The Quiller Memorandum

11: OKTOBER

Her skin was the shade and texture of a wax rose, quite flawless, and her hair fell across her naked shoulder in blond rivulets. Her regard was innocent, the eyes wide and frankly-gazing, too young to have learned that you must sometimes glance away. She leaned across the white chair without coquettishness, insouciance, her small breasts barbed with nipples of carmine, her thighs heavy with pubic hair.

The ant cleaned its antennae.

The light in the room came from a great Daum chandelier, and burned on the gold of the frame. It was no good thinking in terms of taste. She was there for raping. They might just as well have hung a whore on the wall. There was no signature, but the painter had been a German, a true-blue Prussian-born hypocritical bloody Aryan. You portray the face as symbolising purity – the flawless skin, the innocent gaze, the little-girl look – and then you go to town on the tits and pussy, symbolising carnality till it moans. Result you have a picture you can give to your own mother-in-law for hanging in the needle-room, and she'll always think you've come to admire her petit point.

Hypocrisy. Schizophrenia. They've always been like it. That's why you've got to talk about Beethoven and Belsen in the same breath. You can't think of one without the other.

If you kick over an ant-hill the first thing they do is to stop and clean their antennae with a foreleg. In their panic they resort at once to habit, to deceive themselves that everything is really all right and the sky hasn't fallen down. The human species is a little that way inclined. Tea in the Blitz.

Regaining consciousness in the confines of a trap, I had controlled primitive brain-panic by resorting to a habit, and criticising the picture, as if it had been in a cosy gallery along the Kurfurstendamm. But it was no go. You couldn't look at that split-minded perpetration without knowing precisely where you were. Deep in the heart of Deutschland.

The room was large, lofty-ceilinged, and encrusted with Baroque marble, gilt, silk and ormolu. Traceries, mouldings, coquillage and arabesque, brocade and parquetry – there was nowhere for the eye to rest. Hermann Goering would have rolled in here like a pig in clover. No, you couldn't get away from where you were.

The movement of my head had left no dizziness. I had expected to wake from the equivalent of a low sleep-curve, groggy and disorientated; but the drug had no after-effects. I was sitting in a silk brocade chair with a cushion behind my head, facing the length of the room at whose far end was a pair of white-and-gold doors. I felt like a minor monarch about to grant privy audience. They did you well here.

My watch read 9.01. Less than an hour since they'd snatched me. They'd followed me away from the Z Bureau, knowing I would pull in somewhere when the drug took effect. No rough stuff, nothing embarrassing.

There were four men in my audience-chamber. One against the doors, one standing with his back to the monstrous Rasputin Quinze fireplace, one staring out of the window, and one coming quietly towards my chair.

"Excuse me," he said in Heidelberg German, and lifted one of my eyelids. He had seen my movements.

I asked him: "How am I?"

He stood back with a faint and charming smile. Elegantly dressed, crisp white hair, two gold rings, a quiet and melodious tone. "You are very well."

Everyone began moving. The man by the window went down the room to the doors and the man there took a pace to one side. They were taking up positions. They were the guards. The man by the fireplace came to join the doctor. I looked up into his face and knew that if I got out of here alive it would be on his terms.

"I am Oktober," he said.

And the mirage dissolved, and all the silk and arabesque and ormolu were gone, and I sat here in a cell. Even the air had gone chill.

I bowed my head. "Quiller," I said.

His eyes were rivets in a face like a steel trap that clanged when the mouth opened and shut. "You may talk."

I took an instant to weigh up the moves. They had a doctor here. I knew what that meant. But there was a computer in operation inside the steel trap. The material was human, therefore it must be handled in human terms. It was invited to talk.

"How are the Z-polizei," I asked. "Back on the job?"

"They were injected with a neutral fluid."

"It was rather elaborate."

"It was efficient. We didn't want you to give any trouble."

The doctor had moved away. It wasn't his turn. The chill of the air reached my spine.

"And you didn't want me to get hurt. Yet."

"No."

"Then why did you try to crush me against that wall?"

