The Diplomat's Wife

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘Roland retired in sixty-seven. He died five years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Kurt.

  Given what he had just learned about Roland’s behaviour to his wife, Phil was looking out for a hint of bitterness on Emma’s part. He couldn’t detect any.

  ‘Your friend Cyril Ashcott did very well for himself,’ Kurt said. ‘Sir Cyril now, I believe?’

  ‘And ambassador in Paris.’

  ‘I’m surprised,’ said Kurt. ‘After getting caught in Paris. When he stayed in place and continued to pass us material, I guessed your people had turned him. But I would have expected them to have dropped him afterwards.’

  ‘There was a move to turf him out of the diplomatic service after the war, but Roland argued in his favour, and won. You are right: some of the information he gave you was false. Including that the D-Day landings were going to take place in Pas-de-Calais and not Normandy, according to Roland. So the Foreign Office kept him on. After which, he had a glittering career, I’m glad to say. Very few people know about his indiscretion, or about his redemption.’

  ‘Good for him.’

  Emma smiled. ‘Yes. Good for him. What about you? The West German diplomatic service kept you on despite your left leanings?’

  ‘It turned out I wasn’t a very good Nazi after all. And they needed some professionals.’

  ‘You were always exceptionally diplomatic.’

  Kurt acknowledged the compliment with a nod. ‘There was a group of us, young lawyers who really didn’t like Hitler or the Nazis. We formed a kind of loose network, in the Foreign Office, and even in the Abwehr, the German secret service. Some of us were lefties, like me, but there were also good Prussians – right-wing law-and-order people who thought that Hitler had gone too far. We teamed up with some officers in the army. A couple of plots were hatched to get rid of Hitler just before the war. They never came to anything; at the last moment the generals lost their bottle. But it was close. You may have heard about them?’

  ‘I did hear rumours,’ said Emma. ‘But people say it was just German officers and civil servants trying to claim they weren’t really Nazis, after all.’

  ‘I know they say that. It’s frustrating,’ said Kurt. ‘And completely wrong. A lot of people risked their lives – lost their lives – to stop him. It all culminated in the bomb planted in Hitler’s bunker in East Prussia in 1944. Most of the plotters were rounded up. Some were executed; a few survived the war in prison. Like Fabian von Schlabrendorff – he was a friend of mine. He became a judge in West Germany’s constitutional court. And I became an ambassador.’

  ‘Did you end up in jail?’

  ‘No. They missed me, thank God. I was in Paris again at the time, out of the way.’

  Kurt and Emma talked about the diplomatic lives they had both led, and Phil did his best to follow. Kurt’s face was animated as he spoke, his mouth contorting itself from one expression to another – surprise, mock horror, amusement, serious consideration and laughter.

  ‘Kurt?’ Emma said, her voice taking on a serious tone. ‘Can I ask you something? It’s something Dick mentioned.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘He said you had seen Kay Lesser, and that she now lived in East Berlin.’

  ‘That’s right. It was about four years ago, in Hungary. I saw her at a party given by a Hungarian businessman.’

  ‘What was she doing there?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. We said hello and chatted for a few minutes. It was awkward for me because I worked for the West German diplomatic service.’

  ‘And she worked for the Stasi?’

  ‘I don’t know that for sure. But I assume so.’

  ‘Was she still called Kay Lesser?’

  ‘She was still called Kay, or at least she answered to that name. She said she had married a German she met during the war, and lived in East Berlin; her German is very good now. I don’t actually know if she is in the Stasi, it’s just that given her history it’s safest to assume that she is. Or was.’

  ‘Did she say where she lived in East Berlin?’

  ‘No. We only spoke for a few minutes. She hasn’t changed much. She’s older, of course, her hair is silver – she must have been seventy at the time – but she was still very tall. We had a nice chat; but as I say I didn’t want to be seen with her for too long at a diplomatic function.’

  ‘Would you be able to find out the name she goes under now? And her address in East Berlin?’

