Quiller Solitaire Read online

  'Whatever you say.' In a moment: 'You probably think I'm a bit – I don't know – naive, don't -'

  'You're just not used to subterfuge, that's all.'

  'Oh,' she said, looking down, 'I don't know about that. I tell lies easily, don't I?' She looked up again and the shimmering smile came. 'I think it's just that I'm not terribly bright. I was a model, that was all, before I met George. I've never had to use my brain.' A soft laugh – 'It makes life awkward for me.'

  'A touch of innocence,' I said, 'is refreshing in this day and age.'

  'You're very -' and she was looking for the right word when the phone rang again, and I picked it up and gave it to her.

  'Hallo?' She turned to me and nodded slightly. Yes, Willi. Don't worry, it's still not late. Would you like to have a word with Mr Locke?' She listened for a moment. 'All right. But he wants you to know that he guarantees your' – looking at me – 'safety, was it?'

  'His absolute protection.'

  'He guarantees your absolute protection, Willi. So everything's all right.'

  She listened for another minute and then said goodbye and put the phone back. 'We're to meet him at the Cafe' Brahms in twenty minutes.'

  'Do you know where it is?'

  'Oh, yes. Ten minutes from here.'

  'Have you been there before?'

  'Yes. I -'

  'How often?

  She began looking anxious again, as if she'd done something wrong. 'Oh, just a few times, when -'

  With Willi?'

  'Yes.'

  'And with George?

  'Yes.'

  Then Hartman wasn't terribly bright either. I said, 'I just need to know things like that. Don't worry.'

  In a moment, 'You'll be rather glad to be rid of me, won't you, when I leave Berlin?'

  'Not really. But I've guaranteed your absolute protection, too, so we've got to take a few little precautions.'

  But yes, in point of fact, I would be very glad indeed when I could put Helen Maitland onto a plane for London. In Reigate I'd thought she was vulnerable, and she was; but here in Berlin I realised she was also a distinct risk to security – her own, mine and the Bureau's. Solitaire was running close to exposure.

  There was a cold drizzle in the air when we walked out of the lobby at the Steglitz and got a cab and drove through the late evening traffic.

  'How big,' I asked Helen, 'is the Cafe Brahms?'

  'Not very.' She sat close to me, her thigh against mine. Her face looked cold and pinched in the coloured light from the street; she was sitting close because she wanted to touch someone who knew much more about what was going on than she did; she needed to feel the protection I'd told her about. This was my impression. 'It's a basement,' she said. The Cafe Brahms.

  'I'm going to drop you off there,' I said. 'I want you to sit as close as you can to the bar, where I can find you easily.'

  'Why aren't you coming in with me?'

  'I've got a chore to do. I'll be there as soon as Willi is, don't worry. What does he look like?'

  She was picking at her nails, looking out of the windows at the street. 'Willi? Oh, he's short, thirty or so.' With a nervous smile – 'He usually wears a rather rakish trilby.'

  'Face?'

  She thought about it. 'He's got blue eyes – he's German-looking in that way, blond hair, thinning a bit – he's self-conscious about it.'

  We were going east along Steglitzer Damm, crossing Bismarck; the pavements were shining under the drizzle.

  'What kind of nose?'

  'I can't really say I've noticed.'

  'Pale skin? Red? A heavy face?'

  'Oh no. Pale, and sort of soft.'

  'Mouth?' I kept on at her until I'd got all I could. It was going to be a situation where I could make a mistake if I weren't careful.

  'Will he be coming by car, do you think, or by taxi?

  'I don't think he's got a car. If he leaves the city, he flies.'

  'I see. How far is it now?'

  'We're almost there. The next block.' Her arm was resting along my thigh; I could feel its warmth. 'Everything's all right, is it?'

  'Of course. As I told you, we're just taking precautions. Don't worry. By this time tomorrow you'll be back in Reigate. Are your people there?'

  'Mummy is. They're separated.'

  'You see your father much?'

