Quiller Solitaire Read online

  Tinder the autobahn and going into Jakob Kaiser-platz.'

  'Okay. Two minutes.'

  But the traffic was heavier now as the rush-hour got under way, and it was getting more difficult to keep the Volvo in sight. Aggressive driving could give me what I wanted but I'd got this man beside me waiting to go off like a bomb and I couldn't concentrate.

  'Krenz,' I said. 'You try that again and I'm going to kill you. Do you understand?

  Some kind of grunt.

  'Krenz. You're in our hands anyway and you know that. We're going to take you to our base and we're going to fry your brains and if you come out of it alive you'll finish up in a funny farm. But I can make things a bit easier for you, Krenz. Just give me the airline and the flight number.'

  I didn't know if he was able to take it in but it was worth trying. 'What's the flight number, Krenz, where the bomb's going to be?'

  The Volvo was rounding the Kaiser-platz, now heading west, and I called Roach.

  'Entering Siemensdamm.'

  . 'Got you. I'm in the Kaiser-platz and coming up on you.'

  Then a flashy red Porsche cut across my bows and I had to brake and it put me back in fourth place behind the Volvo and I looked for a gap and there wasn't one.

  'Krenz. What flight is it?

  Because if I was going to lose the Volvo we'd have to work this bastard over just as I'd told him. He might not know the flight number because they might not have chosen it yet, might be waiting for a really impressive passenger list, but if Krenz in fact had a number in his head then we were going to try getting it out of him and that meant contravening the Bureau's strict interdiction covering what is known in the trade as implemented interrogation, but we'd have to do it anyway because there was a plane-load of people moving in their daily lives towards an airport with their travel-agents' envelopes in their pockets with the tickets inside, the tickets and the flight number, on their way to the big bright sunburst in the sky.

  'Krenz. What is the flight number? '

  He didn't say anything. I couldn't tell what state of consciousness he was in: I'd worked on the occipital area and he probably couldn't focus very well and I'd worked on the pineal gland and he'd be feeling disoriented but to what degree I didn't know: I'd used more force than I would have used with a smaller man but it might not have been enough to get him below the beta waves where he couldn't do any constructive thinking. The phone rang and I touched for receive.

  'Listening.'

  'I'm three cars behind,' Roach said. 'You want me to stay there?'

  'No. Come right up on my tail.'

  'Will do.'

  There was a gap on my right and I moved in, got some protest, but I was in the same lane as the Volvo now and three behind.

  'Krenz, you tell me the flight number and we shan't have to do it to you. Are you listening, Krenz? You know what I'm talking about, we shan't have to leave you outside a hospital with your brain gone, you know the things we can do, you've seen them done, Krenz, so give me the flight number.'

  He'd keeled over now with his head resting on the top of the dashboard and it wouldn't look very good from outside so I pulled him back and he came off the seat and smashed into me and I swerved and got straight again and he bounced back onto the seat and used the rebound and came at me again and the front tyres screamed as I corrected and used my left hand for a strike in the killing-area because it was the only thing that would stop him. He slumped back onto the seat and I dragged him upright and he fell against the door and stayed there. I'd made the strike in the killing-area but I hadn't used lethal force, hadn't gone out to break through the cartilage, but he was losing colour and I felt for the carotid pulse and couldn't detect any.

  There was a sudden roar as a jet flew over, a TWA flight lowering into Tegel Airport, leaving the air hazed with its exhaust. Lights flashed once in the mirror and I saw a black SAAB sitting there and raised my hand to acknowledge. There wasn't anything I could do about the man sitting beside me so I stopped thinking about him and we kept heading west and then turned north and crossed Saaltwinklerdamm and the canal and came up on the outskirts of the airport with a jet gunning up on the runway and the first light of the day breaking beyond the control tower.

  The Volvo was peeling off and taking a down-ramp into an underground car park and I held back to let a Mazda 323 move in between us and then followed it through the gate. Roach sized things up and chose a different lane as the Volvo found a slot and Sorgenicht got out and gave a brief look around him and slammed the door and started walking to the B exit, steadily, not hurrying.

  Roach came across from the SAAB and I got out of the Mercedes and opened the passenger door and heaved Krenz upright and felt for a pulse and still didn't get anything. Roach stood looking down at him, no expression, hands by his sides, head tilted.

