Mexico Set

by Len Deighton

  She held his upper arms and kissed him carefully enough to preserve her lipstick and make-up and then straightened his tie and flicked dust from his jacket. Zena knew exactly how to handle him. She was an expert on how to handle men. I think she might even have been able to handle me if she’d put her mind to it but luckily I was not a part of her planned future.

  She asked Werner’s advice about everything she didn’t care about, and she enlisted his aid whenever there was a chance for her to play the helpless woman. He was called to the kitchen to open a tin and to get hot pans from the oven. Werner was the only one who could open a bottle of wine and decant it. Werner was asked to peer at the quiche and sniff at the roast chicken and pronounce it cooked. But since virtually all the food had come prepared by the Paul Bocuse counter of the Ka De We food department, probably the greatest array of food on sale anywhere in the world, Zena’s precautions seemed somewhat overwrought. Yet Werner obviously revelled in them.

  Had I read all the psychology books that Werner had on his shelf I might have started thinking that Zena was a manifestation of his desire for a daughter, or a reflection of childhood suspicions of his mother’s chastity. As it was I just figured that Werner liked the dependent type and Zena was happy to play that role for him. After all, I was pretty sure that Zena hadn’t read any of those books either.

  But you don’t have to read books to get smart, and Zena was as smart as a street urchin climbing under the flap of a circus tent. Certainly Zena could teach me a thing or two, as she did that evening. The apartment itself was an interesting indication of their relationship. Werner, despite his constant declarations of imminent bankruptcy, had always been something of a spender. But before he met Zena this apartment was like a student’s pad. It was entirely masculine: an old piano, upon which Werner liked to play ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, and big lumpy chairs with broken springs, their ancient floral covers perforated by carelessly held cigarettes. There was even a motheaten tiger’s skin which – like so much of Werner’s furnishings – had come from the fleamarket in the abandoned S-Bahn station on Tauentzienstrasse. In those days the kitchen was equipped with little more than a can-opener and a frying pan. And glasses outnumbered cups by five to one. Now it was different. It wasn’t like a real apartment any more; it was like one of those bare-looking sets that are photographed for glossy magazines. The lights all shone on the ceiling and walls, and the sofa had a serape draped over it. Green plants, little rugs, cut flowers and a couple of books were strategically positioned, and the chairs were very modern and uncomfortable.

  We were sitting round the dining table, finishing the main course of chicken stuffed with truffles and exotic herbs. Zena had told Werner what wonderful wine he’d chosen, and he asked her what she’d been doing while he was away.

  Zena said, ‘The only outing worth mentioning is the evening I went to the opera.’ She turned to me and said, ‘Werner doesn’t like opera. Taking Werner to the opera is like trying to teach a bear to dance.’

  ‘You didn’t go alone?’ asked Werner.

  ‘That’s just what I was going to tell you. Erich Stinnes phoned. I didn’t tell him you were not here, Werner. I didn’t want him to know you were away. I don’t like anyone to know you’re away.’

  ‘Erich Stinnes?’ said Werner.

  ‘He phoned. You know what he’s like. He had two tickets for the opera. One for you, Werner, and one for me. I thought it was very nice of him. He said it was in return for all the dinners he’d eaten with us.’

  ‘Not so many,’ said Werner glumly.

  ‘He was just being polite, darling. So I said that you would be late back but that I would love to go.’

  I looked at Werner and he looked at me. In some other situation, such looks exchanged between two men in some other line of work might have been comment on a wife’s fidelity. But Werner and I were thinking other thoughts. The alarm on Werner’s face was registering the fear that Stinnes knew Zena was alone because he had had him followed over there in the East Sector of the city. Zena looked from one to the other of us. ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘The opera,’ said Werner vaguely, as his mind retraced his movements from Berlin and across the dark countryside to the frontier and tried to remember any persisting headlights on the road behind, a shadow in a doorway, a figure in the street or any one of a thousand slips that even the best of agents is prey to.

  ‘He sent a car,’ said Zena. ‘I started worrying when it was due to arrive. I thought it might drive up to the front door with a Russian army driver in uniform, or with a hammer-and-sickle flag on the front of it.’ She giggled.

