ADAM HALL: The Scorpion Signal

'The situation, then, is that we have no idea when the coup is planned to take place, and we have no idea where. What we have to do is to find our way in, and our target for surveillance is of course this man Ignatov.' He looked at Bracken. 'How many are watching for him?'

'Two. The other two are watching the Pavillon building.'

'They never left there, I assume.'

'No, sir.'

'Shortlidge, you can join them and make enquiries after a woman named — '

'Misha,' I said, and described her.

Then Croder went through the whole of the briefing again and we repeated paroles, countersigns and contact modes until we'd got it right. We were to dispense with signals through the Embassy: he gave me an Ultravox walkie-talkie, told me that Bracken and the six members of the cell would keep in contact by that medium alone, using speech code only and using the air with extreme discretion.

On street mobility Logan told me: 'We've got most of the blood off the inside of your Pobeda and she's tanked up. We didn't have time to find new plates so we've altered the old ones and rubbed some mud on. Don't forget to lose your papers.'

Bracken told us he'd be based here at the safe-house, since he wouldn't be able to enter or leave the Embassy without surveillance. Croder and I would wait here with him until we got a signal from the field.

'What was the street like?' I asked Logan.

'Looked clean enough. Three cars this side of the intersection, all facing towards it. Truck outside the warehouse opposite with a lot of snow on it. Nobody moving. The militia work east and west across the intersection and their nearest phone is a hundred yards west of there.'

It was one a.m. when he and Shortlidge left us. By that time I felt ready to eat solids and Zoya brought me some goat's milk cheese and black bread.

'Is there some pain?' she asked me.

'Yes.'

'That is good.'

'And a happy birthday to you too,' I said, and she laughed because it was becoming our favourite joke. The left shoulder was throbbing to the rhythm of the pulse but it was only muscle and tissue pain: Ignatov hadn't hit bone. 'If I don't see you again,' I told Zoya, 'you did a great job and I want to thank you.'

'Of course you'll see me again,' she said, and left us.

Bracken was getting increasingly nervy and couldn't keep still. I did some walking about myself and tried out the arm for movement as far as the sling allowed; the shoulder flared up but the pain was confined to that area: the nerves and muscles through the lower arm to the fingers were unaffected and I'd be able to drive a car with the sling off.

Croder stood still for most of the time, keeping dear of the window and taking a few short steps occasionally and coming to a stop with his feet together and standing still again, his thin neck buried in the collar of the military coat, his dark eyes impassive. Sometimes we heard sounds from inside the house, and turned our faces to the door. The stove began losing its heat after a while but we didn't put any more wood on.

I went over the street scene as Logan had given it: three cars parked this side of the intersection, a truck in the other direction, so forth. I went over the briefing pattern, contact modes, signals, the whole thing. I was getting thirsty because of the anaesthetic and the saltiness of the cheese, and kept going to the tap over the basin and coming away with the taste of chlorine in my mouth. We didn't talk much, though Bracken began voicing his nerves after a while.

'I don't see how he can expect to do anything on that scale and get clear.'

'I don't imagine for a moment,' Croder said thinly, `that he can get clear. What concerns me is that he might reveal his identity. If he is discovered to be a London agent I hesitate to consider — ' he stopped and in a moment said so quietly that we barely heard him — ' but we've already gone into that.'

I thought about Schrenk. 'He won't want to live, once he's gone in.'

Croder turned his head. 'You don't think so?'

'He was quite an athlete, before. Tennis champ, good-looking, lots of girls. Now he's a wreck. This is a suicide run.'

In a moment Croder said bleakly, 'So we have that aspect to contend with too.'

I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything we could do about it: a potential assassin who means to get clear after the act will take a lot of care and might finally baulk at the risks, but a kamikaze will go right in for the kill with nothing to lose.

We grew quiet again, and every five minutes Croder took his few short steps and halted again, his death's head staring at the wall. Bracken lit a cigarette and then began chain smoking.

Just before three o'clock we got a signal.

Driving was more difficult than I'd thought. The left arm worked all right with the sling off but I was still feeling the loss of blood and I got into three front-end skids over the snow before I reached the rendezvous because of partial blackouts. Within ten minutes of leaving the safe-house I passed seven militia patrol cars, one of which made a U-turn and followed me for five blocks before it peeled off, presumably in answer to a radio call. The whole environment was strictly a red sector because the number plates of the Pobeda weren't legible and traffic was so thin at this time of night that I was liable to get pulled up by the police just to relieve their boredom. The operation could blow at any given minute and Croder knew that but all he could do now was run the whole thing into the ground if he had to, because of the time factor: we didn't know when Schrenk was going in.

The signal had specified a warehouse in Losinoostrovskaja ulica alongside the main rail line between Belokamennaja and Cerkizovo stations and I reached there at 3.21 and slid the Pobeda across the ruts into the shadow of the building and cut the engine and wound the window down and waited, checking for sound and movement. It wasn't likely to be a trap but if Schrenk picked up my trail he'd come for me himself instead of leaving it to Ignatov, I knew that.

There was a train rolling somewhere, north and west of the warehouse, and its sound made a blanket for aural cues in the immediate vicinity and that was dangerous: I would have preferred to leave the car and get into more flexible cover but the contact had to show himself first and it was a safe principle so I stayed where I was, listening to the train and trying to pick up closer sounds. Something was changing in the visual pattern on the other side of the car and I watched it: a door along the wall of the warehouse was coming open. Someone was standing there but I did nothing until a torch was flashed on and off three times, one long and two short; then I got out of the car and walked across the snow with a trickle running through the spine because a night rdv is always risky: a signal can be intercepted and you can find yourself walking straight into an ambush.

'Midnight red.'

I countersigned and he flashed the light briefly over my face and then his own, and I recognized Shortlidge. He led me into the warehouse and shut the door, then switched on the torch and swung the beam across piles of broken crates and sacking and loose timber until it focused on the black Zil limousine.

'OK?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Fill me in.'

'I was watching Area 1 and saw Ignatov's car come up. Two men got out and went into the apartment block — one of them could have been Ignatov but I'd only got your verbal description. One of them came out in about half an hour — not Ignatov, too young and too thin, a dark chap. We — '

'How was he walking?'

'Walking? Quite normally.'

'He wasn't crippled. Hobbling.'

'No.'

'All right, go on.'

'Two of us tagged him here and he stayed fifteen minutes and then left. Logan's still on the tag and we're reporting by radio. I was told to stay here and show you this lot.'