Ringing tone. Five, six, seven. Not at home.
'I can't be there at the time we agreed on.'
Waited.
'I know, Heinrich. I'm sorry. I'll call you again as soon as I can.'
I put the phone back and said Auf Wiedersehen to the big fat woman and walked out of the cafe and turned left without hesitation and had to go half a mile before a bus slowed at a stop and some people got off and it pulled out again and I kept on walking until the rear doorway was abreast of me and I ran flat out and just made it.
'You shouldn't do that!'
Verboten, so forth.
Pitching a bit as the thing changed gear.
'I could have you arrested!'
Abuse of petty authority; it was all the rage because these poor bastards had no authority, by grace of their Soviet overlords.
'Have a heart, comrade, my wife's ill and I've got to get home.'
But I could have got myself killed, peaked cap and a righteous glare, and then I wouldn't have got home at all, would I, so forth.
Paid the fare and took a seat and used the windows and saw the four-door 230 keeping station at a circumspect fifty metres behind. It had been standing near the cafe in support of the two tags and they'd either climbed in before it moved off or they hadn't; it made no difference: Volper would have a dozen men in the field.
'Is it the flu?'
'What?'
'Your wife.'
'Yes.'
'It's going around. Plenty of rest.'
'That's right.'
There was a chance that they'd try driving me into a corner somewhere and make a snatch instead of a killing. Not a big chance but I couldn't ignore it. I'd come out from London and I'd been holed up with Cone and Yasolev and we'd been in signals and Volper might decide I'd be worth snatching first and grilling before he had me put out of the way. It didn't worry me too much at this stage; they wouldn't find it easy and if I got it wrong then I had the capsule and I wouldn't think twice because there was enough information on the Bureau inside my head to blow it clean out of the European intelligence community.
I got out at Strausbergerplatz and walked as far as Blumenstrasse and they came very close and I felt the air-rush and bounced off the side panel of the front wing and went spinning across the pavement while the tyres squealed and someone caught me before I could go pitching down, the rooftops reeling across the vision-field and the stink of exhaust gas and the terrible fear that they'd stop and get out and finish me off, catch me while I was off balance and unprepared.
'Are you all right?'
Said I was, trying to get focus back, trying to get ready in case they stopped and came for me.
'He must have been drunk!'
Eyes watching me, full of concern, hands on my arms in case I fell.
'Yes. Must've been.'
'Are you hurt anywhere?'
'No. I'm — '
'You were lucky.'
'Yes. I'm all right now. Thank you. Good of you.'
'Do you want to sit down somewhere?'
'No. No, thank you.'
And at a deeper level of consciousness below the polite exchange the creeping of dread, because it had been extremely close and yes indeed I'd been lucky and if they'd come an inch or two nearer they'd have spun me round with a smashed spine and left me face-down on the pavement with my arms flung out, finis, the unfortunate victim of a dastardly hit-an-run accident involving a black Mercedes saloon for which the police are now searching assiduously, so forth, and a signal to London, shadow down.
'Well, I'll be on my way.'
'What? Yes. Yes, very kind, thank you.'
The creeping of dread because however much you're aware that you're inviting attack, however carefully you're playing it by the book, the shock of a close call reminds the psyche that its death is sought, its extermination, eagerly sought; and there's something horribly personal in this, horribly intimate, and it reaches down into the secret confines of the personality and plunders it, and leaves its effect, which can finally be devastating. It's this feeling that brings a man back from a mission with a shut face and slow speech as he sits in one of those small stuffy rooms with his operations director and signs his name on the form, request no further action in the field.
Walking on, bumping into someone — Verzeihen Sie — then finding equilibrium again, walking past the line at a bus stop at 4:15 in the afternoon with the dark down and the tops of the buildings lost in a creeping fog.
It had been like a shark.
More people in the streets now, the traffic bunching at the lights. Another hour and work would be over.
Like a shark, that thing.
Yes, like a shark, shuddup. The end of the working day would be over and they could get into their coats and line up for the buses and the trams and the trains and go home.
With its jaws open when it came past.
Oh for the sake of Jesus Christ shuddup, it's over now and we're still alive, it's not the first time you've come close to blowing it. Stamping their feet at the bus stop, breath like steam, going home, sweet home, with all the evening in front of them, a nice hot dish of sauerkraut and spuds, or would you like to see a movie tonight?
4:20 in the afternoon and this one man moving among all the others, not of them, not of their company but isolated, an outcast, threading his clandestine way through the city on his own surreptitious purposes, while the Mercedes turned again at the Andreasstrasse intersection and started a loop for the second time, and the man in the black wool coat and scarf kept pace on the other side.
I would like to see a movie, yes. I would like to see a movie very much.
Walking a little quicker now; the scenario required it: I still had a rendezvous to keep and I still had to throw off the surveillance before I could keep it.
Waited ten minutes for a bus and got on and saw the Mercedes three vehicles behind and the Lancia parked near the U-Bahnhof with its engine running: I could see the exhaust gas.
This at least I knew now: they wouldn't try for a snatch in the hope of' grilling me. They were here for a kill of whatever kind — at close quarters or with a hit-and-run attack or a premeditated set-up involving precision. The shark thing had just been impulsive, but it proved their intention: death in the afternoon.
At 4:38 I got onto a train at Ost-Bahnhof and took it as far as Ostkreuz, with one of the men who'd been in the cafe getting on soon after me and sitting with his back turned at the end of the compartment, facing a glazed poster with useful reflection. Back in the street at Ostkreuz I walked south along Markgrafendamm with the same man behind me and a BMW cruising in from a side street: the people on foot would have been using their radios but there hadn't been time for the Mercedes or the Lancia to get here — they wouldn't have known where I was until I got off the train and they had the signal. They'd brought in the BMW from somewhere closer; it had pulled into the traffic twice and stopped twice, keeping its distance.
At Straulauer Allee I went into a cafe and used the phone. Steamy windows and the smell of stale cigarette-smoke and a litter of crumbs and slops on the plastic tables, two cab-drivers with a jug of coffee and a sandwich from the machine, a man in the corner, possibly a tag, his attitude too casual, a man coming in, certainly a tag, the one who'd been on the train.
'Hello?'
'I still can't throw them off.'
'What? This is Frau Hauffman.'
'All I can do is phone you when there's a chance.'
'Who are you, please?'
'Don't leave the phone; I'll call you again soon.'
I believe you have the wrong number, so forth; neither of them moved when I walked out of the cafe into the Allee and across to Elsenstrasse and the bridge.