Quiller Solitaire

Chapter 9: INGE

This place was a trap.

He was sitting over there by the wall, Sorgenicht, the man I'd tracked here, Karl Sorgenicht. There were two girls with him. One of them had been sitting by herself when I'd come into the cafeteria; I'd noticed her because she was striking, in the Nordic way: ice-blue eyes and ash-blonde hair, a wide sensual mouth. She wore a crimson leather ski-jacket and crimson calf-length boots; her bag was to match and had steel studs as a decoration. The whole outfit was Berlin-style bisexual-chic.

Sorgenicht had got himself a coffee at the service counter, and he'd been taking it across to the corner when the blonde had called out to him. He'd hesitated and then joined her. The other girl at the table was dark, slim, elegant in Pan Am uniform. She had joined the blonde just before Sorgenicht; the two girls were friends or acquaintances and they'd arranged to meet here: that was ray impression.

I had a girlfriend, Inge, Willi Hartman had told me in the night-club. She was very attractive. Helen had agreed: Yes. I thought she was terribly good-looking.

The girl over there wasn't necessarily Inge; there were a lot of good-looking girls in Berlin, and she could be cabin crew out of uniform. But she'd called Sorgenicht over to her table, and he was a Nemesis agent.

I poked at my eggs on toast, eating very little although I was hungry. This place was a trap and I might have to use muscle to get out of it and I didn't want the digestive process slowing the organism down.

It was a trap because that man Krenz would normally have kept in touch with his cell by telephone from the Mercedes. Nemesis had thought it important enough to send him to watch Sorge-nicht's house to see if anyone tried to track him when he left, and it would therefore be important for him to report on events. He hadn't done that. In terms of signals, he'd been missing ever since I'd taken over the Mercedes, and they wouldn't just assume the phone wasn't working: they would check up. They would know where Sorgenicht was going and they'd send some people here to look for Krenz and when anyone came in I paid attention.

Flight 147 to Frankfurt will be leaving from Gate 6 in ten minutes. Passengers for Flight 147 to Frankfurt should report to Gate 6 and board immediately.

There were four tables between my own and the table where Sorgenicht sat with the two girls, and the people in between provided reasonable but not perfect cover. As some of them moved in their chairs, leaning forward, leaning back, I moved my head so that I could keep observation and have tune to cover my image if Sorgenicht looked in this direction. If he did, he would recognise me. The lighting at the bottom of the stairs at the Cafe' Brahms last night had been subdued but we'd been facing each other, and unless the strike had left him with any degree of retrogressive amnesia he would remember me if he saw me now.

They were speaking in English over there. I haven't been trained in lip-reading but the difference between Yes and Ja is quite distinct, and you can pick up the affirmative in most languages by watching for a nod of the head. It's the same with No and Nein, and the shaking of the head is often more emphatic than the nod. The girl in the Pan Am uniform didn't speak German, perhaps, or not too well; or the others were simply showing courtesy to a foreigner.

Passengers for Flight 232 for London should go to Gate 17 immediately. Flight 232 for London will be leaving in fifteen minutes.

It worried me, the voice on the loudspeaker. This is what it had sounded like in Frankfurt that day: Flight 103 will be leaving in ten minutes. Passengers for London on Flight 103 should report to Gate 10 immediately. It was said later that few of them, perhaps none of them, had even heard of the remote Scottish village with the name of Lockerbie.

If that man Krenz was dead, that man with the massive skull in the Mercedes, if I'd gone too far, put too much force into the strike, I would have no conscience. None. I would have no conscience if, in the urgent process of the mission, others also died, and at my hands.

Three men came in and I watched them. Two were pilots.

I felt a resonance along the nerves; it was not unpleasant. If they found me here, the people of Nemesis, if Sorgenicht recognised me, I would have a fair chance of getting clear. It's very difficult to attack and subdue and seize or kill a man in a place as public as a major airport without bringing security or the police on the scene. The resonance along the nerves was due to excitement, not fear, because I had made access to Nemesis and I would stay with the opposition now wherever they moved, and if I got things right, if I didn't lose them, didn't slip, didn't fall, I would reach this man Dieter Klaus, and reach him in time, and bring him down before there was another hideous sunburst in the sky.

The man at the top now is Dieter Klaus, and I hope to Christ you never run into him. He's inhuman. His body shaking, setting up a vibration in the wheelchair.

