Adam Hall: Northlight

He asked the rest of the questions and pulled a medical printout from the file and went through it with me and then scratched his chest through the gap in his shirt and slid the drawer shut and said, 'Now maybe I can go home and finish my beauty sleep.'

'It's not doing you much good. Who's on watch tonight?'

He checked the roster. 'Kinsley.'

I went through Codes and Cyphers one floor down and picked up a Box 9 grid system with short-cut phrasing and saw Watts in the room next door and conned him into giving me a journalist's cover — he's always trying to push you into off-duty aircrew identities — and then took the stairs again to the floor above and went along to the room right at the end, next to Signals, and found Kinsley sitting at his desk cleaning a gun.

'Have you got a minute?'

'Sure. Sit down. Bryce-Whitney Monitor, 1912, automatic safety-catch, they only made a couple of hundred, how much do you think?'

'I don't know.'

'Four hundred quid, isn't that fantastic?'

'If you say so.' I thought about going home to bed but they might call me at any time now and I could sleep on the flight out; besides, I wanted to know a few things.

'Are you going out again, Quiller?'

'Yes.'

'Can't leave it alone, can you?' He put the cleaning kit away and laid the gun down on the desk with exaggerated care and gave me all of his attention, his wide unsurprisable eyes noting my stubble and untidy hair and my general air, I suppose, of someone who's been up all night. 'What can I do for you?'

'Tell me about the American sub.'

'Okay. Going to meet Brekhov, are you?'

'How did you know?'

'I was talking to the Chief. He said you'd be coming in here to ask me about the sub.' He got up and stretched his arms out at right angles and flexed them backwards a couple of times and then limped across to the shelf in the corner, a short, square-bodied man with stiff black hair and a beaky nose and a national gold medal for weight lifting and a framed police record on the wall from the time when he'd been arrested for bending some railings with his bare hands outside Buckingham Palace and fined one hundred pounds for causing malicious damage to a public monument, which was twice as much as the bet he'd won for doing it; but they had to use a car jack to get the railings straight again, which was what had pleased him the most.

'Sugar?'

'No.'

He plugged in the rusty water-heater and dropped a couple of teabags into two cups and said over his shoulder, 'What particularly interests you?'

'How they decided it must have blown up near Murmansk.'

'Ah. The way I heard it from Cheltenham was that when the Norwegian coastguards spotted the debris it was quite close inshore and drifting due west on the current. This was-'

'How far from the Russian border?'

'Damn close. Roughly north-west of Grense Jakobselv. That was at dawn on the second — last Monday — and the current was running at five knots and pretty well due west. I'd say there isn't any doubt about it, wouldn't you? D'you know that area?'

'All I know is that it's where the Iron Curtain ends in the Barents Sea.'

'Right. The Norwegians looked at their seismographs and worked out the timing of the explosion and the speed of the current and put the estimated location of the sub as due north of Murmansk, give or take a couple of kilometres, when it was hit.'

'There's no way of telling whether it was inside the twelve-mile limit at that time?'

'They're still working things out. We-'

'Who are?'

'The US Navy, Norwegian Navy and coastguards, and the NATO team. But it's pretty unlikely they'll ever get a fix in retrospect.' He unplugged the water-heater and filled the two cups and brought them over. 'Want some milk?'

'No.' I dunked the teabag up and down. 'It was the Cetacea, was it?'

'Oh, yes. There were five bodies found among the general debris that morning, and they were identified within a few hours; two of them had limbs missing and so on, but their faces were unharmed and the water's not much above freezing in that area. No question.'

'Are they still searching for the sub?'

'As a token gesture. They can't look for it inside Soviet waters and even if they could they wouldn't want to: the Americans are saying that the sub was outside the twelve mile limit and the Soviets are saying they didn't know it was in the Barents Sea anyway. Politically, it's a kind of stand off, and both sides are trying to keep the matches away from the powder keg, because of the summit.'

'Is that why they-'

'Hang on.' The phone was ringing and he picked it up. 'Kinsley.' He listened and then put his cup down and went around behind the desk and reached for his pad and a ballpoint. 'When? Okay, see if you can get him on any direct flight with takeoff fifty minutes from now and not later than ETA 08:00 hours today.' He glanced up at me and said, 'Brekhov missed the Potsdam plane but he's on an Aeroflot to Berlin, arriving 08:15. Did you ask Clearance for a bag?'

'Yes.'

'When did you last eat?'

'I'll get something on the plane.'

'Okay.' He spoke into the phone again. 'No, not unless we have to. Try Lufthansa, then.' He pulled open a drawer and dropped the composite airline schedules onto the desk, reaching for his tea. 'There might be time to call in a chopper to take him from Battersea to Heathrow, but I'd rather find-' he broke off and listened again. 'Look, I'll do that while you tell Jones to take his bag along to the checkout room, with his clearance stuff ready for final signature, okay?' Another phone rang and he picked it up. 'Yes, sir, I've just got it from Signals and we're getting him ready now. I'll tell him.' He rang off and looked up at me again. 'Chief says good luck.'

I nodded and he began work on the airline schedules and made a note and spoke into the open phone. 'George?' He listened. 'Shit.' His pen ran down the flight times again and he made another note, turning a page and then hearing a voice on the line. He picked up the phone again. 'What? No, this is better: there's a Lufthansa leaving at 05:45' — he checked his watch — 'in just under an hour from now. Get him on that. I know, but we can't help it. They'll have to put him on the flight deck or a cabin-crew jump seat if they have to — just make absolutely sure they get him on it and have his pass waiting for him at the gate, not at the counter, the gate, okay? Flight 190. We're cutting it fine so call in whatever help you need, right up to the Chief of Control if Lufthansa object to an extra bod — he can request assistance on Line 5.'

Line 5 was our NATO Intelligence connection.

He put the phone down and made a note on a new sheet of his pad. 'Okay, you'll be on Flight 190. They'll-' the ballpoint ran dry and he threw it aside and picked up another one. 'Bloody things. They'll have your pass waiting for you at Gate 10. The rendezvous is for 09:00 in the lobby of the Hotel Sachsen, 8 Linden Platz, about thirty minutes from the airport — he obviously doesn't want to hang about. Have you seen him before?" 'Yes.'

'Okay. He'll be carrying a copy of Pravda upside-down. Use the code introduction for this week. There'll be an Avis car waiting for you at die airport. Any questions?'

'Have we got anyone else covering his arrival?'

'No. You're on your own.'

'That's all.'

'Okay.' He tore the sheet off the pad and gave it to me, getting up and coming round the desk. 'I'll get a police car to fall in behind you on the way to Heathrow in case you blow a tube or anything, so look out for it. We'll also tell them to watch for you at the security check and Gate 10.' He put his hand out. 'Happy landings.'

I picked up the prepacked overnight bag on die ground floor and gave them the final signature and went out through die small door at die back of die building, walking round die puddles to the car. The rain had eased off and a half moon was tugging a gap in die ragged clouds, and as I got in and started up and turned north along Whitehall the last of the queasiness along the nerves died away and left me with only die steady rhythmic sound, deep in my mind, of a man running.