Quiller Solitaire

'I don't think I will.' He stirred the scum on the surface of his tea. 'On the other hand, if you can get away with it, I realise a thing like that would deal with quite a lot of the angst going on in your soul, and that of course would please me. The eye-for-an-eye principle really does do the job, despite the fact that in my opinion it's morally indefensible. But then again, you're not passionately concerned with my opinion on the moral indefensibility of anything in the world, are you?'

'Not really.'

I took another go at the tea. It tasted like sewage but it was hot and there was enough caffeine in it to keep sleep away for a bit and give me the edge I'd need for my meeting with Shatner.

'But in the final analysis,' Holmes said, and I began listening carefully because his voice had gone very quiet, 'what really worries me is that if they decide to put a mission on the board to deal with the McCane incident, and if they give it to you -since you're obviously going to ask for it – you might easily, somewhere along the line, blow everything up.' His eyes watched mine. 'Blow everything up,' he said, 'just because you're a man of too much overweening pride and you can't stand the idea that you've failed someone. Tell me,' he said gently, 'if I'm talking absolute rubbish.'

In a moment I said, 'No. You're not.' Because there was a risk, yes, if I let personal considerations get in the way of the mission. It's one of the really critical dangers we face when we're out there in the field, because it doesn't come from the opposition: it comes from inside ourselves. Pull up the drawbridge and drop the portcullis, but the enemy within the citadel will undo you.

Holmes lowered his head an inch, his eyes watching me from the deepened shadow of his brows. 'I know, of course, that there's nothing I can do to stop you. All I ask is that before you take a risk as big as that, you'll give it some thought before you see Mr Shatner. And if you still decide to see him, be very, very careful.'

Chapter 2: SHATNER

I was on the third floor when they paged me and I saw Shatner coming out of Clearance and waited for him while he ducked his head back through the doorway for a moment.

'Tell him that if he can't get here in time, I'll send someone along to clear him on the plane.' He came into the corridor again and saw me and gave me a direct look, taking in the nerves and the fatigue. 'Oh yes, you want to talk to me, don't you?' He led me along to his room on the other side of Codes and Ciphers, dropping into one of the big leather chairs with the torn hide, stuffing coming out of them in places – they'd furnished this whole building from a discount junk shop, typical of them, won't spend a bloody penny if they can help it, you try fiddling your expense sheet and they'll go for the throat.

'Tilney's spoken to me.'

I took the other chair and got a whiff of ancient horsehair as I sat down. I didn't say anything.

'You've nothing you want to add?' He watched me with no particular expression, a man with dark untidy hair and bags under his eyes and a flat night-shift pallor, leaning forward, attentive. 'Nothing you want to tell me, I mean, as McCane's control, that you might not have wanted to confide to Tilney.'

'No.'

When you're debriefed, you're debriefed; I never keep anything back unless it's to protect someone. Perhaps that was what Shatner meant. I'd never thought McCane was especially good on security, for instance, talked a bit too much when there were people around, didn't take overmuch care to check his environment for ticks, peeps, bugs. It could have got him killed last night: he might have talked to someone about where he was going, and then realised it had been dangerous; that could have been his reason for phoning me, to cover himself.

Shatner said, Then I don't know why you want to see me.'

'You were McCane's control. I was there when they got him. There might be questions you want to ask. I might not have covered everything with Tilney. Another thing is, I'd like to take over.'

He moved his head up a fraction. 'From McCane?'

'Yes.'

Why?'

I'd got it ready. 'I haven't been in the field for nearly two months, and McCane was on my level, so it must be something I'd be able to handle.'

Then one of his phones rang and he reached across to the desk. 'Yes?' Stretched out like that, he'd got one foot half out of his shoe, a hole in his sock. Then tell them to route him through Paris. And Phyllis – no more calls.' He dropped the phone and sat back and looked at me and said, 'It's not your style to ask for a mission. You tend to play hard to get.'

'Two months is a long time. I'm getting bored.' I tried to make light of it, but his eyes were on me and I knew what I looked like, cold with shock still and the nerves flickering. There was nothing you could have done. Bullshit. There's always something you can do. So I knew what I looked like, not quite your eager beaver just dying to see his name on the board again.

'How do you feel, Quiller' – and here it came -'about what happened last night? How do you feel personally?'

Tread carefully. 'It was a shock.'

'Of course. What else?

I looked away. 'I suppose I feel a bit responsible, or at least I did, for a while. But Tilney pointed out that I shouldn't blame myself, and Holmes agreed.'

'I see.' He waited until I was looking back at him. 'So you don't feel any lingering sense of guilt.'

'Not really.'

'Or anger?' Watching me carefully.

'Oh, I think I've got over that sort of thing by now. He's not the first man I've seen killed.'

Shatner waited, in case I made the silly mistake of adding something, of protesting too much. I didn't.

The phone rang again and the sound brought the sweat out on me, because that had been tricky going. 'You couldn't have been listening,' Shatner was saying on the phone. 'I asked for no more calls.' He dropped it and sat back again and I saw a look of sudden fatigue on his face. I suppose he'd been up most of the night too, because Signals would have passed on my message about McCane. This man had also had his executive wiped out on home ground and without any warning, and he must have had a lot to do in the last few hours.

'I don't know you,' he said, 'all that well. I'm not keen on running people I don't know.'

I didn't say anything. If I begged for this job I'd never get it.

Pressing the bridge of his nose, his eyes squeezed shut, You've got a reputation for giving your controls a bad time. I'm not keen on that either.'

I got out of the chair, and a spring twanged. Well there's only a couple of boards active, so you've got plenty of people to choose from.'

I was at the door when he said, 'I rather think this is a time for tolerance, don't you, on both sides.'

'I was trying to make it easy for you.'

He got up too and moved around, not looking at me now, needing to think: that was my impression.

I stayed by the door. 'I've called Westerby in from Bucharest,' he said.

'To take over?'

'Yes.'

'How's his German?

Shatner swung me a look. 'Had McCane talked about Germany, when he phoned you last night?'

'No.'

He went on moving around the small untidy room. I'd got Holmes to fill me in on McCane before we left the Caff, and he'd told me he'd come back from Berlin the night before, so I assumed that was where Shatner had been running him. I'd also asked Holmes about Shatner, and it was interesting. Apart from a few other things he'd run Tewson in Budapest earlier this year and flown there himself to direct the end-phase when things had got sticky, and not many of them will do that, only Croder, Loman, Childs, nobody else I can think of, because it's so dangerous at that stage. Shatner had also brought Farrow in from Sri Lanka with a broken thigh and a bullet in him, not personally that time, but he'd organised a last-ditch rescue operation through Signals with a dozen people in support and orders to use deadly force if they had to, no big deal in a place like Sri Lanka but the Bureau is terribly touchy about that sort of thing. I might not be in bad hands if Shatner agreed to run me in Berlin, give or take a stray shot or a blown cover.