It would be well, then, if Klaus were to follow Krenz.

One of the pilots who had just come in had parted from the other two men, moving between the tables until he came to the one where Sorgenicht was sitting with the girls. Sorgenicht and the blonde knew him; they shook hands perfunctorily. Then the blonde introduced the pilot to the Pan Am stewardess, and he gave a slight bow. I'd seen the winged flash on his uniform when he'd passed closer to my table. He flew for Iran Air.

It was twenty minutes before anyone at the table made a move. During that time I picked up what I could of the conversation, but it was difficult because I had to allow for German and Iranian accents. I gleaned more from their body language: Sorgenicht sat stolidly and said little, listened a lot, especially to the blonde, who sometimes leaned towards the Pan Am stewardess, touching her hand for emphasis. The two girls smiled now and then; the men did not. The Iranian pilot said almost nothing. I thought the name of the stewardess was probably Debbie: the lingual combination of 'd' and 'b' was often formed when the blonde spoke to her.

The Iranian was the first to move. The pilot he'd come in with passed close to the table, looking at his watch, and the Iranian nodded and got up, shaking hands with the blonde, nodding to the others as they began leaving too. As Sorgenicht turned away from the table I picked up my cup of coffee and held it in both hands like a bowl as I drank, masking the lower half of my face and keeping my eyes down, but I think he hesitated as he passed my table, not far away. I couldn't be sure, couldn't look up, but the feeling was there: that he'd recognised me but had kept on going.

I waited long enough for him to leave the cafeteria and then took what would probably be the biggest calculated risk of the whole mission and put the cup down and got up and turned and went out. Sorgenicht was in the main hall, going towards the telephones, his back to me. The two girls were near the elevators, shaking hands. Debbie, if that was her name, began crossing the hall as the blonde took the down elevator and I followed, keeping distance between us.

He could be telephoning, Sorgenicht, calling for support. He could be tracking me as I crossed the lower floor and followed the blonde girl out to the car parks, and I used reflective surfaces where I could find them, but didn't see him. It didn't mean he wasn't there, standing off at a distance: there was good cover to be had as cars and shuttles pulled in to the departure hall.

There was a different vibration now along the nerves as I walked through the cold morning light.

She moved athletically, the blonde, the metal-studded bag slung at the shoulder, the crimson calflength boots tapping the tarmac as she passed between the cars.

'Inge!' I called, and she turned.

'Ja?

I caught up with her and asked in German, 'How are you?'

She studied me. 'I'm very well. Do I know you?'

'I'm sorry – Hans Mittag. I'm a friend of Willi's.'

'Willi Hartman's?'

'Yes.' I held out my hand and she took it, but briefly. 'He sends you his good wishes,' I said. 'He misses you.'

Her eyes were cool. 'Really. But I still don't remember you.'

'We met at one of his little parties. But look, I don't want to hold you up.' I stood back. 'Should I return his good wishes?'

'I think he's out of town.'

'Oh really? Well, it was good to see you. My car's over there.' I moved past her and then turned to face her again, bringing the airport terminal into the background. 'I'll remember you to Willi, when I see him. He was telling me so many interesting things.'

She watched me with the stillness of a cat. 'About what?'

'About you.' I brought my voice down. 'And your exciting plans.'

People moved in the background, against the facade of the terminal. Others were standing still, but I could only see them in the outer vision field; my eyes were on hers.

She said, 'What kind of plans?'

'Perhaps I can help you with them.' The people standing at the shuttle station would be unrecognisable at this distance, even if I could look at them directly. Any one of them could be Sorgenicht. He would be the spotter, if he were there at all. He would show them where I was, tell them to get Inge away from me before I could do her any harm. 'But perhaps you don't need any help.'

She didn't move. 'Did you follow me here?'

'Yes, when I saw you leaving the terminal. I called out to you, but a taxi got in the way,'

In a moment she said, 'I think I'd like to hear what Willi's been saying about me.'

'He was very discreet. I want you to understand that. We'd better talk in your car.' I needed cover; my skin itched for it: I was too exposed here in the open. 'Where is it?'

She stood watching me, her eyes luminous in the cold morning light. Then she said, 'It's over there,' and I followed her.

It was a crimson Porsche 911, recognisable ten blocks away in thick traffic. She didn't make any concession to security, didn't want to, wanted to be seen, to make an impression, didn't know how appallingly dangerous it was in the game she was playing.

