Quiller Solitaire

by Adam Hall

  'Extension 91,' I said.

  There's no Extension 91: I was simply telling them I had opposition company, and they would pass it on when they made the link direct to the board for Solitaire in the Signals room.

  It would be Carey on the board at this hour: he would have taken over from Matthews at six this evening, London time. I didn't know Carey but I wasn't worried: he'd be bright and fast or he wouldn't be in Signals.

  'Yes?

  'Je voudrais parler a Monsieur Croder, en francais.'

  'Hang on.'

  All the board crews knew a smattering of the European languages, enough to know which was which. Croder, as Chief of Signals, was fluent in French and German, and I needed to speak to him in any case because he'd have the authority to do what I needed done.

  'Croder.'

  He'd got to the board very fast: I'd been cut off from Signals ever since I'd hung up last night after talking to Cone in Berlin, and they didn't know whether I was still operational or blown out of existence or running loose like a mad dog in the dark with the opposition closing in on me. I'd set up the Miniver rendezvous with Cone but when the executive is right in the heart of the opposition network anything can happen.

  'Mr Croder,' I said in French, 'I'm within twelve minutes of the rendezvous and I need to know whether you feel it's still secure.'

  It was an awful lot to hit him with because he knew I was with the opposition – he'd been given the Extension 91 bit and he'd have to assume they were listening to every word he said. I'd also spoken in what amounted to broad speech-code, and what I'd just said had got to be decoded as, Have you sent counter-terrorist forces there? If he had, the rendezvous wouldn't be secure, and that was the key word in my question.

  'One can never be sure,' he said, 'can one?'

  He was filling in, asking for more data. He knew I was with the opposition but he also knew that I wasn't talking under duress: nobody was holding a gun to my head and telling me what to say. I was saying exactly what I wanted to, or I would have slipped in the prescribed warning straight off the bat: Mr Croder, I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm within twelve minutes… so forth. I hadn't done that, so he knew four things: I was in the company of the opposition, I was not speaking to him under duress, I meant every word I was telling him, and we were both being overheard. This information was automatically going onto a tape and a printout sheet as we talked.

  'You understand,' I said, 'that if there's been the slightest chance of a security leak, with the risk of police or counter-terrorist or other forces waiting for us at the rendezvous, we can't keep it. Our client is concerned about it, and so am I. This is a rather important deal for us, but I'm calling it off unless you feel the rendezvous is absolutely uncompromised.'

  He now had the whole thing, and I waited.

  Clock: 7:04. Eleven minutes.

  Ibrahimi was watching my face, looking for any kind of giveaway as I talked.

  The two hit men watched my hands, which were on my lap again.

  The limousine rolled smoothly under the African moon, with the ruby marker lights on radio masts in the area winking against the sky.

  Croder's voice came. 'You shouldn't have anything to worry about.'

  I felt cold suddenly. He'd thought out precisely what he must say to give me the clearest signal he could.

  He'd sent people there.

  He'd told me I shouldn't have anything to worry about but that was very different from saying I had nothing to worry about. He would have said exactly that, if the rendezvous were clear. He hadn't. It wasn't.

  His voice came again. 'Do you feel you should cancel everything, then?'

  He was throwing the ball to me and I tossed it back.

  'Do you?'

  I waited. He'd say yes or no. If he said yes it would mean he'd sent people there and couldn't get them out. If he said no it would mean he could.

  I watched the ruby lights through the windscreen, letting them float through my mind, relaxing, because nothing must show in my eyes when Croder answered me.

  His voice came, 'No.'

  The ruby lights floated.

  'All right,' I said. We'll keep the rendezvous.'

  There was silence for a moment except for the crackle of interference on the line. Then Croder said, 'Of course, you'll have to watch out for the airport police. I can't give you any guarantees: this deal is illegal.'

  It was a warning. He was going to call off the people he'd sent there – SAS, GSG-9, the Algerian units, whoever they were – but he couldn't be responsible for local forces. He could signal them that the rendezvous had been called off, tell them to leave, but he couldn't make it an order. They weren't under his authority.

