Quiller Solitaire

Chapter 13: KLAUS

And now Johan has the puck and he's leading with it all the way and he's going as if there just isn't anybody here to stop him. This is only his second time out since the injury he sustained at Frankfurt, but that's obviously old history by the way he's moving.

Floodlights roofed the night.

'Isn't he amazing?' Inge asked me.

I said yes, amazing.

'Would you like one?' Waving a bratwurst.

'Thank you.' I hadn't eaten since this morning.

But we didn't expect Tommy Warnke to get across there so fast and it looks as if Johan's going to have his work cut out unless he can pile on that extra turn of speed he's so famous for.

The stadium was packed, the colours of the sweaters and scarves and woollen hats turning it into a vast flower bed.

'You like ice-hockey?' Inge asked me.

'Very much.'

I'd reached the north-west corner of Waldschulle Allee and Harbigstrasse at the precise hour for the rendezvous and paid off the taxi and the crimson Porsche 911 had pulled in to the kerb with a squeal of tyres.

'Hans!'

She waved from the car and I went across to it and got in.

'It's so nice to see you again!' Showgirl smile, the eyes ice-bright and observant. She took the Porsche away with a dash of expertise, her right hand caressing the gear-knob. She was wearing the same crimson calf-length boots, but tonight she sported a Russian fur hat with fur gloves to match.

A dark green Jaguar was trailing us: it had pulled up behind the Porsche and started off again, keeping close enough to make sure no one slipped in between. Later it overtook us and the woman at the wheel glanced across at Inge and away; then she held back and began trailing again. Inge knew the Jaguar was with us, but didn't say anything. She drove steadily, playing the lights and the traffic lanes without flash but with effectiveness.

'Dieter said he can only give you a few minutes,' she told me as we waited for a green. 'But even so, you're lucky.'

'So is he,' I said. 'I assume you told him what I've got for him?'

She looked at me. 'You don't understand. It's very difficult to get Dieter to see anyone at all.'

'It's very difficult,' I said, 'to keep me waiting so long for a meeting.'

The lights changed to green and she shifted the gear-lever. 'So? Then why did you decide to wait?'

I let my eyes move over her face. 'For one thing I find you charming.'

'Thank you.'

She wasn't impressed: she was a knockout and she knew it. But she flashed me the dazzling sharp-toothed feline smile, and I was fairly sure now that Dieter Klaus had instructed her to spring a Venus trap on me, and I was going to walk right into it because I knew how to pick up information that way. It would also be in keeping with my cover: an international arms dealer passing through Berlin wouldn't turn down the chance of a night with a girl like Inge Stoph.

'And for another thing?' she asked me.

'I confess to a certain admiration for Dieter Klaus.'

She said rather quickly – 'What do you know about him?'

'Not very much, but in my trade the word gets around that he's different from the kind of thugs you find, say, in the Rote Armee Faktion.'

'That's exactly the word,' Inge said. 'Dieter Klaus is very different.'

It was all she said, and she drove in silence until we reached the stadium.

I'd telephoned Cone before I left the hotel, and told him what time the rendezvous was, and where. He said he already knew: Kleiber had signalled him. I cancelled the car: it was a mobile rdv with no fixed address and I didn't know the area, didn't know where they could leave a car for me to reach if I needed one. Cone made a last try, asking me if I'd changed my mind about using support. I said I hadn't.

I don't think I've ever seen Braun so quick with the passes – I think the comeback Johan has made is inspiring him, and in fact the whole team.

I glanced sometimes at Dieter Klaus.

'He's over there,' Inge had told me when we'd sat down.

There were two men and four women around him: they were three rows down across the aisle in the best seats, the Ehrentribune. My view of him wasn't obstructed but it was at an angle of ten or fifteen degrees from behind, and I only saw his face when he turned to speak to the woman on his left. His head was bare; his hair was dressed in the Prussian style, brush-cut and blond. He wore a black overcoat with a dark sable collar, no gloves, a pair of designer sunglasses.

His entourage was fitted out with the same black padded track suit for each of them, except for the woman on his left. She wore a tourmaline mink coat and hat, a flash of gold at her ears, nothing on her wrists unless it was under a sleeve. She was young, olive-skinned, a Latin, and she was giving more of her attention to the game than to Dieter Klaus, even when he turned his head to say something.

