Quiller Solitaire

'Why in private?

'Because I don't talk in the presence of hirelings.'

He studied me, his hands in the pockets of his black sable-trimmed coat, his blunt head forward, his mouth tight. I couldn't see his eyes. He spoke in jerks, his whole body moving, energised by his thoughts.

'You've heard of bodyguards. I don't talk to strangers except in the presence of my bodyguards.'

'I won't hurt you, Klaus.'

I caught a soft sound from Inge. I suppose she thought I was being disrespectful to the Fuhrer.

'You say you are an arms dealer. An arms dealer.'

'That's right. If we -'

'Why should that interest me?'

I took a step forward, as if to be closer so that I could lower my voice, and the bodyguards came in very fast indeed and crossed in front of Klaus in a protective shield with their hands coming up into the Ken-po defence posture. One of them was Asian, I thought Mongol. They stared at me with the indifference in their eyes of a predator before the kill. I had needed to know how good they were.

I couldn't see Klaus any more, or at least not much of him, just the left lens of his dark glasses. I waited.

In a moment Klaus said, 'Leave him.'

They moved slowly backwards, lowering their hands.

'Klaus,' I said, 'you've been told what I've got to offer you. That offer expires at midnight. I've got an appointment tomorrow with the Soviet Foreign Minister in Geneva. My plane -'

'Answer my question. Why have you approached me with this offer?'

'Because you're a professional in your field. I like dealing with professionals. We could -'

'What do you know about me?'

'I can see you in private,' I said, 'for half an hour. But -'

'What do you know about me? '

I looked at my watch. I'm afraid you're wasting my time. I'll give you another -'

'Take him.'

They wore soft shoes and were with me almost in silence, locking my arms, and then Klaus said, 'Take him to the garage. Give him to Geissler. Tell Geissler to find out who he is and what he wants.'

I saw Inge, her eyes bright as she called out to Klaus – 'Can I be there too?

He swung to look at her. 'Yes.'

Chapter 14: STROBE

I was spinning on the wall of the vortex, spinning very fast.

The vortex had been the sea itself, and then the wind had come and the sea drew down in the centre and began whirling and I was in it, whirling on the dark wall of the vortex, a thing with its arms and legs flung out and its mouth open, screaming.

But sometimes lucidity came, like a shaft of brilliant light, and I saw myself in the chair, my wrists handcuffed to its arms, my head held back by a strap so that I couldn't lower it, couldn't look away from the light.

It was a strobe light.

Then the vortex took me down again, a huge dark wave leaping and roaring down and sweeping me with it and leaving me spinning on the wall of water, the wall of the vortex, and I began screaming again, but the other sound was louder, drowning my voice. I was in terror of the sound.

It was a piezo electric siren.

It was filling the room, the garage, with such a volume of sound that the walls would belly outwards before long and the roof crash down, surely it must happen with this monstrous volume of sound filling the room, the garage. The piezo had a faster beat than the strobe light. The flashes of the strobe were hitting my closed eyes at something like fifty or sixty per minute, but the rhythm of the siren was in the region of five oscillations a second, slicing through my head and pinning me to the wall of dark water.

Whirling and screaming in the huge dark vortex, a black hole, an other-world, death.

Lucidity again and a degree of self-awareness, enough to know that the sweat was crawling on my face and my pulse racing, the saliva springing into my mouth so fast that I had to keep swallowing: the whole of the nervous system had become galvanised.

Flash-flash-flash.

Any conception of time had been destroyed somewhere in the past'. I didn't know if I'd been here for three hours or three days. The thing was to keep the integrity of the organism unbroken, to hack out a pathway through this miasma and maintain orientation, but my brain was in theta waves and it could only surface with an effort of will, and in the theta region access to the will is diminished, dangerously diminished, flash – flash – flash - as the mind rocked, as the dark wall of the vortex reared and whirled.

Then they shut off the sound.

Silence exploded and I was left in the debris of the shock, spinning among waves of colour, powerless to reach any kind of shore where beta-wave thought could begin again, until over the minutes the colours of the waves of silence drained away, and I thought I heard a voice.

'Who are you?

My face was wet. The whole organism was vibrating: it felt like a bell, vibrating. 'What?' I heard someone say, 'What?' But that was me.

'Who are you?'

Flash-flash-flash.

'Turn off that light,' I said.

'Who are you?'

'Turn off that fucking light.'

Flash -flash -flash.

'I'm going to ask you some questions. When you've answered them, I'll turn off the light.'

Rage was beginning now as the natural reaction to shock, and if I hadn't been handcuffed to the chair I might have got up and killed him, killed someone, killed as many of them as I could reach because there was more than one man in here, more than one of them, but then we must think, we must do a little thinking, because I'd come here with a cover and that was what I must use, the only weapon I had, the only one that could keep the mission running. I hadn't got this close to Nemesis in order to kill some people and get clear. I was here to go in deeper, right to the centre. There was no place here for rage.

Flash-flash-flash.

Ignore.

'I might decide,' I said, 'to answer questions, and I might not. We'll see.'

'… Difficult.'

'What? Listen, that thing's left my head buzzing, you ought to know that. You'll have to speak up.'

'Who are you?'

'Hans Mittag.'

'What business are you in?'

'Armaments. I buy and sell.'

'What were you doing at the airport this morning?'

'None of your bloody business.'

'I need to know.'

'I was seeing someone off, but I'm not going to tell you his name. He's a business associate. Tell Klaus that if he wants what I've offered him he's got to pay for it. You'll never brainwash it out of me, you understand that?'