Quiller Solitaire

Chapter 10: THROWER

'I need all the information you can get me,' I told Thrower, 'on the NK-9 Miniver tactical nuclear missile. Ahmad Samala should have all I want, but ask London too, tell them to fax it to you.'

'How soon?'

'Now.'

I felt blood creeping on the side of my face and got my handkerchief; my head was throbbing, just over the right temple, and the cold air was sharp on the wound. The shoulder on that side was burning but I could use my arm all right. It had happened when the SAAB had rolled.

'I'll see to that,' Thrower said. 'Where are you?'

'Tegel Airport. I need to debrief.'

'All right. I've moved you nearer there, in point of fact. You're at the Hotel Klinghof in the Haselhorst district. You're booked in and your things are on their way. You can go there now.'

He must have his reasons but I wanted to keep the call short. I needed the information on the NK-9 as soon as I could get it: Inge could phone Kleiber's number at any time to make a rendezvous and if I were going to talk to Dieter Klaus I'd have to be absolutely sure of what I was saving.

'All right,' I told Thrower. 'What street?' 'Eiderstrasse. I shall be moving to the Prinzen, nearby.'

'When?

'I'll be leaving here in a few minutes; I was hanging on in case you signalled.' There was something about his voice that was different, I thought. It was just as smooth, but there was a note of frustration coming through. It wasn't because of what had happened in the underground garage; I hadn't told him about it yet because I didn't want to waste time.

I said, 'I'll wait for your call. How long?'

'We should be able to debrief in about an hour.'

'Where?

'I'll tell you when I phone.'

'All right.' On a thought – 'Have they got Helen Maitland to the airport yet?'

In a moment he said, 'In point of fact, no. She's missing.'

The place smelt of leather and coconut matting and sweat.

'Come on in,' he said.

He was a big man with thick black hair on his bare arms and a round pink head with tiny blue eyes in it that looked as though they could bore through the steel door of a strong room. Thrower had told me his name was Jim, and that was all. The battered sign outside said Jim's Gym. Someone was bashing at a punching-bag.

'Thank you,' I said, and he stood back for me. We'd exchanged paroles.

They were mostly boys in here, some with black eyes.

I couldn't have shown anything on my face but Jim said, They didn't get them here. They got beaten up by their fathers. My job's to stop it happening again.' His eyes shifted a little. He's waiting for you up there,' he said.

He led me across to some stairs in the corner.

Thrower was on the first floor in a room used for storing things, mostly half-broken furniture and a few car seats with the stuffing coming out. It was freezing in here.

'Come along in,' Thrower said.

'Is there any water around?' I was thirsty.

'I don't think so. Downstairs, perhaps.'

'And no bloody heating?' 'I didn't ask.'

He looked as smooth as he sounded, Thrower, what you'd call well-groomed, almost as bad as that bastard Loman, although this man's shoes weren't polished: he was wearing furlined boots. A long face, pale eyes, a tight mouth, fresh cuts from shaving, a short man, thin, hands in the pockets of his elegant black coat, nothing I could see to like about him, but then I wasn't in the mood.

'What happened,' I asked him, 'to Helen Maitland?'

'We'll get to that,' he said.

I was warned. It sounded as though he was used to calling the shots.

'What exactly do you mean,' I asked him, 'she's "missing"?'

He turned away – impatiently, I think. He would have to improve, this man Thrower, he would have to improve a great deal. My hands were in my coat pockets too but it wasn't just to keep them warm; they were still shaking from the reaction: those bastards had come very close indeed to writing me off and it had been noisy down there and I hate loud noises.

'I began calling her room,' Thrower said carefully, 'at seven o'clock this morning, to give her comfortable time to catch the plane. There was no answer. I called her twice more at intervals of ten minutes, then I phoned security and told them I thought there could be something wrong. They let me into her room. She wasn't there and she hadn't packed, not even her toilet things.'

'She leave any kind of note?'

'I couldn't find one. I -'

'What about -' and he stopped and waited for me. 'All right,' I said, 'go on.'

'I talked to the doorman, who said that Mrs Maitland had left the hotel at about 6.30, saying that she didn't want a taxi, she wanted to take some air. She had a coat on. That is all I can tell you.'

My fists were clenched in my pockets, to stop the shaking. I said, 'Have you phoned the Steglitz since you left there?'

'Ten minutes ago, from my hotel.'

'And she's not back?'

'No.'

Do you want to come in for a little while?

She'd been shivering, standing there outside her door, her hands pressing the collar of her coat against her cheeks. I'd said no, she needed sleep.

Just for a few minutes.

