Quiller Solitaire

by Adam Hall

  When he reached me he asked, 'You were signalling London?'

  He'd seen me through the window, known what I must be doing.

  'Washington.'

  His expressionless eyes rested on me. 'Bureau One is in Washington, I believe.'

  'Yes.'

  'You're signalling Bureau One?'

  'Yes.'

  He looked away, watching two of the kids struggling on the mat, one of them trying to get out of a choke-hold, pulling and tugging. I felt his frustration.

  'I've always heard,' Thrower said, 'that you are intractable.'

  'I expect you have.'

  'It is in my mind,' he said smoothly, with no rancour, no rancour at all in his tone, 'to ask that you are replaced. I assume that doesn't surprise you.'

  'No.'

  I didn't want to talk to him; we didn't speak the same language, and it was so bloody cold in this place that my mouth felt clamped by it, by the cold, my jaws felt frozen, but it was a consolation that with a bit of luck I would shortly be on my way to a hot rendezvous, joke, my good friend, that is a little joke, we must do what we can to keep cheerful, must we not.

  'Perhaps you would give him my respects,' Thrower was saying.

  'What?

  'Bureau One.'

  'Of course.'

  The kid on the mat got free suddenly, and I felt a bit better.

  Yes?

  We've just got a signal, sir, from the executive for Solitaire. He requests your attention.

  It's the correct term, you see, straight out of the book, requests your attention, means the poor bastard stuck out there in the field wants to talk to you, for Christ's sake, can't they speak the Queen's English?

  Cold. I wanted to move my feet to get some warmth in them but I didn't because this bastard was here, Thrower, sign of weakness, cold feet, wouldn't do.

  Is he in a red sector?

  Sitting up in bed in his pyjamas, Bureau One, host of hosts, just a touch difficult to imagine the godhead in pyjamas.

  No, sir, but there's a problem with his DIF.

  Shatner, in the floodlit Signals room, standing there at the board with his arms folded, looking at his shoes, his cracked and rather ancient suede shoes, the hole still in his sock, standing there looking down at them because he didn't want to look at Croder, because Control's responsibility had been passed on by the executive to the Chief of Signals and that was a little embarrassing.

  He's in Berlin?

  Yes, sir.

  Croder, in the Signals room, walking up and down like a bloody vulture with its wings folded behind it, he looks like that, actually, Croder, he's got a thin neck and it tends to disappear into his collar, and that hook he's got for a hand is so very like a claw, walking up and down and looking at nobody because the Chief of Signals' responsibility for the mission had been passed on by the executive to Bureau One, and that too was embarrassing.

  He's talked to Mr Croder?

  Yes, sir.

  Head throbbing, my head was throbbing, the pulse-rate would be a degree elevated, say 73, 74, because epiphany was setting in and I was beginning to wonder whether it was a terribly good idea to bring the mission to a dead stop and risk crashing it over a difference of opinion, there were so many lives in the balance, all those people in the plane.

  No, I refuse that. Their lives would be at a greater risk if I let this dictatorial bureaucrat get in my way, because I knew what to do, in the deep reaches of the psyche where everything is known I knew what to do.

  Then I'll talk to him myself.

  He'd got to. He was party to my contract.

  But it was a long shot, Christ it was a long shot despite all the wonders of technology and telephones because it might not be like that at all in the Signals room – Croder could have taken Shatner outside to work out some kind of decision, rather than disturb Bureau One at three in the morning five thousand miles away, they could very well be agreeing to hold things off, wait until this infamously intractable executive had cooled down a little, seen some sense, because -

  Phone ringing.

  Jim looked up from the mat and I said I thought it was for me and he said go ahead and I went into the cluttered little office and picked up the phone.

  'Yes?

  'Bureau One. What is the problem?'

  'Incompatibility.'

  'In what way?'

