An Agent of Deceit

by Chris Morgan Jones

  This was the longest Lock had spent alone with his father; it made him nervous and happy. In the afternoon, the sun now over their heads and dropping light down between the trees, they carried on walking, stopping now and then for Everhart to refer to his compass and his map. Above the town of Bad Harzburg the path left the forest for a while, and for the first time they could see sky and hills and woods ahead of them. They stopped for a moment to take it in. Lock’s father crouched behind him and pointed across a shallow valley to a dark band of forest encased in a high metal fence.

  ‘You see that fence?’ said Everhart. ‘That is the Iron Curtain. It cuts Germany in two. You be thankful you’re a Dutchman.’ Lock imagined vast curtains of gun-coloured metal, swagged apart to reveal some hellish mechanical world beyond.

  And what had Lock done? He had gone to live there. Perhaps that’s why his father was so appalled. Perhaps Lock had ceased to be a Dutchman in his eyes the moment he had gone east. The thought struck him as he drove past Osna-brück on a stretch of dual carriageway that seemed to go on for ever no matter how fast he went. It was late now, past ten, and he should find a place to spend the night. Stopping seemed luxurious, but he reminded himself that if Webster was right he had time. He might feel pursued, but he was in no hurry.

  At Stansted he had bought a suitcase and to put in it a new sweater, shirts, T-shirts to sleep in, socks, underwear, a razor, a toothbrush, a book – Middlemarch, of all things; after Cayman he had always meant to read it – a notebook, a guide to Berlin and two bottles of decent malt. These new possessions felt like the starter kit for a new identity that he had not yet defined. In the pockets of his coat he had two pay-as-you-go phones that Webster had arranged. One was for calls to a third, virgin phone, which Webster would keep, the other for any calls Lock might need to make in Berlin. All were for practical purposes untraceable, apparently. And in his wallet he had five thousand euros. He was all set. All set for a raid behind the wall to retrieve his identity.

  He had arrived in Rotterdam an hour or so after dark. He had hired a car, a good one, an Audi, since it was less conspicuous in Germany to drive an expensive car than a cheap one, and then set off, the satellite navigation telling him in calm Dutch where to go from time to time. It felt strange to be driving; in Moscow he was driven, and everywhere else he took taxis. He enjoyed the car’s solidity, its sureness, the impression it gave that it knew where it was going. He was conscious for the first time in years of the distance between places, between Rotterdam and Utrecht, between Arnhem and Dortmund, and he enjoyed that too.

  Maybe in this car the Swiss wouldn’t stop him at the border. Maybe he should give it a go. No, he thought. Perhaps after Berlin.

  He spent the night in a motel just off the autobahn outside Hannover. The line about his briefcase had worked and he hadn’t had to show his passport. It was strange that even now – he was on the run, for heaven’s sake, if you could be on the run from your boss – these little lies unnerved him. He paid cash in advance and wondered whether that would be the thing that finally made the tired-looking Polish clerk suspicious enough to call the authorities. Which authorities he had no idea.

  But no one came for him in the night. After a sandwich that he had bought in Rotterdam and a glass or two of the Scotch, he slept a solid, heavy sleep with no dreams, waking just before the dawn with a sore throat and a headache. He hadn’t opened a window and the room was hot. He showered and dressed and left in fifteen minutes, discovering as he stepped out into the cold air that it had snowed in the night and was snowing still, fat soft flakes settling on the bonnets and roofs of cars. The road itself was smeared with an ugly grey paste of slush and grit and oil, and the journey took twice as long as it should. But here he was, approaching Berlin from the west, warm and safe.

  He didn’t know the city. It wasn’t a place he had ever needed to visit: Frankfurt, yes, for its banks, but otherwise Germany had never been important in his scheme. He followed the signs to the centre, hoping from there to see signs for Kreuzberg. Through Charlottenburg, through the Tiergarten, past the Reichstag; he eventually found himself on Unter den Linden, driving along the wide boulevard whose name he had heard so often. It was less pretty than he had expected: it looked as if the massive buildings on either side, the hotels and offices and government buildings, had bullied all the leaves off the bare limes and left the trees cowering in the middle of the road.

