“Perhaps some background here?” Tansey-Williams said. Clipping the end off a cigar and taking a taper from the mantle, he dipped it into the fire and held the flame up to the cigar, puffing strongly. Finally satisfied, he looked at Chloe and Cockburn. “General Borshin inherited a small team of people on a file they called Long Knives. We had Teddy Morton working on the same project without realising it. One day, the team is dead and the file is gone. Directorate Four put a man in as a defector. A top flight agent we had at the Midhurst House. He tempts us with a little titbit and ends up dead, the first in a string – and our files are gone too. Both teams at a dead end, except for Adrian Black’s enquiry. General Borshin puts a new man in to try and watch our progress. He thinks, maybe, we’ll stumble on something at our end…”
Cockburn interrupted, “Sorry, Sir Gordon, we are sure we’re after the same thing?”
“Little doubt of that,” Borshin said firmly.
“Then you’ve lost me. What has this to do with me?”
“Titus Quayle – who we inadvertently dragged back into this – is being hunted by the same group that we’re after. But Titus is Titus, and now he’s turning the tables on them. He came across three of them in Ireland and took out two more last night in Frankfurt. For the first time, there’s someone getting close and staying alive.”
Cockburn looked at Chloe with a raised eyebrow. “Kurt Eicheman,” she mimed.
He nodded and she rolled her eyes to the ceiling as Tansey-Williams kept on speaking.
“So you’re back here to fully understand the gravity of the situation. General Borshin is here with the approval, and on the suggestion of, Premier Gorbov – and was talking on the telephone this evening with Number 10. You are to team up with Alexi Kirov, the KGB man who found Quayle in Dublin, and work this one together. Find Quayle. See it finished as one.”
“Resources?” Cockburn asked.
“Just what you’ve got for now. You will understand why later.”
“I want a chap out of the BND, if you can swing it?”
“Reasons valid?”
“Very.”
“Who?” Tansey-Williams asked
“Kurt Eicheman. He’s Station Chief Frankfurt.”
Tansey-Williams harrumphed a bit. He hadn’t missed the significance of the city. “Keep it lean until you need muscle – then shout and I’ll get you the Royal Marines if you want ‘em...”
Borshin interrupted there with a dry smile, “I’ll go one better. I’ll get you a Spetznatz unit.”
Tansey-Williams glared at him with hooded eyes for a second and then continued, “Get straight out again. Stay away from any mainstream contact. Come straight through to me. Quicker that way.”
“Alexi Kirov is in Germany. Following your Mr Quayle,” Borshin said. “He’s waiting for you there.”
“One last question,” Cockburn said, leaning forward. “What the hell are we up against here?”
So Borshin began to speak.
*
“Move up three. Left, left on the roundabout…”
Up ahead, Quayle could see a motorcycle’s rear lights in the rain. The car, number three, would be coming up to take over from the bike who had shadowed now for six or seven kilometres. So far, so good. They were now on a much smaller provincial road – still two lanes each side, but with a preponderance of farm vehicles, trucks with produce heading into the towns and cities. Quayle thought they must be somewhere near Kitzingen or Ansbach but was unsure, so kept his eyes peeled for a road sign. He was now confident that his motley old team could tag the target all the way. They hadn’t put a foot wrong since the airport in Frankfurt two hours ago.
Up ahead, something was happening. The driver touched the brakes and, as he did so, the radio crackled into life. “Right turn right turn after the petrol station bottom of the hill. I’m overshooting…” As he said it, the car crossed the brow and began to descend.
Quayle looked across at the driver. “That must be a small access road.”
“Ja.”
“Right, let’s move up. Take over.”
The man’s foot hit the accelerator. Quayle looked into the back seat, where the taxi sign and wiring sat. They had pulled over for a minute, thirty kilometres back, and ripped the frame off the roof. Now, they were using a second configuration of lights – so that, from the front at night, it would look like a fresh car. He groped for and found the map, pulling it onto his lap.
“Where are we?” Quayle asked the driver.
“Mittelfranken. Ansbach is maybe six or seven kilometres that way,” he replied, jerking a thumb to the left.
The car began to slow. Up on the right, the petrol station lights appeared.
They took the bend fast.
“Don’t lose him,” Quayle warned as he looked back down at the map. He hated not knowing where they were.
Thirty seconds later, the driver cut his lights and brought the car to a halt on the road side in the dark.
“What?”
“There. Ahead. The turning with the sign. They went in there…”
Quayle threw the map on the floor, all thoughts geographical gone in an instant.
“Wait here. Lift the bonnet and mess around in the engine in case we’re being watched. Tell the others to wait up by the road. Don’t bunch up. I’ll be ten minutes. If I’m not back then take off. Leave someone at the petrol station to bring me back.”
“Ja.”
Quayle slid out of his door and doubled over, dropping into the deep ditch at the roadside. From here he began moving back up the road to find somewhere to cross, somewhere where he hoped whatever cameras were hidden out there would have a blind spot.
He waited two minutes for a passing truck to rattle by and, in its wake, darted across the road and into the trees. There he stopped. Taking his overcoat off and dropping it over a stump, he began to move down toward the gate, dressed only in a blue tracksuit and woolly hat. This was the
