Quiller Solitaire

Chapter 4: SOLITAIRE

Shatner lit another cigarette, screwing up his eyes against the smoke.

'What's she like?

I don't think he'd slept, as I had, since I'd seen him last. I would say he'd been in Signals with Berlin again, exhaustively.

'Shy,' I said, 'quiet, nervy, guileless, subservient.'

He'd told me we were putting her up at the Holiday Inn at Heathrow until the plane left; they'd had a car waiting for her when we'd reached Whitehall.

'Subservient?' Shatner said. 'Dominated by Maitland, do you think?'

'Yes. But I'd say she was like that when he married her.' We were trying to get a bearing on Maitland's character: it could be important. 'I mean, women don't usually let a man dominate them unless they've been set up by their fathers first.'

Shatner dropped ash. 'What was their relationship, would you say?

I told him how she'd spoken of her husband. Not lovingly. 'Look,' I said, 'she's got to come with me to persuade Willi Hartman to talk to me, and he's our only access for the moment. But as soon as I can, I want to send her back home. She's appallingly vulnerable.'

Shatner watched me through the smoke, the light yellowing his dry pale face, the bags under his eyes making shadows. 'Is she attractive?'

'Yes. But I want to get her out of Berlin anyway, the minute Hartman's accepted me. It doesn't matter a damn what she looks like.'

'I take your point.' In a moment – 'Now tell me how this Maitland affair strikes you.'

I thought about it. 'I'd say his death wouldn't have looked very important, as an isolated incident taken out of context. But the opposition cell – presumably the Red Army Faction – sent some people over here from Berlin to monitor McCane, and when they knew he was going to see Maitland's widow they thought it was worth killing him to prevent it. They put a peep on Maitland's house in Reigate and they bugged the telephone and when your support group got me away from there the opposition went crazy – I heard them. So I believe Maitland's death is now looking very important and I'd say he was killed because he had something on the Faction and it was something quite big. Big enough for us to take an interest in.'

The telephone rang and Shatner took the receiver off and dropped it into a drawer. 'I happen to have reached the same conclusion. I think we should give it mission status and send you in as the executive. You're still ready to offer your services?'

'Yes.'

I thought it was a rather elegant way to put it, and it pleased me. If at some time in the future I fetched up in a wrecked car or a smashed telephone box or a cell running with rats it was going to help a little, just a little, to know that Control was running things with a certain degree of elegance and that I might, because of it, survive.

'I've set a few things up,' he said, and opened the drawer and put the phone back, 'and if you've had enough sleep we can get you cleared right away. I've called in Thrower from Pakistan to direct you in the field. Has he handled you before?'

'No.'

'I think you'll like his style. He's worked mostly in Europe before now, has good German and a lot of experience. You'll go in with the cover of a medium-weight arms dealer – objections?'

'No.' It was perfect logic. If there's one thing a terrorist faction loves it's an arms dealer.

'From your records,' Shatner said, 'you're quite well versed in that area, but I'll send someone along to update the scene for you.' He got out of his swivel chair and moved around, hands stuck in his pockets, a shoelace undone. 'I don't know what time your flight is for Berlin tonight, but I've asked Travel to make it as late as possible because I want you to see a man at the National Temperance Hospital before you leave London. He's had some experience with the Red Army Faction, and quite recently, so he might be able to fill you in a little. I'm not sure' – he looked at me sharply – 'I'm not sure of that, but it's to be seen.'

He went to the door, shoelace trailing, and opened it for me, standing there hunched with fatigue in his leather-patched jacket. 'You'll be making any direct signals to the board through the crew on duty but you'll be able to call on Mr Croder if you need to, and I shall be within reach. Bureau One is in London and we can bring him in if things get difficult.' He offered me a dry, nicotine-stained hand. 'Let's hope they won't.'

'Mary?' She gave me my card back. 'Can you come down.'

I didn't say I'd go on up, and save Mary the trouble. I'd been here before and knew the rules. You don't get onto the second floor of the National Temperance Hospital unless you're a close relative of a patient or unless you've got first class credentials and an introduction, usually from a department of HM Government.

'Right-o,' the woman said. 'At the front desk, then.'

