Cockburn said nothing. He knew there was more to come.
“You probably never met Jerry,” Quayle continued. “Funny old guy, but a good bodyguard. They hit him with Teflon rounds and took his legs out with a shotgun. He was embarrassed because Holly was there. Imagine being embarrassed to die. What dignity did he have? None. We have none. None of us. I’m as bad as the rest. If I was a better man, I’d walk away.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “But I’m going to get Holly back and take these fuckers out – and you won’t be running me when I do it. This is personal.”
“Pope is alive.”
“Yeah. With a rubber bag to shit into for the rest of his life.”
“Holly,” Cockburn ventured. “What if she’s already...”
“She isn’t,” Quayle replied, his eyes glittering like wet slate, his voice so loaded with conviction and strength that it came like a force from within.
The tension was palpable and Kirov broke it by coming to his feet, taking an apple from the bowl and biting into it. Then he turned to them both and talked with his mouth full. “I’ll come too. I’m still young and foolish!”
Quayle couldn’t help the dry smile that crept across his face.
Cockburn piped up, “OK. I won’t try and run you, but you have to agree that we can work better on this together…”
“There’s only one way we’re going to work together at all.”
“Go on…”
Kirov bit noisily into his apple and Cockburn shot him a look that could kill.
“I go alone until I’m ready for support,” said Quayle. “My decision all the way. I’ll tell you people what I need and you supply it. Nothing at all until I say the word. You throw nothing at this that I haven’t asked for, and when I do, you give me the best you have.”
“That’s some demand,” said Cockburn. “What do I get in return?”
“Broken Square.”
“The whole group?”
“Enough to work with,” Quayle confirmed.
“The people responsible for the Midhurst killings, for Henry Arnold...”
“Sorry Hugh. No promises there.”
“Why?”
“I told you, this is personal.”
As they faced each other, Chloe realised the meaning of what Quayle had just said. He was going to finish it himself. She had just heard a death warrant.
“Alright. You have a deal,” Cockburn finally said. Solemnly, her turned to the others in the room. “Let’s come up to speed and see where we go from here…”
Some time later, they gathered around the table together.
“OK Ti,” Cockburn began, “what have you got from your last few days?”
“A little. Got a couple of names from Kurt and followed them up. I had an enquiry agent sniff about a bit. Not much on the surface. Have had several contacts with group members. Some of them wear a ring like this…” He threw one onto the table. “But they’re very tight and very security conscious. Anyway, I found out they were going to have a visitor so we picked them up at the airport and followed them down to a farm a few hours outside the city.”
“Do they know you’re onto them?”
“Not yet, but they’ll be expecting me to retaliate any moment now, try to find where they have Holly. That’s why they took her She’s the bait.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly.
“They still want you,” Cockburn said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. “Any demand yet?”
“It’s not me they want, Hugh. It’s the file.”
“So other than the ring, and a cell located here in Germany, we don’t have much else.”
“It’s more than a cell. Could be dozens of them in this country. This is a big organisation. Big resources.”
“Any idea who they are?” Chloe asked. “What they want?”
Quayle picked up one of the many newspapers and threw it to her. “What’s all over the front and international pages?” he asked.
She looked at the page.
She scanned the page quickly. “Reform… the Brandenburg gate open… Peace Marches… East Germans shopping in the West…”
“That’s it,” he said, biting hungrily into a bread roll.
“What?”
“Think about the last year or so. Hungary. Last year Jano Kadas out. Honecker in the East out. Solidarity in power in Poland. Riots in Czechoslovakia, even that prick Ceausescu six feet under. In Bulgaria, Zhivkov is out and Mladenov in, but for how long? In the Soviet Union –” he gestured towards Kirov, “– localised nationalism like never before. The entire fabric is changing. That worries some people.”
“That makes Broken Square extreme left wing.”
“Or extreme right,” Cockburn suggested.
“Or both,” said Quayle. “A bunch of the old guard in the Soviet Union watching their power dwindle, their cronies in the Warsaw Pact, and their equals in the West. Men who liked the shape of the bear. Big and understood and stable. Men who don’t want thirty little states bickering and fighting amongst themselves. Men who liked the way it was. It wasn’t perfect, but at least everyone understood where the lines were drawn.”
“Who in the West would want the Soviet union that powerful?” Chloe argued.
“Men who have shares in Northrop or Lockheed or a hundred other defence contractors. Men who remember Mongols on the streets of Berlin liked the Warsaw Pact-NATO stand-off because it kept them in Mongolia. Men who hold power now. Men who are frightened for the future. Men who are shit scared at the thought of a united Germany again...” Quayle paused. “Do you want me to go on?”
“So you’re saying that someone has welded these factions together,” Cockburn ventured.
“It fits.”
“But there’s more, isn’t there?”
“The rest will cost,” he replied.
“Why?”
“Pro patria mori…” he quoted .
“I’m surprised at you, Quayle. You’re one of the few honourable people I know.”
“Oh my honour is intact, Hugh. It’s yours that is suspect. Or should I say that of your masters… This has all been a bit one sided. My risk, my money, my life. Now Six wants in on the spoils – Six, who only days ago, was gleefully trying to kill me.”
“What do you want?”
“A letter. Signed by Tansey-Williams. It’s to state that there was a Metro order
