The Scorpion Signal q-9 Read online

  There were thirty minutes left on the clock, and I thought of something else. 'When did you find out Schrenk was back in Moscow?'

  'Early this morning.'

  'Then you haven't had time to set it up. I'm not — '

  'It was ready to run before I called base from Geneva. You have a director, a safe-house, contacts, sleepers, signal availability and Embassy liaison.' His thin mouth was contemptuous. 'What more do you want, for God's sake?'

  'Access. I'm on their files and I'd never get through the airport.'

  'You have access by road into East Germany.'

  'Overt?'

  'Of course not.'

  'What are you talking about, a bloody farm cart or something?'

  'A closed truck will take you across the frontier at Zellerfeld, in the Harz Mountains, with no questions asked.'

  He was blocking me every time. I was his last hope, I knew that now. He'd tried half a dozen other people and drawn blank, because this was a suicide trip and he didn't pretend it was anything else.

  'What about access into Moscow?'

  'By commercial airline: Aeroflot. We have a seat for you on the morning flight from Leipzig, where the truck will drop you. It's perfectly straightforward.'

  I took a slow breath. 'Cover?'

  'Transit papers, East German national.'

  It was beginning to sound like a trap and I stopped thinking about it for a minute, watching the people in the group by the main doors. A man was shouting his head off now and so was his wife: he wanted asylum but his wife said it would mean leaving her mother behind, and the secret police would take reprisals. A younger man, possibly their son, was trying to make them shut up. Two more policemen were marching towards them, unbuttoning their holsters to make an effect. A crowd was collecting.

  Fluggaste fur Flug Nummer 903 fur Hannover kommen Sie bilge so fort Eingang Nummer 2.

  I looked at the clock.

  'Is that the flight you booked for me?' I asked Croder.

  'Yes.'

  'Then there's no time for briefing.'

  'You'll be briefed on the access in Hanover, and fully briefed In Moscow.'

  'By Bracken?'

  'Yes.'

  'Who's our man in Hanover?'

  'He's an agent-in-place.'

  'I want to know who he is.'

  'All you want,' Croder said with his mouth tight, 'is just one good reason for getting the next plane back to London with what's left of your conscience, and the problem is that you won't find one because we've been hard at it setting the whole thing up, and it works, it really does. The odds, of course,' he said without looking away from my face, 'are not in your favour, and I'd quite understand it if you didn't feel up to the task. Your nerves, as you say, are still — '

  'My nerves are my business.' A lot of heat came out and his black eyes flickered. 'You know bloody well you've got me hooked or I wouldn't be here in this stinking hole, would I?' Control, get control. 'It's just that I want — ' but the anger ran out and we stood facing each other without another word, while the shadows of the rain crept down his neon-grey face and his eyes looked into mine and waited to know whether I would do the job that had to be done or whether I was too old, at last, for this game, or too scared.

  When I was ready I said: 'Who else did you ask?'

  'I told you before. I went straight for you.'

  His eyes went on waiting.

  I only had one more question, and it was difficult, because I thought I knew what he'd say, what he'd have to say. 'What happens if I find him, but can't get him out?'

  He didn't hesitate. 'That would make things easier for you. All we want is his silence.'

  3: JUMP

  It had been snowing in Hanover; the roofs were white with it under a full moon when we touched down.

  He was waiting on the other side of the gate, a short man with a deerstalker hat and a long green woollen scarf wound several times round his neck. He was rubbing his hands and blowing into them, watching me as I came through.

  'From the office?' he asked me.

  'Who are you?'

  'Floderus. Have you got any baggage?'

  'No.'

  'OK. I've got a car here.' He led the way with short energetic steps, his hands in his coat pockets now.

  'I want to see the clinic,' I said when we got outside. 'Did he tell you?'

  'Yes. I only just caught the doc there: he's off on vacation first thing in the morning.' We got in the Mercedes.

  It was the only condition I'd made to Croder: I wanted to know everything I could about Schrenk, if I were going to do anything for him.

