Quiller KGB

I picked up the phone again. 'Something I had to see to. All right, but you'd have to give me your word that you'll send no one into this area unless I fail to make that call.'

It took him a few seconds. 'I will send no one.'

'Fair enough. I'm in the cellar underneath Charlie's Club. Got that? If I don't make the call, you can send in a whole platoon of the KGB and blow the place open.' I was watching Pollock as I said that, and he looked very surprised, though he kept most of it blanked off. I was beginning to think he was a. spook of some sort, running his own thing. 'Look,' I told Cone, 'I don't want to handle this on my own for the moment just for kicks. The thing is it's so bloody sensitive that I want a clear field to work in until I know which way we're facing. But I'll give you everything I've got as soon as I'm ready. I hope you can accept that.'

A question of manners.

In a moment, 'Yes, I can live with it for now.'

'I'll phone at 7:45.'

Rang off.

Pollock hadn't moved; he was standing on one leg with his back and his other foot against the wall, his cigarette half through. Schwarz was moving up and down, less tall than he'd seemed before: it had been in comparison with the other pilot; but he was much thinner and his face was hollowed and his eyes strained, his mouth tight, a nervy man, his own cigarette-end already in the tin ashtray on the floor by one of the chairs.

Pollock: 'I think we could use a drink, couldn't we?'

With care I asked him: 'Where is Horst Volper?'

'I've no idea.'

'Look, I can play it two ways. I can pick up the phone and get the KGB here and give you over to them for exhaustive interrogation under a very bright light or I can get all the information I want out of you here and now and in relative comfort, if that's your choice. But if that's your choice, don't think you can piss me about.'

Pulling in smoke, blowing it out. 'We really have no idea where Horst Volper is. He's nothing to do with us, but I know he's in East Berlin on an operation of his own, and I personally know that you're working his case.'

Secret Service idiom, not Bureau. Meant Volper was my objective.

'Who's your chief of station at the embassy?'

'Technically, Saunders.'

'DI6?'

'Yes.,

'But they're not running Trumpeter.'

'No, that's mine.' The back of his head was against the wall too, and he was sighting me along his nose. He looked relaxed. He wasn't. 'When I say mine, I mean I'm just coordinating it all from this centre.'

DI6 idiom again. 'As a freelance?'

'Of course.' Sudden bright smile. 'They wouldn't do anything like this.'

I knew that. 'Lena Pabst,' I said. 'Whose orders?'

It brought him off the wall and he went over to the ashtray, not looking at me. 'No one's orders, and certainly not mine.' I heard anger in the tone.

'Who shot her, then?'

'Bader.'

'Who's he?'

'The man you messed up.'

'The pilot who's just left here?'

'Yes. I pitched into him over that.' Putting his hands into his pockets, pushing his fists out, the old school habit. 'In fact I said I was going to drop the whole thing.'

'Why didn't you?'

He took a deep breath. 'Melnichenko said I'd have to stay in and see it through. He said it was too important.' In a moment: 'It is.'

'Too important to let a little thing like killing a woman bother you.'

Self-righteous bastard, I was as guilty as anyone, sending her into an infiltration exercise that I should have known might be lethally dangerous.

'I'm sorry about that part of things,' Pollock said quietly. 'Very sorry.' He switched to German and looked at the pilot. 'What happened when I heard about Lena Pabst?'

A shrug. 'You hit the roof.'

'What else? Be more specific.' I heard the edge to his tone and the authority in it. The clean white smile of his was just something he flashed on and off when he was being cultural attache to the British embassy.

'You said you were finished with us,' Schwarz said.

Pollock looked back at me. 'Make up your own mind.'

'She must have been doing very well. Getting very close.'

'That's why Bader panicked.'

'Is he anything more than a bomber pilot?'

'He's not in intelligence, if that's what you mean.'

'I mean precisely what I. said. Is he anything more than a pilot? I want straight answers, Pollock, so don't fuck me about.'

Not keeping my cool terribly well, no, but in the last hour I'd been In handcuffs with a hood over my head and absolutely sure I'd taken the final calculated risk and then I'd found I was right in the nerve-centre of Trumpeter, and there was a lot of work to do before I could move into the end-phase and find Volper and put him away before the Soviet leader landed in East Berlin with a massive protection screen that would still be penetrated by Volper's operation unless we could stop him, so I wasn't in the mood to put up with less than straight answers.

'Bader's no more than a bomber pilot,' Pollock said evenly. 'Except for his involvement in Trumpeter.'

'What about this bloody fool here?'

I was watching Schwarz and his eyes didn't change. I wasn't being rude: I wanted to know if he understood English, to know that when he said that Pollock was 'finished with them' he hadn't just been picking up from what Pollock had said earlier, that he'd been going to 'drop the whole thing'.

No reaction from Pollock either; he knew what I was doing. 'It's the same with him. He's just in the mission with us.'

'And what is the mission?'

Dead silence while the tension in the room hit infinity, and this was understandable. Of the hundred or two questions I was going to ask tonight, that was the ringer.

I waited. Everything depended on this. I could blow Trumpeter and they knew it, but I wasn't ready to do that until I had a lot more answers. One thing stuck out from the rest: I couldn't see this man Pollock involved in an operation against Mikhail Gorbachev.

In a moment: 'Difficult to say.'

'Then get Melnichenko here.

'Right-o.' He sounded almost relieved.

As he went to the telephone I said, 'Pollock, this is exactly what you'll say. Can you come here immediately? It's urgent. Repeat that.'

He did, and got it right.

'If you slip in any other word, I'm going to tell the KGB to take over, and God help you.'

'Point taken.' He picked up the phone and dialled.

I listened carefully and he got it right again and rang off before Melnichenko could put any questions.

'Is this an extension line?'

'No,' he said. 'It's separate.'

'Then you can ask the people upstairs to send down whatever you want to drink. It's going to be a long night.'

'I rather think it is.' He was trying to relax, but wasn't managing; the quick clean smile didn't work any more. 'What'll you have?'

Black Russian tea, no lemon.'

'Jurgen?'

'Beer,' Schwarz said, and dropped into a chair. He was worried about Bader; I assumed they were close friends.

When Pollock put the phone down I asked him: 'You're still officially in DI6?'

'I suppose so. I mean, yes, I am, but if they knew what I was doing they'd throw me straight out.'

'What have you been doing officially?'

'Oh,' he sat down too, leaning forward, playing with his hands, 'mostly I've been feeding stuff from some of the AIPs here to the desk. Then I did a special for them, last year. The Ericson exchange.'

'You supervised that one?'

'I initiated it. We — '

'From which end?'