by Philip Kerr
“Let’s talk some more about the operation, shall we?”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about a put-up job by Karlshorst to frame Roger Hollis, the deputy director of MI5, as a spy working for the Soviet military intelligence—the GRU.”
“Karlshorst? I know the area, in Berlin. But I’ve no idea why you mention it now, as if it means something to me.”
“It’s where the HVA is based these days.”
“MI5. The GRU. The HVA? You’ll have to remind me.”
“The Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung. The East German foreign intelligence service. The equivalent of the British MI6. Or the American CIA.”
“There you go again. You learn something new every day, I guess. Look, until a day or two ago, I’d heard of Guy Burgess. I’d even heard of MI6. But I’d never heard the name of Roger Hollis. And if he is a spy for the Soviet Union then good luck to him. I don’t care. None of this has anything to do with me. All I’ve done was act as a middleman between Hennig and Somerset Maugham. You make it sound as if I’m the one who has suggested Hollis is a spy. I didn’t. And I’ve certainly never mentioned him to Sir John Sinclair or Patrick Reilly.”
“You didn’t have to. That’s what was so damned clever about it. A small, almost insignificant detail in Burgess’s so-called taped confession that Erich Mielke and Markus Wolf hoped we would spot. And we did. We fell right into the trap. The Shanghai connection, let’s call it. British American Tobacco. You really did have us chasing our tails about this. I have to hand it to you. You’ve no idea the kind of panic this has produced in Whitehall. But for the timely defection of one of your own people, poor Roger Hollis would now be under a very large, very dark cloud of suspicion.”
“So what do you want from me? A reference for him so that he can be completely exonerated? Fine. To the best of my knowledge Roger Hollis is actually a very nice man and was never a Russian spy. Is that what you want me to say? Sure. Give me a piece of paper and I’ll write a letter to the Queen on his behalf and recommend him for a knighthood. You British seem to hand those out much more frequently than brains.”
“A confession would be preferable to a letter. It would save us a lot of time.”
“In other words, you haven’t any proof. If this was a game of bridge I’d say you were bluffing.”
“Since you mention bridge, Somerset Maugham’s nephew, Robin—”
“Robin isn’t very reliable, you know. Why don’t you ask him where the photograph came from?”
“Oh, we have. He freely admits selling it to Anthony Blunt. But when Harold Hennig turned up here with the picture, he felt he had no choice but to go along with what Hennig wanted him to do. Robin says it was Hennig who suggested that Robin invite you up to the Villa Mauresque to play bridge. He was most insistent. And of course it was Hennig who suggested you as a suitable go-between in the blackmail. As a disinterested and apparently reliable person who could be trusted not to lose his head. But from the start you two were partners in this whole covert operation, weren’t you?”
“No bid.”
I leaned forward to avoid the spider that was now a few centimeters above my head and stubbed out my cigarette in an ashtray on the table. I was tired. All I wanted to do was sleep. But as I leaned forward the monk placed a photograph in front of me, and then another. In both photographs I was wearing a Stasi uniform. To me they seemed like obvious forgeries, but I could tell that the British wanted to believe the pictures and that made a big difference.
“How do you explain these?” said the monk, showing me another photograph.
This one I’d seen before; it was a picture of me taken in Prague with SD General Reinhard Heydrich, just a short while before he’d been murdered by Czech assassins.
“You’ve had an interesting life,” said the monk. “No doubt about it. I expect you’re an excellent hotel concierge, able to provide all sorts of information. Not just about local restaurants.”
“What are you—a spy? A cop? A civil servant?”
“Something like that.”
“Put me in a room with Harold Hennig,” I said. “And let me ask him some questions. You’ll see just how unreliable your star witness really is. Frankly, it’s just his word against mine.”
“Perhaps.”
“Look, I can see that this man, Erich Mielke, and the Stasi—they’ve been to a great deal of trouble here. But ask yourself this: If they went to all this trouble to discredit your man Hollis, how is it that their plan now falls apart so easily? How is it that Harold Hennig is possessed of pictures that are incriminating to me, if he’s supposed to be on an operation with me? That makes no sense at all.”
“He’s a blackmailer. You said so yourself.”
“Think about it. How is it that you’re now able to discount what was in Burgess’s confession so quickly? So conveniently?”
“You’ll understand everything soon enough. We’ve decided that it would be quickest to assemble all of the interested parties here in this room, to go over all of the available evidence and to hear what the various people involved have to say. A chance to clear the air. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
I glanced at the open door at the end of the room where someone had coughed.
“Are my judges in there?”
“Judges?”
“What you’re describing here sounds suspiciously like a trial,” I said.
“I suppose you might say that, yes.”
“And if I’m found guilty?”
“That’s a very good question.”
“Maybe you’d like to answer it.”
“I think it’s you who needs to think very carefully about your answers, Herr Gunther. We’re asking the questions. And I would strongly advise you to cooperate. You’ll find life is so much easier for you that way.”