  Kurt looked at her sharply. ‘And how would I find out that?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Kurt, you know people who can answer that kind of question.’

  Kurt nodded. ‘I probably do. But why do you want to know?’

  ‘It’s personal.’

  Kurt raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Do you think I’m working for someone?’ Emma asked.

  The eyebrows remained raised. ‘Are you?’

  Emma sighed. ‘No, I’m not. I would hardly bring my grandson along if I was spying, would I?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kurt. He turned to Phil. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ he replied.

  ‘A bit young. But good cover, grandmother and grandson.’

  ‘All right,’ said Emma. ‘I could be working for MI6. Or the KGB, or the CIA, or even the BND. But I’m not. And neither is Philip. You just have to trust me.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You’ve trusted me before.’

  Kurt gave a short laugh at this. ‘Yes, I have trusted you before.’ He leaned forward. ‘How important is this to you?’

  ‘Very,’ said Emma.

  ‘All right. I’ll make some calls. Come back tomorrow. I tell you what, why don’t you have lunch here? And then maybe you can go hang gliding if the weather holds. I’ll watch you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Emma. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down.’

  Kurt grinned. ‘You and I never did let each other down, did we?’

  Chapter 31

  A thick, heavy blanket of cloud lay over the lake as they set off the following morning for lunch at Kurt’s house at Talloires. The blanket hung only a couple of hundred feet above the town, and within a few minutes they were in cloud. Phil slowed down and switched on his headlights: visibility was no more than fifty yards.

  The weather the previous afternoon had been perfect. Phil and Emma had settled down on the Pâquier, a broad lawn at the foot of the lake. Phil had plunged into the water, which was quite shallow and less chilly than he had expected. Drying off, he opened War and Peace and stared out at the crisp blue lake stretching out before him, wooded mountains rising on each side. A swarm of pedaloes pottered about on the water and sailing boats tacked from shore to shore further out. Next to him, Emma read her own book – Germinal by Émile Zola in the original French. Or rather reread; she had told Phil that it was one of the books Hugh had studied at Cambridge. She said every time she read it she felt closer to him. That was no doubt why she had given Phil a copy for his eighteenth birthday the year before.

  Phil had read it then: very worthy, but a bit on the bleak side, in his opinion. It was the story of a family of French coal miners working seven days a week in an atmosphere of poverty, violence and deep despair.

  That morning, confined to the hotel by the weather, they had installed themselves in the small lounge. This time Phil attacked his Teach Yourself Gaelic, working through the first two chapters. Emma hadn’t said anything, but he could tell she was pleased.

  It was a very strange language, but Phil was surprised to find himself intrigued.

  ‘Did you ever actually speak Gaelic?’ he said as they slowly made their way up the mountainside through the fog.

  ‘Hardly ever. To myself, which doesn’t count. And then two sentences to Hugh. Do you want to try some out on me?’

  ‘Ciamar a tha thu?’

  ‘Tha mi glè mhath. Ciamar a tha thu?’

  ‘Well, I am very well, too, thank you very much,’ Phil said. ‘You do remember it! And
now you’ve spoken four sentences.

  ‘Yes, I have.’ There was a catch in Emma’s throat as she said this.

  ‘I’m sorry, Grams. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘Oh, no. No. Please don’t stop. Having you here does bring Hugh back a bit. I hoped it would. As did going back to Chaddington. I don’t want you to stop talking about him, Philip, just because it might upset me. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Phil said. ‘I understand.’ He searched for a subject. ‘Tell me about Hugh’s twenty-first birthday. Was that a big deal in those days?’

  Emma smiled. ‘I wasn’t there; it was in term time. But Hugh sent me a letter about it afterwards. It was in the summer term and Hugh punted to Grantchester, with Freddie and Dick and a couple of others.’

  She chattered away happily about that day, and another when Hugh had taken her and her mother punting on the river, the summer before, when she was sixteen, and how she wished she could have gone up to the university, but her parents would never let her. There was a warmth in her voice that made Phil want to smile.

