There was no tag, and it was twenty-four hours before I realised that this one fact sent me along a line of false reasoning that pitched me straight into the red sector again. This night my psyche had been forced to withstand the effects of sodium amytal, benzedrine (or pervitine), invasion by interrogation, the certainty of death, pentothal (or a similar knock-out dose), immersion in water near freezing-point, and the shock of returning life. It explains my failure to understand why there was no tag on the fast walk to Siemensstadt and back to Wilmersdorf: the mind was not yet clear enough to think safely. It explains but does not excuse. There is no excuse for carelessness. I should have noted the fogginess of my mind and waited till it was alert enough to make safe decisions. I didn't.
The hotel was called the Zentral and I booked in because despite its name it was buried among a maze of small streets in the Mariendorf district, some eight kilometres south of Wilmersdorf. The place was smaller than the Prinz Johan and less efficiently run: a tousled night-porter and dust on the lamp-bulbs; and this suited me because it might be necessary to stay officially dead for a time.
My still wet clothes went unnoticed. Ja, there were some lock-up garages. I said I would leave my baggage in the car and bring it in tomorrow morning, as I was tired. He didn't bother to ask me where the car was now parked so that an eye could be kept on it. I went ostensibly to bed, locked the door, stripped, showered and spread my clothes to dry by the radiators. The room was small but clean and well-heated, a kinder resting-place for this night than the cold dark of the lake.
Immediate sleep was impermissible because the situation had to be worked out first.
I had missed the late-evening Bourse from Eurosound because I'd been on the way to the Prinz Johan to pick it up when they'd made the snatch. Likelihood: no important signal from Control. Nor had I anything to send in. They might find the name of Dr. Fabian – Psychoanalyst – in the Berlin directory (in missions of this kind when complicated shadow-boxing was the rule for both sides it was sometimes overlooked that a man could be found simply by knocking on his door instead of casting an under-cover dragnet for him) and they might start an inquiry on him if I suggested it. The Z Commission could be urged to make a snatch and send him for trial at Hanover as a war-criminal. He was working for Phoenix somewhere near the top level and it was likely that his wartime record would provide evidence enough to charge him. But I might be able to use him myself to better purpose: through him I could reach Oktober and finally Heinrich Zossen, my main target. Decision: don't signal Control to flush him.
I pulled one of the arm-chairs near the bed and sat with my feet at head-level, to feed the nerves while I worked. Major question: why was I still alive?
Supposition number one: the guards had driven me to the bridge as ordered, taken me out of the car, held me ready for dropping over, and had been disturbed at the last moment by people, possibly a police patrol. They had simply dropped me as I was (alive instead of dead), unable to risk the sound of a shot. The best-laid schemes could go like that. The sound of the splash had to be risked, if a greater risk were that of being seen carrying me back into the car. (Query: why had Oktober chosen the Grunewald Bridge? There were more secluded places.) So the job had been done at half-cock and they'd reported to Oktober that it had in fact been done in every accordance with orders, relying on the plunge into icy waters to kill me before the drug wore off and I could try to swim. They wouldn't report the truth, that I hadn't been shot in the neck, because Oktober would flay them.
Findings of supposition number one: Oktober believed I was now dead. The guards were almost certain. Therefore my case was closed and there would be no one tagging me. Confirmation: there had been no tag, either from the lake to the bar or along the Grunewald-Siemensstadt-Wilmersdorf route. Had there been one I would have known it.
Supposition number two: Oktober had tried the double-think on me. He'd wanted me to think that he thought I was dead, so that I would at once go to ground, change my open tactics, and lead him to my base. He had therefore ordered the guards to simulate a
Objection: I wasn't likely to lead Oktober to my base unless they put a strict tag on to me, and they hadn't done that. Query still insistent: why the Grunewald Bridge?
Supposition number three: Oktober had threatened me with death in the hope that fear would work where the narcotics hadn't. He was too subtle a man, and knew my wartime experience among the death-camps too well, to make it an open threat. He had goose-stepped up to me, stood in the living stance of the typical Nazi executioner, and rapped out the Hitlerite announcement about unforgivably wasting his time. Leaving me, to speak to the guards, he hadn't raised his voice, because he knew I would hear and thus hoped I would believe in what I heard: my own sentence of death. There are many and distinct types of courage and fear. A man who will climb a cliff face may funk grasping a snake; a man who will brave a raging sea may faint at the sight of blood. Oktober might have hoped that a man who, with his hands free, was prepared to attack five others and go on attacking even when shooting began, would lose his spirit once his hands were tied and he was made to overhear the cold hard details of his certain death.
So I had been meant to talk, to save myself. They'd failed but must not admit it. The charade had been performed: the dope, the car-journey, the dumping. Oktober was shown to mean what he said. (Again, I was expected to reason as in supposition number one and satisfy myself that they had intended to kill me.)
Objection: they would have tagged me from the lake. But the query was answered now: they'd chosen the Grunewald Bridge (Oktober had carefully named it in my hearing) so that I should remember the death of Kenneth Lindsay Jones, who had died in the same lake. Intention: to increase my fear and my belief in their purpose, by reference to a similar killing.
There were only two major facts matchable with the three suppositions. One: I was alive. Two: there was no tag. Fact one matched: all three suppositions. Fact two matched only the first.
The wall-paper, a faint lilac trellis pattern, began swimming in front of my eyes. The need for sleep was now urgent. I would have to rest there for the night: the second supposition was attractive, and it could be combined with the third: they had tried to frighten me into talking, and when that failed they dumped me so that I would lead them to base; but they would have had to follow up. The absence of tag must rule. They thought I was dead.
The lilac trellis brightened and faded. I had to check to see that I had locked the door: further evidence of fatigue. Sleep.
I phoned the police first thing and reported a grey Volkswagen abandoned near the Grunewald Bridge. If Phoenix were keeping watch on it for any reason unknown to me they would see it was the police, and not I, who took the car away. I was dead.