is important, the key to the psyche. Our name is the most personal thing about us, a cypher for all that we are, our claim to identity. It is the first thing you do, when you begin the matter: you get their name, so that you can turn it as a weapon against them.

  I drove circumspectly, slowing in good time for the lights when they changed to amber, keeping five kph below the speed limit, driving west and south and reaching the safe-house at 05:52.

  Before we got out of the car I said: 'You are in my hands, as you realise, but you have a choice.'

  I told him what it was.

  Gunter Blum, looking down, his face white.

  'Don't
stand there,' I said. 'Don't just stand there like that.'

  I wanted to be angry with him, for showing me what I had done, for holding up a mirror to me, to the picture of Dorian Gray. That was how it felt, how I thought of it.

  'What happened?' he asked me.

  I didn't answer. The light was still very bright: I'd taken the shade off and put some aluminium foil round it to intensify the glare. That too is important, another tool of this most hideous of all trades. There were smells in the room, too, none of them strong but none of them pleasant. There was no sound, except for his breathing. Dollinger's, Helmut Dollinger's breathing. It was all, one might say, that he had left: the ability to breathe.

  Gunter was watching me now, his mouth open a little, his eyes naked and appalled under the fierce glare of the lamp.

  I'd called him in here.

  'I want you to take him somewhere and leave him, and phone for an ambulance, tell them where to find him.'

  I was very tired. This business had drained me, and I hadn't expected it to be so bad. But if I had expected it, I would still have had to do it.

  Against your principles.

  Indeed yes, against my principles, against the tenets of human conduct that alone can keep some sort of brotherhood alive in this angry world. These I had transgressed, and this is not, my good friend — my friend, I am sure, no longer — this is not to purge myself in an outpouring of spurious confession. I shall remember the name of Dollinger. I shall remember it.

  Gunter: 'Take him where?'

  'What? Anywhere. In a doorway, where you won't be seen.' It occurred to me, either because I was finding it difficult to regain my focus on reality or because he looked so stunned, Gunter, so removed from ordinary understanding — it occurred to me that I should spell it out for him, for his own sake. 'That's the important thing, of course, that no one sees you. Then phone for an ambulance, without giving your name.'