Twelve noon: meeting with Yasolev.
I'm not absolutely sure, but at that time I think he was ready to cancel Quickstep and tell us to get out of Berlin. 'We wanted information.' Standing with his feet placed solidly apart to balance him. 'We now have information. We should act upon it.' Thick square hands chopping at the air.
'It's not exactly information,' Cone said quietly.
'It has been confirmed that the target is Gorbachev. Your department has alerted you to Werneuchen Airforce Base and its bombers as a possible threat.'
'It's just possibilities, Viktor, not information.'
'In any case,' I said, 'I've got someone working for us at Werneuchen.'
'Who?' His eyes sunk deep under their brows, defensive, impatient. I believe he might have thought we were trying to play down the few shreds we had to work with, for our own reasons. Yasolev hadn't been trained to trust people.
'One of the officers,' I said, 'in their administration.'
'An agent-in-place?'
Cone looked down. I didn't answer. Yasolev tilted his head, didn't persist. London and the KGB were working in liaison for a single mission, and that didn't mean exposing our networks. Nor was I going to blow 'Renata'.
'I can send ten agents into Werneuchen.'
'We know.' Cone, hunched forward, hands lost in his pockets, watching Yasolev intently. 'You can send fifty in, and the whole of the personnel is going to close up like crabs, and you — '
'Going to shut their mouths,' I said, because Cone's Russian was patchy and he'd meant clams — molluski — and I didn't want any misunderstandings. Yasolev was tricky enough to handle as it was.
'That's right,' Cone said, 'and you wouldn't get anything out of them.'
Yasolev was quiet for a bit, looking anywhere but at us, at the Wall through the window, at the tea tray with its cups still upside down, at the carpet with its cigarette-burns and its worn threads. We hadn't poured any tea; we didn't even sit down; the tension was keeping us on our feet like puppets with their wires jammed.
'You know my responsibilities.' Not chopping now; motionless, sunk into obduracy. 'The welfare of the General-Secretary is in my hands. My hands.'
'We think we all need him,' I said, 'or we wouldn't be here. There's more at stake than your neck.' I didn't use those exact words, but that was the tone. But the stand he was making wasn't entirely because he'd be shot at dawn if anything happened to his General-Secretary; he was a KGB man and when the KGB wanted information they normally sent in a regiment and turned the building upside down and beat on the sides.
'You seriously believe that one agent can do as well as ten?'
'One whiff,' Cone said, 'of any KGB action inside Werneuchen and they'll shut their mouths and Horst Volper will immediately make an alternative plan. We've got to go very careful.'
''Then I will send one of my agents in. One.'
'All right,' Cone said quietly, 'then we'll wrap up the mission and go home.'
That surprised me. But we'd got less than four days left and Yasolev had called us in to do the job our way and that was how it would have to be done.
''That is putting the matter too strongly.' He was chopping at the air again, and I was glad my hand wasn't in the way. 'We agreed to liaise with each other, on the understanding that — '
'Viktor.' Cone's voice was as quiet as Shepley's. 'If you won't stick the rules, we're going home.'
Yasolev swung his body to one side and then to the other like a trapped bear, and I had a flash of what he'd be like when he lost patience and gave the order for someone's destruction.
'You will not see my point of view.'
'I see it very clearly,' Cone said. 'And I want you to see ours. You guaranteed that while the mission was running the KGB wouldn't interfere.'
We waited.
'But you fail to understand the weight of my responsibilities. If — '
'You knew how heavy they were,' Cone told him, 'when you first approached London. Nothing's changed.'
'But of course it has changed. The General-Secretary is now to make a visit here.'
That was true and there was only one way out. 'Do you think,' I asked him, 'there's any threat to the General-Secretary from Werneuchen Airforce Base?'
'But of course. Your department in London spoke of it. Isn't that so?'
'Yes. So the day before Gorbachev lands in Berlin you can send as many people as you like into Werneuchen and close the place down and ground all the bombers and lock up all the pilots. Your General-Secretary isn't at risk until his plane touches down here, so until then we want you to leave us alone.'
1:15: lunch with Pollock at the Steingarten.
'It's just that I can't work up any interest in soccer. Can you?'
'Not really,' I said.
'I don't imagine. Nothing like cricket, is there?' Spoken with passion. 'I spend most of the winter replaying the Tests on the VCR. Any time you'd like to watch, give me a buzz.'
'I'll do that.'
At 2:15 I would walk into the street.
'But even with the videotapes it seems an awfully long time till May.'
'May?'
'When the cricket starts again.'
'Ah, yes.'
Walk into the street, if I could face it.
