Quiller KGB

'It's the only way in. I've done it before.' Moscow, West Berlin, Prague. 'It's a classic, you know that. It's the fastest way in.'

'They'll want,' he said, 'to make sure, next time.'

'The greatest risk is that one of your people gets in my way. The whole thing's very hair-trigger and I could lose him by a knee-jerk reaction before he'd got time to identify himself. I wish you'd see that.'

He put down his tea by the phone and got his briefcase and found an envelope and ripped it open.

'I've got five men on standby. Here are their faces.' He gave me some photographs. 'I don't use them all at once. There was only one of them behind you when you left that club. Keep these somewhere safe.'

'What are their code names?'

'You don't need to worry about that. They won't ever come out of the background unless something happens, and then you won't be interested in their names.'

I put the prints away. 'All right, that's a help. D'you think Yasolev's got people out there too?'

'He gave you his word. I don't know how much it's worth.'

I let it go. 'What about the police?'

'We haven't asked them to look after you. He might have.'

I got myself some more tea. 'What are they doing about the Spree thing?'

'Yasolev asked them to put out smoke. They did. You won't be questioned.'

'But it's woken them up, hasn't it? He wiped out at least two of their cars and finished up on a slab.'

'We can't help that.' The phone was ringing. 'We've got to leave the HUA to Yasolev.' He picked up the receiver.

I was getting gooseflesh, the more I thought about it. Cone had got five men in support and the Spree thing had shaken Yasolev badly and lie could easily decide to bring in some KGB support of his own and on top of that the East German police could just as easily decide to take an interest in me after what had happened, despite Yasolev's request to leave me alone: this was their pitch we were playing on. But the only way we'd got of reaching Horst Volper was by letting him come for me again and he wouldn't do that if it meant taking on an army: he'd realise I was bogged down and no longer a danger.

I'd known I'd have to find a safe-house and go to ground and work Quickstep solo, but I didn't know I'd have to do it so soon.

'He wants to see us.' Cone was putting the phone down.

'Yasolev?'

'Yes. Sounds worried.' He loped across and took the lid off the big brass teapot to see how much there was left.

'What did he say?'

'Just wants to talk.' He went to the door and opened it and left it that, a small gesture of courtesy. 'He's on his way.' The chrome art deco clock on the wall was at 11:05. An hour earlier Yasolev had phoned us and said he was turning in.

'He must have had some kind of signal.'

'That's conceivable.' He lowered his voice. 'Before he comes, there's been another instruction from London. We're to check on Cat Baxter. She's coming out here.'

'The rock star?'

'Yes.'

'Why do we have to check on her?'

'Now that's a very good question.' He took his cup into the bathroom and rinsed it out and dried it on a towel and came back, and then Yasolev was suddenly in the open doorway in a worn red dressing-gown, his thin hair untidy as he looked first at Cone, then at me.

'I have just received information that General-Secretary Gorbachev — '

'Door,' Cone said, and jerked a hand.

I went past Yasolev and shut it and came back.

'Thank you — that General-Secretary Gorbachev will make an informal visit to East Berlin.'

'When?' Cone asked him.

'He arrives on the 17th of this month.'

In a week from now.

'There's some tea,' Cone said, 'if you'd like some.'

10: LIBIDO

'They shot him.'

Closer, now, the Wall.

'They shot him in the back.'

Looming against the south sky, the Wall.

'What made him do it?'

It was all you could see through the window here: the Wall, floodlit, towering, though it's not all that high, fourteen feet, but towering because of what it is, what it means. And because of the barbed wire, the watchtowers, the machine gun posts.

'I suppose he wanted freedom,' I said.

He took another gulp of schnapps, puckering his mouth over it, squeezing his eyes shut, a drop of clear mucus gleaming at the end of his nose under the bleak white light. You could even see the reflection, in the glass of the china cabinet opposite the window, the reflection of the Wall. It shut us in, squeezing us into the small overheated room between its floodlit expanse against the window and its reflection on the cabinet. It was all they talked about in these rooms, these buildings, along these streets: the Wall. Twenty-seven years ago it had leapt like a tidal wave and frozen solid, cutting a city in half.

Gunter Blum, sixty, cab-driver: 'It's not so bad here.'

'No

'We're better off here than what they are in Poland or Czechoslovakia. 'There's industry here, goods, stuff in the shops. You can earn a decent living.' He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. 'So why did he do it?'

'Those things aren't freedom,' I said. 'Perhaps that was what he wanted. How old was he?'

'Thirty-two. Still a young man.'

This place was near Spittelmarkt, and we were on the second floor. The other apartment was next to this one, next to his. He just had the two.

'When did it happen?'

'Three years ago. Three years and seventeen days.' He rubbed at a blister on his hand. 'She tried to kill herself.'

'Your wife?'

'His mother. More his mother than my wife, you know? He was everything to her.' Small jerk of his head. 'It's the way it is, sometimes, mothers and sons.'

This was the fourth place I'd seen. I hadn't looked at the small ads in the local papers because I wanted somewhere close to the hotel, close to the embassies. I'd spent two hours getting rid of a tag, not one of Cone's people because his face didn't match any of the photographs, possibly one of Yasolev's if he'd decided to break faith, possibly one of Horst Volper's. Then I'd gone on foot, looking for the Zimmer zu Vermieten cards in the windows.

'Where is she now?'

There was no sign of a woman here.

'She's living with her sister in Strausberg. She — we couldn't get on, after that.' Jerk of his head. 'She shouldn't have tried to do such a terrible thing. I didn't, and he was my son too, wasn't he? She still had me, didn't she?'

The cheap schoolroom chair creaked as he tossed back the last of his drink; he was a big man, his arms tattooed, his fists resting on the table, bunched, angry, his eyes glancing up at the window every so often as if he were keeping watch on an enemy.

'I read about it,' I told him.

'A lot of people did. It caught attention.' He reached for the bottle of schnapps and then changed his mind, looking at the tin-framed clock on the shelf over the sink.

The story had caught attention because of its irony. Paul Blum had almost made it to the West: he'd been poised on the top of the Wall when they'd shot him, and it was only his body that had dropped to freedom on the other side.

'Why did he do it?' Couldn't get it off his mind.

'He was making a statement,' I said.

'They don't shoot to kill, these days. If only he'd waited.'

'His statement still stands. There are plenty of others crying out for freedom. He spoke for them too.'

'Hero, then. He's a hero? They didn't think so when I went to the checkpoint. I didn't know he'd been going to try it. I saw the papers, next day, and I went to the checkpoint, out of my mind, hit some of the guards, went crazy.' Eyes on the window again. 'They beat me up and shoved me inside for twenty-four hours. Common criminal they said he was, a criminal, betraying the cause, all that Party bullshit.' His glance was on me, now, wary. 'I don't know you, don't know who you are.