Quiller Meridian

ADAM HALL Quiller Meridian

Chapter 1: BUCHAREST

They found me in Rome and the embassy phoned my hotel and I went along there and talked to London, and Signals said something had come unstuck in Bucharest and 'Mr Croder would be grateful' if l could get on a plane and see if I could pull anyone out alive. They hadn't actually put it like that — they'd said 'if I could be of assistance in any way — but when Mr Croder can find it in his rat — infested soul to tell you he'd be grateful for something it can only mean that some kind of hell has got loose and he wants you to get it back in the cage.

That was soon after six and I caught the last night flight out of Rome and got into Bucharest at 9:34 and put my watch forward an hour and found someone waiting for me with a battered — looking Volvo. We exchanged paroles and he asked me if I wanted to drive and I said no because I didn't know this city and there was obviously a rush on and he could take short cuts.

His name was Baker and he was small and wrapped up in a bomber jacket against the cold and smelt of garlic and looked rather pale, but that was possibly his normal winter complexion.

'What happened?' I asked him.

'I don't know. The DIF just sent me to pick you up.'

'What's his name?'

'Turner.' He got past a meat truck and caught a wing, just slightly, because the streets were iced over in places. He was driving just this side of smashing us up but I didn't say anything because he knew what he was doing.

I hadn't heard of a director in the field called Turner. He must be new. New and inexperienced and at this moment sitting at his base with a dry mouth and a telephone jammed against his head listening to his control in London and trying to tell him it hadn't been his fault, and the best of luck, because when a mission hits the wall it must be the fault of the DIF because he's running the executive in the field and it's his job to keep him out of trouble.

'Where are we going?' I asked Baker.

'The railway station. Freight yard.'

We lost the back end and he touched the wheel and used the kerb to kick us straight and when he'd settled down again I asked him the question I'd been trying not to ask him ever since we'd left the airport.

'Who's the executive?'

He gave me a glance and stared through the windscreen again and tucked his chin in. 'Hornby.' He said it quietly.

I hadn't heard of Hornby either, and it didn't sound as if I ever would again. He must have been new, too — they were cutting down the training time at Norfolk these days and sending neophytes into the field without a chance of getting them home again if anything awkward happened. I'd told Croder how I felt about it and he'd said he'd pass it on to the proper quarters, but it wouldn't do any good: he felt the same way as I did, and those pontifical bastards in the Bureau hierarchy obviously hadn't listened even to him. Say this much at least for Croder: he's a total professional and one of the three really brilliant controls in London, and he doesn't get any kick out of going into the signals room and listening to those calls coming in from the field — I don't know if I can make it. They've cut me off and I haven't got long. Can you do anything, send anyone in?

There'd been a call like that reaching London this evening, some time before six, and Hornby's control had said yes, he'd find the nearest executive and send him into the field, and that was why I was sitting in this dog-eared Volvo skating through the streets of Bucharest a little bit too late — it's nearly always a little bit too late, because things happen so fast when a mission starts running hot that there just isn't time to pull people out.

'Was there a rendezvous?'

Baker glanced at me again. 'I don't know.'

Didn't want to know. All he wanted to do was get me to the freight yard and drop me off and go home and try and sleep. They're not all like this, the contacts; most of them are seasoned and they've learned to get used to things blowing up, but one or two hang on to a shred of sensitivity and this man was one of them, I could feel the vibrations.

'How long have you been out here?' I asked him.

'In Bucharest?'

'Yes.'

'Year, bit more.'

'Picking up the language?'

With a nervous laugh, 'Trying. It's a bitch.'

There was some black ice and we spun full circle across a waste of tarmac, perhaps a car park, and soon after that we picked up the coloured lights of signals on the skyline and Baker touched the wheel and hit gravel and sped up and we started bumping across some half-buried railway sleepers, and I told him to slow down and cut his lights and the engine and take me as far as the line of trucks below the big black water tank that stood silhouetted against the sky.

I got out and told him to go home, then I stood there for ten minutes in the shadow of the end truck and waited for my eyes to adjust from the glare of the headlights to the half-darkness here. I didn't know if the local supports had got the area protected, or whether they too lacked experience. Bucharest isn't a major field and you can't expect first class people wherever you go.

There was a film of cloud across the city, lit by the glow of the streets, but only a few lights in the freight yard, high up on swan-neck poles. Smell of coal, steel, soot, sacking, some kind of produce, potatoes or grain. Very little sound, but I was picking up low voices over towards the main passenger station. The air was still, cold against the face. The outline of the trucks was sharper now and I began moving, keeping my feet on hard surfaces, tarmac, sleepers, rails, going slowly, feeling my way in.

A plane was sloping down to the airport, its strobes winking against the ochre smudge of the horizon, the high thin scream of the jets fading across the sky. There was some kind of bell ringing, up there towards the main station; perhaps there was a train due in. I went on moving.

There was something I didn't know. London had called me in either because I was the nearest shadow executive to this area or because this was something that needed a lot of experience to handle. Neither idea seemed to work: there must be shadows closer to Bucharest than Rome, and the Bureau couldn't have had a mission running in a minor East European state that would need a high-echelon executive to handle the mess when it crashed. I would have to ask London what the score was, when I got into signals with them.

The air was colder still here, away from the line of trucks; something of a night breeze was getting up.

'It's all right,' I said softly.

I was behind him and my left hand was across his mouth: I didn't want any noise.

He struggled quite hard until I put a little more pressure on the throat; then he slackened, and I took it off again. 'Don't worry,' I said. 'I know Mr Turner.' I released most of the hold so that he could half-turn and look into my face. I didn't offer him the parole I'd exchanged with Baker at the airport: this man could be anyone, not one of ours. I took the last degree of pressure off his throat and he asked me who I was, good English, recognizable red-brick U accent. I didn't tell him, but I asked him for the parole and got it, the code-name for the mission, Longshot.

'When you're protecting an area,' I said, 'try and find some really deep shadow, and try to stand where there are no hard surfaces around you — look for gravel, or whatever loose surface there is. If you'd done that, I wouldn't have seen you so easily, and you'd have heard me coming.'

'Jesus,' he said. He'd already been upset by the Hornby thing.

'Amen.' It was routine, especially in minor fields where people hadn't been through full training. We're expected to help them along, and I'd shocked him first to drive the lesson home, because one day it could save his life. 'Where is everybody?' I asked him.

'Over there.' His breath clouded in the faint light.