I was spinning on the wall of the vortex, spinning very fast.
The vortex had been the sea itself, and then the wind had come and the sea drew down in the centre and began whirling and I was in it, whirling on the dark wall of the vortex, a thing with its arms and legs flung out and its mouth open, screaming.
But sometimes lucidity came, like a shaft of brilliant light, and I saw myself in the chair, my wrists handcuffed to its arms, my head held back by a strap so that I couldn't lower it, couldn't look away from the light.
It was a strobe light.
Then the vortex took me down again, a huge dark wave leaping and roaring down and sweeping me with it and leaving me spinning on the wall of water, the wall of the vortex, and I began screaming again, but the other sound was louder, drowning my voice. I was in terror of the sound.
It was a piezo electric siren.
It was filling the room, the garage, with such a volume of sound that the walls would belly outwards before long and the roof crash down, surely it must happen with this monstrous volume of sound filling the room, the garage. The piezo had a faster beat than the strobe light. The flashes of the strobe were hitting my closed eyes at something like fifty or sixty per minute, but the rhythm of the siren was in the region of five oscillations a second, slicing through my head and pinning me to the wall of dark water.
Whirling and screaming in the huge dark vortex, a black hole, an other-world, death.
Lucidity again and a degree of self-awareness, enough to know that the sweat was crawling on my face and my pulse racing, the saliva springing into my mouth so fast that I had to keep swallowing: the whole of the nervous system had become galvanised.
Flash-flash-flash.
Any conception of time had been destroyed somewhere in the past'. I didn't know if I'd been here for three hours or three days. The thing was to keep the integrity of the organism unbroken, to hack out a pathway through this miasma and maintain orientation, but my brain was in theta waves and it could only surface with an effort of will, and in the theta region access to the will is diminished, dangerously diminished, flash – flash – flash - as the mind rocked, as the dark wall of the vortex reared and whirled.
Then they shut off the sound.
Silence exploded and I was left in the debris of the shock, spinning among waves of colour, powerless to reach any kind of shore where beta-wave thought could begin again, until over the minutes the colours of the waves of silence drained away, and I thought I heard a voice.
'Who are you?
My face was wet. The whole organism was vibrating: it felt like a bell, vibrating. 'What?' I heard someone say, 'What?' But that was me.
'Who are you?'
Flash-flash-flash.
'Turn off that light,' I said.
'Who are you?'
'Turn off that fucking light.'
Flash -flash -flash.
'I'm going to ask you some questions. When you've answered them, I'll turn off the light.'
Rage was beginning now as the natural reaction to shock, and if I hadn't been handcuffed to the chair I might have got up and killed him, killed someone, killed as many of them as I could reach because there was more than one man in here, more than one of them, but then we must think, we must do a little thinking, because I'd come here with a cover and that was what I must use, the only weapon I had, the only one that could keep the mission running. I hadn't got this close to Nemesis in order to kill some people and get clear. I was here to go in deeper, right to the centre. There was no place here for rage.
Flash-flash-flash.
Ignore.
'I might decide,' I said, 'to answer questions, and I might not. We'll see.'
'… Difficult.'
'What? Listen, that thing's left my head buzzing, you ought to know that. You'll have to speak up.'
'Who are you?'
'Hans Mittag.'
'What business are you in?'
'Armaments. I buy and sell.'
'What were you doing at the airport this morning?'
'None of your bloody business.'
'I need to know.'
'I was seeing someone off, but I'm not going to tell you his name. He's a business associate. Tell Klaus that if he wants what I've offered him he's got to pay for it. You'll never brainwash it out of me, you understand that?'
He didn't say anything for a moment. I let my eyes come open a little, and saw some shapes. They were floating behind the flashing light, because it had produced tears and they were still coming. I think there were three men here, and there was another face, beautiful, a woman's, Inge's.
'What?'
