by John Gardner
How old? flashed through Herbie’s mind. Check his file. Fifty-eight? Yet the face still retained a youthful quality. On a good day he might be taken for forty: few lines, a firm mouth, and alive, young, and alert warm brown eyes, which now smiled out as Herbie entered the room.
The smile, which started in the eyes, went immediately to the mouth as George Thomas rose from behind a beleaguered desk and stretched out his hand.
“Herbie. Haven’t seen you in weeks.” He made sitting motions, after the firm handclasp was unlocked, pouring out words all the time, saying how good it was to see him, and what on earth did he want in this neck of the woods?
“Well, I don’t get much chance these days…” Herbie sat.
Of course you don’t, Herr Doktor (the Herr Doktor was another little executive joke; nicknames followed Herbie like kids after a Good Humor man). You’re as busy as we are but if the Section could be of any help?
Herbie would never shake off the habit of watching other people’s body talk, or trying to read the runes behind what was actually being said. He liked George: had always liked him, though they’d rarely worked together. For a moment the stream of chat seemed like a smoke screen. Then the cloud dropped as George got back behind his desk, leaned forward, lacing his long fingers, and waited for Herbie to speak.
That was good. George had never cultivated the superior, or too busy, attitude, sought by so many when they reached the senior grades. Nor did he bother with the Whitehall uniform. George invariably wore nondescript old jackets and odd trousers. Suits and ties appeared only when absolutely necessary. The cuffs on the check jacket he wore now were frayed.
“You must be busy.” Herbie cocked his head towards the large-scale map of Europe which covered almost the whole area of one wall.
George nodded. They both knew how much reorganisation was needed since the NATO secrets leak from the Bonn Ministry of Defence. The whole fuel-supply pipeline would have to be rejigged for a start. It was in these kinds of things that people like George Thomas excelled.
George made no direct comment. He just waited.
“Courtesy really.” Herbie opened up at last, his big stupid smile filling the face, while the eyes took on a vacant look. Watch, but never allow others to watch you, close up. Even here. Home, dry, safe and with a friend who shared as many secrets as you did. “The DD thought I should let you know that he’s authorised me to read your book.” For book read Personal File. Watch the eyes and the hands. Nothing.
“Christ, you’re not trying to get me to sing in your new choir, are you, Herbie?”
The smile broadened and a chuckle began, deep in the belly. “It’s an idea. At least you’re experienced.”
“Why?” A hint of coldness.
“Your book? Not just yours. Courtesy visit, George, as I said. I do not like it—any more than you. But, well, I’m trying to pull some birds, of both sexes you understand. But you know that.”
George nodded.
“Just a hint, but I have one in the net. Untried. Might possibly be a tasty piece of bait.”
“So why my book?” Not edgy, but something there, as though the full impact that his file was to be read by a controller had only just started to sink in.
“Because this particular bird claims to have associations with something you were on.”
“Recent? I’ve been out of the field for a long time, but—fifties?”
“Rather not say, George. Just courtesy. You should know. Questions to our esteemed Sir Willis…”
“And he won’t tell me.” The coldness conquered; was replaced by a smile.
“You are so right.”
“Hint?”
“George, if I could…”
“You would. I understand.” He gave a small laugh. “I don’t think there’s anything to hide. If there is, perhaps you’d be good enough to bury it.”
“Anything for you, George.”
“Good of you to let me know. Will anyone tell me? When you’ve sussed him, I mean.”
Herbie did not correct the assumption that he was after a male. “I shall see to it personally. In fact, that was the other thing. I want to go through the documents and then, if we could have a session or two.”
George said he would be delighted.
“Just see what your memory can dredge up, George. Quite painless, I promise.”
It would be good for his soul, George laughed. It was a sour “in” joke.
Back in his office, clearing the desk of current paperwork, Herbie thought about that fleeting moment of coldness. Worry? Conscience? Leave it alone and see what the papers said.
Around ten that night, Schnabeln phoned the flat. The two heavies were still on Frau Fenderman’s heels and he had some good snaps. He would run them through the computers tomorrow.
“Another odd thing. Small, but maybe…”
“Yes?” Herbie shifted his body in the padded chair, telephone pressed to his ear.
“She knows London. Knows it like the back of her hand. Knew where she was going and how to get there; and she didn’t learn it from a guide book. Didn’t stop to check landmarks, or street names. I can smell it. She’s either lived here or worked close. Interesting?”
Herbie said to put it all in writing and give a complete rundown on her movements. Inside it was not just interesting, but unnerving. Hildegarde Fenderman had lived in the East, and only a relatively short time in the West. It was supposed to be her first visit—a pilgrimage—to London.
Wait for the files. Don’t jump to conclusions. Time enough. Tomorrow the Grosvenor Square dance.
10
LONDON 1978
THE SQUARE DANCE TURNED out to be more of a minuet.
The American Embassy contact was mid-echelon CIA and spent the first half of their excellent, if bland, lunch bemoaning the current state of the market. By which he meant the general shake-up at present taking place within the agency. There were guys, he said, with a lifetime of experience being thrown into the street overnight. At Langley, Virginia—the headquarters complex of the CIA—they were calling it the Halloween Massacre, because the termination of employment notices had gone out the previous 31 October.
