Quiller Solitaire

'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?'

He didn't say anything for a moment. I let my eyes come open a little, and saw some shapes. They were floating behind the flashing light, because it had produced tears and they were still coming. I think there were three men here, and there was another face, beautiful, a woman's, Inge's.

'What?'

I thought he'd spoken. Perhaps he hadn't. I was still in an altered state of consciousness, would be for a while, that was the object of the exercise, to disorientate before they started the questions.

'How long have you been an arms dealer?'

'Several years.'

'How many?

'Oh Jesus Christ, haven't you ever met an arms dealer before? We don't start at any specific time, it's not like reporting for your first day at a bloody bank, you don't just -' have to watch it, I mustn't get cross, it doesn't suit the cover, my head was still full of the most appalling noises, that was all, and I wanted to kill someone for doing that to me, kill one of these people, kill Klaus, Dieter Klaus, yes, well that's on the cards, isn't it, he's the target for the mission, kill that bloody -

'… you work in?'

'What?

'Tell me what main area you work in.'

'God, what a vague question, you mean what do I buy and sell or do you mean where do I go to do it? I buy and sell anything I can make a profit on and I go all over the world, is this the way Klaus normally does business with arms dealers, I thought he was an intelligent human being.'

Don't get cross.

I suppose she'd asked Klaus if she could come here, Inge, in case they found I was some kind of spook and took me outside and tore me apart, and then she could play with the giblets like cats do when they've killed a mouse; her beautiful ice-blue eyes had been shining when she'd called out to him, Can I be there too? like a little girl asking Daddy if she could go to the party, bitch, she was a bitch, very thirsty now, I was very thirsty but I wasn't going to ask these bastards for anything, a pox on them, steady now, steady lad, get the nerves back in the basket or you're a gonner, you'll blow the whole thing.

'Where do you go, for instance?'

'Go? China, for instance, wouldn't you? Look, there's been a tremendous proliferation of sources of materiel in the last few years because we've got all these lovely wars to keep going, but China's still very much in business – I'd put it about eighth on the list of the major world suppliers.'

'Where else?' He had a thin voice, and I believe a thin face: I could see it floating near the flash – flash – flash of that bloody strobe. He was wearing black goggles, welder's goggles, the bastard – I could use a pair of those.

'You don't have to go far, surely you know that. There are still over two hundred thousand Soviet troops hanging around in this country waiting to be sent home, and a lot of them are raiding their stores for anything they can carry. They -'

'But you deal in bigger things than that, don't you?'

'They steal tanks, aren't tanks big enough for you? Even Soghanalian deals in them, because when -'

'Who?

'Sarkis Soghanalian, he's the biggest dealer there is, an absolute pro, a Turkish-Armenian Christian with Lebanese papers, lives in the USA -'

'What other dealers do you know?'

Flash-flash-flash.

I told him about Terpil, Korkala, people like that.

'What about the Turkish border?

Flash -flash -flash.

I told him about the traffic in Semtex, the traffic in drugs.

The strobe wasn't inducing hallucinations as the piezo siren had done, but it was keeping me just below full beta-wave consciousness, and that was what he wanted, the man with the thin voice, the thin face, Gestler, no, Geissler, Take him to the garage, give him to Geissler, yes, he wanted me just below the surface, uncritical, unwary, and I'd have to be very careful because – 'Go on.'

'What? That bloody light's making me sleepy.'

'You were talking about the exchange of sensitive information.'

'That's right, I mean we meet a lot of top people on government level, and so we pick up some very valuable information, get a high price for it if we work it right, better than tanks, sometimes.'

Flash – flash – flash.

Asked me about the US scene.

Told him.

Asked me about a lot of other things, and sometimes I felt myself smiling, just as he had smiled, little Ahmad Samala when he was talking about his toys, the sweat drying on my face and the eyes still streaming, their faces floating in the rhythmic pulsing of light and dark, told him what he wanted to know.

'Where was that?

'In the USA, in Arkansas. An airman dropped a nine-pound socket from a spanner inside a Titan silo, and it punched a hole in the skin of a fuel cell and started a leak, and this is the funny bit, there was a 750-ton steel door on the silo and when that fuel went off it sent it two hundred feet straight into the air and dropped it a thousand feet away.'

'You were there?'

'If I'd been there, I wouldn't be here. No, Soghanalian told me about it. These things happen.'

Flash – flash – flash.

'Do you ever deal in nuclear armaments? Or components?'

I tried to look at him through the tears. 'Do I what!'

'Do you ever deal in -'

'I heard what you said, but what the hell are you talking about? Didn't they tell you?'

'Tell me what?'

He was testing me out, that was all. He'd done a lot of that, asking me to repeat things to see if I was consistent 'I'm offering to sell Dieter Klaus an NK-9 Miniver.'

'And what is that?

'Look, if Klaus wants to know the specifics, I'm willing to tell him, providing it's in a civilised environment. I'm not used to discussing an arms deal worth a million US dollars in a garage. Now you'd better listen to this. You're behaving like a gang of thugs and it surprises me because Dieter Klaus has got a reputation for running a really sophisticated organisation, but if you'll switch that thing off and get me out of this chair we can talk about things. I'm still ready to do a deal with Klaus, but hell have to prove he's serious. All he's done so far is make me very annoyed.'