This was at 4:13 in the afternoon and at 4:46 I walked into the Airforce administration building in Bruderstrasse and showed my police card to the man at the desk and went across to the elevators and started work.
17: ROOM 60
He was watching me.
The ideal scenario when you go into a building to search one of the offices is that everyone leaves by five o'clock and the doors are shut and there's only the janitor in the basement and you come out of the cleaners' cupboard and start work, but on this particular night there were still some people in the building at six o'clock and it occurred to me that since this was a military administration headquarters they might run a night shift.
Or at least he seemed to be watching me — it wasn't easy to tell. The whole place was a honeycomb of glass and brushed aluminium panels and wherever you looked there were reflections.
I didn't move.
I was sitting in Room 60 and the name of the man who worked here was on the plate outside the door: A. V. Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Directorate. I didn't know what he looked like. If he looked anything like me at a distance of fifty feet through a series of windows and their angled reflections it might go welclass="underline" here was Comrade Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Directorate, still sitting at his desk and catching up on his work. But if he didn't look like me, and I started moving about and opening drawers and going through the filing cabinets it wouldn't go well at alclass="underline" that man at the desk in the office across the corner would be in here to ask who I was and what I was doing, and a captain of the HUA had no right in this place because the military took precedence, and even if I said I was here on some kind of liaison work I'd have to name the officer in the Airforce administration who'd allowed me in here.
In addition to which, this was the office of the Soviet Adviser, and he would be no lightweight: he would be a member of the GRU.
The man across the corridor wasn't in uniform; nor were the others I could see in the more distant offices. My camouflage was thus in order: I'd put on a dark suit and tie, and this at least gave me a chance. And he was on the telephone, the man who seemed to be watching me, and when we're on the telephone we tend to stare at things without really seeing them. On the other hand he might have noticed me after he'd started talking, and might have decided to wait until he'd finished before he came across the corridor to find out who I was.
I suppose it sounds like a harmless intellectual exercise but if that's what you think then you're dead wrong. I'd only been in here five minutes when that man had walked out of the elevator and gone into his office and switched the lights on and sat down at his desk; and when he'd looked up he'd seen me through the glass panels and there hadn't been time for me to drop out of sight and in any case that might have been a mistake because once out of sight I couldn't suddenly appear from nowhere.
The thing is that if anyone came in here and asked who I was it wouldn't be easy, because the military don't get on with the civilian intelligence departments or the secret police and the least they'd do would be to ask me to show my identity card and they'd check on it by phone and find it was false.
Yasolev: The HUA are on no account to know that you are liaising with the KGB.
Someone came out of an office halfway along the corridor and went into the one where the man was at the phone and he looked up and shielded the mouthpiece and this was when he would ask his visitor to go across and check on that man sitting at Comrade Melnichenko's desk, if he were interested.
I waited.
The only man I could call on in the HUA was Captain Karl Bruger, if I had to get out of a sticky situation, and he might not be available or he might have had instructions to deny knowledge of me and I couldn't even call the Soviet ambassador because that would expose the KGB connection and if I blew Yasolev I could blow Quickstep.
Waited.
It wasn't cold in here but I felt the chill. I could possibly get away from the police escort if they tried to take me along for interrogation but they'd know my face again and there'd be an all-points bulletin put out immediately and I'd have to go to ground and stay there, and I had a very definite intuition that even if Yasolev panicked his chief directorate into sending the KGB into East Berlin en masse to escort General-Secretary Gorbachev when he arrived in less than forty-eight hours they wouldn't be able to protect him.
Horst Volper was a professional and he was a specialist and he was believed to be here in this city with the single intention of assassinating Gorbachev and he would expect his target to be heavily escorted and protected, as at all times on foreign soil, and he would make his plans accordingly. The only way to protect the General-Secretary was by finding Volper and incapacitating him.
Incapacitating, Jesus, I was as bad as those snotty-nosed scribes stuck up there in their stuffy little offices in London — killing, yes, we have to kill Volper, get him out of society's way.
'The man at the telephone was still talking to the other one who'd gone into his office and his hand was still blocking the mouthpiece and I still didn't move and it had started to be a test of the nerves, and the sweat was making my scalp itch and I couldn't scratch it, the immobility of my right leg was bringing on cramp and I couldn't move it, well either tell him to come and see who I am or don't.
It was as if he'd heard. He nodded and took his hand away from the mouthpiece and started talking into the telephone again and the other man went out of the office and shut the door and came along the passage with two of his ghostlike reflections moving together across the windows and merging as he got to the corner and turned in this direction, looking down at something in his hand, looking up again and not stopping, not going into any of the other rooms, coming straight on and turning his head to look at me through the glass until he reached the door and opened it.
'Where's Melnichenko?'
'He said he'd be back shortly.'
Looked at the folder in his hand. 'I'd like a word with him.'
'I'll tell him that.'
A nod, turning to go, turning back. 'Have I seen you before?'
'Not unless you've ever visited the Commandant at GRU Headquarters in Moscow.'
Head went back an inch and he opened his mouth but didn't seem o know quite what to say, went out.
I'd spoken German with a Russian accent to make the whole thing plausible but it had been very close and if anyone else came in here they might not be so impressed.
Sitting here like a fish in a bowl and I hadn't expected it, wasn't ready for it. Question of choice at this stage: get out of here and don't stop moving until I hit the street, or stay where I am and ransack this room and risk exposure at any minute. Question of urgency, too: Lena Pabst had said there was a file on Trumpeter in this room, so I was infinitely closer than I'd ever been to finding Volper or blowing his operation. Urgent, then, that I should stay here and take the risk of blowing Quickstep first.
There was also the temptation of picking up the phone and calling Cone.
I'm in a red sector and if I can't get out of it you should be informed that the man who works in Room 60 is A. V. Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Directorate, presumably GRU.
It would then be up to Cone to work out why the file on Trumpeter was in the safekeeping of an officer of the GRU. Two possibilities: the GRU was simply watching the operation and waiting to blow it up, or Trumpeter had nothing to do with Horst Volper.