She sat behind the wheel, her arm across it, her body half-turned to me, a heavy gold chain across the neck of her white polo sweater, a gold bracelet on her wrist, blonde hairs on her fingers catching the light, one knee in a black stocking crooked against the gear lever. 'So what did Willi say?

That you were in Dieter Klaus' organisation.'

'What organisation?'

'Nemesis.'

The pulse beat in her throat. In a moment she said, 'Willi tends to fantasise, as you probably know.'

Someone was getting into a car not far away and when the door slammed I used the excuse and looked through the windscreen and checked the background and saw two men standing there a hundred yards away, talking.

I said, 'Willi wasn't fantasising this time, and you know that.'

She took a deep breath to deal with the tension, looking away, looking back. 'Do you live in Berlin?' It sounded as if she were changing the subject. She wasn't.

'Yes,' I said, 'but I don't see much of it. I travel a lot. I've just got back from a meeting with the Secretary of the General People's Committee of Libya, Muhammad az-Zarruqu Rajab, second in command to Colonel Moammar Gadhafi. The deal was for two million US dollars.'

Her pupils grew larger for a moment. 'Are you talking about arms?'

1 don't always deal in arms. I deal in information, military and paramilitary services, mercenary personnel, presidential security, things like that. My last actual arms deal, which I made two weeks ago, was with the IRA. It wasn't big money but I support people who make a genuine attempt to bring down the capitalistic and democratic establishments, in particular those in London and Washington.'

She expressed very little with her eyes, Inge Stoph; they were liquid blue crystal set above the finely wrought cheekbones and under the thick blonde eyebrows, a perfectly-matched pair of gemstones, beautiful to contemplate but devoid of any real interest; one would get bored with them, I would think, after a time. I looked for other signs of reaction to what I was saying: she looked wonderfully fit and I would have thought her heart-rate would be something less than seventy-two but the gold bracelet was swinging against the squat black knob of the gear lever with a rhythm significantly faster than that.

In a moment she said, 'You lead an exciting life.'

I gave a shrug. 'Business of any sort is still only business, but sometimes I make up little jokes to keep the boredom away.'

The two men were still talking over there but I didn't think they were anything to worry about: they wore coats with astrakhan collars and homburg hats, and this wasn't a situation where the opposition would need to falsify the image; if Sorgenicht and his people wanted me, they would simply close in.

'You make up little jokes?'

She was delightfully attentive, Inge Stoph.

'Oh,' I said, 'not often. But this summer I was in Africa, in a state that shall be nameless, and my assignment was to see that the Minister of Defence should be rendered incapable of launching an armed insurrection, which was thought to be in his mind. I was present at a state banquet three days after my arrival, and the cuisine was French: Faisan roti a la Bergere, Boeuf Bourguignon and for dessert a compote of fresh strawberries in a sauce of creme de papaya. But the piece de resistance was carried in on a silver platter, and when the cover was lifted, there was the head of the Minister of Defence on a bed of vine leaves with a glazed passion-fruit in his mouth.' I touched her arm quickly – 'I knew the president well, of course, and his particular sense of humour. I've never been accused of questionable taste.'

I caught a spark of interest in her eyes at last, or possibly it was a trick of the light. 'Did you kill the man yourself?'

'Some questions are more delicate than others, aren't they?' I looked at my watch. 'Let me leave you with this, Inge. I realise that Dieter Klaus has substantial backing from Colonel Gadhafi – the Secretary of the General People's Committee happened to mention it when I was with him yesterday – and this is why I was particularly glad to see you this morning. Klaus is a difficult man to reach, and I respect that, so you might like to suggest that I meet him, as soon as convenient.'. There was a micro-recorder lying in the well between the seats. 'May I use this?'

If you wish.'

I spoke a telephone number into it and put it back. 'You can leave a message for me there at any time: it's an answering service. Tell Klaus that I can offer him a missile with a nuclear warhead, the American-made Miniver NK- 9, in case he feels like spelling out a really spectacular statement for the prime-time news.' The increase in her saliva was triggered immediately, and I saw her swallow. 'I'm talking,' I said, 'of taking out an entire international sports stadium during a world-class match or a major airport on Christmas Eve or the Houses of Parliament in London, with subsequent fallout megadeaths and mass evacuation and the closing down of the relevant city for the next hundred years – a lasting monument, if you like, to Nemesis.' I opened the door and got out of the car. 'You know how to find me, but you must tell Klaus that time is of the essence. If he'd like a rendezvous, I can only give him till midnight.'

