by Len Deighton
‘I miss you too,’ I said.
‘But it all went smoothly in Berlin?’
‘No problems,’ I said. ‘Snow in April…my God!’
‘But nothing to clear poor Giles?’
‘Looks like he’s even deeper in, I’m afraid.’
‘I wish Tessa wouldn’t keep seeing him. But there’s nothing serious between them. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Why would he be selling his furniture?’ I said.
‘Antiques and furniture have been getting good prices lately. It’s the recession, I suppose. People want to put their money into things that will ride with inflation.’
‘Sounds like a good reason for hanging on to them,’ I said. ‘And if he must sell them, why not send them to a saleroom? Why sell them piece by piece?’
‘Is there tax to be paid on such things? Is that what you mean?’
‘The etchings are small. The lithographs can be rolled up,’ I said. ‘But the furniture is bulky and heavy.’
‘Bernard! You don’t think Giles would be idiot enough to run for it?’
‘It crossed my mind,’ I said.
‘He’d be a fool. And could you imagine poor old Giles in Moscow, lining up to collect his vodka ration?’
‘Stranger things have happened, darling. Surprises never end in this business.’
I turned onto Finchley Road and headed south. There was a lot of traffic coming the other way, couples who’d had an evening on the town and were now heading for their homes in the northern suburbs. The snow was melting as it touched the ground but the air was full of it, like a TV picture when an electric mixer is working. The flakes drifted past the neon signs and glaring shopwindows like coloured confetti. A few dabbed against the windscreen and clung for a moment before melting.
‘I was talking to Frank about the old days,’ I said. ‘He told me about the time in 1978 when the Baader-Meinhof gang were in the news.’
‘I remember,’ said Fiona. ‘Someone got the idea that there was to be a second kidnap attempt. I was quite nervous, I hadn’t seen one of those security alerts before. I was expecting something awful to happen.’
‘There was a radio intercept from Karlshorst. Something about an airport in Czechoslovakia.’
‘That’s right. I handled it. Frank was in one of his schoolmaster moods. He told me all about the intercept service, and how to recognize the different sorts of Russian Army signals traffic by the last but one group in the message.’
‘Frank never passed that intercept back to London,’ I said.
‘That’s very likely,’ said Fiona. ‘He always said that the job of the Berlin Resident is to ensure that London is not buried under an avalanche of unimportant material. Getting intelligence is easy, Frank said, but sorting it out is what matters.’ She shivered and tried to turn up the heater of the car, but it was already fully on. ‘Why? Is Frank having second thoughts? It’s a long time ago – too late now for second thoughts.’
I wondered if she was thinking of other things; too late perhaps to be having second thoughts about a marriage. ‘Look at that,’ I said. A white Jaguar had skidded on the wet road and mounted the pavement so that its rear had swung round and into a shopwindow. There was glass all over the pavement, white like snow, and a woman with blood on her hands and her face. The driver was blowing into a plastic bag held by a blank-faced policeman.
‘I’m glad I didn’t take the Porsche over to Tessa’s tonight. You don’t stand a chance with the police if they find you behind the wheel of a red Porsche. When are you getting the new Volvo?’
‘The dealer keeps saying next week. He’s hoping my nerve will break and I’ll take that station wagon he’s trying to get rid of.’
‘Go to some other dealer.’
‘He’s giving me a good trade-in price on this jalopy.’
‘Why not have the station wagon, then?’
‘Too expensive.’
‘Let me give you the difference in price. Your birthday is coming up soon.’
‘I’d rather not, darling. But thanks all the same.’
‘It would be awfully useful for moving beds,’ she said.
‘I’m not going to give your father the satisfaction of using any of his money.’
‘He’ll never know.’
‘But I will know, and I’m the one who told him where to put his dowry.’
‘Where to put my dowry, darling.’
‘I love you, Fiona,’ I said, ‘even if you do forget my birthday.’
She put her fingertips to her lips and touched my cheek. ‘Where were you that night in 1978?’ she said. ‘Why weren’t you at my side?’
