Quiller Solitaire

Chapter 16: SIROCCO

The sun was a pale disc in the haze, still low above the horizon. Its light glinted on metal and glass surfaces, on the mascot of the Mercedes limousine as it swung in a half-circle by the VFW-Fokker and halted. Klaus got out first and we followed.

There were two other cars already here, with people standing near them in a group, waiting for Dieter Klaus, watching him. His bodyguards – four women and two men – closed in around him as he walked towards the plane with that implacable energy of his. There was a small dog among the people who stood waiting. The pilot came down the ramp and saluted Klaus, standing aside and waiting for him to board the company jet. Klaus spoke to him and got an answer; I didn't hear any actual words but I suppose he was asking the pilot about the weather forecast: the haze was thick towards the horizon.

I joined the group, one of the male guards walking a little way behind me: I'd been under what amounted to close escort since we'd left the house, and I didn't expect that to change. Geissler, the man who'd interrogated me in the garage, had come with us in the limousine, and went aboard the plane soon after Klaus. The rest of us were following now, and the woman in the camelhair coat gave me a flashing smile and said in English – 'Hello, I'm Helen Maitland, and this is George, my husband.'

'Hans Mittag. Delighted.'

I'd caught sight of her earlier this morning, getting into one of the cars at the house.

'Dieter told us about you,' Maitland said. 'Most interesting.' Then he hurried up the ramp, a short man, quick in his movements and with the same nervous tension in him that Klaus had.

The focus of this operation – Shatner, in London briefing – is on a man named Maitland. Or rather, on his death. A week ago he was murdered, and his body taken away. His flat was broken into with some violence, and the police found evidence of massive blood loss. There were marks on the floor indicating that his body had been dragged out of the flat to the lift. The telephone was hanging by its cable – he'd been talking to a woman friend, who came forward, when the flat was entered. She reported sounds of the door being smashed in, an outbreak of voices and finally a cry.

Helen kept close to me as we went up the ramp, and I thought I heard her whisper, 'I'm sorry…'

Maitland had sat down with Klaus in one of the forward seats behind the flight deck. The pilot had taken his place next to the navigator, and a stewardess was greeting us as we came aboard. Her smile, I thought, was over-bright, as Helen's had been just now when she'd greeted me. No one was talking much; they seemed to be taking their cue from Dieter Klaus, from their fuhrer, and this morning he was totally changed from last night: in the limousine there'd been none of his brief outbursts of laughter. I took as long a look at Maitland as I could when I went past his seat: later I might need the ability to recognise some of the people here, perhaps quickly and at a distance.

Maitland, Willi Hartman had told me in the night-club, had been interested in the Red Army Faction. He began asking me questions about them. Then later I realised he was – how will we put it? – playing a kind of game with himself. He had a master plan, he told me once, about how to assassinate Moammar Gadhafi.

A counter-terrorist game, then? He fancied himself as an armchair counter-terrorist?

I think, yes. George was a very unusual man. Very intense.

The twin jets began moaning.

He was neurotic, Willi had said with sudden force. May I say that?

Helen hadn't objected. Oh, of course. Terribly so, terribly neurotic, yes. He fascinated me.

The olive-skinned girl in the mink coat was the last to board; she'd been sitting next to Klaus at the ice-hockey game, and Inge had said her name was Dolores. She was last to board, I think, because her little dog had been giving trouble, scared by the noise of the jets, and as she pulled it through the doorway by the leash I saw Dieter Klaus swing his head – 'I told you I didn't want that thing on the plane!' – and in the next second he was on his feet and the kick caught the dog in the flank and it went spinning through the doorway onto the tarmac with the leash whipping after it. 'Now shut that door!'

The stewardess stood frozen for a moment with her mouth in an O as she stared out at the dog; then she reached for the security lever and pulled the door shut and made it fast and came quickly along the aisle looking at no one, her face white. The dog wasn't yelping out there; from my window I could see that its neck was broken.

Would you please fasten your seat-belts, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to roll. Thank you.

No one was looking at anyone else. Helen sat with her head lowered, picking at her nails; the lacquer was already chipped. It couldn't, I thought, have been an easy decision to join George Maitland again when she found out he was still alive.

We listened to the exchange between the flight deck and the tower through the doorway as the wheels began rolling; then the stewardess came back and slid the door shut and sat down on the single rearward-facing seat with her head turned to the window, her eyes glistening. On the other side of the aisle I could see Khatami, the Iranian pilot, in a black bomber jacket and flying boots. He was sitting alone. His was the only face I'd seen when we'd come aboard that hadn't looked tight, nervous. On the contrary, he'd looked in a strange way exalted.

