The Scorpion Signal

3: JUMP

It had been snowing in Hanover; the roofs were white with it under a full moon when we touched down.

He was waiting on the other side of the gate, a short man with a deerstalker hat and a long green woollen scarf wound several times round his neck. He was rubbing his hands and blowing into them, watching me as I came through.

'From the office?' he asked me.

'Who are you?'

'Floderus. Have you got any baggage?'

'No.'

'OK. I've got a car here.' He led the way with short energetic steps, his hands in his coat pockets now.

'I want to see the clinic,' I said when we got outside. 'Did he tell you?'

'Yes. I only just caught the doc there: he's off on vacation first thing in the morning.' We got in the Mercedes.

It was the only condition I'd made to Croder: I wanted to know everything I could about Schrenk, if I were going to do anything for him.

'What was it like in London?' Floderus asked.

'Pissing down:

'I should've known.'

He got off the autobahn at the Hanover-Herrenhausen exit and drove south on Route 6 as far as the river.

'Are you expecting any problems?' I asked him.

'What? No.' He did it again. 'Why?'

'Fond of the mirror.'

'Oh. Habit.'

I supposed he could have been in from the field; sleepers and a-i-ps aren't normally so nervous. 'What's this man's name?'

I asked him. 'What man?'

'The doctor.'

'Oh. Steinberg.' Along Dorfstrasse he turned right and began slowing. The clinic was just after the church, a long white building with a board with gold letters. Floderus pulled up.

Steinberg opened the door to us himself, tall, stooping, wrapped in a dressing-gown with cigarette burns on it, a man who worked too late. He took us straight into a consulting-room and I let Floderus stay. We spoke in German.

'You wish to know about your patient here, I understand.'

'Yes. I want to know the state of his mind.'

He considered this, staring at the top of his desk through thick round glasses. 'I know nothing at all about his present state of mind, of course. He was abducted in violent fashion, and that would have induced further shock. I have no means of knowing what has happened to him since, in terms of his state of mind.'

'What was he like just before the abduction?'

He lit a cigarette and squinted through the smoke. 'At that time he was quite alert, quite normal. The nightmares had stopped, and he did very well in tests. Still rather bitter towards those people, understandably. We felt he — '

'Bitter?'

He glanced up quickly. 'He harboured a grudge against them. Don't you feel that was understandable, Herr Matthofer?'

'I suppose so,' I said. It was as far as I could go; he didn't know who we were. But something was odd: we don't harbour grudges against the opposition, whatever they do to us; there's nothing personal: it's dog eat dog. I didn't see why Schrenk should have been 'bitter'.

'He put up quite a struggle,' the doctor said. 'The place was in a mess, with blood on the carpet and some glass from a broken syringe. One of my staff ran into the street after them, but they didn't stop.'

'You called the police?'

'Immediately. We are not used to that sort of affair in my clinic. It was very disturbing.'

'What did they do to him?'

'They took him away.' He looked at me quizzically. 'I told you, they — '

'I mean before. Before he was brought here.'

'Ah. That.' He screwed his face against the smoke and pulled a drawer open, putting a thick file on to the desk and opening it. 'I have had some experience with these things, you understand. I am a member of Amnesty International and the World Medical Association. We study these phenomena.' I looked at my watch and he noticed, but didn't hurry. Floderus sat snuffling in his handkerchief. 'We questioned the patient, and his answers were consistent with the trauma we noted on his body.' He studied the file. 'He was subjected to the "wet canvas" treatment. Do you know what that is?'

'Yes.' But they wouldn't have started off with that one. They risk losing you, that way, because panic sets in.

'They used falanga, and we found extensive ecchymoses and edema, with some degree of irreversible ischemic changes in the intermetatarsal areas of the foot. There were — '

'What was he walking like, before they took him away?'

'His feet were still rather painful. He tended to hobble.'

'All right. What else?'

He looked at the file again. 'He said they had suspended him from the arms for prolonged periods, but we found no evidence of cervical dislocations. We took X-rays, of course. He could use his arms perfectly well, after about eight weeks. We found hematuria and some bleeding from the ears, but again we were able to treat these symptoms successfully. This kind of thing is found extensively in Chile, by the way, and Uruguay.'

'You'll find it everywhere,' I said.

I heard Floderus swallowing saliva.

'So we are beginning to discover.' Steinberg nodded, and dropped ash on to his dressing-gown. 'There was, in Herr Schrenk's case, local infiltration of anaesthetics into the eyelids.'

