Disorderly Elements

by Bob Cook

  The customers at Feigl’s bar found the brawl highly entertaining. Herr Feigl himself came out to watch the fun, but he made no attempt to stop it. He knew that Grünbaum would be more than willing to pay for the damage.

  For about four minutes the two fighters seemed to be evenly matched. Most of the punches were landing, and the floor was awash with blood. Finally, Grünbaum managed to catch Frege off balance, and he sent him to the floor with a decisive right hook. The other drinkers gave Grünbaum a congratulatory cheer, and he replied with a twisted, swollen grin.

  Just as Grünbaum was wiping the blood off his face, the door burst open and Captain Mach walked in with three armed vopos. Mach looked down at the concussed Frege, and then smiled triumphantly at Grünbaum.

  “I might have known,” said Mach. “Drunken and brawling. I’m ashamed of you, Grünbaum.”

  “Piss off, Mach,” said Grünbaum elegantly. “You aren’t needed here.”

  “Oh yes I am. You’ve just beaten up our friend Frege.”

  “Crap,” said Grünbaum. “We both slipped on the floor. Didn’t we, Frege?”

  Frege moaned. The drinkers burst out laughing.

  “They could hear you both slipping at the other end of the street, Grünbaum. It’s not good enough, I’m afraid. You’re under arrest.”

  “What?” Grünbaum stared at Mach incredulously. “You can’t just—”

  “Oh yes I can,” smiled Mach.

  “This is harassment,” said Grünbaum. “You can’t make any charge stick, and you know it.”

  “I’ll decide that. Sergeant, put the cuffs on Herr Grünbaum.”

  “The first man who comes near me will get his balls torn off,” Grünbaum said.

  “Don’t be an even bigger imbecile than you already are,” urged Mach.

  “I mean it, Mach. You’ve no right to arrest me.”

  “Haven’t I just?” Mach said. “Brawling isn’t the only thing we’ve got on you, you know.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Think about it, Grünbaum.”

  Grünbaum paused and looked straight at Captain Mach’s smiling face.

  “You’re bullshitting,” he said.

  “Come to the station and find out.”

  “Come and get me.”

  Mach sighed.

  “If you insist,” he said. “Sergeant…”

  The sergeant ran forward and then ducked to avoid Grünbaum’s flying beer glass. Mach moved forward with another policeman, and Grünbaum picked up another glass. A shot rang out and the glass smashed on the floor. Grünbaum gave a little gasp and collapsed.

  Mach turned and saw one of the sergeants holding a smoking pistol. The sergeant paled and lowered the gun.

  “He was going to…”

  “It’s all right, sergeant,” Mach said. “Just call an ambulance.”

  Chapter Five

  THE SETTING SUN TINTED the sandstone College buildings a deep sienna. Doctors Wyman and Hume ambled gently past the iron gates of a fifteenth-century courtyard and into the Fellows’ Garden. Spring had touched the Garden, casting it into a riot of flower and blossom.

  “So there’s to be no reprieve,” Wyman said.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Hume said.

  “Were you the only one who spoke on my behalf?”

  Hume nodded sadly.

  “It had all been decided in advance, I’m sure of it. The Senior Tutor gave a grumble of dissatisfaction at first, but he joined the Bursar when he saw which way the wind was blowing.”

  “And what of Locke? Didn’t he say anything?”

  “He was all for it, I’m afraid.”

  “But…” Wyman faltered. “Locke, of all people. For God’s sake, Arthur, Locke knows better than anybody that I can do my job. Why…?”

  “It’s not just you, Michael,” said Hume. “All the Honorary Fellowships are being rescinded.”

  “They could give me an ordinary Fellowship if they wanted to. Surely that would solve the problem.”

  Hume shook his head.

  “No, Michael. Locke talked about your Ph.D. and Quine, and all the rest of it. They decided that you’re a has-been.”

  “That was thirty years ago. Thirty years! I was a child, Arthur, an infant!”