We got the green from the tower and the full thrust of the twin jets came on and the runway lights began flicking past the windows.

Blood from a butcher's shop, I suppose, or they'd cut a dog's throat to give the scene realism. But why had they gone to so much trouble: couldn't he have just disappeared?

Picking at her nails.

Terribly neurotic, yes. He fascinated me.

That alone could have been why she'd gone back to him, had stayed with him even though she'd seen what it would have to mean – being absorbed into Nemesis, living among people like these. Perhaps she was easily fascinated by people like George Maitland with his neurotic intensity, by the girls in the night-club, by anything or anyone illicit, by whatever dared to take its fill of the forbidden. It would be consistent with her character as far as I knew it, with her schoolgirl naivete.

When we'd reached our ceiling and the power levelled off I asked her quietly, 'Was it Kurt Muller?'

She turned her pale face to me. 'What did you say?'

'Was it Kurt Muller who told Klaus you were in Berlin?' He'd been the man who'd recognised her in the night-club, the one I'd asked her about in the taxi when we'd left there. She hadn't hesitated, or not for long. Oh, he was just someone I knew, a friend of George's at the embassy.

'I'm not sure,' she said. 'It could have been. I didn't ask.'

Muller must have been one of the few people who'd known that George Maitland was still alive, and he'd phoned him that night, told him that he'd seen his wife, that she was here in Berlin.

'He didn't have to do that,' she said.

'Who?

'Dieter.'

Didn't have to kill the dog.

I said, 'You're running with the wrong set.'

How many hotels had Klaus phoned before he'd found her? He would have started with the big ones, so it wouldn't have taken him long. It must have put her into shock, a voice from the dead, his voice. But she'd gone to him, left her things behind, just walked out of the hotel and down the street and found a taxi once she was out of sight.

He fascinated me. Well yes, he must have, and still did. But there was something else she'd said. I've only just realised how much I hated him. But then hate is as close to love as laughter is to tears.

Five rows in front of us I could see Maitland and Klaus talking intently, their heads close. But I wasn't ready to believe that a neurotic embassy attache with a feverish sense of adventure had mounted a one-man counter-espionage crusade against an organisation the size of Nemesis and persuaded a former Stasi colonel to put his trust in him.

I hadn't been able to do it myself, not completely, I knew that now.

'Aren't you running,' Helen said in a moment, 'a terrible risk?

'It depends on what you tell them.'

She turned her head quickly to look at me. 'I won't tell them anything, of course.'

'Then the risk I'm running isn't all that high.'

Not absolutely true. Klaus had got the whole thing worked out and I hadn't been able to stop him because I'd had to stick with my cover and go with him to Algeria, to Dar-el-Beida. It was possible that he believed in me, but it didn't make any difference one way or the other. We believe in what we want the truth to be, ignoring the evidence that would raise doubts, deceiving ourselves, and Dieter Klaus desperately wanted the truth to be that I was a bona fide arms dealer and could provide him with a Miniver NK-9 nuclear warhead. But he was a seasoned Stasi officer and he'd covered himself: if I made the rendezvous in Algiers and the NK-9 was delivered he'd be as happy as a kid at a Christmas tree – I am very pleased, you know, that you have offered me this particular item at such a convenient time – I am delighted! – but if there was no delivery he wouldn't be taking any risk: he'd still go ahead with his operation and he wouldn't let me walk away with all the information I had on him now. He would simply have me silenced.

'We're serving breakfast soon,' the stewardess said. Would you like to choose something from the menu? Leaning over us, the smile fixed, fright behind it, she wasn't with Nemesis, she was just flight crew that went with the Fokker, Marlene, the little brass tab on her uniform said, new to the job, hadn't any idea what her employer would be like, There are Eggs Benedict, if you care for them that way,' her heart still down there on the tarmac nursing a dog with a broken neck. 'And we'll be serving champagne in just a few minutes.' She took our order and moved on.

But the warhead would be there, and there on time: I wasn't worried about that. London would see to it.

He was quite adamant – we have to meet the deadline. Cone to Control. He would have got into Signals the moment we'd rung off last night.

You feel that if we don't make this delivery it's going to jeopardise the mission?

And the executive.