  ‘You went to the East?’

  ‘We saw Mozart’s Magic Flute, darling. At the Comic Opera. It’s a lovely little theatre; have you never been? Lots of people from the West go over for the evening. There were British officers in gorgeous uniforms and lots of women in long dresses. I felt under-dressed if anything. We must go together, Werner. It was lovely.’

  ‘Stinnes is married,’ said Werner.

  ‘Don’t be such a prude, Werner, I know he’s married. We’ve both heard Erich talking about his failed marriage at length enough to remember that.’

  ‘It was a strange thing for him to do, wasn’t it?’ Werner said.

  ‘Oh, Werner, darling. How can you say that? You heard me saying how much I liked the opera. And Erich asked you if you liked opera and you said yes you did.’

  ‘I probably wasn’t listening,’ said Werner.

  ‘I know you weren’t listening. You almost went to sleep. I had to kick you under the table.’

  ‘You must be very careful with Erich Stinnes,’ said Werner. He smiled as if determined not to become angry with her. ‘He’s not the polite gentleman that he likes to pretend to be. He’s KGB, Zena, and all those Chekists are dangerous.’

  ‘I’ve got apple strudel, and after that I’ve got chocolates from the Lenotre counter at Ka De We, the ones you like. Praline. Do you want to skip the strudel? What about you, Bernard?’

  ‘I’ll have everything,’ I said.

  ‘Whipped cream with the strudel? Coffee at the same time?’ said Zena.

  ‘You took the words right out of my mouth,’ I said.

  ‘Stinnes is playing a dangerous game,’ Werner told her. ‘No one knows what he’s really got in mind. Suppose he held you hostage over there in the East?’

  Zena hugged herself, grimaced, and said, ‘Promises, promises.’

  ‘It’s not funny,’ said Werner. ‘It could happen.’

  ‘I can handle Erich Stinnes,’ said Zena. ‘I understand Erich Stinnes better than you men will ever understand him. You should ask a woman to help if you really want to understand a man like that.’

  ‘I understand him all right,’ Werner called after her as she disappeared into the kitchen to get the apple strudel and switch on the coffee-machine. To me in a quieter voice he added, ‘Perhaps I understand him too bloody well.’

  The phone rang. Werner answered it. He grunted into the mouthpiece in a way that was unusual for the amiable Werner. ‘Yes, he’s here, Frank,’ he said.

  Frank Harrington. Of the whole population of Berlin I knew of only one that Werner really disliked, and that was the head of the Berlin Field Unit. It did not portend well for Werner’s future in the department. For Werner’s sake I hoped that Frank retired from the service soon.

  I took the phone. ‘Hello, Frank. Bernard here.’

  ‘I’ve tried everywhere, Bernard. Why the hell don’t you phone my office when you get into town and give me a contact number.’

  ‘I’m at Lisl’s,’ I said. ‘I’m always at Lisl’s.’

  ‘You’re not always at Lisl’s,’ said Frank. He sounded angry. ‘You’re not at Lisl’s now, and you haven’t been at bloody Lisl’s for the last two nights.’

  ‘I haven’t been in Berlin for two nights,’ I said. ‘You don’t want me to phone you every night wherever I am, anywhere in the world, do you? Even my mother doesn’t exp
ect that, Frank.’

  ‘Dicky says you left London without even notifying him you were going anywhere.’

  ‘Dicky said that?’

  ‘Yes,’ shouted Frank. ‘Dicky said that.’

  ‘Dicky’s got a terrible memory, Frank. Last year he took one of those mail-order memory courses you see advertised in the newspapers. But it didn’t seem to make much difference.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for your merry quips,’ said Frank. ‘I want you in my office, tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, without fail.’

  ‘I was going to contact you anyway, Frank.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning, my office, ten o’clock, without fail,’ said Frank again. ‘And I don’t want you drinking all night in Lisl’s bar. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand, Frank,’ I said. ‘Give my best regards to your wife.’ I rang off.

  Werner looked at me.

