by Robert Moss
The second telegram relayed the information, in suitably disguised language, that Johnny had arrived safely in Paris and was installed in a small hotel in the fourteenth arrondissement. While Bailey consulted a boat train schedule, Diana started laying out clothes. He noticed she had picked one of their larger suitcases.
“I really think an overnight bag will be quite sufficient,” he called out to her.
“Not on your life,” she re-joined. “You don’t imagine I’m going to let you go to Paris by yourself, do you?”
With the children away at school and a fortnight to go before the Easter break, he could not think of a convincing excuse to leave her at home. It meant they would have to stay at the Lancaster. Her family had always stayed at the Lancaster. Caught in Paris at the start of the war, her mother had arranged with the management to have her Rolls-Royce driven to Calais, from whence it had been ferried across the Channel on a Royal Navy destroyer.
* * *
In the room up under the eaves of the Hotel Fouche that looked out over a choppy sea of blue rooftops, a bottle of Moét sat untouched in an ice bucket. Johnny had ordered it — and the white and yellow roses he had strewn everywhere, even across the bed to celebrate Sigrid’s birthday. He was suddenly in no mood for a celebration. He was trying to keep his voice low and calm, to betray none of the fear and anger that was in him.
She had told him she was going shopping, that she wanted to go alone so she could surprise him. She had come back empty-handed, but with news that had floored him.
“Slow down,” he said. “Tell me the whole thing again from the beginning.”
Sigrid frowned with impatience. She was excited and happy and couldn’t understand why he was being difficult.
“I went to Editions du Carrefour,” she repeated. That was one Paris address everyone in Berlin knew. The vast publishing house was the hub of Münzenberg’s operation. It had scored a resounding success with the publication of the Brown Book on the Hitler terror. “I asked for Willi Münzenberg.”
“Just like that?”
“I didn’t see anything wrong, Johnny. We know he’s in Paris. I want to get back to work.”
“Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“Do you expect me to go on holiday while the Fascists are devouring Europe?” she rounded on him.
“All right. What name did you give them?”
“The old one. Firelei. Willi would remember that. But he wasn’t there. At least, the receptionist wouldn’t say. They made me wait more than an hour in an empty office.”
“Didn’t you think of leaving?”
“They didn’t want me to leave. You can understand that, can’t you? They’ve every right to distrust strangers. I could have been an assassin.”
The solemnity with which she said this made him want to laugh, more at himself than at her. He was reminded of the lecture on revolutionary discipline he had given her when she had complained about Max.
“What happened then?”
“Max arrived with his bodyguards. He was charming, Johnny, absolutely charming. He said he’s been looking for us for two weeks. He sent men to the flat in Berlin to help get us away, but we had already gone.”
“Very thoughtful of him. Did he say when he arrived in Paris?”
“No”
“But you told him when we arrived.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
Thank God I sent the cable to Smoilett in London, Johnny thought. If Max found out I’d been in Paris for four days without making contact with my controllers, I’d be as good as dead. There’ll be enough to explain as things are.
He resolved to put a bold face on things, opened the champagne, whirled her around the room and took her out for a late supper at a bistro near the Pont Neuf. He considered laying it all on the table that night but held back because of the doubts that kept flooding in. Had her visit to Carrefour been as naive as she said? Why hadn’t she told him where she was going? How deeply was she under Max’s spell?
Max had sent an invitation with Sigrid for both of them to dine with him the following night. The tone of the message was friendly. It was a summons, all the same.
I’ll have to keep up appearances, Johnny thought. If it’s a trap — he pressed his elbow against his side, feeling the bulk of the Mauser under his armpit — I’ll take Max with me.
But first he had to meet an important Englishman from London. He hoped the man had better answers than de Salis.
In the morning he slipped out and sent a telegram to the tailoring firm of Plunkett & Rice, explaining that he had gone on a diet and therefore required to have his jacket taken in two inches.
Colin Bailey chose the Ile St.-Louis, his favourite corner of Paris, for his first meeting with Johnny. Across the street from the bistro was a splendid apparition: a burnished horse’s head, nostrils flaring, glowing in the dozy afternoon sun like an idol. Bailey noted that it was the sign of a butcher’s shop dealing in horsemeat. This observation deepened his suspicion that the French were not altogether to be trusted. How could one vest complete confidence in a people whose better classes, it seemed, were given over to practices Diana regarded as lower than cannibalism? He resolved not to mention the incident to her. Diana much preferred horses to people.
Bailey was excited about the interview that lay ahead of him but edgy as well. Hennessy, a tall, gangling young man from the embassy who bore an unfortunate resemblance to a praying mantis, had reached him at the Lancaster just before he’d left, with the news of Johnny’s eleventh-hour telegram to his tailors. To Bailey, the message that Johnny was back in contact with the Russians was reassuring. The man was unlikely to have sent the cable if he were playing a double game, and it seemed he was now in place to perform the role that Bailey had scripted for him. There remained the task of making sure of the man, of winning him completely to a job that would be not only dangerous but devastatingly lonely. If Bailey had read his man right, the danger might be more of a lure than a deterrent. But to cope with the loneliness of a double life, Johnny would need a sense of purpose as strong as the faith that had sustained him through his years in the revolutionary underground. Bailey knew he could not supply that; but he might help to mould it from the materials he found.