He'd told me he'd only got an hour for lunch, awfully sorry. 'Miki's' visit had relegated all other business to the back burner. That was why I would walk into the street at 2:15. And there wasn't any question, really, of not facing it. They expected it of me: Shepley, Cone, Yasolev. I expected it of myself.
'Losing your appetite?'
'I had rather a late breakfast.'
'Ah.'
I had asked Pollock to lunch because Horst Volper would have stationed a permanent watch on him. So far I hadn't found a tag on me when I'd left the hotel. So far the safe-house near Spittelmarkt was unblown. Unless Cone or Yasolev had been picked up, Pollock would unwittingly provide Volper's cell with a potential contact with me, and they'd go whenever he went. They would have come to the Steingarten. They would be waiting outside.
It was beginning to feel hot in here, and this was normal; in fact the place was underheated.
'Well, well.' Looking at his watch. 'Tempus fugit.'
I got my wallet out but he put down a 1,000-mark note on top of the bill. 'Honoured guest of the embassy.' Clean white smile, lowering his voice. 'Not often we get anyone out here with your kind of credentials.'
I thanked him.
'Are they looking after you at the hotel?'
'No complaints, except for the view.'
'Oh yes, you're at the front, aren't you? It's a bit sinister, I know what you mean. I'm not really used to it myself, yet, and I've been here three years. Kind of presence, isn't it?'
I’m rather relieved. I thought I was being over-sensitive.'
He got up and fetched his coat from the rack. 'Oh no, it gives most visitors the willies. I send quite a few of them to that hotel, visiting artists, culture vultures. I've booked Cat Baxter in there.' Chasing the sleeve of his coat. I helped him. 'Thanks.'
Rock star.
When is she coming?'
''Tomorrow.'
'She's bringing her group?'
Yea. Got a concert scheduled, big one. God, I hope she's going to behave herself — she's worse than Vanessa Redgrave, except that Cat's thing is human rights. Share my cab?'
'I'm not going far.'
Hoped it wasn't true. Hoped very much it wasn't true.
'Take care, then, and you know where your friends are if ever you need anything.'
'Yes.'
And where my enemies are.
Outside.
I found a telephone near the rest rooms. Cone answered at the second ring.
'For what it's worth,' I told him, 'Cat Baxter is bringing her rock group here tomorrow. The embassy's putting them up at our hotel.'
'Well, now.'
'I suggest you tell London. How is Yasolev?'
'I don't know. He's across at the Soviet Embassy.'
'Do you think he's breaking up under us?'
'I don't know. He's a very tough bloke, but he's got a very tough assignment. Thatcher and Reagan are one thing, but Gorbachev is turning half the world inside out and we don't want anyone to stop him. But that's my worry. You're still with Pollock?'
'He's just left here.'
'The Steingarten?'
'Yes.'
'And when are you leaving there?'
'Now.'
'Immediate plans?'
One, two, three: 'I'm going to see if I can get them interested.'
He didn't answer right away. 'You'll have support.'
Not really.
I said, 'Understood.'
'I want you to keep in contact.'
Said I would. What else could I say? If I made contact with him before this day's end it would simply mean I was still alive and had access to Horst Volper. If I didn't make contact then he'd have to signal London: shadow down.
I dropped the receiver back and walked through the lobby, big poster over the door — Berlin, capital of the German Democratic Republic! — they put it everywhere, on posters, book matches, hotel stationery, as if they might be having a little trouble getting people to believe it.
Swing doors, a woman behind me — Danke schon, bitte — and out into the street.
Felt suddenly naked, vulnerable.
The afternoon's operation was simple enough. I was going to make myself conspicuous so that they could catch me in the open and try killing me off as they tried before and I was going to give them a chance because Volper was the target for Quickstep and we didn't know where to find him and the only way to do it was to meet with his people at close quarters and ask them questions. It hadn't worked very well with Skidder but at least we'd got Werneuchen into the picture. This afternoon it might work better. But as I went down the steps onto the pavement and turned west along Dieckmannstrasse I felt so very vulnerable because they'd known I was in the Steingarten with Pollock and they could have got a hunting-rifle set up on a rooftop across the street and they could be lining up the reticle and putting pressure on the trigger spring now, and the air felt supernaturally cold and my body felt strangely light because whether you are very close to death or only think you are very close to death the nervous system reacts in precisely the same way: you go through a subtle shift in reality and feel poised, floating.
Then it was over and the nerves steadied and the street came back into focus and I went on walking, keeping up a good pace, business to do, so forth, because one of the things I had to do this afternoon was to make them believe that I didn't know they were there.
'Tewson.