Some joker had even written a Gilbert and Sullivan parody and pinned it to the bulletin board, slashing at the admiral who had been appointed Director and carried out the massacre—
For many a year I served at sea,
Living on grog and kedgeree.
I paced the deck and never went ashore,
I set the ship’s course and I pleased the Commodore.
CHORUS: He pleased the Commodore
So mightily,
That now he is Director
Of the Agency.
“Who knew,” groaned Hank, the embassy man, “those guys today. Me tomorrow. It’s changing fast and who wants a spook when he’s forty, let alone fifty.”
Who indeed. Herbie was not prepared to console. Halloween was quite a time ago and his contact was still twitchy. He fired point-blank at the target.
“That why you didn’t loosen up about Frau Hildegarde Fenderman and her poor little sister Gretchen Weiss, Hank?”
Jesus, Hank said. Jesus, he was sorry, but he wanted to clear it. He would have got back to Herbie. No doubt about that.
“No possible doubt whatever?” Herbie allowed a sly grin which quickly became the broad and absurd smile.
Gretchen Weiss did things for them, yes. Of course she did. Even before the cancer struck she had pleaded with them to get her sister, Hildegarde, out of the East. It was okay, they checked her out.
“Thoroughly?”
“Like she was a plague carrier.”
So Herbie asked why they had taken so long in bringing her into the West, and doing a deal with Bonn for a passport.
Gretchen Weiss did things. In plain language, while her sister was in the East, Gretchen was pliable. Okay, so she screwed visiting firemen, and leafed through their briefcases. Everyone did it in those days. Dirty tricks wer
en’t anything new.
Herbie left the embassy feeling slightly sick, and it had nothing to do with the food. He shouldn’t be shocked. The trade taught you to use people. He had done it. Was about to do it again. It was this last thought that made him sick.
The nausea turned to worry when he saw the total bulk of the files that arrived in his office ten minutes after he got back. It was a small paper mountain.
He began, there and then, in his office, and with George Thomas’ file, which he read backwards—checking quickly through the recent stuff and the last field jobs, few and far between in the early sixties, heavy and based in Western Europe during the height of the Cold War.
He was still in the office at seven that evening and had worked back to the 1940s—the period which most concerned him.
Flicking through to the first entries, Herbie Kruger made a notation of what seemed to be the most important cross-reference files, sorted them out, dumped the lot in his briefcase, and put the balance in his office safe.
Then he went home and read through the night. He read about George Thomas and his recruitment; about the Stellar network in France during 1941, and what became of those involved. Then he read on—about a German covert operation called WERMUT, in which both George Thomas and Claus Fenderman were deeply involved.
Though the notes and reports gave only the bare bones of the story, Herbie Kruger’s hair tingled at the back of his neck. George had been through all this?—the George he had been speaking to, casually on the main block fourth floor, that afternoon?
He also realised that the Deputy Director had been right—historians would have a field day when these files were released: and they gave no hint of the detail.
The prose was flat—authorised version—yet it gripped.
When Herbie finally laid it aside, around four in the morning, he wanted more. His head buzzed with the enormous hunk of history in which George Thomas had been involved. He wanted flesh on the bones—what George thought and felt at the time; what people actually said and looked like (for so many were now dead). He would spend the next day going through the remaining urgent cross-references, and fix his first long session with George. Already there were glimmerings about Frau Fenderman’s husband, little lights at the end of the tunnel—though they did not explain the pair of East German leeches, or her familiarity with London.
Read. Read. Read. Then flesh it out with George. Clean him of every emotion he had felt during those days in 1941.
Just before he prepared for sleep, Herbie took the files into his living room and locked them in his private safe. As he did so, George Thomas’ Personal File fell open. Among the notes on the first page were the words Recruited, Ministry of Defence, by Brigadier Harold Ramilies, DSO.
Yes, Big Herbie would like to hear all about that as well. The recruitment was dated August 1940—the year of the Blitzkrieg, the fall of Europe, Dunkirk, Battle of Britain, and the London Blitz. The file showed that George Thomas was coming up to fifty-nine years of age. In 1940 he would have been a child: twenty, twenty-one.
Herbie went to sleep thinking about how the memory gets warped by the years, unless there is some particular and constant present reminder. How would George’s memory stand up?
It would be a few days before he could get to grips with George’s memory. Everything did not stop because he was interested in Frau Fenderman.
On the following morning there was a mess of routine paperwork, and Herbie had to get over to Camberwell at lunchtime where he spent two hours in a seedy cafe doing an initial vetting on another possible—a German who had been naturalised British for twenty years, but still had contacts in the East through the remnants of his family.
It was late afternoon before the big man got down to reading the files again—mainly looking for reference passages he had made notes about during the previous night.
The story that unwound was just as fascinating, intriguing, and full of built-in questions which remained unanswered.
