The Scorpion Signal

by Adam Hall

‘I don’t think so. But we shall see.’

  Green-painted walls, passages, doorways, uniformed clerks, a smell of leather, black tobacco, gun oil and the ancient smells that breathe from the walls of old buildings.

  ‘Search him in there and then bring him to my office-Is Colonel Vader in the building?’

  ‘Yes, Captain. Tell him we have the suspect in Room 9.’

  Barred windows, and the smell of sweat and damp uniforms and my own fear.

  ‘Good evening. My name is Vader.’

  ‘Good evening, Colonel. Kapista Kirov.’

  He was in uniform but without a cap.

  ‘Would you like to smoke?’

  I shook my head and he put the packet away. He was a short square man with red hair on his head, in his nostrils and on the backs of his hands. His face was heavily freckled and his eyes were honey-coloured, a luminous amber. His hands were square and spadelike, and moved when he spoke, spreading out on the table or pushing at its edge; his nails were short and well-trimmed, and there were no nicotine stains on his fingertips. I found I was interested in him, because he was probably going to be the man who would force me to decide, in three days from now, four days, five, whether I must kill myself.

  He tilted his chair back, and the light cast the shadows of his brows against his face, so that he looked as if he were frowning suddenly; but I don’t think he was; he had an amiable face, well composed, contemplative. He looked the kind of man I could have soldiered with, in a different world; but there was the risk here of deceiving myself: I was also dangerous, and had been known to kill.

  This wasn’t his office we were sitting in; it was one of the so his hands pushing at the table. ‘Your name is not Kirov, and your papers are false. We’ve been through, the main computer. Kapista Mikhail Kirov, born in Skvira in the Ukraine, died at the age of seven months, of pneumonia. You should have bought some better shoes.’ He smiled comfortably.

  They too had their little jokes. ‘Shoes’ meant walking papers, i.e. passport. But my papers weren’t forged: they were false, and he knew that London doesn’t forge anything if it can get the real thing and put a photograph on it: it saves all the fussing about with sized safety paper and fugitive dyes and watermarks and perforations and date-coded numerals. But the problem with using genuine papers is that a good computer can dig through the historical records and find the grave.

  ‘Requiescat in pace,’ I said.

  ‘M’m? Oh.’ He smiled dutifully.

  The thing was, I couldn’t lie and I couldn’t tell the truth. I had to say nothing.

  In the silence I noticed the marks on the table: narrow parallel striations. I wondered what they were.

  ‘I’d like you to tell me,’ Vader said, ‘about yourself.’

  He was different. I began listening.

  There’s not much to tell,’ I said, ‘All the same, I’d like to hear it,’

  ‘Well, I slipped on the snow, and hit my face against some railings. Your people picked me up, thinking I was someone else. That wasn’t my fault’

  He watched me with his head slightly on one side, like an amiable ginger cat. ‘Very well, you slipped on the snow and hurt yourself. But what are you doing with false papers? What is your real identity?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Colonel. It would mean letting someone down.’

  ‘Letting someone down?’ In Russian the idiom is perhaps ambiguous.

  ‘Betraying them.’

  It was as far as I could go. He knew I wasn’t Kapista Mikhail Kirov and he knew I was the man who’d come out of that crash and run for cover. But that was all he must know.

  ‘Yes,’ he said easily, ‘I understand that. But we want to know all about you, and we shall succeed in doing that, as I’m sure you are aware. But I thought we might start like this, with just the two of us talking around a table.’ He leaned forward slightly, and his leather belt creaked. ‘I don’t consider this a waste of time; I regard it as a gesture of hospitality. We are a hospitable people.’ He leaned back again.

  ‘I appreciate that,’ I said.

  He hadn’t looked behind me yet, at the little screen. He was handling this on his own, so far. There wasn’t a lot I could do to change the pattern. He was going to give me a chance of talking freely; then, if I chose not to, he was going to force me, or have me forced. I could speed things up or delay them, but not by much. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been prepared for this. Croder had pitched me into the field with fight cover at short notice and I’d known what to expect if I got caught. This.

  Talking of hospitality,’ Vader said, ‘would you like a drink? A little vodka?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘I would be happy to join you.’

  ‘You go ahead, if you’d like something yourself.’

  He shook his head, smiling. ‘I’m rather too fond of it,’ he said in a stage whisper, and the smile became a chuckle.

  There was no point in speeding things up, but there was a point in delaying things: there might, somewhere in the next few days, be a chance of getting out of this alive, just a chance in a thousand. But it wasn’t going to be fun, delaying things, because it would give me a lot more time to anticipate what they would finally do to me if that chance never came.

  ‘Which intelligence branch are you in?’ Vader asked with polite interest ‘What makes you think I’m in intelligence?’

  ‘Oh, false papers, an attempt at surveillance, an attempt to avoid arrest, a reluctance to betray your cell Good heavens, I’ve been through all that myself, plenty of times.’ The smile relaxed. ‘London, are you?’

  The problem,’ I said, ‘with security people is that they see everything from their own specialized point of view. I suppose that’s true of most people. What I mean is, betrayal isn’t confined to the intelligence services. One can betray a friend.’

