The Scorpion Signal q-9 Page 4

  'It's a ten-tonner.'

  'What's it carrying?'

  'You.'

  'Come on for Christ's sake I want briefing!' He jerked back and stared at me. 'I want to know what else that truck's carrying and where it's going and why he's got a free run across the frontier. I want information, is that too much to ask?'

  He pulled himself round on his seat and said a bit shakily: 'Look, I haven't been told all that much. You're being briefed in Moscow, they said. All I'm here for is — '

  'Information, don't you know what it means? About the truck.'

  'Oh. Well,' he gave a long riffling sniff, 'it's taking luxury goods across for the black market in Leipzig, a regular run. Scotch and perfume and American goods, jazz records and cassettes and stuff like — '

  'Who runs this?'

  'The Party, if you want to go right to the top. It's for them and their wives, the same thing that goes on in Moscow. They — '

  'How often does this truck go across?'

  'About every month. It varies.'

  'Just the driver, no one with him?'

  'No. He — '

  'Is he Russian? East German? West German?'

  'He's from Hamburg.'

  'Has he ever been turned back?'

  'Only once. He — '

  'Only once?'

  He caught his breath and said in a moment, 'There was a new guard commander, and he wasn't tipped off. He was changed again.'

  I didn't want to know any more. This was Russian roulette they'd got me playing: either we'd get across the frontier or we wouldn't. Either I'd find Schrenk or I wouldn't. All I could do was to stop thinking and let the strain off and leave it to Croder and try to believe he knew what he was doing.

  I shut my eyes for a while, until I heard the faint clinking of snow chains and the throb of a diesel engine. There was light flushing across the road behind us.

  'Is this Gunther?'

  'Yes. He said he'd — '

  'How do you know it's not someone else?'

  'There shouldn't be anyone else up here, this time of night.'

  'Shouldn't? Jesus Christ.' I wished Ferris were here, or someone who didn't leave everything to chance.

  'It's okay,' Floderus said, 'he's flashing us.'

  'What sort of terrain is there,' I asked him wearily, 'between here and the checkpoint?'

  'What? Oh, just rocks, and a few trees.'

  'Why doesn't he just give a blast on the horns?'

  He stared at me. 'They'd hear it from the frontier.'

  Some kind of laughter came out of me, maybe panic in disguise. The truck came alongside and I waited for Floderus to check the driver before I got out and opened the rear door of the car and changed coats and put on the fur hat; at least London had got this much right, pulling the tailor out of bed as well, to check on the size.

  'Gloves,' I said.

  'Oh.' He gave them to me. 'This is Gunther,' he said in German.

  A thick-shouldered man in a reefer jacket and woollen hat, his flat square face half buried in a scarf. 'Everything is in order,' he said.

  'Why were you late?'

  'There was snow.' He pulled open the rear doors of the truck and jumped up. 'In here.'

  Most of the stuff on the floor was Scotch, in cases of a dozen bottles, and he had to shift four of them before he could drag the lid of the recess upwards and swing it to one side. The compartment was lined with felt. He stood clear of it to let the roof light shine down.

  'What's underneath?'

  'Nothing,' he said. 'The road. But it's thick, and there are steel brackets.'

  'Do you bring people across in this, the other way?'

  'I have brought seven, in the past three months. Seventy thousand US dollars. Not for me. For them: His breath clouded under the roof light.

  'How much do you get?'

  'One thousand. I get one for you.' His small brown eyes moved over me. 'It's the first time I've taken anyone this way.'

  'Are you going to move those cases back over the trap when I'm inside?'

  'Yes.'

  'How many of them?'

  'These here. Four. Maybe five.'

  'How much do they weigh? Each?'

  'Seventeen kilos.'

  I dropped into the recess face-down and told him to shut the lid; then I humped my back until my spine made contact. There weren't more than a few inches of leverage but it might be enough to shift five cases of Scotch because I'd only have to do it if I got trapped and if I got trapped there'd be a lot of adrenalin to help me. I told him to open the lid.

