'Cone has plenty of support for him?'
'Yes, sir. He said he didn't need any.'
Holmes, going to get himself another cup of coffee and then not drink it, let it get cold.
The other voices at other boards, quiet under the focused glow of the lamps, with people drifting in to take a look at the one for Quickstep, because the Chairman of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet was involved.
And finally one of them would take the bit of chalk and scrape it across the board. Executive at point of initiating end-phase, no details.
Executive, actually, sitting in a black and rather dirty 230 SE — it's very difficult to get a car washed this side of the Wall — and looking along a deserted stretch of Unter den Linden with three-quarters of a tankful of petrol and his nerves shut down because he was staring at the brink; and even though he'd seen it before it still had the power to make him afraid, afraid to go forward.
Is that really what's happening?
Probably.
You're not just trying to get your nerve back?
Well yes, that too. Give me a break, for Christ's sake.
Not often you ask for charity. You -
Shuddup and leave me alone.
I could actually feel everything shutting down again and giving me a kind of peace as the brainwaves slowed into alpha, touched theta perhaps, lulling the mind into the green and gentle domain of not knowing, not-fearing, until with brilliant clarity I understood the process and my desperate need for it, for these few minutes of oblivion and surrender before I let consciousness take over again and calculate the needs of the moment and tell me to switch on the engine.
Awareness, as if at a great distance, of the hum of the digital clock on the dashboard, of the creak of the upholstery as the muscles went into deep relaxation, of a man's voice from the taxi-rank behind me, of a jet lifting from Tegel on the far side of the Wall, awareness of all three things and then, by infinite degrees, the surfacing of consciousness and the return to the beta rhythm and the sharpness of what we are conditioned to believe is reality, with the harsh and angular perspective of the street under its garish lights and the hard plastic and glass and metal surfaces of the interior of the car and the small black-covered Ignition key jutting from the lock.
Switch on and go.
4:07.
I drove to the British embassy, two miles distant. This had to be the initial step: to make contact.
He would be arriving, the General Secretary of the USSR, in almost exactly four hours from now, direct from Moscow. I didn't know how long Horst Volper would need — had apportioned — for the final stage of his project to remove the General-Secretary from the world scene, but the incident might be scheduled for any time from his arrival on German soil, and I would assume that the assault would be made at the earliest moment, from the moment when the target came down the steps from his plane.
West along Unter den Linden, past the Palace of the Republic.
But I didn't believe that Volper would attempt the kind of shot that had succeeded in Dallas; it was too chancy. Oswald had had luck, at that distance and with that rifle. Volper would use a superior weapon if he had it in mind to use one at all; but the visitor would be arriving under very close protection and no one would even get near any building where a sniper could set up his post.
The Hotel Unter den Linden on the right, with lights burning in the foyer.
There was the chance that if I gave it enough thought, and if I could put myself in Volper's position with effective enough verisimilitude, I could find out the exact method he would use. I would try to do that, in the next four hours, if there were time; but the possibilities were countless, from a close shot into the motorcade to a black olive laced with cyanide at this evening's reception.
Crossing Friedrich-strasse with the red just flicking to green.
The moon was at three-quarters and I noted it as a matter of routine. We would be working within the close confines of the city, where there would be bright artificial light; but even if this weren't so, I couldn't predict at this stage whether moonlight would help me find my way or render me fatally discernible as I crawled from cover to cover. Nothing, in these few imminent hours, was predictable.
Grand Hotel on the left.
I felt quite good, now, quite contained. The brief period of meditation had calmed the nerves, and besides, I was in control of the moment as I took my foot off the throttle and moved it to the brake. I was to precipitate the action, and that gave me the advantage. Later, things would be different, but it didn't come into the reckoning as I slowed the car and stopped outside the furrier's next door to the British Embassy.
Above the street lights the sky was black, its stars lost in the city's albedo. There was no movement in the street: these were the dead hours before the dawn.
There were reflections in the windows of the shops on each side, the street's facade repeating itself in mirror images. In the show window of the embassy, photographs of Stratford-upon-Avon, Kenneth Branagh as Henry V, Anthony Sher as Richard III. Beyond it, a clothing store, and in the distance the massive Soviet embassy and the Brandenburg Gate, with a taxi crossing the intersection at Otto Grotewohlstrasse. The French Cultural Centre was dark, and so were the headquarters of the Party Youth Movement opposite the British Embassy, but there was a car standing on the far side of Neustadtische Glinkastrasse, a dark-coloured Audi.
At that distance I couldn't be sure whether there were anyone sitting in it or not, but I believed there would be. In my driving-mirror there was another car, a Mercedes 280 SE, standing not far from the Komische Oper building. It was closer, and there was a man sitting at the wheel.
I didn't turn my head to look at the car directly; that would have been hamming it, and Brannagh would have been appalled. Scenario: I'd come here to visit the embassy or leave something there, but I'd noticed the two cars and decided not to get out of my own. I wasn't to regard it as a trap; I had simply moved into a surveillance operation that I hadn't expected, and the only thing to do was get out if I could.
04:15. Executive has made contact with opposition surveillance and is moving away.
It would have been interesting for them to make periodic changes to the board during these last hours of the night, if I could have signalled progress to Cone. Perhaps, an hour from now, two hours, I would in fact be able to call him from some phone box or other, to tell him I'd got a fix on Volper or had dealt with him and in time or was trapped and totally unable to get clear, my apologies to Bureau One, so forth, as the blood pooled at my feet or they came for me at a run or their headlights swung suddenly and caught me in the glare and the first shots centred in the ribcage and Cone flinched, hearing them over the phone.
But one mustn't be anxious; one must not, my good friend, anticipate the worst; let it come, if it should, unheralded, like a thief in the night, to pluck away dear life.
I got into gear and drove as far as the second intersection at Otto Grotewohlstrasse and turned north, and after half a block I'd got the Audi in the mirror. At the next street I'd got the Mercedes and a Fiat within view, taking up stations at a distance and moving at my own pace. I had expected this much attention from the moment I'd entered the surveillance area, because at this stage Volper would have given orders to make a certain kill. There would be other cars standing on other streets in the hope of seeing me, especially near the hoteclass="underline" they hadn't specifically expected me to visit the embassy; it was simply a place where I might appear at any time and they'd staked it out as a routine.