Quiller Solitaire Read online

  'Description?' Thrower had a gold pen ready, a gold pen, withal.

  'Thirties, pale face, black hair, five-ten, on the thin side, a bit round-shouldered.'

  'Eyes?

  'I don't remember, but black or brown, dark, not blue.'

  Thrower put his notebook away. 'Let's do some more debriefing.'

  'Yes. I suppose,' I said, 'you changed my hotel because of Helen, did you?'

  'Of course.'

  In case she talked, in case she was made to talk. 'Why did you put me into the Klinghof?'

  We know it. We've used it before: it's small, tucked away, and the woman who runs it is discreet.'

  'I saw a couple of tarts there.'

  That's why she's discreet. I need Krenz's address, don't I?

  I gave it to him. 'He carries a Berliner Bank Visa card, and his cover's an electronics engineer – or he could even be one. What did London say when you told them Helen was missing?' In a moment Thrower said, They're very concerned. They feel responsible. I'd like you to feel reassured.'

  There was a Pan Am plane coming into the approach path, settling nose up through the haze, the strobes flashing. I turned away from the window. 'As long as they're doing something to find her,' I said. He didn't answer. He sat with his pen ready, watching me. 'All right, that man Sorgenicht went straight to the cafeteria when he reached the airport. There were two girls at one of the tables, and he sat down with them.' We were into the major phase of the debriefing and Thrower made notes sometimes, the gold pen flashing in the light from the window, the only thing of beauty in this beleaguered hole. The name of the German girl is Inge Stoph. Were you actually at the Signals board when I debriefed to London last night?'

  'I was.'

  'You keep a lot in your head.'

  'I used a recorder then. I don't use one in the field.'

  Some of the DIFs do – Ferris does, Pepperidge does – but others wouldn't be seen dead with one: halfway through a mission or even before then a tape has got a lot of hot information on it and when Crenshaw was running Jayson through the field in Cyprus a few years ago he got exposed and the opposition got hold of his tape and blew the whole mission and Jayson was found with his head off in the back of a garbage truck because he'd had to write off three of their cell and they hadn't liked that. A tape recorder doesn't carry a capsule.

  'My impression,' I told Thrower, 'was that Inge Stoph was trying to persuade the Pan Am stewardess to do something, or agree to something.' I told him about the Iranian, and Thrower looked up sharply.

  'A pilot?

  'Yes.' He made a note and I said, 'I think Inge Stoph and the Pan Am girl are friends. Sorgenicht and Stoph are both in Nemesis. I couldn't fit the Iranian in: he listened a lot but didn't say much, and I didn't pick up anything of a relationship between him and either Stoph or the stewardess.'

  'Iran Air,' Thrower said, 'doesn't normally fly into Berlin. They go into Frankfurt. But the Iranians have an extensive network of sleepers and agents-in-place in Europe. What happened when you left the cafeteria?'

  'I followed Inge Stoph.' I gave him a complete picture of the scene with her in the car park and then we wrapped it up 'and he put away his notebook and got off the car seat and looked at the river with his hands dug into his pockets and his eyes nowhere and I didn't disturb him.

  When he was ready he asked me: 'You think Stoph went for your approach?'

  'I got a lot of reaction when I mentioned the nuclear missile.'

  'Did you get any idea of her standing with Dieter Klaus?

  'No.'

  'She could be a girlfriend?'

  'Possibly. She could get any man into bed.'

  'You?'

  'No. Most men, then.'

  'She doesn't appeal to you?'

  'She's got hair on her fingers. I mean too much.'

  'She's a lesbian?

  'I'd say a bi.'

  'Is she, do you think, a Venus trap for Nemesis?'

  'If she's not, she could be.'

  'Did you give her the impression she didn't appeal to you?'

  'I'm not stupid, Thrower.'

  He looked down, tilting on his toes and heels for a moment.