A light gleamed in the eyes and went out. "It was a mistake."

In big organisations the right hand doesn't always know what the left hand is doing. I wondered what had happened to the wildcat operator who had jumped orders and gone for me against that wall. As a guess he was now hanged, drawn, quartered, cut piecemeal, canned, and on a shelf in the supermarket labelled Cat-Food.

I studied Oktober. The steel-trap face was deceptively decorated so that a passing glance would accept it as that of a human being. It was oblong, the chin the same width as the forehead. The hair was gummed down flat, Hitler-fashion but without the cowlick. The eyes were flint-grey, with nothing in them but black pupils – no hint of a soul behind. The nose was dead straight. The mouth was dead straight. There was nothing else. I went on looking at it until it spoke again.

"Talk."

I said: "It's turned out nice again."

He might as well know that I would never talk. If anything ever talked, it wouldn't be me. It would be the half-dead remains of the thing called Quiller, jabbering in its death-throes. I hoped it would give nothing away. There were people I had to protect. The only guarantee I could give them now was that if I let them down, it wouldn't be Quiller ratting on them, but just a lump of blood and gristle and pain that was beyond knowing what it was doing. I had seen men being interrogated at Buchenwald.

Oktober spoke again.

"We know who you are. In the Churchill war you refused military service. You wasted your time masquerading as a German soldier and trying to sabotage the efficient working of the Final Solution, ‘rescuing’ Jews and other sub-human organisms from what in fact was their prescribed destiny. You failed in your grandiose intentions. When offered awards by the Polish, Dutch and Swedish governments after the war, you refused them, thus admitting your failure and your shame. We know about you."

I had worked out the only possible move, and began taking very deep and very slow breaths to feed oxygen into the blood so that it should be available to the muscles. By careful degrees I tensed my arms, legs and abdomen, and then relaxed. Tense, relax. Tense, relax. Increase oxygen-intake, circulation and muscle-tone.

"You are a known authority on memory, sleep-mechanism, the personality patterns of suicide, critical-path analysis, fast driving techniques, and ballistics. You are known to be at present in the service of M.I.6."

Wrong. Never mind. He was watching my eyes for reaction so that he could get a clue to the truth or untruth of his information. Most of it was correct. I kept my eyes blank. Tense… relax.

"You thought we didn't know who was supplying the court with so-called ‘war-criminals’ at Hanover in the past six months. We knew who it was. You were seen in different areas and we built up a portrait parle of you. We recognised you when you went to the Neustadthalle. It was reported that your cover had been called off, so we knew that you were embarked on some more special undertaking. There is very little we don't know about you."

Breathe deep. The window was nearer than the doors but that way out was no go. The heavy curtains were drawn but there was a gap and there was lamplight outside, shining on the bare boughs of a plantain. Its height made a fair reference: this room was three floors up, maybe four. I wouldn't be given time to hunt about for balconies or drainpipes. It would have to be the doors. Tense… relax.

"But we lack certain information about your bureau. We have observed its affairs closely for some time, and we wish to fill in our picture of M.I.6."

Not subtle. The repetition was clumsy and it was now clear that he was feeding me doctored corn, trying to provoke me into retorting – for pride's sake – that he was wrong, that I wasn't with M.I.6. Eyes blank. Breathe deep.

Oktober riveted me with his soulless eyes. "We must thus oblige you to talk." He was too intelligent to make any threats, because he knew I had seen men interrogated by his kind. There was simply no option but to talk. He said: " Begin."

Tense… relax. I must bear in mind that this meeting with this man in this house was the goal of my mission. Certainly the ball had bust the net: I'd hoped to arrive in this house in possession of my senses and with a chance of getting clear before it was too late. The inoculation trick had been elaborate, yet it had involved no more than a phone-call to Captain Stettner purporting to come from the Medical Office of Health, a private ambulance, a doctor and a nurse. Phoenix would possess such facilities; one of the accused at Hanover held a chair at the medical faculty of Moenberg; the hierarchies of more than one ministry were riddled with Nazi executives. The effort of ensuring that I should be brought here insensible had been worth making. But I must bear in mind that my mission had been to expose myself in open ground, draw the enemy fire, and thus locate his base. I had done that. The advantage was mine. This thought must be repeated, to give psychological help to the physical necessity of somehow staying alive and sane.