  'We'll watch out,' I said, 'for the police.'

  He said good luck and shut down the call and I reached forward to touch the End button and sat back again and looked at Muhammad Ibrahimi.

  'So what do you think? I asked him.

  In a moment he said, 'Monsieur Klaus is eager to possess the warhead. Very eager.'

  And if Ibrahimi didn't get it for him his life might not be worth very much.

  'Then you're prepared to go in?' I asked him.

  'Yes.'

  The clock on the dashboard flicked to 7:05.

  We had ten minutes left.

  I said, 'Ibrahimi, I'd like to know something. Whether the exchange is made or not, do you have plans for me?'

  I waited.

  The hit men watched me. Beyond them I could see in the far distance the floodlit control tower at Dar-el-Beida.

  Ibrahimi turned to look at me. 'My lips are sealed,' he said. 'But you should make your peace with Allah.'

  Chapter 20: FLASHPOINT

  A rose for Moira.

  Through the windscreen I could see a twin-engined jet taking off, its splinter-sharp profile aslant against the brilliant haze of the starfields above the airport; it looked very like the company jet we'd flown from Berlin this morning. We'll be taking off at seven, George Maitland had told me at the palace. He and Dieter Klaus. Destination unknown, unknown at least to me.

  You should make your peace with Allah.

  It would be delivered to Moira, as specified in my will, a single rose, so that she should know.

  7:11 on the dashboard clock, but what did it signify? That I should make my peace with Allah.

  The driver took the Mercedes in through the gates to the freight area, showing the guard a piece of paper. He waved us through. A line of hangars made a black frieze against the horizon, and five or six aircraft stood at angles, big ones, freight carriers.

  I couldn't see any ground crews, any vehicles on the move.

  7:12. It was three minutes to the rendezvous. Ibrahimi was checking his jewelled wrist watch.

  'Wait,' he told the driver in French.

  The tyres whimpered on the tarmac as the big car was turned towards the wall of a freight shed, and we stopped in its shadow. The three-quarter moon was twenty or thirty degrees high, bright in a clear sky; the sirocco had died away towards evening as the air had cooled. There was traffic on the move near the main runway, the strobes of small planes flashing as they rolled.

  The two hit men watched me from their jump seats. They hadn't put their guns away after I'd finished my call to London. They were aimed at me now, at the heart. The two men weren't watching my hands any more; they were watching my eyes. They were well-trained, and I knew from this slight but significant shift in their observation that they were expecting me to make some sort of attack on them, or on Muhammad Ibrahimi, very soon now, if at all. So perhaps they understood a little French, had heard what Ibrahimi had told me, and knew from experience that when the subject of an execution nears the moment of truth he tends to panic and strike out in a final attempt to save himself.

  I haven't seen Moira for a long time, several months. She travels a lot, making those terrible movies, and of course I travel quite a bit too. I hope she is well.

  Croder must have got his signals throu
gh extremely fast, but then we expect it of him: he has the attributes of a vampire and will draw blood in the instant if you cross him but when you're out in the field and he's in the Signals room you've got infinitely more chance of bringing the mission home than with anyone else. I didn't know what units he'd sent in to the rendezvous or how many there were, but he'd cleared them out in nine minutes flat, phoning them direct or phoning their coordination unit and telling them the rendezvous was cancelled, cancelled or postponed or moved or whatever. Of course they could still be parked in one of the hangars over there or behind the freight shed. Nothing was certain.

  He'd done a good job, Croder, and it looked as if I had an absolutely clear field for whatever last-ditch attempt at salvation I might try. This was what I'd wanted, asked for and got, but at that time I'd thought there'd be something I could do at the flashpoint, turn the car over or go for these people, these monkeys, these stinking monkeys, steady, you'll have to watch it, there's no room for emotion, no room for panic here, it's too dangerous, thought there'd be something I could do at the flashpoint, yes, but in fact there wasn't, take some of them with me of course but that was all, an eye for an eye, but what shall it profit a man when the mission is over before its time, what precisely is the point in taking life out of spite? Pride, yes, but that's no answer.

