by Bill James
Spying called for a big range of skills. Kale-Walker was away there in Dresden dutifully helping possible bombers in the future to hit with fine precision. When he came back to Berlin, Mount wanted him just as dutifully to phrase some information so that it lacked fine precision, but put the theme across, anyway.
As Mount approached the apartment block on his return he thought he saw someone, a man, hanging about not far from the main entrance. Yes, he thought. But perhaps he’d become stupidly oversensitive to possible watchers and stalkers after being tracked from Toulmin’s place the other night – that is, if he had been tracked. This kind of doubt took a hold on him now. He knew he should have been deeply troubled and deeply alert. But he wondered if he was taking fright at nothing much at all – or nothing much at all to do with him. When Mount came nearer, the man who had seemed to be loitering there no longer seemed to be loitering there. He’d gone. Mount couldn’t tell where. Had he been loitering, then, or simply on his way in or out and hesitating briefly for some reason? In the training there’d been several sessions on what was called ‘the psychology of seeing’. These dealt with mistakes of perception and their causes. He recalled seven of them:
(1) Fear could produce a wrong and perhaps threatening interpretation of some circumstances. The sessions hadn’t actually termed this ‘galloping panic’, but that’s what was meant.
(2) Hope and optimism could make you see what you wanted to see.
(3) Drink and/or drugs, and especially drink and drugs together, could enhance hope and optimism and make you see what you wanted to see.
(4) The wish to offset results of a previous mistake might lead you to imagine circumstances where you could compensate for the previous mistake, perhaps annul its effects.
(5) Events seeming similar to some earlier events could prompt you to fabricate resemblances beyond the actual, without being aware of it. A sort of déjà vu with knobs on.
(6) Modesty might tell you your attempts to remain unrevealed as a spy could not succeed, and that what you now saw proved you had been exposed, as you’d always expected to be. This self-deflation might lead to error.
(7) Arrogance might make you feel you were so brilliant that you needed obvious enemies so you could hoodwink, outmanoeuvre and defeat them, as you’d always expected you would. This self-inflation might lead to error.
Mount thought that (4) certainly pointed towards his failure to notice tails between Lichtenberg and Steglitz the other night, and, consequently, a determination to spot any sort of surveillance now. There might also be a touch of (1) in his reaction, and possibly (6). Definitely not (7). Nor (3). He’d had time to do one of his descriptive paragraphs: age 30–40; build, slight to thin; height, just under six feet; hair, dark, plentiful; hatless; dark hip-length pea jacket, black or navy trousers, black lace-up shoes; face, hairless, lean, small-nosed, no spectacles. Mount believed it was someone he had never seen before, and categorically not either of the two men who had brought Toulmin back from Russia and appeared later in the parked Mercedes. Nor did he look like one of the Opel pair.
In his apartment, Mount moved the armchairs into the bedrooms and brought out the two straight-backed replacements. He would have liked to go to the window and look down to the street for a possible re-sighting. That could be difficult, though. The curtains had not been drawn and the lights were on. He’d be obvious, and obviously troubled. Even if he kept to the side and tried for cover from the furled-back curtain, he’d probably be seen. If this was someone who’d come because of the woman’s telephone call to the police, Mount didn’t want to appear jumpy. That could make this watcher more interested and inquisitive.
He went to the radiogram and put a Mozart record on. It came with the apartment, plus some Wagner and Beethoven. To those records he’d added some of his own, lighter, jazzier, some danceable to. Then he sat on the settee and got himself pretty relaxed with the help of the non-blare music. He thought the Beethoven and Wagner would be less easy to relax to. The Mozart avoided din, but was still loud enough for anyone in the corridor and near his apartment door to hear it and deduce it was music for somebody very relaxed.