  Nervous smile. 'I haven't seen him for ages. He's all right, I suppose, but he likes playing the patriarch. Mummy finally couldn't stand it.' The taxi began slowing. 'I'd like to see Gerda, before I leave Berlin, and some other friends.' Her head was turned to watch me.

  'I'd forget it for now. Wait till things have blown over. And please don't leave the hotel, or even phone anyone, unless you check with me first. Do that for me?

  In a moment, Whatever you say.'

  'And I'm not being patriarchal.'

  A soft laugh – I know.'

  'Cafe Brahms.'

  'Danke.'

  I opened the door for her but stayed where I was. 'I'll see you in a few minutes.'

  As she crossed the pavement her long fair hair caught the light from the marquee; she didn't look back. I had a moment of doubt, which I'd expected, because she looked so alone as she opened the door of the cafe and vanished.

  'Fahren Sie und lassen Sie mich an der Ecke aussteigen.'

  'Sehr gut.'

  I got out at the next corner and paid the driver and walked back towards the Cafe Brahms on the other side of the street and then crossed over, looking at the jade and ivory chess sets in the window of a store, putting in time. Hartman was a German and would be punctual, and that made it easier.

  There were canopies over most of the stores here and I stayed under them; the rain hit their canvas with the sound of distant drums. People came by, some of them stopping to take shelter, looking along the street for a taxi. A police car slowed at the traffic lights and went through as they changed to green.

  A BMW stopped at the kerb and two people got out, going across the pavement and into the Cafe Brahms; the chauffeur drove away. A bus pulled in at the stop on the other side of the street, its massive tyres hissing on the wet tarmac. A taxi drew in to the kerb on this side and a man got out and paid the driver and turned across the pavement and I checked him against Helen's description and he matched it but I didn't move. I was working on the assumption that Hartman was under surveillance, just as Helen Maitland had been in Reigate; she was the widow of the dead man and Hartman had been his close friend. It made sense, and as the small black Mercedes slid to a stop behind the taxi and a man got out I started off and opened the heavy wooden door of the Cafe Brahms and let it swing shut behind me.

  There was a tiny hallway and then stairs and I began going down them as the door opened again and I heard someone coming across the hall and then down the stairs behind me. A door marked Damen was on the right and a door marked Herren was just beyond.it and then there were three telephones on the other side of the passage, and I stopped and turned and looked at the man and said in German: 'You're to phone Dieter Klaus right away. Tell him that Hartman has just got here.' He said, 'Very well. But who are you?' There was no one else in the passage so I dropped him with a swordhand to the carotid artery and dragged him into the men's room and pulled out his wallet and searched him for weapons and left him propped in a cubicle.

  Helen was three tables from the bar and Hartman had joined her and I went over there and said, 'We're leaving here now and we'll take the rear exit, it'll be through that archway past the end of the bar, you first, Helen, then you, Hartman, and I'll be right behind, don't move too fast and don't attract attention but start now.'

  Helen threw me a glance and left the table but Hartman was slower.

  'I don't understand. We -'

  'There's a Rote Armee Faktion hit man in here and you are the target.'

  Not strictly true but the colour left his face and he moved at once for the archway and I closed up. There was a man playing a violin and quite a few people dancing
and I don't think anyone noticed us going out. It worried me a little that I'd got these two people on my hands because I knew now that they were going to need a lot of protection, but at least I had that man's wallet in my pocket and could send a signal to London later tonight: Have made contact and gained access to the opposition.

  Chapter 6: WILLI

  It was almost dark in here.

  'Shall I check your coat?' Willi asked.

  I'll keep it on,' Helen said. She was looking paler than usual; perhaps it was the lighting, or she hadn't realised it would be quite like this when she came back to Berlin; she'd thought there was just going to be a quiet talk with Willi. He was lighting a cigarette, black with a gold tip. His hands were quick, nervous.

  'A hit man,' he said. 'How did you know?'

  We hadn't talked much in the taxi on our way here; we'd been looking for somewhere quiet, and there aren't too many places like that in Berlin. 'I'm not sure he was there in order to make a hit,' I said. 'He was just the type, that was all. He'd followed you there.'

  'But how do you know?'