  'What was it like in London?' Floderus asked.

  'Pissing down:

  'I should've known.'

  He got off the autobahn at the Hanover-Herrenhausen exit and drove south on Route 6 as far as the river.

  'Are you expecting any problems?' I asked him.

  'What? No.' He did it again. 'Why?'

  'Fond of the mirror.'

  'Oh. Habit.'

  I supposed he could have been in from the field; sleepers and a-i-ps aren't normally so nervous. 'What's this man's name?'

  I asked him. 'What man?'

  'The doctor.'

  'Oh. Steinberg.' Along Dorfstrasse he turned right and began slowing. The clinic was just after the church, a long white building with a board with gold letters. Floderus pulled up.

  Steinberg opened the door to us himself, tall, stooping, wrapped in a dressing-gown with cigarette burns on it, a man who worked too late. He took us straight into a consulting-room and I let Floderus stay. We spoke in German.

  'You wish to know about your patient here, I understand.'

  'Yes. I want to know the state of his mind.'

  He considered this, staring at the top of his desk through thick round glasses. 'I know nothing at all about his present state of mind, of course. He was abducted in violent fashion, and that would have induced further shock. I have no means of knowing what has happened to him since, in terms of his state of mind.'

  'What was he like just before the abduction?'

  He lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. 'At that time he was quite alert, quite normal. The nightmares had stopped, and he did very well in tests. Still rather bitter towards those people, understandably. We felt he — '

  'Bitter?'

  He glanced up quickly. 'He harboured a grudge against them. Don't you feel that was understandable, Herr Matthofer?'

  'I suppose so,' I said. It was as far as I could go; he didn't know who we were. But something was odd: we don't harbour grudges against the opposition, whatever they do to us; there's nothing personal: it's dog eat dog. I didn't see why Schrenk should have been 'bitter'.

  'He put up quite a struggle,' the doctor said. 'The place was in a mess, with blood on the carpet and some glass from a broken syringe. One of my staff ran into the street after them, but they didn't stop.'

  'You called the police?'

  'Immediately. We are not used to that sort of affair in my clinic. It was very disturbing.'

  'What did they do to him?'

  'They took him away.' He looked at me quizzically. 'I told you, they — '

  'I mean before. Before he was brought here.'

  'Ah. That.' He screwed his face against the smoke and pulled a drawer open, putting a thick file on to the desk and opening it. 'I have had some experience with these things, you understand. I am a member of Amnesty International and the World Medical Association. We study these phenomena.' I looked at my watch and he noticed, but didn't hurry. Floderus sat snuffling in his handkerchief. 'We questioned the patient, and his answers were consistent with the trauma we noted on his body.' He studied the file. 'He was subjected to the "wet canvas" treatment. Do you know what that is?'

  'Yes.' But they wouldn't have started off with that one. They risk losing you, that way, because panic sets in.

  'They used falanga, and we found extensive ecchymoses and edema, with some degree of irrevers
ible ischemic changes in the intermetatarsal areas of the foot. There were — '

  'What was he walking like, before they took him away?'

  'His feet were still rather painful. He tended to hobble.'

  'All right. What else?'

  He looked at the file again. 'He said they had suspended him from the arms for prolonged periods, but we found no evidence of cervical dislocations. We took X-rays, of course. He could use his arms perfectly well, after about eight weeks. We found hematuria and some bleeding from the ears, but again we were able to treat these symptoms successfully. This kind of thing is found extensively in Chile, by the way, and Uruguay.'

  'You'll find it everywhere,' I said.

  I heard Floderus swallowing saliva.

  'So we are beginning to discover.' Steinberg nodded, and dropped ash on to his dressing-gown. 'There was, in Herr Schrenk's case, local infiltration of anaesthetics into the eyelids.'

  Floderus was leaning forward. 'What for?' he asked the doctor.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'So that he couldn't shut his eyes,' I told him, 'against the light.' I wished I hadn't let him stay; he was getting on my nerves. 'Did they use drugs?' I asked Steinberg.

