The Quiller Memorandum Read online

  Then I went slack and inhaled, to bring down the blood pressure with a bang.

  The ears sang and the vision lost focus, and the room was darkening as I saw Oktober's hand come out to grab me as I collapsed. The whole operation had taken some five or six seconds and I would be blacked-out for perhaps ten or fifteen and even more if he kept me upright instead of putting my head below heart level.

  The blackout was total for a few seconds, then lifted and returned in decreasing waves as the body tried to surface and the mind forced it down again. Various impressions dark and light, constriction beneath the arms as my jacket was drawn upwards by his suspension (he had grabbed it at the front) singing in the ears, muted voice of a man, urgent desire for air, so forth. And all the time the thought: it's this or nothing, it's got to work. The mind had been pre-set to work against the body's recovery, reversing the norm.

  Voices again. Inga called something. Water running somewhere. A flash of light as Oktober brought the back of his hand across my face. I was moaning. The shock of the water as they flung it against my eyes. Full consciousness came back and I had to feign continuance of the syncope, letting my dead weight hang on their hands as they tried to wake me, letting my lids droop and the eyes turn upwards. My heart was pumping to restore the lost pressure.

  They tried a trick and let me fall and I didn't try to save myself but dropped in a heap and got to my knees and hung on all fours shaking my head to clear it, opening my eyes and saying softly and monotonously "Carry on treatment… burn her alive… you won't get a word, not one word… not one word…"

  Someone closed a door and nobody spoke. I swung my head and tried to focus, blanking the eyes of full intelligence: a man's legs still against the entrance door, Oktober gone, where had he gone? A man behind me, could see his shoe. "Not one word," I said to his shoe. The remains of the water dripped from my face.

  Nobody did anything. No one spoke. I got upright and stood swaying, trying to find my pocket, missing, trying again and getting out my handkerchief, wiping my face – the guard by the door had pulled his gun as fast as a snake's tongue and was ready with it, but he knew I wasn't armed; it was his instinct.

  A door opened and I heard her sobbing. A shadow loomed on the wall and I saw the arm lifting. It was a low-powered rabbit-chop and I dropped like a sandbag, out before I hit the floor.

  The time-sense was groggy but I couldn't have been out for long. The pile of the carpet formed an expanse of high terrain in front of my eyes because the side of my face was lying on it. There were no shoes anywhere. Everything was quiet except for her sobbing. I got on to hands and knees and stood up when I could. The room swung and I put out a hand to stop it. The big Chinese-moon lamp went on and off to my pulse.

  When I could turn round I saw there was no one here. The ache of the rabbit-chop throbbed but I reached the bedroom still on my feet. She was crouched naked on the end of the bed and there was blood on her legs so I went back and used the phone, dialling from the list she kept. He said he would come.

  In the bedroom I put out the main lamps and knelt and took her face between my hands, and began worrying, nothing to do with her but to do with them, because they shouldn't have gone. Then I knew why they had gone. I said:

  "There's a doctor on his way."

  She nodded between my hands. She wouldn't let me touch her. She crouched with her legs tight together, rocking slowly.

  "I have to leave you, Inga. If they come back it'll start again." She didn't say anything and I worried the thing out, and understood why she didn't ask me to stay. Later I would think clearly about this and set up the perspective. For the moment all I could do was to get the hang of the way things were going and act on impromptu understanding.

  I wrote a number on a Kleenex from the dressing-table and left it on the bed. "If you want to, after this, you can always get a message to me by phoning this number." I put a bathrobe round her shoulders and sat and held her until the doctor came.

  He asked me what had happened to me and I realised my face would be showing the after effects of the induced syncope and the rabbit-blow: film of sweat, bloodshot eyes, so forth. I told him it wasn't me, and showed him the bedroom before I left.

  The street was bright. The innocent afternoon was ended, and it was night.

  I was in time to fade-in on Portuguese Canning.

  Quota Freight was 132, plus 3¼. NO REPORT FROM YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND REASSURE. IF CORNERED SYSTEM RT.

  Clucking like hens. I didn't like it. Through Hengel or Brand or some unemployed scout loafing in my field they'd got wind of my clash with Phoenix and wanted to know the score. They weren't worried about me. They were worried about my being caught and grilled successfully because I was now a hot operator and could blow the Bureau sky-high if I were made to talk.

  So now I was given homework to do. It filled three pages of paper with the name of the hotel cut off. Items included:

  I don't think Rothstein was operating in liaison with anybody or working to any joint purpose. His own purpose was always, ultimately, to avenge his wife. The canister probably contains microfilm with a bang-destruction unit.

  If Solly hadn't died in the way he did I would have asked the Z Commission to open that canister because I was fairly certain the contents could have led me straight to Zossen. As things were, I didn't want anything to do with it.

  Phoenix are going to a lot of trouble with me and it seems reasonable to think that they have a great deal to keep in hush, and are very keen to find out how much I know. So far I know nothing.

