Adam Hall - Quiller Solitaire

'Are we cutting it fine?'

'Not too bad, but we don't want to -'

'I'm not cleared yet.'

You'll do it on the way.'

He took me across to the dark green Rover parked by the railings and I got in and the man in the back asked me, 'Is there anything you need from the office?

'Is there a bag on board?'

He was Loder. He'd cleared me before.

Yes, in the boot.'

Bloom shut the rear door and went round and got behind the wheel. Your flight's leaving at 21:06, so there's plenty of time, but – you know – you can always get a puncture.'

Loder put a thin briefcase onto my lap. 'Have a look through it, see if it's all there.'

Bloom took us into the evening traffic, south through Parliament Square.

I signed the medical form and the codicil and the active service waiver and checked the maps, two of Berlin with different scales, one of the whole country. Hotel reservation, expense sheet, embassy contacts, Signals grid. Signed for the bag though I hadn't checked it, but they knew my sizes by now. No next of kin, money to the battered wives home.

Take this bloody thing,' I said, and gave Loder the expense sheet. My director in the field would have one and he could look after it for me; one of the really trying chores of a mission was having to deal with those arthritic old harpies in Accounts when you got back, and I'm often tempted to charge them for a bag of cocaine or a tart or a Stealth bomber just to get the dust out of their bustles.

'Looking good,' Loder said.

'What? He'd been watching me, I suppose, in the pale shifting light of the street lamps as we turned West along Victoria Street. 'I'm feeling fine,' I said, 'yes.' There's never been anything official about it in the book of rules but the people in Clearance make a point of catching our mood if they can, because they're the last people we see before we leave the building and the mission starts running, and what they're looking for is an abnormal show of nerves. They'd pulled one of the new recruits off a courier job last week because they'd noticed Ms hands weren't all that steady when he was signing the forms. Have they got a code-name for this one yet?'

' Solitaire ,' Loder said. 'It's gone up on the board.'

'Who's the crew?

'Gary and Matthews.'

They'd be manning the board in shifts around the clock. I hadn't worked with Gary but I knew Matthews, one of the old hands, a retired sleeper from Marseilles. And if I needed the Chief of Signals he'd be there, Croder, with his basilisk eyes and his hook of a hand and his cold-blooded expertise. And if I needed total support at the Signals board there'd be Ashley, Bureau One, Host of Hosts, with a direct line to the prime minister and enough clout to call every agent-in-place out of his foxhole and bring in enough fire power to sink a destroyer, an exaggeration, but you get my drift.

Smell of burning.

'Has she been told,' I asked Loder, 'not to recognise me when she sees me at the departure gate?

'But of course.'

I shouldn't have asked. It sounded as if I didn't trust Shatner to look after even the basics.

I almost said to Loder, do you smell burning? But of course he didn't. It wasn't on my clothes any more or in my hair. It was in my head. For all the very good reasons the Bureau had for sending me to Berlin – to infiltrate the Red Army Faction, perhaps prevent some kind of coup – my own reason for going out there still contained an element that was primitive, brutish and urgent. They had drawn blood.

She picked up the phone, swinging her head to look at me.

'Do you want to talk to him?'

'Yes,' I said, 'if he's willing.'

There was nothing I wanted to say to Hartman over a telephone: all we needed to do was make the rendezvous; but it would give my voice an identity for him.

Helen dialled.

This was her room, 506. The Bureau had chosen the Steglitz. I was in 402 on the floor below: they knew I would want space and distance so that I could check on any tags when she left her room. There wouldn't be any, at least not tonight. Only the Bureau knew where we were. There'd been no message for me. Shatner had said that Thrower, my director in the field, would reach Berlin some time tomorrow. There was no hurry; I didn't need him yet.

'Willi,' she said on the phone, 'this is Helen, and it's just gone ten. I thought you'd be there. I'm in Room 506 at the Steglitz. Will you ring me when you come in? Any time tonight.'

She put the phone down and turned and looked at me, puzzled. 'I rang him from Heathrow before we took off. From my hotel there. He said he'd wait in.'

'He wouldn't have gone to bed?'

'He never sleeps. That's why he loves Berlin.'

She came slowly across the room, watching me, worried. A jet lowered across the window, the lights of the city colouring its wings as it made its way into the airport.

'When you phoned him,' I said, 'from Heathrow, how did he sound?'

'He said he was glad I was coming to Berlin, and -'

'I mean did he sound nervous? Nervous about meeting me?'

She thought about it. 'A little, I think, yes. He said I mustn't tell you where he lives. He's going to meet us somewhere else.'

That made sense. His friend Maitland had been dead less than a week, and Hartman knew that any enquiry would risk exposing him to the Faction.

'When he phones,' I told Helen, 'if he doesn't want to talk to me, try and reassure him. I guarantee his absolute protection – tell him that.'

'All right. Would you like something to drink? I can ask them to send us -'

'Nothing for me. You go ahead.'

'I don't think so. Although I should be celebrating, in a way. This is probably the last time I'll be in Berlin apart from the odd trip.' She let her eyes wander across the brilliantly lighted streets. 'But it's also nice to be here for the first time alone. Without George.' She swung her head to look at me. The way he died was so beastly, and I've only just realised how much I hated him.' With a small wry smile – 'Do you mind if I unpack?'

'Not a bit.' There was a copy of Stern on the small round table and I went over and picked it up.

'Things get so creased,' she said from behind me, and I heard her pulling the zips of the bag open. 'At least mine do – I wear cotton when I can.'

I took it that the small talk was to cover the last thing she'd told me, about hating George. I didn't think she wanted any kind of answer. But it was interesting, and I wondered whether she was feeling a sense of relief that he was dead, and had even, perhaps, seen it coming.

'It was probably the last thing,' I said, 'you'd been expecting.'

She was pulling drawers open. 'I'm not absolutely sure. He was a rather mysterious person, rather secretive. In fact he was very secretive.' Her voice had become louder and when I looked up I saw she'd swung round from the chest of drawers, a pair of white cotton briefs in her hand. 'Do you think he could have been a spy?'

'It sounds possible.'

' Berlin 's almost a beautiful city again, and look what they're planning for the Potsdamer Platz and everything, but there are still some very strong undercurrents here, aren't there? You must know about them. And George -' she broke off as the phone rang. 'That's Willi.' She dropped the briefs onto the bed and picked up the telephone. 'Hello?' I went across to her, in case Hartman let me talk to him.

'Oh, Gerda, how are you?

I covered the mouthpiece and said, Tell her you'll call her back.'

'Gerda,' she said, 'do you mind if I call you back? I'm just out of the shower and dripping all over the floor.'

I wondered if she'd thought the easy lie was necessary, or if it was just social habit. When she'd hung up I said, 'She's a friend of yours?'