Quiller Solitaire

'I followed Inge Stoph.' I gave him a complete picture of the scene with her in the car park and then we wrapped it up 'and he put away his notebook and got off the car seat and looked at the river with his hands dug into his pockets and his eyes nowhere and I didn't disturb him.

When he was ready he asked me: 'You think Stoph went for your approach?'

'I got a lot of reaction when I mentioned the nuclear missile.'

'Did you get any idea of her standing with Dieter Klaus?

'No.'

'She could be a girlfriend?'

'Possibly. She could get any man into bed.'

'You?'

'No. Most men, then.'

'She doesn't appeal to you?'

'She's got hair on her fingers. I mean too much.'

'She's a lesbian?

'I'd say a bi.'

'Is she, do you think, a Venus trap for Nemesis?'

'If she's not, she could be.'

'Did you give her the impression she didn't appeal to you?'

'I'm not stupid, Thrower.'

He looked down, tilting on his toes and heels for a moment.

'Sorry,' I said. It had sounded as if he wasn't sure whether I knew the value of a Venus trap: no experienced agent will ever give a Venus the impression she doesn't appeal to him, in case he wants to use her and walk into the trap and get out again with information.

'That's all right,' Thrower said. We're getting to understand each other, that's all.' For the first time I wondered whether I should signal London and change him as my DIF, have him replaced by someone who'd run me before. But that would blow the board and Solitaire was running flat out and I didn't want to slow it down.

I had to keep this one thing in my mind the whole time, above all others: It could be any next flight.

'What I need to know,' Thrower went on, 'is whether you feel that if Inge Stoph comes through with a proposed rendezvous it will be in order to trap you.'

'I can't say, because I don't know Dieter Klaus or the way his mind works. If she comes through with a rendezvous it'll be on his instructions, either because he can't resist the temptation of blowing up the Houses of Parliament and getting his face on the front cover of the Terrorist's Gazette or because he wants to find out who I am and what I'm doing in Berlin.'

Thrower stood looking out of the window, and he didn't turn round when he said, 'Of course you realise how very dangerous it is for you to agree to such a rendezvous. For you to meet Dieter Klaus.'

'Yes.'

'You know his reputation.'

'Yes.'

'Suppose you meet him, and of course it will be on his own ground and in the presence of his bodyguards, what will you rely on to get you away again, still alive?'

'My cover.'

I was getting impatient but he'd got a right to ask me what my plans were: he was my director in the field and his job was to support them.

'Your cover,' he said, and turned round from the window now and looked at me. 'Is that all?'

'It's all I've got.'

'It won't be enough. If they suspect you're using a cover they'll try and break it and they'll succeed. You know that – you talked to that poor devil in the hospital in London. They turned him into a -'

'I'm not saying it's going to be easy.'

'I'm glad you appreciate that. What would you hope to achieve, in any case, by meeting Dieter Klaus?

'Access to information. Which plane, which flight. That's all I want, and he's got it.'

'What if you failed to get information? Would you try to take him out?'

Kill him, he meant kill him. 'Of course. It'd blow Nemesis.'

In a moment he said, 'If I let you do this, I shall need time to call in as much support as I can. It may take -'

'No support.'

'I realise' – showing much patience now, much patience – 'that you normally prefer working without support, and I understand that, but if you mean to walk right into the centre of an opposition network with a man like Dieter Klaus running it, I'd have to insist on support. I'm here to direct you in the field, not stand by and see you take this mission deliberately into hazard and destroy it.'

'That isn't my plan.' A crack in one of the windows buzzed as a jet gunned up on take-off and lifted across the skyline, the Pan Am insignia on the tail, and the last of my patience broke. 'My plan is to stop those bastards putting a bomb on a plane full of people and I know the best way to do it and if I hang around waiting for you to call the bloody troops in and clutter up the rendezvous with enough people to start a bloody war then I won't get anywhere, I won't get into the centre of Nemesis and they'll rig that bomb and blow all those people out of the sky, for Christ's sake, don't you understand, Thrower, don't you understand that it could be any next flight? '

He watched me steadily with his pale expressionless eyes, not saying anything yet, letting me listen again in my mind to what I'd just said, to how I'd just said it, too forcefully, too emotionally. Then he said, 'You've just come through some action that almost cost you your life, and your nerves are going to take their time to settle down. When you've got your control back, 'we'll talk again. Now let me drive you to your hotel.'

He didn't understand. He wasn't thinking.

'Thrower, I'm going in to the centre of the opposition and I've got to do it alone because they'll have people deployed in the environment, and if you put people in as well I shan't know one from the other if it's a night action and I could easily kill one of them, one of ours – but more important than that, you can't put support in close enough to help me without exposing them, and an arms dealer doesn't move around with a crowd of peons, he's a businessman and he behaves like one, so if you put support on the scene when I go in you'll blow my cover before I've got a chance in a thousand to make it work, can you hear what I'm saying, you'll blow my cover. Do you think that's what I want from my director in the field?'

He turned away, turned back, hands in the pockets of his dark elegant coat, his head tilted slightly, his voice smooth, placating. We'll talk about it later. I have my arguments too, but I don't feel that at the present moment you're sufficiently receptive.'

I took a step towards him. My head was throbbing because of the wound, and because of what was happening to the mission, to Solitaire, just when I'd got access, just when I was ready to move in on the opposition and destroy it if I could, and if I couldn't, get clear and try again, try again until I found the way, and went in for the kill.

Thrower,' I said, 1 want you to tell me something. If there's no time to talk, if I don't have time to listen to your arguments, if I have to go in to this rendezvous at a moment's notice, will you send in support anyway, despite all I've said?'

He didn't hesitate. 'Yes. I would have to.'