I thought he'd spoken. Perhaps he hadn't. I was still in an altered state of consciousness, would be for a while, that was the object of the exercise, to disorientate before they started the questions.
'How long have you been an arms dealer?'
'Several years.'
'How many?
'Oh Jesus Christ, haven't you ever met an arms dealer before? We don't start at any specific time, it's not like reporting for your first day at a bloody bank, you don't just -' have to watch it, I mustn't get cross, it doesn't suit the cover, my head was still full of the most appalling noises, that was all, and I wanted to kill someone for doing that to me, kill one of these people, kill Klaus, Dieter Klaus, yes, well that's on the cards, isn't it, he's the target for the mission, kill that bloody -
'… you work in?'
'What?
'Tell me what main area you work in.'
'God, what a vague question, you mean what do I buy and sell or do you mean where do I go to do it? I buy and sell anything I can make a profit on and I go all over the world, is this the way Klaus normally does business with arms dealers, I thought he was an intelligent human being.'
Don't get cross.
I suppose she'd asked Klaus if she could come here, Inge, in case they found I was some kind of spook and took me outside and tore me apart, and then she could play with the giblets like cats do when they've killed a mouse; her beautiful ice-blue eyes had been shining when she'd called out to him, Can I be there too? like a little girl asking Daddy if she could go to the party, bitch, she was a bitch, very thirsty now, I was very thirsty but I wasn't going to ask these bastards for anything, a pox on them, steady now, steady lad, get the nerves back in the basket or you're a gonner, you'll blow the whole thing.
'Where do you go, for instance?'
'Go? China, for instance, wouldn't you? Look, there's been a tremendous proliferation of sources of materiel in the last few years because we've got all these lovely wars to keep going, but China's still very much in business – I'd put it about eighth on the list of the major world suppliers.'
'Where else?' He had a thin voice, and I believe a thin face: I could see it floating near the flash – flash – flash of that bloody strobe. He was wearing black goggles, welder's goggles, the bastard – I could use a pair of those.
'You don't have to go far, surely you know that. There are still over two hundred thousand Soviet troops hanging around in this country waiting to be sent home, and a lot of them are raiding their stores for anything they can carry. They -'
'But you deal in bigger things than that, don't you?'
'They steal tanks, aren't tanks big enough for you? Even Soghanalian deals in them, because when -'
'Who?
'Sarkis Soghanalian, he's the biggest dealer there is, an absolute pro, a Turkish-Armenian Christian with Lebanese papers, lives in the USA -'
'What other dealers do you know?'
Flash-flash-flash.
I told him about Terpil, Korkala, people like that.
'What about the Turkish border?
Flash -flash -flash.
I told him about the traffic in Semtex, the traffic in drugs.
The strobe wasn't inducing hallucinations as the piezo siren had done, but it was keeping me just below full beta-wave consciousness, and that was what he wanted, the man with the thin voice, the thin face, Gestler, no, Geissler, Take him to the garage, give him to Geissler, yes, he wanted me just below the surface, uncritical, unwary, and I'd have to be very careful because – 'Go on.'
'What? That bloody light's making me sleepy.'
'You were talking about the exchange of sensitive information.'
'That's right, I mean we meet a lot of top people on government level, and so we pick up some very valuable information, get a high price for it if we work it right, better than tanks, sometimes.'
Flash – flash – flash.
Asked me about the US scene.
Told him.
Asked me about a lot of other things, and sometimes I felt myself smiling, just as he had smiled, little Ahmad Samala when he was talking about his toys, the sweat drying on my face and the eyes still streaming, their faces floating in the rhythmic pulsing of light and dark, told him what he wanted to know.
'Where was that?
'In the USA, in Arkansas. An airman dropped a nine-pound socket from a spanner inside a Titan silo, and it punched a hole in the skin of a fuel cell and started a leak, and this is the funny bit, there was a 750-ton steel door on the silo and when that fuel went off it sent it two hundred feet straight into the air and dropped it a thousand feet away.'