Floderus was leaning forward. 'What for?' he asked the doctor.

'I beg your pardon?'

'So that he couldn't shut his eyes,' I told him, 'against the light.' I wished I hadn't let him stay; he was getting on my nerves. 'Did they use drugs?' I asked Steinberg.

'He described certain phases of mental disorientation, including hallucination, but of no great significance. It might have been induced by reaction to the physical trauma. If they used drugs, they may have used thiopental or one of the amphetamines; he exhibited no lasting evidence of this.' He closed the file and put it in the drawer.

'Can you tell me anything else?'

He drew on his cigarette, leaving a shred of tobacco on his lip. 'I think that is all I can give you. As to his present state of mind, it depends upon how they have treated him since they took him away.' He spread his thick white hands. 'We can only hope that by some good fortune…'

'Did he tell you he'd revealed any information?'

'I heard nothing about that.'

'Would you have heard?'

'It would be in the records.'

'Taped records?'

We record conversations with patients, yes. It is routine, an essential part of the therapy.'

'Can I hear some of the tapes?'

'That is quite out of the question. Such matters are strictly confidential. We — '

'Did he mention any names? Names of people in Moscow?'

'I cannot say. It would be in the records.' He began fidgeting with a pen-holder.

'Did he scream any names in his nightmares?'

'Herr Matthofer, I am not at liberty to — '

`Did he make any threats?'

'Of what nature?'

'Any nature. Any threats against anyone at all.' I got up and walked past his desk to the window and back. 'You said he was bitter, and bore a grudge. Against whom?'

'There was nothing specific.' He stubbed out his cigarette, annoyed by the way things were going. He was the top kick in this place and he'd found me on the doorstep washed up by the night.

'You mean he was bitter in general? What made you think he bore someone a grudge?'

He stood up and came from behind his desk, drawing the dressing-gown around him. 'Surely you can understand that a man in his condition should bear a grudge against those responsible for it?'

'Or did you just expect him to feel like that?'

It was important and he didn't realize it and I couldn't explain.

'You will have to excuse me, Herr Matthofer. I agreed to receiving you in the middle of the night in order to discuss this patient's case for a few minutes, but not to submit to an Interrogation. I am leaving Hanover at nine o'clock and I need some sleep.' He jerked the chain of the desk lamp and went over to the door. Floderus got up. I asked Steinberg:

'Did the police find any clues?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

'They came here to ask questions?'

'But of course.'

'Did anyone see the car these people used?'

'No, they did not. I would have been told. Now I will say good night, gentlemen.' He opened the front door for us.

Floderus started blowing into his hands again the minute we were in the street.

'Haven't you got any gloves, for God's sake?' I asked him.

'I lost them,' he said irritably.

'Haven't you got any others?'

'Why was it so important,' he asked me, 'about Schrenk being bitter?' He swung the Mercedes in full turn and headed north by the river.

'It's right out of character. What time's our rendezvous?'

'03.30 at Zellerfeld. He should be there by now.'

'Why so early?'

'I didn't know you wanted to see Steinberg first.'

'Couldn't you signal him?'

'Look,' he said, 'we're all doing our best, OK?' He got on to the autobahn at Hanover-Flughafen and drove east, moving into the eighties before turning south at the cloverleaf with the Hildesheim sign coming up. 'Your stuff's in the glove pocket if you want to start looking it over.'

I found the thick envelope. It had the single word Scorpion written in pencil at the top left corner. 'Where else did they take him,' I asked Floderus as I pulled out the papers, 'apart from Lubyanka?'

'We think he was at the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow, and the mental hospital in Chernyakhovsk. London's still checking with our people in Moscow and you'll be briefed when you get there.'

'Is that all you know?'

'I'm just contact and relay, sorry.'

I checked the stuff over: transit cover in the name of Hans Matthofer, East German representative for Plastichen Farben; visa and travel permit, Moscow only; record of previous visits; stated purpose of present visit; advanced hotel booking and proposed itinerary (including a visit to the Bolshoi Theatre on the evening of February 23rd, unaccompanied); currency vouchers; a batch of sheets in a file with photographs of plastic moulding and three letters of introduction, one of them to the Ministry of Labour. My photograph was recognizable, with fur hat.

'Have you got any clothes for me?'

'In the back. Coat, hat, furlined boats and gloves; it's twenty below in Moskers, rather you than me.'

