But the conversation must be genuine. Or was it? There was no way of knowing. I lit another cigarette and read on. At least now I was spared the bureaucratic, tortuous phrasing of the preamble. The conversation was presented like the dialogue in a screenplay. All it needed was the shooting directions.
Ljubimov:… have you any idea if Comisiones Obreras will get the workers out on the streets on the 1st of May?
Hippie: The comrades are doing great work and it looks like they’re following the strategy which the Central Committee in Moscow supports too. It’s a question of mobilising and forcing PSOE onto the defensive.
Ljubimov: What about the strikes next month?
Hippie: All the indications are that they’re going to be nationwide. Virtually a general strike.
Ljubimov: Have they got enough funds?
Hippie: There’s a shortage of funds. No doubt about that.
Ljubimov: I can get more. I’ll need a couple of days. We’ll have them transferred here via Paris, through the usual channels.
Hippie: Then there’s the student movement. The anarchist groups are strong and are pushing the Party into the background. We need funds for that fight too.
Ljubimov: Moscow’s rich, but we can’t print the stuff.
Hippie: It’s now that the battle has to be won. It’s only a question of time before the PCE is legalised, so we’ve got to come from a position of strength. Otherwise the Socialists will run with the people. We’re in a revolutionary situation.
Ljubimov: Moscow attaches importance to both the strike and the 1st of May. That’s where the door to this rotten system has to be kicked in.
Hippie: I’m on the scene. Students and workers will be on the streets together on the 1st. Count on it.
Ljubimov: OK. Spain must be won.
Hippie: Then there are the Basques …
Ljubimov: Yes.
Hippie: My contacts say that they’re prepared for a military offensive at the same time as the demonstrations and strikes.
Ljubimov: Yes.
Hippie: Chaos.
Ljubimov: Yes.
Hippie: The fascists will close ranks. The first wave of repression will be violent, but it’ll be the final convulsions. Then the situation will be revolutionary for real …
Ljubimov: Moscow has decided that the correct strategy is to enter into the transitional phase in such a way that the PCE can be made a legal party.
Hippie: Ah-ha.
Ljubimov: The plan is to smuggle Carrillo in first and let him be here illegally as a symbol, and then when the time is ripe to let La Pasionaria return completely openly.
Hippie: They’ll never go along with that.
Ljubimov: We think they will. We don’t believe that terrorism should be a practical strategy in Spain’s current circumstances. Moscow sees the correct strategy as a combination of winning over the workers at the workplace and the general population by participating in the parliamentary process which we believe will come. We must be there when fascism is replaced by bourgeois democracy. At least at first.
Hippie: My impression is that, as the situation stands, Berlin doesn’t see the Basque struggle as terrorism, but as a legitimate armed struggle.
Ljubimov: We are possibly only partially in disagreement with the comrades, but at the moment we consider the legal course to be the correct one. There will be elections. The PCE must be in a strong position at those elections. If not, we will reappraise the situation.
Hippie: Misha thinks I should pursue my contacts with ETA.
Ljubimov: We have no quarrel with that.
Hippie: We’re still training them, and we’re linking up with the Czechoslovak comrades on a new consignment, but that means we’ve got to activate the cell in Pamplona.
Ljubimov: That’s fine, but we’d like you to try to get more information about the student milieu and I’m also interested in names in the press who we can count on standing shoulder to shoulder with the working classes when the situation comes to a head. That’s the assignment we think you should concentrate on. It’s co-ordinated with Karlhorst.
Hippie: I’m on the job.
Ljubimov: Good.
I went out to the kitchen, got a can of beer and went back to my office to think about what I had just read. If you knew the sequence of events, a pattern emerged. The illegal, communist trade unions, Comisiones Obreras, had called a general strike and huge demonstrations for 1 May 1976, year zero after General Franco’s death. In April of that year, Spain had been rocked by the biggest wave of strikes for 40 years, which had helped to overthrow the old fascist guard and pave the way for a more pro-reform administration lead by Adolfo Suárez.
The old communist leader, Santiago Carrillo, returned to Madrid concealed under a wig later that year, and in 1977 the Spanish Communist Party was legalised and the legendary leader from the Civil War, Dolores Ibárruri – known as La Pasionaria – returned home in triumph. It was typical of the communists that they considered not only the fascists as their principal enemies, but also the social democrats in the PSOE. The reason for this went right back to the 1930s and the Civil War, when the communists fought against the anarchists, who had always been dear to my heart, and also the socialists. The centre-right had won the general election in June 1977, but the PCE had made a strong showing, although not nearly as good as the PSOE. The communists’ strategy had failed. Spain did not become a communist country, but a liberal democracy.
I understood the references to their Czechoslovak comrades. They were to supply the plastic explosive, Semtex, which ETA used in manufacturing its bombs. The GDR had trained and equipped terrorists all over the world. The Palestinians, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction in West Germany and ETA in Spain. Even though I knew this, reading the transcript still sent a cold shiver down my spine. This had been a European nation which had financed, trained and given shelter to terrorists from all over the world, while the GDR leadership had persistently claimed that they served only the cause of peace. Misha was, of course, Markus Wolf, who had been head of the GDR’s foreign espionage until shortly before the Wall fell, when he saw which way the wind was blowing and left the service to join the democracy movement in East Germany. I had read that he had published his memoirs but still refused, even in the German courts, to disclose the names of his agents.
