ADAM HALL: The Scorpion Signal

Glass shattered, raining against me, and I kept my face down, my head hunched between my shoulders. A period of weightlessness came again — two seconds, three, four, five — as the truck found a sheer drop and floated free, turning slowly and bringing a kind of calm as the rotational speed of the cargo matched the speed of the truck itself. It was the eye of the storm, and I waited. Seven seconds, eight, nine — then we struck rock and smashed down again and the storm burst as it had before, a crash coming as the rear doors were forced open, one of them dragging itself off the hinges with a scream of metal on stone. Then the truck veered at right angles and the rolling stopped. We hit the floor of the slope head-on and I was flung backwards with the rest of the cargo, keeping my head in my arms and going with it, something dragging against my thigh and ripping the coat away and tearing the flesh, a shower of glass whining across my head through the open doors, a last case toppling and smashing down as the truck shuddered and rolled again, slowly, and rocked to stillness.

I made for where I could smell the air and see the moon. The senses were partially numbed and the organism was working with instinct, but I could smell fuel oil and I fought in a frenzy to get clear, feeling the snow under my hands as the first flame burst and took hold. The split tank coughed into life and black smoke began pouring across the rockface as I pitched forward and got up and staggered, straightening and going on down the mountainside away from the fierce white light that had started blazing from the roadway above the ravine. The truck was a mass of flames and I kept low, lurching and rolling among the snow-covered boulders and keeping the fire between me and the fierce white light. Twice I saw my shadow in front of me and dropped flat, waiting to know if they'd seen me, waiting for the shot.

I sat waiting.

The night was perfectly quiet, with no movement in the air. The moon neared its zenith, towards the south.

I shifted my position again and the nerves in my right thigh reacted; the tissues had only just begun healing. I didn't know if I could run yet, if I had to. There was nothing else wrong with me, except for the lingering effects of the shock: unexpected sounds made my head jerk, as if they were shots.

It was freezing cold.

'What held you up?'

Another trolleybus went past the end of the street, along Ckalova ulica, a No.10. It was the seventh I'd counted. There had been a dozen cars during the same period; it was eleven o'clock and traffic was light.

'We crashed the truck,' I told him.

He started the engine again to blow some more air through the heater. It was a Pobeda, stinking of oil and stale cigarette smoke. We couldn't run the engine all the time because it'd be noticed: we parked by the river, close to the intersection, and four militia patrols had gone past in the last fifty minutes, one of them slowing to look at us. I didn't like it, any of it; my scalp crept too easily, and I was breathing too fast. I'd got close to being wiped out in that truck and the organism remembered.

'We thought we'd lost you,' the contact said. His speech was indistinct, as if his mouth were bruised. 'There was a complete blackout on you after Floderus signalled from Hanover.'

'It was close.'

'What happened to the driver?'

'The truck went up.' I didn't want to talk about it.

He turned the engine off and the cold began creeping through the cracks again from outside the car.

'What else?' he asked me.

It was his job to find out. This was Moscow and in Moscow you live from one minute to the next because there's no building that isn't bugged and no street that isn't surveyed and no hope of getting away with sloppy security or a doubtful drop or inadequate cover. They could stop, the next time around, and poke their torches in here and ask for our papers and pull us in if everything wasn't exactly right. Or even if it was.

So he had to find out what I'd been doing, because in five minutes from now I might not be able to tell anyone. I said: 'I got as far as Ashersleben in a shepherd's Volkswagen and asked for some medical attention and bought a new coat. That was this morning. There wasn't a plane till 13:20 Leipzig time. Then — '

'What medical attention?' He turned to look at me, and the oblique light shadowed the scar that ran from one ear along the jawline. A lot of them look a bit creased in one way or another when they've come in from the field.

'Torn leg,' I said.

'Is that all?'

'And screw you too.'

He laughed without any sound at all, laying his head back and giving a little shake. 'As long as you're fit for work.'

'I'm as fit as I'll ever be. Where the hell is Bracken?'

He began watching the intersection again. Through a gap in the buildings I could see a curve of floodlit gold, one of the domes of the Kremlin. 'It's difficult,' he said in that soft-slipper voice of his. 'Since the trial started we can't make a move without drawing a tag. There's a lot of foreign journalists in town and the K don't like it.'

'How did Bracken get in?'

'Diplomatic cover. It was last-minute stuff: they had to fake a case of hepatitis in the Embassy and send a man home, with Bracken to replace him.'

My nerves reacted again, shrinking the scalp. Most of the field directors come in like that, but not so fast: London would prepare the ground a month ahead to avoid any fuss. But this wasn't a planned operation; it was a last-ditch emergency job, and the man they'd thrown me as director in the field was trying to shake off the ticks before he got close to me and blew me sky-high at the first rendezvous.

I began taking slow breaths, working on the nerves.

'Bracken's all right,' the contact said. 'He knows his Moscow, don't worry.'

'It won't help him. Not at night.' Bracken would have left the Embassy in a car with diplomatic plates and the tags would have fallen in behind: it was routine KGB procedure when someone new joined the staff. And he couldn't drive dear of them by putting his foot down because he wasn't going to ground: he was going back to the Embassy sooner or later and they'd ask an awful lot of questions. There's not much traffic at night in this city and you'd wake the dead if you hit the tit and left rubber all over the road. All he could do was to try getting a truck or a bus or something between them and himself and ease off into a side street while their view was blocked. And the best of luck.

'Have you worked here before?' the contact asked me.

'No. I was trained here for Curtain operations.'

'Are you fluent?'

'Yes. Local accent.'

'When were you here last?' he asked me, watching the intersection.

'Three years ago.' Another militia patrol went past, in one of their snubnosed Volgas. A face was turned towards us. The car didn't slow.

'That's a long time,' the contact said. 'Things are changing fast over here. You'll have to be careful.'

'Oh for Christ's sake d'you think I need telling?'

His head moved a fraction to watch my reflection in the windscreen. 'Sorry, old boy.'

I slowed my breathing, counting the breaths. I'd have to do better than this, a hell of a lot better. Otherwise I was going to blow up when the heat came on. Eight, nine, ten, 'They pulled me in from leave,' I said more quietly, 'two weeks after the last lot.'

'Bastards, aren't they?'

We watched the car.

'I could have refused.'

'Why didn't you?'

'Vanity.'

He laughed again soundlessly, but didn't take his eyes off the car. It was moving into better light now, turning off Ckalova ulica towards us and speeding up a little. It was a black Humber with CD plates.

'You're driving this one,' the contact said, 'all right?'