When a knock on the door came he did not answer at once, as if so intent on the flibbertigibbet tune he couldn’t register any other sound. But, at the second knock, he called out in German, and relaxed German, ‘Who is it? I’ll be with you in just a moment, rest assured.’ He left the music playing and walked to the door. Through the judas hole he saw the man who had been waiting around outside. The man gave a massive wink to the judas hole – involving not just an eye, but all one side of his face and his hairline, possibly his shoulders – then several more winks. Because the Judas hole offered only one-way vision, he would not know at what point someone inside was watching him, and he’d obviously hate to waste all that effort. ‘Mr Stanley Charles Naughton, I believe, or maybe not,’ he said.
The accent was educated Berlin. ‘Can I help you?’ Mount said, without opening the door.
‘I can help you.’
‘In which respect?’
‘Oh, yes, it would be a privilege.’
‘Has someone sent you? Why would you imagine I need help?’
‘In my type of métier it’s very insecure, dawdling and talking in a passageway like this,’ he replied.
‘Why do you have to dawdle and talk in the passageway like that when in your type of métier?’
‘Because the door’s shut.’
‘Who are you?’
‘We don’t answer that type of question, do we, in our type of métier while dawdling in a passageway like this?’
‘You know my name, spoke my name, although in our type of métier while dawdling in the passageway like that.’
‘I spoke a name.’
‘Is there a name for you?’
‘There is, of course, but it’s not to be spoken while dawdling in the passageway like this when in our type of métier.’
‘Why not?’
‘Open up, Marcus, would you, there’s a dear, and switch off that footling, cultivated splurge. There’s one thing I’d never do. Never. I expect you’d like to know what it is.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I would never use one of my clever keys on your door. Not while you’re inside. That would be deeply uncivilized. An Englishman’s home in a German building is his pied à terre. I hate confrontations, and I’m sure you do, too.’
‘No,’ Mount said, ‘I don’t mind them.’
‘Someone listening to that kind of music – I’d say it indicates a desolation of spirit, and all should tread thoughtfully, considerately in its presence.’
The Section had two principal agents in Berlin. Toulmin was the minor of these. The other, coded as another ancient clockmaker, Ahasuerus Fromanteel, generally spoke exclusively to Stephen Bilson. This relationship gave Fromanteel top rank by association. There’d be a dossier on him and pictures at Section, but SB kept them in his safe. Mount had never met or seen Fromanteel, but thought he was meeting and seeing him now through the judas hole and getting massively, possibly fruitily, winked at by him through the judas hole, though the judas hole only just allowed enough vision to get the whole scope of the wink. It could have been mistaken for the beginnings of a fit, or reaction to being struck in a fleshy spot by shrapnel. The photographs SB had probably wouldn’t include one of Fromanteel in full wink. ‘Ahasuerus?’ Mount said.
‘People call me Has or just A.’
‘Which people?’
‘You’re right. It’s not people in a wide sense. Only SB and Bernard Kale-Walker.’
‘And now, me.’ Mount opened the door. ‘Come in, Has.’ Now that Mount could view him fully, properly and non-winking, he thought the smallness of Fromanteel’s nose gave him an impish, merry look, as small noses on men often did. This could be a tremendous plus for an agent. There seemed nothing sinister or even serious about him. Such a nose seemed to suggest he had so much natural vivacity, cheerfulness and fun inside
his frame that he didn’t need to oxygenate things through bigger nostrils. Possibly, he could have done with being a little shorter and plumper to bear out this impression. However jolly and reassuring he might look, though, Mount realized that for Fromanteel to approach someone from the Section who was not SB must mean he brought a message he considered paramountly important. Mount sensed that it might be a warning of some sort. Fromanteel would do the badinage and joke stuff, as if to suit his appearance. But that’s not what the visit meant. Mount began to wonder about an exit from Germany for himself and Toulmin.
Fromanteel shut the door behind him and then squinted out through the judas hole in a bit of spoof high security. Mount said: ‘You may find it a little sparse as regards chairs, but I’ve been practising ju-jitsu falls and cleared some of them away. I expect SB stays here when over to see you. You’d know the address. But, obviously, there’d be more chairs when SB was in residence. His ju-jitsu is too good to need upgrading.’
