I got out of the wing chair and wandered about, took a look at the bar. 'In terms of weight,' I said, 'we're talking about forty-two kilos.' I found some Schweppes and poured some. 'Cheers.'
'You told me you wouldn't drink.'
'It was discourteous of me not to join you. It's fairly rugged, but the detonator's rather fragile, have to watch bumps if you're going to take it overland across rough terrain.'
'No problem.'
And not much headway. It looked as if the plans he'd already got on the board would accommodate a Miniver warhead without any changes. I suppose that was partly why he'd begun lusting after it: the project wouldn't be held up.
I gave him a few more statistics and he wanted to know about critical temperatures, contamination zones, half-life figures. It was all in the faxed specifications I'd got from London. He hadn't asked me to get on the phone yet, because he wanted a secure line. He was efficient, Klaus, had been well-trained, and the way he was talking, the way he'd handled me so far, had that familiar ring to it: I'd been handled like this before, and it had been inside Lubyanka.
The telephone rang and he went over to it.
He'd worn a uniform, once, had wielded authority, like the KGB colonel who'd put me under intensive interrogation in Moscow. Klaus had the same stamp: I put him down now as a reasonably high-ranking ex-officer of Stasi, the former East German secret police; five or six hundred of them had gone to ground after unification and counter-espionage were still looking for most of them.
'Yes,' he said at the telephone. 'Give it to me.'
Some of them, the rabid Communists, had joined terrorist groups, mostly in Europe. This one had joined the Rote Armee Faktion and then broken away and set up on his own.
'Now bring the car here,' he said and rang off, and I took in a slow breath because as soon as the stolen car reached here I would have to use the phone in it, and it was going to be an appallingly sensitive call and the whole of the mission would pivot on the outcome and could easily crash.
'So,' Klaus said. 'When can you deliver?'
I took a slow swig of the Schweppes. 'You said you want it as soon as possible?
'Yes.'
'I'll have to see what we can do.'
A wash of headlights came sweeping across the curtains while we were still talking, and Klaus nodded.
'Well go down.'
I saw three guards on the way, one on the second floor and two below. They watched us but didn't come close. Our coats were in the hall and we got into them and I told Klaus, 'My partner's an Englishman.'
'And he doesn't speak German?'
'None too well.'
In good English Klaus said, That is perfectly all right.'
It was cold outside and there were bright stars pricking the glow of the city's lights. All I could see around us were trees, some of them with the last of the autumn leaves still clinging, trees and high walls and street lamps in the distance. But a plane was settling on its approach path, lined up with Sirius, and it confirmed what I'd thought before: the house was somewhere north-west of Tegel Airport, in or near Kreis Oranienburg.
The car was a Volvo 940 and Schwartz had the door open for Klaus and he got in and I followed. There was a pale blue headscarf on the seat and I put it into the glove compartment. The theft of the car was routine security procedure and I would have expected a probable former Stasi colonel to practise it. Up to a point he trusted me, but this house was his headquarters and any calls from it could be traced. Anyone trying to trace the call I was going to make wouldn't get any farther than a stolen Volvo, whereabouts unknown.
'You don't object,' Klaus said suddenly, 'to my listening in?'
'Of course not.'
The man Schwartz hadn't gone back to the house; I could see part of him in the offside mirror, silhouetted against the street lamps. There would be other guards in the grounds. It was fifty yards, sixty, from the Volvo to the black iron gates I'd seen when we'd come out of the house, and they would possibly be locked, certainly watched. Dieter Klaus was young, thirty or thereabouts, younger than Krenz, the man who had died in the Mercedes, and he was athletic, Klaus, walked with a spring, turned quickly. But that particular strike, made with the requisite speed, is close to instantaneous in its effect, however young the target, however athletic.
'You have the number?' Klaus asked me.
'Yes.'
He switched the ignition key to arm the ancillaries, and the telephone beeped and lit up.
And it's true of course that we are obliged, we the ferrets in the field, are obliged to take life solely in the defence of our own, and not, shall we say, in order to expedite the mission by removing the kingpin of the opposition, in order to save other lives by so doing, perhaps hundreds of other lives. We are required, by the strictest conceivable edicts of those who rule us, never to play God.
But temptation sometimes comes our way, and I sensed him beside me, Klaus, the kingpin of the opposition, the dark mind of Nemesis, could hear his breathing, could smell with a certain distaste the rather cheap cologne he used, would feel, if I moved my hand an inch or so, the pulse in his wrist, could destroy, if I moved my hand with the requisite speed, the source of its pulsation, life.
But then there were the guards and the gates and those pontifical bloody priests of the temple in far Londinium and we mustn't play God, must we, but there are times, my good friend, when we stay our hand, we the dirty little ferrets in the field, only because we know we haven't got a hope in hell of getting away with it.
Klaus was waiting.
Dial the number.
He watched me doing it, and could memorise the number if he wanted to, but it would have looked suspect if I'd shielded the grid with my hand: the semblance of trust must be maintained, was vital.
I held the receiver to my left ear, the side where Klaus was sitting. I couldn't tell how much sound he could pick up from the earpiece, how accurately he could make out words. It wouldn't have to be important; we would have to pick our way through this conversation, the Englishman and I, as through a minefield.
'Hotel Sachsen.'
'Herr Foster,' I said. 'Der Englander.'
We waited. Sound came into the sky, and the strobes of a jet flashed across the driving-mirror through the rear window.
'Bitte?
I switched to English, gave it an accent.
'Is that you, Charlie?
Cone didn't hesitate.
'Yes. Who's that?'
'Hans. How's Mary?'
'She's fine.'
There are certain classic words and phrases in the Bureau's prescribed speech-code that light up the board when they come in to Signals, and I'd just used two of them. Is that you, Charlie? indicates that the caller is either being overheard or is an actual captive. How's Mary? is a warning that the caller wants the conversation to be played according to the leads he'll give, or attempt to give. I didn't need to throw in a signal for Cone to move out of his hotel as soon as he put the phone down: the Charlie bit had told him there could have been someone watching the number I'd dialled. He'd get out straight away, and my life-line to London would be cut, until he called me back.