  I couldn't say there wasn't time to tell him: he was as high as I could go and if I couldn't make him understand that the mission was jeopardised I'd have to play the last card I'd got, and I didn't want to do that, it would make things infinitely more difficult, more dangerous. So I told him about the impasse we'd reached, Thrower and I, on the subject of sending in support when I went in to the rendezvous, and told him also that my DIF didn't seem to understand the way I worked, the way I had to work if I was to bring the mission home. Then I waited.

  Play the last card, yes, if I had to. If Shepley called me in or if he told me I'd have to work out my differences with my DIF, I would go to ground, cut myself off from the DIF and from London and go it alone, let them chalk it up on the board in Signals, Executive withdraws, a graceful way to put it, typically euphemistic, because what it would really mean was that I would have to find myself a burrow in the bowels of Berlin and operate from there, surface from there and do what I could to infiltrate Nemesis, penetrate to the centre, blow it up on my own without any help, without signals, without franchise, without authority.

  Infinitely more difficult, more dangerous, but I would do it if I had to. I've done it before.

  'Do you feel,' Shepley was asking me, 'that your DIF has a case? That he's thinking of your protection, rather than of imposing his own will?'

  'Possibly.'

  'You concede that?

  'Yes. But he doesn't understand what's involved. I'm going to be on sensitive ground, ultra-sensitive, and I don't want the opposition to pick up the vibrations. It could be fatal.'

  I waited. In the ceramic mug the pencil was buzzing again as a plane got airborne. Hold fast, yes, I must hold fast. And if necessary, go to ground. They hate it, in London, if you do that. They like to keep their puppets on the string, they don't like to think they've got a rogue shadow loose in the field, you can see their point.

  'You realise,' Shepley said, 'that I might feel it best to have you recalled?'

  He had a calm voice, Bureau One, calm, measured and contemplative.

  'Yes,' I said.

  'And you realise that your DIF has a case to make, on your own admission, and that I might feel it best for you to settle your differences and proceed with the mission?'

  'Yes,' I said.

  Thrower had moved away from the door; he was watching the wall again, his feet neatly together. I suppose he'd thought it rather rude if he'd stayed by the door listening. He was a gentleman, give him that. But this is not a trade for gentlemen.

  'What would you do,' Bureau One asked me from Washington, from his bed five thousand miles away through the night, 'if I recalled you, or if I instructed you to work with your present DIF?'

  One of them was on the punch-bag again, thump – thump – thump, and it gave me energy, I think, gave me strength, gave me the feeling that it was my own fist pounding into the leather bag, thump – thump – thump, a good feeling, sanguine, confident.

  'I'd go to ground,' I said.

  Australian Airlines came drifting across the skyline, a winged kangaroo on the tail, lowering to the runway with the pale winter sunshine flashing on the windows, the soft scream of the jets pitching up a little as it reached for the surface of the earth.

  Shepley hadn't answered me. I didn't mind. I'd said all I wanted to say and he'd have to take it from there. If all went well I had a rendezvous to keep and nothing was going to stop me. But I'd rather do it for the Bureau, stay on the Signals board, keep the life-line open. I'd have a better chance that way.

  His voice came, Shepley's. 'Who do you want as your director in the field?'

  Thump – t
hump – thump on the bag, come on, bust the bugger.

  'Ferris.'

  'Ferris is directing Stingray.'

  'Mayhew.'

  'He is in Morocco.'

  'Cone.'

  'You can have Cone. I'll instruct Control.'

  The line went dead and I put the phone down and. tucked the corner of a hundred-deutsche-mark note underneath it and went out of the office and across to where Thrower was standing. 'You can go home now,' I said.

  Chapter 12: CONE

  It is contended legally that Voest-Alpine of Vienna licensed Gerald Bull's howitzer technology about 1979, some time before he dismantled his American operation and went to work with Poudriere Reunie Belge, who wanted to produce and market howitzer shells together with Austrian gun sales.

  Crumbs dropped from the meat pie as I took bites at it, and I held it over the greaseproof paper. A jet took off, leaving echoes among the buildings.

  It was just gone 10:00 hours.