Breathe deep. Tense, relax. The advantage is mine.

Oktober said: "Will you talk?"

I said: "No."

The scene changed a little. At the movement of his hand the two guards came away from the doors and halted within three yards of my chair, each pulling a Munslich eight-millimetre flat-butt and flicking the catch. Oktober looked at something behind my chair and I realised there was a fifth man here. He came into my range of view. He was the doctor who had used the needle on us at the Z-Bureau. His surgeon's gown was spotless and his hands moved deftly among the equipment in the kit that was carefully set down on a little japan-laquered table by my side. It would be the same hypodermic, I supposed.

The pattern emerged. He was the anaesthetist. The older man, finely groomed and noble of face, was the psychoanalyst. No crude torture, then. Just the direct clinical invasion of the psyche.

I had to alter, by a little, the move that must be made. The guards had closed in, making things more difficult but leaving a clear run to the doors once immediate opposition was dealt with. The threat of the guns was minimal: I was fairly confident they wouldn't fire. I was wanted alive. A leg-shot to stop me running would be pretty useless if they didn't actually strike a main nerve and paralyse the limb; a man can go on running with a leg-wound if he has the will.

I have never carried a gun in peace-time. It is an impediment, physically and psychologically. Some operators clutter themselves up with guns, code-books, flashlights and death-pills. I travel light. A gun is as clumsy as a woman's handbag. It is utterly useless in defence at a distance because you haven't time to draw even if you see the adverse party with his rifle levelled, which you won't. In Solly Rothstein's case I wasn't the target, and I was expecting the shot, and saw the rifle at the window; but I couldn't have picked off the sniper with a revolver at that range except by luck. Psychologically you have the advantage, unarmed, providing the adverse party knows that you are. (These people knew. They would have frisked me on the way here.) Knowing you have no gun they're not afraid of you, and fear is a natural spur to alertness: unarmed, you disarm them. Any demand at gun-point always carries the risk of failure because they mostly demand that you do something useful to them and you can't do much when you're dead. A gun is psychologically a penis-substitute and a symbol of power: the age-range of toy-shop clientele begins at about six or seven, rises sharply just before puberty and declines soon after the discovery of the phallus and its promise of power. From then on, guns are for kids and for the effete freaks and misfits who must seek psycho-orgasmic relief by shooting pheasants.

There are a few special situations when a gun is useful. This wasn't one of them. A gun would have been useless to me now.

Oktober spoke.

"Take off your coat."

The anaesthetist was filling the syringe. The fluid was colourless. There looked to be about two ounces.

Stand up. Breathe deep. Slip the coat off. Squeeze the toes, relax them. Remember: The advantage is mine. And now the final requisite: rage. The blood needed a shock-dose of adrenalin to anoint sudden intense physical action.

They're after my guts, this arrogant pack of Hitlerite Belsen bastards! A noble death-smeared underfoot by a clique of schizo shits!

The very action of taking off a jacket sets it up as a weapon because for an instant it is held both-handed like a matador's cape. I let Oktober have it across the face in a blinding shroud and kneed for his groin once and again and found the rim of the little japan-lacquered table and sent it pitching head-high to a man at the guard on the left, hearing the gun clatter down as the other guard swung a razor-chop left-handed that missed the neck and burned a shoulder-blade before I could get a sight of his leg and work on it. The placing was perfect because momentum was taking the weight of my body forward hard and at a low angle so that as my shoulder hit his knee my left hand hooked him behind the ankle so that the foot couldn't shift and he screamed as the knee-joint broke.

