Adam Hall - The Striker Portfolio

The dogs must be under the leash still, their handlers making sure it was a true scent before they slipped them, certain of a kill. They were close now.

I was moving again in a drunken run for the dark, for the trees. Brilliance flooded the field's edge and I saw figures grouped. Men's voices mingled with the crying of the dogs.

Somewhere near the trees I fell again, one shoulder hitting the metalled surface of a road. It was very dark here but the shape of the car was visible, massive above me: I had nearly run into it. It had been waiting here with its lights off so that I wouldn't see it. One of its doors swung open. She said: 'Get in.'

My head was against the floor.

We crawled in the dark and then stopped, backing and waiting. The sound of the dogs was muffled by the bodywork. We turned and there was faint light. I heard the snatch of the universals under the floor. Voices called.

Then we accelerated and turned at speed, pulling up suddenly. The dogs were far away. We started off and settled down to cruising on our way back to the asylum. This was a definite move, a decision, writing off all the uncertainties, and my brain was satisfied and let oblivion come.

'How long have I been out?'

'Half an hour.'

I hadn't moved. My head was still on the floor. I moved and lightning struck through me. I waited before trying again. I asked:

'Where are we?'

'Near Mulhausen.'

'You're lying. You always lie.'

I moved again, my teeth clenched. Faint light was inside the car, pulsing. She got out and opened the door at the back and I felt her hand supporting the side of my head. She knew her stuff: the head is the heaviest bit when you're trying to get off the floor, it's as bad as a ball and chain.

'I don't want your bloody help.'

She went on helping me so I put a lot of effort into it because I wanted to do it for myself. Millhausen was nowhere near the asylum. It was towards the Frontier. The lying bitch.

I was sitting on the seat, head lolling about. She was trying to keep my head still so that I could drink. She had a flask. They always brought you a flask before they put you through the mincer. After three days they were suddenly lousy with the things. But I drank.

'It's empty,' she said when I'd finished. As if I didn't know. But I suppose she said that because I was still hanging on to it.

'Where are we?'

'Near Mulhausen,' she said carefully. Towards the West German Frontier.'

'Leave that alone.' She was trying to find the end of the bandage among all the mess. It was humiliating. I pulled my hand away.

'Clench it,' she said. 'Keep it clenched. You've been losing blood.

'What the hell've you brought me here for? Give the dogs a longer run?'

The light from the dashboard had stopped pulsing. She was watching my face. 'How long can you hold out?'

'A long time. I was thirsty, that's all.

Who are you?' 'My name is Helda.'

'I mean who are you?'

But one or two pointers were presenting themselves for my inspection. When I had got into the car she'd crawled in the dark at first so by the time she'd put her lights on she'd have been some distance from where the dogs were milling about at the end of the scent-track. Then she'd backed and waited, floodlighting the field, keeping up the search like the rest of them. Then she'd driven off hard for the next search-area.

The water was cold in my stomach. My whole body was drinking there. I said:

'You'll be missed by now. Better shove on.'

She was watching me attentively. 'When did you last eat?'

She knew when I'd last eaten. Three days ago.' Maybe she didn't.

'Nothing since then?'

'You think I fancy salt-beef sandwiches? I'm used to caviar.'

The bronze eyes lit and softened and suddenly she looked as she had when I'd thought about her as a change from thinking about blotting it all out. It was relief, that was all. I was a mess but it sounded as if the inside of my head was still operating and obviously there were things we had to do.

'Drink this.'

Plastic bottle. 'What is it?'

'Glucose and milk.'

I took it and she unscrewed the top. Compared with the water the milk was warm: she'd had it in the pocket of her flying-coat. While I drank slowly she left me and got behind the wheel. I climbed out and dumped myself in the front beside her partly to see if I could do it and partly so we wouldn't have to shout. But she didn't say anything until we were through Mulhausen and into the minor roads.

'I'm taking you to the Frontier.'

'Out on a limb, aren't you?'

'It's my affair.'

Shivering had set in and she noticed it: 'I couldn't bring your coat.'

'No. The dog-handlers had it.'

I still heard the baying and would hear it for a long time. Delayed shock was trying to start but it wouldn't have much luck because I was too interested in what was going on. After a while I said: 'We haven't got long.'

'It wasn't just bad organization,' she said. 'My duty was to pick up Guhl. They were waiting for his report on the Benedikt situation. I couldn't do anything except hand you over. I couldn't even talk in the car because of the driver. I could only plan to get you away as soon as I could do it. That should have been much sooner but the sky was clear until tonight and they would have got you before you'd gone a yard, I'm sorry.'

'You're taking a chance even now.'

'But it's at least a chance.'

She drove deftly: her nerves showed only in the way she spoke, a few brief phrases broken by short intervals of silence. I said: 'Who are you with?'

'No one you would know. We had a cell established in Zagreb.'

I waited but that was all. I couldn't ask anything else because it wouldn't be ethical and anyway she wasn't going to tell me anything more than we would both need to share for the sake of security. But I thought I had it: there'd been someone in Zagreb recently who'd had to do a bunk and it had stirred things up a lot. Two people had shown up in London soon afterwards and we'd vetted them in case they had any value for the Bureau. All we'd learned was that the Zagreb base was blown and that three of their regional cells were cut off. It happens a lot: it's bound to. It can't happen to the established networks: the American C.I.A. has a hundred thousand personnel and you could drop a multi-megaton buster down their chimney and no one would get cut off anywhere because their outfit is fully diversified, but there are thousands of pint-sized private-enterprise groups working the clock round from Leningrad to Lisbon and they haven't resources wide enough to cushion the crunch if it comes.

'You did pretty well,' I said.

'No. We — '

'I mean it's not everyone who can fix up a secret-police cover and live too long.' I didn't want her to explain how pretty well she hadn't done. It can happen to the best of them: they've nowhere to go once their base is blown and the best of them just go on operating in the hope that somehow they can bring it off alone. But they can't do that if they come down to the broken reeds among their number. People like Benedikt.

'We were cut off,' she said and there was a sag in her voice because she was only now recognizing the defeat that she'd refused to face before.

'It can happen to anyone. But why send a man like him to a place like Hanover when you had at least two other people right inside London?'

She looked at me and away again. I was knowing too much. That wasn't awkward: it was just embarrassing. She said in a moment: 'I couldn't trust them.'

That fitted. Benedikt had broken but he hadn't sold out. He'd left them safe.

'But you didn't drop the idea. I mean of calling on London.'

It wasn't the first time a group had signalled for help. A lot of them were the nuclei of resistance cells and refugee organizations and even though times had changed and the hot war had gone cold they were still of the generation that once had nothing to sustain them in the twilight of the attics and the cellars and the boarded-up cupboards but the voice among the static prefaced by the four notes of the V-sign: This is London. But it was the first time my own Bureau had mounted a mission and sent out an agent within hours of a contact. We get a lot of contacts and most of them are duff but just as soon as Lovett tipped us off about an imminent Striker crash I was lying on my back on top of a chalk quarry with that very aeroplane performing overhead. And there'd been nothing to go on. Lovett himself hadn't known who the contact was.