"I have to leave you, Inga. If they come back it'll start again." She didn't say anything and I worried the thing out, and understood why she didn't ask me to stay. Later I would think clearly about this and set up the perspective. For the moment all I could do was to get the hang of the way things were going and act on impromptu understanding.
I wrote a number on a Kleenex from the dressing-table and left it on the bed. "If you want to, after this, you can always get a message to me by phoning this number." I put a bathrobe round her shoulders and sat and held her until the doctor came.
He asked me what had happened to me and I realised my face would be showing the after effects of the induced syncope and the rabbit-blow: film of sweat, bloodshot eyes, so forth. I told him it wasn't me, and showed him the bedroom before I left.
The street was bright. The innocent afternoon was ended, and it was night.
I was in time to fade-in on Portuguese Canning.
Quota Freight was 132, plus 3¼. NO REPORT FROM YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND REASSURE. IF CORNERED SYSTEM RT.
Clucking like hens. I didn't like it. Through Hengel or Brand or some unemployed scout loafing in my field they'd got wind of my clash with Phoenix and wanted to know the score. They weren't worried about me. They were worried about my being caught and grilled successfully because I was now a hot operator and could blow the Bureau sky-high if I were made to talk.
So now I was given homework to do. It filled three pages of paper with the name of the hotel cut off. Items included:
I don't think Rothstein was operating in liaison with anybody or working to any joint purpose. His own purpose was always, ultimately, to avenge his wife. The canister probably contains microfilm with a bang-destruction unit.
If Solly hadn't died in the way he did I would have asked the Z Commission to open that canister because I was fairly certain the contents could have led me straight to Zossen. As things were, I didn't want anything to do with it.
Phoenix are going to a lot of trouble with me and it seems reasonable to think that they have a great deal to keep in hush, and are very keen to find out how much I know. So far I know nothing.
This was just to needle them and I knew it but decided to let it stand. It was only five days since Pol had contacted me and I had given myself a month for the mission. They had a nerve, anyway, signalling me to report.
Don't quite understand your request for ‘reassurance’ at this early stage. Have you been getting in the way of off-centre info?
This was to tell them they could keep Hengel and Brand and anyone else out of my territory. Obviously somebody had reported my red sectors; it was even possible that the Bureau had a man doubling on the fringe and trying to find his way in, as I was myself; and he could have passed a report saying that I was in a corner. Well they could all bloody well shut up.
No justification for using RT.
RT didn't stand for radio-telephone but for Rabinda-Tanath, meaning the emergency system for phoning Local Berlin in that language. Had they clean forgotten what kind of thing a corner could be? There's never a telephone there.
I still hadn't got it off my chest so I ended: Would respectfully suggest that unless there is definite info on my being in trouble, no unnecessary ‘reassurance’ requests should be sent. If I am cornered I shall report accordingly. Q
Time was now 9.07 and the depression was setting in because of the blood on her legs and the way Oktober had simply left the arena. It wasn't going to work and he didn't yet know that, so it would take him a short time to understand and alter his tactics – unless the doubling were perfect.
I am never happy when the adverse party gets confused because there's the interim period of correction and he is for this period like a mad bull that won't run straight, and you're closer to a high cornada than you'd ever be with an honest five-year-old Miura running on rails.
It took something like an hour to collate all the findings that stemmed from the events of the innocent afternoon, and to edit them and form detailed conclusions. General inference: starting out to hunt Zossen I'd been forced on the defensive twice within the first five days and hadn't learned more than half a dozen names that weren't already logged in the memorandum. The offensive would have to be taken as soon as possible because once Oktober decided that I knew nothing except what his and Fabian's questions had implied, he would have me wiped out before I started getting solid facts and feeding them into Control.
One vital check had to be made before I chose my offensive position, and it had to be made now.
The distance was some three kilometres and the pavements were drying so I left the BMW 1500 in the lock-up at the hotel and walked. Within five minutes I sensed a tag and led him north-west along the Hildburghauser-strasse at a slow pace because his presence had mentally thrown me and I wanted time to think. I hadn't expected him.
Findings: he must be flushed. I was reluctant to do this because he had his uses, but it was no go. What had happened was that no one had tagged me from the Grunewald Bridge until the beginning of the afternoon when I arrived at Inga's flat, because they'd known I could be picked up there. They hadn't known my new base: the Hotel Zentral. But they'd put a tag on wheels behind me when I had driven in the BMW from her flat in Wilmersdorf to the Zentral in Mariendorf – and I hadn't known it. It was simply that Oktober was taking no chances and this was pleasing because it showed how worried he was.
They now knew my present base. This man had tagged me from there and was still at work. That was all right because there was absolutely no way of going over to the offensive without first showing Phoenix my new base: to reach them I must first let them know where to reach me.
But I was committed to making this vital preliminary check, and it had to be done solo. Therefore he must be got rid of.
He was first-class and it took almost an hour. The whole business of tagging is one of the most routine and boring aspects of any operator's work. He can never walk down a street without making constant checks especially if he is going somewhere strictly hush, and it can burn up valuable time in having to flush the tag once he senses him. But if the game goes on long enough and you know the rules it is impossible to tag a man and not eventually lose him if he doesn't want you there, in a city the size of Berlin. I have lost hundreds and hundreds have lost me. In a few cases the boredom of well-worn tactics becomes over-ridden by the interplay of the game itself, and this is what now happened.
He was damned good and I had to take him through four hotels and twice through Lichterfelde-Sud station before I flushed him at the south end of the Berliner-strasse and took up my original course.
Time was now 11.21 and the bar was closing. It was called the Brunnen and I had never been there before. The kellner viewed me from between the chair-legs with his night-pallor face and thought out what phrase he would choose if I asked for a drink. There was only one other man in here, half-way up a step-ladder winding a clock; he didn't even see me come or go.