Quiller KGB

'No.' I wasn't certain she meant a girl.

'I thought you might be.'

'What would you like to drink?'

'I've had too much. You can't tell?'

'It doesn't show.' If not a girl, then who?

'You know what I think? I think Moscow ordered a boycott of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles because they knew the DDR would beat them hands down.'

'It wouldn't surprise me.'

'Are you frightened of AIDS?'

'No.'

'That means you're either married or careful.'

'Careful.'

'Isn't it terrible, though? Everyone's too scared even to fuck.'

'Why did you think I was here looking for someone?'

'I thought — I was mistaken, that's all.'

Her eyes didn't make any connection with mine; she looked as if she were speaking on the telephone. She could be stoned. I tried a long shot.

'When did you start working for the KGB?'

'For what?' Smoke curling out of her mouth, her eyes meeting mine but without any expression.

'The KGB.'

'Are you out of your mind?' But they still didn't change; she was like talking doll. 'I saw a Soviet military truck make an illegal U-turn today across Unter den Linden, and one of our Vopos stopped him — but he didn't get a ticket. I hate those people; it's like they rape us every day. You're not looking for Volper?'

'Who?'

'Horst Volper.' Her eyes blank, indifferent.

I said, 'No.'

She pulled another cigarette out. 'You want one?'

'I quit.'

'I don't know how I'd live without them.'

I was losing a word now and then because of the noise. 'Have you got relatives over there?' Across the Wall.

'Yes.' A flicker of emotion came into the ice-blue eyes. 'My father. I've only seen him three times since I was five. Don't you think that's terrible?'

'He came through to see you?'

'Yes. God, it's like I'm in gaol, isn't it? But then I suppose I am. You know the worst thing? To me, the BDR is Deutschland. West Germany isn't a foreign country; it's German, and so am I. It only feels foreign because I can't go there. Don't you feel that?'

'I've got used to it. And we shan't have the Wall forever. Who knows, Gorbachev might pull it down one day.'

'I can't see that happening,' she said, 'in my lifetime.'

It was another hour before she said goodnight and left the club and I waited three minutes and went up the steps to ground level and saw her getting into a dark-coloured VW with a front wing smashed in and covered with adhesive plastic with the headlamp poking through. Five minutes later I was fifty yards behind her along Franzosischestrasse with a taxi between us and nothing in my mirror, the streets quiet and access to the target for Quickstep depending on the thin thread leading me through the night as the twin rearlights moved ahead of me and I sped up or held back, keeping them in sight.

Northeast along Werderstrasse with the same taxi and a small pick-up truck between us, a black Audi in the mirror: it had come up behind me from a side-street and I discounted it because we'd gone two miles from the club and it was the first I'd seen of it.

Turning right onto Spandauerstrasse with the clock on the dashboard moving through 12:35, into the early hours, and the Audi closing up a little: it had turned right as we had but I still couldn't take it seriously because it was too close. It couldn't be one of Yasolev's people because they'd have tagged me to Charlie's Club and I'd checked when I got there, taking a lot of care. Cone wouldn't have put anyone on to me unless I'd asked for support or unless he'd thought I was going to need it.

Left onto Grunerstrasse with the taxi peeling off and moving down a side-street, leaving the pick-up ahead of me and the rear lights of the Volkswagen showing whenever I veered far enough in the traffic-lane to make a check. There was almost no traffic at this hour and the only police car I'd seen was stationary, three blocks behind.

Eyes watering a little from the thick cigarette smoke at the club, the smell of it on my coat, 12:41 and the thought persisting that I'd handled things correctly, holding off when she'd mentioned Volper, giving her nothing.

I mustn't lose her.

Right onto Karl Marx Allee, 12:45 and the streets almost deserted; another police car cruising north, passing us on the far side. The Audi was still with us but it peeled off a block later, leaving the mirror blank.

12:49.

'98.3.'

It can't be ninety-eight point three. That isn't any kind of time at all.

'Pulse normal.'

The smell of cigarette smoke on my coat, and of something else. 'Blood-pressure 125 over 83.'

Antiseptics. Smell of antiseptics. Terror.

'All right, you can take him off the drip.' The terror of disorientation, of not knowing. 'Lights,' I said. 'Can you turn off the lights?'

Blinding me. I was enveloped in some kind of passive restraint. Blankets.

'Did he say something?' Cone's voice.

'Yes, he's conscious now.'

Conscious? Jesus Christ, of course I'm conscious.

Said, 'Of course I'm conscious.'

It had gone almost dark now, just one lamp burning, like a moon in haze.

'Feel all right?' Cone's face with its eyes squinting and its gash of a mouth, hovering over mine.

'God knows what I feel.' I tried to sit up but the girl in the white linen coat put her hand on my shoulder and I wasn't strong enough to resist.

'You can't get up yet,' a man said in German. Also in a white coat.

'Are you a doctor?'

'Yes.'

Someone else standing there looking down.

Yasolev.

Said, 'Is this a hospital?'

'Yes,' the doctor said.

Some kind of amnesia, then.

'Am I functional?'

'Please?'

'Functional, for God's sake. What injuries?'

'Take it slow,' Cone said. 'You're all right. There's nothing broken.'

Furious now. Panicking. 'Tell me what condition I'm in.'

The sharpest fear of the executive: to become unfit and lose the mission.

'You've come out of hypothermia,' Cone said, 'and there was some concussion and various bruises and some skin ripped off. There's nothing serious.'

'Hypothermia. Cone, fill me in, will you?' Excessively polite, monumentally patient, because my head was full of bells ringing and lights flashing and fireworks going off — the nerves, in other words, had been rubbed raw and the brain was screaming out for information so that I could find my place again in reality. So I had to keep the lid on things, strictly essential.

'You were nearly drowned,' Cone said. 'The police pulled you out of the Spree. The other man was already dead.'

Sensation of black water rising against my face, filling my mouth, blocking my throat — Oh Christ -

'Nurse.'

'Yes, doctor — '

'Take it slow,' Cone said, and the nurse held me by the shoulders, some sort of paroxysm, choking fit, hadn't expected it. 'You swallowed the wrong way, that's all.'

It was a minute before I could speak. 'Out of the Spree? What was I doing there?'

'We're hoping you can tell us.'

There was a sense of oblivion coming into me, of a void. It was enough to chill the blood and I stayed with it alone for as long as I could before I asked for help.

'Doc,' in German, 'I had concussion, is that right?'

'Yes. Mild concussion.'

'Any shock?'

'Shock too, yes, because of the hypothermia and because of the other trauma.'

'I see. Well I — listen, what about retrogressive amnesia?'