Quiller KGB

'By the City of East Berlin?'

'Not straight off.'

'Wouldn't you like to sit down too?'

'I'm fine like I am.'

And angry, and beginning to be scared.

'Where did the invitation come from, then, initially?'

'It wasn't exactly an invitation. I got a letter from the British embassy saying that if it'd interest me to bring The Cats here, they'd ask the authorities.'

'The authorities in East Berlin?'

'Well, of course.'

'I just want to be sure I understand you. And who was it at the British Embassy who wrote to you?'

'Mr Pollock.'

'Of course. He's the cultural attache, that's right.' I got up, and one of the stitches pulled. 'That's all I wanted to ask you, Miss Baxter.'

'What have I said?'

Very scared now.

'You've been very cooperative, and you've set my mind at rest.'

'You people are so bloody smooth, aren't you?'

I thought if I offered my hand she might have spat in it. 'Let me wish you a very successful concert. The East Berliners are lucky to have you here.' I went to the door, and she followed, step, step, step in that tiny silver skirt, her eyes bright.

'Okay, Mr Ash, I'm taking a risk, out here. But it's going to be worth it.'

I'd leave that one to Cone.

'Then look after yourself. I mean that.' I opened the door and found the KGB bodyguard outside.

'Mr Ash.'

I looked back at her.

'Will you be at the concert?'

'I hope so.'

'Try and make it.' Eyes shining. 'It'll blow your mind.'

'He knew very little.' Yasolev's eyes were sunk deep under the brows and he was pouring himself another shot of vodka.

'He knew very little, or only said very little?' I wasn't on vodka but it wouldn't have needed much for me to blow up in his face. It'd taken me close to ten hours to snatch whatever I could off the streets and it had been that man Dietrich and I'd handed him over to a KGB colonel with a reputation for squeezing blood out of a stone in an interrogation cell and all he'd come up with was close to zero.

'He said very little, but I believe he would have said more if he had known it.'

Bloody assumption, that was all.

'What about the other man you snatched, the one on the bridge?' Those nicotine-stained eyes of his had never looked at me with this much animosity before and I was warned. I'd come out here to run Quickstep for the KGB and Shepley would quite rightly blast me into Christendom if I provoked Yasolev into calling the whole thing off.

'We had no better fortune.'

A tone of icy control.

'Interrogation,' Cone said, looking at no one, 'doesn't carry a guarantee.'

Pouring oil, so forth, perfectly right. Bureau One would blast him into Christendom too if we lost control.

'Point taken.'

'Thank you,' he said.

I liked his manners. 'All right, Viktor, give us what you got.'

I t was the first time I'd used his Christian name, waving a flag of truce.

'Mr Cone has sent it for analysis to London, and I have of course sent it to Moscow.' I think some of the edge had come off his voice. 'For what it's worth.' He knocked back the shot and absorbed its force. 'He obliged me to use pressure. There was no time for sophisticated procedures.' Hooding, love-hate, psychiatry.

'The General-Secretary,' Cone said, 'arrives here in forty-eight hours, yes.'

'Would you care for some vodka?'

'Thanks, I'll stick to tea.'

A tilt of his head. 'It was also clear that Dietrich didn't have the confidence of Horst Volper. He said that he had only ever spoken to his master on the telephone, and that he spoke German with an English accent. Dietrich has no English. He was no more than a minion, like the man you questioned that night in the river, with as little success.'

Touche.

Cone stepped in. 'How long did it take, with Dietrich?'

'I think perhaps half an hour.'

Mystery of dead man discovered in garage. Signs he may have been tortured.

'The rest of what I have to tell you,' Yasolev said, 'is patched together from the scraps of information Dietrich was willing to part with. My feeling was that the little he gave me was true, that he has never met Horst Volper nor. heard of Trumpeter, and that Volper's operation is aimed at the General-Secretary — as we already knew.'

Cone put his tea-cup back on the tray. 'You think he was talking about assassination?'

'Whether he was talking about assassination or not, I am assuming an attempt will be made. From the information you have given me, it is Volper's speciality. But you can imagine how I feel. I have reported to my department on the inherent risk to Comrade Gorbachev, and that would normally evoke immediate and urgent concern.' A bitter shrug. 'But the visit is not to be cancelled. The General-Secretary's meeting with President Honecker is apparently considered vital. What more can I do?'

'But they'll strengthen the guard.'

His eyes flicked to mine. 'But of course. And we shall request the HUA to do the same. But this is Gorbachev. We must not lose him. He is… precious.'

It was extraordinary how much charisma this new man of theirs possessed. People had gone crazy about him in London and Washington and here was a KGB man getting emotional. Of course he was right: no one could afford to lose this totally different breed of Soviet leader.

'We'll have to do what we can,' I said.

'Do you think — ' he took a step nearer '- do you think that the man Volper has any chance of succeeding?'

Oh God what a question. The answer was even worse. 'Yes.'

'A chance,' Cone said. 'Let's not put it at much more than that.'

'You are not optimistic.' Yasolev looked as if we'd thrust a knife in him.

'Look,' I said. 'We know that Horst Volper specialises in assassination and we know that he's here in Berlin and we know who the target is. He hasn't got a reputation for failing. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't rely on doubling the guard round the General-Secretary. We've got to pick up someone much closer to Volper than these minions. They've been given the job of wiping me out because he thinks I'm a risk and he's damned right — but they don't know anything. We still need information.'

'How do we get it?'

'Tonight,' I told him, 'I'm going to have a look round Room 60 in the Airforce Administration building.' I turned to Cone. 'You filled him in?'

'Yes.'

'I will give you support,' Yasolev said, and I swung on him.

'Viktor, if I see one of your people in the field again I'm going to pack my bags — now is that clear?'

'I gave no instructions to have you followed last night. My agents were following only the tags, in the hope of seizing one. Which we did. We — '

'Oh for God's sake, I really don't know how to convince you.' In English: 'Cone, I'm going to leave you to work on him. I do not want the field cluttered tonight and he's got to understand that.'

'Do what I can.'

'All right. And listen — ' I switched back to Russian '- I'd put someone reliable on Cat Baxter, if I were you, in fact two or three people. Talk to her yourself if she'll see you.'

'What did you get out of her?'

I checked the time. 'I'll have to report on it later because I've got to get into the Airforce building before they close the doors at five. But in brief I think she's playing with fire and it could be some kind of demonstration she's thinking of putting on because Gorbachev's going to be here. We're sitting on dynamite and we can do without some little jumped-up Joan of Arc throwing matches around.'