  'Sorry,' I said. It had sounded as if he wasn't sure whether I knew the value of a Venus trap: no experienced agent will ever give a Venus the impression she doesn't appeal to him, in case he wants to use her and walk into the trap and get out again with information.

  'That's all right,' Thrower said. We're getting to understand each other, that's all.' For the first time I wondered whether I should signal London and change him as my DIF, have him replaced by someone who'd run me before. But that would blow the board and Solitaire was running flat out and I didn't want to slow it down.

  I had to keep this one thing in my mind the whole time, above all others: It could be any next flight.

  'What I need to know,' Thrower went on, 'is whether you feel that if Inge Stoph comes through with a proposed rendezvous it will be in order to trap you.'

  'I can't say, because I don't know Dieter Klaus or the way his mind works. If she comes through with a rendezvous it'll be on his instructions, either because he can't resist the temptation of blowing up the Houses of Parliament and getting his face on the front cover of the Terrorist's Gazette or because he wants to find out who I am and what I'm doing in Berlin.'

  Thrower stood looking out of the window, and he didn't turn round when he said, 'Of course you realise how very dangerous it is for you to agree to such a rendezvous. For you to meet Dieter Klaus.'

  'Yes.'

  'You know his reputation.'

  'Yes.'

  'Suppose you meet him, and of course it will be on his own ground and in the presence of his bodyguards, what will you rely on to get you away again, still alive?'

  'My cover.'

  I was getting impatient but he'd got a right to ask me what my plans were: he was my director in the field and his job was to support them.

  'Your cover,' he said, and turned round from the window now and looked at me. 'Is that all?'

  'It's all I've got.'

  'It won't be enough. If they suspect you're using a cover they'll try and break it and they'll succeed. You know that – you talked to that poor devil in the hospital in London. They turned him into a -'

  'I'm not saying it's going to be easy.'

  'I'm glad you appreciate that. What would you hope to achieve, in any case, by meeting Dieter Klaus?

  'Access to information. Which plane, which flight. That's all I want, and he's got it.'

  'What if you failed to get information? Would you try to take him out?'

  Kill him, he meant kill him. 'Of course. It'd blow Nemesis.'

  In a moment he said, 'If I let you do this, I shall need time to call in as much support as I can. It may take -'

  'No support.'

  'I realise' – showing much patience now, much patience – 'that you normally prefer working without support, and I understand that, but if you mean to walk right into the centre of an opposition network with a man like Dieter Klaus running it, I'd have to insist on support. I'm here to direct you in the field, not stand by and see you take this mission deliberately into hazard and destroy it.'

  'That isn't my plan.' A crack in one of the windows buzzed as a jet gunned up on take-off and lifted across the skyline, the Pan Am insignia on the tail, and the last of my patience broke. 'My plan is to stop those bastards putting a bomb on a plane full of people and I know the best way to do it and if I hang around waiting for you to call the bloody troops in and clutter up the rendezvous with enough people to start a bloody war then I won't get anywhere, I won't get into the centre of Nemesis and they'll rig that bomb and blow all those people out of the sky, for Christ's sake, don't you understand, Thrower, don't you understand that it could be any next flight? '

  He watched me steadily with his pale expressionless eyes, not saying anything yet, letting me listen again in my mind to what I'd just said, to how I'd just said it, too
forcefully, too emotionally. Then he said, 'You've just come through some action that almost cost you your life, and your nerves are going to take their time to settle down. When you've got your control back, 'we'll talk again. Now let me drive you to your hotel.'

  He didn't understand. He wasn't thinking.

  'Thrower, I'm going in to the centre of the opposition and I've got to do it alone because they'll have people deployed in the environment, and if you put people in as well I shan't know one from the other if it's a night action and I could easily kill one of them, one of ours – but more important than that, you can't put support in close enough to help me without exposing them, and an arms dealer doesn't move around with a crowd of peons, he's a businessman and he behaves like one, so if you put support on the scene when I go in you'll blow my cover before I've got a chance in a thousand to make it work, can you hear what I'm saying, you'll blow my cover. Do you think that's what I want from my director in the field?'