I switched on my computer, connected to the internet and did a search under “Karlhorst”. A long list of matches appeared. Karlhorst was the KGB’s old headquarters in the GDR. This was the real centre of power, where even the Stasi were controlled.
I went back to the papers while I drank my beer. It was completely dark outside now, and it seemed as if the warm night air had wrapped the cars down on the busy avenida in cotton wool.
The man referred to as Hippie in the surveillance report had mentioned a number of Spanish names. I recognised only one of them. Today he was a well-known television personality with a string of quiz shows on one of the privately owned TV channels.
I continued to read.
Hippie: I’ve heard about a Danish journalist and photographer who has good contacts with the Basques and the underground scene.
Ljubimov: Yes …
Hippie: He’s travelled a lot. Bit of a nomad, but good at his job. So they say. Lebanon, GDR, Moscow, Basque Country.
He goes where the pictures are.
Ljubimov: Is he right-wing?
Hippie: Progressive, liberal. Like everyone else he flirts with socialism, or rather the naïve Spanish version of Durruti’s anarchist ideas …
Ljubimov: But that’s reactionary.
Hippie: I don’t think it goes very deep, and he can be moulded. I’d call him progressive. I wouldn’t call him reactionary.
Ljubimov: A potential contract?
Hippie: Maybe. Maybe more likely a source without actually knowing it. He’s never got enough money … drinks too much … likes the ladies … so maybe later it would be worth pursuing the money angle. He’s got a lot of contacts ev
en though he’s only in his mid-20s.
Ljubimov: Sounds promising. What’s his name?
Hippie: Lime. Peter Lime.
Ljubimov: (laughter) Like Harry Lime. Well, rather symbolic.
Hippie: It’s his real name, so they say.
Ljubimov: OK. Follow it up. You’ve had good results with a Dane before. They’re usually naïve and guileless people. They often see that our convictions are right, even though they don’t completely support the working-class cause. But don’t forget the Spanish. They have top priority.
Hippie: OK.
Ljubimov: The money will be at the usual drop. Share it around.
Hippie: OK.
Ljubimov: And take care. It’s a critical time.
Hippie: Isn’t it always?
The subjects leave the room and conclude their conversation in the entrance hall where the electronic surveillance is not operative.
The surveillance group recommends that investigations continue and that surveillance of the named Peter Lime is implemented, and in addition that funds be allocated to establish Hippie’s identity, that the unit in Navarre be informed and that cross-border surveillance be intensified.
I leant back in my chair and re-read the lines that described my youthful self. It was a very precise description, but it was still strange to have been the subject of a conversation between two agents. It was an encroachment on my privacy, an intrusion. It was as if a huge telephoto lens had been trained on me. It seemed like an act of violence to observe and divulge someone’s secrets, be they political allegiances or love affairs. My hands were trembling slightly, not just because I had been mentioned in the report, but also because I was wondering who Hippie might be. I had pictured a young Oscar, but that didn’t fit with the fact that I had met him – to the best of my knowledge by chance – in the spring of 1977, a year after this conversation had taken place. Wouldn’t he have made contact with me almost immediately? And the impulsive, charming, fun Oscar hardly fitted with the cold-blooded East German who spoke of a supply of explosives as if it were a consignment of bananas. I could see that Hippie wasn’t an East German agent, although maybe he was a double agent. His real employer was the KGB. Maybe the East Germans didn’t know what his game was, but my knowledge of the world of espionage wasn’t extensive enough to understand what was going on.
I thought again about myself and the agent’s description of me. Maybe it was accurate, but who knows what they were like when they were young? We think we remember who we were, but every memory is rewritten and edited, every memory is full of holes.
My legs got twitchy, and I went to see if I could find anything stronger to drink, but Oscar and Gloria hadn’t kept any of the hard stuff in the office for years. So I opened another beer and rang Don Alfonzo. He answered straight away, as if he had been waiting for my call.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Yes, my friend.”
“I’d like to talk with the man who calls himself Don Felipe.”
“That’s not possible, my friend. But you can talk to me.”
“I feel dirty,” I said. “I know I’m not being rational.”
“It’s a very human reaction, Pedro. It’s as if one has been molested.”
“Did they ever find out who Hippie was?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“As is the case with so much else in this world, random factors spoiled the scheme. The French got tired of Victor Ljubimov’s double game in Paris, blew the whistle on him and expelled him from the country. With his cover blown, he couldn’t travel in the West again. He was of no further use as a handler. Hippie was assigned to another one, but we never found out where they met. That cover address was never used again. Do you know who Hippie was?”
“Maybe,” I said. I paused. “What have you got on Oscar?”
I dreaded his reply, feeling the palms of my hands begin to sweat despite the artificial coolness of the office.