  It was strange to be driving in a city he didn’t know. It took him nearly an hour to find the hotel. The Hotel Daniel, in a residential street near the canal. It was small, and dark in a comforting way, and he was shown to his room by a bulky, smiling woman in her seventies who spoke little English but understood him well enough. He gave his name as Mr Green. When he started to explain about his passport she simply waved him away.

  The room was papered with red and cream stripes, and fitted out with furniture that didn’t match and was a little too good for a hotel of this kind. A double bed with a small mahogany table by its head; a wardrobe, mahogany again and rather grand, with an oval mirror set into its single door; a chest of drawers; a desk and chair. From his window Lock could see through trees the canal and the U-bahn track above it, and beyond that a solid red-brick church and layers of boxlike apartment buildings stretching back into Mitte. A train ran past from left to right, its orange carriages the only colour in a world of white and grey.

  Lock unpacked his new things, taking his shirts from their plastic packets and hanging them, creased, in the wardrobe. He checked the charge on his phones. Should he call Nina now? Something held him back. He thought for a moment that it was the prospect of seeing his dead friend’s wife and being rejected, or not knowing what to say. But that wasn’t it. If Nina had nothing, knew nothing, then the last prospect of some sort of dignified escape from all this, however fantastical, was gone. Here in this comfortable room, snow blanking out the world around, that was a moment he could happily delay.

  He would write her a note. Or better, a letter of condolence. He was in Berlin, and would very much like to see her. That was natural, after all: they had met, and Dmitry had been his friend.

  He took his time with it, writing it out in his notebook first before copying it carefully onto a sheet of the Daniel’s headed paper. When he finished he called down to reception and managed to explain in English, Dutch and broken German that he wanted a taxi.

  He needed food, and air. Outside the snow was now a grey mud on the pavements. Lock could feel his shoes cold on his feet and knew that icy water was about to leak through the soles and seams. Soft flakes had given way to something between hail and sleet and the easterly wind froze his face. He walked on the main road, leaning into the cold as it came at him, taking in little but the noise of the cars and the people hurrying past him on their way home. He had little idea where he was; he had a map but there was no point in trying to open it.

  At Wittenbergplatz he turned left into quieter streets in search of a bar. Thank God for bars. When he found one it was less a bar than a cafe, rather grand and Viennese, but it would do. It was warm, and warmly lit, and he found a booth that seemed the most comfortable thing he had ever seen.

  He ordered beer, because this was Germany, and drank the first one in four or five deep swallows. Another came. He looked at the menu and ordered food: gravad lax and Wiener schnitzel.

  From his coat he took one of his phones. He looked at it for a while and then put it on the table. It continued to attract him. He wanted to call Marina, to tell her he was all right and that he had a plan, but he wasn’t sure he should. Webster had said he could make calls, hadn’t he? Halfway through his third beer he surrendered.

  ‘Marina?’

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Hi. I thought I should call.’

  ‘Richard, where are you?’

  ‘I shouldn’t say. I just . . . I wanted to tell you I’m OK.’

  ‘Vika wants to see you. I think she can tell I’m worried.’

  Lock rub
bed his eyes with his free hand, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  ‘I’ll see her soon,’ he said. ‘Tell her I’ll see her soon.’

  There was a pause. ‘I stood there’, said Marina, ‘whispering your name over the wall.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was fine. I should have said.’

  They were silent again.

  ‘I did what you suggested,’ Lock said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I got some help. I’m trying to find a way out. It’s better already. Being free. I can think more clearly.’

  ‘That’s good, Richard, but . . . You’re not going to run off ? I don’t think I could stand it.’

  ‘No. No, I’m not.’

  ‘I thought you had.’