  They almost missed the turn-off uphill to Kurt’s house. Kurt greeted them cordially.

  ‘We would normally eat outside on the terrace,’ he said. ‘But there is no point – you can barely see as far as the end of the garden.’ The table in the dining area of the living room was laid for three. ‘But first, can I get you something to drink? I’ve opened a good bottle of Burgundy.’

  Phil and Emma both indicated that that would do very nicely.

  ‘I called the hang-gliding place for you yesterday, but they warned me that they would be socked in today. I’m sorry about that, Philip.’

  ‘It would have been fun,’ said Phil. And a little scary, he added silently to himself.

  ‘It would,’ said Emma, whose gleaming eyes suggested her enthusiasm the previous day hadn’t been a bluff.

  ‘Can I use your toilet?’ said Phil.

  ‘By all means,’ said Kurt. ‘Just to the left of the front door.’

  As Phil opened the lavatory door, the bell rang.

  He hesitated, then shut himself in.

  He heard the sound of Kurt unlatching the door, and then a crash as it banged open, and a shouted order in German.

  ‘Get back! Get back now! Stand over there!’

  Phil froze. What the hell was that?

  He opened the toilet door carefully and stepped out into the living room.

  The next minute passed very slowly.

  A man in a black balaclava was pointing a pistol at Kurt and Emma. He stood with his back to Phil, only ten feet or so away from him. Kurt and Emma were both holding glasses of wine: Kurt’s face registered shock; Emma was glaring.

  The man was dressed in blue jeans and a grey shirt. Phil couldn’t see any of his face beneath the balaclava, but he was of no more than medium height, and slim, and there was something in the muscles of his back that suggested toughness. That, and the gun he was holding.

  Phil took two steps forward and launched himself at the man, just as the gun went off. In the enclosed space of the house, the noise was deafening. Kurt let out a cry, and Phil and the man crashed on to the floor.

  Phil was on top of him, but the man had still kept a grip of his gun. And he was yanking it round to try to point it at Phil. Phil lunged for the gun, and grabbed the man’s wrist with his left hand, his right arm pinning the man’s body down.

  Although Phil had the better angle, the man was strong. Slowly, inch by inch, the gun was moving upwards, the barrel twisting towards Phil’s skull. In a couple of seconds, the man would press the trigger and blow Phil’s brains out.

  Phil had no choice. He shifted his weight and his right arm so that he pinned the gun back on to the floor with both of his own hands.

  But that gave the man an opportunity. He bucked, twisted, and kicked, pushing Phil off him with his free hand, and scrambled to his feet.

  Phil looked up.

  The man was pointing his gun right at Phil’s face. Phil stared along the barrel directly at the man’s hard blue eyes glaring back at him through the slits in the balaclava, focusing on him over the gun sight.

  There was another loud crash of a gunshot in an enclosed space.

  Phil closed his eyes, his ears ringing.

  He didn’t feel anything.

  He opened them to see the man slumped on the floor a few feet in front of him, blood pouring out of a messy hole in the side of the balaclava, his eyes still staring at Phil. But the light had gone out of them.

  Emma was standing next to Kurt’s body, her own revolver pointed at the man on the ground, her handbag open on the dining table.

  The room smelled of cordite.

  ‘Are you all right, Philip?’ Her voice was surprisingly calm.

  ‘Yes,’ said Phil, but he was shaking. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘He’s definitely dead, isn’t he?’

  Phil looked again at the bloody mess of the man’s head, and at his staring eyes. ‘Yes. He’s definitely dead.’

  Kurt’s slumped body emitted a groan.

  ‘But Kurt’s still alive!’

  He was. Yet only barely, and only for a minute or so.

  As Phil and Emma knelt over Kurt and tried to straighten him up and make him more comfortable, he groaned again. ‘Who the fuck was that?’ he said in German.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Emma.

  Blood was seeping from Kurt’s chest. He tried to say something else, but the words wouldn’t come. His breathing was weaker and shallower, but then he seemed to take one last rasping gasp, and he was silent.

