'Thank you,' I said, and put the cassette on the ledge below the windscreen.
'I would have liked to talk to you about it all,' Samala said, 'but they told me this way was better.' He sounded infinitely sad.
He'd wanted, I suppose, to go through the whole thing with me, enjoying the role of tutor, bringing his sweet smile to bear upon the business of trading a consignment of Heckler and Koch HK91s for a dozen bags of cocaine on the dockside in Istanbul, or of buying Semtex by the square yard without blowing up the freighter. It would have been amusing to hole up with him for an hour or two in some kind of safe-house; he was obviously an interesting man. I have been bathed in smiles as sweet as his before, sometimes over the muzzle of a gun.
'Perhaps we can meet again,' I said, 'when it's more convenient.'
'I would enjoy that.' He offered his hand, not knowing any better, and I broke every rule in the book and shook it politely. 'Now I am going back to bed,' he said, and backed away and went over to the VW and squeezed himself into it. He made a U-turn again, this time with his lights off.
London had done welclass="underline" it had been 12:00 this morning when I'd called Signals to debrief and ask for an update on the arms dealing scene to secure my cover, and they must have got onto Samala in Berlin not long afterwards and asked him to get it onto a cassette for me, and then they'd had to phone him soon after 04:10 to give him my precise location for the rendezvous. Even without my DIF in the field, Signals and support services were running efficiently, and it calmed the nerves.
The windows of the house beyond the end of the street were still dark. One of them, or more than one of them, would show a light when August Sorgenicht got up and began his day. Then I would move in a bit closer.
Calmed the nerves, but only a little: they were starting to tighten now as the minutes went by, because the opposition knew what had happened to him at the bottom of the flight of stairs at the Cafe Brahms last night. It had looked like a simple mugging, with the wallet gone; I hadn't taken his keys because he would have had all his locks changed right away, and in any case it would have been less interesting to look around his house than to track him to whatever contacts he would make during the day, because one of them could lead me to Nemesis, right to the centre. When I'd signalled London that I'd secured access, this is what I had meant.
But Nemesis would know it hadn't been a simple mugging, because Sorgenicht would have told them what I'd said to him. You're to phone Dieter Klaus right away. Tell him that Hartman has just got here. He'd assumed I was one of them, a new recruit he hadn't seen before, but when he'd come to in the men's room he had known better.
The five distant windows were still dark. Traffic on the far side of the canal was on the move now as the city's longitude swung towards morning.
He would have known better, yes, Sorgenicht, he would have known that the opposition cell from London had now got his address, and this was why the nerves were starting to tighten a little as the minutes went by, because Dieter Klaus was a professional and he wouldn't leave me free to track Sorgenicht through the city today. It had been good news for London that I had access to Nemesis. The bad news was that when I began tracking Sorgenicht, Nemesis would have access to me.
Chapter 8: KRENZ
Despite the proliferation of sources of supply, mainland China still remains important, and I would place it about eighth on the list of the major world suppliers.
05:43.
The five windows in the house over there were still dark. August Sorgenicht was not an early riser.
You should know that there are still over 200,000 Soviet troops stationed in former East Germany waiting to be sent home, and many of them are busy pilfering their arsenals and selling whatever they can get hold of to whoever will buy it.
A sweet smile: you could hear it in his voice. Mr Samala was showing me over his toyshop. I kept the volume low, barely audible, because I needed to hear sounds from the greater environment. Both windows were down.
Bang of a metal can somewhere, bringing a frisson along the nerves. There was a dog, I thought, rooting among the rubbish that had dropped from the truck along the edge of the wasteground.
I am speaking of AK-47 assault rifles, anti-tank weaponry, small arms and mines. The Red Army Faction is known to have purchased a consignment of bombs and grenades. Another development in -
The phone was ringing and I picked it up and shut off the tape.
'Hallo?'
'DIF.'
Thrower.
I've called in Thrower from Pakistan, Shatner had told me, to direct you in the field. I think you'll like his style.
I gave him Blackjack.
'What can I do for you?' he asked me.
'Get Helen Maitland back to the UK'
In a moment he said, 'Of course. I was told you're concerned about her.'
'She's at risk. Just get her home.' Perhaps the implication wasn't really there – that for some reason I shouldn't be concerned. 'I'd been the only one in the field until now, the only one who knew the risk she was running. I didn't want it disputed.
'Of course,' he said again. I didn't want humouring either. 'I've got the ticket for her in my pocket, according to your request to Control.'
'What airline?'
'Alitalia is the first flight out.'
'What time?'
'09:34.'
Faint light began flooding from behind the Audi.
'I want her escorted onto the plane.'
'Of course, since you say she's at risk. I've laid that on.'
His tone was soft, a degree smooth. He didn't sound like an experienced director in the field; he sounded like a lawyer.
'That's all I need,' I told him.
The light was spreading across the wasteground; then it vanished.
'What is your situation?'
'I'll have to call you back,' I told him, and shut down.
The light hadn't been switched off: it had moved behind the buildings. I heard a car turning and stopping. This time the lights were cut dead.
I waited two minutes, three. No one got out of the car. It was in the next street, facing the house where Sorgenicht lived: the lights had been shining in that direction.
Five. Five minutes. No one got out of the car: I would have heard the door slam.
So I took the cassette out of the slot and slipped it into my pocket and got out of the Audi and left the door open and walked across the wasteground to the street at the top and turned right and kept on going and then turned right again, and right again, coming back on the street where the car had pulled up and cut its lights. It was cold, outside the Audi. I felt very cold.