The Striker Portfolio Read online

  ‘He’s enormously brave. Fantastic record, almost as good as Otto’s. He’s come out of three crashes, I mean ordinary ones, not the special ones.’ What Ferris called ‘pattern crashes’.

  ‘Were any of them due to pilot error?’

  She swung her head and made a laughing sound though it wasn’t quite laughter. ‘You don’t know Franz. He can bring in a plane backwards.’ She was still watching me. ‘He says you’re a psychologist. It must be like undressing people.’

  ‘It’s much more difficult. You’ve got to get through a dozen overcoats before you can reach anyone’s mind.’

  ‘He says you’re English. I’m wild about the English. You don’t talk.’

  ‘It’s just that you can’t hear, because of the overcoats.’

  ‘There’s the city,’ she said. ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘At Linsdorf.’

  ‘But I thought you were going to Hanover.’ She shifted sideways on the seat to face me, her legs still drawn up, one arm along the top of the facia. She was no closer to me than before and her scent was no different but suddenly she made herself explicit: her proximity, her scent, her body. ‘You came specially?’

  I said: ‘Anyone would have given you a lift.’ A lot of the cars I’d slowed for had been coming from the airbase after the party broke up.

  ‘I know. But I didn’t think you were coming specially.’

  ‘What would you have done if you’d known?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  We drove through Hanover-Messe and up Hildesheimerstrasse. ‘Let me know, will you?’

  ‘I’m in Lister-Platz.’ She looked for her shoes. ‘Will you come infer a drink?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Did you want to ask me about Franz and the others? To get information?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we’ll have a drink.’

  The apartment was small and overheated and untidy, with her clothes around and nothing to show whether it was from indifference or despair.

  She sat curled up on the floor just as she had been in the car, in the attitude of a child. The blatant carnality she had shown in the crowded room was quite gone, because the necessity had gone; but her reasons remained and she spoke with her head turned away.

  ‘It’s late, and I don’t want to have to go out again. If it can’t be you it’ll only have to be someone else.’

  Chapter Six

  NITRI

  He looked dead.

  There was no traffic about. It was late: gone 2.00 a.m. I had left the N.S.U. in the Hohenzollernstrasse and we’d walked round the corner into Lister-Platz. I had walked back along to the car and there was condensation inside the windows, otherwise I would have seen him from farther away.

  He was only just recognizable through the condensation: some thin straw-coloured hair on a lolling head, black-framed glasses on a waxy face, the eyes shut. I looked along the street, both ways, both sides, in the doorways, in the shadows. It could be a booby-trap, you can never tell. They hadn’t got on to me since the truck had hit the thin one but they were looking for me, I knew that.

  The street seemed all right. I wasn’t expecting a shot: it would be a rush of feet. They were controlled by someone circumspect. Even when they did a bump there was a suicide note to smooth things over. I knew now why they’d taken me to the car dump. They knew that if I gave trouble they’d have to shoot and they didn’t want to do any shooting in the cul-de-sac with a lot of buildings around.

  I walked once round the car. None of the doors had been forced. It looked all right so I got in and he woke up.

  ‘I must have dozed off.’

  ‘Don’t let me disturb you.’ I was a bit annoyed: not with him but with her. She’d thrown a few hysterics when I told her it wasn’t on and hysterics can be wearing.

  He was completely awake within seconds. ‘I’ve been in signals with London all day. It goes roughly like this: Parkis didn’t know a thing except that another Striker was going to crash, but he thought something much bigger was in the background - he’s got a flair that way. That’s why he wanted you for the mission. But there was nothing he could give you except what looked like a one-and—nine penny sabotage-investigation pitch. So he had to hook you in.’

  I began wiping some of the condensation off the glass because if anyone came by I wanted to see who they were.

