ADAM HALL: The Scorpion Signal

Shapiro.

Say this much: he was a professional.

'You know his work, at least.' Croder's voice came insistently.

'Yes.'

'What would be your opinion of him,' in slow and reasonable tones, 'as an executive in the field?'

I felt Tilson listening, beside me. I thought of lying, then realized I didn't have to. In the end I could refuse, I could refuse, repeat it like a litany, I could refuse.

'First class.'

'Quite so. You wouldn't,' Croder said with a certain silkiness, 'consider him expendable.'

Like a dog with a broken leg.

'No.'

Stonewall the bastard, don't give him any rope.

'All I would ask is that you would at least meet me in Berlin, so that I can give you the details.' Three seconds, four. 'That is all I would ask, for him.'

The lights glowed on the console. I could hear the voice of the man in the field coming faintly across the room, where they were running Flash point. Tilson hadn't moved. The smell of peppermint had gone now, or I was getting used to it. I leaned forward towards the console so that Croder would hear me clearly, and know by my tone that I meant what I said.

'I'm on leave. I haven't got my nerve back yet — it was close to the crunch, that time, and I'm lucky to be here. So you'll have to find someone else, because I refuse.'

I got out of the chair and went past Tilson without looking at him and opened the door and threw it shut behind me and walked down the green-painted corridor to the lift and pressed the button for down.

It was a deluge outside and there was a traffic block near Hyde Park Corner and I sat waiting for fifteen minutes before I took the phone off the clip and got Tilson and told him I wanted a police car to get me out of this mess and I wanted a flight to Berlin, the first he could find for me. And tell Croder.

Blinding sleet and the runway lights floating up from the dark as the wheels hit and we bounced and they hit again and we bounced again with the airframe shuddering.

'Was, zum Teufel, macht der Pilot?'

A few uneasy laughs but at least we were down.

Bitte behalten Sie Ihren Sicherheitsgurtel an.'

A fat man sat leaning forward with his face white and his head down; I hoped he'd found the bag. Sleet washed past the windows in a bow wave.

'Mon Dieu, it est impossible meme de voir la tour d'observation!'

'Esperons que nous n'allons pas s'enfoncer contre elle!'

Reverse thrust and we sat feeling the drag.

'Are you all right, Audrey?' someone asked.

'Sort of.' A breathless giggle, then she lit a cigarette and blew out a noisy sigh. In the rear of the plane a child had started crying.

Tempelhof was packed.

'Excuse me, but do you know where the information desk is?'

'In the middle of that crowd over there,' I said, and she went hurrying off, trailing a flight bag with a broken strap. There were puddles everywhere, with people bringing slush in from the front of the building.

'Haben Sie etwas zu deklarieren?'

'Gar nichts.'

'Keine Rauchwaren, kein Alkohol?’

'Nein.'

He didn't bloody well believe me, went right through my bag.

'We were meant to land at Tegel,' a man with an astrakhan coat said to me, 'but there was too much stuff in the circuit.' I wondered if he'd got any other useless information.

In the main hall people were milling around looking for friends, children, baggage, a porter to help them out of the chaos. Three North Africans carrying skis edged their way through the crowd, clouting people every time they turned round to look for what they'd lost.

'Entschuldigen. Sie, Bind Sie Herr Wolsieffer?'

'Nein,' I told him.

A party of Chinese trotted past towards the main exit, their leader waving a little red flag to guide them.

'Pardon, monsieur. Vous etes de Paris?'

Non, mademoiselle, c'est le vol de Londres.'

She went across to the information desk. Pretty legs.

'Not a very nice evening.'

'Not very,' I said.

'What sort of flight?'

'Bloody awful.' We started walking, looking for somewhere we could talk. 'Been waiting long?'

'Half an hour,' he said.

'Did what I could. London was a mess.'

'Let's go over there,' Croder said.

'All right.' There was a lot of water on the floor below one of the big windows, which had sprung a leak, and we stood there with our backs to the dark glass watching the people near us. I didn't know whether he'd got here without any tags on him; as a rule the London directors aren't too good in the field. He stood with his hands in the pockets of the big military coat he was wearing, its buttons plain now and the marks still showing where the insignia had been taken off. It looked too big for him: he was a slight man, thin-boned and pallid, with a head like a skull and the hands of a skeleton and only the eyes alive, brooding in his face as if they were trapped there under the taut parched skin, their black luminescence shadowed by heavy lids. He hadn't looked at me yet.

'Good of you to come,' he said formally. 'I was surprised when they said you'd changed your mind.'

'So was I.'

He made a smile with his small teeth, like a rat nibbling.

'We nearly missed each other. They had to get back to me through Interpol.' It was a reprimand.

'Where's Shapiro?' I asked him.

He didn't answer for a moment. There was a lot of noise from a bunch of people over by the doors, and Croder gazed at them steadily. 'East Germans,' he said. 'They were going into Schoenefeld but an engine was out, so they came into Tempelhof instead.' His small teeth made a token smile. 'Half of them are demanding asylum. Wouldn't you? We don't know where Shapiro is,' he said without looking away from the group. 'His cover name is Schrenk. Forget Shapiro. Schrenk.' He spelt it for me. 'He was in Moscow for two months, working very well, then they uncovered him and put him through interrogation in Lubyanka. Then he escaped.'

For the first time he turned and looked at me with his black contemplative eyes and I thought, Christ Almighty, only Shapiro could have got out of Lubyanka by the midnight express. Only Schrenk. 'He got as far as West Germany,' Croder said, 'and we had him put straight into a clinic. I don't think he would have made it as far as London — he was in a pretty bad way.'

'Were you running him?'

I didn't think he'd answer that.

He looked back at the group of East Germans. 'It doesn't matter who was running him. He was in the clinic for nearly three months, and recovering steadily. They were going to discharge him before long, as soon as he was fit enough to stand up to debriefing. But the K got him again, and one report says he's back in Lubyanka.'

There was a chill coming into the air; I felt it against my skin: possibly the sweat was starting to creep, setting up refrigeration. I have never been inside Lubyanka, but I've talked to people who have. There aren't many of them at liberty. North had got back from there, the night he blew his brains out at Connie's place.

Croder was gazing across the hall in silence, and I asked him: 'What's our timing on this?'

'There's a flight for Hanover in forty minutes, and there's a seat booked for you.'

'In case I want one.'

He ignored that. 'Schrenk carried a capsule. It was part of the contract, on that particular mission. Obviously he didn't use it.' He turned away from the group of people and stood facing me, hunched into his big coat and saying with muted force: 'He would have saved us an immense amount of trouble if he had used it. An immense amount of trouble.' He waited for the message to sink in. 'Because what we have on our hands now is a potential disaster — unless we can somehow prevent it. Schrenk prided himself on his ability to survive the most gruelling interrogation by the use of practised and convincing disinformation; he had three or four different scenarios worked out and he rehearsed them every day of his life, in series. We know that. We had him tested at Norfolk, a year ago, and even hypnosis couldn't break him down, because he'd used autohypnosis himself, to move his scenarios down into the subconscious. That is the kind of man he is.' The heavy lids were lowered for a moment. 'But Norfolk isn't Lubyanka. We do not know, you see, how bad the position is, because we don't know how much he gave away.'