"Let me remind you how the U.S. prosecutor put it at the Nurnberg Tribunaclass="underline" ‘German militarism will tie itself to any new creed in order to regain the power of making war.’ There are new creeds emerging now in Egypt, China, Cuba. Further, they realise the huge potential of the GGS and its value as an ally, given the right ground: aworld on the brink."
"You can't start war without people."
"People never start war. Politicians and generals start them. As long as ten years ago – and only ten years after the bloodshed stopped – there was a rally of ex-Nazi soldiers in honour of Kesselring. The people protested but the police pushed them back and kept order."
"The people are still protesting, by means of the trials."
"And now the trials are becoming more and more difficult. Convicted war-criminals are no longer hanged, but witnesses are being shot. The tide is on the turn."
I sat with my eyes shut. The auditorium had gone dark. Music was playing. A girl sang.
Pol was silent. He knew that in persuasion one must pause, so that the subject is given time to dwell.
"Political polemics," I said wearily. "Keep them. Shove them down the next man's throat."
His silence was disapproving.
"I don't claim, Pol, to have my finger on the pulse of the human condition or to know what future mankind has, if it has any. And I'm tired. You chose the wrong box, just as I told you in the beginning."
He was moving about and I opened my eyes. From somewhere he'd taken a plastic briefcase. It must have been under his jacket. I would have seen it before, otherwise. He put it on my knees.
"I am to leave this with you," was all he said.
I let it rest there without touching it. "Damn your impudence, Pol."
"We have arranged a cover man for you," he said softly, "and a front."
"I don't want a cover."
"What happens if you get into a corner?"
"I'll get out again."
"You know the risks, Quiller."
"Did KLJ use a cover man?"
"Yes, but it is difficult to cover anyone from a long range shot."
"That's the way they'll get me if it comes to it. No cover, Pol. And don't post one without my knowing. I'm going in alone."
A pulse had begun beating in my leg, the onset of cramp. I moved and the briefcase slid off my knees. I left it where it fell. Pol said softly as the music broke:
"There are two people you can trust -"
"No people."
"An American, Frank Brand, and a young German, Lanz Hengel. They -"
"Keep them clear of me."
"You have a link man
"Keep him clear."
"It is myself. I am your link man."
"Keep clear of me then."
If I were going in, it had to be on my terms. They couldn't expect it of me and they shouldn't have sent this man Pol to hook me like this. They were bastards. Charington dead – get another man. KLJ dead – get another man. Who would they get after me? Six months hard, now this, and because of expedience, because I was handy. And they had the hook. "There's only one way to persuade him," they'd said, standing round the desk in that London room with the Lowrie and the smell of polish. "Tell him someone has seen Zossen in Berlin." And they'd lit a cigarette and sent for Pol.
I didn't care whether the monologue about a renaissant Nazi group was genuine or not. Given Zossen I needed no further blandishments. They'd wasted my time.
The cramp was beginning so I crawled on my hands and knees to the back of the box and got into the chair as if I'd just come in again after the interval. Pol did the same, brushing his hands carefully across the knees of his trousers. I sat with my eyes shut, thinking.
Now that I'd stopped resenting him and made the decision I could admit that it was my own fault. For years I'd operated in strict hush, as I'd been trained to do; so when they seconded me to liaise with the Federal Z Commission and supply the Hanover Tribunal with bodies for trial, I didn't see much point in coming into the open air. If I had, my face would have become, in those six months, the most recognisable feature ever to have spanned the crossed hairs of a telescopic rifle-sight. That wouldn't have worried me because I'd moved between Berlin and Hanover and back with a constant cover of six men, like a pocket president. But my insistence on secrecy had got me on this hook. After six months I knew Berlin like my face, yet my face was unknown in Berlin.
No wonder they'd come for me.
For a while Pol must have thought I'd refuse. Then he knew it was going to be all right, and had put the briefcase on my knees. It would contain all the information they could give me, all the names, suspects, dossiers, leads and theories they could cull from the whole of the Bureau files, a complete and exhaustive breakdown on the field. But they'd come for me because I knew even more.
"Pol," I said.
He was sitting with his arms folded, head tilted, watching the show. His head tilted the other way, towards me.
I said: "Tell them not to try tapping my phone again. I want to be able to know that if I hear any clicks, it's the adverse party doing it."
"Very well."
"No cover."
"Noted."
"Communication Post and Bourse."
"Available."
When the stage began filling and the music was loud I asked him for his photo and he gave it to me. The zip on the briefcase was the interlocking plastic flange type and opened silently. Inside was the folder with the black cover. It was the memorandum. Between the typed lines was written, invisibly, my future. In detail it gave specific outline to the manner of my life. It made no mention of the possible manner of my death. It was thus a highly personal document, and on the cover was a single letter: Q.
I put the photograph in and shut the case.
3: SNOW
The snow had stopped. It had been packed into ice by the tyres, and the traffic was slow and quiet. Half-way along the Kurfursten-strasse a street bollard lay smashed and they ere towing the car clear; rusty water steamed as it poured from the radiator.
Above the roofs the sky was black and the stars close. It was easy to see tonight that the earth was a star too, adrift in a void; a fur collar gave little protection against the thought.
I had left the box a minute before Pol so that when he went down the main staircase in the throng he couldn't see me. I had kept back by the wall on the balcony to get a good look at his face in the mirror above the stairs. I compared it with his photograph and asked for a plain envelope on my way past the box-office. In the street I put the photograph inside and addressed it to Radio Eurosound, posting it, unstamped, in the box at the kerbside.