'Liaison.'
'How can I help you?'
'Is Major Yasolev still in the embassy?'
'I will see.'
It was only three o'clock but the rooftops were already losing definition. Dark would soon be coming down.
'Yasolev.'
'Liaison.'
'Yes?'
'Have you put a tag on me?'
'No.
The Mercedes had pulled into a space well ahead of us; I could only just see its rear numberplate. Within that distance Gunter wouldn't be able to make a U-turn legally and there was no sidestreet. All they had to do was wait, and if I didn't go back to the cab they'd simply deploy people on foot.
'Are you sure?' I asked Yasolev.
'Of course I am sure. We agreed.'
'It's not that I don't trust you. I'm just checking.'
'Where are you?'
'I'll be in touch,' I said, and rang off and went across the pavement and got in and saw the small black Audi reflected in a window on the flier side. It had swung into Unter den Linden three blocks ago and I’d seen its image in windows at the first and third intersections. I thought it was best to leave it alone and blow the Mercedes.
'Gunter, that SEL is parked about seventy metres ahead of us on this side. When you go past it, put your foot down hard and take a right into Spandauerstrasse and then a left as fast as you can.' He started the engine. 'If the lights are against us at Spandauer, go into it when they change and then do whatever you think best to lose the Merc.'
'Without doing anything the police — '
'Your own discretion.'
'I could lose my licence, and it's my living.'
'Absolutely at your own discretion. Just lose the Merc.' He got into gear.
It wouldn't be difficult.
They would let him do it.
Host Volper knew more about me than I knew about him. He knew I was experienced: witness the Skidder incident. He knew London wouldn't send anyone out here who didn't know what a tag was, who didn't know how to get rid of it: they'd seen me lose Cone's man a few minutes ago. So I had to blow either the SEL or the Audi because that would be my level of street-craft and they'd expect me to conform. The Merc had been with us longer and it was more noticeable and it was slower on the gun than the Audi so this was the better one to go for.
And they'd let it happen because then I'd be lulled, satisfied that we were alone again. I wasn't expected to know about the Audi.
'Yes,' Gunter said, 'it's just — '
'All right. Turn your head and look at it when you go past and then give it the gun.'
But the lights were red at Spandauer and we had to wait till they changed, but he'd gone through the motions and worked up a bit of tyre-squeal and when the green came on he jumped it by a fraction and took a right and two lefts and I told him to slow and take it easy: we'd lost the Merc.
The Audi was still with us.
'Put me down outside the U-bahn station at Alexanderplatz. Have you had lunch yet?'
I eat on the job.'
'You did well.'
I got out and went into the subway entrance, checking the environment as a precaution, simply as a precaution, looking as if I didn't expect tags now that the Mercedes was blown.
Two men got out of the Audi but I made sure to catch them only at the edge of the vision-sweep; then I went down the steps.
Chicken, I suppose.
I mean going down into the subway. Nerves.
All right, I'm not your bloody hero.
The subways in Europe are normally safe from killing attempts because they're confining and limiting in terms of freedom to get away. You can make the kill quite easily — I've done it twice, but only because i had to do it there or nowhere — but if there's going to be any noise or fuss you risk getting cut off from escape. I used my hands on both occasions, in total silence.
The U-bahn in East Berlin is a safer place than most others in Europe; as safe as in Moscow. I didn't expect an attack at Alexanderplatz; all I wanted to do was make sure they were still on my track and begin the major work of the afternoon. This was to make it seem that I had a rendezvous to keep, that I realised they were still in the environment and that I couldn't make the rdv until I'd thrown them off,
This meant using a phone at intervals, to give the impression that I was having to shift the rendezvous in timing and location because I wasn't alone and mustn't expose the contact. The entire operation for an agent's enticing the opposition to make an attack in the hope of securing one of them for interrogation is in the books at Norfolk but I don't know anyone who's carried it through; the risk factor is exorbitantly high and a director in the field would never ask his executive to do it, because it'd be like giving him a loaded revolver with five rounds in the chamber and asking him to play Russian roulette.
Sitting with my tea in this sleazy cafe scared to death.
I'd got on a train and got off again at Schillingstrasse and here I was and here they were, one of them at a table across by the door and I couldn't help that because I hadn't wanted to sit there myself: it was too exposed. The other man was in a corner as far from the door as possible, so that I couldn't keep both of them in sight at the same time, which is good close-surveillance practice and very effective.
Scared to death because I hadn't wanted to mount this operation and I'd done it reluctantly and that's infinitely worse for the nerves. I knew that Shepley was pushing the Bureau to the limits trying to locate Horst Volper and I knew that Yasolev and his cell were doing the same, and at any time they could come up with some kind of access for me that would take me off the street and put me into a new direction. But they hadn't found anything and all I could do was sit here in this bloody place and hope these two would try an attack so that I could nail one or both of them and wring some information out of them, sit here and hope at the same time that they'd decide not to attack because it could easily go their way instead of mine and they could walk out of here a minute from now or an hour from now and leave me curled up in the cleaner's closet or one of the cubicles in the lav with my head on my chest and my eyes looking at nothing, nothing at all, while the blood — oh Jesus Christ this is the trade you're in and this is the way you want to play it so don't bloody well whine.