  'Willi, it's my job to know things like that. You've got to trust me.'

  He flicked his cigarette but there was no ash on it yet; it was just a nervous gesture.

  'What happened to him? Where did he go?

  'He went into the men's room,' I said, 'with a bad headache. He didn't follow us here. I had to get you out of the Cafe Brahms because he'd been dropped off by a Mercedes, and that would have stayed in the area. They're waiting for you to come out of the Cafe Brahms and here you are in this place and you're absolutely in the clear, so cheer up, all is well.'

  'Guten Abend. Was mochten Sie trinken?'

  The girl stood looking down at us, holding her tray, pale and skinny and wearing a black satin slip, rouge and red lipstick and short bobbed hair: this place was called Die Zwanziger – The Twenties – and there were girls at the bar and dancing with some pale-looking men on the miniature spotlit stage. Some of them were flourishing long cigarette holders; the place was thick with smoke.

  'Helen?'

  Willi was attentive, considered himself the host.

  'Oh, whatever you're having.'

  'Mr Locke?' 'Tonic. My name's Victor.'

  'Zwei Schnapse und ein Tonic.'

  I waited until the girl had left us. 'Have you been here before, Willi?'

  'No.'

  'Good. For a while, keep to unfamiliar places.

  Change your daily routine. Don't phone friends. Take a private mail box at the post office. Watch for people you've seen before somewhere, in the street, in the shops. Take a good look at people who stand with you in a taxi rank or sit near you in a restaurant, so that you'll recognise them easily if you see them again. Just until things get themselves straightened out.'

  'But I have an apartment. Must I move?'

  'I would just get the things you need from there, say for a week or two, and lock it. Are there security guards in the building?

  'Yes.'

  'Slip them something to look after things, the newspaper and deliveries.'

  'But if they were following me,' he said, 'they'll watch my apartment, won't they?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then I can't go there to pick up my things.'

  'You can if I help you. It depends on how much you're ready to tell me.'

  He looked down. 'About George Maitland, you mean.'

  'About why he was killed, who did it, where I can find them, things like that.'

  'Yes. But there are personal things.'

  'I don't need personal things.'

  Another girl came and stood looking down at us. She'd come through the black velvet curtains at the back of the little stage; her slip was white and diaphanous; her nipples were rouged, and thick black pubic hair showed under the silk. She smiled, the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

  'Mochtest Du ein Spiel spielen?

  Would we like to play games.

  No, Willi told her. Perhaps later. She went back through the curtains and he looked at Helen. 'I'm sorry, I didn't know it was that kind of place. Shall we go somewhere else?'

  'It doesn't matter. They won't bother us, will they?'

  'No. I shall see that they don't.' He turned to look at me. 'So what can I tell you, Victor?'

  'Do you think it was the Faktion that killed Maitland?'

  'Yes.'

  'Why?'

  'He was getting too interested in them.'

  'What started him off in that direction?'

  He looked down for a moment. 'I think perhaps I did.'

  'How?'

  'It wasn't deliberate. I had a girlfriend, Inge Stoph. She was very attractive.' To Helen – 'You met her, several times. She -'

  'Yes. I thought she was terribly good-looking.'

  Willi shrugged. 'Thank you.' To me – 'But I found out she was involved with the Rote Armee Faktion. I was seeing quite a bit of George, at that time, and Helen, when she was over here from England. Just – parties and that sort of thing. Good friends. Good friends.'

  'Of course, Willi.' Her beautiful smile came. 'Of course.'

  He drew smoke in. 'I mentioned my girlfriend to George, just casually. I told him I thought she was too thick with those people.'

  The girl came with our drinks. 'Zwei Schnapse, einer Tonic.' She left the tab.

  I leaned forward. 'What did George say about that?'

  'He was interested, which surprised me.'

  'Interested,' I said, 'in the Rote Armee Faktion.'

  'Yes. He began asking me questions about them. Then later I realised he was – how will we put it? – playing a kind of game with himself. He had a master plan, he told me once, about how to assassinate Moammar Gadhafi.'

  'A counter-terrorist game, then? He fancied himself as an armchair counter-terrorist?'