  ‘Oh, agreed. Also, of course, oneself.’ He pushed his red-haired hands across the surface of the table, watching them. ‘As a human creature, for example, you’ve no wish to suffer pain, but if the ego decides you shall submit to it, that would be a kind of betrayal. Wouldn’t you say?’ His hands stopped moving.

  I supposed by this time Bracken would have started worrying. Extension 7 would have reported no signal at eight-fifteen, nine-fifteen, ten-fifteen, so forth. I wondered when he’d tell London. Shapiro gone, Quiller gone, not really their day. The red lamp over the board for Scorpion would still be on, but one day they’d have to switch it off. That man who’d been on the stool would reach up and flick the lever and go on sucking on his bloody chewing-gum, and Tilson would go padding quietly back to the Caff in his plaid slippers and bury his face in a cup of tea. We got this from the Foreign Office just now. DI6 have located Q in one of the Potma complex camps, no tried, twenty years. Better put out the light.

  ‘We’re getting into philosophy,’ I told Vader. ‘If I decide to go the whole way, rather than let down my friend, that’s what I’ll finish up doing.’

  For a few seconds we watched each other across the table; then he leaned back, tilting the chair under him. ‘As you know, intelligence agents hold a certain degree of - what shall we say? - sympathy for one another. Especially for their opposite numbers. A grudging regard, m’m? That’s understandable, surely - we share the same kind of experience. So I’m inclined to put myself in your place, at the moment, because I’ve actually been there, once or twice.’ He looked up at me apologetically - ‘Though I have to admit that I was never in your exact predicament. What I want you to understand is that I dislike the idea of your having to submit to indignities, even though you may choose to let it happen. I really do dislike it very much.’ He leaned forward again, and spoke earnestly. ‘I’d see myself there, in your place. That is why I’m offering you this chance of doing all the talking around a table. You see?’

  He really wanted an answer.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’d feel the same way myself.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He smoothed the surface of the table. �
��I’m quite sure.’ Like the walls and the door, the table was green, with the wood grain showing through in places, especially where the long narrow striations had formed. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘I want you to know that I’m a family man. I have a charming wife and two pretty daughters, ten and twelve years old. With red hair - did you guess?’ He threw back his head and laughed about this. ‘So you see, underneath the uniform there’s just an ordinary man like yourself, with very human instincts. This is another reason why I hope you’ll save us both a lot of misery. Surely you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I understand.’

  ‘Then let’s make a fresh start.’ He tilted his head in curiosity. ‘Who are you?’

  This was the first phase.

  ‘Who are you?’ he screamed and brought the flat of his hand crashing against the table. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I can’t tell you!’ The chair toppled and hit the floor as I got up and faced him: his rage had got me on to my feet because he was towering over me and I thought he might lash out and I had to be ready - in this mood he could half kill me if I let him.

  ‘Your identity! Your identity] I demand to know your identity !’ The amber eyes burned in his face.

  This was the second phase and I’d been expecting it because it was a classic procedure and he’d been so bloody cosy the first time that I knew he was going to do this the next time we met, but it still took some handling because his rage wasn’t spurious; he wasn’t a man who liked being blocked.

  ‘Are you English?’ His hand hit the table again. ‘Are you from London? Answer me!’ The table was rocking. I moved away from it, wary. He’d be strong and fast and well trained and I didn’t know his breaking point, the point when he’d lose his control —he was working for Mother Russia and for Mother Russia he’d smash a million Englishmen against the wall.

  ‘Answer me?

  The blood had left my face: I could feel it It had gone to the muscles and the adrenalin was ready: the organism was triggered and what I had to do now was watch him, watch his every move in case he lost control and wanted blood for the sake of blood.

  ‘Tell me who you are! Tell me?

  His wide leather belt came off so fast I was into a knife stance but he brought it down across the flat top of the table with a sound that cracked through the confines of the small bare room and I reacted: the edge of my hand was lined up with the carotid nerve of his neck and the mental rehearsal was already over and the hand was ready to lift and strike with the accuracy of an automaton.

  ‘You were carrying false papers and you were following one of our citizens and you tried to avoid arrest and now you refuse to explain your actions!’ He took two paces towards me and I sank an inch lower, solidifying the stance. ‘Do you know how many years that would get you in a forced labour camp? Do you?’

  I would let him take one more step. If I let him come closer than that he could do some damage. The element of surprise was on his side: when you don’t know when the opponent is going to attack there’s no real problem - you just have to wait; but when you don’t know if he’s going to attack it can be very difficult because you’re liable to let the hairspring off the hook and get to him first and it might not be necessary. I didn’t want to break his clavicle or paralyse him by going in too fast: they wouldn’t like me for that.

  He started shouting again, bringing the belt cracking down for emphasis, stopping to glare at me with his eyes narrowed to slits and his teeth bared. ‘How do we know what harm you might not be planning against our country? How do we know what appalling danger you might not be placing our citizens in? This man you were following - did you intend to kill him? Did you?’

  The belt snaked down and left another weal across the top of the table. The sweat was bright on his face under the white light, trickling to the edge of his collar. He was following the prescribed routine but he also believed in what he was saying: this was his city, his country, and I was an unknown danger. I could see his point of view.

