Quiller Solitaire

Chapter 6: WILLI

It was almost dark in here.

'Shall I check your coat?' Willi asked.

I'll keep it on,' Helen said. She was looking paler than usual; perhaps it was the lighting, or she hadn't realised it would be quite like this when she came back to Berlin; she'd thought there was just going to be a quiet talk with Willi. He was lighting a cigarette, black with a gold tip. His hands were quick, nervous.

'A hit man,' he said. 'How did you know?'

We hadn't talked much in the taxi on our way here; we'd been looking for somewhere quiet, and there aren't too many places like that in Berlin. 'I'm not sure he was there in order to make a hit,' I said. 'He was just the type, that was all. He'd followed you there.'

'But how do you know?'

'Willi, it's my job to know things like that. You've got to trust me.'

He flicked his cigarette but there was no ash on it yet; it was just a nervous gesture.

'What happened to him? Where did he go?

'He went into the men's room,' I said, 'with a bad headache. He didn't follow us here. I had to get you out of the Cafe Brahms because he'd been dropped off by a Mercedes, and that would have stayed in the area. They're waiting for you to come out of the Cafe Brahms and here you are in this place and you're absolutely in the clear, so cheer up, all is well.'

'Guten Abend. Was mochten Sie trinken?'

The girl stood looking down at us, holding her tray, pale and skinny and wearing a black satin slip, rouge and red lipstick and short bobbed hair: this place was called Die Zwanziger – The Twenties – and there were girls at the bar and dancing with some pale-looking men on the miniature spotlit stage. Some of them were flourishing long cigarette holders; the place was thick with smoke.

'Helen?'

Willi was attentive, considered himself the host.

'Oh, whatever you're having.'

'Mr Locke?' 'Tonic. My name's Victor.'

'Zwei Schnapse und ein Tonic.'

I waited until the girl had left us. 'Have you been here before, Willi?'

'No.'

'Good. For a while, keep to unfamiliar places.

Change your daily routine. Don't phone friends. Take a private mail box at the post office. Watch for people you've seen before somewhere, in the street, in the shops. Take a good look at people who stand with you in a taxi rank or sit near you in a restaurant, so that you'll recognise them easily if you see them again. Just until things get themselves straightened out.'

'But I have an apartment. Must I move?'

'I would just get the things you need from there, say for a week or two, and lock it. Are there security guards in the building?

'Yes.'

'Slip them something to look after things, the newspaper and deliveries.'

'But if they were following me,' he said, 'they'll watch my apartment, won't they?'

'Yes.'

'Then I can't go there to pick up my things.'

'You can if I help you. It depends on how much you're ready to tell me.'

He looked down. 'About George Maitland, you mean.'

'About why he was killed, who did it, where I can find them, things like that.'

'Yes. But there are personal things.'

'I don't need personal things.'

Another girl came and stood looking down at us. She'd come through the black velvet curtains at the back of the little stage; her slip was white and diaphanous; her nipples were rouged, and thick black pubic hair showed under the silk. She smiled, the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

'Mochtest Du ein Spiel spielen?

Would we like to play games.

No, Willi told her. Perhaps later. She went back through the curtains and he looked at Helen. 'I'm sorry, I didn't know it was that kind of place. Shall we go somewhere else?'

'It doesn't matter. They won't bother us, will they?'

'No. I shall see that they don't.' He turned to look at me. 'So what can I tell you, Victor?'

'Do you think it was the Faktion that killed Maitland?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'He was getting too interested in them.'

'What started him off in that direction?'

He looked down for a moment. 'I think perhaps I did.'

'How?'

'It wasn't deliberate. I had a girlfriend, Inge Stoph. She was very attractive.' To Helen – 'You met her, several times. She -'

'Yes. I thought she was terribly good-looking.'

Willi shrugged. 'Thank you.' To me – 'But I found out she was involved with the Rote Armee Faktion. I was seeing quite a bit of George, at that time, and Helen, when she was over here from England. Just – parties and that sort of thing. Good friends. Good friends.'