  'On your back,' he said, 'is best.'

  'That's the way you put people in coffins.' I looked at Floderus, standing out there at the back of the truck with his hands tucked under his arms. 'Is there anything else?'

  'This,' he said, and gave me a small red metal box. Normally I refuse it but on this trip I didn't think much of my chances and if they caught up with me in Moscow and pulled me in I might want to opt out rather than finish up like Schrenk, his feet were still rather painful, he tended to hobble. I put the box in my pocket. 'Send a signal,' I told Floderus, 'as soon as you can get to a telephone. Understood?'

  'OK.'

  I dropped into the recess again and told Gunther to shut the lid. The time by my watch was 03.37.

  First there was just one man talking to Gunther; then a second one came up and told him to open the rear doors of the truck. I could hear those bloody dogs again, not far away now. I was lying in total darkness, with only aural data coming in. When the doors banged back the voices were much dearer.

  What is in these boxes? What is in those packages over there?

  So forth.

  Sweat was running on my face because there weren't enough ventilation holes in this thing and they shouldn't be asking all those questions out there: Gunther had said there wouldn't be any trouble at the checkpoint, he'd drive straight through as soon as they recognized him.

  How many cases are there?

  Their boots grated on the floorboards just above me. I lay with my eyes shut to keep the sweat from running into them.

  Does the Gruppenfuhrer know about this consignment?

  There was grit under their boots and it sounded like static, immediately above my head. Of course the Gruppenfuhrer knew about it, Gunther told them. I thought his voice was too loud, too blustering.

  A dog barked again and my scalp shrank, because this wasn't the end phase of the mission with the blood up and the nerves singing and the target in sight; this was the jump phase and the sweat was cold on me and I wasn't ready for them to tell Gunther to pull up on the floorboard here, this loose one.

  Wait there. I shall have to wake the guard commander.

  They'd be in trouble. Gunther told them, if they woke the Gruppenfuhrer for nothing. He'd have their hide.

  We shall see about that, the man said, and his boots thudded on the roadway as he dropped from the truck.

  I listened to the ticking sounds of the exhaust pipe contracting as it cooled. Light showed faintly through some of the ventilation holes and a door slammed somewhere on the right of the truck. Voices came again, Gunther's the loudest and with panic in it. They didn't listen to him.

  Move your vehicle over here. It's in the way.

  His boots loudened again and the doors at the rear slammed shut like an explosion. I listened to him going forward and climbing into the cab, pulling the door shut. Exhaust gas seeped in through the ventilation holes as he started the engine, and I began shallow breathing as we started to roll. I waited to feel the movement as he turned the wheel but it didn't come: my feet were being pushed against the end of the recess as he gunned up in first gear and botched into second and kept his foot down as a man began shouting somewhere behind us. The roar of the exhaust drowned everything out until the truck hit something head-on and began dragging the debris with it, possibly the barrier but I tried to believe that Gunther knew he wouldn't have a chance in hell of putting a ten-tonner through a checkpoint and
getting away with it.

  There were more shouts now and I could see lights flashing in the ventilation holes; then the noise fell away and we seemed to be clear of the debris as Gunther forced a fast change into third gear and flattened the throttle gain. A lot of vibration started and I braced my hands forward in case we hit something else.

  When the first shots came I humped my back and heaved upwards against the trap door, feeling the weight of the cases and heaving again till they were forced dear. There was some rapid fire now and I crawled out of the recess and lurched forward, getting most of the cargo between my body and the rear doors as a bottle was hit and glass exploded inside one of the cases. The truck was swaying as we took a curve and some of the load went over, bursting open and shattering against the doors. I thought I could hear Gunther shouting in the cab, but couldn't make out any words. A bullet came through at an angle, deflected by the cargo and crumping into the timber close to my head. I lay face down, my body in line with the longitudinal axis of the truck, feet towards the rear doors.

