He came closer still and touched my arm. We're going to sit down,' he said. 'I've been on my feet a lot.'
Bloody lie – he'd been in bed all night and then got into a taxi. I said, There wasn't any sign of – you know – any kind of disturbance? In her room?'
'None at all. I was careful to look for that.'
With George Maitland they'd found blood all over the floor, and I didn't want to think about it. They'd have to find her. London would have to find her. I went over to one of the car seats, he was right, I suppose, I looked as if it'd do me a bit of good to sit down. He took the other one, brushing the dust away. Tell me what's been happening,' he said.
'What?5 To you.'
'Oh. I was got at. You want to record?' We were suddenly into debriefing.
'I don't use a recorder. Just tell me.'
It didn't take long; it was just an attack, that was all. But he wanted to know the casualty figures: London's fussy about that. 'I'm not sure,' I told him. 'One of them had knocked his head against the windscreen, I think, blood all over his face. The man I shot at was certainly hit but he could be still alive. The one I pulled out of the car is dead. I went for the larynx.'
He was looking at the floor, Thrower.
'One down,' he said, 'For certain.'
'Yes. What happened to that man Krenz?
'The same thing.'
That was an accident. I went for the throat because he was trying to send the car off the road and we were in traffic, but I didn't go deep, I pulled it. I just needed to incapacitate.'
In a moment Thrower said, 'Possible heart failure.'
'Whatever. I mean I'm not trying to get out of it, if I killed him I killed him. Whatever Records want to put it down as.'
I could hear a jet gunning up at the end of the runway – we were only two miles or so from the airport. I've remembered something,' I said. 'There was a man in the night-club where I talked to Willi Hartman, a man who recognised Helen. She knew him. She told me his name was Kurt Muller.'
Thrower turned his head to look at me. I suppose he thought I wasn't taking it seriously enough, the fact that I'd killed at least two people since I'd got out of bed this morning, shouldn't be thinking about Helen.
'Look,' I said, 'my job is to bring this mission home and prevent a couple of hundred perfectly innocent people from getting blown out of the sky at thirty thousand feet and if you want me to weep over any graves I dig as I go along, you're clean out of luck.' Punch-bag thumping down there, punch bag thumping, I wouldn't mind having a go at that bloody thing myself, punch the bloody stuffing out of it. 'All I want,' I told Thrower, 'is a director in the field who understands these things.'
Of course I took it seriously, taking human life, I always have, I've spent the dark hours huddled in the keening wind where the ghosts walk, gone sleepless through the night often enough, I'm not a clod, I'm not made of bloody stone. But I hadn't got time now to rake over the ashes of what I'd done today, I wasn't finished with it yet, and there's another thing – it's a minefield, this trade we're in, a whole complex of booby-traps set up in the dark, and I know – I've always known – that somewhere out there there's one with my name on it too.
He was still watching me, Thrower.
'Relax,' he said.
What?
'Relax. You've had a busy time.' He pulled out a notebook. 'Kurt Muller, was it?' 'Yes.' I couldn't sit still, got up, went across the bare splintered floor to look at the river, the Havel, barges on it, small boats, a hulk rusting near the bank opposite, the cold winter sunlight setting the scene in amber. 'But God knows how many Kurt Mullers there are in the telephone book.' He hadn't followed us away from the night-club, no one had, I knew that. But he might have phoned her, later, or she might have phoned him.
'Description?' Thrower had a gold pen ready, a gold pen, withal.
'Thirties, pale face, black hair, five-ten, on the thin side, a bit round-shouldered.'
'Eyes?
'I don't remember, but black or brown, dark, not blue.'
Thrower put his notebook away. 'Let's do some more debriefing.'
'Yes. I suppose,' I said, 'you changed my hotel because of Helen, did you?'
'Of course.'
In case she talked, in case she was made to talk. 'Why did you put me into the Klinghof?'
We know it. We've used it before: it's small, tucked away, and the woman who runs it is discreet.'
'I saw a couple of tarts there.'
That's why she's discreet. I need Krenz's address, don't I?
I gave it to him. 'He carries a Berliner Bank Visa card, and his cover's an electronics engineer – or he could even be one. What did London say when you told them Helen was missing?' In a moment Thrower said, They're very concerned. They feel responsible. I'd like you to feel reassured.'
There was a Pan Am plane coming into the approach path, settling nose up through the haze, the strobes flashing. I turned away from the window. 'As long as they're doing something to find her,' I said. He didn't answer. He sat with his pen ready, watching me. 'All right, that man Sorgenicht went straight to the cafeteria when he reached the airport. There were two girls at one of the tables, and he sat down with them.' We were into the major phase of the debriefing and Thrower made notes sometimes, the gold pen flashing in the light from the window, the only thing of beauty in this beleaguered hole. The name of the German girl is Inge Stoph. Were you actually at the Signals board when I debriefed to London last night?'
'I was.'
'You keep a lot in your head.'
'I used a recorder then. I don't use one in the field.'
Some of the DIFs do – Ferris does, Pepperidge does – but others wouldn't be seen dead with one: halfway through a mission or even before then a tape has got a lot of hot information on it and when Crenshaw was running Jayson through the field in Cyprus a few years ago he got exposed and the opposition got hold of his tape and blew the whole mission and Jayson was found with his head off in the back of a garbage truck because he'd had to write off three of their cell and they hadn't liked that. A tape recorder doesn't carry a capsule.
'My impression,' I told Thrower, 'was that Inge Stoph was trying to persuade the Pan Am stewardess to do something, or agree to something.' I told him about the Iranian, and Thrower looked up sharply.
'A pilot?
'Yes.' He made a note and I said, 'I think Inge Stoph and the Pan Am girl are friends. Sorgenicht and Stoph are both in Nemesis. I couldn't fit the Iranian in: he listened a lot but didn't say much, and I didn't pick up anything of a relationship between him and either Stoph or the stewardess.'
'Iran Air,' Thrower said, 'doesn't normally fly into Berlin. They go into Frankfurt. But the Iranians have an extensive network of sleepers and agents-in-place in Europe. What happened when you left the cafeteria?'