22 : CORNER

By four o'clock in the morning I knew I was beaten.

We had done the whole city. In five hours we must have gone thirty or forty kilometres on foot and in a dozen taxis from north to south, Hermsdorf to Lichtenrade, from east to west, Neukolln to Spandau, and through seventeen hotels and three stations, to finish where we'd started in Zehlendorf.

The eyes gave in first: I saw dark specks on light surfaces. The eyes and the nerves. I had flushed ten of them before three o'clock and one of these ten had tried so hard to stick that I knew he couldn't be a decoy. In two of the hotels I had gone as far as asking the night porter to deliver a message for me but the message was never written because I sensed they were on to me.

My coat was torn and one knee was swelling: there'd been ice between the lines at the Hauptbahnhof freight yard and I'd slipped between a truck and a loading jig full of unplaned timber. One glove was missing and a button was gone from the coat: I'd tried topping a pair of iron gates at the Kaulsdahl cemetery but it had been no go. Some time about midnight we had started a scare at Checkpoint Charlie because I'd given a taxi-driver fifty marks to keep his foot down and he'd got blocked at the east end of the Friedrichstrasse and simply did a U-turn under the nose of the guards.

I was never alone in the open street. Whenever I got a taxi there was another one tagging it, sometimes two or three. There was no point in asking a driver to get a message through to Control: every time I left a taxi they moved in on the driver and questioned him with their gun-hands lumpy in their pockets. Every car had radio and the temptation was very great, but it would be fatal to send out a call to the fleet switchboard because every time they took a car to follow mine they'd order their driver to call his base and request monitoring. No go.

The only time I had come near to flushing the whole team was when I had got a fifty-yard start in the open and headed for the nearest cover – the ruins of the Reichstag; then I'd stepped on broken glass and two guards came over from near the Russian memorial and began using their lamps. Now we were back in Zehlendorf and in two hours it would be dawn. Three of them were still with me and they would be the full-backs, briefed to kill. My night was drawing short.

Once daylight came they wouldn't let me run them arty farther because there was the risk of losing me in the rush-hour traffic and they knew that the minute I'd flushed them I would send my signal, and the Grunewald base would be raided straight away and with no chance of an overkill. I had two hours left before Oktober sent them the order to put me in the cross-hairs and switch off the risk.

Instinct: go home.

It was nine kilometres and I took a taxi as far as the Lankwitz-strasse and walked from there. Two of them kept up the tag while the third questioned my driver. A light burned in the doorway of the Hotel Zentral and I went in by that entrance and not through the courtyard where the lock-up garages were.

The night-porter was brushing a pair of shoes and looked for my key on the board. I said I had it with me and he said I ought to leave it at the desk when I went out and I said I must remember to do that.

I locked the door and looked around. The room had been searched but nothing was missing. They had even probed the tube of toothpaste for microfilm: the needle had raised a ridge from the inside.

There was a chance in a thousand of posting a report to Eurosound so I spent twenty minutes at it, locating the Grunewald base and giving a resume of the Sprungbrett affair. The main section of the report dealt with my ideas on what I had now come to think of as the Parallel Assumption, reference the Rothstein document. The fake Sprungbrett file had confirmed some of these ideas and there was quite a bit of underlining in my report, because the thing looked weird on paper and London would give it a very sidelong glance.

The factors on which Phoenix would have to work were (1) opportunity, (2) local situation in main attack area, (3) availability of armed forces in strength and (4) security. Therefore the Med was out. There was only one area in the world where the armed forces of East and West were looking down each other's gun-barrels on a cold-war footing, and where opportunity+local situation+availability of strength could trigger off a small-scale but developing war. Berlin. The fourth factor – security – was the only doubtful runner, partly because I myself was busy trying to break down the Phoenix security to a point where they could no longer risk launching an operation of any kind in any place.

If I could post this report it could be decisive. Wipe out Phoenix and the Nazi elements of the German General Staff would be left without central direction.

It was clear that if this were not so, Phoenix would not be concentrating on me so fiercely.

The chances against successful transmission being a thousand to one, I didn't waste too much time in neat phrasing. The facts would have to do.

Twenty minutes with feet on the bed. Brain think session. Dark specks crossed the trellis-pattern wallpaper and I closed my eyes. Findings: must disregard likelihood of my death. Must not put the Bureau at risk by simply sending a signal (thus committing suicide), and counting on my people making the overkill, because they might not have the time. If suicide-type signal sent, it must be phoned in direct, because if this report were seen to be put into a box they would smash open the box, note the address and start a careful investigation of the Eurosound staff until they found our man; then they would grill him till he spoke or broke. Consider possibility of phoning Captain Stettner: tell him to phone Control for me. Result: tags would go through the routine, kill me off, phone their contact in the Polizei, get him to ask the Exchange what number I had called, find it was Stettner's, and send in a party to snatch him and grill him. (Danger here particularly great since their Polizei contact would probably be higher in rank than captain and would simply order the man to repeat my message.) Consider other possibilities. There weren't any.

Time was 04.35. Eighty-five minutes (it was coming down to minutes now instead of hours) before dawn. The rush-hour wouldn't start until eight o'clock but they wouldn't wait for that because they knew that I would wait. If I hadn't flushed them by first light I'd have the sense to cool my heels until the rush-hour began and then have another go. That would be Oktober-thinking.

My brain had to be geared to Oktober-thinking or the bastard would do for me.

Oktober-think. Brain-think. The bruised knee was throbbing. The specks flew quietly across the trellis-pattern like slow bullets.

We have arranged a cover man for you.

I don't want a cover.

What happens if you get into a corner?

I'll get out again.

Too bloody confident, that was Quiller.

The room was getting smaller and I got up. The sweat was starting. Eighty minutes.

There was only one thing to do and that was the thing I hadn't succeeded in doing for the past five and a half hours. I had to signal Control without their seeing me do it.

Paramount consideration: protect the Bureau from risk. Worst eventuality: death and no signal sent, my people back where they began. (Who would replace me? Dewhurst? Disregard likelihood.)

Programme: send signal by direct phone if absolutely certain unobserved. If impossible, wait for the bullet in the neck and try to – (Disregard).

I left the glove on the bed. Very fast driving and maze-tactics would be hampered by uneven hand-control. The glove chanced to fall palm upwards on the coverlet and it looked like an appeal though I couldn't think for what. More time perhaps. Seventy-nine minutes.