  This was just to needle them and I knew it but decided to let it stand. It was only five days since Pol had contacted me and I had given myself a month for the mission. They had a nerve, anyway, signalling me to report.

  Don't quite understand your request for ‘reassurance’ at this early stage. Have you been getting in the way of off-centre info?

  This was to tell them they could keep Hengel and Brand and anyone else out of my territory. Obviously somebody had reported my red sectors; it was even possible that the Bureau had a man doubling on the fringe and trying to find his way in, as I was myself; and he could have passed a report saying that I was in a corner. Well they could all bloody well shut up.

  No justification for using RT.

  RT didn't stand for radio-telephone but for Rabinda-Tanath, meaning the emergency system for phoning Local Berlin in that language. Had they clean forgotten what kind of thing a corner could be? There's never a telephone there.

  I still hadn't got it off my chest so I ended: Would respectfully suggest that unless there is definite info on my being in trouble, no unnecessary ‘reassurance’ requests should be sent. If I am cornered I shall report accordingly. Q

  Time was now 9.07 and the depression was setting in because of the blood on her legs and the way Oktober had simply left the arena. It wasn't going to work and he didn't yet know that, so it would take him a short time to understand and alter his tactics – unless the doubling were perfect.

  I am never happy when the adverse party gets confused because there's the interim period of correction and he is for this period like a mad bull that won't run straight, and you're closer to a high cornada than you'd ever be with an honest five-year-old Miura running on rails.

  It took something like an hour to collate all the findings that stemmed from the events of the innocent afternoon, and to edit them and form detailed conclusions. General inference: starting out to hunt Zossen I'd been forced on the defensive twice within the first five days and hadn't learned more than half a dozen names that weren't already logged in the memorandum. The offensive would have to be taken as soon as possible because once Oktober decided that I knew nothing except what his and Fabian's questions had implied, he would have me wiped out before I started getting solid facts and feeding them into Control.

  One vital check had to be made before I chose my offensive position, and it had to be made now.

  The distance was some three kilometres and
the pavements were drying so I left the BMW 1500 in the lock-up at the hotel and walked. Within five minutes I sensed a tag and led him north-west along the Hildburghauser-strasse at a slow pace because his presence had mentally thrown me and I wanted time to think. I hadn't expected him.

  Findings: he must be flushed. I was reluctant to do this because he had his uses, but it was no go. What had happened was that no one had tagged me from the Grunewald Bridge until the beginning of the afternoon when I arrived at Inga's flat, because they'd known I could be picked up there. They hadn't known my new base: the Hotel Zentral. But they'd put a tag on wheels behind me when I had driven in the BMW from her flat in Wilmersdorf to the Zentral in Mariendorf – and I hadn't known it. It was simply that Oktober was taking no chances and this was pleasing because it showed how worried he was.

  They now knew my present base. This man had tagged me from there and was still at work. That was all right because there was absolutely no way of going over to the offensive without first showing Phoenix my new base: to reach them I must first let them know where to reach me.

  But I was committed to making this vital preliminary check, and it had to be done solo. Therefore he must be got rid of.

  He was first-class and it took almost an hour. The whole business of tagging is one of the most routine and boring aspects of any operator's work. He can never walk down a street without making constant checks especially if he is going somewhere strictly hush, and it can burn up valuable time in having to flush the tag once he senses him. But if the game goes on long enough and you know the rules it is impossible to tag a man and not eventually lose him if he doesn't want you there, in a city the size of Berlin. I have lost hundreds and hundreds have lost me. In a few cases the boredom of well-worn tactics becomes over-ridden by the interplay of the game itself, and this is what now happened.

  He was damned good and I had to take him through four hotels and twice through Lichterfelde-Sud station before I flushed him at the south end of the Berliner-strasse and took up my original course.

  Time was now 11.21 and the bar was closing. It was called the Brunnen and I had never been there before. The kellner viewed me from between the chair-legs with his night-pallor face and thought out what phrase he would choose if I asked for a drink. There was only one other man in here, half-way up a step-ladder winding a clock; he didn't even see me come or go.

  I asked the kellner the way to Sudende station and went back into the street, making a whole series of rapid checks.

  It was completely clear. I was alone. It was, in a way, a big moment in my life, and I savoured it. The night air felt clean in my lungs and my shoes were springy on the empty pavement and for a few minutes I was aware of the remote possibility of the ultimate redemption of mankind. This modest turn of madness had the effect of a whiff of ammonia, clearing the head. It was a feeling that some operators may or may not experience once or twice in their careers. In actual speech it would go:

  Here you are again in the thick of a job that you're doing because you choose to do it even though it may kill you round the next corner. It gets in the hair and the eyes and mouth and you never feel really clean, except for these few minutes, because you've just struck a blow that was bone on bone and it sent them reeling. Drink, brother, this may not come to you again.

  My day ended in this way. It was midnight when I got back to the hotel. I fell asleep like an innocent man, with all those scars on the mind quietened as if by a balm. Tomorrow the offensive would be launched at dawn when the streets would be empty.