'Of course, Willi.' Her beautiful smile came. 'Of course.'

He drew smoke in. 'I mentioned my girlfriend to George, just casually. I told him I thought she was too thick with those people.'

The girl came with our drinks. 'Zwei Schnapse, einer Tonic.' She left the tab.

I leaned forward. 'What did George say about that?'

'He was interested, which surprised me.'

'Interested,' I said, 'in the Rote Armee Faktion.'

'Yes. 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.' Willi slipped another black cigarette from the pack. 'George was a very… unusual man. Very intense.'

'He carried a gun,' Helen said.

'Always?'

'I don't know. I just saw it sometimes when he was taking off his» jacket. It wasn't a very big one.'

'But it's illegal,' Willi said, 'in Berlin.'

I asked Helen, 'Did he know you'd seen it?'

'Oh, yes. It didn't worry him. I think he was rather proud of it.' She played with her glass of schnapps; she hadn't drunk any. 'George was very intense, as Willi says. He had a lot of dynamic energy, a lot of energy, all the time.' A faint smile – 'It was a little wearing.'

'But there was a lot more,' Willi said, 'under the surface. Don't you agree?' He flicked his gold lighter.

'It went down deep,' Helen said. 'It was rather attractive, in a way, when it didn't get too wearing. It was like being near – I don't know – a small power station.'

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

'Oh, of course. Terribly so, terribly neurotic, yes. He fascinated me.' She gave a short laugh, embarrassed.

Hate, and fascination. I've only just realised, she'd said in the hotel, how much I hated him.

'He was also very secretive,' Willi said, 'despite his energy. Sometimes he would be very quiet for a while, and' – his hand brushed the air – 'and you didn't want to ask what he was thinking.' He looked round for the waitress.

'I know that part of him,' Helen said, 'rather well. George hated being asked what he was thinking about. He'd shut you up at once, and go very cold. But then it's a silly thing to ask people, isn't it? It's an invitation to a lie.'

I watched the man over there.

'I never knew,' Willi said, 'that he carried a gun. It surprises me.'

The girl came to the table and he asked for another schnapps; Helen and I passed. The man had come in alone and was talking to someone near the stage. 'Willi,' I said, 'did George ever meet your girlfriend, Inge?'

'Yes.'

'Did he show any interest in infiltrating the Faktion?'

'Infiltrating…'

'In getting closer to them.'

'He was – how will we put it? – like a moth at a flame. And I thought that was not good for him, as a member of the British Embassy and everything. He had an official position, and I thought he might be in danger of – of compromising himself. So I stopped telling him anything about the Faktion.'

The man was asking for a girl, I saw now, and one of them slipped off the high stool at the bar and went across to him.

'You stopped telling George about the Faktion' I said to Willi. 'So what had you told him already?'

He drew on his cigarette immediately, looking down, squinting against the smoke. 'Oh, various things. Things that Inge had told me.' With a slight shrug – 'I miss her, you know. She was… good-looking, yes. You have seen Mai Britt? She is -'

'Important things, Willi?'

'What?'

'Had you been telling George Maitland important things about the Faktion?'

Cigarette. In a moment, 'I do not think so.'

The girl was taking the man through the black velvet curtains. There was only the slightest chance in any case that we'd been followed here. I'd checked the environment with extreme care when we'd got into the cab outside the Cafe Brahms; the black Mercedes hadn't been in sight: not that one, with the three-pronged antenna on the boot.

The waitress brought Willi's drink.

'Schnapps, darling.'

'Danke.'

He raised his glass, and I nodded. Helen wasn't looking. She was watching the girls perched at the bar, their white spindly arms angled, hands on hips, their long legs reaching from their brief silk slips. Two of them had bruises on them. As Helen watched them she stroked her cheek against the soft lambswool collar of her coat.