‘A pleasant part of Berlin with a fine history,’ Fromanteel said. ‘Kale-Walker did well to find this nest. He’s away lining up Dresden for a pasting. Myself, though, I don’t think world war two will take place.’
‘Well, not today. D’you know a play by Jean Giraudoux called The Trojan War Will Not Happen? Giraudoux invents all kinds of situations that should logically preserve peace. But the doomy prophetess, Cassandra, says war’s fated to come. And despite the changed circumstances, it does. Giraudoux – a student and teacher at Munich university for a while, incidentally.’
‘And, as a matter of fact, quite a noble history to this area,’ Fromanteel replied. ‘If you go back to the twelfth century, there was a Knight Henricus of Steglitz.’
Mount dragged a couple of the armchairs back from his bedroom.
‘Do you like music with your ju-jitsu?’ Fromanteel said.
Mount switched off the Mozart.
‘These are very fine chairs, elegant, laminated, yet clearly strong,’ Fromanteel said. ‘As a matter of fact, while I was waiting for you to return, one of your neighbours – a lady not particularly young and of some bulk – approached and asked me if I had come about the chairs.’
‘About the chairs? She thought you made chair covers?’
‘Then she corrected herself and said, “Not the chairs, exactly. Pieces of chairs.”’
‘Pieces of chairs? Strange.’
‘She seemed to think I might be plain clothes police answering a call from her.’
‘About chair pieces? Do you think she might be not quite OK in the head?’
‘I see you know about this.’
‘Weird. A drink?’
‘I don’t when on duty, and in this kind of métier I am always on duty.’
‘You should complain to the authorities.’
‘Which?’
‘Your work requirements sound like exploitation,’ Mount said.
‘I acknowledge it’s very much against the rule book for me to come here.’
‘Sometimes the rules have to be stretched.’
‘I wanted you to know about Colonel Maximilian Knecht. Hardly something that could be said over the telephone, is it?’
‘I suppose you’d have this number even though it’s restricted.’
‘I know Berlin pretty well,’ Fromanteel replied.
‘Well, yes.’
‘I mean, not just the history going back to Henricus. More modern things. It’s a pursuit of mine. More than a hobby. Oh, yes, much more.’
‘My tipple’s a Bloody Mary,’ Mount said. ‘What will it be for you?’
‘Water. A half glass. No more, please. There’s a kind of fun in temperateness. One is teasing, subjugating the body.’
Mount mixed his drink at the sideboard and drew Fromanteel the water. They sat in the armchairs. ‘Which part of Berlin do you live in?’ Mount said.
‘Knecht has some difficulties,’ Fromanteel replied.
‘It’s a big job.’
‘Some extra, wholly unforeseeable difficulties. I felt it necessary to brief you at once. I expect you’ll ask, “What kind of difficulties?”’
‘Not if you’re going to tell me anyway.’
‘At the present stage, this is scarcely going to be open information.’
‘How did you get it? You have a tipster inside Knecht’s office? Inside Gestapo headquarters? That’s almost unbelievable.’
‘I’ve always been delighted with the code name SB found for me, you know – “Ahasuerus Fromanteel”.’ Enthusiasm and gratitude put a happy lilt into his voice. ‘Ahasuerus and his son, John Fromanteel, brought a new accuracy, a new reliability, to the measurement of time. This was rather an improvement on going out to look at where the sun was, so they could make a guess – say when preparing something and not wanting the meat overcooked, yet not bloody, either.