  They sat on a bench and watched the sun fade behind the College chapel.

  “Perhaps if I spoke to the Master…” began Wyman.

  “If you saw him now,” said Hume, “the results would be wholly predictable. He’d sit you down with a glass of sherry, talk over old times, and show you to the door. You’d achieve nothing.”

  “I see.” Wyman sighed and lit a cigarette. “I was looking forward to coming back. It wasn’t the salary, or the pension, or anything like that. I just thought I would be coming home.”

  Hume smiled sadly at his friend.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly.”

  Chapter Six

  “FIVE ACROSS. A place that sells Spanish wine. Six letters.”

  Wyman squinted at the ceiling.

  “Spanish wine,” he repeated. “Mmmm.”

  He looked down at the crossword. Six down read: Metaphysical poet put on in close-up. He entered the word “Donne”. Seven down was Take a busman’s holiday as an actor (2,2,4), which must be “Go on tour”. That meant that five across must be “Bodega”. Things were proceeding nicely.

  It was the morning after Wyman’s last visit to the College. He had not slept well that night and did not feel inclined to work. Like many people whose world has been suddenly dismantled, Wyman was coping by immersing himself in trivial distractions. The Daily Telegraph crossword was ideally suited to this purpose.

  “Eight across: Absorbing business offer (4,4,3).”

  Wyman entered the words “Take-over bid” and took a sip of his coffee. His in-tray contained a large pile of documents, including half a dozen East German newspapers. These newspapers were seldom informative, but reading them was part of Wyman’s weekly chores. He looked at them in distaste and lit a cigarette.

  “A master craftsman who misses out on his reading.”

  He inhaled a deep puff of smoke, exhaled it, and wrote “Skipper” under two down. He wondered if there was money to be made from compiling crosswords. At this stage, he reflected, he must consider anything. Both his employers had now dismissed him, and if the only way he could earn a living was to be by writing enigmatic statements like A fruit drink very quietly brought in, then so it would have to be.

  Ten across was “apple”. He wrote down this solution and picked up the first newspaper from his in-tray. It was the Berliner Zeitung am Abend, one of the DDR’s national dailies. He leafed through it casually, pausing only to glance at an item about the opening of a new electricity station in Leipzig. Having done his duty, Wyman scrawled his signature on the top of the front page to indicate that he had read the paper. He then put it in his out-tray. Fourteen across, he noted, was American fuel product of practical value. This could be a tricky one.

  The DDR has a number of different national newspapers, although they all contain the same news and opinions. This reflects the peculiar nature of East German politics. East Germany calls itself the German Democratic Republic, and it is proud that since its creation it has always housed several supposedly independent political parties. In theory, each party is represented by its own newspaper. In fact, because most of the smaller parties in the DDR are directly controlled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the SED, all the newspapers say the same thing. The only differences are those of style.

  The DDR’s national newspapers seldom talk about any of the country’s economic or social problems. Crime, food shortages and environmental problems are never discussed. Only the provincial newspapers mention such issues, which is probably why their export to the West is forbidden by the East German government. Hence, national newspapers were of little use to Wyman, since all that he was interested in would be found in the provincials.

  Not that the provi
ncials especially interested him either. Whatever one’s feelings are on the ethics of state-controlled publications, it is fairly clear that the results in East Germany are excruciatingly dull. Wyman could only derive amusement from the pathetic efforts of the East German journalists to endear themselves to their political masters.

  His favourite example came from the August 1980 issue of the dog-lovers’ magazine, Der Hund. In most countries, dog breeding is not a political occupation. East Germany is an exception. Der Hund’s editorial began as follows: “The decisions of the IX Parteitag of the SED… are the guide of conduct for all our members…” Wyman had pinned this remarkable leader column to his wall.

  “Twenty-three across: One badly treated, but given a repeat performance.”

  Wyman ran his pen through what little hair remained on his head and released a small cloud of dandruff.