  He turned away, turned back, hands in the pockets of his dark elegant coat, his head tilted slightly, his voice smooth, placating. We'll talk about it later. I have my arguments too, but I don't feel that at the present moment you're sufficiently receptive.'

  I took a step towards him. My head was throbbing because of the wound, and because of what was happening to the mission, to Solitaire, just when I'd got access, just when I was ready to move in on the opposition and destroy it if I could, and if I couldn't, get clear and try again, try again until I found the way, and went in for the kill.

  Thrower,' I said, 1 want you to tell me something. If there's no time to talk, if I don't have time to listen to your arguments, if I have to go in to this rendezvous at a moment's notice, will you send in support anyway, despite all I've said?'

  He didn't hesitate. 'Yes. I would have to.'

  So I turned away and went down the stairs and found Jim showing one of his kids a gedan kosauke and asked him if I could make a call and he showed me his little office in the corner of the gym and I picked up the phone and dialled the number and the code extension and blew the board for Solitaire all over the Signals room in London.

  Chapter 11: SHOWDOWN

  'Executive. Get me Control.'

  Smell of sweat in this place, Jim's office, not much bigger than a cupboard.

  'Control.'

  Shatner.

  I said, 'I want a new director in the field.'

  There was a short silence and I wasn't surprised.

  'What is the problem?' he asked me.

  'Incompatibility.'

  Grounds for divorce. The relationship between the DIF and the executive is very much like a marriage: trust is involved, and above all else, understanding.

  Shatner said, 'I need to know more than that.'

  I think I heard quiet anger in his tone. As I've told you, he'd said to me in his office yesterday, you're not my favourite executive.

  'There isn't much time,' I said. 'I'm going into a strictly red sector and he's insisting on sending in support.'

  Shatner thought about that. Then he said, 'I imagine he thinks you need it.'

  'It could kill me.'

  There was another silence. I could only wait, only keep what patience I had, because this was thin ice and I could crack it if I didn't take care how I walked.

  Is he there?' Shatner asked.

  'Yes.'

  'I'll talk to him.'

  Shatner didn't understand, any more than Thrower understood. I'd only come into the field last night and I'd secured access to the opposition and at any time the call could come through from Inge Stoph arranging the rendezvous and I was in a position to go right into the centre of Nemesis and blow it apart and these two hidebound bloody bureaucrats were trying to stop me dead in my tracks.

  'You can't talk to him,' I told Shatner. 'You don't understand the situation. The executive in the field is in a fully active phase of the mission and he's urgently requesting a change of the DIF and he's got every right to do that, and his Control is expected to bear in mind that in these circumstances the executive makes the decisions, not his DIF.'

  In the silence I could hear the ice cracking. The thing is that Control picks the director in the field very carefully from those available, making sure he's the right choice for the mission: Thrower knew Berlin and was fluent in German, so forth. But what Shatner hadn't done was make the right choice for the specific executive and that's even more critical. But I was taking an appalling risk in asking for a new DIF in the first twenty-four hours of the mission because those bloody people in London can come back at you like a boomerang and leave the director in the field and call the executive in and send a new one out in his place and you won't work for the Bureau again and for me that would be the end of things, finis, finito.

  'I rather think I understand,' Shatner said, 'my responsibilities as your Control. I am asking you to put your DIF on the line.'

  There was a mug, a ceramic mug on Jim's desk, in the middle of a mess of papers and bottles of ink and hand-grips and rubber bands and paper clips and curled photographs of Japanese martial artists, and in the mug were some pens and pencils, and one of them was vibrating as another jet was cleared for take-off and thundered into the sky, and I was glad to hear the small intimate sound of the pencil sending its message to me, if I wanted to hear it. In the complex chemistry of life there are always messages for us, if we make time to listen, and this one was perfectly clear: Any next flight.