Got a bun.
Went and got a bun from the filthy cracked marble counter and paid for it, a huge woman, face like a po, her eyes already mourning a lost future, sat down again and started on the thing though I wasn't hungry — I needed fifteen more minutes in here and it was something to do, but at least I'd got a glimpse of him, the one by the door, in the mirror behind the counter, and that was a plus because it could be very important indeed if later the same man — if I got out of here — the same man came close to me in a crowd; I'd be able to recognise him and get a chance of jumping the gun.
But let's not talk about guns. Right — I never draw one when I'm going through Clearance because they can be dangerous: it's not just professional caprice. Carrying one of those things can make people nervous and they'll pay you a lot more attention and try for an overkill before you can do any useful work; but let them know you're unarmed and in their opinion harmless and they'll come up quite close and then you can go in with the hands and do a very great deal more damage than a bit of hot copper because you can be selective, picking on the right nerve for the job, producing paralysis or producing pain, the intense pain that's guaranteed to cool them off and get some answers out of them.
But it's like seat belts: they're effective eighty per cent of the time and for the other twenty per cent you're on your own. One of these people could pull something out and use it from where he was sitting, dropping me like a bird off a bough. The risks are calculated, and they're the only kind I ever take.
The one in the corner had gone to the phone when he'd come in here and that was why they weren't making a move. One of two things was on the programme: he'd got instructions to wait here until I left and keep up the tag, or he'd asked for someone else to get here very fast indeed because they had me set up and were ready for the kill.
It really was a bloody awful bun. This was East Berlin, not West, none of your delicate mille-feuilles or rum babas, just this rotten lump of crud straight out of the granary, rat-shit and all.
At 3:16 I began looking at my watch. The time wasn't critical, not important; it was just that the chances of doing anything in here weren't very good. The situation was far too static: when the time came for me to move in on them it'd be when things were suddenly starting to go very fast, so that I could work with reactions and reflexes, find a totally unrehearsed opening and take it on the wing, because the only way you can work this particular operation is in hot blood and with the system full of adrenalin.
At 3:27 I got up and went over to the phone on the wall and dialled at random. The two tags hadn't been joined by anyone: the only people who'd come in here in the last eleven minutes were two women and a man with one arm.
Ringing tone. Five, six, seven. Not at home.
'I can't be there at the time we agreed on.'
Waited.
'I know, Heinrich. I'm sorry. I'll call you again as soon as I can.'
I put the phone back and said Auf Wiedersehen to the big fat woman and walked out of the cafe and turned left without hesitation and had to go half a mile before a bus slowed at a stop and some people got off and it pulled out again and I kept on walking until the rear doorway was abreast of me and I ran flat out and just made it.
'You shouldn't do that!'
Verboten, so forth.
Pitching a bit as the thing changed gear.
'I could have you arrested!'
Abuse of petty authority; it was all the rage because these poor bastards had no authority, by grace of their Soviet overlords.
'Have a heart, comrade, my wife's ill and I've got to get home.'
But I could have got myself killed, peaked cap and a righteous glare, and then I wouldn't have got home at all, would I, so forth.
Paid the fare and took a seat and used the windows and saw the four-door 230 keeping station at a circumspect fifty metres behind. It had been standing near the cafe in support of the two tags and they'd either climbed in before it moved off or they hadn't; it made no difference: Volper would have a dozen men in the field.
'Is it the flu?'
'What?'
'Your wife.'
'Yes.'
'It's going around. Plenty of rest.'
'That's right.'
There was a chance that they'd try driving me into a corner somewhere and make a snatch instead of a killing. Not a big chance but I couldn't ignore it. I'd come out from London and I'd been holed up with Cone and Yasolev and we'd been in signals and Volper might decide I'd be worth snatching first and grilling before he had me put out of the way. It didn't worry me too much at this stage; they wouldn't find it easy and if I got it wrong then I had the capsule and I wouldn't think twice because there was enough information on the Bureau inside my head to blow it clean out of the European intelligence community.
I got out at Strausbergerplatz and walked as far as Blumenstrasse and they came very close and I felt the air-rush and bounced off the side panel of the front wing and went spinning across the pavement while the tyres squealed and someone caught me before I could go pitching down, the rooftops reeling across the vision-field and the stink of exhaust gas and the terrible fear that they'd stop and get out and finish me off, catch me while I was off balance and unprepared.
'Are you all right?'
Said I was, trying to get focus back, trying to get ready in case they stopped and came for me.
'He must have been drunk!'
Eyes watching me, full of concern, hands on my arms in case I fell.
'Yes. Must've been.'
'Are you hurt anywhere?'
