Adam Hall - Quiller Solitaire

'No.'

'I think you'll like his style. He's worked mostly in Europe before now, has good German and a lot of experience. You'll go in with the cover of a medium-weight arms dealer – objections?'

'No.' It was perfect logic. If there's one thing a terrorist faction loves it's an arms dealer.

'From your records,' Shatner said, 'you're quite well versed in that area, but I'll send someone along to update the scene for you.' He got out of his swivel chair and moved around, hands stuck in his pockets, a shoelace undone. 'I don't know what time your flight is for Berlin tonight, but I've asked Travel to make it as late as possible because I want you to see a man at the National Temperance Hospital before you leave London. He's had some experience with the Red Army Faction, and quite recently, so he might be able to fill you in a little. I'm not sure' – he looked at me sharply – 'I'm not sure of that, but it's to be seen.'

He went to the door, shoelace trailing, and opened it for me, standing there hunched with fatigue in his leather-patched jacket. 'You'll be making any direct signals to the board through the crew on duty but you'll be able to call on Mr Croder if you need to, and I shall be within reach. Bureau One is in London and we can bring him in if things get difficult.' He offered me a dry, nicotine-stained hand. 'Let's hope they won't.'

'Mary?' She gave me my card back. 'Can you come down.'

I didn't say I'd go on up, and save Mary the trouble. I'd been here before and knew the rules. You don't get onto the second floor of the National Temperance Hospital unless you're a close relative of a patient or unless you've got first class credentials and an introduction, usually from a department of HM Government.

'Right-o,' the woman said. 'At the front desk, then.'

On the second floor is the clinic of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and it offers treatment with a guarantee of the closest possible secrecy.

Mary was middle-aged, quiet in her speech and had the other-world calm of a nun. 'You can see him for a few minutes,' she told me in the lift, 'just a few minutes, that's all.'

He was in a private room, the man. I didn't know his name, and nobody here knew mine: it wasn't on the card I'd shown the woman downstairs. He was in a wheelchair, a book on his lap, Quantum Healing , one of his hands – his right hand – buried under the plaid rug, a bandage covering half his face, some of his thin dry hair sticking up at the side.

I said hello. He turned his head to look up at me, a touch of fear in his eyes, I thought, and that would be natural: if things have been taken too far, usually in some kind of interrogation cell, we fear strangers, afterwards, as I had, once, for a time.

'He's a friend,' Mary told him.

'Oh. What have you come for?'

You don't, in this place, say things like, To ask a few questions.' He'd had enough of questions, and he was here because he'd refused to answer them.

They said you've had a brush with the Red Army Faction,' I told him, and sat down on the edge of his bed so that he didn't have to look up at me any more. 'I'm going to Berlin tonight, and 111 probably run across them. I thought you might feel like giving me a few tips, so I can keep out of trouble.'

He watched me for a bit, his eyes full of intelligence: they hadn't pulled his brains out and thrown them away. They sometimes do; not physically, of course, but it comes to the same thing: you can't do any more thinking. 'I see,' he said.

There was a drip of mucus under his nose, and Mary got a Kleenex.

'Oh shit,' he said. 1 couldn't feel it.' He blew his nose, still watching me, as if he daren't look away in case I did something. I understood that too. 'The Faction,' he said in a minute, 'yes. Well, contrary to popular belief, they're still alive and well. Not the old ones, the new ones. Not Baader and Meinhof, of course.'

'No.' The story put out was that they'd committed suicide in their cells in Stammheim prison, but we've never taken that seriously. The main thing was, they were dead. 'There's a third generation now, isn't there?'

'Third or fourth. They keep a low profile; you can't easily infiltrate; it was a piece of cake, once, but that's over. The man at the top now is Dieter Klaus, and I hope to Christ you never run into him. Mary,' he said, 'tell me if I start dripping again, will you? I hate that.' He sat clutching the box of Kleenex. They'd worked on his face over there, and it was still numbed, could even stay like that. 'Dieter Klaus, yes. He's inhuman.'

I put him down now as Department of Information 6, by his idiom – 'low profile', 'infiltrate'. Again I avoided a question. 'He shouldn't be too hard to find.'

He'd begun shaking now, setting up a vibration in the springs of the wheelchair. We listened to it, Mary and I. Then the man said, 'He'll be extremely difficult to find. After the wall came down there were all kinds of rats running all over the place, because Stasi's Division XXII was broken up and their terrorist guests had to find some other kind of shelter, and there isn't any, not now, not in the new Germany.' The spring in the wheelchair had started a definite rhythm now as the whole of his thin body began shaking under the blanket. I thought I might not have much longer here so I interrupted him.

'Some people say they've based themselves in Frankfurt.'

' Frankfurt? Oh, yes, some of them are there. Don't confuse Dieter Klaus with Dieter Lenz , though. The police got Lenz for blowing up Herrhausen's Mercedes, remember? Dieter Klaus has never been arrested for anything, because he's a cut above your usual terrorist. He was with Monika Helbing and Werner Lotz when they got picked up – Christine Duemlein was there too and got copped – but Klaus simply vanished in a puff of smoke. He's very agile, very clever, and a real shit, I should keep away from him if I were you, I mean at the moment you're just a visitor here, aren't you,' the shaking getting worse every minute because I was bringing it all back and I'd asked Mary about that in the lift but she'd said it would be good for him to talk, they were all trying to get him to 'bring it out', as she called it. All well and good, but the sweat was starting to come out on his face, giving it a bright sheen.

'Willi told me much the same thing,' I said. 'Willi Hartman.'

'Did he?' He clawed another tissue out of the box and kept it pressed to his nose. Well there you are.' The sweat was running into his eyes, and Mary went to the box too. 'Who's Willi Hartman?' the man asked me, not looking at me any more, looking down, then letting his eyes close as Mary pressed the lids gently with the tissue.

'I thought you might know him,' I said.

'Not an uncommon name, not uncommon.' His tone had a deadness to it suddenly; he spoke like an old man weary of talking any more. 'Keep away, I would,' he said, 'keep away from those bastards, if you know – if you know what's good for you, they're not – they're not the original angels of – of mercy, you understand, they're just – they're just a bunch of fucking terrorists, you see, just – just a bunch -' his voice changing to a spasm of coughing that went on and on with some words in it – 'some stuff, Mary… need more stuff, please -' but she was already at the little white table by the bed, filling a syringe as the coughing went on and on and I took his hand and held it for a while, the wheelchair shaking as if it had an engine running 31 it, the needle going in while I crouched lower so as not to get in her way as she said quietly, 'I'm afraid time's up now.'

I said yes and thanked her and squeezed his cold emaciated hand and left them, going out and past the lift and down the stairs and into the lamp lit street.

When I got back to Whitehall a man came across the little square at the back of the building and said through the window, You can leave your car here and they'll run it over to your place. My name's Bloom and I'm driving you to the airport, all right?'