by Len Deighton
‘Did you get the licence number?’ said Dicky, standing in the yard looking at the gates through which the car had gone.
‘I saw it.’ It was Gloria coming out of the back doors to find us. ‘I saw it all from the window. There were three men and a black Ford Fiesta. No licence plates. I looked for the number but there were no plates.’
‘He must have been wearing armour,’ said Dicky. ‘Did you hear the clank as I hit him?’
‘No I didn’t,’ I said.
‘Well, thanks for all your help, Bernard,’ said Dicky with biting sarcasm. He was standing arms akimbo: panting, excited and angry. And frustrated that his quarry had escaped.
‘I wasn’t sure what it was you were going to do,’ I explained.
‘I would have thought your training and know-how would have taken care of that. I thought the instincts of an experienced field agent would show him what to do in an emergency.’
‘The developed professional instincts of all the field agents who survive tell them to get quickly out of the line of fire when the bullets are flying.’
Gloria looked at me. I’d disappointed her too, I could see it in her face. After all she’d heard about my exploits, the first time she sees me in action I demonstrate a remarkable capacity for self-preservation while Dicky does the tough-guy stuff.
‘Jesus, Dicky,’ I said in exasperation. ‘He didn’t shoot. He probably wasn’t armed. Can you imagine what sort of clamour there would have been if you’d killed him? Or even if we had him here now, badly hurt and unable to move?’
Dicky wasn’t listening. ‘I hit him on the run. My skeet-shooting days were not wasted. No, sir!’ Dicky was still glowing with the heat of battle and there was nothing for it but to give him time to cool off.
I went back into the building and looked at the broken pieces of glass jar, the puddle of chemicals, and the severed hand – unnaturally white and puffy – that was sitting on the floor like some large and venomous species of spider.
Dicky came and looked too. ‘I suppose you are right,’ he said. Now it was dawning on him what he’d done. And what he’d have to say in his report.
‘Where did you get that Colt revolver?’ I asked him. It looked familiar.
‘I’ve had it since you took it from those gorillas in Warsaw.’
My God, Dicky. On the plane? Going through customs and everything? I would have died of fright if I’d known what that idiot had got concealed under his duty-free gin and Viyella pyjamas. But I didn’t tell him that. I just said: ‘Better get rid of that piece right away. It might be ballistically identifiable – all kinds of crimes may already be attached to it.’
Dicky didn’t respond. ‘We must get this place cleaned up,’ he said. ‘The staircase and the walls. Get on to the Works people, Gloria. I want it all done by this evening. Reliable people. We don’t want word to get out.’
Dicky put away his gun and nibbled at his fingernail. He was beginning to worry.
Gloria joined us to stare down at the severed hand and the pool of smelly liquid.
Dicky said: ‘This will prove wrong all those dotty ideas about George being alive, Bernard. This is George’s hand. It will be conclusive evidence.’
I said: ‘You won’t easily get a print from flesh that’s been marinating in that brew. That skin tissue is like wet Kleenex.’
‘Could you pick it up, Bernard?’
I balanced it upon the largest remaining piece of the broken jar, its thick saucer-like base.
‘What shall we do with it?’ Dicky asked.
‘Take it to the mail-room,’ I said. ‘Tell them to put it in a plastic bag and send it to forensic by motor-cycle messenger.’
‘That’s right,’ said Dicky, then: ‘He had a beard. That’s what baffles me. How could he hope to be inconspicuous with all that face fungus?’
‘He’ll shave it off, Dicky. Men like him don’t disguise themselves by growing beards when they can disguise themselves by shaving them off.’
‘Maybe,’ he conceded.
‘Can I use your phone, Dicky?’
He reached into his pocket and gave me his mobile phone. I punched in the number of a friend of mine in the Berne embassy. ‘Who are you calling?’ said Dicky, who’d watched what I was doing and recognized the Berne prefix.