‘Of course, as soon as the clocks had measured the time, it was gone. It became the past, and of no more interest, as it were, to the clocks. In the half second it took to say, “It’s four o’clock,” it wasn’t four o’clock because time had progressed. But the clocks themselves remained, ready to take on anything new that came their way, and what came their way, since they were clocks, was, naturally, more time. The clocks, in their unimpassioned, calibrated, windupable manner, handled that magical progress from the nowness of what the hands showed, and, immediately afterwards, the move of that nowness into thenness. This is why the Fromanteel sobriquet suits me perfectly. I like to think of myself as able to encompass with precision and resolve the momentary, the present, so vital in our métier; but also to set the momentary, the present, in its uncontainable endlessly approaching and disappearing context.’
‘I’m pretty sure SB had that kind of thing in mind when he picked “Ahasuerus Fromanteel” for you. In fact, I think I can remember him mentioning it. He’s a smart one. He actually spoke of your flair for it.’
‘Which?’
‘Not in those actual words, obviously, but I can see now this was what he meant.’
‘What?’
‘The “uncontainable endlessly approaching and disappearing context”. He stated you were just the one for that. SB has at least one Ahasuerus clock in his collection, so he was not talking idly.’
‘I don’t believe it would be fair to say Hitler is narrow or negative about sex,’ Fromanteel replied. ‘Ask his girlfriend, Eva Braun. She has a giggle when visiting politicians pose for photographs with Adolf on a certain sofa, because she’s thinking what also happens on it – though, clearly, it will have been given a good de-juicing before the important guests sit. And then there are some of Eva’s friends – real sleep-arounds, yet tolerated at Berchtesgaden, getting satisfaction with waiters and guards. Or Goebbel’s lech antics with almost any woman under ninety-five. What Hitler can’t put up with, though, is public scandal. They’ve had some bad instances of that, haven’t they? He considers they lower the party’s tone. And that’s so precious to him. He wants the Nazi name to be an admired name worldwide, synonymous with civilization – robust civilization, but civilization. He recognizes there has to be sex, or how do you go on producing the master race? Not complicated, fractious or perverse, though.’
There had been an abrupt change of tone. Mount felt the real reason for the visit would show soon. ‘Tone is crucial to a political party.’
‘I wonder if you know the Toledo.’
‘It’s a club, isn’t it?’
‘Knecht goes there now and then. This would be to divert himself after an especially trying day, I expect. To have a couple of what the British call, I believe, “sundowners”.’ Fromanteel did the term in English.
‘There are clubs in London with the same purpose, though many are all-male.’
‘Such as the Athenaeum and Boodle’s? That might be a different kind of club. I’d say it’s unlikely you’ve ever met Knecht’s wife.’
‘Well, no, I don’t believe I’ve run across her. But, then, I don’t know Knecht, either.’
‘W
hat I hear about Knecht’s wife is she’s no great hulk of a thing.’
‘I’m without reports on her at all, big or small,’ Mount said. ‘Kale-Walker might have something. Many women prize slimness.’
‘And yet she can do damage.’
‘Anger will often startlingly empower quite slight-seeming women.’
‘Anger was a factor. Remarkable you should spot that. It’s from reading the classics, I expect. Plenty of angry women there, I suppose.’
‘Clytemnestra murders her husband Agamemnon in a right temper. And Maia gets very cross with her son Hermes for rustling Apollo’s cattle.’
‘Apollo’s a god, isn’t he? Utterly off colour, surely, to steal a god’s cows. No wonder his mother was irritated. But, as to the other, I don’t know whether it will get into the Press. That’s why I thought I’d better come round and talk to you. If you read something like this in a newspaper without any background information on events it might make you wonder whether matters will continue as previously, or if you should adapt.’
‘Thanks, Has. It was a misunderstanding when I kept you out in the corridor. You shouldn’t have had to undertake all that winking.’
‘This is what I had in mind when I spoke of “context”,’ Fromanteel replied. ‘The incident took place last night, but I have to put it into one.’
‘Into a context?’
‘There is the occurrence itself, but also the past to that occurrence, the what we may call harbinger, and the future to come after that occurrence. This is context. Mind you, they’ve done a very good repair job. You wouldn’t know just from looking that there’d even been an occurrence.’