'You were there?'
'If I'd been there, I wouldn't be here. No, Soghanalian told me about it. These things happen.'
Flash – flash – flash.
'Do you ever deal in nuclear armaments? Or components?'
I tried to look at him through the tears. 'Do I what!'
'Do you ever deal in -'
'I heard what you said, but what the hell are you talking about? Didn't they tell you?'
'Tell me what?'
He was testing me out, that was all. He'd done a lot of that, asking me to repeat things to see if I was consistent 'I'm offering to sell Dieter Klaus an NK-9 Miniver.'
'And what is that?
'Look, if Klaus wants to know the specifics, I'm willing to tell him, providing it's in a civilised environment. I'm not used to discussing an arms deal worth a million US dollars in a garage. Now you'd better listen to this. You're behaving like a gang of thugs and it surprises me because Dieter Klaus has got a reputation for running a really sophisticated organisation, but if you'll switch that thing off and get me out of this chair we can talk about things. I'm still ready to do a deal with Klaus, but hell have to prove he's serious. All he's done so far is make me very annoyed.'
The tears streaming on my face, nothing much more in my head now but the flash – flash – flash of the strobe, and then it stopped.
Not altogether. It went on, but only under my eyelids now, not right through my head.
'Release him,' Geissler said.
People moved about, and someone came close, smell of tobacco. The handcuffs came off. Working, he was working on the strap now, the strap on my head. I couldn't hear too well, there was quite a degree of tinnitus, these bastards had been wearing ear-protectors, must have been.
'What is the Miniver like?'
Geissler.
'I've told you, I'm not -'
'Just a brief description, nothing specific.'
I opened my eyes, got out a handkerchief. The bodyguards who'd brought me here had gone, but there were two other people, both men this time, both with guns hanging from their hands. Inge was leaning against the redbrick wall, one foot against it behind her, arms folded, I couldn't see the expression in her eyes, things were still floating a bit. Geissler was quite tall, not your usual mobster, quite intelligent-looking, but then his questions had been like that, quite intelligent; I could see him holding a violin, or a baton, except for his eyes, which had as much soul in them as a steel trap.
He was waiting.
'It's a tactical nuclear missile,' I said, 'capable of being launched by a designated officer of high rank in the field at his personal discretion – or by anyone in his command, presumably, under his supervision, I'm not sure of the niceties. The Miniver can knock out an entire division, or as I told Inge, a sports stadium or the Houses of Parliament in London, what you will. That's all I can tell you.'
I got out of the chair, and no one stopped me. They still looked like figures in some kind of netherworld, and I wasn't too steady on my feet, but that was to be expected. Presumably my cover had stood up, or the Stoph girl would be out there playing with my giblets by now.
'My name is Geissler,' the thin man said, 'Ignaz Geissler.' He offered me his hand. 'I'll take you to see Dieter Klaus.'
There was no one in the room.
'I'll tell him you've arrived,' Geissler said, and left me. He didn't lock the door: I would have heard it, even though there was still some lingering tinnitus ringing in my head from that awful piezo thing.
The heavy silk curtains were drawn across the windows and I didn't part them to look out; on principle I don't like to offer a blatant target, though I didn't think anyone here was likely to shoot at me. They could have done that in the garage if they'd wanted to.
Geissler had ordered one of the men there to blindfold me again, and had apologised in his dry way, calling it an 'inconvenient measure of security.' Then they'd put me into a car and Geissler and another man had sat in the back with me, and I'd smelled gun oil. The garage had been somewhere south of Tegel Airport, because we hadn't gone far from the Eissporthalle, and on our way here I'd monitored the sound of the planes along their flight paths and the hooting of the tugs and barges on the Tegeler See, and I would have said the house was north-west of the airport but not far away, eight or nine kilometres, perhaps in Kreis Oranienburg.