  'He gone?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Give him mouth-to-mouth?' He had cool eyes, Roach, voice was a flat monotone.

  'If you want to,' I said. 'Not in public. Get him out of sight.'

  'No hospital?'

  I looked down at the heavy face. 'No. No hospital.'

  'If he's gone?'

  'Dig a hole.'

  And chalk it up for McCane.

  Roach gave me the keys of the SAAB and I followed Sorgenicht through B Exit into the terminal.

  Chapter 9: INGE

  This place was a trap.

  He was sitting over there by the wall, Sorgenicht, the man I'd tracked here, Karl Sorgenicht. There were two girls with him. One of them had been sitting by herself when I'd come into the cafeteria; I'd noticed her because she was striking, in the Nordic way: ice-blue eyes and ash-blonde hair, a wide sensual mouth. She wore a crimson leather ski-jacket and crimson calf-length boots; her bag was to match and had steel studs as a decoration. The whole outfit was Berlin-style bisexual-chic.

  Sorgenicht had got himself a coffee at the service counter, and he'd been taking it across to the corner when the blonde had called out to him. He'd hesitated and then joined her. The other girl at the table was dark, slim, elegant in Pan Am uniform. She had joined the blonde just before Sorgenicht; the two girls were friends or acquaintances and they'd arranged to meet here: that was ray impression.

  I had a girlfriend, Inge, Willi Hartman had told me in the night-club. She was very attractive. Helen had agreed: Yes. I thought she was terribly good-looking.

  The girl over there wasn't necessarily Inge; there were a lot of good-looking girls in Berlin, and she could be cabin crew out of uniform. But she'd called Sorgenicht over to her table, and he was a Nemesis agent.

  I poked at my eggs on toast, eating very little although I was hungry. This place was a trap and I might have to use muscle to get out of it and I didn't want the digestive process slowing the organism down.

  It was a trap because that man Krenz would normally have kept in touch with his cell by telephone from the Mercedes. Nemesis had thought it important enough to send him to watch Sorge-nicht's house to see if anyone tried to track him when he left, and it would therefore be important for him to report on events. He hadn't done that. In terms of signals, he'd been missing ever since I'd taken over the Mercedes, and they wouldn't just assume the phone wasn't working: they would check up. They would know where Sorgenicht was going and they'd send some people here to look for Krenz and when anyone came in I paid attention.

  Flight 147 to Frankfurt will be leaving from Gate 6 in ten minutes. Passengers for Flight 147 to Frankfurt should report to Gate 6 and board immediately.

  There were four tables between my own and the table where Sorgenicht sat with the two girls, and the people in between provided reasonable but not perfect cover. As some of them moved in their chairs, leaning forward, leaning back, I moved my head so that I could keep observation and have tune to cover my image if Sorgenicht looked in this direction. If he did, he would recognise me. The lighting at the bottom of the stairs at the Cafe' Brahms last night had been subdued but we'd been facing each ot
her, and unless the strike had left him with any degree of retrogressive amnesia he would remember me if he saw me now.

  They were speaking in English over there. I haven't been trained in lip-reading but the difference between Yes and Ja is quite distinct, and you can pick up the affirmative in most languages by watching for a nod of the head. It's the same with No and Nein, and the shaking of the head is often more emphatic than the nod. The girl in the Pan Am uniform didn't speak German, perhaps, or not too well; or the others were simply showing courtesy to a foreigner.

  Passengers for Flight 232 for London should go to Gate 17 immediately. Flight 232 for London will be leaving in fifteen minutes.

  It worried me, the voice on the loudspeaker. This is what it had sounded like in Frankfurt that day: Flight 103 will be leaving in ten minutes. Passengers for London on Flight 103 should report to Gate 10 immediately. It was said later that few of them, perhaps none of them, had even heard of the remote Scottish village with the name of Lockerbie.

  If that man Krenz was dead, that man with the massive skull in the Mercedes, if I'd gone too far, put too much force into the strike, I would have no conscience. None. I would have no conscience if, in the urgent process of the mission, others also died, and at my hands.

  Three men came in and I watched them. Two were pilots.