Inge watched him with a lot more interest. She was sitting on my right, so that when she moved her head to look across at Klaus I couldn't see her eyes, but the angle of her head and its stillness told me a great deal, and when she turned to look at me for a moment to talk about him, the expression in her eyes was clear enough: Dieter Klaus was the subject of her adoration.

'He's here in Berlin tonight,' she told me, 'For a special reason. Normally he stays in Frankfurt -he flew in an hour ago.'

'Quite an aficionado.'

She looked surprised for an instant. 'Yes, but he didn't come to Berlin tonight to watch ice hockey.'

'It sounds interesting,' I said. 'Something, perhaps, I can help him with?'

She gave me a long look. 'No. Everything is arranged.'

Teddy bear.

And Lange takes the puck but he's not too well placed for a strike if he means to go for a goal at this distance and with those two quarterbacks moving in from the flank. But he's got the speed if he wants to take it closer before he strikes – just look at that!

Teddy bear in the sky.

He was fifty feet away from where I was sitting, Dieter Klaus, and the thought was running through my mind that if I could get close enough to him when we were leaving the stadium I might go for a quick direct kill and take it from there, keep the others off me if I could, use the confusion and the crowd for cover. They wouldn't use guns, even if they had any; it was illegal to carry arms in this city and the sound of shots would bring the police and security much faster than a brawl.

It was simply a thought, running through my head. I was not mad; I knew the risks; but the situation was so obviously attractive: the executive for Solitaire was within fifty feet of the target and if he could close that distance to within killing range he could complete the mission in a matter of seconds and two or three hundred people would board their flight and feel nothing worse than a touch of jet lag at the other end, attractive, such a very attractive situation.

With legs as long as that,' Inge was calling above the sudden roar of the crowd, 'I'm not surprised he can make that kind of speed!'

I said no, it wasn't surprising, something like that.

There was another thought in my mind, less attractive. Inge had been full of suspicion this morning at the airport when I'd told her we'd met at one of Willi's parties, and I couldn't tell how much I'd convinced her that it was true – that she simply didn't remember me. I might not have convinced her at all: she could have brought me here tonight to have me killed.

'Do you smoke?'

She had a packet of Players in her hand.

'I'm trying to quit.'

She flashed her smile and lit a cigarette, and the scent of marijuana came on the air.

To have me killed, because I didn't know what she'd said to Dieter Klaus when she'd phoned him in Frankfurt. I've just met an arms dealer who says he respects you and what you're doing. He supports people who try to bring down the capitalistic establishment, and he says he can sell you a nuclear missile. Are you interested?

That would be all right. That would be very nice. But she might have said something quite different. I've just met a man who says that he knows you and your organisation – he even knows its name. He says he knows that you have substantial backing from Colonel Gadhafi. He pretended he'd met me before, but I've never seen him in my life, and I think you should have him worked over to find out who he is. If you like, I can bring him to you.

That would not be all right. It would not be very nice at all. But that is what I thought she'd probably said to Klaus, and those were the terms of the critical risk I was taking. I hadn't walked in here with much hope of getting clear again if I wanted to, if I had to. I was committed now: if I got up and tried to walk out of here I wouldn't get farther than the car park if they didn't want me to, the people in the black track suits. I didn't underestimate them because four of them were women: I've trained too many women myself at Norfolk in the lethal use of the hands. The men would only be there in case they were needed.

And as Johan gets through and shapes for the strike he's no more than two feet ahead of Lieberman and he'll need an awful lot of speed to bring this one off.

I was committed, and that had been my intent. From here I could only go in deeper, all the way to the centre, and I could only get out by destroying Nemesis first.

'She's one of his girls,' Inge said.

'Yes? What's her name?

'Dolores. I'm one of his girls too, one of his concubines. We share him. It's an honour.'

Her eyes were shimmering.

'How nice for him.'

She drew on the cigarette, deeply. 'We'd do anything for him.' She looked at me with her eyes narrowing. 'We would kill for him.'

I said, 'He must have quite a lot of enemies.'

'Of course. They are dealt with.'

One of the players made a goal and the crowd roared and I tried to think how to bring Maitland into the conversation, and Helen. This girl might know where Helen was, what had happened to her. There was an Englishman, I remember, killed in Berlin last week, May ford, was it, or Mason? Was he one of Dieter's enemies? But I couldn't risk it; there were too many reasons for murder in a big city, and there didn't have to be any connection with Nemesis.