He knew his man as soon as he entered the restaurant — back to the wall, corner table, eyes on the door. The face was strong but troubled, Bailey thought, capable of — no, prone to — excesses of passion.
They drank the new Beaujolais, and since Johnny had no interest in the menu, Bailey ordered each of them a dozen belons and the steak au poivre to follow.
“I got your message,” Bailey said, when the waiter was out of earshot. “Are you being followed?”
“I don’t think so. But I spent all morning getting here, just in case.”
Bailey nodded his approval.
He looks bloody miserable, Bailey thought. Better start on the upbeat.
“I wanted to tell you that the prime minister is deeply grateful for the information you have given us. He asked me to send you his personal thanks.”
“The prime minister? Oh.” Johnny frowned and leaned forward. “Have there been any arrests?”
“There won’t be for a good while yet,” Bailey assured him. “And when there are, we’ll make damn sure there’s nothing to tie them to you.”
At this, Johnny seemed to relax a little, and he consumed his oysters with relish.
I mustn’t push him, Bailey reminded himself. Let him open up in his own sweet time.
“I’m going to see Max tonight,” Johnny suddenly announced. “Andre, if you like.”
“I know who you mean. Tell me about him.”
“He is the most brilliant man I know. There was a time when I think I would have died for him. He killed my best friend.”
De Salis was right about this, at least, thought Bailey. Here was something to build on. Little by little, Johnny told him most of the story.
Then Johnny interrupted himself and said, od
dly, “In a way, I don’t blame Max.”
“I’m not sure that I follow.”
“He pulls the trigger. He doesn’t aim the gun. It’s the party that does that.”
“You’re saying that your quarrel is not with the individual, but with the cause.”
“Not with the cause,” Johnny came back fiercely. “With those who have stolen it.”
Careful, Bailey cautioned himself. In part of himself, Johnny still believes.
“With the system, then,” he suggested.
Johnny didn’t dissent from this.
“What are you planning to do about it?” Bailey challenged him.
“Heinz said he was going to Trotsky—” the German went off at a tangent “—before they killed him.”
“Did you consider that yourself?”
“No.”
“May I ask why not?”
“Because you can’t fight Stalin with speeches.”
Closer, Bailey thought. We’re halfway there.
But a few minutes later, Johnny cut across his questioning. “Did you bring my money?”
“Well, yes. I have something for you.”
“Ten thousand pounds?” The corners of Johnny’s mouth twitched.
“Not quite, I’m afraid. I can let you have a hundred for now. Actually, I wanted to suggest a more permanent arrangement.”
“Meaning?”
“Fifty a month.”
“This is not what I discussed with your man in Berlin.”
“But is that what you really want? So you can run a pub by the sea or grow cabbages? Forgive me if I’m presumptuous, but you don’t strike me as the kind of man who’d be happy in early retirement.”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting we join forces for the long haul.”
“You mean you want me to spy for you.”
“Put it that way if you like. The way I view it, you have a score to settle, and we are in a position to help you do it. Isn’t that why you came to us in the first place?”
The waiter came with the steaks, and Bailey held his breath. Had he pushed it too far?
The waiter left and Johnny said, “I’ll let you know after tonight.”
In Paris, Max behaved like a millionaire on holiday. At least he did that night. His driver called for them at the Hotel Fouche and whisked them off to the Café de la Paix. They ended up at a White Russian nightclub complete with gypsy singers and Cossack dancers, and Max insisted on ordering caviar with the vodka. He seemed entirely unperturbed about the risk of being identified as the wrong sort of Russian.
He expressed no suspicions about their escape from Germany. On the contrary, he toasted Johnny’s imagination. But Johnny’s stomach tightened as he watched all this show of hilarity, trying to keep his head clear while the bottle swung back and forth like a pendulum.
When the thunderbolt came, it was not what he most expected, but worse than anything he had feared.
“I talked to Marlowe today,” Max announced, looking at Sigrid. Johnny knew the name from the cable traffic he had seen in Berlin. It was a code name for the resident director of the OGPU in Paris, who operated from behind the cover of an architect’s studio decorated in futuristic style on the Rue de Seine. It was curious, this Russian penchant for literary code names — novelists for military intelligence, playwrights for the chekists. “It’s all been cleared,” Max went on.
“Wait a minute!” Johnny exclaimed. Sigrid’s face was shining. “Did I miss something?”
“No need for secrets in the family,” Max beamed. “Sigrid is going to work for us. Shall we drink her health?”
Oh, no, Johnny thought. You can’t do this a second time. Not with Sigrid.
“This is something Sigi and I have to talk over in private,” he said.
He got to his feet a trifle unsteadily and took her arm. “Come on. We’re going now.”