I leaned nearer Willi. 'You see, I'll be glad to help you fetch your things from your flat, as I said, as long as you do your bit. What, for instance, was the most important thing you told Maitland about the Rote Armee Faktion?'

He shifted on his chair. 'I stopped telling him anything at all,' he said with a trace of impatience. 'I even stopped seeing my girlfriend. I tried to wean her away from those people, but she was too involved. It excited her, you understand. So I stopped seeing her. It's all… finished with now.' He brought his eyes back to mine at last, but it wasn't easy.

I spoke quietly. I didn't think Helen was listening any more; she was watching the velvet curtains now, stroking her cheek against her collar. 'Willi,' I said, 'I'm afraid it's not all finished with now. Since George was murdered, "those people" mounted surveillance – put a watch on the house where our gentle friend here is living, and they put a watch on your flat, as you know, and when you left there tonight they had two men tracking you – at least two, possibly more. And you're now cut off from your home and your normal life and I have to tell you, Willi, that unless you earn my protection you may well follow your friend George Maitland in a matter of days, even a matter of hours. I would've thought this much would be clear to you, and I'm sorry to have to spell it out, but it could in fact save your life.'

I sat back and drank some tonic; it was getting warm in this place, but that wasn't why there were drops of sweat forming on Willi's forehead. I glanced at Helen; she was still absorbed by the girls. One of them had noticed it, and was returning her gaze steadily, her long thin fingers playing with her cigarette holder.

I looked back at Willi. 'It's getting late,' I said. 'I've come a long way to see you, and for your own sake I want it to be worth while.'

'It is difficult,' he said, and crushed his cigarette out in the black onyx bowl and took another one from the packet, his hands moving with the speed of a conjuror's, the sweat giving his forehead a sheen below the blond thinning hair. 'Already I am being followed, and I have done very little. What will happen if I reveal things to you, and they find out?

'They won't find out.'

'But you cannot guarantee that.' Flicking his lighter, his pale face bright, suddenly, his eyes strained – They may capture you.'

'I've never talked yet.'

They are vicious,' he said urgently, those people. I know this.'

'Of course. They're terrorists.' I leaned close to him again across the little table. 'You'll be much safer, Willi, if you trust me and let me help you, than if you walk out of here on your own tonight. Where can you go? I'm used to this kind of thing, Willi; It's my job, and I know how to handle it. For you it's very different. We're sitting here tonight talking about George Maitland. I don't want to be sitting with Helen somewhere in a couple of days' time talking about Willi Hartman.'

Pulling on his black cigarette, his hands on the move the whole time, his eyes darting everywhere, seeing nothing. I was sorry for him. He'd taken up with a very good-looking girl and suddenly he'd found himself on the fringe of a very nasty set and before he could pull out they were on to him. If I hadn't felt sorry for him I would have given him the message a lot less gently than I had – either talk or get out and duck when you hear the shots, so forth.

'The Faktion,' he said at last, 'has set up an operation, and they call it Nemesis.' He'd got the message all right, and I began listening carefully. 'The object of this operation is to place a bomb on board an international flight scheduled by one of the major US airlines. I do not know which airline, or which flight.'

Oh my God. In a moment I asked him, 'Have they got a mule lined up?'

'I don't know. There is never any problem with that; they will be using a Semtex bomb, obviously, and they can persuade almost any passenger to take it on board concealed in a suitcase or something like that; it's what they did with Pan Am Flight 103; they just got a girl to take it on board with her.' The sweat was bright on his forehead and he got out his handkerchief.

'You know more than that, Willi.'

His eyes widened. 'But I swear to you -'

'What's their timing for this? Were they – was Inge talking about days, weeks, when you last spoke to her?'

'She said nothing about -'

'You must have got an idea, Willi. Did it sound as if they were getting near the deadline? Did Inge sound excited about it?'

