Instinct: go home.
It was nine kilometres and I took a taxi as far as the Lankwitz-strasse and walked from there. Two of them kept up the tag while the third questioned my driver. A light burned in the doorway of the Hotel Zentral and I went in by that entrance and not through the courtyard where the lock-up garages were.
The night-porter was brushing a pair of shoes and looked for my key on the board. I said I had it with me and he said I ought to leave it at the desk when I went out and I said I must remember to do that.
I locked the door and looked around. The room had been searched but nothing was missing. They had even probed the tube of toothpaste for microfilm: the needle had raised a ridge from the inside.
There was a chance in a thousand of posting a report to Eurosound so I spent twenty minutes at it, locating the Grunewald base and giving a resume of the Sprungbrett affair. The main section of the report dealt with my ideas on what I had now come to think of as the Parallel Assumption, reference the Rothstein document. The fake Sprungbrett file had confirmed some of these ideas and there was quite a bit of underlining in my report, because the thing looked weird on paper and London would give it a very sidelong glance.
The factors on which Phoenix would have to work were (1) opportunity, (2) local situation in main attack area, (3) availability of armed forces in strength and (4) security. Therefore the Med was out. There was only one area in the world where the armed forces of East and West were looking down each other's gun-barrels on a cold-war footing, and where opportunity+local situation+availability of strength could trigger off a small-scale but developing war. Berlin. The fourth factor – security – was the only doubtful runner, partly because I myself was busy trying to break down the Phoenix security to a point where they could no longer risk launching an operation of any kind in any place.
If I could post this report it could be decisive. Wipe out Phoenix and the Nazi elements of the German General Staff would be left without central direction.
It was clear that if this were not so, Phoenix would not be concentrating on me so fiercely.
The chances against successful transmission being a thousand to one, I didn't waste too much time in neat phrasing. The facts would have to do.
Twenty minutes with feet on the bed. Brain think session. Dark specks crossed the trellis-pattern wallpaper and I closed my eyes. Findings: must disregard likelihood of my death. Must not put the Bureau at risk by simply sending a signal (thus committing suicide), and counting on my people making the overkill, because they might not have the time. If suicide-type signal sent, it must be phoned in direct, because if this report were seen to be put into a box they would smash open the box, note the address and start a careful investigation of the Eurosound staff until they found our man; then they would grill him till he spoke or broke. Consider possibility of phoning Captain Stettner: tell him to phone Control for me. Result: tags would go through the routine, kill me off, phone their contact in the Polizei, get him to ask the Exchange what number I had called, find it was Stettner's, and send in a party to snatch him and grill him. (Danger here particularly great since their Polizei contact would probably be higher in rank than captain and would simply order the man to repeat my message.) Consider other possibilities. There weren't any.
Time was 04.35. Eighty-five minutes (it was coming down to minutes now instead of hours) before dawn. The rush-hour wouldn't start until eight o'clock but they wouldn't wait for that because they knew that I would wait. If I hadn't flushed them by first light I'd have the sense to cool my heels until the rush-hour began and then have another go. That would be Oktober-thinking.
My brain had to be geared to Oktober-thinking or the bastard would do for me.
Oktober-think. Brain-think. The bruised knee was throbbing. The specks flew quietly across the trellis-pattern like slow bullets.
We have arranged a cover man for you.
I don't want a cover.
What happens if you get into a corner?
I'll get out again.
Too bloody confident, that was Quiller.
The room was getting smaller and I got up. The sweat was starting. Eighty minutes.
There was only one thing to do and that was the thing I hadn't succeeded in doing for the past five and a half hours. I had to signal Control without their seeing me do it.
Paramount consideration: protect the Bureau from risk. Worst eventuality: death and no signal sent, my people back where they began. (Who would replace me? Dewhurst? Disregard likelihood.)
Programme: send signal by direct phone if absolutely certain unobserved. If impossible, wait for the bullet in the neck and try to – (Disregard).
I left the glove on the bed. Very fast driving and maze-tactics would be hampered by uneven hand-control. The glove chanced to fall palm upwards on the coverlet and it looked like an appeal though I couldn't think for what. More time perhaps. Seventy-nine minutes.
The layout of the hotel had been studied the day after I'd moved in. Main entrance, double doors to the terrace single door from the kitchens, single door to the courtyard. I left the room without a sound, taking five or six minute with the handle. The corridor was carpeted. There might be one or more adverse parties inside the building, might not. They knew where I'd gone and they knew they'd see me come out again. The phone would be wire-tapped but although they'd searched the room they hadn't miked it, so there wouldn't be anyone looking after a speaker or tape.
The hollow coughing of the shoe-brush was the only sound on the stairs. He had the lot to do: the night-porter and Boots combined.
It was possible to reach the single door to the courtyard without going within sight of the desk and I moved only when the brush sounded, freezing in the intervals of silence. The door was locked but the key was on the inside. A white chef's coat hung on the door.
Chill air. The surface of the yard was concrete and I put my shoes on again and left the door unlocked on principle: ensure availability of exits and entrances.
A glass roof covered half the yard, running from the wall of the hotel to the row of lock-ups. Observation was possible only from the hotel windows and the four windows of the house opposite the yard gates. Five minutes to allow the eyes fully to accommodate. Five minutes to check each window. There was no lamp burning in the yard and I stood in eighty per cent darkness, stars giving the only light.
There was no observation. The thought was chilling. There should be observation. Re-check windows, shadow areas. No observation. Disregard.
The lock-ups were communal and had two big double doors facing the hotel wall at some sixty feet. Both sets of doors had the same key. The 230SL pagoda-top was inside the doors nearer the gate and street. It would be possible to open them quietly but not silently; I had oiled the lock, hinges and swing-bar staple the first time I had run the BMW in here. But there was no point in taking pains. If they were going to open fire as I drove through the gates they'd have plenty of warning because of the noise of starting up. To open the doors quietly would reduce the warning period by a good ten seconds (time taken to go through the open doorway, get into the Mercedes and start up). But they would still have fifteen left (time taken to engage reverse, back out, stop, engage first and move off to the gates). And you can raise a rifle on target from across the knees in one second flat.