'No. I'm — '
'You were lucky.'
'Yes. I'm all right now. Thank you. Good of you.'
'Do you want to sit down somewhere?'
'No. No, thank you.'
And at a deeper level of consciousness below the polite exchange the creeping of dread, because it had been extremely close and yes indeed I'd been lucky and if they'd come an inch or two nearer they'd have spun me round with a smashed spine and left me face-down on the pavement with my arms flung out, finis, the unfortunate victim of a dastardly hit-an-run accident involving a black Mercedes saloon for which the police are now searching assiduously, so forth, and a signal to London, shadow down.
'Well, I'll be on my way.'
'What? Yes. Yes, very kind, thank you.'
The creeping of dread because however much you're aware that you're inviting attack, however carefully you're playing it by the book, the shock of a close call reminds the psyche that its death is sought, its extermination, eagerly sought; and there's something horribly personal in this, horribly intimate, and it reaches down into the secret confines of the personality and plunders it, and leaves its effect, which can finally be devastating. It's this feeling that brings a man back from a mission with a shut face and slow speech as he sits in one of those small stuffy rooms with his operations director and signs his name on the form, request no further action in the field.
Walking on, bumping into someone — Verzeihen Sie — then finding equilibrium again, walking past the line at a bus stop at 4:15 in the afternoon with the dark down and the tops of the buildings lost in a creeping fog.
It had been like a shark.
More people in the streets now, the traffic bunching at the lights. Another hour and work would be over.
Like a shark, that thing.
Yes, like a shark, shuddup. The end of the working day would be over and they could get into their coats and line up for the buses and the trams and the trains and go home.
With its jaws open when it came past.
Oh for the sake of Jesus Christ shuddup, it's over now and we're still alive, it's not the first time you've come close to blowing it. Stamping their feet at the bus stop, breath like steam, going home, sweet home, with all the evening in front of them, a nice hot dish of sauerkraut and spuds, or would you like to see a movie tonight?
4:20 in the afternoon and this one man moving among all the others, not of them, not of their company but isolated, an outcast, threading his clandestine way through the city on his own surreptitious purposes, while the Mercedes turned again at the Andreasstrasse intersection and started a loop for the second time, and the man in the black wool coat and scarf kept pace on the other side.
I would like to see a movie, yes. I would like to see a movie very much.
Walking a little quicker now; the scenario required it: I still had a rendezvous to keep and I still had to throw off the surveillance before I could keep it.
Waited ten minutes for a bus and got on and saw the Mercedes three vehicles behind and the Lancia parked near the U-Bahnhof with its engine running: I could see the exhaust gas.
This at least I knew now: they wouldn't try for a snatch in the hope of' grilling me. They were here for a kill of whatever kind — at close quarters or with a hit-and-run attack or a premeditated set-up involving precision. The shark thing had just been impulsive, but it proved their intention: death in the afternoon.
At 4:38 I got onto a train at Ost-Bahnhof and took it as far as Ostkreuz, with one of the men who'd been in the cafe getting on soon after me and sitting with his back turned at the end of the compartment, facing a glazed poster with useful reflection. Back in the street at Ostkreuz I walked south along Markgrafendamm with the same man behind me and a BMW cruising in from a side street: the people on foot would have been using their radios but there hadn't been time for the Mercedes or the Lancia to get here — they wouldn't have known where I was until I got off the train and they had the signal. They'd brought in the BMW from somewhere closer; it had pulled into the traffic twice and stopped twice, keeping its distance.
At Straulauer Allee I went into a cafe and used the phone. Steamy windows and the smell of stale cigarette-smoke and a litter of crumbs and slops on the plastic tables, two cab-drivers with a jug of coffee and a sandwich from the machine, a man in the corner, possibly a tag, his attitude too casual, a man coming in, certainly a tag, the one who'd been on the train.
'Hello?'
'I still can't throw them off.'
'What? This is Frau Hauffman.'
'All I can do is phone you when there's a chance.'
'Who are you, please?'
'Don't leave the phone; I'll call you again soon.'
I believe you have the wrong number, so forth; neither of them moved when I walked out of the cafe into the Allee and across to Elsenstrasse and the bridge.
The feeling of dread persisting, haunting the nerves, the bruise on the hip a reminder of how close they'd come, how close they would come again.
The traffic across the bridge was light; there was no one walking: it was too cold. Below the balustrade the black waters of the river glittered from bank to bank with the lights of the city, and the air was freezing, here in the open away from the buildings. I walked steadily, meaning to go as far as Puschkin Allee and then make a loop and turn back on my tracks and make a run for it, a very fast run that might bring just one of them, only one of them close to me where I could work on him; but they were getting impatient now and I could see three of them ahead of me at the far end of the bridge and when I looked behind me there were two more and the profile of the BMW gathering speed and I felt the rush of adrenalin and the sour taste in the mouth at the onset of fear as I reached the middle of the bridge and they began shutting the trap.