‘Masterson at the embassy.’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘No, probably not,’ I said. Masterson was a lowly toiler in the embassy ant-hill. He didn’t have the right school ties, the right accent nor – most decisively of all – the right wife, to win any decent position in the embassy rat-race. Mrs Masterson was a French socialist intellectual who used social functions to lecture her husband’s superiors on Britain’s failings. The fact that his wife’s criticisms were well-founded and well-argued was the final fatal blow to his career.
When the phone was answered, a girl came on the line. She’d come fresh from one of those training courses where telephone staff learn how to rudely deter callers from making contact with their employers. ‘He’s not here. He’s at a meeting. Call later,’ she told me.
‘Get him out of the meeting,’ I said. ‘This is urgent.’
‘Is it personal?’ she asked.
‘In a way,’ I said. ‘I’m his live-in lover and I’ve just been checked positive.’
She made a noise and went away for a long time, but eventually Masterson came on the phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Batty? It’s Bernie.’
‘Of course it is. Who else would phone up to offend my secretary and make trouble for me by pulling me out of a staff meeting with the First Secretary presiding?’
‘Those tourists who went to see my brother-in-law. Any of them feature a pigtail haircut, and beard?’
‘Yes, Bernard.’
‘Short, dark. About one hundred and forty pounds?’
‘That’s him. A Stasi major. We’ve got a smudgy Photo-fit picture somewhere if I can find it.’
‘Put it on the fax for me, Batty. You have Dicky Cruyer’s fax number on file.’
‘I’ll do that for you, Bernie.’
‘Thanks, Batty. I’ll do the same for you some day.’
‘You’re always saying that, Bernard.’
I rang off. ‘Stasi?’ said Dicky excitedly.
‘Sounds like it,’ I said.
Dicky emerged from his melancholy mood. He could put aside his thoughts on how he would explain shooting an innocent passer-by in Central London. ‘I knew it. I knew it,’ he said, and rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. ‘Incidentally, Bernard. A propos telephone procedure: in future I counsel you to simply inform Berne – and such people – that you are calling from London Central, and give them your priority code, so you won’t have to go through all that jokey rigmarole.’
Dicky looked at Gloria and smiled broadly to make sure she enjoyed this crushing directive. Gloria, whose feminine instinct for the right timing seldom let her down, returned this intimacy with a confidence. ‘I’m going to work for Mr Rensselaer,’ she told Dicky. When Dicky seemed not to hear her, she reached out and touched him on the arm to get his attention. I had no claim to her of course, but seeing her make that most ordinary of physical contacts with another man was enough to make me want to shout my protest aloud. Despite whatever look of horror was written across my face, Gloria gave me her most beguiling smile and said: ‘And Bernard’s decided to go and work in Berlin.’ I suppose she wanted to be quite certain I couldn’t wriggle out of it.
‘Brilliant,’ said Dicky. He studied my face for a moment and said: ‘You’re fond of Frank, and Lisl Hennig is a mother to you. Berlin’s your home, Bernard. Admit it.’
‘It sometimes seems that way,’ I said.
‘And lovely Gloria stays in London,’ said Dicky, and looked at her and chuckled in a tone that sounded predatory.
Gloria laughed too, as if Dicky had made a very good joke that only she shared. It was a lovely laugh and came bubbling up like milk boiling over. I didn’t join in.<
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‘I’ll take the hand to the mail-room,’ I said. ‘They may be a bit squeamish about touching it.’
Something in what I’d said or done – or failed to say or do – seemed to outrage Dicky. Perhaps he was expecting that his one demonstration of manly daring should bring expressions of admiration and respect. He seemed to forget Gloria’s presence. ‘You won’t be told, will you?’ he said, pushing his face very close to mine but keeping his voice soft and low in a studied demonstration of restraint. ‘I suppose you expect me to believe that George Kosinski bolting at exactly the same time that the stock-market crashed is pure coincidence?’
‘Tell me, Dicky,’ I said, ‘do you think that London getting hit by a hurricane, at exactly the same time that the stock-market crashed, is something more than just coincidence?’
