Quiller KGB

'No. He's at the embassy.'

'His own?'

'Yes. What's the position?'

'They're being uncooperative, so I'm going to throw them to the dogs. I'll keep you well informed.'

I think he was going to ask something else but I rang off. 'Commandant Melnichenko, how long have you been here in East Berlin?'

'Almost three years.' He was looking particularly bland, but his head was glistening.

'Then you see quite a bit of the Soviet ambassador.'

'I do, yes.'

'And you're familiar with his private telephone number.'

'Yes.'

He was sitting near enough to the phone to be able to see what I was dialling, and that was all I wanted.

'Chancery.'

'I'd like to speak to Ambassador Polyakov.'

'I'm sorry, but he is dining now. May I take a message?'

'Tell him Liaison is on the line.'

He asked me to repeat it and I did; he was confused because it wasn't a name.

Pollock got up and started mooching about. I was sorry for him: he'd had his mission blown from under him, but it was his own fault. He shouldn't have given these pilots such a free hand; they weren't in intelligence and didn't know how to operate.

'Polyakov.'

'Your excellency, let me apologise for disturbing you at dinner.'

'It doesn't matter, because in any case the duck was a disaster. I requested flambe, not incinere. What can I do for you?'

'Do you know a Commandant A. V. Melnichenko?'

'I do.'

'Is he here in an official capacity as a member of the GRU?'

'As far as I know. He's an adviser to the Airforce.'

'Thank you. Is Colonel Yasolev there this evening?'

'I'll call him to the phone.'

Pollock was still on the move, hands dug into his pockets, fists pushed out. I put a hand over the mouthpiece.

'Colonel Yasolev is KGB. He'll be your chief interrogator; it's his speciality.'

I'd spoken in German so that Melnichenko and Schwarz could pick it up.

Laughter broke out faintly from the rooms above, an odd sound, surrealistic in this context.

'Yasolev.'

'Good evening. Let me ask a question. Would you be ready to put two people under intensive interrogation immediately?'

'But of course.'

Pollock had stopped walking about, and was staring at the floor. Melnichenko was wiping his face. I was speaking in Russian, and Schwarz wasn't getting anything, but he was watching the other two, and that was good enough.

'As you know,' I told Yasolev, 'we haven't got much time left. You may have to be very persuasive.'

'These people are with you now?'

'Yes. But they're refusing to talk. I know you'll be more successful.'

'Is it a suitable place?'

'It's a cellar, but it's not really soundproof. You can do it at KGB headquarters, can't you?'

'Of course.'

'Then I'll have them available for you to pick up. I'd suggest four men and a van. I don't — '

I broke off because Pollock was looking at me.

'No KGB,' he said. 'Full disclosure. Deal?'

'If you don't change your mind.'

'It wouldn't make sense, would it?'

'Yasolev,' I said into the phone, 'go and finish your dinner and I'll call on you again when everything's ready.'

'But I insist on knowing what's happening. Are these two of Volper's people?'

'No. You can ask Cone about it: I've got my hands rather full.'

I told him I'd keep in close touch and rang off and dialled Extension 525 at the hotel.

Second ring.

'It's time you came down here,' I told Cone. 'Bring the tape recorder and five sixty-minute tapes, plus the mains charger.' I looked at Pollock. 'Where exactly is the door to this cellar?' I'd had the bag over my head when I'd been brought here.

'It's on the east side of the building at the end of the car park. Green door, next to some railings.'

I told Cone. 'And listen, this location is strictly covert. Strictly.'

I didn't want to mention Yasolev's name again and let Pollock know that I was keeping him uninformed. It was simply that it wasn't the time to let the KGB loose on Trumpeter; it sounded much too sensitive.

'Understood,' Cone said. 'Shall I tell Jones?'

'No. It's not his concern.'

He was just making sure I wasn't in fact a captive and phoning him under duress to bring him into a trap: I'd told him earlier that I was in the Trumpeter operations room. If I'd said yes — tell Jones — he would have had this place surrounded straight away and put under siege conditions.

'I won't be long,' he said.

'Can somebody open that door?'

Place was stinking of cigarette smoke, getting in the eyes. There'd been a bit of hope a couple of hours ago when Pollock had thrown his empty packet of Players' onto the table, but he'd called the barman upstairs to bring another one. I hadn't stopped him because I'd wanted his nerves kept sedated.

Schwarz went up the steps to open the door.

It was gone three o'clock and the place was littered with plastic plates and the remains of bread and blood-sausage and sauerkraut and hard-boiled eggs and everything looked in a real mess but we'd got Trumpeter nailed down, the whole thing.

And Pollock was perfectly right: if we let this one go forward to completion it could change Europe, and the world.

'I shall have to inform London,' Cone said at last.

He'd been edifying to watch, sitting there for hours in the seedy plush chair with his thin chilblained hands folded on his lap and his eyes squinting from one to the other as Pollock and Melnichenkov had answered the questions, listening with great care and sometimes asking for repetitions, sometimes trying to trap them into conceding they were holding something back, once or twice succeeding and leading them on again, bringing in a whole string of questions about Cat Baxter and her critical role in the operation, cornering Pollock once or twice and carefully bringing out the relationship between him and Melnichenko. Pollock answered most of the questions, using fluent German, but now the Russian got out of his chair and loomed over us, wiping his face the whole time.

'But why must you "inform London," as you put it? Who is "London"?'

'My department,' Cone said.

'Your department of what intelligence agency?'

Cone looked at me and said, 'I think we've got all we want here. Unless you've got any questions?'

He'd been hitting the pause button on the recorder a dozen times a minute for hours on end, editing out inconsequential material as he went along. His finger was on it now.

'It's out of my field,' I told him, 'at this stage.' I'd blown Trumpeter and it was for Cone to give a brief outline to Bureau One and let him take it from there. 'You might want to question Bader some time. He's the second pilot.'

'Where is he?'

'In hospital.'

'What's his problem?'

'He got injured.'

'Very well.' This was Melnichenko, having another go. 'Very well, it is for you to ask the questions. But I fail to understand why you should inform your government. This operation is strictly to do with the USSR and Germany, as you must surely realise.'

Cone said nothing, sat watching him.

'We've done our best,' Pollock told Cone. 'This has been a very thorough debriefing. I think you owe us consideration.'

'I'll give you five minutes,' Cone said, and looked at his watch. 'It might take a bit — '

'This is a Soviet enterprise.' Melnichenko was standing over Cone, his pink hands flat with the fingers spread, orchestrating what he was saying. 'The Soviets alone are responsible for the consequences.' Thumping his chest — 'I am responsible for the consequences, not Pollock, not you, not your government. The action will take place on East German soil, the soil of a country under Soviet protection. Our intention is to advance General-Secretary Gorbachev's efforts to bring the USSR into the open, into the world community; our intention is not to harm him, and we have made that plain enough. You say your mission is to protect him. So, indirectly, is ours.' Spreading his hands, holding the crescendo — 'Now, come, let each of us get on with our own business.'