The Scorpion Signal

'In case I want one.'

He ignored that. 'Schrenk carried a capsule. It was part of the contract, on that particular mission. Obviously he didn't use it.' He turned away from the group of people and stood facing me, hunched into his big coat and saying with muted force: 'He would have saved us an immense amount of trouble if he had used it. An immense amount of trouble.' He waited for the message to sink in. 'Because what we have on our hands now is a potential disaster — unless we can somehow prevent it. Schrenk prided himself on his ability to survive the most gruelling interrogation by the use of practised and convincing disinformation; he had three or four different scenarios worked out and he rehearsed them every day of his life, in series. We know that. We had him tested at Norfolk, a year ago, and even hypnosis couldn't break him down, because he'd used autohypnosis himself, to move his scenarios down into the subconscious. That is the kind of man he is.' The heavy lids were lowered for a moment. 'But Norfolk isn't Lubyanka. We do not know, you see, how bad the position is, because we don't know how much he gave away.'

He withdrew into himself again, staring at nothing, or maybe at Schrenk's insubstantial image, lost somewhere in the wastes of Soviet Russia. The sleet outside was turning to water on the window, and the light from the tall gooseneck lamps threw its translucent delineations against his face, so that his skin crept with rivulets.

'What has he got,' I asked him, 'to give away?'

'I'm sorry?' He swung to look at me.

'You said you don't know how much he gave away. You mean something specific?'

His sharp teeth bit at the air again. 'Yes. The Leningrad cell.'

Mother of God.

This was why Norton had been showing his nerves today, and why Tilson had looked scared behind the eyes. The Leningrad cell had taken eleven years to build up, and once established and running it had given us the Sholokof Project and the submarine dispersal pattern and the tactical analysis for the buried-weapons system for transmission to NATO and the CIA, plus satellite scanning, plus laser progress in the military-application laboratories, plus the whole of the missile-testing programme including the ultra-classified global-range ICBMs from X-9 to the city-heat guidance Marathon 1000. That was the Leningrad cell.

'But he couldn't have known,' I said hopelessly, 'much about it:

'He worked there for two years, before he was seconded to the field-executive branch. He knows everything about it.'

I didn't understand. 'But who could have let him — '

'That is not your concern.' Spittle came against his lower lip, and in a moment he licked it away and said more slowly, 'For your information, it wasn't I.'

I let it go. Someone had blundered, and disastrously, because once you're with a cell you stay there till your time's up: you don't go anywhere else and you don't get seconded to the field-executive pool, because you know too much of value and they won't risk sending you into the field where the opposition can pick you up and drag you in and take your brain apart. But someone had done that with Schrenk.

'Your only concern,' Croder said with a lot of control, 'is to find him and pull him out — if indeed you're prepared to do that for us.' The need for control worried me, because this man was known for his cool and he'd lost it, and in front of the executive he was desperate to recruit. My nerves were jumping again. 'You would receive intensive support, I need hardly say.'

'In Moscow?'

'Right in the target area, wherever that may be. Cut-outs, back-ups, shields — '

'No shields — '

He shrugged. 'You may be glad — '

'I said no shields.' My own control wasn't too good and I waited and counted three. 'I make my own decisions and my own mistakes and I won't involve anyone else.' Shields were dangerous; they could get in your way, and when the crunch came they'd save themselves, not you. 'What about the director in the field? If the timing's that close you can't — '

'Bracken,' he said.

'Bracken's in Singapore.'

'We called him in.' He moved his eyes to the clock over the information desk. 'He is at present airborne with BAC, arriving Moscow at noon tomorrow, local time.' He waited.

'I've never worked with him.'

'He's first class, you know that. He directed Fenton in Cairo last year. He got Matthews out of Pekin. First class.'

There were thirty minutes left on the clock, and I thought of something else. 'When did you find out Schrenk was back in Moscow?'

'Early this morning.'

'Then you haven't had time to set it up. I'm not — '

'It was ready to run before I called base from Geneva. You have a director, a safe-house, contacts, sleepers, signal availability and Embassy liaison.' His thin mouth was contemptuous. 'What more do you want, for God's sake?'

'Access. I'm on their files and I'd never get through the airport.'

'You have access by road into East Germany.'

'Overt?'

'Of course not.'

'What are you talking about, a bloody farm cart or something?'

'A closed truck will take you across the frontier at Zellerfeld, in the Harz Mountains, with no questions asked.'

He was blocking me every time. I was his last hope, I knew that now. He'd tried half a dozen other people and drawn blank, because this was a suicide trip and he didn't pretend it was anything else.

'What about access into Moscow?'

'By commercial airline: Aeroflot. We have a seat for you on the morning flight from Leipzig, where the truck will drop you. It's perfectly straightforward.'

I took a slow breath. 'Cover?'

'Transit papers, East German national.'

It was beginning to sound like a trap and I stopped thinking about it for a minute, watching the people in the group by the main doors. A man was shouting his head off now and so was his wife: he wanted asylum but his wife said it would mean leaving her mother behind, and the secret police would take reprisals. A younger man, possibly their son, was trying to make them shut up. Two more policemen were marching towards them, unbuttoning their holsters to make an effect. A crowd was collecting.

Fluggaste fur Flug Nummer 903 fur Hannover kommen Sie bilge so fort Eingang Nummer 2.

I looked at the clock.

'Is that the flight you booked for me?' I asked Croder.

'Yes.'

'Then there's no time for briefing.'

'You'll be briefed on the access in Hanover, and fully briefed In Moscow.'

'By Bracken?'

'Yes.'

'Who's our man in Hanover?'

'He's an agent-in-place.'

'I want to know who he is.'

'All you want,' Croder said with his mouth tight, 'is just one good reason for getting the next plane back to London with what's left of your conscience, and the problem is that you won't find one because we've been hard at it setting the whole thing up, and it works, it really does. The odds, of course,' he said without looking away from my face, 'are not in your favour, and I'd quite understand it if you didn't feel up to the task. Your nerves, as you say, are still — '

'My nerves are my business.' A lot of heat came out and his black eyes flickered. 'You know bloody well you've got me hooked or I wouldn't be here in this stinking hole, would I?' Control, get control. 'It's just that I want — ' but the anger ran out and we stood facing each other without another word, while the shadows of the rain crept down his neon-grey face and his eyes looked into mine and waited to know whether I would do the job that had to be done or whether I was too old, at last, for this game, or too scared.

When I was ready I said: 'Who else did you ask?'

'I told you before. I went straight for you.'

His eyes went on waiting.

I only had one more question, and it was difficult, because I thought I knew what he'd say, what he'd have to say. 'What happens if I find him, but can't get him out?'