She'd leaned her head against me, and I'd held her until the shivering had stopped. I had to make some calls, I'd told her.

I'm cold, and a bit frightened, that's all.

And I'd told her to call room service, ask for some hot milk and Horlicks. That is what I had told her.

Thrower was watching me.

She'd asked me to come in for a few minutes because she was cold and frightened. Jesus Christ, it wasn't much to ask, was it?

'I've informed London.'

'What?'

Thrower, saying he'd informed London.

'I'd hope so,' I told him, 'I would very much hope so.'

Something hooted, down there outside the building, a barge, I suppose, on the river. Fog still clung to the water, but the sun was throwing a clear cold light across the buildings on the other side.

'Why don't we sit down?' Thrower said, and I looked at him.

'And what did London say they'd do?'

'All that's necessary.'

'We brought her out here, you know that? The Bureau brought her out here, on my recommendation. So they'd better bloody well find her again, hadn't they?

He turned away, turned back, and I didn't like the way he did that, he wanted me to see how very patient he was being with me. 'Look, Thrower, if they don't find -' and I stopped. In the silence I could hear the thumping of the punch-bag downstairs. It was freezing cold in here and I'd just come out of an action phase and I'd have to get some control back, especially if this man Thrower was going to run me in the field. I'd need some patience too.

'You don't have to feel any guilt,' he said, 'about this.'

'I don't?'

'The recommendation to bring her out here was yours, but the decision was London's. You -'

'Split hairs if you like.'

'You also blamed yourself, I'm told, for what happened to McCane.' He took a step towards me, perhaps because I'd been raising my voice and he wanted to keep things quiet. 'Didn't you?'

'Is this place all right? Is it a safe-house?'

'The safest in Berlin.'

'McCane? Yes, that was my -' and I stopped again. I wasn't under control, didn't sound under control.

He came closer still and touched my arm. We're going to sit down,' he said. 'I've been on my feet a lot.'

Bloody lie – he'd been in bed all night and then got into a taxi. I said, There wasn't any sign of – you know – any kind of disturbance? In her room?'

'None at all. I was careful to look for that.'

With George Maitland they'd found blood all over the floor, and I didn't want to think about it. They'd have to find her. London would have to find her. I went over to one of the car seats, he was right, I suppose, I looked as if it'd do me a bit of good to sit down. He took the other one, brushing the dust away. Tell me what's been happening,' he said.

'What?5 To you.'

'Oh. I was got at. You want to record?' We were suddenly into debriefing.

'I don't use a recorder. Just tell me.'

It didn't take long; it was just an attack, that was all. But he wanted to know the casualty figures: London's fussy about that. 'I'm not sure,' I told him. 'One of them had knocked his head against the windscreen, I think, blood all over his face. The man I shot at was certainly hit but he could be still alive. The one I pulled out of the car is dead. I went for the larynx.'

He was looking at the floor, Thrower.

'One down,' he said, 'For certain.'

'Yes. What happened to that man Krenz?

'The same thing.'

That was an accident. I went for the throat because he was trying to send the car off the road and we were in traffic, but I didn't go deep, I pulled it. I just needed to incapacitate.'

In a moment Thrower said, 'Possible heart failure.'

'Whatever. I mean I'm not trying to get out of it, if I killed him I killed him. Whatever Records want to put it down as.'

I could hear a jet gunning up at the end of the runway – we were only two miles or so from the airport. I've remembered something,' I said. 'There was a man in the night-club where I talked to Willi Hartman, a man who recognised Helen. She knew him. She told me his name was Kurt Muller.'

Thrower turned his head to look at me. I suppose he thought I wasn't taking it seriously enough, the fact that I'd killed at least two people since I'd got out of bed this morning, shouldn't be thinking about Helen.

'Look,' I said, 'my job is to bring this mission home and prevent a couple of hundred perfectly innocent people from getting blown out of the sky at thirty thousand feet and if you want me to weep over any graves I dig as I go along, you're clean out of luck.' Punch-bag thumping down there, punch bag thumping, I wouldn't mind having a go at that bloody thing myself, punch the bloody stuffing out of it. 'All I want,' I told Thrower, 'is a director in the field who understands these things.'

Of course I took it seriously, taking human life, I always have, I've spent the dark hours huddled in the keening wind where the ghosts walk, gone sleepless through the night often enough, I'm not a clod, I'm not made of bloody stone. But I hadn't got time now to rake over the ashes of what I'd done today, I wasn't finished with it yet, and there's another thing – it's a minefield, this trade we're in, a whole complex of booby-traps set up in the dark, and I know – I've always known – that somewhere out there there's one with my name on it too.

He was still watching me, Thrower.