'Yes, yes, she did, but that was the way she always sounded when she talked about the Faktion. She -'

'But I'll bet she was as high as a kite about this one, Willi, I mean she wasn't talking about just another financier in a Mercedes like Herrhausen or just another judge in a restaurant like Soderheim, she was talking about another Lockerbie, wasn't she, Willi, you'll find you can remember more than you think you do, so keep on trying.'

If he was telling the truth and if Inge hadn't been selling him a line to make herself look big I was going to have to send a signal to London tonight that I didn't want to, that I very much didn't want to. The ghost of Lockerbie had started walking again.

Willi was sitting with his eyes squeezed shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. 'I remember Inge said something about waiting for a passenger list, a certain passenger list.'

'With important people on it?'

'Yes, I think. She-'

'Or just one important person?'

'No.' He looked up at me. There was no name mentioned.'

'Did she talk about a day operation, a night operation, the weather conditions -'

'I don't remember -'

'The plane's destination, the distance involved?'

'I don't remember,' shaking his head all the time.

'She talk about warning a particular airline, a particular nation?'

'America. An American airline.'

I gave it another ten minutes, another twenty or thirty questions, and got a little bit more but not much: this was Dieter Klaus' personal pride and joy, something he'd set his heart on, he had a lot of rage in him because they'd been making so many arrests within the Faktion, he needed a really important coup to re-establish the group as a major organisation, things like that.

Willi got himself another schnapps and put it away in one go. 'I'm glad,' he said in a moment, I'm very glad you obliged me to tell you about this, about Nemesis, and what they want to do. Perhaps you can stop them. That would be good. Very good.'

'There's a chance.'

A girl came through the velvet curtains and dropped a short black whip onto one of the little tables and laughed to someone, another girl at the bar, her lipstick bright and her teeth flashing. The man hadn't followed her out, the man who'd gone in there with her.

Then Helen said, 'I think I'd like a drink now, Willi.'

'Of course.'

'Cognac.' She pulled her coat closer as Willi looked round for the waitress. 'Did George know all this, about Nemesis? Did you tell him?'

She'd been listening more than I'd thought.

'Yes. I told him.' Tilting his head, 'If I had known…'

'If we all knew the future, Willi. Don't have it on your mind.' She turned to look at me. 'Do you think you'll be able to do something to stop this awful thing from happening?'

'It'll be a question of how much time we've got.'

'And it's so very difficult,' Willi said. 'I telephoned all the major US airlines, do you know that? But they all said the same thing – thank you very much, we'll certainly take this seriously, but we get these threats every day, and we're operating with the best security we can.'

'Was mochten Sie trinken, darling?'

Willi looked at me, but I shook my head.

'EinCognac.'

When the girl had gone, Helen said, They had people watching my house, do you know that, Willi? It's not only you.'

'Then you must be careful.'

'Yes. And Victor's looking after me.'

'He came from East Germany,' Willi said, I've just remembered. Dieter Klaus. He came across just after unification. He's a rabid communist, of course.'

'Then he would have trained there.' It wasn't anything new. When the East German secret police had started to do their laundry it had brought a whole army of villains into the open and running for cover.

'Cognac schwenker.'

'Danke.'

Helen cupped her hands round the balloon glass.

'Do you think he killed George, this man Dieter Klaus? I mean personally?'

'Does it make any difference?' Willi said. 'Maybe we shouldn't be morbid.'

'It'd be interesting to know,' she said, 'that's all.' I think she shivered, under the thick coat.

I gave her time to finish the cognac.

'Willi,' I said, 'can I do this?'

'No, thank you.' He got the girl over. 'We are going?'

'Yes. And I need your address.' He hesitated, and I said, 'They know it already. You're not giving anything away. And where do I find Inge?'

'She's moved. She's met someone else, and she lives with him. I don't know where.'

I let it go. Perhaps he was trying to protect her, from a belated sense of chivalry. 'I'd find her anyway.

