ADAM HALL: The Scorpion Signal

'What was it like in London?' Floderus asked.

'Pissing down:

'I should've known.'

He got off the autobahn at the Hanover-Herrenhausen exit and drove south on Route 6 as far as the river.

'Are you expecting any problems?' I asked him.

'What? No.' He did it again. 'Why?'

'Fond of the mirror.'

'Oh. Habit.'

I supposed he could have been in from the field; sleepers and a-i-ps aren't normally so nervous. 'What's this man's name?'

I asked him. 'What man?'

'The doctor.'

'Oh. Steinberg.' Along Dorfstrasse he turned right and began slowing. The clinic was just after the church, a long white building with a board with gold letters. Floderus pulled up.

Steinberg opened the door to us himself, tall, stooping, wrapped in a dressing-gown with cigarette burns on it, a man who worked too late. He took us straight into a consulting-room and I let Floderus stay. We spoke in German.

'You wish to know about your patient here, I understand.'

'Yes. I want to know the state of his mind.'

He considered this, staring at the top of his desk through thick round glasses. 'I know nothing at all about his present state of mind, of course. He was abducted in violent fashion, and that would have induced further shock. I have no means of knowing what has happened to him since, in terms of his state of mind.'

'What was he like just before the abduction?'

He lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. 'At that time he was quite alert, quite normal. The nightmares had stopped, and he did very well in tests. Still rather bitter towards those people, understandably. We felt he — '

'Bitter?'

He glanced up quickly. 'He harboured a grudge against them. Don't you feel that was understandable, Herr Matthofer?'

'I suppose so,' I said. It was as far as I could go; he didn't know who we were. But something was odd: we don't harbour grudges against the opposition, whatever they do to us; there's nothing personal: it's dog eat dog. I didn't see why Schrenk should have been 'bitter'.

'He put up quite a struggle,' the doctor said. 'The place was in a mess, with blood on the carpet and some glass from a broken syringe. One of my staff ran into the street after them, but they didn't stop.'

'You called the police?'

'Immediately. We are not used to that sort of affair in my clinic. It was very disturbing.'

'What did they do to him?'

'They took him away.' He looked at me quizzically. 'I told you, they — '

'I mean before. Before he was brought here.'

'Ah. That.' He screwed his face against the smoke and pulled a drawer open, putting a thick file on to the desk and opening it. 'I have had some experience with these things, you understand. I am a member of Amnesty International and the World Medical Association. We study these phenomena.' I looked at my watch and he noticed, but didn't hurry. Floderus sat snuffling in his handkerchief. 'We questioned the patient, and his answers were consistent with the trauma we noted on his body.' He studied the file. 'He was subjected to the "wet canvas" treatment. Do you know what that is?'

'Yes.' But they wouldn't have started off with that one. They risk losing you, that way, because panic sets in.

'They used falanga, and we found extensive ecchymoses and edema, with some degree of irreversible ischemic changes in the intermetatarsal areas of the foot. There were — '

'What was he walking like, before they took him away?'

'His feet were still rather painful. He tended to hobble.'

'All right. What else?'

He looked at the file again. 'He said they had suspended him from the arms for prolonged periods, but we found no evidence of cervical dislocations. We took X-rays, of course. He could use his arms perfectly well, after about eight weeks. We found hematuria and some bleeding from the ears, but again we were able to treat these symptoms successfully. This kind of thing is found extensively in Chile, by the way, and Uruguay.'

'You'll find it everywhere,' I said.

I heard Floderus swallowing saliva.

'So we are beginning to discover.' Steinberg nodded, and dropped ash on to his dressing-gown. 'There was, in Herr Schrenk's case, local infiltration of anaesthetics into the eyelids.'

Floderus was leaning forward. 'What for?' he asked the doctor.

'I beg your pardon?'

'So that he couldn't shut his eyes,' I told him, 'against the light.' I wished I hadn't let him stay; he was getting on my nerves. 'Did they use drugs?' I asked Steinberg.

'He described certain phases of mental disorientation, including hallucination, but of no great significance. It might have been induced by reaction to the physical trauma. If they used drugs, they may have used thiopental or one of the amphetamines; he exhibited no lasting evidence of this.' He closed the file and put it in the drawer.

'Can you tell me anything else?'

He drew on his cigarette, leaving a shred of tobacco on his lip. 'I think that is all I can give you. As to his present state of mind, it depends upon how they have treated him since they took him away.' He spread his thick white hands. 'We can only hope that by some good fortune…'

'Did he tell you he'd revealed any information?'

'I heard nothing about that.'

'Would you have heard?'

'It would be in the records.'

'Taped records?'

We record conversations with patients, yes. It is routine, an essential part of the therapy.'

'Can I hear some of the tapes?'

'That is quite out of the question. Such matters are strictly confidential. We — '

'Did he mention any names? Names of people in Moscow?'

'I cannot say. It would be in the records.' He began fidgeting with a pen-holder.

'Did he scream any names in his nightmares?'

'Herr Matthofer, I am not at liberty to — '

`Did he make any threats?'

'Of what nature?'

'Any nature. Any threats against anyone at all.' I got up and walked past his desk to the window and back. 'You said he was bitter, and bore a grudge. Against whom?'

'There was nothing specific.' He stubbed out his cigarette, annoyed by the way things were going. He was the top kick in this place and he'd found me on the doorstep washed up by the night.

'You mean he was bitter in general? What made you think he bore someone a grudge?'

He stood up and came from behind his desk, drawing the dressing-gown around him. 'Surely you can understand that a man in his condition should bear a grudge against those responsible for it?'

'Or did you just expect him to feel like that?'

It was important and he didn't realize it and I couldn't explain.

'You will have to excuse me, Herr Matthofer. I agreed to receiving you in the middle of the night in order to discuss this patient's case for a few minutes, but not to submit to an Interrogation. I am leaving Hanover at nine o'clock and I need some sleep.' He jerked the chain of the desk lamp and went over to the door. Floderus got up. I asked Steinberg:

'Did the police find any clues?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

'They came here to ask questions?'

'But of course.'

'Did anyone see the car these people used?'

'No, they did not. I would have been told. Now I will say good night, gentlemen.' He opened the front door for us.

Floderus started blowing into his hands again the minute we were in the street.

'Haven't you got any gloves, for God's sake?' I asked him.

'I lost them,' he said irritably.

'Haven't you got any others?'

'Why was it so important,' he asked me, 'about Schrenk being bitter?' He swung the Mercedes in full turn and headed north by the river.

'It's right out of character. What time's our rendezvous?'

'03.30 at Zellerfeld. He should be there by now.'