Adam Hall - Quiller Solitaire

'Is he for interrogation, sir?'

'Ask the DIF.'

We sometimes take prisoners during a mission but it's usually forced on us as the only alternative to the extreme sanction thing, and we do it when they've got enough information about us to cause damage if we let them go, and this man knew enough about me to bring me down.

'Do you know what I'm driving?' Roach asked me.

'Yes.'

'Where are you now?'

'Northbound in Tegeler Weg, just going under the S-Bahn and coming up on the autobahn.'

'Ten minutes, then.'

Sorgenicht was three vehicles ahead of me in the same lane. He didn't know he was being tracked. If he'd suspected it he would have put the Volvo through a series of turns to find out. He hadn't done that.

The lights of a train crossed the morning sky as we passed under the S-Bahn. It was between there and the autobahn that Krenz heaved his weight off the passenger seat and hurled it against me and I took it on the right shoulder and the car swerved and I got it straight in time but the Lexus on our left had swerved too and the driver hit the brakes and shouted something. We were in a traffic flow of something like thirty miles an hour and I was in the middle lane and couldn't pull over and stop. Krenz had bounced back, onto the seat and now he was coming at me again, hands still tied to his thighs but with his massive head free to smash against mine if he could get it right, so I swung a backfist to his forehead to stun the pineal gland and he lurched back onto the seat and sat with his bulk against the passenger door, shaking his head like a boxer on the ropes, animal sounds coming from him, not quite words, I think, but just grunts of rage, and I left him like that and touched the numbers for Roach and spoke through the remote microphone.

'Still in Tegeler Weg, approaching the autobahn from the south at fifty yards, middle lane. The dark green Volvo 242 is three vehicles ahead and that's the one I'm tracking.'

'Got you. Five minutes.'

I took the cassette out of the slot and put it into my pocket.

The Volvo was changing lanes and I looked for a gap but there wasn't one. The traffic on both sides was moving ahead: I was in a slow lane and perhaps that was why the Volvo had used a chance and changed to the lane on the right. It was now four vehicles ahead and I'd have to do something because he could go through the next traffic lights just before they changed and leave me stuck: I couldn't afford to crash a red because I could hit something and in any case there could be a patrol car in the area and that wouldn't do any good, show me your licence please while the Volvo pulled away into the distance, and is this man sick and why are his wrists tied to his legs, so forth.

Krenz had gone quiet and I took a look at him. His head was lolling but he wasn't out: the gland was still in shock and he felt giddy, that was all. I couldn't be sure that he wasn't faking it, or some of it, while he got enough energy back to come at me again.

The pickup truck on my left was hanging back a little and I pressed into the gap and he used the horn but I stood a better chance now of pulling up on the Volvo. I called Roach.

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.