  I had to get the words exactly right. 'I request the immediate attention of Chief of Signals.'

  The ice cracked again and I heard it. I've talked to a lot of my own kind in the Caff and other places, but I've never heard of anyone telling Control to his face that they wanted higher rank to talk to.

  In the silence I could hear things going on in the underground Signals room: voices, beepers, the sharp clink of a teacup. They were there under the floodlit Signal boards, hunched over the mikes or leaning back to check the progress of a mission, reaching for the bit of chalk. Executive requires backup, Rendezvous established, Courier down, red sector. As the data went in, the decisions would be made, and -

  'Chief of Signals.'

  Croder. We'd never got on well, but I respected him above most others. He wasn't a bureaucrat.

  'I'm asking for a new DIF.' I told him why.

  He was standing there at the board for Solitaire – he roves the room, Croder, from board to board, taking over in a crisis, keeping the heat down, bringing people back sometimes from the edge of a certain grave.

  'Thrower is a very good man,' he told me. 'He is very experienced.' Standing there under the floodlight with his black reptilian eyes scanning the board, his steel hand hanging like a hook. 'I know your style,' he said, 'and you're quite possibly misjudging things after going through a difficult action-phase. Am I correct?'

  I felt a shiver. It sounded like clairvoyance: Thrower hadn't had time to send my debriefing to the board, stuff on the underground garage.

  Croder was inside my mind.

  I had to cut corners, save time, because of the pencil. 'Do you know Thrower's style?'

  I waited. In a moment: 'Yes.'

  'Then you'll know that he and I can't work together.'

  It meant a lot more than it sounded: it meant that if a wheel came off we wouldn't be able to agree on a decision and the mission would crash; it meant that if I went into a hot rendezvous with support I hadn't asked for, people could get killed.

  'I need more information,' Croder said.

  'There isn't time.'

  'You will have to make time.'

  So I went in blind, didn't think about it, otherwise I couldn't have done it. 'I request the immediate attention of Bureau One.'

  Shepley, king of kings, host of hosts, head of London.

  It was all I could have done and I'd had to do it. Some people would have called it professional suicide, and I would have agreed.

  'Bureau One is in Washington.'

  His voice hadn't chang
ed, Croder's, but he was now in what amounted to a towering rage. That's one of the things I like about him: he's a complete master of control. But it can be deadly.

  I said, 'I need his immediate attention.'

  There were some voices in the background, louder than before; one of them could be coming over a speaker at the console, some beleaguered shadow in extremis, calling for help. They would want Croder at the board.

  His voice came again. 'Give me your number.'

  I read it to him off the base of the telephone.

  'Be available,' Croder said, and shut down the line on me.

  I stood there with a sense of being in limbo, cut off from the day and its affairs, lost, isolated, disenfranchised. The throbbing went on in my head with the rhythm of a slow drum beat. I would have liked to sit down somewhere, rest a little and then wash my face, feel civilised for a few minutes before I went into the rendezvous with Nemesis, because once I was there it could turn out to be difficult, not civilised at all, it could turn out to be bloody murder.

  There was a grimy bit of glass here next to the door, call it a window, and through it I could see Thrower out there in the gym, standing on the other side of the punch-bag, not watching anything that was going on, watching the wall.

  I opened the door and stood just outside it, waiting for the phone to ring. In Washington it was three in the morning and Shepley would almost certainly be in bed, but they'd wake him. The Signals room in London can reach him within seconds wherever he is, by calling direct to his pager, and his pager is never switched off: it's the equivalent of a presidential hotline. And Croder wouldn't fail to signal him: when the executive is in the field he's considered to be in hazard, whether he's in a red sector or not, and London undertakes to keep Bureau One in constant touch with him: it's in our contract.

  Thrower was coming across the gym, walking carefully; his footprints on a sandy beach would make a straight line – and this was my problem with him; you can tell a lot about people by the way they walk, and this man's mind, like his footprints in the sand, was unwilling to deviate.