  16: CIPHER

  The dawn offensive was not spectacular, opening as it did with nothing more than a quiet stroll.

  He was waiting for me when I left the Hotel Zentral. I didn't actually see him but I knew where he was. The street was residential but had a bar at the corner, some small distance from the hotel entrance. I knew he would be there. It was the only place. He would be somewhere behind the grey-white net curtains, watching for me.

  To warm him up I turned along the street in the other direction so that he had to get out of the bar and start his tag at a distance. He wouldn't like that. There was nothing moving in the street at this hour but myself, and the morning was windless. He must have tracked me over this first section with his fingers crossed hard: I had only to turn my head once to spot him. I didn't turn my head. We went north towards the centre of the city where it would be more crowded.

  The operation we were now engaged on was known as the switch. When an operator starts out to shadow another the outcome will be found among five main possibilities. One: the tag is never noticed, and the shadowed man leads the adverse party to his destination, unknowing. (It seldom happens. An operator who doesn't even notice a tag isn't allowed to stay in the business very long.) Two: the tag is noticed but can't be flushed, in which case the operator must simply lead him a dance and leave his original destination unexposed. Three: the tag is noticed and then flushed, and the operator can then make for his original destination unaccompanied. Four: the tag is noticed, flushed and challenged. (I did this with young Hengel. In that case my tag was not an adverse party, but it makes little difference: there's always a temptation to challenge after flushing, if only to see their face go red.) Five: the tag is noticed, flushed and followed. The switch has been made, and the tag is now tagged.

  We don't often do it, because an operator is never off duty. He is always going somewhere and usually it's important that he gets there as soon as he can. On this occasion I used the switch because I had to go over to the offensive and find where the Phoenix had its nest. It might be where I had been taken for the narcoanalysis session, but I was getting bored with being taken to places and followed to places (Inga's flat). The idea was to draw the enemy's fire so that we could come to grips, and I had done that successfully, but it was no good fetching a bellyful of amytal whenever we closed together. I now had to find their base, go in under my own steam, get information on it and then get clear with the skin on.

  Two untapped sources of information were mine for the taking but I wasn't going to take them. Solly Rothstein's sealed container was one. Unless I were missing something, that container held all the vital information that he'd tried to bring me when they'd shot him down. It would lead me right to the Phoenix base. I wanted to get there without trading on the death of a friend I'd helped to kill. Inga was the other untapped source. She was a defector of long standing but I would not trade on our innocent afternoon and ask her to give me all the information she had at the time of her defection. (This was how she would see things, and I must play it her way.)

  The single route to their base was open to me: the tag who was behind me now must be made to lead me there. It was almost the only justification for a switch.

  By nine o'clock I had managed to check him visually twice. He was a new man and less efficient than the one I'd flushed last night. Forty-five minutes later I flushed him outside Kempinski's in the Kurfurstendamm, though clumsily. (He nearly got run over crossing the zebra on the red.) We spent half an hour dodging about and then he went into a phone-kiosk to report on the situation. His orders became obvious within ten minutes: he took a taxi and I followed him in mine, all the way back to the Hotel Zentral in Mariendorf. He had lost me, hadn't a hope of picking me up again by chance, and had been ordered back to our starting-point, the only known place where I could be found.

  We were both annoyed. The morning was wasted. I had borne it in mind, when launching my damp-squib offensive, that he wouldn't necessarily lead me to his own base after I did the switch. It had been hope, not expectancy, that had started me off. There had been no other way of trying to get near their base again.

  But tagging is like driving: an experienced operator does it automatically, and can think about other things while he's doing it. I had thought a lot about Solly Rothstein between Mariendorf and the Kurfurstendamm and back, and it had been brain-think. Before, it had been stomach-think, emotional thinking. Guilty because of his death, I'd le
t myself believe that to use the information inside that container would be to trade on tragedy, to exploit Solly for my own purposes. But my purposes were his. If I could kill off Phoenix, a Nazi organisation, it would avenge the murder of his wife; and Solly had lived for that and died for it.

  I phoned Captain Stettner at the Z-Bureau. He said:

  "I've been trying to make contact with you. I didn't know where you'd moved."

  There was no audible sign of line-tap but we didn't have to take chances so I just told him I would go to his office within the hour.

  Sleet had started so I used the BMW, not even checking the mirror. They knew I was linked with the Z-polizei. already. On the way I thought about Kenneth Lindsay Jones because the question of the Grunewald See had been coming up at me again, on and off. I thought I'd answered it: Oktober had told them to drop my corpse into the Grunewald because he knew I was listening and would be convinced that they were genuine orders to kill, since that was where KLJ was dumped. That answer might be correct but now I suspected it, simply because it kept on calling for my attention. It would have to be dealt with.

  The only clue might lie in KLJ's last report to Control before he died. The information in that report was already filed in my head, taken from the burned memorandum; but I had never seen the report itself. If KLJ had had any premonition of his death it would be there in the phrasing of his report, and the memorandum didn't quote reports verbatim. It carried edited information only.