  'He described certain phases of mental disorientation, including hallucination, but of no great significance. It might have been induced by reaction to the physical trauma. If they used drugs, they may have used thiopental or one of the amphetamines; he exhibited no lasting evidence of this.' He closed the file and put it in the drawer.

  'Can you tell me anything else?'

  He drew on his cigarette, leaving a shred of tobacco on his lip. 'I think that is all I can give you. As to his present state of mind, it depends upon how they have treated him since they took him away.' He spread his thick white hands. 'We can only hope that by some good fortune…'

  'Did he tell you he'd revealed any information?'

  'I heard nothing about that.'

  'Would you have heard?'

  'It would be in the records.'

  'Taped records?'

  We record conversations with patients, yes. It is routine, an essential part of the therapy.'

  'Can I hear some of the tapes?'

  'That is quite out of the question. Such matters are strictly confidential. We — '

  'Did he mention any names? Names of people in Moscow?'

  'I cannot say. It would be in the records.' He began fidgeting with a pen-holder.

  'Did he scream any names in his nightmares?'

  'Herr Matthofer, I am not at liberty to — '

  `Did he make any threats?'

  'Of what nature?'

  'Any nature. Any threats against anyone at all.' I got up and walked past his desk to the window and back. 'You said he was bitter, and bore a grudge. Against whom?'

  'There was nothing specific.' He stubbed out his cigarette, annoyed by the way things were going. He was the top kick in this place and he'd found me on the doorstep washed up by the night.

  'You mean he was bitter in general? What made you think he bore someone a grudge?'

  He stood up and came from behind his desk, drawing the dressing-gown around him. 'Surely you can understand that a man in his condition should bear a grudge against those responsible for it?'

  'Or did you just expect him to feel like that?'

  It was important and he didn't realize it and I couldn't explain.

  'You will have to excuse me, Herr Matthofer. I agreed to receiving you in the middle of the night in order to discuss this patient's case for a few minutes, but not to submit to an Interrogation. I am leaving Hanover at nine o'clock and I need some sleep.' He jerked the chain of the desk lamp and went over to the door. Floderus got up. I asked Steinberg:

  'Did the police find any clues?'

  'Not to my knowledge.'

  'They came here to ask questions?'

  'But of course.'

  'Did anyone see the car these people used?'

  'No, they did not. I would have been told. Now I will say good night, gentlemen.' He opened the front door for us.

  Floderus started blowing into his hands again the minute we were in the street.

  'Haven't you got any gloves, for God's sake?' I asked him.

  'I lost them,' he said irritably.

  'Haven't you got any others?'

  'Why was it so important,' he asked me, 'about Schrenk being bitter?' He swung the Mercedes in full turn and headed north by the river.

  'It's right out of character. What time's our rendezvous?'

  '03.30 at Zellerfeld. He should be there by now.'

  'Why so early?'

  'I didn't know you wanted to see Steinberg first.'

  'Couldn't you signal him?'

  'Look,' he said, 'we're all doing our best, OK?' He got on to the autobahn at Hanover-Flughafen and drove east, moving into the eighties before turning south at the cloverleaf with the Hildesheim sign coming up. 'Your stuff's in the glove pocket if you want to start looking it over.'

  I found the thick envelope. It had the single word Scorpion written in pencil at the top left corner. 'Where else did they take him,' I asked Floderus as I pulled out the papers, 'apart from Lubyanka?'

  'We think he was at the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow, and the mental hospital in Chernyakhovsk. London's still checking with our people in Moscow and you'll be briefed when you get there.'

  'Is that all you know?'

  'I'm just contact and relay, sorry.'

  I checked the stuff over: transit cover in the name of Hans Matthofer, East German representative for Plastichen Farben; visa and travel permit, Moscow only; record of previous visits; stated purpose of present visit; advanced hotel booking and proposed itinerary (including a visit to the Bolshoi Theatre on the evening of February 23rd, unaccompanied); currency vouchers; a batch of sheets in a file with photographs of plastic moulding and three letters of introduction, one of them to the Ministry of Labour. My photograph was recognizable, with fur hat.

