01- The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall

Author:Adam Hall [Hall, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780765309686
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 1965-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Page 75

The lilac trellis brightened and faded. I had to check to see that I had locked the door: further evidence of fatigue. Sleep.

I phoned the police first thing and reported a grey Volkswagen abandoned near the Grunewald Bridge. If Phoenix were keeping watch on it for any reason unknown to me they would see it was the police, and not I, who took the car away. I was dead.

Toothbrush, shaver, two shirts, socks, so forth. I left them at the Hotel Zentral and went to the Hertz office, hanging about for a time until the lunch-shift clerk took over. She hadn't seen me before. I chose a BMW 1500 LS saloon by Mechelotti. The name was Schultze, number three passport: there was a millionth chance that Phoenix might check to see if I'd re-hired.

Lunch at the hotel, quite the tourist, a brand-new valise in my room and a car in the lock-up.

Then my afternoon began. There is an innocence in the very word ‘afternoon’. Morning is for trains and business and hangovers, night is for love and burglary. The afternoon is the halcyon, the calm coming between earnestness and drama. In Berlin it is a time for cream buns, and the cafes swarm, even on a winter's day. But in Berlin there is, beneath this surface, a tide that runs darker than hell itself that carries people into tributaries not of their choosing. I was such a one.

There was a simple force propelling me northwards into Wilmersdorf, and it never crossed my mind to deny it.

14 : LIBIDO

She prepared Lapsang Suchong and served it with chips of orange-peel in small black bowls, kneeling on the floor to drink; we drank in the manner of a ritual. Sometimes she moved, for no reason other than to let me watch, her, knowing it pleased me.

A winter sun was in the sky and a ray of it struck through the window, gilding her helmet of hair.

It was very quiet and when she moved I could hear the fabric of her clothes sliding over her skin.

To each his aphrodisiac, and she knew mine. She made no secret of hers.

"Sometimes I can tell a man who has killed others. Iknow that you have."

"Yes."

"I don't mean in war."

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