  Who was this man you were following?’

  When I heard that, I didn’t believe it ‘Who was he?’ His rage was genuine and he couldn’t think clearly enough to use subterfuge, yet he couldn’t be serious about this. I just didn’t believe it.

  ‘Answer me!’

  The belt sent a sliver of wood flying from the table.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  It was the first time I’d spoken and the sound of someone else’s voice got through to him and he stood still and stared at me. ‘What are you standing like that for?’ he asked with suspicion. ‘Are you thinking of attacking me?’ His wide chest heaved under his uniform as his lungs worked to recover oxygen. ‘Do - you - know - what they would do to you for attacking a colonel of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnos? For attacking him physically in his own headquarters? They — would - have — you — shot!’

  He was being very Russian. Anyone who can read a newspaper knows that once you’re inside the headquarters of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnost on the wrong end of the banana you’re not going to come out looking all that fit. But I wasn’t interested in that. I was getting terribly interested in this thing about the man I’d been following, because Vader didn’t seem to know his name. Or mine.

  It was unbelievable. The first time he’d asked me who I was I knew I’d have to start listening because this was a different approach: they usually want you to feel they know everything about you. What I couldn’t believe was that Ignatov had made a phone call in the street and told them to pick me up and they’d done that but they didn’t know his name and they didn’t know mine.

  Something wrong there.

  ‘Of course I’d get shot,’ I told him and turned away and folded my arms. ‘But what d’you think I’m going to do if you start putting that fucking belt of yours across me - just stand there?’

  He dropped it on to the table and started walking from one wall to the other, his square-toed boots landing flat on the floor with no spring in them, his arms held slightly forward like a bear’s, as if he were looking for something to break, for some kind of life to crush out. He was my height and heavier and all muscle and he could kill me in an even match but I didn’t think it was even because they’re exceptionally fussy at Norfolk: they don’t send you into the field unless you can take on a tank and get the tracks off without a lot of deep breathing.

  ‘Who were you following?’ He swung round, hitting a fist into a palm.

  Back on that track.

  Fascinating.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ I asked him. ‘I was following him to find out who he was!’

  ‘I don’t have to accept that!’

  You bloody well do.

  He started walking again, from wall to wall. He must have seen a lot of this place, look at that table. ‘Why did you want to find out who he was ? Who put you on to him ?’

  It was difficult because we didn’t really have a topic for conversation. He knew I was some kind of agent because we get to recognize the signs in one another: my behaviour in this room, confined with a KGB colonel who was ready to flay me alive, was totally different from the behaviour of an innocent tourist who’d slipped on the snow and got snatched by mistake because he’d injured his face - you can’t do this to me, I want my lawyer here, I’ll have you charged with wrongful arrest., so forth. This man knew I was an agent but as an agent I couldn’t tell him anything and he understood that, and he was annoyed because he was trying to build a reputation as a red hot interrogator who could get information out of anyone they sent to him and without having to throw him to the downs to work over, because that takes a lot of time if you want to go after all the information he’s got in his brain: you can’t rush things, it’s no good just poking a red hot needle into his urethra and saying now talk because he’ll either pass out or scream unintelligible things and the most you can do is get one word out of him at a time, one name, one target, one key to one code; you’ve got to spend days at it, with some o
f them.

  Vader stopped walking and picked up the belt. He’d lost a lot of his colour and the sweat was drying on him and there was foam at the comers of his mouth. ‘I will ask you one more time. Who are you?’

  ‘Kapista Kirov. I told you, the computers have gone on the blink.’

  It wasn’t a lie and it wasn’t the truth and he knew that; it was all I was going to tell him, nothing, Like saying it looks as if we’re going to get some more rain again.

  ‘Very well!’ The belt hit the table and the sound went round the walls like an explosion. ‘You realize we shall get this information from you in the end, don’t you? Of course you do. We shall use every method available to us, every technique, every refinement. We shall show you no mercy. You understand me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Bring on the clowns.

  Chapter 9

  Rainbows

  The rat sat preening its whiskers.

  I watched it.

  It sat with its rear paws spread on the ground, their tips visible at the edge of the grey fur body. The front paws worked rhythmically, pulling each fine whisker through the toes from the root to the tip.

  It hadn’t seen the snake.

  I watched the snake. It was rock-still, coiled in a perfect ring with the angular head slightly lifted and pointing in the direction of the rat. The distance between them was about three feet. The snake was large, and I could see that its length was quite sufficient to carry the jaws that far when it struck The rat was facing at right-angles to the snake. Its round black eyes reflected the environment in miniature. I think it saw the snake, in terms of light reception by the retinae, but didn’t know what it was: the brain interpreted it as a rock formation, or just a pattern of light and shade. Otherwise it wouldn’t be sitting there.

  I detected movement now in the snake, though it was so slow that it was almost an illusion: the pointed head was drawing back, millimetre by millimetre, across the coils, the neck flexing to keep the head pointing directly at the rat At the same time the coils were tensing, as the muscular energy-gathered and flowed, preparing for the whiplash speed of the strike.