On the second floor is the clinic of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and it offers treatment with a guarantee of the closest possible secrecy.

Mary was middle-aged, quiet in her speech and had the other-world calm of a nun. 'You can see him for a few minutes,' she told me in the lift, 'just a few minutes, that's all.'

He was in a private room, the man. I didn't know his name, and nobody here knew mine: it wasn't on the card I'd shown the woman downstairs. He was in a wheelchair, a book on his lap, Quantum Healing, one of his hands – his right hand – buried under the plaid rug, a bandage covering half his face, some of his thin dry hair sticking up at the side.

I said hello. He turned his head to look up at me, a touch of fear in his eyes, I thought, and that would be natural: if things have been taken too far, usually in some kind of interrogation cell, we fear strangers, afterwards, as I had, once, for a time.

'He's a friend,' Mary told him.

'Oh. What have you come for?'

You don't, in this place, say things like, To ask a few questions.' He'd had enough of questions, and he was here because he'd refused to answer them.

They said you've had a brush with the Red Army Faction,' I told him, and sat down on the edge of his bed so that he didn't have to look up at me any more. 'I'm going to Berlin tonight, and 111 probably run across them. I thought you might feel like giving me a few tips, so I can keep out of trouble.'

He watched me for a bit, his eyes full of intelligence: they hadn't pulled his brains out and thrown them away. They sometimes do; not physically, of course, but it comes to the same thing: you can't do any more thinking. 'I see,' he said.

There was a drip of mucus under his nose, and Mary got a Kleenex.

'Oh shit,' he said. 1 couldn't feel it.' He blew his nose, still watching me, as if he daren't look away in case I did something. I understood that too. 'The Faction,' he said in a minute, 'yes. Well, contrary to popular belief, they're still alive and well. Not the old ones, the new ones. Not Baader and Meinhof, of course.'

'No.' The story put out was that they'd committed suicide in their cells in Stammheim prison, but we've never taken that seriously. The main thing was, they were dead. 'There's a third generation now, isn't there?'

'Third or fourth. They keep a low profile; you can't easily infiltrate; it was a piece of cake, once, but that's over. The man at the top now is Dieter Klaus, and I hope to Christ you never run into him. Mary,' he said, 'tell me if I start dripping again, will you? I hate that.' He sat clutching the box of Kleenex. They'd worked on his face over there, and it was still numbed, could even stay like that. 'Dieter Klaus, yes. He's inhuman.'

I put him down now as Department of Information 6, by his idiom – 'low profile', 'infiltrate'. Again I avoided a question. 'He shouldn't be too hard to find.'

He'd begun shaking now, setting up a vibration in the springs of the wheelchair. We listened to it, Mary and I. Then the man said, 'He'll be extremely difficult to find. After the wall came down there were all kinds of rats running all over the place, because Stasi's Division XXII was broken up and their terrorist guests had to find some other kind of shelter, and there isn't any, not now, not in the new Germany.' The spring in the wheelchair had started a definite rhythm now as the whole of his thin body began shaking under the blanket. I thought I might not have much longer here so I interrupted him.

'Some people say they've based themselves in Frankfurt.'

' Frankfurt? Oh, yes, some of them are there. Don't confuse Dieter Klaus with Dieter Lenz, though. The police got Lenz for blowing up Herrhausen's Mercedes, remember? Dieter Klaus has never been arrested for anything, because he's a cut above your usual terrorist. He was with Monika Helbing and Werner Lotz when they got picked up – Christine Duemlein was there too and got copped – but Klaus simply vanished in a puff of smoke. He's very agile, very clever, and a real shit, I should keep away from him if I were you, I mean at the moment you're just a visitor here, aren't you,' the shaking getting worse every minute because I was bringing it all back and I'd asked Mary about that in the lift but she'd said it would be good for him to talk, they were all trying to get him to 'bring it out', as she called it. All well and good, but the sweat was starting to come out on his face, giving it a bright sheen.

'Willi told me much the same thing,' I said. 'Willi Hartman.'

'Did he?' He clawed another tissue out of the box and kept it pressed to his nose. Well there you are.' The sweat was running into his eyes, and Mary went to the box too. 'Who's Willi Hartman?' the man asked me, not looking at me any more, looking down, then letting his eyes close as Mary pressed the lids gently with the tissue.