Cone would have said that. He had a sense of the humanities, could be counted on to let them know they'd have a dead ferret on their doorstep if they didn't get it right.

Very well, then. We shall do what is necessary.

There would have been a lot of phones ringing in the dead of last night, at the bedside of the head of the Army's Quartermaster Office and Ordnance Stores, if necessary of the Minister of Defence, if necessary of the Prime Minister, to whom the Bureau was directly responsible. Red tape would have been slashed through, security units alerted at the Ordnance hangars, passes shown and metal doors rolled back, the instructions presented and transport called in, the crew of a civilian freight-plane on Her Majesty's Service ordered to report for special duty, their destination sealed in an envelope to be opened in flight.

So Klaus would get his toy and I would be paid off if he kept to the deal – unless London made the decision to stake out the scene, and that was why I was sitting here with the feeling that time was running out for Solitaire and that it was only a matter of hours, because I knew London and I knew their way of thinking and their way of thinking was that if they could send in the SAS and Germany's GSG-9 and Algeria's counter-terrorist units they could do a better job of destroying Dieter Klaus and his whole organisation than one lonely ferret in the field, and unless I could reach a telephone in time and persuade them to change their thinking then that was what they'd do.

Finis, finito.

Looking down over the snows of the Swiss Alps I told Helen, 'I feel responsible for you. Did that occur?'

In surprise – 'No. Why should you?

'We brought you into Berlin to help us.'

'It doesn't matter.' Picking at her nails. 'I could have gone home yesterday morning if I'd wanted to. He – just rang me up, and asked me if I wanted to go to him. I – said I would.' She turned her head to look at me. 'I can't help it, you see.' With a note of bitterness – 'You wouldn't think, would you, that there could be so much passion under such a placid exterior?'

I offered the obvious cliche. 'Still waters.'

'Yes. Very still and very deep. Sometimes I frighten myself – but anyway, you don't have to feel responsible for me any more. I'm a free agent.'

'Are you?

Her smile was quick, nervous. 'All right, I'm free to trap myself in this – in this thing that's going on.'

'Do you know what it is?

She didn't look away. 'No, I don't. Do you believe me?

'Of course.'

'They haven't told me anything,' she said, 'and I haven't asked. None of these people here know what Dieter's planning to do, except for George.' A moment of hesitation, then: 'I think he sort of switched sides.'

'George?'

'Yes. I haven't talked to him very much since I went back to him, because Dieter's had meetings all the time and George has been kept busy; but obviously I had to ask him what all that drama was about, the murder scene at his flat, and he said Dieter had – I must get it right – had "required it of him". He wouldn't say any more.'

Perhaps it had been a blooding, then, a ritual act of faith, of commitment. George had become excited by Nemesis and had wanted to go over -'switch sides' from counter-terrorism to terrorism -and Klaus had demanded that he go through a symbolic act of self-immolation as his entree into the organisation. It could have appealed to Maitland's neurotic fancies: he could even have revelled in the idea of such grand deception. But he must also have brought something to Nemesis, something of value – as I had. He was already close to Dieter Klaus, on equal terms.

I asked Helen, Why did Klaus accept him, do you think?

'I don't know. He might have made some kind of proposal. He was always playing around with outlandish schemes in his mind.'

Like assassinating Gadhafi, for instance. Possible scenario, then: Klaus had been planning a terrorist operation and Maitland had gone to him and said look, do it this way, it's better. Or bigger. So Klaus had taken him up on it and there wasn't going to be another Lockerbie, there was going to be something bigger than that, even more devastating. The purpose, after all, of any terrorist act was to attract attention.

The snows drew out beneath us, twenty thousand feet below. I thought I could make out the Matter-horn.

'These meetings,' I said. 'You weren't invited to any?'

'Oh, no. I'm just… here to be with George. But I heard him talking to someone on the phone about "Mittenaeht Ein" and "Mittenacht Zwei", and I heard Dieter using the same phrases. My German's not good at all but they stuck in my mind: they were repeated so often.'

They were obviously code names and possibly for deadlines and if one of them were for midnight tonight it'd be only five hours after delivery of the Miniver and they'd be running it very close.

She must have heard other things, a word here and there, things she'd half-forgotten because they hadn't sounded important, though I might see them as vital. I could coax her memory, as I'd done with Willi Hartman, and conceivably bring out information I could use; but it would be too dangerous for her. If anything she'd given me became the basis of my future actions and Klaus suspected the source…

'Look,' I said, 'I want you to forget everything you've told me.'