'I must ask Dieter,' I said, 'why he flew in to Berlin tonight. You've got me interested.'

She looked at me. 'He might tell you. He might not.'

'I'm a salesman, Inge, and at the moment I'm selling something rather impressive. As I told you, he could take out an entire sports stadium like this one.'

She looked around her. That would be impressive, yes. That would be powerful.' Her eyes had darkened, the blue ice gathering shadows. 'I like power. That's why I'm with Dieter Klaus. He's the most powerful man in Europe. It'll be interesting to see what he thinks about you, Hans, but I must tell you something. I have a very good memory, and I've never been to one of Willi Hartman's parties in my life.'

Please check to make sure you haven't left any belongings on your seat, and be patient with children and elderly people… they may be a little slower than the rest of us.

'Wait,' Inge said.

People moved past us, and she slipped between them and went down the steps and spoke to Klaus, and for an instant he looked across at me. Then Inge turned and came back, her eyes bright as she said, Hell see you for a moment outside the stadium.'

She put a hand on my arm, and we waited until Klaus and his bodyguards moved past us to the exit tunnel. He didn't look in our direction; none of them did. It was a huge crowd but we kept up a good pace once we'd started moving.

'Then it must have been somewhere else,' I'd told her, and she'd laughed lightly and said yes, it must have been, but I knew now that when she'd phoned Dieter Klaus she might have told him that I was an arms dealer but she'd also told him that I'd pretended we'd met before and seemed suspect, so perhaps he should have me worked over.

'Did you like the game?' she asked me.

'Very much.'

Her smile was different now; it had secret amusement in it, and her eyes were cold fire. I didn't think it was the marijuana. I thought that if she could consider the idea of destroying a packed sports stadium and find it 'impressive', she'd probably feel turned on by escorting a man to his execution.

We were held back at one of the gates to the car park by an old man with a ruff of silver hair below his black wool hat; he'd dropped something, a glove, I think, and Inge brushed past him with a quick laugh – 'Don't you think that when people get to a certain age they should be shot?'

They were ahead of us, Klaus and his guards and the woman, Dolores; then they slowed as they neared a black Mercedes limousine with smoked windows and an array of antennae over the boot. A uniformed driver opened a rear door and Dolores got in; then Inge stopped me with her hand as Dieter Klaus swung round.

'What do you want to see me about?'

'I'll tell you in private.'

'Why in private?

'Because I don't talk in the presence of hirelings.'

He studied me, his hands in the pockets of his black sable-trimmed coat, his blunt head forward, his mouth tight. I couldn't see his eyes. He spoke in jerks, his whole body moving, energised by his thoughts.

'You've heard of bodyguards. I don't talk to strangers except in the presence of my bodyguards.'

'I won't hurt you, Klaus.'

I caught a soft sound from Inge. I suppose she thought I was being disrespectful to the Fuhrer.

'You say you are an arms dealer. An arms dealer.'

'That's right. If we -'

'Why should that interest me?'

I took a step forward, as if to be closer so that I could lower my voice, and the bodyguards came in very fast indeed and crossed in front of Klaus in a protective shield with their hands coming up into the Ken-po defence posture. One of them was Asian, I thought Mongol. They stared at me with the indifference in their eyes of a predator before the kill. I had needed to know how good they were.

I couldn't see Klaus any more, or at least not much of him, just the left lens of his dark glasses. I waited.

In a moment Klaus said, 'Leave him.'

They moved slowly backwards, lowering their hands.

'Klaus,' I said, 'you've been told what I've got to offer you. That offer expires at midnight. I've got an appointment tomorrow with the Soviet Foreign Minister in Geneva. My plane -'

'Answer my question. Why have you approached me with this offer?'

'Because you're a professional in your field. I like dealing with professionals. We could -'

'What do you know about me?'

'I can see you in private,' I said, 'for half an hour. But -'

'What do you know about me? '

I looked at my watch. I'm afraid you're wasting my time. I'll give you another -'

'Take him.'

They wore soft shoes and were with me almost in silence, locking my arms, and then Klaus said, 'Take him to the garage. Give him to Geissler. Tell Geissler to find out who he is and what he wants.'

I saw Inge, her eyes bright as she called out to Klaus – 'Can I be there too?

He swung to look at her. 'Yes.'