‘You’re determined to believe that George Kosinski is still alive; not because you want to spare the feelings of his friends or relatives but just to prove that you are the clever one. You just have to show us that you remain sceptical, while all of us dullards are sucked in to some conspiracy… or whatever it is you think is going on.’
‘I just said I’d take the hand –’
‘I know what you bloody said,’ said Dicky. ‘It’s your whole superior attitude that gets up my nose. Now will you look at that hand?’ He pointed at it as if without his help my attention might be drawn elsewhere. I looked at it. ‘Do you see the signet ring? Look at the Kosinski family crest. It belongs to George Kosinski, and we both know that. Didn’t I hear you say it’s there because the fingers are too swollen to get it off? Now will you see sense?’
‘I hear what you’re saying, Dicky.’ I spoke slowly and soberly in the hope that it would cool him down. ‘But the trouble I have with that is that the last time we saw George Kosinski’s signet ring it was in the palm of Stefan Kosinski’s hand, and he was telling us that he’d just brought it back from the police station where the cops were holding the murderers.’
‘But it’s the same ring,’ said Dicky, and all the wind went out of him.
‘The same crest, yes. I’m not so sure about the ring. Gold signet rings are usually pretty much the same for everyone in the family.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
‘I’ll ask the lab to remove it,’ I said. ‘We can get a closer look at it then. Perhaps the size will show whether it belongs to some other member of the family. There may even be an engraved inscription on the inner side.’
8
SIS Offices, Berlin.
‘Hold on, Bernard, hold on. I’m just a simple old desk wallah. You’ll have to explain this one to me. You say this chap was a Stasi man?’
‘Looks like it, Frank,’ I said.
Frank raised an eyebrow. ‘Dashed in, and grabbed this amputated fist or whatever it was?’
‘Yes, a hand.’
‘Well, why?’ He leaned back in his chair. Frank Harrington never seemed to grow older. His countenance, pale, stern and bony, and the stubble moustache he’d cultivated to make himself look more military, had given him this same appearance decades ago, when I was a child and he was an indulgent ‘uncle’.
‘I don’t exactly know, Frank.’
‘You don’t exactly know, Bernard? I won’t write that down, because when you say you don’t exactly know in that tone of voice, I am quite confident that you have a clever theory of some kind.’
‘I can only think that someone was keen to prevent the severed hand going to the forensic lab.’
‘Because?’
‘Perhaps they didn’t want us to establish for certain that the hand wasn’t that of George Kosinski.’
‘But they didn’t stop us,’ argued Frank. ‘The hand went to the lab, and we didn’t find out that it wasn’t George Kosinski’s, did we?’
‘The lab said they couldn’t make an identification. The flesh was too soft.’
‘Well then. How does your theory hold together?’
‘I assume that someone was afraid the lab would say categorically that it wasn’t the hand of George Kosinski.’
‘That’s quite a long leap, Bernard. I mean: we still don’t know for certain that it’s not.’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘You mean perhaps it was a double bluff? They give us the hand, then pretend to want it back, because that will make us think it belongs to George Kosinski?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
‘Perhaps…’ Frank reached for a wooden pencil, one of a dozen or so he liked to keep in a decorative drinking mug emblazoned with a talking doughnut proclaiming itself lecker locker leicht – tasty, spongy and light. He used the pencil to tap a closed dossier on his desk and give emphasis to his words. ‘But I am tempted to believe that this Stasi agent… I visualize him as a sharp and devious fellow, always ready with a bit of double bluff or treble bluff, if that suits him. A Stasi hoodlum… but otherwise a bit like you, Bernard, I suspect. I am tempted to believe that his superior is a blunt old fool like me, incapable of working out in advance the sort of intricate games you youngsters like to play.’
‘Yes, Frank.’ This was one of Frank’s favoured poses: the blunt, no-nonsense, pipe-smoking Englishman who had no time for knavish foreign tricks. But I knew Frank better than to fall for that. I might have been heard more than once saying that the esteemed prizes he won at university as a Classics scholar did not make him the ideal man to run the Berlin Field Unit, but I had no doubts about Frank’s agile mind. And this was Berlin: this was Frank’s kingdom, and this was Frank assuming that humble manner that comes naturally to men with extensive and absolute powers.
