Adam Hall - Quiller Solitaire

I'd telephoned Cone before I left the hotel, and told him what time the rendezvous was, and where. He said he already knew: Kleiber had signalled him. I cancelled the car: it was a mobile rdv with no fixed address and I didn't know the area, didn't know where they could leave a car for me to reach if I needed one. Cone made a last try, asking me if I'd changed my mind about using support. I said I hadn't.

I don't think I've ever seen Braun so quick with the passes – I think the comeback Johan has made is inspiring him, and in fact the whole team.

I glanced sometimes at Dieter Klaus.

'He's over there,' Inge had told me when we'd sat down.

There were two men and four women around him: they were three rows down across the aisle in the best seats, the Ehrentribune. My view of him wasn't obstructed but it was at an angle of ten or fifteen degrees from behind, and I only saw his face when he turned to speak to the woman on his left. His head was bare; his hair was dressed in the Prussian style, brush-cut and blond. He wore a black overcoat with a dark sable collar, no gloves, a pair of designer sunglasses.

His entourage was fitted out with the same black padded track suit for each of them, except for the woman on his left. She wore a tourmaline mink coat and hat, a flash of gold at her ears, nothing on her wrists unless it was under a sleeve. She was young, olive-skinned, a Latin, and she was giving more of her attention to the game than to Dieter Klaus, even when he turned his head to say something.

Inge watched him with a lot more interest. She was sitting on my right, so that when she moved her head to look across at Klaus I couldn't see her eyes, but the angle of her head and its stillness told me a great deal, and when she turned to look at me for a moment to talk about him, the expression in her eyes was clear enough: Dieter Klaus was the subject of her adoration.

'He's here in Berlin tonight,' she told me, 'For a special reason. Normally he stays in Frankfurt -he flew in an hour ago.'

'Quite an aficionado.'

She looked surprised for an instant. 'Yes, but he didn't come to Berlin tonight to watch ice hockey.'

'It sounds interesting,' I said. 'Something, perhaps, I can help him with?'

She gave me a long look. 'No. Everything is arranged.'

Teddy bear.

And Lange takes the puck but he's not too well placed for a strike if he means to go for a goal at this distance and with those two quarterbacks moving in from the flank. But he's got the speed if he wants to take it closer before he strikes – just look at that!

Teddy bear in the sky.

He was fifty feet away from where I was sitting, Dieter Klaus, and the thought was running through my mind that if I could get close enough to him when we were leaving the stadium I might go for a quick direct kill and take it from there, keep the others off me if I could, use the confusion and the crowd for cover. They wouldn't use guns, even if they had any; it was illegal to carry arms in this city and the sound of shots would bring the police and security much faster than a brawl.

It was simply a thought, running through my head. I was not mad; I knew the risks; but the situation was so obviously attractive: the executive for Solitaire was within fifty feet of the target and if he could close that distance to within killing range he could complete the mission in a matter of seconds and two or three hundred people would board their flight and feel nothing worse than a touch of jet lag at the other end, attractive, such a very attractive situation.

With legs as long as that,' Inge was calling above the sudden roar of the crowd, 'I'm not surprised he can make that kind of speed!'

I said no, it wasn't surprising, something like that.

There was another thought in my mind, less attractive. Inge had been full of suspicion this morning at the airport when I'd told her we'd met at one of Willi's parties, and I couldn't tell how much I'd convinced her that it was true – that she simply didn't remember me. I might not have convinced her at all: she could have brought me here tonight to have me killed.

'Do you smoke?'

She had a packet of Players in her hand.

'I'm trying to quit.'

She flashed her smile and lit a cigarette, and the scent of marijuana came on the air.

To have me killed, because I didn't know what she'd said to Dieter Klaus when she'd phoned him in Frankfurt. I've just met an arms dealer who says he respects you and what you're doing. He supports people who try to bring down the capitalistic establishment, and he says he can sell you a nuclear missile. Are you interested?

That would be all right. That would be very nice. But she might have said something quite different. I've just met a man who says that he knows you and your organisation – he even knows its name. He says he knows that you have substantial backing from Colonel Gadhafi. He pretended he'd met me before, but I've never seen him in my life, and I think you should have him worked over to find out who he is. If you like, I can bring him to you.

That would not be all right. It would not be very nice at all. But that is what I thought she'd probably said to Klaus, and those were the terms of the critical risk I was taking. I hadn't walked in here with much hope of getting clear again if I wanted to, if I had to. I was committed now: if I got up and tried to walk out of here I wouldn't get farther than the car park if they didn't want me to, the people in the black track suits. I didn't underestimate them because four of them were women: I've trained too many women myself at Norfolk in the lethal use of the hands. The men would only be there in case they were needed.

And as Johan gets through and shapes for the strike he's no more than two feet ahead of Lieberman and he'll need an awful lot of speed to bring this one off.

I was committed, and that had been my intent. From here I could only go in deeper, all the way to the centre, and I could only get out by destroying Nemesis first.

'She's one of his girls,' Inge said.

'Yes? What's her name?

'Dolores. I'm one of his girls too, one of his concubines. We share him. It's an honour.'

Her eyes were shimmering.

'How nice for him.'

She drew on the cigarette, deeply. 'We'd do anything for him.' She looked at me with her eyes narrowing. 'We would kill for him.'

I said, 'He must have quite a lot of enemies.'

'Of course. They are dealt with.'

One of the players made a goal and the crowd roared and I tried to think how to bring Maitland into the conversation, and Helen. This girl might know where Helen was, what had happened to her. There was an Englishman, I remember, killed in Berlin last week, May ford, was it, or Mason? Was he one of Dieter's enemies? But I couldn't risk it; there were too many reasons for murder in a big city, and there didn't have to be any connection with Nemesis.

'I must ask Dieter,' I said, 'why he flew in to Berlin tonight. You've got me interested.'

She looked at me. 'He might tell you. He might not.'

'I'm a salesman, Inge, and at the moment I'm selling something rather impressive. As I told you, he could take out an entire sports stadium like this one.'

She looked around her. That would be impressive, yes. That would be powerful.' Her eyes had darkened, the blue ice gathering shadows. 'I like power. That's why I'm with Dieter Klaus. He's the most powerful man in Europe. It'll be interesting to see what he thinks about you, Hans, but I must tell you something. I have a very good memory, and I've never been to one of Willi Hartman's parties in my life.'

Please check to make sure you haven't left any belongings on your seat, and be patient with children and elderly people… they may be a little slower than the rest of us.