He was one of Cone's people, a man I knew, and he was fifty yards behind me on the other side of the street.
You'llhave support.
Cone didn't use amateurs. He would have hand-picked them as soon as he'd reached Berlin and he might even have brought some of them with him or sent them ahead. Yesterday it had taken me almost two hours to throw one of them off before I could start out to Werneuchen. Today it would be quicker. I'd made arrangements, because these streets were strictly a red sector and I didn't want anyone coming in to help me when I could be into a close hold with one of Volper's men and getting the answers I wanted.
Tewson wasn't keeping to my pace; he wouldn't have to shorten the distance before I reached a corner: there'd be relay men, two, even three, somewhere ahead to take over and pass me on.
This was all Cone could do. We'd chewed the whole thing on the mat and he knew I was liable to go solo at any minute and he could only try to follow Shepley's instructions. Viktor Yasolev had his heavy responsibilities but so did Cone. He wouldn't be shot at dawn if he failed to bring me home from Quickstep but he'd find sleep hard to come by for a long time afterwards. He was one of the few field directors — Ferris was another, and Bainbridge — who took a personal pride in protecting their executives, and he'd brought them home again and again, sometimes from last-ditch situations where other directors would have left them for dead and pulled out. This afternoon he'd try to make sure I was never alone, never without support, but I couldn't let that happen because when it came to the crunch I wanted a clear field to work in.
Charlottenstrasse, and I turned the corner and walked north, a damp chill in the air, the river smell drifting through the streets from the Spree. I felt better now; the nerves had reacted to the fear of imminent death when I stepped into the street but the gooseflesh had gone by this time and I was walking steadily and the organism was gradually eliminating the excess adrenalin. Not all of it. I could need more, at any time.
The relay man was a hundred yards ahead of me on the other side. I couldn't see his face but I knew he'd be there somewhere and I picked him up fairly soon; if I hadn't been looking for him I could have missed him easily: he was using good mobile cover — other people — and had his back to me most of the time.
'How are things, Gunter?'
I got in and slammed the door and sat back straight away. There was a Mercedes SEL behind us and I didn't want to overlook anything.
The relay man was at the intersection of Charlottenstrasse and Franzstrasse by now and he'd seen me get into the cab and he was turned away from us and using his walkie-talkie, but there wasn't anything he could do unless Cone had put a vehicle into the field and that wasn't likely with a relay tag in operation.
'I was on time?'
'Yes.' He wanted praise, and I should've thought of that; in this trade we don't give it. 'Exactly on time. Take a right and a left as fast as you legally can.'
'Whatever you say.'
Give me your wife's name and her sister's address, and by the end of the month I'll see she gets a permit to visit the cemetery on the other side.
He didn't think I'd give him a bill. I hadn't put it specifically but I'd given him the cover of being what they called a live-body entrepreneur. Ever since the Wall had gone up there'd been a steady trade in people who needed to reach the other side. Prices varied, and the cost of getting young people across was higher, their working life and value to the German Democratic Republic making them expensive: in the region of twenty-five thousand US dollars. For this man's wife the price would normally be a quarter of that: she was middle-aged and a woman. But he didn't think I'd give him a bill because I'd told him there were things he could do for me.
'Get into Unter den Linden.'
He nodded his head.
I wanted Unter den Linden because we'd have more room to manoeuvre. The Mercedes had been behind us when we'd pulled out from the kerb in Charlottenstrasse but that didn't mean anything. I didn't think it was Cone's because it was a four-door model and too big, too noticeable for a tracking vehicle and too expensive for the Bureau's economies. It could be Volper's, making a series of sweeping passes ever since I'd walked out of the Steingarten. It couldn't have shadowed Gunter from his apartment because I'd taken extreme care before I'd decided on it as a safe-house. The SEL could have more than one, more than two men in it. The object of their operation was to get onto my track and stay with me until they'd set up the kill and could trigger it but it didn't have to take all afternoon — they could pull into the next traffic lane at any time and come alongside and put out a burst of rapid fire. But I didn't expect that. The streets of East Berlin are well policed and the bleak, quiet atmosphere would deter anyone from calling attention.
And I was beginning to know Horst Volper's style. The first attempt at a kill had been carefully organised, and designed to look like a hit-and-run. He wouldn't start lashing out in a panic.
'Gunter. What kind of car have we got behind us?'
'A VW.'
'And behind that? Don't move your head.'
He let the cab drift a couple of feet to the left side and checked the mirror again.
'A Mercedes SEL.'
'Find me a phone box.'
It took us another three blocks and he pulled into the kerb and waited for me while I got out and crossed the pavement to the telephone and called the Soviet Ambassador.