“Removal of the existing reformers,” Cockburn interrupted.
“And Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer,” Quayle misquoted softly.
“You’re saying…”
“They’re going to kill Gorbov, Walensa, Mladenov and the others at the Warsaw Pact Summit in Prague.”
There was silence in the room.
Then:
“Oh my God,” uttered Cockburn. “That gives us less than two weeks!”
*
Quayle and Kirov lay in the pitch darkness beneath the trees and waited.
It was before midnight and lights still burned in the upstairs rooms of the farmhouse. Kirov had convinced Quayle that they should have support nearby. They would enter and take the subjects, but Kirov felt they should have backup. “Remember Spain,” he had said, and reluctantly Quayle had agreed. Now, deployed out in the dark behind them were two four man sections of the Red Army’s elite special forces, the Spetznatz. Dressed in black lightweight overalls and armed for night vision assault, they were better than the Fairies could ever hope to be for work like this – but Quayle still thought of it as inviting failure. Alone and without close support, you didn’t make mistakes because you couldn’t afford to. The mere knowledge of support often dulled an operative’s cutting edge, and he agreed only because he would rather know where they were and then put them from his mind.
Up above, the last light went off in the house. Give it an hour, he thought, and the dogs another sweep. Kurt Eicheman and Cockburn waited at a house not ten minutes away with a clinical psychiatrist from the Hagne Institute, a man who owed Eicheman favours. According to Eicheman, he was close to developments in the clinical treatment of the mentally disturbed and the latest drugs, some of which had interesting side effects. Effects like making the subject talk about anything and everything without being able to remember later. Ethics aside, Eicheman had arranged for the man’s niece to cross the Berlin Wall three years before, and tonight the debt was being called in.
The time had come.
Quayle got to his feet like a dark shadow rising and began to move forward, so that he could see the dogs pass. Behind him, he could feel something moving up to take his position. The Spetznatz. On his right, Kirov was up and moving too. They didn’t have long to wait. A guard with a big silver coloured dog moved along the damp concrete path between them and the house, the dog not sniffing at the air and the ground but bored with the patrol and lagging behind his handler. Quayle was pleased. They had made the classic mistake with a dog and left it too long on the job. The handler jerked the leash and muttered a muffled curse at his canine charge, then kept moving. Quayle watched them push onward another twenty yards, then crossed the few yards to the wall fast and silent, Kirov on his heels. As soon as they were there, he began to climb the drainpipe hand over hand, his strength incredible. Fifteen seconds later, he eased open the window he had tampered with the last time and dropped through into the store room, Kirov dropping in behind him. As he reached the door, he began delving into his pack for his endoscope and microphones. The doctor had delivered instructions on the correct dosage of the clear fluid in the hypodermics he was carrying. Their instructions were simple: they had to be back with him for the second dosage within forty minutes of administering the first. From that point on, they would have just over an hour for the ‘therapy’.
They found the American in the second bedroom they tried. A hooded red torch beam picked out his features on the pillow: his hook nose, bushy eyebrows and close cropped hair. He was breathing deeply when Kirov gave him a sniff of the gas and his eyelids fluttered briefly as he dropped from sleep into unconsciousness. Quayle pulled him upright and placed a wide band of surgical tape over his mouth, then pulled plastic restraints from his pocket and cuffed the man’s hands in front of his chest. Nodding to Kirov – who eased back into the passage with the endoscope and microphone to find the Chinese – he picked up the inert form of the American and carried him to the store room window where he lay him down.
Part One complete.
As soon as that was done, he went back into the passage and found Kirov at the last door, listening on his knees listening. Soon, Quayle had eased the door open and was crossing into the darkness, headed towards the bed, the gas canister in one hand and the little red torch in the other. Thirty seconds later, he was carrying the smaller man up the passage to the store room where Kirov was busy laying out a climber’s safety harness. Sliding the man into the thick nylon straps, they worked together to ease him onto the windowsill where Quayle tied a fast knot in some nylon rope and guided him over the edge, Kirov moving out after him and sliding down the pipe.
The American was heavier and his pyjamas got caught in the straps. Quayle took his time getting it right. The dog wasn’t due for another eight minutes and, when he was on the ground, he clambered back up the pipe to close the window before dropping down and carrying the unconscious man back into the dark of the trees.
They had been in, done the snatch, and were out in fourteen-and-a-half minutes, not one word spoken and not one mistake made.
The doctor, a small bespectacled man with tufts of hair sprouting from his ears, stripped the gag tapes off with some distaste and arranged the two subjects in separate rooms, both devoid of anything but the chairs they sat in.
“I don’t approve,” he said to Eicheman, who just shrugged.
“I don’t care,” Quayle replied. “Just give him the rest of