He came perilously close to baring his soul to Sigrid that night. He told her that Max was a killer, that Stalin and his people had betrayed the cause they both believed in, that because of them, the mightiest Communist movement in the world outside Russia had stood frozen like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming car, in the face of the Nazi jackboots. She wouldn’t hear him.
“You’re jealous,” she informed him. “You’re jealous because I’ll be working for Max instead of you. Didn’t you teach me that these things are not for us to decide? That the party decides?”
I taught you too well, Johnny told himself. Now I shall have to wait until you hear the same screams that I hear and wake from this dream.
Helene had been right after all.
Over the next week he met Bailey several times. They spent the best part of a day in a flat in Neuilly loaned by a retired colleague of Bailey’s who had decided to live abroad because, as he put it, the English were best admired from a distance. The apartment was adorned with mildly pornographic sketches of grisettes and spiky, inhospitable plants that belonged in a different climate.
Bailey didn’t like the way Johnny was drinking. He was drinking like a Russian, drinking himself towards oblivion. Something had evidently happened involving Max and the girl, but Johnny refused to talk about it. On other subjects, however — from the order of battle in Moscow to Fourth Department operations in Oslo — he talked freely, with a wealth of detail. He pulled back abruptly only when Bailey asked about the woman who had lived with him at the Richmond address.
“Some things I’ll never give you,” he said angrily.
“Yes. I respect that.”
Communications became the biggest worry. Johnny had been in touch with the Fourth Department man in Paris and had been told he would probably be recalled to Moscow. Though the Russians saw British spies under every bed, the Intelligence Service did not maintain a station in Moscow — a dereliction about which Bailey had often complained to C. British agents inside Russia were handled by officers stationed in neighbouring capitals: Reval, Helsinki, Prague. Bailey undertook to send a special courier to Moscow in the event Johnny was recalled. They discussed possible meeting places and settled on two: the bathroom of an Armenian restaurant and the Arbat metro station. Johnny would send a postcard to a cover address, setting the time and place for the initial contact by means of a simple code.
“If there’s any sign of trouble,” Bailey promised, “we’ll get you out. You have my word on that.”
Pray God they don’t keep him in Moscow for long, Bailey thought. We need to keep a good man alongside him. Otherwise isolation will start wearing him down, and the bottle will make him careless. Pity about this woman trouble. Although it’s helping to bind him to us.
Gingerly, Bailey broached one last item of business. “You mentioned that a few of your colleagues feel as you do about Stalin.”
“More than a few. We German Communists are all displaced persons.”
“Would you be willing to talk to any of them on our behalf?”
Johnny did not reject this out of hand. He thought for a bit before saying, “Too risky. They wouldn’t trust me. The way things are, everyone goes around looking over his shoulder. They would think I was a provocateur, a second Emil.”
“Perhaps there’s someone we should talk to directly.”
“I’ll think about it.”
6
The first requirement for a case handler, in Bailey’s estimation, was the same as for a bird-watcher or a fly fisherman: the capacity to wait. He wanted to enlist Johnny’s help in recruiting a second agent from inside the ranks of the Comintern, not only to increase his sources but to silence the whispering demon — the soul of Section V — that lived on his left shoulder and was still cackling in his ear that despite all the evidence, despite his gut instincts, there was an outside chance that his new agent was a plant, a phantasm created by Comrade Max. But Bailey did not push his suggestion, and his patience was rewarded.
He was taking a morning glass of champagne with Diana in the elegant courtyard of the
Lancaster when a boy materialized with a note on a silver salver. From it Bailey learned that Johnny was waiting for him in a church on the Rue des Augustins.
Half an hour later, he was kneeling beside the German.
“I met someone from Germany,” Johnny whispered. “His name is Karl Vogel. I told you about him. Do you remember?”
“Karl you mean the boy who worked for Heinz Kordt?”
“He came for help,” Johnny went on. “All Kordt’s people are under suspicion, but he’s a useful man. He’s a good shot, he can handle himself. He told me he is on probation. He’s in France illegally, living from hand to mouth, no better than an Algerian. But one of Marlowe’s people came to him and said they’re considering him for a job. I think it involves a Russian defector, the one who used to work in Stalin’s office. He asked me what he should do.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him to act according to his conscience. I can’t be involved. If you want to try something, that’s your affair. I just thought you would like to know.”
“Where can I find this Karl?”
Johnny told him.
Bailey could think of more appetizing sights before breakfast than a row of gutted steers slung from steel hooks. At five in the morning, Les Halles was crowded and bustling. Bailey lengthened his stride to avoid a thin rivulet of blood and followed an opulent pear-shaped figure, embellished with a boutonniere and a waxed moustache — evidently the buyer for one of the fashionable restaurants — between the stands of butchered meat. Bailey was dressed in his civilian uniform, complete with umbrella and homburg hat, as if he were on his way to his club.
He spotted Karl fairly quickly. He was wearing a bloodied apron and was engaged in hoisting a carcass out of the back of a truck. This struck Bailey as suitable employment for a man who, by Johnny’s account, had spent a good part of his life disposing of other types of bodies.
