Quiller KGB

'Skidder!'

Anything more.

There was just the white flare of the light playing on us and his face, Skidder's face close to mine with its eyes open and its mouth hanging slack, his dead weight on my hands, and voices now, voices calling from the top of the bank, a door slamming and a man running, more lights as another car swung from the higher road and pulled up with its siren dying.

Conscious thought slipped into illusion: I was aware of the police cars and the men coming down the bank and the man in my arms and the dark flat surface of the river reaching forever beyond the brilliance of the lights, but they were all unreal, a chimera, and the only reality was this gripping cold, sapping the strength and numbing the mind, turning me into something immovable, an entity that was losing its significance — watch it — and now the beginning of euphoria as the will to move gave way to the comfort of deciding to make no effort — move, for God's sake, move — no more effort, just the feeling of letting go, with the water lapping against my throat now, against my mouth — move move move you're drowning — and a man with a peaked cap and other men, uniforms; 'it's all right, we've got you, hang onto me now' and the bright lights spinning and the man's face watching, watching me from slightly above, nodding, making a note.

'You were pretty far gone, yes, when they found you.'

'Oh Jesus, it was so cold, I tell you.'

Nodding again. 'And you remember being brought in here?'

'Yes. Most of it. I mean there was nothing very specific about it; I knew they'd dragged me out of the river but I was shaking badly and I didn't want to take much notice of anything. Hot drink, beef broth, I think.'

''They did a good job.' He switched off the recorder. forced that man too hard and got nothing from him, or next to nothing, rage, too, about what Cone had done, rage and depression because of a death on my hands, and above all the knowledge that because of all these things I'd left Quickstep to founder out there in the night-dark waters of the river.

9: TEA

Umdrehen auf dein Magen, bitte.'

I turned over onto my stomach and she began again, a huge woman, huge hands, but experienced, feeling the exact degree of pain she was giving, keeping it under control.

'No. Not for a few days.'

Cone was sitting on the edge of the chrome-framed vinyl chair near the bed, the phone in his hand.

'Entspannen, bitte, loslassen.'

I went as limp as I could. It was mainly the right shoulder, where I'd been thrown against the rear quarter of the Mercedes. The rest consisted of abrasions and wasn't serious, wasn't hampering.

The curtains were open and the glow from the floodlit Wall was on the ceiling, like the reflection of snow.

'I'll ask him, sir.' Louder, 'Morale?'

'Not very high,' I told him. 'We'll have to talk about that.'

I couldn't see his face from where I was lying on the massage table but he was quiet for a moment before he spoke again, repeating what I'd said to Shepley. A bruised shoulder and a few abrasions and the lingering effects of hypothermia didn't amount to anything major, considering how close I'd come, but the morale of the executive in the field is vital to his operation and if I couldn't deal with the angst it was quite likely that Shepley would pull me out and replace me before I endangered Quickstep and the critically sensitive Bureau-KGB relationship.

'Bleiben entspannen fur zehn Minuten, bitte.'

'Ja. Danke, Fraulein.'

'Bitte.'

I rolled off and went over to the bed and lay there while she folded the legs of the portable table and went lumbering out with it.

That bloody Audi: he'd have to explain that.

'Sir? No, the opponent was lost. Yes, I'll be getting a report for you. No, the only product amounted to a few words. There was — 'he broke off and listened and then said, 'Ash, can you take the phone?'

I sat up on the bed and he gave it to me.

'Executive.'

'What did you get out of him?'

This was going over scrambled: that man Binns had hooked up a T3 to the phone. 'He said the target is Gorbachev.'

'And that is all?'

'Yes.'

'Do you consider it was worth the consequences?'

He meant Skidder's death. 'It confirms who the target is and it's knocked out one of their hit-men.' I thought I was going to stop at that but the anger needed relief. I didn't raise my voice. 'If you think I should have got more out of him I'll remind you that we weren't sitting in a cosy interrogation room; we were up to our necks in freezing water and he didn't break easily.'

'I implied nothing. Have Cone come to the telephone again, will you?'

I passed it to him and tuned out what he was saying. It wasn't totally unlikely that Bureau One would order him to pull me out of the mission for mishandling the Skidder thing and letting it affect my morale.

'Something for us to work on,' Cone said, when he'd put the phone down. 'One of our sleepers out here got his wavelengths crossed with someone's transmitter and picked up Werneuchen Airforce Base as the site of a clandestine operation. Mr Shepley suggests you do some work on it.'

I opened my eyes. 'Volper's operation?'

'They don't know.'

'Werneuchen,' I said, 'is a bomber base.'

'See what you can find out. But I need your report before we do anything else. Feel up to it?'

I said yes and he got the recorder and put it on the edge of the bed and pulled his chair closer and switched the thing on and said, 'Report on terminal incident, DIF Cone, executive Quiller.' He gave the time and the date and sat back.

'The loss was unintended,' I said into the recorder. 'I had to judge how far to go with the subject, and how fast. This was difficult because there was very limited time and we were both feeling the onset of hypothermia.'

His blunt, heavy face bobbing at the surface of the water, his eyes not looking at me, though we were face to face.

'There was no personal element involved. It's my feeling that if I hadn't pressed him he would have lost consciousness before I got anything out of him at all. Or he would have gone on blocking.'

The weight of his body under my hands as we swayed together in that freezing river, both of us near death, thrown together like flotsam on the tide of circumstance and performing our little danse macabre to the tune of sirens in the night.

'I have no compunction. I feel no remorse.'

But I'm depressed, I tell you, I'm bloody depressed.

The compunction and remorse bit's always asked for in these reports because some of us can take a man's life like swatting a fly but others find it affecting their work, the mission, and they're often pulled out.

'The subject had been trying hard to kill me and that had been his intention; the trap had been set specifically to accomplish that. Hence no remorse. I regard it as having been in the day's work, but I admit to a feeling of depression and this is normal for me after a terminal incident.'

Words, words, oh my God words, it does matter when you cut down a human life and the fact that he was trying to wipe me out had got nothing to do with it. There was that awful sound, the gurgling, and that had got everything to do with it, the sound of someone drowning like a dog while I went on pushing him under and blocking the force of my natural instinct to save him.