  The mission had ended when that plane had taken off just now. My objective had been to infiltrate Nemesis and stay within it until I'd learned enough to be able to destroy it and get clear, but there hadn't been a chance and Klaus was airborne for Midnight One and tomorrow there would be headlines. Nothing would have changed if I'd let London spring their trap: they'd have got Ibrahimi, that was all. They'd hoped to get Klaus, thought he'd be at the rendezvous. Nothing would have changed.

  7:14.

  One minute.

  Adrenalin coursing through the veins, through the heart where the bullets would go. A feeling of lightness, of time slowing down, feelings that were familiar to me.

  Ibrahimi told the driver, 'Go to the hangar over there, the second from the end. Hangar No. 5.'

  We moved away, leaving the shadow of the freight building. I could see another vehicle on the move now, a dark-coloured van. It was going towards Hangar No. 5, as we were. London is very good with timing, very reliable.

  'That will be the van,' I told Ibrahimi, 'with the warhead.'

  'It is good,' he said.

  The moonlight flashed on the star mascot as the big Mercedes turned.

  'Here,' Ibrahimi told the driver. 'Stop just here.'

  We were at the north-east corner of the hangar, not far from one of the big freight planes and a stack of crates with ropes across it. The tyres whimpered again on the smooth tarmac, and we stopped.

  The clock flicked to 7:15.

  Fifty yards away, in the shadow of the hangar, the dark van halted.

  Silence came in.

  You should make your peace with Allah.

  But I would rather stop the presses, stop the headlines.

  Try.

  'One thing worried me,' I told Ibrahimi, 'when I was talking to my contact in London. He warned us that we'd have to watch out for the airport police. Do you remember?'

  He turned his face to me. 'Yes,' he said.

  'I think he had a point. We're still not certain we can get through this rendezvous successfully. There could still be a trap.'

  I waited.

  No one was getting out of the van over there.

  'I'm thinking,' I said to Ibrahimi, 'of your personal welfare, at this point. There's no need for you to get out of the car yourself.'

  Across the airport a commercial jet came in, nose up and then flattening as the smoke rose in puffs from the tyres. The sound hadn't reached us yet.

  My hands were folded on my lap. The two men could see them in the moonlight that struck obliquely through the window. My hands were not folded with the left one holding the right wrist, gripping it. That technique couldn't work now, because these two had their guns out, didn't have to draw first. If I went for the elbow strike to Ibrahimi's throat it wouldn't connect with the tissues before the bullets came: they had their fingers inside the trigger guards, and like me they'd be feeling the adrenalin and would be fast, touchy.

  The sound of the jet came in with a soft roar as it reversed thrust.

  Ibrahimi had done his thinking.

  'Order the man in front,' he told me, 'the German, to go across to the van and receive the warhead.'

  I'd known it would be the man in front he would send out there, not one of the men in the back of the car, because they were watching me, protecting him.

  I'd wanted the man in front to leave the car for two reasons. He was out of my reach, unlike the two in the rear, and Ibrahimi could conceivably walk across there into a hail of shots if in fact there were some people still hanging around here despite the call from London – and I wanted Ibrahimi to stay alive in case Allah was good to me and threw me a chance in a thousand and let me interrogate him. He was the last link I had with Nemesis, and might give me some information I could work with.

  'He might speak a little French,' I told Ibrahimi, 'in which case you could give him the instructions yourself.' I called in German to the man in front, asking him if he understood French. He turned his head and stared into my face.

  'Nein.'

  So I told him that Ibrahimi's instructions were for him to get out of the car and go across to the van. When he was halfway there, I said, someone would come out of the van and deliver the consignment into his hands.