The sun had cleared the airport buildings and floated in the haze, a pale membrane speared by the black antennae at the top of the control tower. Shadows had begun to form on the tarmac as I walked across the slip road to the underground car park where Roach had left his SAAB.

I could see no one, had seen no one since I'd left Inge, but the skin was crawling at the nape of the neck and the scrotum was tight because in the last hour I had taken appalling risks, however calculated, and if I were going to survive long enough to debrief to my director in the field he was going to blow my head off and send a report to London.

The roar of a jet came like a soft explosion as a British Airways VC10 cleared the buildings and tilted into the haze. Something was moving at the rim of the vision field and I turned my head; it was a radar scanner. Echoes began coming from the underground garage, echoes of footsteps, and I stopped, listening; I'd been making them myself. I don't like the nerves pulling tight when there's no reason, but I never ignore them. There are vibrations in human affairs that have nothing to do with speech or contact; they are there because the primitive brainstem still protects us in a world of technological sophistication, analysing the environment, interpreting data that the senses have picked up even without our knowing, and on that level we don't understand the signals; we just feel uneasy, on edge.

The black SAAB was standing where Roach had left it; the Mercedes had been too hot for me to use again, and he would have dumped Krenz somewhere in the field for support people to look after and then driven the car to the east section of the city and left it there.

The windows of the SAAB were up and the doors were locked; he'd given me the keys, but I handled them gingerly, slipping the door-key in and waiting before I turned it. There were other people down here, and I listened to their footsteps, and the echoes they made, expecting a rush, a closing in. There was nothing of that sort, and I opened the door and got in and sat behind the wheel and took a look at the instrument panel and waited again, listening, hearing the roar of another jet that was taking off, the sound setting up a metallic hum in the lid of the ashtray.

Then I put the ignition key in and sweat sprang instantly on my skin but I turned the key because there hadn't been time for them to rig a bang, it was just nerves, that was all, and the engine started right away and I shifted the gears in and got rolling and the BMW that was parked three cars away in the same line started up too and the tyres whimpered a little as it pulled ahead of me and swerved inwards and the 380SL on the other side went into the same manoeuvre and I gave the SAAB the gun and the tyres shrilled and the left wing hit the Mercedes and was ripped away as I kept going and felt a shudder from the rear as the BMW moved right in and tried to close the trap as a Volkswagen came in from the next line and swung across my bows in a curve and I rammed it and broke through.

Another car was moving past one of the concrete pillars and it braked hard and I saw a woman with a white face behind the windscreen and then the Mercedes pulled alongside the SAAB with his tyres yelping under the acceleration and I swung the wheel and bounced off the pillar and heard the offside wing tearing away. The windscreen snowed out as something glanced across it and I thought I heard the pop of a silenced gun and then it came again and the driving-mirror shattered and I kept low on the seat and swung the SAAB full-circle across the dry concrete and looked for a gap and found one and went for it but the VW blocked me and I swung the other way, ramming the front end of the Mercedes and bringing a burst of water from the radiator and a lot of clatter from the fan.

They were shooting and they were using silencers and the clock on the dashboard took a ricochet and the bullet dropped into my lap and I left it there. Something moved in from the left side and the SAAB rocked and I dragged it straight and saw another gap and took it and hit a pillar and broke free but the Mercedes was close and we rocked again and righted and then rolled over with the roof-metal screaming on the concrete and I hit the belt-buckle and got the door open and found the Mercedes alongside with the driver slumped at the wheel with blood on his face so I smashed the window and found his gun and saw the BMW moving in and fired twice and rolled clear as it lost control and hit the Mercedes and bounced back with the driver's foot still on the throttle and the engine screaming.

The Volkswagen was coming in and I dropped the gun and waited and saw the driving-window coming down and a muzzle poking out and I dropped flat as he fired and fired again and I came up from under the window and hit the gun and felt the shock as it went off and then I found the man's throat and smashed the larynx and dragged him out of the car and got in and gunned up for the exit and went through with the man in the box there shouting because I hadn't paid and he wanted to ask me about all the noise he'd heard. I merged with the main traffic from the terminal and kept going until I found a telephone and got out and called Thrower and he picked up on the second ring.