  Chapter 32

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Phil stared at the carnage. ‘He’s dead. They’re both dead.’

  Emma slowly put her gun down on to the dining table.

  Phil scrambled to his feet. ‘Where’s the phone? We need to call the police. What’s the number? It’s not 999, is it? What’s the number in France, Grams?’ He was shouting now.

  ‘We’re not going to call the police,’ said Emma, her voice low.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Grams! What do you mean, we’re not going to call the police? They’re dead. Look at them!’

  ‘We can’t. I can’t stay here and talk to the police. It will mess up all my plans, and I don’t have much time left.’

  ‘Your plans? Your plans for what?’

  ‘Calm down! I’ll tell you.’

  ‘No, I won’t calm down!’ said Phil. ‘Your plans have just involved two people dying. We have to call the police.’

  ‘If that man had escaped, then I’d say fair enough. We’d call the police so they could catch him. But he’s dead. There is no murderer to catch. And they’ll start asking me questions, questions I can’t answer. Much better for us to leave now.’

  ‘Leave now?’ said Phil incredulously. ‘And go where?’

  ‘Switzerland. Geneva’s only fifty kilometres away. With any luck we’ll be over the border before the police start looking for us.’

  Emma’s face was determined. But Phil knew what the right thing to do was.

  ‘No. We call the police.’

  He spotted a telephone on a desk in the corner and moved over towards it.

  ‘No, Phil!’ Emma raised her gun and pointed it at him.

  ‘Oh, come on, Grams,’ said Phil. ‘You’re not going to shoot me.’ He was surprised at his own confidence, but confident he was.

  She lowered the gun. ‘You’re right, Philip. I’m not going to shoot you. But please. Just do as I ask. If we do get stopped at some point, you can say I made you leave without calling the police. I’ll back you up.’

  Her eyes were pleading. ‘You know how important this trip is to me, even if you don’t know exactly why yet. If you call the French police, they will stop me. And it’s not as if a murderer is going to escape justice.’

  Phil stood still and looked down at the two bloody bodies slumped on the floor. This was all spinning out of control very fast. Then he turned to his grandmother. She had br
ought him along because she trusted him. Now, at the end of her own life, she needed him. He didn’t want to let her down, even though he knew he should.

  Suddenly, he knew. He was with her. Whatever happened, he was with her.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do we do now? Do we just leave them here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘Let’s quickly wipe down any surfaces we touched today and yesterday. And then let’s go.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Phil. ‘I want to see who this guy is.’

  Gingerly, he reached out and gripped the neck of the balaclava. He pulled upwards, trying to ensure that none of the warm blood seeping through it touched his own clothes.

  Slowly, a face was revealed.

  ‘Do you recognize him?’ said Emma.

  Phil nodded. ‘He’s been following us since England.’

  ‘You can explain in the car,’ said Emma. ‘Now I want to check if Kurt wrote anything down. Like Kay Lesser’s address in Berlin.’

  ‘Be quick.’

  Emma searched for five minutes through Kurt’s desk, and Phil tentatively checked Kurt’s trouser pockets.

  Poor man. Phil had only just met him, but he’d liked what he’d seen, and his grandmother was clearly fond of him. And now Kurt was dead, killed by that psycho sprawled on the floor by the door.

  ‘Philip. Come here.’

  Phil moved over to the desk. A name was written on the back of an envelope, which was lying by Kurt’s telephone. Kay Ortmann.

  ‘Ortmann must be Kay’s married name. Or at least the name she goes under now.’

  ‘Is there an address?’

  They looked, carefully, using a biro from the desk and a handkerchief to try to avoid leaving fingerprints on the papers.

  Nothing. Or at least nothing obvious.

  Emma got two cloths from the kitchen and they began wiping. Fifteen minutes later, Phil and Emma were in the TR6, heading through the fog.

  Phil fought to concentrate on the road ahead as the enormity of what he had just experienced crashed around him.

  He had just watched someone die.

  He had just seen his grandmother blow someone’s brains out.