TWENTY-NINE
The two thugs took me back to the red room with the green ceiling and handcuffed me to a cast-iron radiator that looked like a giant silver anaconda. Unlike the lightbulb on the ceiling, it wasn’t switched on, fortunately. They gave me a pint glass of water and another cigarette and I felt as if life was almost worth living. Almost. I had a bad headache, but that was hardly surprising given two bottles of schnapps and two equally powerful punches. On the whole, I’d preferred the schnapps. It’s a much more effective means of cauterizing raw feelings, although when the stuff wears off it does leave you a little depressed. When the effect of two bottles finally draws to a close you just want to find a nice shallow grave and crawl inside. The way things were shaping up with the British, they’d probably find one for me or even dig it themselves. I had little faith in the fairness of British justice when it was just a kangaroo court convened in some disused villa on the Riviera, and I had no doubt that my life was at stake. I’d seen enough evidence of the brutality of the British army during the first war to know that these people were more than equal to the task of killing me in cold blood. The Tommies thought themselves fair, but they were just like Germans in that respect. Nearly every man I’d known in the trenches could tell stories of killing prisoners he could not be bothered to escort back to his own lines. That was just as true of the Tommies as it was of the Germans. I was a prisoner now, and I could hardly see how these particular Englishmen were going to transport me safely to a cozy jail in England without risking some sort of diplomatic incident with the French. Murder is a lot easier when the alternative is a lot of very time-consuming paperwork. I tried to sleep but without much success. It’s only the guilty man who can sleep when he’s wearing manacles.
They fetched me back to the room with the chandelier a couple of hours later. I figured something was wrong because Harold Hennig was already there and wearing handcuffs, like me; there was a large bruise below his eye and his shirt was torn. It seemed like a strange way to treat your star witness. They made us sit at oppo
site ends of the room. I tried to ignore him and he paid me the same compliment. There were now three men behind the desk, including the monk. One of the other men looked like a duchess who was aware of a bad smell under the floorboards. In that house, there probably was. The other man was an avuncular type with large ears and irregular teeth. Around his neck was a striped tie that matched the monk’s and I wondered if it meant they’d been to the same school, or if they just went to the same boring tie shop in London. The two thugs from Portsmouth were also there, but now they were accompanied by others of similarly anthropoid stature. And once again I had a strong sense that there were yet more people listening to these proceedings through the open door in the next room. From time to time I could hear matches being lit and chairs creaking.
“Well, we all know why we’re here,” said the monk.
“I wish I did,” I remarked.
“So let’s get started, shall we?” He nodded at one of the thugs who was standing by one of the other doors. “Would you fetch the witness in here, please?”
“So this is a trial,” I said.
The thug went out, and when he came back in he was followed by Anne French. I felt my stomach turn. And while I wasn’t yet able to understand why she was there, I was increasingly certain that I was facing something calamitous. Not least because she avoided my eye. That wasn’t so surprising, I suppose; it was what Harold Hennig said that really caught me unawares.
“Anne, my love. What are you doing here?”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” I said, already wondering just how intimate they might have been while I was on duty at the Grand Hôtel.
She didn’t answer Hennig any more than she looked my way. Me, I don’t believe in the devil but I’m still scared of him, and I was now possessed of an uncomfortable feeling deep in my guts that he’d arranged for something doubly unpleasant to come my way.
Anne French sat down on a chair beside the table and stared straight ahead of her. She was wearing a sober-looking sleeveless blue dress. Her hair was gathered at the back of her head in a knot. She looked like an innocent schoolgirl. By now I could smell the cloying scent of her perfume, and I suddenly remembered where the red wallet file I had seen on the table in front of the monk must have come from. It was one of her research files from the cabinet in her office in Villefranche.
“What is your name?” asked the monk.
“Anne French.”
“Would you please tell us why you’re here?”
Imperfect and partial evidence that she was about to betray me swiftly became something much more concrete.
“I’m an author by profession.” She smiled a rueful smile. “Not a very successful one, I’m afraid. It’s a job that enables me to travel to lots of different places and provides excellent cover for a spy. Like Somerset Maugham himself, you might say. Until recently I was also a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and an agent of the HVA—the East German Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung.”
“What’s your connection with East Germany?”
“Originally my mother was German. From Leipzig.”
“Do you speak German?”
“Fluently.”
All of this was news to me. Not once had she ever given me to suspect that she could speak my own language.
“And for how long have you been an agent for the East Germans?”
“I joined what was later to become the HVA on a trip to Leipzig in nineteen fifty; since then I have been involved in a number of clandestine operations here on the Riviera. Most recently I was asked to befriend the French minister of defense, Monsieur Bourgès-Maunoury, who was staying at the Grand Hôtel Cap Ferrat. I was to become his mistress so that I might spy on him for the HVA. This, however, was not successful. He’s a happily married man with two sons. Not long after this I received new orders from Berlin to—”
“Did you receive any special training for your work?” asked the monk.
