Quiller's Run

Adam Hall Quiller's Run

1 Smoke

The whole place was tight with tension when I got there, people huddled in hushed groups along the corridors and hanging around the Signals Room, Croder standing outside Codes and Cyphers with one of the cryptologists, his eyes pinning the poor bastard against the wall and his voice like a knife being sharpened: 'Then why the hell didn't you get me on the phone, I don't care what time it was, you ought to know that by now? I went on past them and thought, for God's sake if Grader's lost his cool then something big must have blown and the fallout was still coming down – but the thing was, the thing was, you know, I couldn't have cared less.'

Loman had asked me to meet him at six in his office but he wasn't there and I had to stand listening to Radcliffe talking on the phone with his mouth tight and his face pasty under the lights.

Tensing is no longer in service.' He glanced up at me and gave a nod and went on talking. 'No, officially we're calling it suicide.'

Now that was spelling it out, wasn't it, not pretty but at least honest – 'no longer in service' was one of those coy little euphemisms coined by the bureaucrats on the third floor: why couldn't they put us down in the records as dead when we came unstuck, or was there something offensive about the idea, something not quite nice, not to be talked about?

'Of course we are,' his pale fingertips drumming on the desk. 'We've called Howatch in from Belgrade and Johns from Rome and they're trying to locate Hockridge through his director in the field.'

I stood with my raincoat dripping – it'd been drizzling the whole day again, bloody spring for you – they'd called Johns in, what on earth for? The last I'd heard of him he'd been passing the hat round to the sleeper agents right across the communist bloc for any leftover scraps of information they could give him because there'd been five red-sector contacts supporting Sable One when it had come apart and left them 'terminally exposed', as those snotty-nosed twits on the third floor called it.

'No,' Radcliffe said, 'he's still unaccounted for.'

I got fed up with waiting and went outside and along the corridor to see if I could find Loman anywhere, and if I couldn't I'd check back at his office and if he still wasn't there he could go to hell. But when I got to the stairwell I saw him standing against the banisters on the floor above, talking to someone. Then he suddenly looked down and saw me.

I stood with my hands in the pockets of my raincoat, staring up at him, waiting. If the bastard wanted to talk, he'd have to do it now.

Calthrop was with him and they came down the stairs together. 'I'm sorry I wasn't in my office,' Loman said, 'but there's a lot going on.' Short, dapper, smelling of shoe-polish, I could have killed him on the spot and he knew that. 'Let's go in here, shall we?'

It was a room next to the janitor's closet, no number on the door, no name, just like all the other doors in this anonymous building. No one was in here; it was used to store things in, by the look of it – empty filing cabinets and some worn leather armchairs and a coffee urn inside a torn cardboard box, someone's bike with the tyres flat and the chain hanging slack, Loman shut the door and turned to look at me. 'It was good of you to come.'

I didn't answer, didn't look at either of them. Calthrop was here, I knew, in case Loman needed protection. He might.

The room was quiet, with only the rain dripping on the windowsill outside.

'Why don't we take a pew?' Calthrop, very smooth, almost jolly, pouring lots of oil. He slapped the dust off one of the armchairs and dropped into it, crossing his legs, looking up at me with an amiable smile.

Loman went to sit down but stopped when he saw I hadn't moved. 'We feel we owe you an apology, Quiller. We – er — deeply regret the circumstances that obviously prompted you to hand in your resignation, and very much hope you'll reconsider.'

The rain dripped, dripped on the windowsill.

From his chair Calthrop added gently, 'You mustn't think you're not still among friends, you know. We're -'

'Friends?'

Loman flinched, though I hadn't shouted or anything.

He recovered fast, annoyed with his show of nerves. 'Oh, come now. You know perfectly well that every shadow executive has to be considered expendable, in justifiable circumstances. After all, you signed the clearance forms as usual before the mission.'

His face made me sick and I turned away and looked at a picture on the wall instead, a faded photograph behind cracked glass, the Queen at the Trooping of the Colour, sidesaddle, upright, plumed and in full scarlet. There was a dead moth lying on the top edge of the frame. When I was ready I turned back and looked at Loman again with a dead stare.

'Yes. I signed the forms.'

I said it quietly but he knew my ability to keep control, to contain even rage if I had to, with none of it reaching the eyes. It's what they expect of us, isn't it, the shadow executives? Total control. We're required to behave like deadly reptiles out there in the field and then turn up here at the Bureau and comport ourselves like civilised people. And we do.

'I signed the forms. I also defused the bomb. And if I'd known you'd had it planted for me I would have brought it all the way home at the end of the mission and blown this whole fucking building apart.'

Loman turned and took a pace or two with his bright polished shoes, his black onyx cufflinks glinting under the light, his short arms held behind him. 'The necessity,' he said thinly, 'was agreed upon, and at the highest level, as you may well imagine. The fate of nations was at stake. We -'

'It's always at stake. That's the type of operation you always give me.'

He shrugged. 'There was the risk of your breaking under interrogation if you were caught.'

'I had a capsule.'

'We can never be absolutely sure, of course -' he shrugged again.

'That we'll use it?'

'Quite so.'

'Do you know how many missions I've completed?'

'I acknowledge your experience, but -'

'You've directed me in the field yourself.'

'That's correct.'

I took a step towards him. 'And did you find me to be the type of spineless wimp who wouldn't even suck on a peck of cyanide to protect the mission? Did you?'

The cracked glass of the picture on the wall vibrated and the little bastard flinched again, and I felt sudden compassion for him, because he was locked into a system that sometimes demanded that Control deliberately condemned a first-class shadow executive to death, somewhere out there where the people in London couldn't see him, where they couldn't in fact make absolutely certain that his death was essential, with no choice but to order it done and cut off a career and leave a corpse somewhere in hostile territory where it'd be found and treated as trash and tossed onto a rubbish dump, a feast for rats.

But there was one thing worse, perhaps, even worse for the people in London, and that was to have the intended dead come back alive, and curse them to their face.

'We have to do,' Loman said in a moment, 'what we have to do.'

I didn't answer that.

Calthrop spoke, gently. 'On what terms, Quiller, would you perhaps consider staying on?'

'None.'

Loman said, 'We would offer you rather good ones, Quiller. Your sole discretion, for instance, as to back-ups, shields, signals, liaison, contacts and so on.'

I didn't say anything.

Calthrop took over smoothly, 'Including your presence at mission planning, with Chief of Control. And of course, -he tried to soften the crudeness of the next tit-bit with an apologetic smile – 'a more appropriate retainer.'

The rain dripped on the windowsill.

'How appropriate?'

Calthrop glanced at Loman, who said quickly, 'Double.'

'What makes me so valuable, suddenly, considering you tried to get my guts blown into Christendom out there in Russia?'