We drove for two hours, through Hildesheim and over roads covered with snow when we reached the mountains, while I thought of Croder and Schrenk and Steinberg and tried to think why Schrenk should feel 'bitter' about what they'd done to him. It didn't fit in with the pattern and I kept on worrying it because these are the little things that can take you off course if you're not watching. I'd done two missions with Schrenk and in two missions you learn a lot about a man; Schrenk knew the score, all the way along the line, and he wouldn't bear a grudge against the KGB any more than he'd bear a grudge against a snake that had bitten him, because there's nothing personal about these things.

Floderus was slowing, and I tore off the top left corner of the envelope and put the papers back.

'Where are we?'

'The other side of Zellerfeld. I made a loop.' He drove slowly for another half mile and pulled up on a snow-covered patch alongside the road, dousing the headlamps. The moonlight brightened gradually.

'Is this the place?'

'Yes.'

'Where is he?'

'He should be here.'

'What's the landmark?'

'That sign over there.' Einbeck.

I began worrying. 'How far is it to the checkpoint?'

'Four kilometres.' He began blowing into his hands and I reached over to the back seat and rummaged about and found the gloves and dropped them on to his lap.

'For Christ's sake put these on.'

'You'll need them when — '

'Put them on till then.' A slight break in the tone, inadmissible in the pre-jump phase but my nerves were only just under the surface and small things were picking at them because this is the phase when you're stone cold and your mind is clear and you know you're putting your life on the line and you know you've done it before and got away with it but this time it's different and you're scared again, and swallowing, and alert to the signs and portents that are suddenly in every sound and every shadow, till you can't stand a man blowing into his hands because the repetition drives you up the wall.

Not good. Not at all propitious. Better to get to a telephone and pull Tilson out of bed and tell him to find Croder: Tell him I was right, I'm not ready, he'll have to get someone else.

'… Gunther.'

'What?'

'His name's Gunther,' said Floderus again. 'The man with the truck.'

I wound the window down and listened. The air was perfectly still and the snow had brought its own peculiar silence; a jet was moving at altitude, lost in the brightness of the moon, its thin whine threading the night. I could hear other sounds, distant and muffled by the terrain.

'Dogs?'

'What? Yes. At the checkpoint.'

'Where else?'

'Nowhere else, in this area.'

I don't like dogs.

'You want a gun?'

'What for?'

He looked at me in the pale light, sniffing a drop off his nose. 'For the mission.'

'No. Is this meant to be clearance?'

'Sort of.'

I wanted to laugh. Clearance and briefing normally takes hours and you see a dozen people and sign a dozen forms and make half a dozen declarations because that's all that's going to be left of you if you muck it up out there: a record of what you were. It makes you feel you're important to somebody, if only to the computer clerks. But this trip I was being kicked across the frontier by a junior a-i-p with a drip on his nose and only just enough control over himself to keep him from telling me I shouldn't have got him out of bed in the first place.

'You'd better sign this.' He sniffed again and got out a crumpled handkerchief, taking off one of my gloves to use it. 'Is that your own code?'

I looked at the form. 'My own what?'

' "Five hundred roses for Moira." '

I didn't want to talk about that so I got a pen and signed the form, no next-of-kin, no dependants, nothing saved up to leave to anyone, just enough for the roses. What was she doing now? When did she last think of me?

'Where the hell is that man Gunther?'

Floderus looked at his watch in the moonlight. 'He'll be here.' He put the glove back on.

'How big's the truck?'

'It's a ten-tonner.'

'What's it carrying?'

'You.'

'Come on for Christ's sake I want briefing!' He jerked back and stared at me. 'I want to know what else that truck's carrying and where it's going and why he's got a free run across the frontier. I want information, is that too much to ask?'

He pulled himself round on his seat and said a bit shakily: 'Look, I haven't been told all that much. You're being briefed in Moscow, they said. All I'm here for is — '

'Information, don't you know what it means? About the truck.'

'Oh. Well,' he gave a long riffling sniff, 'it's taking luxury goods across for the black market in Leipzig, a regular run. Scotch and perfume and American goods, jazz records and cassettes and stuff like — '

'Who runs this?'

'The Party, if you want to go right to the top. It's for them and their wives, the same thing that goes on in Moscow. They — '

'How often does this truck go across?'

'About every month. It varies.'

'Just the driver, no one with him?'

'No. He — '

'Is he Russian? East German? West German?'

'He's from Hamburg.'

'Has he ever been turned back?'

'Only once. He — '

'Only once?'

He caught his breath and said in a moment, 'There was a new guard commander, and he wasn't tipped off. He was changed again.'