  ‘Frank reading the Riot Act,’ I explained. ‘Don’t get drunk in Lisl’s bar, he said. It sounds as if he’s been talking to that fellow Henry Tiptree.’

  ‘He’s spying on you,’ said Werner, in a voice of feigned weariness. ‘How long is it going to take before you start believing me?’

  Zena reappeared with a tray upon which stood my slice of apple strudel, whipped cream, the coffee and a small plate of assorted chocolates. ‘Who was on the phone?’ she asked.

  ‘Frank Harrington,’ said Werner. ‘He wanted Bernie.’

  She nodded to show she’d heard as she arranged the things from the tray on the table. Then, when she’d finished her little task, she looked up and said, ‘They’re offering Erich a quarter of a million dollars to defect.’

  ‘What?’ said Werner, thunderstruck.

  ‘You heard me, darling. London Central are offering Erich Stinnes a quarter of a million dollars to defect.’ She was aware of what a bombshell she’d thrown at us. I had the impression that her main motive in persuading me to stay to dinner was to have me present when she announced this news.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ said Werner. ‘Do you know anything about that, Bernie?’

  Zena gave me no chance to steal her thunder. She said, ‘That is a gross sum that would include his car and miscellaneous expenses. But it wouldn’t be subject to tax and it wouldn’t include the two-bedroom house they’ll provide for him. He’ll be on his own anyway. He’s decided not to ask his wife to go with him. He’s not even going to tell her about the offer. He’s frightened she’ll report him. They don’t get along together; they quarrel.’

  ‘A quarter of a million dollars,’ said Werner. ‘That’s…nearly seven hundred thousand marks. I don’t believe it.’

  Zena put the strudel in front of me and placed the whipped cream to hand. ‘Do you want whipped cream in your coffee, Werner?’ She poured a cup of coffee and passed it to her husband. ‘Well, it’s true, whether you believe it or not. That’s what they’ve offered him.’

  ‘I haven’t heard anything about it, Zena,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to be handling the whole business but I’ve heard nothing yet about a big lump sum. If they were going to offer him a quarter of a million dollars I think they’d tell me, don’t you?’

  It was intended as a rhetorical question but Zena answered it. ‘No, my dear Bernard,’ she said. ‘I’m quite sure they wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  ‘Use your imagination,’ said Zena. ‘You’re senior staff at London Central, maybe more important than a man such as Stinnes…’

  ‘Much more important,’ I said between mouthfuls of strudel.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Zena. ‘So if Erich is worth a quarter of a million dollars to London Central you’d be worth the same to Moscow.’

  It took me a moment or two to understand what she meant. I grinned at the thought of it. ‘You mean London Central are frightened in case I discover what I’m worth and then defect to Moscow and price myself at the same fee?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Zena. She was twenty-two years old. To her it had the elegant simplicity that the world had had for me when I was her age.

  ‘I’d need more than a quarter of a million dollars to soften the prospect of having to spend the rest of my days in Moscow,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be evasive,’ said Zena. ‘Do you really think that Erich will spend the rest of his days in London?’

  ‘You tell me,’ I said. I finished my strudel and sipped at my coffee. It was very strong. Zena liked strong black coffee but I floated cream on mine. So did Werner.

  Werner rubbed his face and took his coffee over to the armchair to sit down. He looked very tired. ‘You can see what Zena means, Bernie.’ He looked from me to Zena and back again, hoping to find a way of keeping the peace.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Extending this idea just for the sake of argument,’ he said apologetically, ‘Moscow would simply want to debrief you in depth. What are we talking about: six months? Twelve months at the outside.’

  ‘And after that?’ I said. ‘Continuing to extend this for the sake of argument, what would happen to me after that?’

  ‘A new identity. Now that the KGB have that new forgery factory near the airport at Schönefeld they can provide papers that pass damned near any sort of scrutiny. German workmanship, you see.’ He smiled a tiny smile; just enough to make it all a bit of a joke.