  He looked several times at Ibrahimi, who nodded to confirm what I was saying. When I'd finished he hit his seat-belt release and snapped the door open.

  'Jawohl!'

  'Wait,' I said. 'You will tell them you are here on behalf of Herr Ibrahimi. Mention his name: Ibrahimi. You will also give the password, which is in English. It is the word Mushroom. Pronounce it for me.'

  He tried.

  'No,' I said, 'listen again. Mush – room. Repeat that.'

  He frowned, angered because he hadn't got his sums right, would have liked to put a bullet straight into my head. 'Mush – room.'

  'Good. Say it to yourself a few times as you walk across there. Now get moving.'

  He slammed the door and the echo came back from the mouth of the hangar like a gunshot. We watched him walking across the tarmac, his right arm not swinging, not visible: his gun, like the others', would be left-side bolstered under his coat. He didn't trust the people in the dark-coloured van. He didn't trust his own mother.

  I slowed my breathing, made it deeper, bringing down the tension in the muscles because there was sweat coming, and sweat is slippery on the hands, can make a critical difference in any kind of action.

  But there wouldn't be any: the odds were too stacked and the timing was prohibitive: I couldn't reach those guns from this distance and hope to smash them away before they fired, not even with a double wave strike or downward blocks.

  There were no options left, then. None.

  The feeling of lightness came into me again, a kind of floating. I've known it before: I think it's when the conscious mind realises that death is inevitable and allows the psyche free rein to survey the data on a subconscious level, where there may perhaps be insights, inspiration, where the spirit may redeem the flesh, offering a means of survival.

  I gave myself to it.

  Through the windscreen I saw a door of the dark-coloured van coming open and a man getting out, then another. Between them they carried an oblong crate with rope handles. It looked heavy.

  The German approached them, and when he was within a few feet of them they all stopped, and seemed as if they were talking. The German would be giving them the name of Ibrahimi and the password, Mush – room, and I suppose they were pointing out to him that this thing was too heavy for one man to carry, something like that, but then the whole scene turned silver in a flood of blinding light and the figures of men came running from the mouth of the hangar a
nd two jeeps came swerving into the foreground with their tyres screaming and Ibrahimi shouted something in Arabic and our driver hit the throttle and the Mercedes began slewing under the wheelspin until the treads found traction and we grazed the nearest jeep and rocked and steadied and got under way with a surge of acceleration that took us clear of the hangar and across the tarmac with the rear tyres still whimpering under the acceleration.

  Lights in the mirrors, bright lights, dazzling.

  Ibrahimi was shouting to the driver again in Arabic. I didn't know what he was saying. The two guards hadn't reacted very much, were still watching me with their guns out, perfectly trained. Ibrahimi was turning sometimes to look through the smoked rear window, his face grey in the light coming through the tinted glass. He looked at me once, his eyes burning.

  'Did you know of this?'

  'No. But I warned you it could happen – and you're still a free man.'

  He looked away. The lights in the mirrors were coloured now and flashing, and sirens began sounding. We kept a straight course until a fuel tanker came into view as a dark rectangle crawling across the taxiway, then we swerved and hit gravel and tore a radar scanner away from its base and straightened again with the automatic shift kicking down and giving us another surge of acceleration from the huge 5.6-litre engine, the sirens behind us howling and shots coming now as we crossed the central apron in front of the terminus with the digital speedometer moving through 150 kph, 160, 165 and the lights from behind us losing their glare and the sound of the sirens fading by a degree. But the shots were still coming and a rear tyre burst and we slewed badly and then corrected, the huge shape of a commercial jet looming and swinging past as the tyre was torn away from the rim and we began settling on the off-side like a ship taking on water.

  The driver was doing what I would have done: we'd got superior speed but not too much manoeuvrability at over two tons so he was relying on putting all the distance he could behind us while the going was good, and we were closing in on some hangars at the other end of the airport and could even reach them and get into shelter and ditch and run if that was what Ibrahimi ordered.