  “Of course,” he muttered, and wrote down “Iterated”. He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and pulled out another newspaper. This was the Thüringer Neueste Nachrichten, a provincial organ of the National Democratic Party.

  Wyman read the first two pages and saw nothing of interest. He turned to page three and read the heading “Erfurt man dies after shooting incident”. The piece ran as follows:

  On the night of May 5, Josef Grünbaum was shot by police in a café in Erfurt. Captain Georg Mach and three officers of the Volkspolizei tried to arrest Grünbaum, who precipitated a violent brawl in the café. During the brawl, one other man was seriously injured.

  When the police officers tried to arrest Grünbaum, he flew into a violent rage and began a vicious attack on Captain Mach. One of the other officers shot Grünbaum, who was taken to hospital, where he subsequently died of his wound. Captain Mach later said: “Grünbaum was a drunken, disreputable man. He was uncontrollably violent, and my officers defended me in the only practicable way…

  Wyman cut out the article and reread it. Whether or not the story consisted of lies or half-truths, one thing was certain: Josef Grünbaum was dead. That was of great interest to Wyman because Grünbaum had run a small network of spies in Erfurt. The information that Grünbaum had collected was passed on to the British Secret Intelligence Service, and Wyman was Grünbaum’s case officer.

  Wyman was a vague, untidy person. He gave the impression of being obscure and confused, and he was famed for his absent-mindedness. Certain unkind members of the Firm had suggested that he was suffering from a touch of premature senility. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Wyman’s memory was almost photographic, and his powers of reasoning and analysis were far better honed than most of his associates ever realized. The problem was that Wyman’s faculties were seldom required by the dreary mechanical work he was given. There were very few occasions on which he was required to think, but this was one of them. And he thought hard.

  He took off his glasses and screwed his eyes up tight in concentration. As he did so, he flicked back through a mental catalogue of dates, people and events. He reached for his pen, and began to scribble notes on his desk-pad. Within twenty minutes, three pages of scrawl adorned Wyman’s desk.

  He put his glasses back on and read through his notes. Having satisfied himself that nothing had been left out, he lit another cigarette and drank the cold dregs of his coffee.

  All thoughts of his dismissal from the College, or Margaret’s pregnancy, or even the Daily Telegraph crossword, had been banished. A new problem had arisen, and Wyman was totally immersed in it. He picked up his telephone and dialled an internal number that connected him with MI6 headquarters on London’s South Bank.

  “Hello, this is Wyman at the Department. Could you put me through to Newspaper Records please…yes, I’ll wait…Hello, George? This is Michael at the Department…very well, thank you. And how are you keeping?…Splendid. I need something to be sent here as soon as possible, if you can manage it…Copies of a DDR paper, the Thüringer Neueste Nachrichten for all of last October, December and January…Yes, all of them. If you could give them to one of the messengers and tell him to bring them here at once, I’d be immensely grateful…That’s marvellous. Thanks awfully, George… Yes, definitely. Cheerio.”

  Wyman put the telephone down and looked out of his window at the London sky. It was still bloody cold out there, he reflected, but at least it was sunny.

  Chapter Seven

  FROM: Compendium of Anglo/US Intelligence Systems (Classified) 1972 page 47, Section 2.

  INTELLIGENCE GROUPS: CATEGORY F

  Such groups consist exclusively of Eastern bloc civilians recruited before 1958. Their primary function is to report the activities of military and civilian administrators in zones otherwise inaccessible to NATO scrutiny.

  Type-F networks are more rigidly structured than networks in other categories: individual members of the network deal exclusively with the Group Leader; their identities are known only to him and the appropriate British or US department. (See p. 71, “Allocation of Network Parentage”.)

  Group Leaders of Category F networks communicate solely with their British or US case officers. They are funded and maintained solely by the parent department, and this department is responsible for collation and distribution of all material received. Any withdrawal of funds or equipment on behalf of the network will be designated by the network number, the code name of its Group Leader and the title of the parent department.