The room was spacious, elegant: white-enamelled fluted mouldings, shot-silk wall covering, a twelve-foot ceiling, the furniture mostly reproduction Edwardian, the carpeting heavy, brocaded at the fringe. The magazines neatly arranged on the low polished table near the hearth were mostly German – Stern, Quick, Brigitte – and American – Life, Time, Newsweek – with some newspapers lying on the chair nearby, one of them Arabic, the Farsi-language Jomhuri Islami, with a picture of the president of Iran on the front page, which I thought was interesting.
There were no flowers in the room, and no bowls of potpourri anywhere that I could see, but there was a faint perfume on the air, as if a woman had been here recently, or came often.
I assumed they'd brought me to the headquarters of Nemesis.
It would please London, give them something for the board, pick up the bit of chalk, then – Executive has maintained cover, infiltrated opposition headquarters, three cheers for the poor bloody ferret in the field, that'd teach them to give me a clown like Thrower for my DIF, but we're getting petty, aren't we, a touch spiteful, that's the way it goes, though, in this trade – they've got so much raw naked power over us, those bastards in London, because the only way anyone can turn himself into a professional spook and work for an outfit as sacrosanct as the Bureau is to sell them his soul and submit to a degree of discipline that would put a regimental sergeant major straight into shock. We're expected to -
'So!'
Klaus.
I hadn't heard the door open. Perhaps he hadn't meant me to.
'We must shake hands, mustn't we, Herr Mittag, now that I know who you are. Sit down, please, sit down.'
He wasn't wearing the smoked glasses now. His eyes were very dark, would look black in some lights: I thought he might be using coloured contact lenses, because his hair was so blond in contrast. He sat on the edge of the settee, leaving me one of the silk-brocade chairs; he sat facing me directly, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. 'We must have dinner later, and you'll stay the night, of course. Hans Mittag… I'm surprised I haven't heard your name before, if you're important enough to deal in the kind of armament Inge mentioned – we can speak freely here, of course.'
Not really.
I said, 'I use several names.'
'That explains it, of course, I expected it to be the case, yes. Now tell me about the Miniver NK-9.'
'Are you in the market for it?'
I didn't lean forward to face him; it was a wing chair, and comfortable, and I felt like taking it easy after that garage thing.
'I am in the market for it, yes,' Klaus said, 'otherwise I wouldn't have had you brought here. But I need details.'
His face was open, attentive, but the bright obsidian eyes had an intensity that reminded me that although I'd come out of that garage with a whole skin my cover was still my only protection. For as long as I stayed here at the centre of Nemesis I was a fly on a web, and one wrong word could send it trembling.
'I'll give you the most important detail first,' I told him. 'My price for one fully-primed Miniver NK-9 complete with electronic detonator is one million US dollars, cash.'
He lifted his square heavy-looking hands from his knees and dropped them again. I think it was a gesture of impatience.
'You must know,' he said, 'that the details I'm asking for concern the missile and its capability. 'We'll discuss the price later.'
'Surely I don't need to tell you, Herr Klaus, what a missile with a nuclear warhead will do. I've already given Stoph and your man Geissler an adequate idea. You could reduce the Eissporthalle, for instance, where you were sitting tonight, to radioactive ash, if you wanted to, and turn the entire district of Charlottenburg into a wasteground for a century to come, if not the whole of Berlin. The funds must be placed to a Swiss account, by the way, within twenty-four hours of your decision to buy the Miniver, if that's the decision you're going to make.'
He said nothing, went on staring at me. That was all right: I wasn't in any hurry. It was quiet in the room; there were logs burning in the hearth but the flames were soundless, at least to my ears. I hoped the effects of the piezo siren weren't going to last too long: I needed the full use of my senses.
Klaus said in a moment, 'I should tell you that I don't actually require the complete missile. I require only the warhead.'
'The price is the same.'
His hands lifted again, dropped. 'I assume the warhead can be used by itself? It would become, in effect, a bomb?'