  ‘London got a letter today from Lovett, posted two days ago with a microdot inside.’ He turned to look at me for the first time. They badly want to know who told Lovett about that Striker. They think it’s someone trying hard to get across. He made contact with Lovett, who played it cool and asked for a sight of his wares. They weren’t bad, were they? The exact prediction of the next pattern-crash. So Lovett was ready to pass him on but his signal about the Striker got intercepted. That was bad luck.’

  He was silent for a bit and I didn’t ask any questions. Even in an organization that doesn’t exist and where everyone is anonymous there are some people whose names begin to mean something over the years. We’d all liked Lovett and I knew Ferris had worked close to him until they’d carved him up in Rome.

  ‘We still want to know why the Strikers are going down. It’s not the storm-centre but it’s the way in, or one of the ways in. And we want to know, fully urgent, who made contact with Lovett.’

  He must have actually been on one of the protected communications networks, person-to-person with Parkis. ‘Storm-centre’ was a typical Parkis phrase, straight out of the comics.

  I said: ‘What makes you think he’s still alive?’

  They’d neutralized Lovett just because he’d seen a fraction of the picture. His contact must be in possession of the whole.

  ‘We think he’s still in Hanover and the Bureau’s monitoring the news of every death in the area. So far they believe he’s not among them. Find him as soon as you can. Help him across. London wants him badly.’

  ‘Oh come on, Ferris, you can do better than that.’ I was suddenly fed up. Parkis didn’t run all the missions but he was running this one and he was running it in his usual way: sparking off random activity in the field without a sign of co-ordination. ‘They want me to find out why the Strikers are going down so my search-area’s Linsdorf and they want me to find Lovett’s contact so my search-area’s Hanover. Tell Parkis to make up his bloody mind.’

  ‘Nobody loves Parkis, do they?’ He was running his long fingers across the facia-board, transferring his reactions. He spoke mildly for maximum effect. ‘But you’ll have to bear with him this time because he’s on to a rather big show and you are in it. If you let your dislike of Parkis affect your judgement you’ll come unstuck, and I don’t want that to happen because I’m in it too and I’m responsible for you. So brighten up a little and we can do some good business together.’ He ran his fingers round the chronometer and then took his hand away. ‘Your judgement’s a degree cloudy at the moment. Our contact tipped off Lovett about a Striker crash and the nearest Striker base from Hanover is Linsdorf so he might be there, someone on the admin, staff or on the technical side, even one of the engineers. And your enquiries have brought you back to Hanover tonight - correct ? So you can commute between the two. Parkis doesn’t realize that, but I do, and I’m not going to tell him he’s got his wires crossed just because you’re in a tantrum. Wouldn’t she let you, or something?’

  This was why Ferris was such a good director. He knew how to set you up when you were slipping.

  ‘You really are a bastard,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right.’ He resettled his glasses. ‘Another thing is, Parkis wants to send in a shield.’

  I didn’t say anything right away because I was feeling better now and in any case this was confirmation that the mission was expanding: they only send someone to look after you when things hot up and you become valuable to them. A shield is a bodyguard, close or remote, and his job is to stop people messing you about -people like the man with the marzipan - to keep you alive and leave
you in peace while you’re working. Some of us accept the idea because it can be useful: when Miller burst open the Warsaw thing last year it was almost wholly due to the shield who kept him alive while he was busy penetrating.

  ‘No go,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what I told him.’

  ‘I work best alone, you know that’

  ‘That’s what I told him.’

  He’d been enjoying himself, telling Parkis the answers before I’d been given the questions.

  ‘All I haven’t told him,’ he said carefully, ‘is whether you’ve dug up any lead-in data at Linsdorf.’

  ‘I’ve been .down there for twelve hours, remember?’

  ‘That’s all right. I just asked. Because he will. How’s the hand ?’

  ‘Top condition.’

  ‘And what else was it? The arm, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I still don’t want a shield.’

  ‘Fair enough. But you’ll have to be careful. Independence is one thing but as your director I’m not standing for any flights of bravado. Is there anything else before I go?’