'Forget?'

'You've seen what Dieter Klaus can do to a dog. He can do that to a man or a woman, to anyone, whoever they are.' She was watching me with fright in her eyes, and that was good, she was paying attention. 'If Dieter Klaus thought for one second that you were in his way, don't imagine that George could save you. He couldn't.'

She looked down, and said in a moment, 'You must think I'm terribly naive, letting myself get mixed up in all this.'

'I think you're playing with fire, and you don't know how easy it is to get burned, with a man like that.'

Turning to me she said – 'I'd like to stop everything, of course. I mean they're planning to do something quite terrible, and I know that. But what can I do? Should I walk down the next street and go up to a policeman and say my husband and his friends are going to kill a lot of people? Think of all the questions they'd ask me, the statements I'd have to make, before anyone could even lift a finger – if they believed a word of it, from a mere woman.' She felt strongly about this. 'Or suppose -'

'Don't raise your voice,' I said.

Leaning close to me – 'Suppose I phoned my MP, or Scotland Yard or someone like that – I don't know about these things – and told them the same story?

'They'd get on to my department,' I said, 'and I'd be sent out here to do something, and here I am, so don't worry about it, of course there's nothing you can do. But be very careful. Don't show the slightest interest in what they're doing, not the slightest. And in a minute or two I'm going to find a newspaper and sit across there with it. If George asks you about me, tell him I've been boring you to death with my stories of armament deals, and you weren't really listening.' She was watching me steadily, fretting with her nails. 'And if we run into each other again we'll simply follow the social graces, mention the weather, that sort of thing.' I got out of my seat and leaned over her for a moment. 'What you have to do above all is to look after yourself.'

The stewardess got me a copy of this morning's Die Welt and I sat down with it in a seat across the aisle and towards the rear, so that I could watch people.

Klaus was using the telephone again: it was his third call since we'd taken off from Berlin. Maitland went into the forward toilet and came out again and spoke to the stewardess for a few minutes, then looked along the cabin and saw Helen sitting alone and came aft to join her, and I caught the leap of excitement in her eyes.

I'd got a better look at him this time as he'd walked along the aisle; he was a short man, as Helen had told me – lie hates being short' – but he was attractive in a chiselled, sharp-featured way, with high cheekbones and imaginative eyes and a strong mouth, and I suppose that for a woman he'd pack a good deal of libido, which might explain his Svengali-like power over his wife. The houndstooth-check suit was perfectly cut and he showed plenty of linen: he looked successful, experienced. One arm was round Helen's shoulders as he talked to her, his head close to hers, a sudden smile coming, a look of reassurance, this was my impression, Dieter's not really a bad type – perhaps – it's just that he's got a hell of a lot on his mind at the moment and it's fraying his patience, the same kind of thing he'd been saying to the stewardess, possibly, a few minutes ago.

Inge Stoph was sitting two rows behind Klaus, and after a while she got up and looked through a window on the other side, asking the stewardess something. Then she came along the cabin and talked to Dolores, three rows in front of me, then moved on towards the rear and stopped to lean over me, taut-bodied in a white sweater and slacks, her warm scent lacing the air, her ice-blue eyes reflecting the oval window and her brief smile brilliant.

'There's a bunk in the rear,' she said, 'if you want to rest a little. It has curtains. Would you like me to go with you?'

'At any other time,' I said.

'Of course. Whenever you feel in the mood. It's part of Dieter's hospitality.'

'He has great style,' I said. 'How long shall we be in Algiers?'

'At the palace?'

'Yes.'

Her eyes darkened. 'I don't know. Certainly overnight, because tomorrow we shall be celebrating. Has Dieter told you anything about it?'

'No. I wouldn't expect him to.'

'You'll know,' she said, tomorrow. Everyone will know.' She turned on her brilliant smile and went back along the cabin, stopping to talk to Khatami, the Iranian pilot, but not for very long: he seemed lost in his own world. I thought it should be telling me something, his trance-like preoccupation, perhaps something very important, but I couldn't get a fix on it.

We were over the Mediterranean when Marlene leaned over my seat, pitching her light voice against the sound of the jets. 'We'll be landing in less than an hour, sir. Can I get you anything from the galley or the bar?' She watched me with her nerves still in her eyes. As soon as she landed at her home base she'd give in her resignation and apply for a different charter.

I told her I didn't need anything, and she moved on down the aisle.'

