Take stock. I was in a freight-yard and the trucks were coming in to unload for the markets that would open for shopkeepers, probably at first light. There would be Volper's people moving through the area, checking everywhere before they assumed one of two things: either the grenade had finished me or I'd managed to get clear. Then they would leave, moving in larger circles with the truck depot as their centre.
There was still a chance of making the switch: of keeping one of them in sight and waiting until he moved away and moving after him and staying on his track until led me to base, to the objective for Quickstep, to Horst Volper.
Must've been a drunk!
Or a stolen car, going that speed!
Truckers calling to each other they came alongside and began work on the ropes and the tarpaulins, big men in big coats, in from the country, mud on their boots.
Makes you sick, with him still in the car.
A woman, maybe.
Worse, then. Hans! Gimme a hand with this rope, the knot’s frozen!
I began checking the environment. There must be ten or fifteen platforms in the yard, a hundred feet long, with twenty or thirty trucks crawling between them and pulling up, the rattle of their diesels dying one after another and leaving only the shouts of the men and the banging of their boots as they moved about, stowing the tarpaulins and pulling the crates on their backs, the crates, baskets, sacks and bundles, dropping them onto the platforms.
What's he coming here for?
Give us a talk about bloody Lenin, what else?
He's all right, Otto, he's shaking things up over there!
Pity he doesn't knock the Wall down, now that'd be something!
Below the platforms, a backdrop of red brick walls and store fronts, doors, windows, sandbins, street lamps, two cars standing within fifty yards of where I was lying in cover, a man moving away from a BMW and coming into the depot, looking at no one, talking to no one, hands shoved into the vertical chest-pockets of his black anorak, his head turning left, turning right. I wasn't in hazard: this was good cover among the debris of broken crates and cardboard boxes, with the light factor so low as to be shadowless. I could lie easy, letting the body go through its healing processes and the nerves relax — I'd skinned a hand when I'd hit the door of the Merc open and pitched out, and my back had twisted as I'd started my run, falling and getting up and falling again and finding my feet and lurching towards cover; I didn't know what I looked like from the back, whether the rush of flame had actually seared the plastic jacket, how much attention I'd attract when I finally walked out of here. There was a lingering degree of shock from the instant when I'd known what they must have thrown into the car, worse than when the thing had blown up because I'd been expecting that. Relax, then, relax and observe.
The scents of damp earth and greenstuff came on the air, sweet after the man-made reek of exhaust gas, the smell of the country drifting in to the stone and steel and concrete mileu of the man-made city. The smell of black tobacco as the truckers lit up again as they worked.
Within the next ten minutes I counted four men moving about in the area, the one from the BMW and three coming in from the street that ran at right-angles, their figures silhouetted against the last of the blaze as the fire crews worked with their hoses and extinguishers. Black smoke drifted as thick as black water from the mouth of the street, coloured by the lights of the police cars and the fire-trucks, and one of the men coming across here was coughing the whole time, probably because he'd stayed close to the burning car, trying to see if the driver were still inside.
A rat ran close to my face as I lay perfectly still, a huge rat, a city rat here for the feasting, and another followed, scampering across my leg and stopping, its feet splayed as it sniffed; and I moved slightly and felt it leap in alarm and heard it scuttle away; it had felt flesh underfoot and suspected I was carrion. Feast, my good friend, but not on me.
Ten minutes more and two of the men had passed along the row of trucks behind me: I could watch both rows by turning my head at intervals. It may have been a subconscious concession to social convention that stopped them going through the debris under the platforms; the truckers would hardly notice them as they walked past, but they would have attracted attention if they'd started scavenging. And they were looking for a man on foot, the silhouette or the shadow of a man loping in the distance from cover to cover, someone they could give chase to and run down and kill. If this yard had been deserted, I think they might have made a thorough search, taking their time, taking an hour, two hours, before they were satisfied.
Get it, Heiner!
Don't move!
Clang of a metal bar, maybe a tyre-iron, as one of the rats leapt and vanished in the half-dark.
Another ten minutes and a truck started up at the front of the row and moved off, the sound of its diesel drumming within the walls of the yard, the gas from its exhaust creeping across the ground.
There was only one man now, the one from the BMW that stood fifty feet away near a fire hydrant. He was moving towards the area where I was lying, checking the trucks for the second time. He would be my last chance for making the switch, and it worried me.
There was no other vehicle in sight and even if there had been it would have been locked and although I could smash a window and get in, the key would almost certainly not be there and I wouldn't have time to hot-wire the ignition and take up station behind the BMW.
The BMW was the only car I could use, and if this man were the last of the hit-team left in the area I wouldn't have to follow him anyway. I would have to take him with me.
He was coming along the nearest row between the trucks and the platform and was within thirty feet of me. I got a glimpse of him now and then between the slats but his face was strange; he wasn't one of the tags who'd been with me through the streets the day before. A blunt face with short black hair, worn leather jacket, not a big man but strong, wide-shouldered, thick at the wrist. He was ducking to look under the trucks now, then turning and looking under the platform.
There was deep shadow here, the flat white light of the street lamps blanked off by the trucks, but he would see me if he looked under the platform and was close enough.
If I couldn't do the switch there was only one option left to me. It was something I have never done before in any mission, on principle and because the Bureau disallows it, but I believed as I lay there among the mess of broken crates and beer cans that I would have to do it now.
Not now, later. But prepare it now.
Paul, canyou shift up a couple of metres?
What for?
I've got to let the tailboard down.
Half a jiff.
Another truck was moving off at the end of the row behind me and a crate dropped off the platform and split open, spilling green apples. Paul's truck started up, and the huge twin wheels rolled as the man, the man with the blunt face, stood back. Small flat-beds and vans had started coming in from the street as the shopkeepers arrived to load up. Engines were running everywhere in the crowded yard, and the air was thick with carbon monoxide.
All right, that'll do it!
A tailboard slammed down against the rubber stops. The man was close now, two or three metres away.
Heinrich! Where's Veidt?
Haven't seen him.
I've got his quota!
The door of a cab clanged shut and boots hit the ground. The section of platform above my head took the weight of potato sacks as they were swung from the truck. The man ducked and looked under the platform, closer still now, but didn't see me among the debris.