  I asked him for a statistics breakdown on the complete series of pattern-crashes to date, chronological, geographical and with background information on the dead pilots. He said he could do it for me.

  ‘Can I drop you off?’

  ‘I’ll walk. It’s a fine night’

  I watched him away while the engine was warming. He had a loping stride and his thin hair blew around his head as he passed below the last lamp before the corner.

  The Hanover-Kassel autobahn runs almost due north-south and I could see the few lamps of Hildesheim to the right. The rain had stopped and the three-quarter moon sent a trickle of light along the chrome edge of the screen. After Hildesheim I pushed the N.S.U. to its optimum cruising-speed on the auto-converter, close on 160 k.p.h. Full pelt was 180 but there was no need for that: the mirror was clear except when I overtook a night-running truck.

  It had come oddly from someone like Ferris: ‘You’ll have to be careful.’ Yesterday morning he’d told me to ‘get in their way’ without hesitation and now he was talking in terms of a shield. He’d known I wouldn’t agree but if I’d changed my mind an hour ago he would have signalled London by now and they’d have flown one in. The thought was luxurious: once they decide you’ve got a value they’ll do your buttons for you if you can’t be bothered, give you that 260-k.p.h. Lamborghini without a Special Uses chit.

  I missed her nyloned legs, curled up in the glow from the facia. Her scent was still in the car.

  I’d stopped being annoyed with her because the stuff Ferris had given me was important and I was interested in it. It had been nothing more than frustration in any case because there’d been arousal and I hadn’t bargained for that.

  When I told her it-wasn’t on she slipped out of her dress, stretched, stooped and was naked before I had time to say that I meant it.

  She was pleased, watching my expression, standing there with a little half-proud smile. ‘I’m different, aren’t I?’

  Anders was the word. The lamp had a rose shade and she moved so that its light could play on her. Then I looked up at her eyes and she was sure of me and came towards me so I turned away and that was when the hysterics began.

  I let them come. I couldn’t leave her until I’d heard enough to know she wouldn’t do anything dumb as soon as she was alone. They were all living on their nerves, the wives of Linsdorf, and if there were any dangerous instability in her a small shock to the ego like this could push her over the edge. Between sobs she said the expected: she hated me, I was impotent, so forth, throwing herself face down across the bed where the lamplight fell so that it was necessary to look somewhere else because for a lot of reasons it wasn’t on and it was no good the libido’s trying to struggle.

  Then of course she was suddenly asking, ‘Is it because I’m different?’ and I went over and played with the hair at the nape of her neck because she was serious now and needed comfort.

  ‘You’re not that different, Nitri.’ Her hair was like warm cream through my fingers. The English don’t talk, remember? And there are other things they don’t do when they don’t want to, however, much they want to. You only want to hurt yourself and I’d make it worse, it’d be a kind of rape, wouldn’t it?’

  When she was quiet and I moved away and she watched me open the door. She said: ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I’ll tell him we did. That’s all you want, for him to think so.’

  The Hara peaks on the left, moonlight along their snows.

  He’d stayed in the mirror for more than five kilometres now so I came down to 140 and he still didn’t pass and I began thinking things but he pulled out after a while and I kept my speed down until he became a shrinking blob of light far ahead of me. Some night-drivers like company through the long dark autobahns and he was just one of them.

  The lamps of Nordheim. Poor little bitch. Not long out of school and into marriage with a man who used variety for a tranquillizer because his nerve was going and now she was only at peace when his plane took off because it was the one place where he couldn’t take a woman, the one place where she didn’t want him to be: alone with the Widowmaker.

  But I would have to see her again. There was more that she could tell me. Ferris had asked if I’d dug up any lead-in data at Linsdorf. Well yes. But not entirely at Linsdorf: it linked with something she’d said in the car on the drive north. And she knew them better than anyone, the pilots, those who knew that she was anders.