  ‘I’m going to face it. I think I have to.’

  Marina was quiet for a moment. ‘That’s good. That is. We’ll help you. I’ll help you.’

  ‘I know.’

  Another silence, broken by Marina. ‘Konstantin called.’

  Lock said nothing.

  ‘This morning. He wanted to know where you were.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That I didn’t know anything.’

  ‘Was that it?’

  ‘He wanted to know if I had lost trust in him as well.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told him I didn’t leave Moscow just to get away from you.’

  Again, Lock was silent.

  ‘He said . . . he told me that he was trying to save you.’

  Lock closed his eyes. ‘There’s no point in telling me that.’

  ‘I thought you should know.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘I think he no longer knows what he is saying.’

  Lock nodded slowly to himself. Could Malin really expect him to believe that? There was no point in wondering. He felt tired.

  ‘Listen, darling, I should go. It’s going to be a busy few days. I’ll . . . I’ll call again.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Will you kiss Vika for me?’

  ‘Of course. Be careful. Please.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘If it doesn’t work, I’ve found you a lawyer.’

  By twelve the next day Lock was anxious. Nina hadn’t called and he had begun to regret the letter; it was time to stop delaying. His first call to her went unanswered, but he left no message. So did his second, two hours later; this time he told the machine who he was, that he was in Berlin and would welcome the chance to see her. He could go to her or she could come to him at the Hotel Daniel.

  At three she called; it was a short conversation. She told him that she didn’t want to see anyone associated with Dmitry’s old world, that he shouldn’t take this personally, and that she would be grateful if he left her alone. He tried to tell her that he no longer worked for Malin but it was clear that she had made up her mind. As he put the phone down he wondered what Webster would have done to keep her talking – and what would he do now to force a meeting?

  Lock had been in his hotel room all day, reading Middle-march and the guide book and drinking Scotch. He had had breakfast, but no lunch, and his head felt light and tense at the same time. He didn’t know what to make of Nina’s refusal: was it the end of everything, or merely an obstacle? Part of him, he realized, had never thought that Nina would make any difference; part of him longed to think that she would. Snow had settled thickly overnight and was still falling outside his window.

  He decided to walk into town. He couldn’t leave today in any case, not in this snow, and he wanted to see people and breathe fresh air. And he needed new shoes. The pavement sludge had frozen in places and in his leather soles he made precarious progress north, across the canal and up Friedrichstrasse, leaning forward slightly for balance and correcting himself with a jerk every time he started to slip. If the snow would only stop he could drive to Switzerland in a day – less, probably. He wondered how far south it was falling. He passed Checkpoint Charlie and stopped for a moment to read the screens that enclosed the construction sites on either side of the road. People had crossed the wall in suitcases, in cars decked out in mourning, suspended from balloons, on death slides, in a hundred ways that defied imagination. Plenty had tried and not crossed at all, shot down by the automatic machine guns trained on every inch of the wall or by the border guards who longed to cross it themselves. Some had been left to die in the death strip between the two walls, the soldiers of neither side prepared or allowed to go to their aid. All in one direction. No one had ever crossed the other way.

  He was in a camping shop trying on shoes when Webster rang. The phone gave an irritating chirrupy ring that was strange to him, and it took him a moment to realize it was his to answer. He took the phone out of his pocket and looked at it for some time, hoping that voicemail would pick up, but it simply rang and rang, chirruped and chirruped.

  ‘Hello,’ he said at last.

  ‘Richard, it’s Ben. How are things?’

  ‘Ben, hi. OK. They’re OK.’

  ‘How are you getting on?’

  ‘She won’t see me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She says she won’t see anyone from my world. I tried to tell her it wasn’t my world any more but I didn’t get through.’

  ‘So what are you doing now?’

  ‘Trying on shoes.’

  Webster said nothing for a moment. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s snowing like crazy here.’

  ‘Richard, do you want to see Nina?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and see her?’