  N.B. It is an integral feature of Category F networks that individual members do not know the identities of their colleagues. Should this situation fail to hold, the network concerned should be disbanded immediately.

  Chapter Eight

  THERE ARE MANY solutions to the perennial problem of office tedium. Some people—usually those with active intellects—pass their time by solving crosswords, creating paper-clip chains, developing new designs of paper aeroplane and inventing various Heath-Robinson contraptions made of Sellotape, rulers and string. This was the approach Wyman favoured.

  Other people choose to devote their creative energies to the enhancement of their job. For example, the true bureaucrat enjoys nothing better than inventing unsolicited “cost analyses”, improving filing systems, and drawing up “efficiency studies” on multi-coloured graph paper. These activities are no less trivial and irrelevant than the achievements of the paper-clip engineers, but they give an illusion of efficiency and relevance to the orderly running of the office.

  Owen, Wyman’s chief, belonged to this second school of thought. Countless breakdowns, analyses and projections flowed from his pen. They were typed out, duplicated, circulated and thrown into waste-bins by those who received them. If Owen was aware of this, it did not bother him. The repeated Government demands for economies and reductions in spending merely charged his enthusiasm. He replied to every Ministerial memo on the subject with one more statistical salvo, confident that it would keep his masters happy.

  Owen’s background was military, as was his appearance. His neatly trimmed moustache and Brylcreemed hair adorned a stern, impassive mien that had taken him thirty years to perfect. He was concrete in every sense that Wyman was abstract. Although the two men shared many views, Wyman had reasoned them out, while Owen had swallowed them as blind dogma. They shared a world polluted by deception and brutality, but each had his own way of retreating from the stark realities of his job. Wyman turned facts into concepts, and took refuge in a sanctuary of abstractions; Owen built a stockade out of rule-books and Ministerial directives. Wyman’s air of detachment found little favour with the Whitehall mandarins; Owen’s blind submission was precisely what they wanted. Thus, Owen was assured of seniority and an index-linked pension, while Wyman was to be exiled into ignominy.

  Intercourse between the two men was usually polite and arctic. When Wyman asked to see Owen about a matter of some urgency, Owen made a great point of looking at a blank page in his diary.

  “You’re in luck, Michael,” Owen said. “I have no appointments this afternoon. Do take a seat.”

  “Tha
nk you,” Wyman said.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “It may come to nothing, but there are some news items I collated recently. Taken individually, none of them is terribly significant. When seen together, however, they form a disturbing picture.”

  Owen picked up an HB pencil and began scraping the wax out of his ear.

  Wyman went on: “The first is an item of news in an East German local paper. It reports the arrest of Otto Gödel for drunken behaviour in Erfurt on the night of October 21.”

  He passed a newspaper cutting to Owen.

  “As well as this, we have a list of new arrivals at the Heisenberg Psychiatric Institute in Mühlhausen for the week ending January 4. You may recall that we decided to monitor the intake at that hospital because an unusually high number of political prisoners was being transferred there.”

  “Well?”

  “On January 1 a Kurt Neumann was arrested and taken there on a specific charge. See?”

  He passed the list to Owen.

  “The last document is a public notice listing the names of certain people arrested and convicted of illegal trading in foreign currency. One of the names is Günther Reichenbach. He was arrested on December 18.”

  “Very interesting,” Owen said. “Perhaps you’d care to explain.”

  “Certainly,” Wyman said. “All these men were members of network ERF1O6F, headed by Josef Grünbaum, code-named ‘Dovetail’. Dovetail was a small-time criminal who indulged in theft, pimping and black-market activities. His allegiance to us was strictly mercenary, though he was of some use. Whenever there were military exercises in Thuringia he was able to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. He also had some useful friends in the Volkspolizei, and he tipped us off about the first Brandt visit to Erfurt in ’70. I was his case officer.