  'Have you got any clothes for me?'

  'In the back. Coat, hat, furlined boats and gloves; it's twenty below in Moskers, rather you than me.'

  We drove for two hours, through Hildesheim and over roads covered with snow when we reached the mountains, while I thought of Croder and Schrenk and Steinberg and tried to think why Schrenk should feel 'bitter' about what they'd done to him. It didn't fit in with the pattern and I kept on worrying it because these are the little things that can take you off course if you're not watching. I'd done two missions with Schrenk and in two missions you learn a lot about a man; Schrenk knew the score, all the way along the line, and he wouldn't bear a grudge against the KGB any more than he'd bear a grudge against a snake that had bitten him, because there's nothing personal about these things.

  Floderus was slowing, and I tore off the top left corner of the envelope and put the papers back.

  'Where are we?'

  'The other side of Zellerfeld. I made a loop.' He drove slowly for another half mile and pulled up on a snow-covered patch alongside the road, dousing the headlamps. The moonlight brightened gradually.

  'Is this the place?'

  'Yes.'

  'Where is he?'

  'He should be here.'

  'What's the landmark?'

  'That sign over there.' Einbeck.

  I began worrying. 'How far is it to the checkpoint?'

  'Four kilometres.' He began blowing into his hands and I reached over to the back seat and rummaged about and found the gloves and dropped them on to his lap.

  'For Christ's sake put these on.'

  'You'll need them when — '

  'Put them on till then.' A slight break in the tone, inadmissible in the pre-jump phase but my nerves were only just under the surface and small things were picking at them because this is the phase when you're stone cold and your mind is clear and you know you're putting your life on the line and you know you've done it before and got away with it but this time it's different and you'
re scared again, and swallowing, and alert to the signs and portents that are suddenly in every sound and every shadow, till you can't stand a man blowing into his hands because the repetition drives you up the wall.

  Not good. Not at all propitious. Better to get to a telephone and pull Tilson out of bed and tell him to find Croder: Tell him I was right, I'm not ready, he'll have to get someone else.

  '… Gunther.'

  'What?'

  'His name's Gunther,' said Floderus again. 'The man with the truck.'

  I wound the window down and listened. The air was perfectly still and the snow had brought its own peculiar silence; a jet was moving at altitude, lost in the brightness of the moon, its thin whine threading the night. I could hear other sounds, distant and muffled by the terrain.

  'Dogs?'

  'What? Yes. At the checkpoint.'

  'Where else?'

  'Nowhere else, in this area.'

  I don't like dogs.

  'You want a gun?'

  'What for?'

  He looked at me in the pale light, sniffing a drop off his nose. 'For the mission.'

  'No. Is this meant to be clearance?'

  'Sort of.'

  I wanted to laugh. Clearance and briefing normally takes hours and you see a dozen people and sign a dozen forms and make half a dozen declarations because that's all that's going to be left of you if you muck it up out there: a record of what you were. It makes you feel you're important to somebody, if only to the computer clerks. But this trip I was being kicked across the frontier by a junior a-i-p with a drip on his nose and only just enough control over himself to keep him from telling me I shouldn't have got him out of bed in the first place.

  'You'd better sign this.' He sniffed again and got out a crumpled handkerchief, taking off one of my gloves to use it. 'Is that your own code?'

  I looked at the form. 'My own what?'

  ' "Five hundred roses for Moira." '

  I didn't want to talk about that so I got a pen and signed the form, no next-of-kin, no dependants, nothing saved up to leave to anyone, just enough for the roses. What was she doing now? When did she last think of me?

  'Where the hell is that man Gunther?'

  Floderus looked at his watch in the moonlight. 'He'll be here.' He put the glove back on.

  'How big's the truck?'