  Lock thought for a moment. Priorities shuffled in his mind. ‘Would you see her?’

  The line was quiet for a moment. Please. I need help.

  ‘I’ll be there tomorrow,’ Webster said at last. ‘I’ll text you my plans.’

  ‘Thank you. She might see you.’

  ‘She might. Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Hang in there. We’ll crack it together.’

  Lock left the shoe shop with his old shoes in a plastic bag and his new ones dry and tight on his feet. They had jagged soles and made short work of the ice. He felt newly in control, and set off in search of the cafe where he had eaten the night before. Two nights in the city and already he had worked out a routine. He was too tired to do otherwise.

  This part of Berlin was all wide streets and solid apartment blocks. Something about the rhythm of the buildings – the narrowness of the windows, the space between them, the height of the floors – reminded him strongly of Moscow. Their colours, too: creams, dirty yellows, greys. And the streets empty of people in the snow, the pavements a slithery mess, the lamps giving out a harsh blue light. It came to him suddenly and with a panicked chill that this was an eastern city, that he’d been tricked into thinking it was the incorruptible West, that he wasn’t safe here. They could get you here, if they wanted to; it wasn’t so far away. They probably knew he was here already. He could feel his heart beating fast in his chest and his throat felt swollen, unable to swallow.

  He walked quickly now to the cafe, not quite rushing, and when there ordered beer again, and ate soup, and sausages with sauerkraut. He began to calm down, and scolded himself for not having eaten sooner. He wished he’d brought his book. He had his notebook, though, and for a while he sketched in it absent-mindedly. First Webster came out, wearing a mac, a trilby and dark glasses, a flower in his buttonhole and a folded newspaper under his arm. Then Lock himself astride a high wall, one arm and one leg in view. He looked at the images for a second, shook his head as if to clear it and opened a fresh page. He would think this thing through. He drew two lines down the page and gave a title to each of the three columns: Cooperate, Return and Run. Then he ruled two lines across, and marked the rows Likely Outcome, Risks, Obstacles. It took him half an hour to fill up the grid with a neat, close hand and he could feel his mind disentangling as he wro
te. This was an odd document, he realized; he wondered what someone would make of it if they came across it. It was odd in part, he understood, because nowhere did it address what he wanted. It hadn’t occurred to him to include it, and he wasn’t quite sure where it should go.

  So on the opposite page he wrote two things. See Marina; and See Vika. He stopped and looked at the words for a while, and wished that he’d known this so clearly five years before. What they told him now was that he had no choice but to wait for Webster and see this out. He shut the book flat with his hand, as if swearing on it. Then he put it back in his pocket next to Marina’s letter, paid the bill and went out into the night.

  This was not a lively neighbourhood. Shops were shutting around him and between them offices were already dark. Berlin felt empty again. He longed for a bar with young people in it; they had to be somewhere. He stood in the porch of the cafe for a moment and looked at his map. Schöneberg was close. The guide book had said something about Schöneberg, he forgot what. He’d try there.

  As he walked along Kurfürstenstrasse he passed a man he thought he recognized. He was young, perhaps thirty, and he wore a heavy black cap and a padded raincoat down to his knees. His eyebrows were fair. As he passed he looked at Lock with an air of studied casualness, as if it would be unnatural not to hold a stranger’s eye for a half-second. Lock knew the cap. He’d seen it somewhere. Was it in Moscow? No, it was here, he was sure. He walked along staring at the grimy pavement, looking hard for the answer. At Checkpoint Charlie. He had been reading the screens on the other side of the street and when Lock had crossed over he had turned and walked away. Lock was sure it was him. They were half an hour from there now and this was a big city. This wasn’t chance.

  There’s no way they can know that I’m here, he thought. I’ve been so careful. Webster planned it. Maybe it’s one of Webster’s people. But why would he follow me now? And there was something about that cap, something eastern, something Muscovite. It was the sort of cap that half the men in Russia wore come winter.