  Light was showing from somewhere, bright light from behind us, filtering through the gaps where the hinges were. The shots were lower now, clanging into the chassis below the tailboard; one of them ripped a hole in the silencer and a sustained roaring started up; I heard a tyre burst but there were twin wheels at the rear and Gunther still had control. A klaxon was going, its sound getting louder as a vehicle dosed in, its light silvering the dark through the cracks in the rear doors; the next volley smashed into a case and sent glass fluting through the air. Then they were shooting low again and two more tyres burst and the truck lurched over, righting itself and lurching again and starting a long slow zig-zag on the rear wheel-rims.

  Then everything went. I felt a final lurch and then a brief period of weightlessness as the truck left the road and began floating into the drop, tilting to one side and staying like that, then tilting right over before it hit the rockface and started bouncing. Orientation was down to near zero now: I was inside a rolling barrel and the cargo had gone wild and all I could do was squeeze under the rear shelf and try to hang on but it wasn't easy because the noise had reached a crescendo: I was trapped inside a thunderstorm and couldn't think my way out.

  Glass shattered, raining against me, and I kept my face down, my head hunched between my shoulders. A period of weightlessness came again — two seconds, three, four, five — as the truck found a sheer drop and floated free, turning slowly and bringing a kind of calm as the rotational speed of the cargo matched the speed of the truck itself. It was the eye of the storm, and I waited. Seven seconds, eight, nine — then we struck rock and smashed down again and the storm burst as it had before, a crash coming as the rear doors were forced open, one of them dragging itself off the hinges with a scream of metal on stone. Then the truck veered at right angles and the rolling stopped. We hit the floor of the slope head-on and I was flung backwards with the rest of the cargo, keeping my head in my arms and going with it, something dragging against my thigh and ripping the coat away and tearing the flesh, a shower of glass whining across my head through the open doors, a last case toppling and smashing down as the truck shuddered and rolled again, slowly, and rocked to stillness.

  I made for where I could smell the air and see the moon. The senses were partially numbed and the organism was working with instinct, but I could smell fuel oil and I fought in a frenzy to get clear, feeling the snow under my hands as the first flame burst and took hold. The split tank coughed into life and black smoke began pouring across the rockface as I pitched forward and got up and staggered, straightening and going on down the mountainside away from the fierce white light that had started blazing from the roadway above the ravine. The truck was a mass of flames and I kept low, lurching and rolling among the snow-covered boulders and keeping the fire between me and the fierce white light. Twice I saw my shadow in front of me and dropped flat, waiting to know if they'd seen me, waiting for the shot.

  4: MOSCOW

  I sat waiting.

  The night was perfectly quiet, with no movement in the air. The moon neared its zenith, towards the south.

  I shifted my position again and the nerves in my right thigh reacted; the tissues had only just begun healing. I didn't know if I could run yet, if I had to. There was nothing else wrong with me, except for the lingering effects of the shock: unexpected sounds made my head jerk, as if they were shots.

  It was freezing cold.

  'What held you up?'

  Another trolleybus went past the end of the street, along Ckalova ulica, a No.10. It was the seventh I'd counted. There had been a dozen cars during the same period; it was eleven o'clock and traffic was light.

  'We crashed the truck,' I told him.

  He started the engine again to blow some more air through the heater. It was a Pobeda, stinking of oil and stale cigarette smoke. We couldn't run the engine all the time because it'd be noticed: we parked by the river, close to the intersection, and four militia patrols had gone past in the last fifty minutes, one of them slowing to look at us. I didn't like it, any of it; my scalp crept too easily, and I was breathing too fast. I'd got close to being wiped out in that truck and the organism remembered.

  'We thought we'd lost you,' the contact said. His speech was indistinct, as if his mouth were bruised. 'There was a complete blackout on you after Floderus signalled from Hanover.'

  'It was close.'

  'What happened to the driver?'

  'The truck went up.' I didn't want to talk about it.

  He turned the engine off and the cold began creeping through the cracks again from outside the car.

  'What else?' he asked me.