“I thought you might ask that. Nothing. Born in Hamburg. Left-wing journalist, very radical in his younger days. Today a solid and affluent citizen who pays his tax on time and contributes to the common good of the nation.”
I was unbelievably relieved.
“What about me. What have they got on me?” I said.
“Nothing on you either.”
“Nothing! Wasn’t I under surveillance?”
“Perhaps, my friend. But we haven’t got anything. That doesn’t mean that you weren’t under surveillance, but the intelligence services are bureaucracies and bureaucracies make lots of mistakes. Reports are filed in the wrong place, index numbers disappear, aliases are changed and there’s no cross-referencing. The wrong files get destroyed or mislaid. Don’t think of the intelligence services as organisations run by people of infallible genius. They are huge bureaucracies with their share of power struggles, drunkenness, slovenliness, stupidity, paper-pushing, little office dust-ups and love affairs, just like any other. We have your details, know that you fulfil Spanish residence permit requirements and don’t cheat on your tax return, but otherwise nothing.”
I could hear the mirth in his voice. It was one of the longest speeches he had ever made and it was clear that he took great pleasure in it. For some reason the pressure in my head eased and I laughed with him.
“So the game stops here?” I said.
His voice became serious again.
“Indeed it could, were it not for Amelia and Maria Luisa.”
“Yes. Exactly,” I said, and felt the familiar knot in my stomach.
“It puts a different light on the matter. Now it’s more than a case of recording history, isn’t it?”
“Exactly,” I said again, and waited for him to play his hand. I realised that he had stepped into character as handler and that I was the one being handled. Without my being aware of it, he had quietly steered me towards an investigation. I thought I had chosen to do it myself, but somewhere along the line he had made the decision for me. As if he could read my thoughts, he said, “You reached that conclusion on your own. I’m just an old man who has a certain amount of experience. But it was your own choice.”
“What does your experience tell you now?” I asked.
“Ring the woman in Copenhagen.”
“Why?”
“Because perhaps the answer is to be found in Berlin, and she can help you get to the archives there quicker than I can. Take care of yourself, Pedro.”
He hung up, as if he already thought he had said too much on the telephone. Old habits don’t die easily. I lit a cigarette and found the numbers Clara Hoffmann had given me. It was Sunday evening, but I rang her home number anyway.
She answered, and a clear image of her came to mind as I heard her soft, cultivated voice.
“It’s Peter Lime. I’m ringing from Madrid.”
“Good evening, Peter. What a pleasant surprise.”
“I’ve found something out about Lime’s photograph,” I said.
“Ah-ha.”
“I’ve found another photograph and I’ve found a name.”
“That sounds very interesting.”
“But I don’t think we should talk about it on the phone. It would probably be easier to meet face to face. Because I might need your help.”
“One favour is always worth another,” she said. There was the sound of faint music in the background and I could picture her sitting in a comfortable chair, reading a book. I felt myself becoming sentimental at the thought of such snug domesticity. She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring when I’d met her in Madrid, so I imagined her alone. Maybe she was having a quiet drink or a cup of tea. The living room would be snug. Danish women were good at that. Creating an atmosphere of cosiness, making the home a safe, warm and relaxed place. Danes spend so much of the year indoors that they use huge amounts of energy and money making everything as comfortable and attractive as possible. The home has to be an impregnable fortress.
I shook the feeling off. That time had def
initively been and gone. I wasn’t going to put down roots again. I wasn’t going to risk such an intense and painful loss again. I thought of a line from an old Janis Joplin number. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
“Are you there, Peter?” she said, probably for the second time. Had we been on first name terms before now?
“Yes. Sorry. I just got distracted for a moment. I didn’t hear what you said.”
“I asked if I should come to Madrid?”
“No. I’ll come to Copenhagen tomorrow, if I can get a ticket. Otherwise the day after. Then I’ll ring.”
“I look forward to seeing you.”
“You too.”
“And your photograph,” she said.
“That’s a different matter,” I said, and hung up.
15
There was an SAS flight the next day with plenty of spare seats, leaving Madrid at 15.15, arriving in Copenhagen at 18.25. It was just as well that it was an afternoon flight because that night I fell seriously off the wagon. I stayed at the office drinking beer for another half hour and then I went back to the hotel and downed most of a large bottle of vodka that Carlos in reception fetched for me. Up until then I had controlled my intake of alcohol, naïvely thinking that I could drink like other people, but of course it couldn’t last. I spent an evening and a night filled with booze and self-contempt, sentimentality and disgust. Fortunately I didn’t have a gun. In the worst haze of drunkenness I realised that I didn’t want to live, but I was too drunk to go downtown and try to find a weapon that could end it all. Besides, I probably knew that I wouldn’t have the nerve when it came to it. But life was shit. I looked at myself in the mirror above the bed and didn’t like what I saw. Unkempt hair, bloodshot, desolate and furious eyes, the pain of missing Amelia and Maria Luisa as strong as the day they had left me. At some point in the middle of the night I felt their presence in the room, and I talked with them, and they answered. In the end I went out like a light.
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