He phoned me in the late afternoon. I shall always remember my carelessness.
He said in English: "It is me."
I didn't answer. For some reason I was thinking about Pol. Then Solly said: "It was a long time, wasn't it?"
"Yes." He had wanted to identify himself without giving his name.
"I will come to see you," he said. "Wait for me."
The line went dead.
So he couldn't keep it to himself. The frustration was too much. Either that or he'd been unwilling to tell me in the laboratory: the partition had been thin. He had decided, after I
It wasn't only bugs, then. Or it was bugs in a big way. Germ warfare might be the clue. But I was still thinking of Pol, and about the box office of the Neukomodietheater, so I worried it. There must be a connection. Pol wouldn't phone me here; I was hot, untouchable, unphonable. His voice wasn't anything like Solly's and Pol had spoken only German to me. Not the connection. Must be one. I had to recall actual conversation between Pol and me before I got it. He'd said:
We knew that you had reserved this box. So you've got access to the box-office.
Yes.
No go. I used the name Schultze.
We knew that.
By tapping my phone -
I bruised my hand hitting the receiver in a blind grab and caught it as it began falling. I knew the laboratory number because I'd hooked it automatically in the memory when I'd shut the directory. Switchboard told me to wait.
I waited. A nerve had begun flickering in my eyelid.
Carelessness. There had been a click on the line when I'd answered Solly's call. I hadn't expected a call from anyone, not from Pol, Hengel, Ebert, Inga, Brand, anyone I could think of. In no situation would Pol, Hengel or Brand phone me here. Ebert didn't have my number: nor did Inga. Solly wouldn't phone me, because we hadn't even made a date to meet again. Then who? Consciously involved with the question, I'd heard the click on the line only subconsciously, and it had chain-reactioned in the memory so that I'd begun thinking of Pol and the box-office, for no known reason.
My phone was being tapped again. Not by Control this time: that had just been a hush way of finding me. This time it was by the adverse party. The DKW tag. The twin glint. Now the tap. The third small sign that they were closing in.
"The number's ringing, sir."
"Thank you."
The eyelid went on flickering.
It didn't matter that they were tapping me now, at this minute, because all I had to tell Solly was don't come!
I might be wrong but I couldn't chance it. Solly would trust neither a phone nor the partition in his own laboratory; therefore he was in some kind of permanent red sector and had to watch everything he did; therefore he might be known to Phoenix, so well that they even knew his voice. He might be doubling with them, still feverish with that undetonated anger of his after twenty years, playing his own game with them in order to get facts that would guide him along the fuse to that almighty detonation he must have before he died, however long it took, because of his young wife.
"Dr. Rothstein's laboratory."
I said: " I'd like to speak to him."
"He's just left here, I'm afraid. Can I give him your message?"
"There's no message."
I put the receiver down.
Solly Rothstein was burning to tell me something and it was something so vital that no one must overhear. If they knew him, and knew his voice, they would know that he was on his way here now, because of the tap. And they would try to stop him. And there was nothing I could do.
The Zehlendorf district was ten kilometres from the east side of Tempelhof, so he wouldn't walk all the way. Nor would he simply take his car or a taxi from door to door; his tactics were already cautious; he would dodge about. Hopeless to start out from here and try to intercept him. Must wait here for him.
Time-check: 5.09. Ten kilometres by car or taxi through the beginning of the rush-hour: twenty minutes. Add five, because he'd start out on foot if he were taking a taxi, and pick it up some distance from base; or he'd take it from base and leave it some distance from here. He might even take a trolley or the overhead but it was unlikely because he was impatient. He would be here between twenty minutes and half an hour from now. 5.29 to 5.39.
I didn't phone the laboratory again to ask if he normally used a car or taxis because they would tap me, and if they'd no plans for Solly at this moment I didn't want to suggest they should make any. If I were wrong, nothing would happen. If I were right, they would be doing all they could to reach him along his route. A car would come into his mirror and stay there, waiting for the chance; or a man would open the door of his taxi and climb in while it was held at the lights; or someone would cross the road and fall in behind him along the pavement.
5.14. Nothing to do.
I left my room and went along the corridor until I found a door open. The room was empty. The curtains were filmy but opaque enough by winter daylight. Five minutes' gradual movement and the hem was parted an inch from the window-frame and I checked the apartments across the street. The window four up and seven along was open, a dark square. I let the curtain fall and came away.
At 5.23 I went down and wandered around the main reception-lounge, keeping within sight of the switchboard so that the girl would recognise me and know I wasn't in my room, because Solly might conceivably phone again if he sensed he was being followed.
At 5.27 I went through the revolving doors and down the steps and crossed the road and stood well back in the doorway of the apartments, so that my head would have to turn only about a hundred and twenty degrees instead of one-eighty to keep each end of the street under alternate observation. He might come from either direction.
My breath floated grey on the cold air. Tyres hissed along wet tarmac. Two men came down the steps of the Prinz Johan and turned west side by side. Time 5.34. Didn't matter now, just have to wait and go on waiting. Cold. Cold outside and cold inside. Carelessness, bloody carelessness. Getting old.
A Borgward pulled in at the kerb and I had to shift my position to keep the east end of the street under watch. Present population of street: woman and dog ten degrees left coming east, man in black overcoat ninety degrees right coming west, two girls one-double-o right catching up, hear their voices, one laughing. Two men (same two?) extreme left coming east (coming back?). Borgward away, gas acrid on the air. Shift position. Girls passing black overcoat. Man extreme right coming west. Check left, check right. Walking quickly, short, black hat. Check left, check right. Yes.
I left the doorway and walked slowly at first to keep him under scrutiny and when the distance was fifty or sixty yards and I could recognise him with certainty I quickened and took a gap in the traffic and crossed over. We were closing on each other from thirty yards and all I had in my pockets were keys but they'd have to do. Twenty yards and within calling-distance. Stop. Check. Four up and seven along – and I was running, calling his name and shouting for him to dodge. He saw me, surprised. I flung the keys full at his face and they whistled through the air but never hit him because he was staggering, toppling, as the thin crack of sound echoed across the blank stone face of the buildings.
I caught him as he fell.