Quiller KGB

But this is not convenient, good citizens.

I have plans, you see, and I don't need help with them, so why don't you mind your own bloody business and let me -

Steady.

There's nothing you can do about it now, so -

But I wouldn't have fallen, for Christ's sake -

Possibly not. By no means certainly not, but possibly not.

Move, keep moving -

Not terribly wise, to hurry. You get another wind gust like the last one and -

Move, get going, there's still time to find a safe place before they -

Actually no.

A fire engine, immense, with its sirens and bull-horns cutting out as it came to a halt below. That was all I saw because the movement and the colour was disturbing the visual equilibrium and that was dangerous. I heard men running and the moan of a winch-engine.

What were you doing on the ledge?

I was contemplating suicide, so forth, because there was nothing else I could say.

What's your department, captain?

Not known, not known there.

Interrogation.

Finis.

I went on moving because I wasn't far now from the corner of the building and there was a million-to-one chance of reaching the next wall if I could manage the right-angle turn, of reaching it and finding some kind of escape, a roof below where I could drop and break the fall and run, a million-to-one.

Oh, bullshit, you haven't got a chance in hell.

Perfectly right.

Movement at the edge of the vision-field and I looked down as far as the next window below me on the building opposite and saw the reflection of the ladder.

The whole street was filled with noise by now and I suppose there was a crowd down there. The police radios would be busy: I could hear a chorus of three sirens loudening from the distance.

In a workers' state, captain, attempted suicide is seen as anti-social and irresponsible. We -

All right, I'll take over. He's not known in that department. There's more to this than attempted suicide. I'm taking him in for questioning.

Window behind me: I'd got almost as far as the corner, Gott straffe their bloody workers' state and social expectations.

Wind gust and I braced against it, the nerves shocked again and the sweat coming chill on the skin, don't move, hold still, you are not safe yet, you are not in safety.

I took in what I could without disturbing the equilibrium: the top of the ladder was still rising and from the reflections in the windows opposite I could see that a fireman had started climbing as the winch-motor moaned below. The sirens had neared and died short, cut off as the vehicles reached the scene; voices floated upwards as the crowd grew bigger. This was better than television, better even than the Western stations, though not so colourful of course; one man on a wall could hardly qualify for casting in Lives of the Rich and Famous, nothing so fancy.

No, sir, we're taking him along for questioning; for one thing his police papers are false, so there's a great deal we want to know. He was also found on the Airforce administration building.

The winch crew on the fire engine were very good: the top of the ladder was now leaning on the wall beside me and the fireman was only a few rungs below.

'You all right?'

'Yes,' I said, but at last I'd got leverage and I grabbed the top rung and arched my spine and lowered my head and smashed my way backwards through the window behind me and pitched into the room.

19: CHECKPOINT

Three rings.

Cone: 'Yes?'

'Liaison. I think I can get clear of the red sector, but I'm not sure. I'm phoning you to confirm Soviet Adviser A. V. Melnichenko's involvement in Trumpeter. Listen carefully: he will be at Werneuchen Airforce Base when the target arrives. That clear?'

'Yes. Where — '

'Yasolev will obviously recommend the target lands at Schonefeldt instead. I think we should treat Melnichenko as highly suspect and get London to put his name into the computer for background. Clear?'

'Clear. Where are you now?'

Police car.

'In the streets.' I did not want support.

'Then you'll have to be careful. I had a call from Karl Bruger an hour ago and it looks as if Volper or someone else has blown you to the HUA.'

I think I flinched. 'I'm listening.'

'Bruger told me there's an all-points bulletin out for your arrest for questioning, and they've got a photograph.'

It was probably one of the police cars that had been protecting the scene below the Airforce building. I watched it cross the intersection, heading away from the phone box.

'How did they get the photograph?'

I have never felt so cold.

'It could have been taken at any time with a telescopic lens. When you arrived in Berlin, or when you left the club at lunch time yesterday. Bruger says there's hardly any grain and the light was sharp.'

'I see.'

I was sorry for him, for Cone. The director in the field is meant to keep the executive in signals with London and to observe his progress through the mission and report on it and monitor feedback from the Bureau and pass on what he feels to be necessary; to love, cherish and act as nursemaid if the executive is beyond the ability to help himself, and to respond to an emergency by calling in whatever help he can from sleepers, agents-in-place and in extreme cases the intelligence chief-of-station at the British embassy.

The director in the field is not expected to inform the executive that he has been exposed to the host-country's police forces and intelligence services, but that is what Cone had just had to do and I felt sorry for him.

The streets had been dangerous for me since I'd arrived in Berlin but only because of the opposition's limited surveillance and hit teams. The streets were now the more dangerous to an infinite degree: the whole city had become a red sector.

Mr Shepley?

Speaking.

We've just had to revise the signals board. The DIF reports the executive has become the subject of an APB and the Berlin police have been ordered to arrest him on sight for questioning.

On the board it would be expressed more briefly than that, with a red-and-white striped line underneath my name and the time the information came in. For an executive behind the Curtain it's not uncommon to be the subject of an arrest-on-sight order during the last phases of a mission. It is not uncommon, but it is nonetheless hazardous in the extreme.

'Is there anything,' Cone asked me, 'I can do?'

'Yes. I'd feel easier if you could man that phone constantly until I can stabilise things.'

'I'll have my food sent in.'

'If you've got to leave the phone, get Yasolev in. But he can't signal London and we might need to do that, any time now. I don't — '

'I'll be standing by without a break. Is there anything else?'

'No. I'm going to ground and I'll phone you when I'm there.'

Another police car, cruising slowly. I turned my back to the street.

'I'd like,' Cone said quietly, 'to send you some support. I've got six men.'

'Offer them my respects.'

I rang off and waited until the police car had crossed the intersection and then I walked into the alley and reached the next street and got into the BMW and for a moment sat doing nothing, thinking of nothing, letting the muscles go limp and feeling the mood deepening towards the alpha state, and the benison of not caring, not knowing, not being afraid.