  By eleven I had got through the whole cassette, made notes, turned them face down, making up questions, answering them, some of them right, not all of them, not enough.

  Terpil and Korkala were convicted in absentia for conspiring to sell 10,000 machine guns and 10 million rounds of ammunition to a small unit of New York under-cover police officers posing as South American revolutionaries. Several private people and agencies are now looking for these two in Lebanon, but their hideout is quite difficult to locate.

  It was cold in here, in this small oblong room at the top of the building; there was an electric heater but it didn't do much more than warm the air within a few inches of it, where I had my feet. The cold was coming from inside me, some of it. I hoped Cone would get into Berlin before I needed him, before Inge Stoph telephoned, if she were going to telephone, if Klaus had told her he'd see me.

  A woman laughed, lower in the building, one of the tarts, I suppose. I didn't think the top floor rooms were used, or at least not by the girls: when || I'd been shown along the passage most of the doors had been open, with nothing in the rooms except for tin trunks, mattresses, a portable bidet, some newspapers, no beds or furniture. But the room was all right because it was on the third floor and the one window wasn't Overlooked and there was a metal fire escape and a courtyard with six-foot walls on three sides. When the woman with the huge mole on her neck had left me I'd stood outside on the fire escape and checked on the roof; there wasn't easy access but it could be done if it didn't snow. It surprised me that a man like Thrower had chosen a place like this; it should have offended his sensibilities; perhaps he'd just signalled Kleiber's support group and asked them where he should book me in.

  The biggest dealer across the globe is Sarkis Soghanalian, born a Turkish-Armenian Christian and naturalised as a Lebanese. He lives most of the time in the USA. The weaponry he has sold has been used in Lebanon, Nicaragua, Angola, Ghana, Biafra, you name it, even against Britain in the Falklands mini-war, though Soghanalian claims he is friendly to the US and her allies in the West.

  He spoke quietly, Ahmad Samala, leaving silences for note-taking; sometimes I could hear his smile when he talked about new weapons, the latest and shiniest of his toys… Terpil was after that particular model but I beat him to it, and he was most upset…

  There was a telephone in here; they'd led an extension cable from the next room, but there was a big enough gap under my door for it to shut. I would be glad when the thing rang: I didn't know the timing for the day. Inge could call Kleiber and make a rendezvous an hour from now and it could take me an hour to reach there. I would also be glad when Cone rang to say he was in Berlin; the executive would have a director in the field and Solitaire could start running again and those bloody people controlling the board in London could settle down and try and get things right in future: Shatner must have been out of his mind to pick someone like Thrower to handle me.

  My head was still throbbing, I think because I was feeling under pressure with so much information to take in against the clock.

  He deals in everything from Brazilian tanks to helicopters and army uniforms, sometimes legally but not always. There are widespread thefts that go on at military bases all the time.

  Twelve noon.

  He's rather touchy when people tell him he's a merchant of death. He asks them how the big chemical manufacturers feel, selling the stuff they do – if they don't feel guilty, why should he?

  13:00 hours.

  He couldn't have been in Europe, then, Cone, when Signals had called him in.

  They don't have allegiance to any flag or organisation, remember, and they need wars in order to prosper. It makes them different.

  I wanted to phone Kleiber and ask him if he'd had instructions from London to mount a search for Helen Maitland, but it would tie up the line and I had to stay open for Cone, for Kleiber.

  A TWA jumbo dropped through the sky on its approach path, trailing a skein of exhaust gas through the winter sunshine.

  We must remember 'that because arms dealers meet so many people in government and military circles, they pick up some very sensitive information, and there are those who trade that information for as high a price as they can get, and that is often very high indeed. They -

  The phone began ringing and the nerve-light flashed behind my right eye, the side where I'd banged my head. I picked up the receiver.

  'Bitte?'

  'Mr Jones?

  'Yes.'

  Cone.

  'Your place or mine?'

  I asked him: 'Does Kleiber know you're here?

  'I phoned him from the plane.'

  'You'd better come to my place,' I told him. It was Kleiber's number I'd given to Inge, and this was where he'd call me.