‘It’s just as well you are here in Berlin, and away from it all, Bernard. Of course you’d rather be with your lovely wife… and your children. But in many ways it’s better that you are here with me. George Kosinski being your family… It’s not fair, not appropriate, that you should be closely involved with this rumpus about him. I’m surprised Dicky didn’t see that.’
‘Is that why you asked for me?’
‘I didn’t ask for you, Bernard,’ said Frank, holding the pencil to his face, scowling as he studied it carefully, as if he’d never encountered one before.
‘You said that feelingly, Frank.’
‘I didn’t ask for you, because I thought London would never let you go. I set my sights rather lower.’ Frank dropped the pencil back amongst its fellows in the doughnut mug, and opened the brown folder he’d been tapping. ‘So you’ve read this?’
‘DELIUS? Yes, it kept me up all night.’
‘Yes, it would,’ said Frank. ‘It’s not pleasant to think that any of our people are in trouble over there. What should we do?’
‘There’s nothing we can do for the time being, Frank. The Stasi are waiting for our reaction. You know their methods far better than I do.’
‘Perhaps.’ He fingered his telephone. ‘But your instincts are often good ones. I want to bring Robin into this.’ He picked up the telephone handset and waved it in the air while he called the extension. ‘The young man who went with you to Magdeburg. I want you to go through your thoughts while he’s here with us.’
‘I hope I’ve not come here to be the resident nursemaid, Frank.’
‘Don’t be a curmudgeon, Bernard. Think of all the people who played nursemaid to you when you were a youngster. We’ve got to mould the people who are coming up.’
‘Very well, Frank. If that’s what you want.’
The lanky kid came in almost immediately; he must have been waiting for Frank’s call. He gave me a smile that revealed his crooked teeth, but his deep polished voice was one hundred per cent English upper-class. After we’d shaken hands and confirmed each other’s well-being, he sat down and I went through what little we knew about the sudden and ominous silence that had descended upon the normally very active DELIUS network operating for us in Allenstein, a small town – or more accurately a sprawling village – a few miles east of Magdeburg.
‘The very last we heard was on
the Friday,’ I said, flicking the folder. ‘And that could have been a garbled routine from some other network. So there has been enough time for the contact string.’
Frank raised a schoolmaster’s eyebrow at Robin.
‘The roll-call for survivors,’ said Robin patiently. ‘But we don’t do that from this end any more. These cells are virtually self-contained nowadays.’
‘Out-of-contact signals?’ I said. ‘I suppose that’s none of our business either?’
Frank said: ‘There have been no out-of-contact signals. None at all. They have closed down. My best radio man will vouch for that.’
The kid said: ‘We just have them send us the reports nowadays. The Stasi interception people are very efficient. The less time spent on the air the better, even with these modern high-speed sets.’
I said: ‘Are we still monitoring the Stasi signals?’
‘Not the Berlin teleprinter any more, alas,’ said Frank. ‘We lost Berlin in the big Stasi shake-up last summer, and so far we’ve made no breakthrough on the new codes.’
‘But nothing on the police radio?’ I said. ‘No general alarm? Not even a suspicious activity alert for the local cops?’
‘Nothing at all,’ said the kid. ‘It may all be a non-starter. You know how these amateur nets blow apart and then come together again. There have been domestic flare-ups before with this group. Two years ago: November.’
‘Amateurs have a role to play,’ said Frank, enduringly paternal and preparing his response to the reprimand from London that almost invariably followed the collapse of a network. ‘Don’t underestimate their skills and effectiveness. Amateurs built the Ark, remember; professionals built the Titanic.’
‘Are they all Church people?’ I asked, after we’d all smiled at Frank’s joke. I knew they weren’t all Church people – at least one of them was a declared atheist – but I wanted to see what they’d say.
‘No. And two of them are chronically difficult. It’s a small community. The wives don’t all get along and there are the usual feuds and vendettas. It’s only the pastor who holds them together.’