'Relax,' he said.

What?

'Relax. You've had a busy time.' He pulled out a notebook. 'Kurt Muller, was it?' 'Yes.' I couldn't sit still, got up, went across the bare splintered floor to look at the river, the Havel, barges on it, small boats, a hulk rusting near the bank opposite, the cold winter sunlight setting the scene in amber. 'But God knows how many Kurt Mullers there are in the telephone book.' He hadn't followed us away from the night-club, no one had, I knew that. But he might have phoned her, later, or she might have phoned him.

'Description?' Thrower had a gold pen ready, a gold pen, withal.

'Thirties, pale face, black hair, five-ten, on the thin side, a bit round-shouldered.'

'Eyes?

'I don't remember, but black or brown, dark, not blue.'

Thrower put his notebook away. 'Let's do some more debriefing.'

'Yes. I suppose,' I said, 'you changed my hotel because of Helen, did you?'

'Of course.'

In case she talked, in case she was made to talk. 'Why did you put me into the Klinghof?'

We know it. We've used it before: it's small, tucked away, and the woman who runs it is discreet.'

'I saw a couple of tarts there.'

That's why she's discreet. I need Krenz's address, don't I?

I gave it to him. 'He carries a Berliner Bank Visa card, and his cover's an electronics engineer – or he could even be one. What did London say when you told them Helen was missing?' In a moment Thrower said, They're very concerned. They feel responsible. I'd like you to feel reassured.'

There was a Pan Am plane coming into the approach path, settling nose up through the haze, the strobes flashing. I turned away from the window. 'As long as they're doing something to find her,' I said. He didn't answer. He sat with his pen ready, watching me. 'All right, that man Sorgenicht went straight to the cafeteria when he reached the airport. There were two girls at one of the tables, and he sat down with them.' We were into the major phase of the debriefing and Thrower made notes sometimes, the gold pen flashing in the light from the window, the only thing of beauty in this beleaguered hole. The name of the German girl is Inge Stoph. Were you actually at the Signals board when I debriefed to London last night?'

'I was.'

'You keep a lot in your head.'

'I used a recorder then. I don't use one in the field.'

Some of the DIFs do – Ferris does, Pepperidge does – but others wouldn't be seen dead with one: halfway through a mission or even before then a tape has got a lot of hot information on it and when Crenshaw was running Jayson through the field in Cyprus a few years ago he got exposed and the opposition got hold of his tape and blew the whole mission and Jayson was found with his head off in the back of a garbage truck because he'd had to write off three of their cell and they hadn't liked that. A tape recorder doesn't carry a capsule.

'My impression,' I told Thrower, 'was that Inge Stoph was trying to persuade the Pan Am stewardess to do something, or agree to something.' I told him about the Iranian, and Thrower looked up sharply.

'A pilot?

'Yes.' He made a note and I said, 'I think Inge Stoph and the Pan Am girl are friends. Sorgenicht and Stoph are both in Nemesis. I couldn't fit the Iranian in: he listened a lot but didn't say much, and I didn't pick up anything of a relationship between him and either Stoph or the stewardess.'

'Iran Air,' Thrower said, 'doesn't normally fly into Berlin. They go into Frankfurt. But the Iranians have an extensive network of sleepers and agents-in-place in Europe. What happened when you left the cafeteria?'

'I followed Inge Stoph.' I gave him a complete picture of the scene with her in the car park and then we wrapped it up 'and he put away his notebook and got off the car seat and looked at the river with his hands dug into his pockets and his eyes nowhere and I didn't disturb him.

When he was ready he asked me: 'You think Stoph went for your approach?'

'I got a lot of reaction when I mentioned the nuclear missile.'

'Did you get any idea of her standing with Dieter Klaus?

'No.'

'She could be a girlfriend?'

'Possibly. She could get any man into bed.'

'You?'

'No. Most men, then.'

'She doesn't appeal to you?'

'She's got hair on her fingers. I mean too much.'

'She's a lesbian?

'I'd say a bi.'

'Is she, do you think, a Venus trap for Nemesis?'

'If she's not, she could be.'

'Did you give her the impression she didn't appeal to you?'

'I'm not stupid, Thrower.'

He looked down, tilting on his toes and heels for a moment.

'Sorry,' I said. It had sounded as if he wasn't sure whether I knew the value of a Venus trap: no experienced agent will ever give a Venus the impression she doesn't appeal to him, in case he wants to use her and walk into the trap and get out again with information.

'That's all right,' Thrower said. We're getting to understand each other, that's all.' For the first time I wondered whether I should signal London and change him as my DIF, have him replaced by someone who'd run me before. But that would blow the board and Solitaire was running flat out and I didn't want to slow it down.

