She was too distressed mentally by her bewilderment and fear (see foregoing) to tell me that she had now, in truth, defected from Phoenix. It would not have been easy for her to explain her position, since she believed that at that time I assumed her to have defected a long time ago. She would have simply told Oktober that she would try out the new tactics, and let him leave the apartment. Her actual breakdown came at that precise moment, leading to the fit of sobbing once we were alone.
From the time when I left her apartment that night there was a noticeable reduction in tagging and observation. Example: my meeting with Pol was unobserved and there had been no tag on my journey to the park. It was assumed the adverse party was giving me rope so that I should – being off-guard – try to visit Lindt again. She would then be expected to try their new tactics as ordered by Oktober. I did not go to see her. Their patience became exhausted and she was next ordered to contact me and ask me to see her at the apartment. I then went there and found the agent Helmut Braun. (Note: she had put on clothes of a vivid red. I had seen her only in black, before. I believed this to be an expression – not so much to me as to herself – of her radically-altered attitudes (red=life, black=death), and I accepted this as further confirmation of my theory that she was now allied with me and opposed to Phoenix. There follows the section on Helmut Braun.
I could hear the water lapping at the legs of the bridge.
Helmut Braun? It was difficult to think about him when I stood so close to her.
"There's no time, Quill, to talk. As long as you trust me."
I said: "I do."
She took my hand. Her eyes shone in the lamplight. She said: "Then I can come with you." "Are you walking out on them?"
"Running. I don't know when you found out I was working for them, but you know when I stopped."
"It hasn't been long."
"But it will be. They suspect me now – that's why I had to give that exhibition in there. I'll be safe if I go with you. Take me."
"I'm going to my Control. There might be time to stop Sprungbrett if there's a last-minute hitch. And I've seen their faces, and I know their names. So I've got to send a signal."
"Take me with you. Wherever you go I'll be safe. You're my life, Quill."
I said: "It's no go. There's still a risk. They told me it's too late but they know I'll try to put a signal in to Control, in case there's a last hope. And there's a risk they'll try to stop me."
Her face had gone bleak. "You won't take me?"
"I can't. Not safe."
"It's that you don't trust me." She took her hand from mine.
I looked past her along the span of girders and then looked again at her face. "Listen to me. This is how much I trust you. There's a risk of their shooting me down if I try to send that signal. If they do, it won't ever reach my Control. Unless you'll help me."
Her head came up. To reassure her I gave a smile. She said nothing.
I told her: "Fix this number in your memory. 02.89.62. Berlin exchange. "I made her repeat it twice. "Oktober won't get on your track for a time – you made a convincing show in there. You're more free than I am, and safer. Phone that number. Give them the code-word: Foxtail. Tell them about Sprungbrett. All of it. Then ask them to pick you up. Once you're with my people you'll be safe."
"Then… I'll see you again?"
"If we both get through."
I kissed her mouth for the last time and turned away and walked quickly to the end of the bridge without looking back, but I knew I would always remember her as she was then, my lost little bunkerkinder, slimand erect and triumphant in her soldier's coat with the light on her helmet of hair.
It would take her five minutes to return to the house and report to her Reichsleiter, and five minutes for them to phone that number and find it was a fake. It would give me ten minutes' start and a chance to live.
21 : TRAP-SHOOT
In trap-shooting the pigeon is released from the trap and then shot down.
This was my situation now.
I had stopped for a few minutes at the end of the bridge to survey the terrain; now I had reached a street in Zehlendorf, and stopped again.
One of them was seventy-five yards distant, standing in shadow. Another was closer, waiting some fifty yards in the opposite direction. (It was the pincer trick, one tag rounding a block and keeping ahead. It is useful but can be done only when there are plenty of tags.) A third man was not far from the first and I couldn't see him but I knew where he was because I'd seen him fade. The taxi had pulled up quietly at the intersection and no one got out.
A clock struck eleven. I listened patiently to the strokes, calmed by their measured certainties. It was a half-hour since I had left the bridge and so far I'd seen five of them.
There was no hurry. Some time before dawn I must get a signal through and do it without their knowledge. On the way from the bridge I had passed four phone-kiosks but couldn't use them. If I went into a kiosk to call up Control in Rabinda-Tanath I would come out into a hail of fire. They would then go into the kiosk and call up their highest contact in one of the police departments, probably (and preferably) the Kriminal polizei because they could get a quicker reaction from the Berlin Exchange. The exchange would be told to find out what number had just been called from the kiosk and to find out the name and address of the subscriber. Phoenix would then send a party into Local Control Berlin to seize all papers and personnel.
Phoenix was ready to launch a big-scale operation and they couldn't do it before they were certain of how much my Control knew about it. It must be an operation whose success would depend on absolute secrecy and/or surprise. Pol had told me: "If you help us bring down Phoenix you'll save a million lives and it will almost certainly cost you yours." He had said: "We want information badly. We want to know where Phoenix has its base. They want information too, and as badly. They want to know how much we know of their intentions. Their most direct way of getting that information is through you." He had said: "Your mission is to get near enough to see them and signal their position to us, giving us the advantage."