‘I was in Gdansk, involved in that meeting with the shipyard workers who never turned up. It was all a KGB entrapment. Remember?’
‘I must have repressed the memory of it. Yes, Gdansk, of course. I was so worried.’
‘So was I. My career has been one fiasco after another, from that time to this.’
‘But you have always got out safely.’
‘That’s more than I can say for a lot of the others who were with me. We were in good shape in 1978 but there’s not much left now.’
‘You were always away on some job or other. I hated being in Berlin on my own. I hated the dark streets and the narrow alleys. I don’t know what I would have done without dear old Giles to take me home each night and cheer me up with phone calls and books about Germany that he thought I should read to improve myself. Dear old Giles. That’s why I feel so sorry for him now he’s in trouble.’
‘He took you home?’
‘It didn’t matter what time I finished work – even in the middle of the night when the panic was on – Giles would come up to Operations and have a cigarette and a laugh and take me home.’
I carried on driving, swearing at someone who overtook us and splashed filth on the windscreen, and only after a few minutes’ pause did I say, ‘Didn’t Giles work over in the other building? I thought he’d need a red pass to come up to Operations.’
‘Officially he did. But at the end of each shift – unless one of the panjandrums from London was there – people from the annex used to come into the main building. There was no hot water in the annex, and most of us felt we needed to wash and change after eight hours in that place.’
‘But there was an inquiry. A man named Joe Brody questioned everyone about a leak that night.’
‘Well, what are you supposed to say, darling? Do you think anyone is going to let Frank down? I mean, are you going to say that people from the annex come up and steal paper and pencils and take their girlfriends up to that sitting room on the top floor?’
‘Well, I didn’t know all that was going on.’
‘Girls talk together, darling. Especially when there are just a few girls in a foreign town. And working in an office with the most disreputable lot of men.’ She squeezed my arm.
‘So everyone told lies to Joe Brody? Giles Trent did have access to the signals?’
‘Brody is an American, darling. You can’t let the old country down, can you?’
‘Frank would throw a fit if he knew,’ I said. It was appalling to think of all Frank’s regulations, memoranda and complicated routines being flouted by everyone even when he was there in the office. In those days I’d spent most of my working hours off on the sort of assignment that the more artful executives avoid by pleading their German isn’t fluent enough. Clever Dicky, stupid Bernard.
‘Frank is just a selfish pig,’ said Fiona. ‘He likes the money and the prestige but he hates the actual work. What Frank likes is playing host to the jet set while the taxpayer gets the bill.’
‘There has to be a certain amount of that,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I think the D-G only keeps Frank over there to pick up all the gossip. The D-G loves gossip. But Frank understands what is gossip and what is important. Frank has got a talent for anticipating trouble long before it arrives. I could give you a dozen examples of him pulling the coals out of the fire, acting onl
y on gossip and those hunches he has.’
‘Who will get Berlin when Frank retires?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘I suppose they will go to that computer and see if they can find someone who hates Berlin as much as Frank does, who wastes money as extravagantly as Frank does, and who looks like an Englishman on a package tour, as Frank manages to look.’
‘You’re cruel. Frank’s so proud of his German too.’
‘He’d get away with it if he didn’t try writing out those instructions for the German staff and pinning them on the notice board. The only time I’ve ever seen Werner laughing, really laughing uncontrollably, was in front of the notice board in the front hall. He was reading Frank’s German language instruction: “What to do in case of fire.” It became a classic. There was a German security man who used to recite it at the Christmas party. One year Frank watched him and said, “It’s jolly good the way these Jerries are able to laugh at the deficiencies of their own language, what?” I said, “Yes, Frank, and he’s got a voice a bit like yours, did you notice that?” “Can’t say I did,” said Frank. I was never quite sure if Frank understood what the joke was.’
‘Bret said the D-G mentioned your name for the Berlin office.’
‘Have you seen Bret much while I was away?’