  ‘German workmanship,’ I said. The Russians had been at it since 1945. They’d gathered together the scattered remnants of SS unit Amt VI F, which from Berlin’s Delbruckstrasse – and using the nearby Spechthausen bei Eberswalde paper factory, and forgers housed in the equally nearby Oranienburg concentration camp – had supervised the manufacture of superb forgeries of everything from Swedish passports to British five-pound notes. ‘Perfect papers and a new identity. Plus an unlimited amount of forged paper money. That would be lovely, Werner.’

  Werner looked up from under his heavy eyelids and said, ‘Defectors to Moscow wind up in weird places, Bernie. You and I both know certain residents of Cape Town, Rome and…where was that last one: some place in Bolivia?…who have changed their names and occupations suddenly and successfully since the last time we saw them.’

  ‘For a quarter of a million dollars?’ I said. ‘And spend the rest of your life in Cape Town, Rome or Bolivia?’

  ‘Zena didn’t mean that you’d do that for a quarter of a million dollars, Bernie.’

  ‘Didn’t she? What did you mean, Zena?’ I said.

  ‘Zena said, ‘No need to get touchy. You heard what I said, and you know it’s true. I said that London Central were afraid of what you might do. I didn’t say that I felt the same way. London Central trust no one. They don’t trust Werner, they don’t trust you, they don’t trust me.’

  ‘Trust you how?’ I said.

  Zena touched her necklace and smoothed the collar of her silk jacket, preening herself while looking away across the room as if half occupied with other, more important matters. ‘They don’t trust me to be their contact for Stinnes. I asked Dicky Cruyer. He ignored the question. Earlier this evening I put the same idea to you. You changed the subject.’

  ‘Do you know for certain that Erich Stinnes has only the one child?’ I said.

  ‘Not a child exactly,’ said Zena. ‘He has just the one son who is eighteen years old. Perhaps nineteen by now. He failed to get into Berlin University last year in spite of having very high marks. They have a system over there that gives priority to the children of manual workers. Erich was furious.’

  I got up from the table and went to look out of the window. It was dusk. Werner’s apartment in the fashionable Berlin suburb of Dahlem looked out on to other expensive apartment blocks. But between them could be seen the dark treetops of the Grunewald, parkland that stretched some six kilometres to the wide water of the Havel. On a sunny day – with the windows open wide – the sweet warm air would endorse every claim made for that famous Berliner Luft. But now it was almost dark and the rain was spattering against the glass.

  Zena’s pr
ovocative remarks made me jumpy. Why had London not told me what they’d offered to Stinnes. I wasn’t just the ‘file officer’ on a run-of-the-mill operation. This was an enrolment – the trickiest game in the book. The usual procedure was to keep ‘the enroller’ informed about everything that happened. I wondered if Dicky knew about the quarter of a million dollars. It took no more than a moment to decide that Dicky must know; as German Stations Controller he’d have to sign the chits for the payment. The quarter of a million dollars would have to be debited against his departmental outgoings, until the cashier adjusted the figures by means of a payment from central funding.

  Street gutters overflowing with rain-water reflected the street lamps and made a line of moons that were continually shattered by passing traffic. Any one of the parked cars might have contained a surveillance team. Any of the windows of the apartment block across the street might have concealed cameras with long-focal-length lenses, and microphones with parabolic reflectors. At what point does sensible caution become clinical paranoia. At what point does a trusted employee become ‘a considered risk’, and then finally a ‘non-critical employment only’ category. I closed the curtains and turned round to face Zena. ‘How furious?’ I said. ‘Is Stinnes furious enough to send his son to university in the West?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ said Zena. ‘Ask him for yourself.’

  ‘We need all the help we can get,’ Werner told her gently.

  ‘The son has gone to live with Stinnes’s first wife. He’s gone to live in Russia.’

  ‘You’re way ahead of, us there, Zena,’ I admitted. ‘There was nothing about a first wife on the computer.’

  She showed obvious pleasure at this. ‘He’s had only one child. The first wife was Russian. The marriage was dissolved a long time ago. For the last year or so the son has been living with Stinnes and his second wife. He wanted to learn German. Now he’s gone back to live with his mother in Moscow. She has a relative who thinks he can get the boy a place at Moscow University, so the boy rushed off to Moscow immediately. He’s obviously frantic to go to university.’