Someone fired but fired to miss and I knew it and kept up the pressure, thrown off balance now by the collapsing of the guard's leg but getting some of it back with one hand hitting the thick carpet and pivoting me half-round to face the line of run: the doors. The situation seemed comfortable so far: Oktober had staggered back because of the coat but my knee had found his groin second time and I'd heard the grunt in his throat and his face would be white by now. One guard out of action with a smashed leg. The anaesthetist would be psychologically worried by the wrecking of his equipment and didn't look unarmed-combat-trained anyway. The psychoanalyst wouldn't weigh in, wasn't his field.

I began the run. A foot beside me the pile was raised by the spit of a wide slug-shooting to miss again because at this range they could have split the spine if they'd wanted to. A word of command from Oktober. My right foot in trouble as fingers locked round the ankle and I hit ground half-way to the doors, jacknifing and swinging a buncher at the hands: no go. The table came and I twisted and caught it against the shoulder as the hands bettered their purchase and I had to engage with the guard, using my other foot against his neck and pressing back and back as he yielded, one hand coming away but the other holding on. Switch tactics: let the foot give way and bring his head closer with a jerk. No go again – he'd rolled and put the grip on and I had to kick for the side of the head, getting it once but not hard enough.

A shadow stood over me and an arm locked round my neck and that was it. A final effort and then both legs and the neck were trapped. I waited for the pressure. It didn't come. Oktober was giving commands and I heard the doors shutting: the crash of the table against my shoulder had muffled the sound of their opening.

In a few seconds the arm was unlocked from my neck and my legs were released and Oktober said:

"You may get up."

I was smart about it for decency's sake, and tucked my shirt in, making it look like the end of a dormitory rag. Breathing not too bad, didn't wheeze. Relax.

The little japan-lacquered table lay in four pieces and the anaesthetist was still gathering up his gear. One guard stood behind me: I could feel him there. Six men had come into the room and stood in a ring, each with a gun out. The other original guard was still on the carpet with his leg at a dreadful angle from the thigh and a puddle of vomit beside his blenched face. The psychoanalyst was standing outside the ring of men, looking straight at my face with the intensity of a painter who must commit what he sees to his canvas. Oktober stood stiffly, visibly accommodating his pain and refusing his groin the comfort of his hands. The colour was seeping back into his face but the sweat had gathered and dripped from his chin.

The anaesthetist had charged a smaller syringe and now stooped over the prone guard, lancing a vein in his leg, straightening up. No one spoke. I could hear Oktober's breathing; the pain was audible in it. My right arm was going numb from the blow of the table and the shoulder-blade throbbed. I'd got off lightly; they could have done much worse than this. The guards were well-trained: the orders must have been: He is not to be damaged unless absolutely necessary.

The anaesthetist nodded to Oktober, who said: " Two of you. Take him to Doktor Lowe. Then come back."

The guard was unconscious. They carried him with his legs together. The doors opened and closed. The anaesthetist was checking the damage to his kit. Oktober asked him what the situation was and he said: " We can proceed when you are ready, Herr Oktober."

The five remaining guards were signalled to close in and Oktober said to me: "Sit in the chair." There was no expression on the oblong face, no hate in the eyes. He would not wipe the sweat from his chin. It wasn't there. The pain wasn't there. I had done nothing to him.

I sat down again in the brocade chair and began thinking out the next move. Oktober said:

"Zander. Take aim at the left foot. Gebhardt, the right foot. Schell, the left hand. Braun, the right hand. Krosigk, aim at the genitals." I watched the little barrels line up. All catches were set at fire. "At the slightest movement, shoot. Do not wait for my order." He spoke to the anaesthetist. "Approach the patient from behind and work without covering any line of fire." To me he said: "Be careful not to move your hands or feet by the smallest degree, especially when the needle enters."

The smell of ether and soap came into the air as the man passed behind me and rolled up the sleeve of my shirt and cleansed the skin. I looked around me without moving my head. The psychoanalyst was still studying me, assessing his material. The five guards had their eyes fixed on the five targets; their fingers were curled on the triggers. I stopped thinking out the next move. There wasn't one.

"Proceed."

The needle went in.