I didn't want to know any more. This was Russian roulette they'd got me playing: either we'd get across the frontier or we wouldn't. Either I'd find Schrenk or I wouldn't. All I could do was to stop thinking and let the strain off and leave it to Croder and try to believe he knew what he was doing.

I shut my eyes for a while, until I heard the faint clinking of snow chains and the throb of a diesel engine. There was light flushing across the road behind us.

'Is this Gunther?'

'Yes. He said he'd — '

'How do you know it's not someone else?'

'There shouldn't be anyone else up here, this time of night.'

'Shouldn't? Jesus Christ.' I wished Ferris were here, or someone who didn't leave everything to chance.

'It's okay,' Floderus said, 'he's flashing us.'

'What sort of terrain is there,' I asked him wearily, 'between here and the checkpoint?'

'What? Oh, just rocks, and a few trees.'

'Why doesn't he just give a blast on the horns?'

He stared at me. 'They'd hear it from the frontier.'

Some kind of laughter came out of me, maybe panic in disguise. The truck came alongside and I waited for Floderus to check the driver before I got out and opened the rear door of the car and changed coats and put on the fur hat; at least London had got this much right, pulling the tailor out of bed as well, to check on the size.

'Gloves,' I said.

'Oh.' He gave them to me. 'This is Gunther,' he said in German.

A thick-shouldered man in a reefer jacket and woollen hat, his flat square face half buried in a scarf. 'Everything is in order,' he said.

'Why were you late?'

'There was snow.' He pulled open the rear doors of the truck and jumped up. 'In here.'

Most of the stuff on the floor was Scotch, in cases of a dozen bottles, and he had to shift four of them before he could drag the lid of the recess upwards and swing it to one side. The compartment was lined with felt. He stood clear of it to let the roof light shine down.

'What's underneath?'

'Nothing,' he said. 'The road. But it's thick, and there are steel brackets.'

'Do you bring people across in this, the other way?'

'I have brought seven, in the past three months. Seventy thousand US dollars. Not for me. For them: His breath clouded under the roof light.

'How much do you get?'

'One thousand. I get one for you.' His small brown eyes moved over me. 'It's the first time I've taken anyone this way.'

'Are you going to move those cases back over the trap when I'm inside?'

'Yes.'

'How many of them?'

'These here. Four. Maybe five.'

'How much do they weigh? Each?'

'Seventeen kilos.'

I dropped into the recess face-down and told him to shut the lid; then I humped my back until my spine made contact. There weren't more than a few inches of leverage but it might be enough to shift five cases of Scotch because I'd only have to do it if I got trapped and if I got trapped there'd be a lot of adrenalin to help me. I told him to open the lid.

'On your back,' he said, 'is best.'

'That's the way you put people in coffins.' I looked at Floderus, standing out there at the back of the truck with his hands tucked under his arms. 'Is there anything else?'

'This,' he said, and gave me a small red metal box. Normally I refuse it but on this trip I didn't think much of my chances and if they caught up with me in Moscow and pulled me in I might want to opt out rather than finish up like Schrenk, his feet were still rather painful, he tended to hobble. I put the box in my pocket. 'Send a signal,' I told Floderus, 'as soon as you can get to a telephone. Understood?'

'OK.'

I dropped into the recess again and told Gunther to shut the lid. The time by my watch was 03.37.

First there was just one man talking to Gunther; then a second one came up and told him to open the rear doors of the truck. I could hear those bloody dogs again, not far away now. I was lying in total darkness, with only aural data coming in. When the doors banged back the voices were much dearer.

What is in these boxes? What is in those packages over there?

So forth.

Sweat was running on my face because there weren't enough ventilation holes in this thing and they shouldn't be asking all those questions out there: Gunther had said there wouldn't be any trouble at the checkpoint, he'd drive straight through as soon as they recognized him.

How many cases are there?

Their boots grated on the floorboards just above me. I lay with my eyes shut to keep the sweat from running into them.

Does the Gruppenfuhrer know about this consignment?

There was grit under their boots and it sounded like static, immediately above my head. Of course the Gruppenfuhrer knew about it, Gunther told them. I thought his voice was too loud, too blustering.

A dog barked again and my scalp shrank, because this wasn't the end phase of the mission with the blood up and the nerves singing and the target in sight; this was the jump phase and the sweat was cold on me and I wasn't ready for them to tell Gunther to pull up on the floorboard here, this loose one.

Wait there. I shall have to wake the guard commander.

They'd be in trouble. Gunther told them, if they woke the Gruppenfuhrer for nothing. He'd have their hide.