'How was the champagne?'

Maitland this time.

'Excellent.' I hadn't tried it.

He stood watching me thoughtfully. 'How much do you know, Herr Mittag?'

'Very little.' We were talking in German; he was fluent. 'But I've great faith in Herr Klaus. I'm sure everything will go splendidly.'

His eyes were flickering to the slightest degree, but I didn't think it was nerves. I thought he was holding back a great deal of excitement, was only just managing to contain it. 'It will indeed,' he said, 'go splendidly. And your faith in Dieter Klaus is not misplaced. But the idea, you know, was mine.'

'Congratulations.'

I could smell the champagne on his breath but I didn't think he'd overdone it; I thought it would have had as much effect as Perrier: he was running on his own natural high.

'You'll understand what I'm talking about,' he said, 'tomorrow. We're going to make the headlines, you know. They'll be interrupting television programmes, all over the world.'

'I'm impressed.'

'And you've made quite a contribution yourself, Herr Mittag – the icing on the cake. We appreciate that.'

'Klaus did mention he was delighted – in fact I've got a question for you. Am I to be offered, shall we say, a grandstand seat when the balloon goes up?'

His mouth tightened. Well, no, actually. There's only one man here who's going to have a grandstand seat.' He straightened up. 'Just came to chat, that's all, make sure you're all right.'

'Civil of you. One more question – are we going straight to the palace from Dar-el-Beida?' The airport.

'All of us except for you and Geissler. You'll be stopping off at the Banque d'Algerie, where he'll make the necessary transfer of funds to Switzerland.' Touching my shoulder – 'All is arranged, have no fear.'

'I had none.'

'Very good. The price was fair, I rather think. You didn't ask too much, and we didn't try to bargain. The true value is in fact incalculable: this is to be a major show.'

'I very much hope nothing happens to stop your bringing it off.'

His eyes went cold, and he waited a moment before he said quietly, 'Nothing will happen, Herr Mittag, no. This operation has been planned with an attention to detail that will guarantee our complete success. Nothing will get in our way.'

A ruff of white surf below us now, a fringe of coastal palms and then white buildings as we turned for the approach, a spread of white buildings and domes and minarets and beyond them the desert, the sands of the Sahara.

The undercarriage' was down: I'd felt the slight vibration a minute ago. The noon sun flashed across the sea on the starboard side as we straightened, lining up with the runway, a degree or two of roll and then its correction as the flaps went down and we levelled off.

Mittenacht Ein, Mittenacht Zwei… Why two midnights, two deadlines – if they were deadlines.

Flareout, and the nose came up a little, the cabin tilting. The first of the runway markers began flashing past the windows.

There's only one man here who's going to have a grandstand seat.

Klaus? Why only Klaus? Or someone else here' on board this plane? Maitland himself? Khatami, the pilot? Why only one man?

We're going to make the headlines, you know…

Because they were going to use what they thought was a live nuclear warhead? No. And you've made quite a contribution yourself, Herr Mittag – the icing on the cake.

The Miniver thing would be a dummy but they'd still have the 'cake', and that alone was going to make the headlines for them.

Somehow I'd have to reach a telephone, signal London, stop them sending in a whole army to the delivery point, to the rendezvous, because they'd never take Dieter Klaus that way, he wouldn't be there, he was a former Stasi officer, KGB trained, and he knew that a rendezvous always carries a risk, any rendezvous, carries a risk of exposure, can be a trap, can turn out not to be a rendezvous after all but an ambush, he knew that, so he wouldn't be here tonight at Maintenance Hangar 5, he'd just send some people with me to make the exchange, some people he could afford to lose if I weren't just an arms dealer, if I were there to blow Nemesis. And if the SAS and GSG-9 and the Algerian counterterrorist units came out of the shadows and made the snatch then I'd be dead, because those would be his orders, the orders from Klaus: in the event of any surprise, shoot Mittag, get him out of the way – and the operation would proceed as planned, exactly as planned, and tomorrow there would be headlines, because I wouldn't be there to prevent it.

First bump, and the cabin flexed.

So I must somehow telephone London, warn them off, let me do it, this is a job for one man on his own and right on the inside where Klaus can be reached, can be taken, can if necessary be killed.

Second bump and then the hot kiss of the tyres on the runway as we settled, then a burst of sound as the jets were reversed and the brakes came on and we swung towards the terminal, sand against our faces as we left the aircraft, the sirocco was blowing, someone said.