  It was his job to find out. This was Moscow and in Moscow you live from one minute to the next because there's no building that isn't bugged and no street that isn't surveyed and no hope of getting away with sloppy security or a doubtful drop or inadequate cover. They could stop, the next time around, and poke their torches in here and ask for our papers and pull us in if everything wasn't exactly right. Or even if it was.

  So he had to find out what I'd been doing, because in five minutes from now I might not be able to tell anyone. I said: 'I got as far as Ashersleben in a shepherd's Volkswagen and asked for some medical attention and bought a new coat. That was this morning. There wasn't a plane till 13:20 Leipzig time. Then — '

  'What medical attention?' He turned to look at me, and the oblique light shadowed the scar that ran from one ear along the jawline. A lot of them look a bit creased in one way or another when they've come in from the field.

  'Torn leg,' I said.

  'Is that all?'

  'And screw you too.'

  He laughed without any sound at all, laying his head back and giving a little shake. 'As long as you're fit for work.'

  'I'm as fit as I'll ever be. Where the hell is Bracken?'

  He began watching the intersection again. Through a gap in the buildings I could see a curve of floodlit gold, one of the domes of the Kremlin. 'It's difficult,' he said in that soft-slipper voice of his. 'Since the trial started we can't make a move without drawing a tag. There's a lot of foreign journalists in town and the K don't like it.'

  'How did Bracken get in?'

  'Diplomatic cover. It was last-minute stuff: they had to fake a case of hepatitis in the Embassy and send a man home, with Bracken to replace him.'

  My nerves reacted again, shrinking the scalp. Most of the field directors come in like that, but not so fast: London would prepare the ground a month ahead to avoid any fuss. But this wasn't a planned operation; it was a last-ditch emergency job, and the man they'd thrown me as director in the field was trying to shake off the ticks before he got close to me and blew me sky-high at the first rendezvous.

  I began taking slow breaths, working on the nerves.

  'Bracken's all right,' the contact said. 'He knows his Moscow, don't worry.'

  'It won't help him. Not at night.' Bracken would have left the Embassy in a car wit
h diplomatic plates and the tags would have fallen in behind: it was routine KGB procedure when someone new joined the staff. And he couldn't drive dear of them by putting his foot down because he wasn't going to ground: he was going back to the Embassy sooner or later and they'd ask an awful lot of questions. There's not much traffic at night in this city and you'd wake the dead if you hit the tit and left rubber all over the road. All he could do was to try getting a truck or a bus or something between them and himself and ease off into a side street while their view was blocked. And the best of luck.

  'Have you worked here before?' the contact asked me.

  'No. I was trained here for Curtain operations.'

  'Are you fluent?'

  'Yes. Local accent.'

  'When were you here last?' he asked me, watching the intersection.

  'Three years ago.' Another militia patrol went past, in one of their snubnosed Volgas. A face was turned towards us. The car didn't slow.

  'That's a long time,' the contact said. 'Things are changing fast over here. You'll have to be careful.'

  'Oh for Christ's sake d'you think I need telling?'

  His head moved a fraction to watch my reflection in the windscreen. 'Sorry, old boy.'

  I slowed my breathing, counting the breaths. I'd have to do better than this, a hell of a lot better. Otherwise I was going to blow up when the heat came on. Eight, nine, ten, 'They pulled me in from leave,' I said more quietly, 'two weeks after the last lot.'

  'Bastards, aren't they?'

  We watched the car.

  'I could have refused.'

  'Why didn't you?'

  'Vanity.'

  He laughed again soundlessly, but didn't take his eyes off the car. It was moving into better light now, turning off Ckalova ulica towards us and speeding up a little. It was a black Humber with CD plates.

  'You're driving this one,' the contact said, 'all right?'

  I said yes, and watched the Humber. There was nothing behind it but there was still plenty of time: we were parked less than a hundred yards from the intersection. It came on, slowing as it neared. Another bus passed along the ring road, then a private car, going quite fast.