We shall see about that, the man said, and his boots thudded on the roadway as he dropped from the truck.

I listened to the ticking sounds of the exhaust pipe contracting as it cooled. Light showed faintly through some of the ventilation holes and a door slammed somewhere on the right of the truck. Voices came again, Gunther's the loudest and with panic in it. They didn't listen to him.

Move your vehicle over here. It's in the way.

His boots loudened again and the doors at the rear slammed shut like an explosion. I listened to him going forward and climbing into the cab, pulling the door shut. Exhaust gas seeped in through the ventilation holes as he started the engine, and I began shallow breathing as we started to roll. I waited to feel the movement as he turned the wheel but it didn't come: my feet were being pushed against the end of the recess as he gunned up in first gear and botched into second and kept his foot down as a man began shouting somewhere behind us. The roar of the exhaust drowned everything out until the truck hit something head-on and began dragging the debris with it, possibly the barrier but I tried to believe that Gunther knew he wouldn't have a chance in hell of putting a ten-tonner through a checkpoint and getting away with it.

There were more shouts now and I could see lights flashing in the ventilation holes; then the noise fell away and we seemed to be clear of the debris as Gunther forced a fast change into third gear and flattened the throttle gain. A lot of vibration started and I braced my hands forward in case we hit something else.

When the first shots came I humped my back and heaved upwards against the trap door, feeling the weight of the cases and heaving again till they were forced dear. There was some rapid fire now and I crawled out of the recess and lurched forward, getting most of the cargo between my body and the rear doors as a bottle was hit and glass exploded inside one of the cases. The truck was swaying as we took a curve and some of the load went over, bursting open and shattering against the doors. I thought I could hear Gunther shouting in the cab, but couldn't make out any words. A bullet came through at an angle, deflected by the cargo and crumping into the timber close to my head. I lay face down, my body in line with the longitudinal axis of the truck, feet towards the rear doors.

Light was showing from somewhere, bright light from behind us, filtering through the gaps where the hinges were. The shots were lower now, clanging into the chassis below the tailboard; one of them ripped a hole in the silencer and a sustained roaring started up; I heard a tyre burst but there were twin wheels at the rear and Gunther still had control. A klaxon was going, its sound getting louder as a vehicle dosed in, its light silvering the dark through the cracks in the rear doors; the next volley smashed into a case and sent glass fluting through the air. Then they were shooting low again and two more tyres burst and the truck lurched over, righting itself and lurching again and starting a long slow zig-zag on the rear wheel-rims.

Then everything went. I felt a final lurch and then a brief period of weightlessness as the truck left the road and began floating into the drop, tilting to one side and staying like that, then tilting right over before it hit the rockface and started bouncing. Orientation was down to near zero now: I was inside a rolling barrel and the cargo had gone wild and all I could do was squeeze under the rear shelf and try to hang on but it wasn't easy because the noise had reached a crescendo: I was trapped inside a thunderstorm and couldn't think my way out.

Glass shattered, raining against me, and I kept my face down, my head hunched between my shoulders. A period of weightlessness came again — two seconds, three, four, five — as the truck found a sheer drop and floated free, turning slowly and bringing a kind of calm as the rotational speed of the cargo matched the speed of the truck itself. It was the eye of the storm, and I waited. Seven seconds, eight, nine — then we struck rock and smashed down again and the storm burst as it had before, a crash coming as the rear doors were forced open, one of them dragging itself off the hinges with a scream of metal on stone. Then the truck veered at right angles and the rolling stopped. We hit the floor of the slope head-on and I was flung backwards with the rest of the cargo, keeping my head in my arms and going with it, something dragging against my thigh and ripping the coat away and tearing the flesh, a shower of glass whining across my head through the open doors, a last case toppling and smashing down as the truck shuddered and rolled again, slowly, and rocked to stillness.

I made for where I could smell the air and see the moon. The senses were partially numbed and the organism was working with instinct, but I could smell fuel oil and I fought in a frenzy to get clear, feeling the snow under my hands as the first flame burst and took hold. The split tank coughed into life and black smoke began pouring across the rockface as I pitched forward and got up and staggered, straightening and going on down the mountainside away from the fierce white light that had started blazing from the roadway above the ravine. The truck was a mass of flames and I kept low, lurching and rolling among the snow-covered boulders and keeping the fire between me and the fierce white light. Twice I saw my shadow in front of me and dropped flat, waiting to know if they'd seen me, waiting for the shot.