'Oh yes. It could be detonated electronically in just the same way, or by a conventional explosive charge or by remote control. Yes, we'd be talking about a.1-megaton nuclear bomb.'
And a first, a real first for Nemesis in the annals of international terrorism: a nuclear Lockerbie. He had a sense of the dramatic, Dieter Klaus. You didn't need a Miniver warhead to bring down a 747 with two hundred and fifty people in it: you could do it with a teddy bear. But it would attract a lot more attention to have the rescue crews and investigators go into the scene wearing protective masks and clothing and armed with Geiger counters.
'You mean,' Klaus said, 'one-tenth of a megaton?'
'Yes.'
'That is a lot of power.'
'Yes.'
I waited for him to put the next question. He hadn't moved since we'd started talking, just his hands; he was still sitting forward, right on the edge of the settee, giving me all his attention. The only difference I could sense, as we watched each other now, was an added vibration in him: I could feel its waves. He'd begun to want the Miniver with great intensity, to lust after it. But he still didn't put the question: how could it be taken aboard a commercial jet?
'And when could you deliver the warhead?' he asked me instead.
'When do you want it delivered?'
'As soon as possible.'
In a moment I said, and with the greatest care, 'You know, of course, that this kind of bomb has got its drawbacks. You couldn't, for instance, get it through an inspection area.' It was as far as I could go. 'It's not like a bit of Semtex.' It was as far as I could go because Inge had told Willi that these people were planning a Lockerbie thing, and Inge knew that Willi had talked to me. I'd be lighting a short-burn fuse if I mentioned an airport.
'That's no problem,' Klaus said.
I didn't show any surprise. The Miniver warhead wasn't all that big: it'd go into a suitcase; but you wouldn't get it through an X-ray unit. It worried me a little; Klaus was deviating from the script, and I didn't know why.
I asked him, 'Will you need a conventional explosive charge to provide detonation?'
'No.'
He'd got one already: teddy bear. 'You can deposit the funds in Geneva within twenty-four hours?'
'Yes,' he said and got up suddenly and walked about, marched almost, energised by his new-found lust for that bloody thing. 'Half down, half on delivery.'
'Here in Berlin?' 'No. In Algiers.'
Oh really.
'I haven't any plans,' I told him, to go to Algiers, so I won't be there at the delivery point.'
He stopped his restless pacing and turned and faced me. 'If we are to complete this deal, Herr Mittag, I'd prefer you to remain within my organisation as a respected guest until delivery is made. Then if there are any problems you'll be there to take care of them and receive the final payment.' He was standing very still, watching me. 'I don't insist on it, but I would prefer it. What do you say?'
I got out of the chair and turned away from him, took a step or two, turned back, because it'd seem natural for me to want a little time, to give it a little thought. But I didn't need any time and I didn't need to think. It was a trap, because he was giving me a choice and he didn't have to.
There was no good reason why I shouldn't stay with his organisation through the performance of the deal; it's often done in cases like this when the final payment is to be made at the delivery point. I could refuse, but if I refused he'd know I was frightened of something or that I wasn't on the level and it'd be tantamount to blowing my own cover and he'd forget the Miniver and tell Geissler to put a bullet into the back of the head and take me across to the East side and leave me there for the garbage collectors to pick up.
But if I agreed to stay with his organisation until the warhead was delivered it'd be the same thing as going to ground: I'd be cutting myself off from my director in the field and from London, and Cone would assume I'd bought it and they'd put me down on the Signals board as missing, missing or deceased, and it might not turn out to be a lot different from the truth because the strain of keeping to my cover in an organisation, like this one even for another twenty-four hours would be critical – get a word wrong or forget something I'd said and finis, finito.
He was waiting for my answer, Klaus. But I hadn't any choice.
'If that's what you'd prefer,' I said, 'I'll stay, of course. See the deal through.'