  I felt a resonance along the nerves; it was not unpleasant. If they found me here, the people of Nemesis, if Sorgenicht recognised me, I would have a fair chance of getting clear. It's very difficult to attack and subdue and seize or kill a man in a place as public as a major airport without bringing security or the police on the scene. The resonance along the nerves was due to excitement, not fear, because I had made access to Nemesis and I would stay with the opposition now wherever they moved, and if I got things right, if I didn't lose them, didn't slip, didn't fall, I would reach this man Dieter Klaus, and reach him in time, and bring him down before there was another hideous sunburst in the sky.

  The man at the top now is Dieter Klaus, and I hope to Christ you never run into him. He's inhuman. His body shaking, setting up a vibration in the wheelchair.

  It would be well, then, if Klaus were to follow Krenz.

  One of the pilots who had just come in had parted from the other two men, moving between the tables until he came to the one where Sorgenicht was sitting with the girls. Sorgenicht and the blonde knew him; they shook hands perfunctorily. Then the blonde introduced the pilot to the Pan Am stewardess, and he gave a slight bow. I'd seen the winged flash on his uniform when he'd passed closer to my table. He flew for Iran Air.

  It was twenty minutes before anyone at the table made a move. During that time I picked up what I could of the conversation, but it was difficult because I had to allow for German and Iranian accents. I gleaned more from their body language: Sorgenicht sat stolidly and said little, listened a lot, especially to the blonde, who sometimes leaned towards the Pan Am stewardess, touching her hand for emphasis. The two girls smiled now and then; the men did not. The Iranian pilot said almost nothing. I thought the name of the stewardess was probably Debbie: the lingual combination of 'd' and 'b' was often formed when the blonde spoke to her.

  The Iranian was the first to move. The pilot he'd come in with passed close to the table, looking at his watch, and the Iranian nodded and got up, shaking hands with the blonde, nodding to the others as they began leaving too. As Sorgenicht turned away from the table I picked up my cup of coffee and held it in both hands like a bowl as I drank, masking the lower half of my face and keeping my eyes down, but I think he hesitated as he passed my table, not far away. I couldn't be sure, couldn't look up, but the feeling was there: that he'd recognised me but had kept on going.

  I waited long enough for him to leave the cafeteria and then took what would probably be the biggest calculated risk of the whole mission and put the cup down and got up and turned and went out. Sorgenicht was in the main hall, going towards the telephones, his back to me. The two girls were near the elevators, shaking hands. Debbie, if that was her name, began crossing the hall as the blonde took the down elevator and I followed, keeping distance between us.

  He could be telephoning, Sorgenicht, calling for support. He could be tracking me as I crossed the lower floor and followed the blonde girl out to the car parks, and I used reflective surfaces where I could find them, but didn't see him. It didn't mean he wasn't there, standing off at a distance: there was good cover to be had as cars and shuttles pulled in to the departure hall.

  There was a different vibration now along the nerves as I walked through the cold morning light.

  She moved athletically, the blonde, the metal-studded bag slung at the shoulder, the crimson calflength boots tapping the tarmac as she passed between the cars.

  'Inge!' I called, and she turned.

  'Ja?

  I caught up with her and asked in German, 'How are you?'

  She studied me. 'I'm very well. Do I know you?'

  'I'm sorry – Hans Mittag. I'm a friend of Willi's.'

  'Willi Hartman's?'

  'Yes.' I held out my hand and she took it, but briefly. 'He sends you his good wishes,' I said. 'He misses you.'

  Her eyes were cool. 'Really. But I still don't remember you.'

  'We met at one of his little parties. But look, I don't want to hold you up.' I stood back. 'Should I return his good wishes?'

  'I think he's out of town.'

  'Oh really? Well, it was good to see you. My car's over there.' I moved past her and then turned to face her again, bringing the airport terminal into the background. 'I'll remember you to Willi, when I see him. He was telling me so many interesting things.'

  She watched me with the stillness of a cat. 'About what?'

  'About you.' I brought my voice down. 'And your exciting plans.'

  People moved in the background, against the facade of the terminal. Others were standing still, but I could only see them in the outer vision field; my eyes were on hers.

  She said, 'What kind of plans?'

