Quiller Solitaire

'Zwei Schnapse und ein Tonic.'

I waited until the girl had left us. 'Have you been here before, Willi?'

'No.'

'Good. For a while, keep to unfamiliar places.

Change your daily routine. Don't phone friends. Take a private mail box at the post office. Watch for people you've seen before somewhere, in the street, in the shops. Take a good look at people who stand with you in a taxi rank or sit near you in a restaurant, so that you'll recognise them easily if you see them again. Just until things get themselves straightened out.'

'But I have an apartment. Must I move?'

'I would just get the things you need from there, say for a week or two, and lock it. Are there security guards in the building?

'Yes.'

'Slip them something to look after things, the newspaper and deliveries.'

'But if they were following me,' he said, 'they'll watch my apartment, won't they?'

'Yes.'

'Then I can't go there to pick up my things.'

'You can if I help you. It depends on how much you're ready to tell me.'

He looked down. 'About George Maitland, you mean.'

'About why he was killed, who did it, where I can find them, things like that.'

'Yes. But there are personal things.'

'I don't need personal things.'

Another girl came and stood looking down at us. She'd come through the black velvet curtains at the back of the little stage; her slip was white and diaphanous; her nipples were rouged, and thick black pubic hair showed under the silk. She smiled, the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

'Mochtest Du ein Spiel spielen?

Would we like to play games.

No, Willi told her. Perhaps later. She went back through the curtains and he looked at Helen. 'I'm sorry, I didn't know it was that kind of place. Shall we go somewhere else?'

'It doesn't matter. They won't bother us, will they?'

'No. I shall see that they don't.' He turned to look at me. 'So what can I tell you, Victor?'

'Do you think it was the Faktion that killed Maitland?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'He was getting too interested in them.'

'What started him off in that direction?'

He looked down for a moment. 'I think perhaps I did.'

'How?'

'It wasn't deliberate. I had a girlfriend, Inge Stoph. She was very attractive.' To Helen – 'You met her, several times. She -'

'Yes. I thought she was terribly good-looking.'

Willi shrugged. 'Thank you.' To me – 'But I found out she was involved with the Rote Armee Faktion. I was seeing quite a bit of George, at that time, and Helen, when she was over here from England. Just – parties and that sort of thing. Good friends. Good friends.'

'Of course, Willi.' Her beautiful smile came. 'Of course.'

He drew smoke in. 'I mentioned my girlfriend to George, just casually. I told him I thought she was too thick with those people.'

The girl came with our drinks. 'Zwei Schnapse, einer Tonic.' She left the tab.

I leaned forward. 'What did George say about that?'

'He was interested, which surprised me.'

'Interested,' I said, 'in the Rote Armee Faktion.'

'Yes. He began asking me questions about them. Then later I realised he was – how will we put it? – playing a kind of game with himself. He had a master plan, he told me once, about how to assassinate Moammar Gadhafi.'

'A counter-terrorist game, then? He fancied himself as an armchair counter-terrorist?'

'I think, yes.' Willi slipped another black cigarette from the pack. 'George was a very… unusual man. Very intense.'

'He carried a gun,' Helen said.

'Always?'

'I don't know. I just saw it sometimes when he was taking off his» jacket. It wasn't a very big one.'

'But it's illegal,' Willi said, 'in Berlin.'

I asked Helen, 'Did he know you'd seen it?'

'Oh, yes. It didn't worry him. I think he was rather proud of it.' She played with her glass of schnapps; she hadn't drunk any. 'George was very intense, as Willi says. He had a lot of dynamic energy, a lot of energy, all the time.' A faint smile – 'It was a little wearing.'

'But there was a lot more,' Willi said, 'under the surface. Don't you agree?' He flicked his gold lighter.

'It went down deep,' Helen said. 'It was rather attractive, in a way, when it didn't get too wearing. It was like being near – I don't know – a small power station.'

'He was neurotic,' Willi said with sudden force. 'May I say that?

'Oh, of course. Terribly so, terribly neurotic, yes. He fascinated me.' She gave a short laugh, embarrassed.

Hate, and fascination. I've only just realised, she'd said in the hotel, how much I hated him.

'He was also very secretive,' Willi said, 'despite his energy. Sometimes he would be very quiet for a while, and' – his hand brushed the air – 'and you didn't want to ask what he was thinking.' He looked round for the waitress.

'I know that part of him,' Helen said, 'rather well. George hated being asked what he was thinking about. He'd shut you up at once, and go very cold. But then it's a silly thing to ask people, isn't it? It's an invitation to a lie.'

I watched the man over there.

'I never knew,' Willi said, 'that he carried a gun. It surprises me.'

The girl came to the table and he asked for another schnapps; Helen and I passed. The man had come in alone and was talking to someone near the stage. 'Willi,' I said, 'did George ever meet your girlfriend, Inge?'

'Yes.'

'Did he show any interest in infiltrating the Faktion?'

'Infiltrating…'

'In getting closer to them.'

'He was – how will we put it? – like a moth at a flame. And I thought that was not good for him, as a member of the British Embassy and everything. He had an official position, and I thought he might be in danger of – of compromising himself. So I stopped telling him anything about the Faktion.'

The man was asking for a girl, I saw now, and one of them slipped off the high stool at the bar and went across to him.

'You stopped telling George about the Faktion' I said to Willi. 'So what had you told him already?'

He drew on his cigarette immediately, looking down, squinting against the smoke. 'Oh, various things. Things that Inge had told me.' With a slight shrug – 'I miss her, you know. She was… good-looking, yes. You have seen Mai Britt? She is -'