Around six he telephoned George, who was out at some conference, so he asked, if it was possible, could he call—either tomorrow or at the St. John’s Wood number that evening.
The phone was ringing as he entered the flat.
Not George. Schnabeln wanting an urgent meeting.
“I have two walking computers who are willing to go on record.” Schnabeln sipped a strong gin and looked pleased with himself.
“You going to give them an exclusive recording contract?”
“You might. They’ve looked at the photographs and I’ve shown them the product—from a safe distance. They have also run their thoughts through the electronic machines.” Schnabeln looked smug. “They are willing to swear that Frau Fenderman—Hildegarde Fenderman—spent two months in England last autumn. At that time her passport said she was a Fraulein Gretchen Weiss.”
“Get it in writing,” was all Herbie said as Schnabeln left. Then, as an afterthought, at the door, “Hals und Beinbruch.” (Break your neck and leg: good luck.)
He went back to the files with greatly enhanced interest; but, lack of sleep, the warmth of the room, and the gin made him dozy. He nodded over the paperwork and was roused suddenly by the telephone. The instrument intruded to the point of causing him to drop his glass, which shattered on the carpet.
A sign of good luck in the old country, he thought, lumbering across the room.
This time it was George.
“I would be most grateful”—Herbie shook his head to clear the fog—“if we could have our first session soon.”
George said tomorrow afternoon was fairly clear. He could spare a couple of hours then, but Herbie wanted more. He was sorry, but it was important—and interesting. He wondered if, perhaps, George could spare an evening away from his lovely wife. Possibly have dinner here, in St. John’s Wood? Yes, a whole evening—just to start with. Saturday was clear. Six o’clock on Saturday then. Good.
That would give Big Herbie Kruger time to finish going through the files, and also a chance to bone up on Nostradamus, the sixteenth-century prophet who appeared to have been the cause of all the trouble in the first place.
11
LONDON 1978
HE READ A COUPLE of books on the Nazi Party and its love-hate relationship with the occult—rubbish mainly; one autobiography of a leading light in PWE; James Laver’s book on Nostradamus, published in 1942, therefore angled from the events which submerged Europe at that time; and browsed through a paperback edition of The Prophecies of Nostradamus, with a commentary by Erika Cheetham.
Herbie also finished the main work on the files, and conducted three interviews. All this in forty-eight hours. More, he whistled up some equipment from Audio and refused their proffered help with installation.
Very late on the Friday night he had another meeting with Schnabeln, who was sharing his constant watch with a young Westphalian called Girren.
Herbie smiled his daft smile at the juxtaposition of the names Schnabeln and Girren. In direct translation they meant Billing and Cooing—though there was not much of the love bird about either of them. Girren would eventually go into the East under Herbie’s London control. During the last three years he had become a specialist in the security services of both German republics.
“He says he’s pretty sure,” Schnabeln reported.
Why then, Herbie asked, did Girren not come personally? Because he wants a little more time to make certain and go over his sources.
It upset Herbie, because if Girren was right, his own BND contact at the German Embassy was playing him very false. Girren thought he had recognised, and marked, one of Frau Fenderman’s leeches. He was, said Girren, a good all-rounder. A career man in the BND. A Federal Republic spook.
“Shit!” Herbie remarked loudly when Schnabeln took his leave. He said some other uncomplimentary things which had a lot to do with breaking necks and legs, but not in any sense of good luck.
On Saturday morning he set up the sound. A big reel-to-reel tape machine at the
bottom of his kitchen cupboard was linked to a tuner/amplifier set to a preselected clear channel. He then scattered radio bugs throughout the main room, choosing particularly places where his visitor was most likely to sit.
The tape machine was set to sound-activate, and in the afternoon—between preparing the main course for dinner—he did a lengthy test run. There was a clean sound picture from almost every part of the flat.
Not that he had any reason to suspect George of even the slightest indiscretion, but Herbie had one set of stories on file and he wanted the skin, flesh, muscles, and sinews on tape.
He had prepared a good meal; then chose the music—switching from his passion for Mahler to Mozart. Mahler might have a disturbing effect on George, and at least he wanted him to make his entrance to music.
Shortly before six he cued the tape machine, and put on one of the later piano concertos (No. 21 in C Major as it happened: Herbie Kruger tended to select Mozart at random—There’s so much of it. With Mahler I know where I am; with Mozart it’s a barrel of apples).
The music went off a couple of minutes after George arrived, and they got down to business over dinner.
“Memory test tonight?” George Thomas crumbled a bread roll. He wore a smarter jacket, black velvet, and a white rollneck. Why? Herbie asked himself as if it were important.
“A little journey back, I think. I am interested, George. I been reading about you. Christ, you should be Alistair MacLean. Adventures.”
“You’ve had plenty yourself, Herbie. They’re only adventures a long time afterwards. Good soup.”
Herbie thanked him and said it came from a tin. Then, out of the blue he said, “Nineteen forty-one. Nostradamus. Stellar.”
“Jesus, Herbie. It’s old and tired.”
Herbie said that it was neither old nor tired to him, and that some history would have to be rewritten when the files came out of the bag.