'I thought you might know him,' I said.

'Not an uncommon name, not uncommon.' His tone had a deadness to it suddenly; he spoke like an old man weary of talking any more. 'Keep away, I would,' he said, 'keep away from those bastards, if you know – if you know what's good for you, they're not – they're not the original angels of – of mercy, you understand, they're just – they're just a bunch of fucking terrorists, you see, just – just a bunch -' his voice changing to a spasm of coughing that went on and on with some words in it – 'some stuff, Mary… need more stuff, please -' but she was already at the little white table by the bed, filling a syringe as the coughing went on and on and I took his hand and held it for a while, the wheelchair shaking as if it had an engine running 31 it, the needle going in while I crouched lower so as not to get in her way as she said quietly, 'I'm afraid time's up now.'

I said yes and thanked her and squeezed his cold emaciated hand and left them, going out and past the lift and down the stairs and into the lamp lit street.

When I got back to Whitehall a man came across the little square at the back of the building and said through the window, You can leave your car here and they'll run it over to your place. My name's Bloom and I'm driving you to the airport, all right?'

'Are we cutting it fine?'

'Not too bad, but we don't want to -'

'I'm not cleared yet.'

You'll do it on the way.'

He took me across to the dark green Rover parked by the railings and I got in and the man in the back asked me, 'Is there anything you need from the office?

'Is there a bag on board?'

He was Loder. He'd cleared me before.

Yes, in the boot.'

Bloom shut the rear door and went round and got behind the wheel. Your flight's leaving at 21:06, so there's plenty of time, but – you know – you can always get a puncture.'

Loder put a thin briefcase onto my lap. 'Have a look through it, see if it's all there.'

Bloom took us into the evening traffic, south through Parliament Square.

I signed the medical form and the codicil and the active service waiver and checked the maps, two of Berlin with different scales, one of the whole country. Hotel reservation, expense sheet, embassy contacts, Signals grid. Signed for the bag though I hadn't checked it, but they knew my sizes by now. No next of kin, money to the battered wives home.

Take this bloody thing,' I said, and gave Loder the expense sheet. My director in the field would have one and he could look after it for me; one of the really trying chores of a mission was having to deal with those arthritic old harpies in Accounts when you got back, and I'm often tempted to charge them for a bag of cocaine or a tart or a Stealth bomber just to get the dust out of their bustles.

'Looking good,' Loder said.

'What? He'd been watching me, I suppose, in the pale shifting light of the street lamps as we turned West along Victoria Street. 'I'm feeling fine,' I said, 'yes.' There's never been anything official about it in the book of rules but the people in Clearance make a point of catching our mood if they can, because they're the last people we see before we leave the building and the mission starts running, and what they're looking for is an abnormal show of nerves. They'd pulled one of the new recruits off a courier job last week because they'd noticed Ms hands weren't all that steady when he was signing the forms. Have they got a code-name for this one yet?'

'Solitaire,' Loder said. 'It's gone up on the board.'

'Who's the crew?

'Gary and Matthews.'

They'd be manning the board in shifts around the clock. I hadn't worked with Gary but I knew Matthews, one of the old hands, a retired sleeper from Marseilles. And if I needed the Chief of Signals he'd be there, Croder, with his basilisk eyes and his hook of a hand and his cold-blooded expertise. And if I needed total support at the Signals board there'd be Ashley, Bureau One, Host of Hosts, with a direct line to the prime minister and enough clout to call every agent-in-place out of his foxhole and bring in enough fire power to sink a destroyer, an exaggeration, but you get my drift.

Smell of burning.

'Has she been told,' I asked Loder, 'not to recognise me when she sees me at the departure gate?

'But of course.'

I shouldn't have asked. It sounded as if I didn't trust Shatner to look after even the basics.

I almost said to Loder, do you smell burning? But of course he didn't. It wasn't on my clothes any more or in my hair. It was in my head. For all the very good reasons the Bureau had for sending me to Berlin – to infiltrate the Red Army Faction, perhaps prevent some kind of coup – my own reason for going out there still contained an element that was primitive, brutish and urgent. They had drawn blood.