‘Don’t start that all over again, darling. There is absolutely no question of a relationship between me and Bret Rensselaer.’
‘No one’s mentioned it to me,’ I said. ‘The job, I mean.’
‘Would you take it?’
‘Would you like to go back there?’
‘I’d do anything to see you really happy again, Bernard.’
‘I’m happy enough.’
‘I wish you’d show it more. I worry about you. Would you like to go to Berlin?’
‘It depends,’ I said cautiously. ‘If they wanted me to take over Frank’s ramshackle organization and keep it that way, I wouldn’t touch it at any price. If they let me reshape it to something better suited to the twentieth century…then it could be a job well worth doing.’
‘And I can easily imagine you putting it to the D-G in those very words, darling. Can’t you get it into your adorable head that Frank, Dicky, Bret and the D-G all think they are running a wonderful organization that is the envy of the whole world. They are not going to receive your offer to bring it into the twentieth century with boundless enthusiasm.’
‘I must remember that,’ I said.
‘And now I’ve made you angry.’
‘Only because you’re right,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s hardly worth discussing what I’d say if they offered me Frank’s job when I know there is not the slightest chance they will.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Fiona. ‘You realize you’ve driven past our house, don’t you? Bernard! Where the hell are we going?’
‘There was a parked car…two men in it. Opposite our entrance.’
‘Oh, but Bernard. Really.’
‘I’ll just drive around the block to see if there’s any sort of backup. Then I’ll go back there on foot.’
‘Aren’t you taking a parked car with two people in it too seriously? It’s probably just a couple saying good night.’
‘I’ve been taking things too seriously for years,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it makes me a difficult man to live with. But I’ve stayed alive, sweetheart. And that means a lot to me.’
The streets were deserted, no one on foot and no occupied parked cars as far as I could see. I stopped the car. ‘Give me five minutes. Then drive along the road and into our driveway as if everything was normal.’
She looked worried now. ‘For God’s sake, Bernard. Do be careful.’
‘I’ll be okay,’ I told her as I opened the door of the car. ‘This is what I do for a living.’
I took a pistol from my jacket and stuffed it into a pocket of my raincoat. ‘You’re carrying a gun?’ said Fiona in alarm. ‘What on earth do you want with that?’
‘New instructions,’ I said. ‘Anyone who regularly carries Category One papers has to have a gun. It’s only a peashooter.’
‘I hate guns,’ she said.
‘Five minutes.’
She reached out and gripped my arm. ‘There’s nothing between me and Bret,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing between me and anyone, darling. I swear it. You’re the only one.’
‘You’re only saying that because I’ve got a gun,’ I said. It was a rotten joke, but she gave it the best sort of smile she could manage and then slid across to the driver’s seat.
It was cold, and the flakes of snow hit my face. By now the snowfall was heavy enough to make patterns on the ground, and the air cold enough to keep the flakes frozen so they swirled round in ever-changing shapes.
I turned into Duke Street, where we lived, from the north end. I wanted to approach the car from behind. It was safer that way; it’s damned awkward to twist round in a car seat. The car was not one I recognized as being from the car pool, but on the other hand it wasn’t positioned for a hotrubber getaway. It was an old Lancia coupé with a radio-phone antenna on the roof.
The driver must have been looking in his rearview mirror because the door swung open when I got near. A man got out. He was about thirty, wearing a black leather zip-fronted jacket and the sort of brightly coloured knitted Peruvian hat they sell in ski resorts. I was reassured; it would be a bit conspicuous for a KGB hit team.
He let me come closer and kept his hands at his sides, well away from his pockets. ‘Mr Samson?’ he called.
I stopped. The other occupant of the car hadn’t moved. He hadn’t even turned in his seat to see me. ‘Who are you?’ I said.
‘I’ve got a message from Mr Cruyer,’ he said.
I went closer to him but remained cautious. I was holding the peashooter in the pocket of my coat and I kept it pointing in his direction. ‘Tell me more,’ I said.
