Home met me on foot – at least he knew that much – and took me round the corner into Abbe-strasse and gave me the keys.
'Recent service, fall tank, phone's already switched on, is that all right?'
'Tyres?
'Forty all round.' He was a short man in a duffle coat and a woollen hat, his breath clouding on the air. 'Normal's thirty-five, I thought you'd like -'
'Yes. Spare keys?'
We'd had a case where the shadow had been tracked back to his car and it was locked and he'd lost the keys and had to smash the window to get in and it had taken him too long and they'd found him reaching inside to unlock the door and taken every vertebra out of his spine with a 9 mm Uzi carbine and it went straight into the book at Norfolk: The importance of providing spare keys.
'They're under the front bumper, nearside.'
I shouldn't have had to ask: he should have told me right away.
'How long have you been working in the field?'
He almost flinched. 'Two days, sir.'
'When did you graduate?'
'Three days ago.'
Oh Jesus, those bloody people were out of their minds.
'Then you're doing well,' I told him, and got into the Audi and started up and took it as far as the next T-section and turned away from the canal and doubled back and found a bit of wasteground with a few cars and a rubbish dump on it and pulled in between a van and a broken-down pickup truck with a smashed window and the front bumper hanging off. The house was five or six hundred yards distant, the house where Sorgenicht lived: that was the name on the papers in the wallet I'd taken from him, August Sorgenicht.
I'd swung wide at the T-section to let the headlights play across the entrance and pick up the number. The house was at the end of a row, and I could sight it from here between the buildings at the end of the short deserted street. At this angle I could see two of its walls, five of its windows. The windows were dark.
The inside of the Audi smelled of stale smoke and I ran the driving-window down and pulled out the ashtray and emptied it. The air was cold and very still. Traffic was moving on the far side of the canal but the wall deadened its sound: for the next three hours I'd be able to hear things clearly in the environment.
I picked up the phone and got the Signals board in London direct and gave Matthews my exact.position and asked him to inform Kleiber, chief of support here in Berlin. 'I'll be in the car for the next few hours,' I told him, 'and this is the number.' I waited until he'd repeated it. This would have been going through my director in the field if I'd had one, and we were wasting a lot of time. 'Give my number to the DIF as soon as you can. Where is he now?'
I heard the pitch of his voice alter a fraction as he raised his head to look up at the board. 'He landed at Werneuchen Airforce Base at 03:51 local time and left there in a military helicopter at 03:59, so he'll still be airborne. His ETA Berlin is 04:07, a minute from now.'
I felt a certain degree of relief. You can sometimes push a lot of the way through a mission on your own if it's low key and there's no hurry, but with this one the deadline was any next flight of a US airliner and the first one of the day was due for takeoff in three hours from now, destination New York via London, I'd checked the schedules in the paper.
'You've put him into the Steglitz?' I asked Matthews.
'Yes.'
'Room?
'510.'
On the same floor as Helen Maitland. I felt reassured. 'Ask him to phone me as soon as he can.'
'Will do.'
'Is Control at the board?' Shatner.
'I think he's resting up, but he's in the building. You want me to -'
'No, but listen. Norfolk's sent a support man out here, name of Home, with absolutely no experience in the field – he's just graduated. He's quite good but he shouldn't be working on a major mission for at least twelve months and they should know that.'
The sound of a vehicle was coming into the environment, some kind of truck. 'This isn't a complaint, as far as he's concerned, it's not his fault, but for God's sake tell Norfolk to watch what they're bloody well doing, they can get people killed like that.'
In a moment Matthews said, 'This is to go on record?'
'You're dead right. It's for COT Norfolk, Control, COS and Bureau One.'
Chief of Training Norfolk, Shatner, Chief of Signals and the head of the entire Bureau, host of hosts. Life's cheap in this trade and on our way through the labyrinth of a mission there's often a dead spook left behind in the shadows when it's all over but with Solitaire we'd got civilian lives to look after, hundreds of them, and if any one of us made a mistake somewhere along the line then yes indeed, it should go on record.
'I'll see to it,' Matthews said, and I shut down and watched the flood of light sweeping across the front of the houses over there as the banging began, garbage truck.
The ashtray still stank so I pulled it away from the dashboard and threw it out of the window. There hadn't been time to eat anything because sleep had been more important, so I was having to take the stink of someone's nicotine fix on an empty stomach.
Bang of the garbage truck – I could see it now, a humped silhouette against the wall that ran the length of the canal.
04:51 on the digital clock.
I was feeling all right at this time, the nerves quiet. They'd start tightening up a bit before long because of what we had to do, but for the moment I felt relaxed, the smell of the hotel's sandalwood soap on my skin; I'd had some sleep and I was clean, and when you feel clean you feel in control again, as I'm sure you've noticed.
At 05:03 faint light began flooding from somewhere behind, and I tilted the mirror and waited, watching the things the light began picking up in the environment as it brightened: a parked baker's van, three bicycles chained together, one with a pedal missing, a wrecked brass bedstead leaning against a shed. Then a black VW came onto the wasteground and made a U-turn and swept its lights across me and straightened up and stopped not far away and the headlamps went off and I watched the man get out, watched him carefully.
He walked slowly across the littered ground, a short fat man, his arms hanging at his sides and held a little way out from his body, the posture recognisably harmless, and when he reached the Audi I ran the window down on the passenger's side.
'Solitaire,' he said, his face dark, bearded, smiling sweetly as he peered into the car. I could see him better than he could see me, because of the street lights over there. 'Ahmad Samala,' he said, garlic on his breath.
I answered the parole. 'I'm sorry they got you up so early, Mr Samala.'
'It is of no importance. Here is what you want.'
I reached for the cassette, still watching him, not looking at the cassette, because if anyone is going to do anything inconvenient you see it coming in their eyes first, before their hands move. I was virtually sure of him, because the Bureau doesn't often send the wrong people to a night rendezvous with the executive, but in this trade you can't take anything on trust: look what those clods had done at Norfolk.