The Striker Portfolio

'It doesn't mean anything to him,' I said.

'Only at the time. It's the time I think of.' She stretched and pushed her fingers through her hair. 'But I have my times. I think of those too. It's wild, isn't it? Grotesque.'

Her speech wasn't slurred. She might have been cold sober: it was hard to tell. A lot of them had drunk steadily the whole evening, more than they normally did, more than they would be drinking now at some of the other bases — Spalt, Oldenburg — where the 'anxiety was dissipating automatically' after the accident.

I said, to make her talk: 'It's rough on everyone.'

'It's not like I suppose a war is like, when everyone's in it. They're on a sort of list. A waiting-list. Only just the few of them. Sometimes I think of him as already dead, and there's only the waiting for it to be official. That's when I forgive him most. Have you a cigarette?'

I checked the glove-pocket to see if there were a packet left behind.

'It doesn't matter. I don't want to smoke. It's cosy in here. What car is this?' The reflection of her hair was a cloud of silver on the windscreen and sometimes her nails flashed through it as she brushed it back.

'It's an N.S.U.'

'I don't drive. I lost my licence. I didn't even hurt anyone, only myself, but they took it away. It's grotesque.' We listened to the rain and the wipers for a long time. The lights of Hanover made a sudden haze on the horizon to the north and then vanished as we dropped again below hills. 'He wants to have as many as he can while there's time. All right, we can't live together any more but I'm his wife and we're in love, I think. But how much of what I feel is because I might not know him for long?'

I checked the mirror regularly and slowed a little when lights came. They all went by.

'He seems very confident,' I said. 'That's an important safety factor.'

'He's enormously brave. Fantastic record, almost as good as Otto's. He's come out of three crashes, I mean ordinary ones, not the special ones.' What Ferris called 'pattern crashes'.

'Were any of them due to pilot error?'

She swung her head and made a laughing sound though it wasn't quite laughter. 'You don't know Franz. He can bring in a plane backwards.' She was still watching me. 'He says you're a psychologist. It must be like undressing people.'

'It's much more difficult. You've got to get through a dozen overcoats before you can reach anyone's mind.'

'He says you're English. I'm wild about the English. You don't talk.'

'It's just that you can't hear, because of the overcoats.'

There's the city,' she said. 'Where are you staying?'

'At Linsdorf.'

'But I thought you were going to Hanover.' She shifted sideways on the seat to face me, her legs still drawn up, one arm along the top of the facia. She was no closer to me than before and her scent was no different but suddenly she made herself explicit: her proximity, her scent, her body. 'You came specially?'

I said: 'Anyone would have given you a lift.' A lot of the cars I'd slowed for had been coming from the air-base after the party broke up.

'I know. But I didn't think you were coming specially.'

'What would you have done if you'd known?'

'Nothing.'

We drove through Hanover-Messe and up Hildesheimerstrasse. 'Let me know, will you?'

'I'm in Lister-Platz.' She looked for her shoes. 'Will you come infer a drink?'

'I don't think so.'

'Did you want to ask me about Franz and the others? To get information?'

'No.'

Then we'll have a drink.'

The apartment was small and overheated and untidy, with her clothes around and nothing to show whether it was from indifference or despair.

She sat curled up on the floor just as she had been in the car, in the attitude of a child. The blatant carnality she had shown in the crowded room was quite gone, because the necessity had gone; but her reasons remained and she spoke with her head turned away.

'It's late, and I don't want to have to go out again. If it can't be you it'll only have to be someone else.'

Chapter Six — NITRI

He looked dead.

There was no traffic about. It was late: gone 2.00 a.m. I had left the N.S.U. in the Hohenzollernstrasse and we'd walked round the corner into Lister-Platz. I had walked back along to the car and there was condensation inside the windows, otherwise I would have seen him from farther away.

He was only just recognizable through the condensation: some thin straw-coloured hair on a lolling head, black-framed glasses on a waxy face, the eyes shut. I looked along the street, both ways, both sides, in the doorways, in the shadows. It could be a booby-trap, you can never tell. They hadn't got on to me since the truck had hit the thin one but they were looking for me, I knew that.

The street seemed all right. I wasn't expecting a shot: it would be a rush of feet. They were controlled by someone circumspect. Even when they did a bump there was a suicide note to smooth things over. I knew now why they'd taken me to the car dump. They knew that if I gave trouble they'd have to shoot and they didn't want to do any shooting in the cul-de-sac with a lot of buildings around.

I walked once round the car. None of the doors had been forced. It looked all right so I got in and he woke up.

'I must have dozed off.'

'Don't let me disturb you.' I was a bit annoyed: not with him but with her. She'd thrown a few hysterics when I told her it wasn't on and hysterics can be wearing.

He was completely awake within seconds. 'I've been in signals with London a J day. It goes roughly like this: Parkis didn't know a thing except that another Striker was going to crash, but he thought something much bigger was in the background — he's got a flair that way. That's why he wanted you for the mission. But there was nothing he could give you except what looked like a one-and-ninepenny sabotage-investigation pitch. So he had to hook you in.'

I began wiping some of the condensation off the glass because if anyone came by I wanted to see who they were.

'London got a letter today from Lovett, posted two days ago with a microdot inside.' He turned to look at me for the first time. They badly want to know who told Lovett about that Striker. They think it's someone trying hard to get across. He made contact with Lovett, who played it cool and asked for a sight of his wares. They weren't bad, were they? The exact prediction of the next pattern-crash. So Lovett was ready to pass him on but his signal about the Striker got intercepted. That was bad luck.'

He was silent for a bit and I didn't ask any questions. Even in an organization that doesn't exist and where everyone is anonymous there are some people whose names begin to mean something over the years. We'd all liked Lovett and I knew Ferris had worked close to him until they'd carved him up in Rome.

'We still want to know why the Strikers are going down. It's not the storm-centre but it's the way in, or one of the ways in. And we want to know, fully urgent, who made contact with Lovett.'

He must have actually been on one of the protected communications networks, person-to-person with Parkis. 'Storm-centre' was a typical Parkis phrase, straight out of the comics.

I said: 'What makes you think he's still alive?'

They'd neutralized Lovett just because he'd seen a fraction of the picture. His contact must be in possession of the whole.

'We think he's still in Hanover and the Bureau's monitoring the news of every death in the area. So far they believe he's not among them. Find him as soon as you can. Help him across. London wants him badly.'

'Oh come on, Ferris, you can do better than that.' I was suddenly fed up. Parkis didn't run all the missions but he was running this one and he was running it in his usual way: sparking off random activity in the field without a sign of co-ordination. 'They want me to find out why the Strikers are going down so my search-area's Linsdorf and they want me to find Lovett's contact so my search-area's Hanover. Tell Parkis to make up his bloody mind.'