  There were a few lights in the motel and I swung the N.S.U. into the park and had a thought and turned out again without stopping, driving on for three kilometres and then taking the minor road past the airbase. It ran within a hundred yards of the hangars and they were on to me right away: red lights, mobile barriers, the full treatment.

  ‘Halt!’ One on each side with submachine-guns. ‘Ihre Papiere bitte!’

  Their breath clouded in the lamplight ‘Von wo kommen Sie?’

  ‘Hannover.’

  Wo wollen stehn?’

  ‘Nach Linsdorf ins Motel.’

  ‘Was machen Sie auf dieser Strasse?’

  ‘Ich muss wohl auf der verkehrten Strasse sein.’

  ‘Lassen Sie den Wagen hier und begleiten Sie uns.’

  I got out and they took up escort positions. The post was on the far side of the hangars and the guard commander kept me fifteen minutes and used the telephone twice before he was satisfied.

  ‘Sie konnen gehen. Das nachste Mal bleiben Sie auf dem richtigen Weg.’

  ‘Jawohl.’

  Then they walked me all the way back and I still wouldn’t fall into step and it got on their nerves. When I backed up and turned in the narrow road the headlights swung across the hangars and the statuary of armed figures.

  I had needed to know. If anyone were getting at the Strikers it was from the inside.

  You can use a book face down or a penknife on edge but I prefer keys and I always carry three on a ring and leave them in a top drawer because they’ll go for the top one first and if someone interrupts they don’t have time to open the lower ones.

  I never vary the pattern: the rim of No 1 just touching the E of Yale and the rim of No 2 super-imposed on the border-moulding of No 3. They’re no use to anyone, except to me. The only things they’ll open are a ‘65 Chewy in Mexico, a flat in Putney and a jemmied strong-box somewhere at the bottom of the Nile.

  A book isn’t so certain. They might not take it out and if they do they won’t necessarily put it back face up. The snag with a penknife is that it won’t necessarily fall over and if it does they’ll smell a rat if they’re any good at all. But they’re certain to pick up keys: any keys. They’ll try them on anything in the room and if they have the time and the equipment they’ll make a wax impression. (I’ve used this set for four years now and there must be dozens of keys that can open the Chewy and the flat and the strong-box.) My room at the motel was like most others: you couldn’t
move the bed out of sight of the windows. In this case there was a balcony. The wardrobe was built in but I wouldn’t have moved it to shield the bed anyway because they don’t search your room and shoot afterwards: it isn’t consistent.

  It was soon after five o’clock when I turned in. Two cars left the park in the few minutes before I slept, their lights fanning across the ceiling. The motel was on a route used a lot by commercial travellers. It might have been a couple of commercial travellers driving away.

  Last waking thought: so they’d got on to me but there must have been a policy-switch and for the moment the orders were to leave me alive.

  Chapter Seven

  COLLAPSE

  It happened at precisely 0951 hours; I checked my watch from habit.

  ‘She is beautiful.’ The manager nodded.

  Most of them had gone, much earlier. I had slept until someone had called out across the park below my room: the human voice probes deeper into the sleep-levels than other sounds in the normal range.

  I drank coffee at the bar. She stood on the lid of the black padded box. The traveller turned her to catch the light. The work was delicate: the mouth, ear-whorls, fingers.

  ‘Original,’ the manager said, ‘of course?’

  ‘Copies are a waste of time. A good copy can be valuable these days but people won’t offer you a decent price, just because it’s a copy.’

  The paper was upside down from where I sat. There was still hope for the seventeen miners. Maria Fedrovna said she had not asked for asylum but that both she and her choreographer were ‘considering such a step’.

  The manager lifted the shepherdess to look at the markings on the base, his big hands gentle because he knew that if he dropped her the price would be double.

  ‘Dresden, Herr Benedikt?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Feldmarschall Stockener was killed late last night on the outskirts of Hamburg. He was alone in the car.

  ‘Things are different there now. The bombing made a difference. My wife is there. My family.’ He turned to me. ‘Do you know Dresden?’