Quiller KGB

It carried the same signature: they'd gone for Scarsdale in the same way but this time they'd assumed I'd be more difficult so the 'd chosen the alley and set up the kill with the girl for the lure and the timing precise and it must have looked certain and would have been certain if I hadn't got things right.

I couldn't see where we were going, couldn't see street names because I was prone with my face down, one cheek sliding across the cellulose and my foot slipping, catching again and slipping with both hands burning on the chips of glass in the frame. I didn't know what the speed was in actual figures but he was moving flat out for the terrain and hitting the kerb and bouncing with the springs heeling, straightening and heeling as he shook the car like a ship beam-on to a ru

We turned and the car slewed through an intersection with the tyres sending out a long-drawn whimper that echoed from the buildings and my weight shifted under the pull of the centrifugal force and my foot lost its purchase on the ante

But I had my priorities too and the chief of these was to move in on this man if I could and force something out of him, even if only a name, one name, or a clue, one clue that would to take Quickstep a stage further towards the access I had to have, the access to Horst Volper.

A siren sounded again, a different one from somewhere ahead of us: the Vopos had been using their radio and calling in some support and at this hour with the streets almost empty there'd be patrols cruising the city with nothing to do. Lights swept the intersection ahead of us and the driver braked and swerved to the right and hit the kerb and bounced into a wrenching U-turn and my legs were swung back and my foot caught the ante

Headlights in front of us and a siren howling and he swerved and grazed a lamppost and the Mercedes shuddered, rocking on its springs and heeling to one side before it hit the police car at an angle and the deceleration forces pushed me forward and I kept my foot hooked against the ante

He could see me in the driving mirror and one of the things I expected him to do was get at his gun and snatch a half-second to swing round in his seat and fire into me and there was nothing I could do to stop him except let go and drop off and leave it to happen that way instead of with a bullet. He was having to concentrate on driving char of' the tightening police net and he was hoping he could shake time off at some point along the way and leave me lying at the front end of a long red smear on the road surface, but even so I was begi

We were going very fast now and the street was wide and I thought it could be Karl Marx Allee again. They'd flushed him out of the side-streets into the open and that was another worry because he was a clear target and they could bring in a dozen more patrols if they wanted to, fifty if they wanted to, and fill the whole of the avenue and shoot his tyres off and wait till he spun and crashed. The speed felt like something close to a hundred kph and the backwash of the slipstream was tugging at my clothes and I thought that if he smashed the Mercedes now there wouldn't be any question of forcing anything out of him and I had a sudden feeling of rage because we were only two days into the mission and Shepley was ma

Sirens were sounding everywhere now and sending echoes from the buildings and there was a wash of headlights flooding the street. He gave it one more block and hit the brakes and brought the speed down and then used the throttle to swing into a side-street but we were still going much too fast to do it cleanly and he lost the rear end and it hit the kerb and bounced back and hit it again as he tried to correct and then we were ski

I was having to get my mind off the fatigue in the wrist muscles because they were burning now and unless I could shift forward and get one elbow inside the window I wouldn't have more than a minute, a minute and a half before I had to let go and drop. I waited for him to use the brakes and let the momentum take me forward but he was accelerating the whole time now and the strain on the wrists was intensified and there was another factor coming into play — I was begi

Thing was to hang on. Thing was to focus the sense of reality on this one objective, to forget why it had to be done, to ignore all other considerations and reduce everything to the simple facts: these are my hands and they must keep their hold on the edge of metal here and anchor themselves to it and become one with it, my fingers are made of iron and nothing can bend them, the car swinging wide suddenly and lifting on one side as he tried again to shake me off, my wrists also are made of iron and they ca