I had to keep this one thing in my mind the whole time, above all others: It could be any next flight.

'What I need to know,' Thrower went on, 'is whether you feel that if Inge Stoph comes through with a proposed rendezvous it will be in order to trap you.'

'I can't say, because I don't know Dieter Klaus or the way his mind works. If she comes through with a rendezvous it'll be on his instructions, either because he can't resist the temptation of blowing up the Houses of Parliament and getting his face on the front cover of the Terrorist's Gazette or because he wants to find out who I am and what I'm doing in Berlin.'

Thrower stood looking out of the window, and he didn't turn round when he said, 'Of course you realise how very dangerous it is for you to agree to such a rendezvous. For you to meet Dieter Klaus.'

'Yes.'

'You know his reputation.'

'Yes.'

'Suppose you meet him, and of course it will be on his own ground and in the presence of his bodyguards, what will you rely on to get you away again, still alive?'

'My cover.'

I was getting impatient but he'd got a right to ask me what my plans were: he was my director in the field and his job was to support them.

'Your cover,' he said, and turned round from the window now and looked at me. 'Is that all?'

'It's all I've got.'

'It won't be enough. If they suspect you're using a cover they'll try and break it and they'll succeed. You know that – you talked to that poor devil in the hospital in London. They turned him into a -'

'I'm not saying it's going to be easy.'

'I'm glad you appreciate that. What would you hope to achieve, in any case, by meeting Dieter Klaus?

'Access to information. Which plane, which flight. That's all I want, and he's got it.'

'What if you failed to get information? Would you try to take him out?'

Kill him, he meant kill him. 'Of course. It'd blow Nemesis.'

In a moment he said, 'If I let you do this, I shall need time to call in as much support as I can. It may take -'

'No support.'

'I realise' – showing much patience now, much patience – 'that you normally prefer working without support, and I understand that, but if you mean to walk right into the centre of an opposition network with a man like Dieter Klaus running it, I'd have to insist on support. I'm here to direct you in the field, not stand by and see you take this mission deliberately into hazard and destroy it.'

'That isn't my plan.' A crack in one of the windows buzzed as a jet gunned up on take-off and lifted across the skyline, the Pan Am insignia on the tail, and the last of my patience broke. 'My plan is to stop those bastards putting a bomb on a plane full of people and I know the best way to do it and if I hang around waiting for you to call the bloody troops in and clutter up the rendezvous with enough people to start a bloody war then I won't get anywhere, I won't get into the centre of Nemesis and they'll rig that bomb and blow all those people out of the sky, for Christ's sake, don't you understand, Thrower, don't you understand that it could be any next flight? '

He watched me steadily with his pale expressionless eyes, not saying anything yet, letting me listen again in my mind to what I'd just said, to how I'd just said it, too forcefully, too emotionally. Then he said, 'You've just come through some action that almost cost you your life, and your nerves are going to take their time to settle down. When you've got your control back, 'we'll talk again. Now let me drive you to your hotel.'

He didn't understand. He wasn't thinking.

'Thrower, I'm going in to the centre of the opposition and I've got to do it alone because they'll have people deployed in the environment, and if you put people in as well I shan't know one from the other if it's a night action and I could easily kill one of them, one of ours – but more important than that, you can't put support in close enough to help me without exposing them, and an arms dealer doesn't move around with a crowd of peons, he's a businessman and he behaves like one, so if you put support on the scene when I go in you'll blow my cover before I've got a chance in a thousand to make it work, can you hear what I'm saying, you'll blow my cover. Do you think that's what I want from my director in the field?'

He turned away, turned back, hands in the pockets of his dark elegant coat, his head tilted slightly, his voice smooth, placating. We'll talk about it later. I have my arguments too, but I don't feel that at the present moment you're sufficiently receptive.'

I took a step towards him. My head was throbbing because of the wound, and because of what was happening to the mission, to Solitaire, just when I'd got access, just when I was ready to move in on the opposition and destroy it if I could, and if I couldn't, get clear and try again, try again until I found the way, and went in for the kill.

Thrower,' I said, 1 want you to tell me something. If there's no time to talk, if I don't have time to listen to your arguments, if I have to go in to this rendezvous at a moment's notice, will you send in support anyway, despite all I've said?'

He didn't hesitate. 'Yes. I would have to.'

So I turned away and went down the stairs and found Jim showing one of his kids a gedan kosauke and asked him if I could make a call and he showed me his little office in the corner of the gym and I picked up the phone and dialled the number and the code extension and blew the board for Solitaire all over the Signals room in London.