'Willi, we're going to leave here first, Helen and I. Then you wait five minutes and go outside and get a taxi. You'll be perfectly safe. Go and buy a toothbrush at an all-night pharmacy and then book in at one of the big hotels, make it the Ambassador or the Kempinski, take a room on the top floor and use room-service for whatever you need.' I wrote a number for him on the back of his receipt. 'Call this number at ten tomorrow morning; be as punctual as you can. By that time I'll have arranged for you to go and take whatever you need from your flat. No one from the Rote Armee Faktion will see you there – no one, do you understand?'

There was fear in his eyes but he said, 'Very well.'

'Then do the other things I told you about, give the security guard a very good tip, then go and hole up somewhere quiet.'

'For how long?'

'I can't tell you. Phone the security guard every week, in case I've left a message for you. And watch the newspapers. Now wait here for five minutes, and trust me: there'll be no trouble.'

The rain had almost stopped when Helen and I went out to the street, and the air was cool and fresh after the smoke we'd been breathing. We walked half a block and crossed the street and came back on the far side and I saw Willi come out of Die Zwanziger and flag a taxi down and there was no one behind him when it drove away. Then I found one for ourselves.

'Hotel Steglitz.'

'Jawohl.'

She sat close to me again, Helen, huddled in her coat, the scent of the cognac on her breath. 'Poor Willi,' she said. 'I think he feels responsible for what happened to George.'

We turned into Birkbuschstrasse. The wet streets shimmered under the lights. 'I think George was going to hell in his own handcart anyway, wasn't he?'

'That could be. He wanted so desperately to make an impression, on himself more than other people.

He was quite a short man, did you know? Almost as short as Willi, but not quite. I think that was partly why he liked him – in Willi's company he looked a little taller, or thought he did.' I felt her shiver against me. 'It's suddenly begun to hit me, all this. In England the shock was distanced for me, but now I'm back here it's come into sort of close focus. And there's this terrible thing about what they're planning to do, those people.'

Along Sedan-strasse the leaves were spilled across the pavement from the park, yellow and red and gold in the lamplight. I didn't say anything. I didn't think she wanted me to. I had something to ask her but it could wait.

'I have a friend,' she said, 'who lost her husband in the Lockerbie crash. I mean they loved each other; he wasn't just her husband. She cried for days. It was all that stuff in the papers, all the beastly details they love to put in, bodies strewn all over the place. She still doesn't read a paper; she cancelled it.' In a moment, 'Is there something you can do to stop those people?'

She'd asked me that before. I said I could only try. And then I asked her, Who was the man in the night-club?'

I was watching her reflection in the glass of the division. She looked at me and then away. 'What man?'

'The one you recognised. The one who recognised you.'

'Oh,' with a soft laugh. She hadn't hesitated, or at least not for very long. 'It was rather embarrassing. He was just someone I knew, a friend of George's at the embassy. I met him a few times at parties.'

A BMW cut across our bows, swung in too soon, and our driver got the window down and shouted something, Schweinehundt, I think. 'What is his name?'

Helen turned her head against my shoulder. 'Kurt He's -'

'What's his surname?'

'Oh. Muller, I think. I'm not sure. I mean it was embarrassing because neither of us expected to see the other one in a place like that.'

I let it go. We'd come away absolutely clean from the night-club. The taxi turned east along Steglitzer Damm and I said, 'You'll be home by this time tomorrow, and you can leave Berlin behind.'

In a moment she said, 'You still don't want me to see Gerda, or any of my friends?'

'No. It'd be too dangerous.'

She shivered again but I wasn't sorry I'd said it; she had to get the message: she was too exposed here, and I wanted to think of her safely back in Reigate taking Billy for long walks, kicking up the leaves.

Things had moved very fast since I'd got here: only this morning Holmes had said there was no actual mission on the board and already we had Solitaire running and I'd got access to the opposition and there was something much bigger on my mind than making a private kill in the name of McCane. At some time tomorrow, unless we could stop it, tomorrow or the next day, any time at all, there'd be a flight taking off with three or four hundred people on board and it was going to make a sunburst in the sky.