  'I think, yes.' Willi slipped another black cigarette from the pack. 'George was a very… unusual man. Very intense.'

  'He carried a gun,' Helen said.

  'Always?'

  'I don't know. I just saw it sometimes when he was taking off his» jacket. It wasn't a very big one.'

  'But it's illegal,' Willi said, 'in Berlin.'

  I asked Helen, 'Did he know you'd seen it?'

  'Oh, yes. It didn't worry him. I think he was rather proud of it.' She played with her glass of schnapps; she hadn't drunk any. 'George was very intense, as Willi says. He had a lot of dynamic energy, a lot of energy, all the time.' A faint smile – 'It was a little wearing.'

  'But there was a lot more,' Willi said, 'under the surface. Don't you agree?' He flicked his gold lighter.

  'It went down deep,' Helen said. 'It was rather attractive, in a way, when it didn't get too wearing. It was like being near – I don't know – a small power station.'

  'He was neurotic,' Willi said with sudden force. 'May I say that?

  'Oh, of course. Terribly so, terribly neurotic, yes. He fascinated me.' She gave a short laugh, embarrassed.

  Hate, and fascination. I've only just realised, she'd said in the hotel, how much I hated him.

  'He was also very secretive,' Willi said, 'despite his energy. Sometimes he would be very quiet for a while, and' – his hand brushed the air – 'and you didn't want to ask what he was thinking.' He looked round for the waitress.

  'I know that part of him,' Helen said, 'rather well. George hated being asked what he was thinking about. He'd shut you up at once, and go very cold. But then it's a silly thing to ask people, isn't it? It's an invitation to a lie.'

  I watched the man over there.

  'I never knew,' Willi said, 'that he carried a gun. It surprises me.'

  The girl came to the table and he asked for another schnapps; Helen and I passed. The man had come in alone and was talking to someone near the stage. 'Willi,' I said, 'did George ever meet your girlfriend, Inge?'

  'Yes.'

  'Did he show any interest in infiltrating the Faktion?'

  'Infiltrating…'

  'In getting cl
oser to them.'

  'He was – how will we put it? – like a moth at a flame. And I thought that was not good for him, as a member of the British Embassy and everything. He had an official position, and I thought he might be in danger of – of compromising himself. So I stopped telling him anything about the Faktion.'

  The man was asking for a girl, I saw now, and one of them slipped off the high stool at the bar and went across to him.

  'You stopped telling George about the Faktion' I said to Willi. 'So what had you told him already?'

  He drew on his cigarette immediately, looking down, squinting against the smoke. 'Oh, various things. Things that Inge had told me.' With a slight shrug – 'I miss her, you know. She was… good-looking, yes. You have seen Mai Britt? She is -'

  'Important things, Willi?'

  'What?'

  'Had you been telling George Maitland important things about the Faktion?'

  Cigarette. In a moment, 'I do not think so.'

  The girl was taking the man through the black velvet curtains. There was only the slightest chance in any case that we'd been followed here. I'd checked the environment with extreme care when we'd got into the cab outside the Cafe Brahms; the black Mercedes hadn't been in sight: not that one, with the three-pronged antenna on the boot.

  The waitress brought Willi's drink.

  'Schnapps, darling.'

  'Danke.'

  He raised his glass, and I nodded. Helen wasn't looking. She was watching the girls perched at the bar, their white spindly arms angled, hands on hips, their long legs reaching from their brief silk slips. Two of them had bruises on them. As Helen watched them she stroked her cheek against the soft lambswool collar of her coat.

  I leaned nearer Willi. 'You see, I'll be glad to help you fetch your things from your flat, as I said, as long as you do your bit. What, for instance, was the most important thing you told Maitland about the Rote Armee Faktion?'

  He shifted on his chair. 'I stopped telling him anything at all,' he said with a trace of impatience. 'I even stopped seeing my girlfriend. I tried to wean her away from those people, but she was too involved. It excited her, you understand. So I stopped seeing her. It's all… finished with now.' He brought his eyes back to mine at last, but it wasn't easy.