He looked down at where the gun made a bulge and said, ‘He told me to wait. You didn’t leave a contact number.’
He was right about that. Fiona’s request to move that damned bed had been waiting for me at home. ‘Let’s have it, then.’
‘It’s Mr Trent. He’s been taken ill. He’s in a house near the Oval. Mr Cruyer is there.’ He motioned vaguely to the car. ‘Shall I call him to say you’re coming?’
‘I’ll go in my car.’
‘Sure,’ said the man. He pulled the knitted hat down round his ears. ‘I’ll ask Mr Cruyer to call you and confirm, shall I?’ He was careful not to grin but my caution obviously amused him.
‘Do that,’ I said. ‘You can’t be too careful.’
‘Will do,’ he said, and gave me a perfunctory salute before opening the car door. ‘Anything else?’
‘Nothing else,’ I said. I didn’t let go of the gun until they’d driven away. Then I went indoors and poured myself a malt whisky while waiting for Cruyer’s call. Fiona arrived before the phone rang. She gave me a tight embrace and a kiss from her ice-cold lips.
Cruyer was not explicit about anything except the address and the fact that he’d been trying to get me for nearly an hour, and would I please hurry, hurry, hurry. Not wanting to arrive there complete with folding bed, I lifted it from the roof rack before leaving. The exertion made me short of breath and my hands tremble. Or was that due to the confrontation with the man from the car? I could not be sure.
The part of south London that takes its name from the Surrey County cricket ground is not the smart residential district that some tourists might expect. The Oval is a seedy collection of small factories, workers’ apartments and a park that is not recommended for a stroll after dark. And yet, tucked away behind the main thoroughfares, with their diesel fumes, stray cats and litter, there are enclaves of renovated houses – mostly of Victorian design – occupied by politicians and civil servants who have discovered how conveniently close to Westminster this unfashionable district is. It was in such a house that Cruyer was waiting for me.
Dicky was lounging in the front r
oom reading The Economist. He habitually carried such reading matter rolled up in the side pocket of his reefer jacket which was now beside him on the sofa. He was wearing jeans, jogging shoes and a white roll-neck sweater in the sort of heavyweight wool that trawlermen require for deck duty in bad weather.
‘I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Dicky in a tone that meant it did. ‘Trent has taken an overdose.’
‘What did he take? How bad is he?’ I asked.
‘His sister found him, thank God,’ said Dicky. ‘She brought him here. This is her house. Then she called a doctor.’ Dicky said doctor as another man might say pervert or terrorist. ‘Not one of our people,’ Dicky went on, ‘some bloody quack from the local medical centre.’
‘How bad is he?’
‘Trent? He’ll survive. But it’s probably a sign that his Russian pals are turning the screws a bit. I don’t want them tightening the screws to the point where Trent decides they can hurt him more than we can.’
‘Did he say that? Did he say he’s coming under pressure?’
‘I think we should assume that he is,’ said Dicky. ‘That’s why someone will have to tell him the facts of life.’
‘For instance?’
‘Someone is going to have to explain that we can’t afford to have him sitting in Moscow answering the questions that a KGB debriefing panel will ask. Losing a few secret papers is one thing. Helping them build a complete diagram of our chain of command and the headquarters structure, and filling in personal details about senior officers for their files would be intolerable.’ Dicky held the rolled-up magazine and slapped the open palm of his left hand with it. Ominously he added, ‘And Trent had better understand that he knows too much to go for trial at the Old Bailey.’
‘And you want me to explain all that?’ I said.
‘I thought you’d already explained it to him,’ said Dicky.
‘Did it occur to you that a suicide attempt might indicate that he’s already been pressed too hard?’
Dicky became absorbed in the problem of rolling The Economist up so tightly that no light could be seen through it. After a long silence he said, ‘I didn’t tell the stupid bastard to sell out his country. You think because he’s a Balliol man I want to go easy on him.’ He got out his cigarettes and put one in his mouth unlit.