  'Perhaps I can help you with them.' The people standing at the shuttle station would be unrecognisable at this distance, even if I could look at them directly. Any one of them could be Sorgenicht. He would be the spotter, if he were there at all. He would show them where I was, tell them to get Inge away from me before I could do her any harm. 'But perhaps you don't need any help.'

  She didn't move. 'Did you follow me here?'

  'Yes, when I saw you leaving the terminal. I called out to you, but a taxi got in the way,'

  In a moment she said, 'I think I'd like to hear what Willi's been saying about me.'

  'He was very discreet. I want you to understand that. We'd better talk in your car.' I needed cover; my skin itched for it: I was too exposed here in the open. 'Where is it?'

  She stood watching me, her eyes luminous in the cold morning light. Then she said, 'It's over there,' and I followed her.

  It was a crimson Porsche 911, recognisable ten blocks away in thick traffic. She didn't make any concession to security, didn't want to, wanted to be seen, to make an impression, didn't know how appallingly dangerous it was in the game she was playing.

  She sat behind the wheel, her arm across it, her body half-turned to me, a heavy gold chain across the neck of her white polo sweater, a gold bracelet on her wrist, blonde hairs on her fingers catching the light, one knee in a black stocking crooked against the gear lever. 'So what did Willi say?

  That you were in Dieter Klaus' organisation.'

  'What organisation?'

  'Nemesis.'

  The pulse beat in her throat. In a moment she said, 'Willi tends to fantasise, as you probably know.'

  Someone was getting into a car not far away and when the door slammed I used the excuse and looked through the windscreen and checked the background and saw two men standing there a hundred yards away, talking.

  I said, 'Willi wasn't fantasising this time, and you know that.'

  She took a deep breath to deal with t
he tension, looking away, looking back. 'Do you live in Berlin?' It sounded as if she were changing the subject. She wasn't.

  'Yes,' I said, 'but I don't see much of it. I travel a lot. I've just got back from a meeting with the Secretary of the General People's Committee of Libya, Muhammad az-Zarruqu Rajab, second in command to Colonel Moammar Gadhafi. The deal was for two million US dollars.'

  Her pupils grew larger for a moment. 'Are you talking about arms?'

  1 don't always deal in arms. I deal in information, military and paramilitary services, mercenary personnel, presidential security, things like that. My last actual arms deal, which I made two weeks ago, was with the IRA. It wasn't big money but I support people who make a genuine attempt to bring down the capitalistic and democratic establishments, in particular those in London and Washington.'

  She expressed very little with her eyes, Inge Stoph; they were liquid blue crystal set above the finely wrought cheekbones and under the thick blonde eyebrows, a perfectly-matched pair of gemstones, beautiful to contemplate but devoid of any real interest; one would get bored with them, I would think, after a time. I looked for other signs of reaction to what I was saying: she looked wonderfully fit and I would have thought her heart-rate would be something less than seventy-two but the gold bracelet was swinging against the squat black knob of the gear lever with a rhythm significantly faster than that.

  In a moment she said, 'You lead an exciting life.'

  I gave a shrug. 'Business of any sort is still only business, but sometimes I make up little jokes to keep the boredom away.'

  The two men were still talking over there but I didn't think they were anything to worry about: they wore coats with astrakhan collars and homburg hats, and this wasn't a situation where the opposition would need to falsify the image; if Sorgenicht and his people wanted me, they would simply close in.

  'You make up little jokes?'

  She was delightfully attentive, Inge Stoph.

  'Oh,' I said, 'not often. But this summer I was in Africa, in a state that shall be nameless, and my assignment was to see that the Minister of Defence should be rendered incapable of launching an armed insurrection, which was thought to be in his mind. I was present at a state banquet three days after my arrival, and the cuisine was French: Faisan roti a la Bergere, Boeuf Bourguignon and for dessert a compote of fresh strawberries in a sauce of creme de papaya. But the piece de resistance was carried in on a silver platter, and when the cover was lifted, there was the head of the Minister of Defence on a bed of vine leaves with a glazed passion-fruit in his mouth.' I touched her arm quickly – 'I knew the president well, of course, and his particular sense of humour. I've never been accused of questionable taste.'