I opened the top left drawer while the last thought went through the processing stage; then it came back very fast indeed. Play it again:
'Trumpeter had nothing to do with Horst Volper.
Nothing to do with the assassination.
Then what was it to do with? Something of major importance, because soon after Lena Pabst had started infiltrating it she'd been found shot dead.
No question now: pick up the phone.
While I waited for the, ringing tone I watched one of the reflections of the man in the office over there; he wasn't interested in me: he'd put the phone down and was writing.
Five rings.
Eight.
Someone came into reflection from the direction of the elevator and his images merged and then split apart again. I watched him.
At the tenth ring I pressed the contact down and waited and let it up again. Dialling tone.
He was coming in this direction and I closed the top left drawer.
Ringing.
Where did Cat Baxter come in?
Four rings.
I know I'm taking a risk. What had she meant? A risk of what?
He came past the door without turning his head, a young man, uniformed, lower rank. You do not, if you are lower rank, glance in at the offices of the directorate.
'Yes?'
Yasolev.
'Liaison.'
'Well?'
'For your information, Room 60 is the office of A. V. Melnichenko, Soviet Adviser to the Airforce Directorate. I assume he's GRU, not KGB, this being a military headquarters. It — '
'Wait.'
Making notes.
'Yes?'
'It could be possible that the Trumpeter operation is not being run by Horst Volper, and has nothing to do with our main concern.' A KGB officer with a room in an East Berlin hotel uses a telephone that is totally free of bugs, but I shied at mentioning the name of Gorbachev as the target of an assassination project.
'Perhaps Melnichenko has acquired the file and is observing the operation.'
'Giving it rope, yes, that's possible. But I phoned you because if the other possibility is fact, there's got to be a major switch in our thinking. We've got to infiltrate two operations.'
In a moment: 'We already suspected this.'
Because Dietrich, under the intense pressure of interrogation, had known nothing about Trumpeter.
'Yes. This seems to confirm it. I'll leave it to you, all right?'
'Yes. I shall go to work on it immediately. But I am concerned about your position. If you are found in that building — '
'I've been in hazard before. You'll hear from me as soon as I'm clear.'
'Very well. I hope — ' I could see him shrug.
'Over and out.'
I rang off.
He wouldn't waste any time. Immediate signal to Moscow: Require all possible information on A. V. Melnichencko, believed to be a member of the GRU. Also try the personnel files of the KGB. Request immediate and most urgent attention.
My hand went to the drawer again but I froze on another thought. I'd just told Yasolev that it was possible that Trumpeter had nothing to do with "our main concern", simply because it was nothing to do with Horst Volper. That could be dangerous thinking. Crows are black but all black birds are not crows.
Were there two independent operations with Gorbachev as the target for both of them?
Mother of God.
You must understand that inside the Kremlin there are factions opposed to the Comrade General-Secretary's policy of perestroika. Yasolev, in that chill dawn among the trees. Inside the KGB there are factions similarly opposed.
Hand on the drawer.
And inside the GRU?
I would have liked to talk to Cone. He'd said that if I couldn't reach him at the hotel I should try the Soviet Embassy but he might not be there either and I didn't want to spend any more time on the phone; I wanted to rip this office apart and find the Trumpeter file and get clear before someone else came in here and asked if he'd seen me before and refused to be put off by the Russian accent.
There came to me, my good friend, as I sat here at Comrade Melnichenko's desk in this hall of mirrors, in the centre of this critically red sector, the feeling that I had also arrived at the centre of Quickstep, at the point where the entire mission had become focused, its components coalescing into a gem-hard reality. It was a good feeling. The wounds I'd received out here in the field, the underlying grief for those who had met their death — Scarsdale, Skidder, Dietrich, the man on the bridge, the smouldering distrust I felt for Yasolev, even Cone, even Shepley, the paranoid suspicion that they were setting me up, all of them, and running me through this city like a rat in a maze — all these things were leaving my mind, so that my attention could become focused, like the mission itself, on the immediate and paramount objective. The Trumpeter file.
I've had this feeling before, and I've learned to trust it. It's a good feeling, yes. But do not be quick, my friend, with your congratulations. The centre of any mission is like the eye of the hurricane, and there was the warning in the blood, in the atavistic brain stem, that if I didn't leave this treacherous hall of mirrors while I had the chance I would lose the day, and all I would know would be the dying echoes of the explosion as Quickstep blew apart.
Bang of a door and the nerves jerked and I watched the man going along the passage to the elevator, the man who had been in the office across the corner. His room was dark now.
Only two others were still lit, but the passage itself was bright under the argon tubes. They would be left going all night, for the janitors.
I could see six faces from where I sat, two of them substantial except tier the filming of the glass, four of them reflections. From where they sat they could see three faces, all of them mine.
Movement attracts the eye at the periphery of the vision-field; nothing is actually seen, only movement, but it brings attention, and turns the head. It took time, therefore, to reach the filing cabinet in the corner, perhaps fifteen minutes. It wasn't important; but I'd had to move in the chair, lowering my body behind the desk, by imperceptible degrees, and by the time I was at the filing cabinet in the corner of the room the muscles were trembling from the strain. But there were no faces in the windows now.
There wouldn't be anything on Trumpeter here in the cabinet; even if the drawers were locked it'd be dangerously accessible: there'd be a wall-safe somewhere and I would look for it. But this was the only corner of the room where I was invisible, so I could do some work here to pass the time. The man who had left his office wouldn't be the last; the other two would follow — there wasn't, after all, a night-shift here. If I were wrong then I'd have to rethink.
The drawers were locked but I'd brought the keys I'd been looking for in the desk and I used them now.
Aircraft deployment — States of Readiness — Estimated Scramble Delay.
The second drawer held personnel statistics, the third drawer an inventory of ordnance and specialised weaponry, the fourth a breakdown of the fighter units and their strategical disposition throughout the Democratic Republic. The bottom drawer was more interesting: Werneuchen Base: Deployment of Aircraft — Availability of Optimum Strength — Personnel.
It didn't surprise me that Werneuchen was featured and had an entire drawer to itself. My air base, Werneuchen, is in the front line of the war. Lena Pabst, her dark eyes shimmering. I am in the front line of the last war on earth, and when it's over I shall still be here to see the dawn of the new world.