  'Bring anything?' Cone asked.

  'No.'

  I shut down and switched on the tape again.

  There was another incident in Kansas, USA, during a propellent transfer for a recycling operation. A pipe broke loose from the missile in the silo and there was a release of nitrogen tetroxide.

  Samala was talking about the availability of nerve gas from legitimate sources when Cone arrived, his footsteps picking their way across the bare boards of the corridor with deliberation. I opened the door and he came in and took a quick look around.

  'Economy class.'

  'It's good in terms of security.'

  'Oh yes.' He would have noticed the fire escape and the fact that the room was at the other end of the building from the stairs, so that you could hear people coming.

  'Sit down,' I said, and he looked carefully at the iron bedstead and the two art deco chairs and sat down in one of them and pulled a manila envelope out of his coat and gave it to me.

  'Stuff on the Miniver missile. You wanted it, didn't you?'

  'Yes.'

  'They gave it to me in London. It's also been faxed to Thrower's hotel, and I'll have it picked up there. Its nothing classified, just the specifications, mostly from Jane's. Bit of action was there?'

  I suppose my eyes were still a bit nervy.

  'Yes. Nothing serious. Bump on the head.'

  'Doesn't show. Anything else?'

  'Bruised shoulder.'

  'Still use it?

  'Yes.' I showed him.

  'How d'you feel?'

  'First class.'

  He nodded and stopped talking. He'd been like this in Moscow, fussing about injuries, part of his job. One of the responsibilities of the director in the field is to make sure his executive doesn't go into any kind of action unless he's fit. He sat watching me with his bright attentive eyes, the window throwing light across his raw peeled-looking face, the cheekbones sharp under the skin, the ear nearer the window so thin that it was translucent. Cone, wherever he is, even in summer, looks as if he's walking against a blizzard, and more than that, as if he created it for himself, perhaps as a penance.

  'Did you get any briefing in London?' I asked him.

  'The lot.'

  'From Shatner?'

  'Yes.' />
  'How was he?'

  'Pissed off.'

  'He could've got me killed, giving me that clown. What about debriefing on this side?'

  'I was an hour with said clown at the airport – London set it up. He was told to wait for me to come in before he booked out.'

  I would have expected London to do that, to have Thrower go through the whole of the debriefing he'd given me so that I wouldn't have to do it all over again for Cone.

  'Let's hope it was accurate,' I said.

  'It sounded all right. He's got a good memory. What about timing, then?'

  'I'm waiting for a call from Inge Stoph through Kleiber. Whatever time she suggests, I'll have to be there.'

  'So tell me what's got to be done before you leave.'

  'As soon as you can, tell Kleiber to send someone along to the taxi-rank outside the Steglitz Hotel. Ask them if Helen Maitland got into one of their cabs and if so, where she was taken. The doorman offered to get her one but she said she felt like a walk.'

  'Description?'

  I gave it to him.

  'All right. You trust her, don't you?

  'We can't. She's naive and she's totally subservient to men. If anyone told her to walk into a trap, that's what she'd do.'

  'And that's what you think she's done.'

  'Possibly.'

  'And if anyone asked her the wrong questions?'

  'That's why Thrower moved me out of the Steglitz right away.'

  Cone got out of the chair, moving around. 'Better not phone Kleiber yet.'

  'Not until he phones us. You can tell him then.'

  'Right.'

  I was going through the documents in the envelope; they were a breakdown on the Miniver, specifications, capability, technical drawings, disposition of all known models, mostly in the USA, some in the UK, some in Germany.

  'That what you wanted?' Cone asked me.

  'It's perfect.'

  'Thank goodness something's perfect, then.'

  I dropped the documents onto the bed. 'I hope you're not worried,' I said.

  He leaned one shoulder against the window frame, looking down at me, sometimes turning his head as a plane moved through the pale sunshine outside. Thrower said you're going to try getting into Nemesis on your own and with no support, and you'll be relying on your cover and nothing else, is that right?'