“Some. I attended a few classes at an espionage school in Tschaikowskistrasse, in Berlin-Pankow. But to be honest it was mostly teaching table manners and social behavior to young East Germans who lacked social niceties. That wasn’t much good to me since I already had those manners. I was trained to use a radio transmitter, however. And a gun.”
“How did you receive your orders from Berlin?”
“Mostly by radio.”
Suddenly Anne’s devotion to her Hallicrafters and the BBC World Service took on a different meaning.
“I’m sorry, my dear. Do go on with your story.”
The “my dear” was nice; it helped me understand that they already believed whatever it was she had to tell them now, and told me to prepare for the worst.
“Not long after my abortive attempt to become the mistress of Monsieur Bourgès-Maunoury I received new orders to join an operation with two agents of the HVA I’d met in Berlin. Bernhard Gunther and Harold Hennig.”
“Bullshit,” muttered Hennig. “What is this?”
“Can you identify these men?”
“Yes,” she said flatly. “There they are.”
Anne duly pointed us out, just in case there was any doubt about who we were. This was one of the few times in the proceedings that she ever looked at me, but she might as well have been looking at the postman.
“Can you describe the HVA operation, please?”
“Yes. It had been something that was planned at the highest level in the HVA by Comrade General Mielke himself. In short, it was a covert black operation designed to entice MI5 into eliminating or at the very least neutralizing the deputy director general of MI5, Roger Hollis. To persuade the British secret service that one of their most efficient and loyal spymasters was in fact a long-term spy working for Soviet military intelligence—the GRU. Gunther was already working in a deep cover position as the concierge at the Grand Hôtel where, originally, it had been hoped he would help me carry through the honey trap for the French minister. But when this plan failed, the plan to discredit Roger Hollis—code-named Othello—went into immediate effect.”
“Can you explain how the plan was to work in detail?” said the monk.
“This is all a lie,” said Hennig.
“You’ll have a chance to speak,” said the monk. “Please allow Miss French to finish.”
Anne nodded patiently. “Thank you. Well, Comrade General Mielke’s idea was inspired by Shakespeare’s play Othello, he said. Iago sets about blackening the name and reputation of Desdemona, with a great show of reluctance and almost incrementally. Which was what was supposed to happen here. So, Harold Hennig arrived at the hotel posing as a businessman. His job was to blackmail Somerset Maugham with a compromising photograph featuring Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and Maugham himself. The photo had been sold to Anthony Blunt by the author’s nephew, Robin, and then stolen from Mr. Blunt’s flat in London, and sold to Hennig.”
“Stolen by whom?” asked the avuncular man with bad teeth.
“By an agent of the HVA. One of Blunt’s students in London, I believe. At the Courtauld Institute. I’m afraid I don’t know his name. He gave the picture to Berlin, who passed it on to Hennig, and when Hennig arrived down here, he contacted Robin Maugham, who rightly identified the photograph as the one he himself had used to blackmail Blunt. Consequently, it was a relatively simple task for Hennig to pressure Robin Maugham, first to invite Gunther to the Villa Mauresque, and then for Somerset Maugham to use Gunther as a reliable courier between himself and Hennig. The plan was that Gunther should ingratiate himself with Somerset Maugham by obtaining the photograph for no money, at which point Hennig would reveal the new material with which he was going to blackmail Maugham, and by extension the British secret service. Carrying out the blackmail down here was perceived to be a lot safer than attempting such a thing in London, where almost certainly everyone involved would have been arrested.”
“Tell us about the new material,” said the monk. “It was a tape recording, was it not?”
“Yes, a tape recording of the Soviet agent Guy Burgess explaining how he came to work for the KGB. General Mielke believed that as soon as Somerset Maugham heard what Burgess had to say he would understand the vital importance of the tape to his old friends in MI6. Also, it was believed that Somerset Maugham had the financial means to buy the tape himself on behalf of the British secret service. Of course, the Burgess tape—which is perfectly genuine, it is indeed Guy Burgess speaking, although the tape was recorded in Moscow, not at sea—contained a small, almost insignificant detail that was to be the equivalent of Desdemona’s handkerchief, I suppose; something small and almost insignificant. It was this: that Burgess had met someone in Paris in nineteen thirty-seven who had recently worked for British American Tobacco in Shanghai, and that this same person had been recruited by the Soviet GRU. Mielke hoped that someone in British intelligence would eventually make the connection between the tobacco salesman and Roger Hollis. After which MI6 and MI5—already feeling deeply paranoid after the recent defections of Burgess and Maclean—would do all the heavy lifting work of discrediting Roger Hollis themselves. He was quite convinced that just to plant the seed of doubt about Hollis would be more than enough to scupper the man. In the same way that Iago lets Othello do most of the hard work of distrusting Desdemona by himself.”
“Did Mielke have to take the Othello plan to the KGB for operational approval?”
“I believe so, yes. It was to be the HVA’s first big operation to prove it had come of age as an intelligence service to Moscow, as it were. You see, the HVA is a comparatively new service still trying to win the trust of the Soviets.”
“Did the KGB give the tapes directly to the HVA?”
