by Len Deighton
She washed a lettuce and cut thin slices from a Bockwurst. It was the fresh fruit she missed so much: she still couldn’t understand why such things were so scarce. She had found a privately owned baker near the office and the bread was good. She’d have to be careful not to put on weight – everything plentiful was fattening.
It was an austere little room well suited to reflection and work. The walls were painted light grey and there were only three pictures: an engraving of a Roman emperor, a sepia photo of fashionable ladies circa 1910 and a coloured print of Kirchner’s Pariser Platz. The frames, their neglected condition, as well as the subject matter, suggested that they had been selected at random from some government storage depot. She was grateful for that human touch just the same. Her bedroom was no more than an alcove with a hinged screen. The old tubular-framed bed was painted cream and reminiscent of the one she’d slept in at her boarding school. There were many aspects of life in the DDR – from the endless petty restrictions to the dull diet – that reminded her of boarding school. But she told herself over and over that she had survived boarding school and so she would survive this.
When she went to bed that night she was unable to sleep. She hadn’t had one night of sound natural sleep since coming over here. That terrible encounter with Bernard had been a ghastly way to start her new life. Now every night she found herself thinking about him and the children. She found herself asking why she’d been born with a lack of the true maternal urge. Why had she never delighted in the babies and wanted to hug them night and day as so many mothers do? And was she now being acutely tortured by their absence because of the way she had squandered those early years with them? She would have given anything for a chance to go back and see them as babies again, to cuddle them and feed them and read to them and play with them the nonsense games that Bernard’s mother was so good at.
Sometimes, during the daytime, the chronic ache of being separated from her family was slightly subdued as she tried to cope with the overwhelming demands made upon her. The intellectual demands – the lies and false loyalties – she could cope with, but she hadn’t realized how vulnerable she would be to the emotional stress. She remembered some little joke that Bret had made about women adapting to a double life more easily than a man. Every woman, he said, was expected to be a hooker or matron, companion, mother, servant or friend at a moment’s notice. Being two people was a simple task for any woman. It was typical Rensselaer bullshit. She switched on the light and reached for the sleeping tablets. In fact she knew that she would never return to being that person she’d been such a short time ago. She had already been stretched beyond the stage of return.
13
Whitelands, England. June 1983.
‘No, Dicky, I can hear you perfectly,’ said Bret Rensselaer as he pressed the phone to his ear and shrugged at Silas Gaunt, who was standing opposite him with the extension earpiece. Dicky Cruyer, German Stations Controller, was phoning from Mexico City and the connection was not good. ‘You’ve made it all perfectly clear. I can’t see any point in going through it again. Yes, I’ll talk to the Director-General and tell him what you said. Yes. Yes. Good to talk to you, Dicky. I’ll see what I can do. Goodbye. Goodbye.’ He replaced the handset and sighed deeply.
Silas Gaunt put the earpiece in the slot and said, ‘Dicky Cruyer tracked you down.’
‘Yes, he did,’ said Bret Rensselaer, although there had been little difficulty about it. The Director-General had told Bret to visit Silas and ‘put him in the picture’. Bret had left the Whitelands telephone number as his contact, and Mrs Porter – Gaunt’s housekeeper – had put the call from Mexico through to the farm manager’s office.
Having thanked the greenhouse boy who’d run to get them, Silas, wearing an old anorak, muddy boots and corduroy trousers tied with string at the ankles, led the way – ducking under the low door – out to the cobbled yard. Bret was being shown round the farm.
‘I don’t encourage guns any more,’ said Silas. ‘Too damned hearty. Those gigantic early breakfasts and mud all through the house. It became too much for Mrs Porter and to tell you the truth, too much for me too. Anglers are not so much trouble: quieter, and they’re gone all day with a packet of cheese sandwiches.’
Silas swung open the yard gate and fastened it again after Bret. The fields stretched away into the distance. The harvest would be gathered early. The field behind the barn would be the first one cut and flocks of sparrows, warned by the sound of the nearby machinery that the banquet would not be there forever, were having a feed that made their flight uncertain as they swooped and fluttered amongst the pale ears.
It was a lovely day: silky cirrus torn and trailed carelessly across the deep blue sky. The sun was as high as it could get, and, like a ball thrown into the air, it paused and the world stood still, waiting for the afternoon to begin.
As they walked along they kept close to the hedge so that Silas could be sure it had been properly trimmed and weeded. He grabbed ears of unripe wheat, and with the careless insolence of the nomad, crushed them in his hand, scattering chaff, husk and seed through his splayed fingers. Bret, who had no interest in farms or farming, plodded awkwardly behind in the rubber boots that Silas had found for him, with a stained old windbreaker to protect his elegant dark blue suit. They went through a door set in the tall walls that surrounded the kitchen garden. It was a wonderful wall, light and dark bricks making big diamond patterns that were just visible under the espaliered fruit trees.
‘I am not convinced that it was a wise move to send both Dicky Cruyer and Bernard Samson to Mexico City,’ said Bret, to resume the conversation. ‘It leaves us somewhat depleted, and those two seem to fight all the time.’
Silas pointed to various vegetables and said he was going to start a little rose garden next year and reduce the ground given to swedes, turnips and beetroots. Then he said, ‘How is Bernard taking it?’
‘His wife’s defection? Not too well. I was thinking of making him take a physical, but in his present paranoid state he’d resent it. I guess he’ll pull out of it. Meanwhile, I’ll keep an eye on him.’
‘I have no experience as an agent in the field,’ said Silas. ‘Neither have you. I can think of very few people in your building who know what’s involved. In that respect, we are like First World War generals, sitting back in our château and sipping our brandy, and subjecting the troops to nasti-ness that we don’t comprehend.’
Bret, not knowing exactly what was coming, and never ready to state his views without time to think, made a sound that indicated measured agreement.
‘But I have seen a lot of them,’ said Silas, ‘and I know something of what makes such fellows tick. Fiona Samson will not wind down slowly like a neglected clock. She’ll keep going at full power until she has nothing more to give. Then, like a light bulb, she’ll glow extra bright before going out.’
It sounded too melodramatic to Bret. He looked at Silas wondering if this same little speech, with other names, had been used many times before, like next-of-kin letters when the unthinkable happened. He couldn’t decide. He nodded. ‘When the question of her going over there was first discussed, I was in favour of taking the husband into our confidence.’
‘I know you were. But his ignorance has proved a great asset to us, and to his wife. It’s given her a good start. Now it’s up to her.’ Silas looked around him in a proprietorial manner and crushed a clod of earth with the toe of his heavy boot. It was good fertile soil, dark and rich with leafmould.
Bret undid his borrowed windcheater and fingered a bundle of computer printout to be sure he hadn’t dropped it during his walk.
It was hot in the garden, everything silent and still, protected by the high garden walls. This was the culmination of the gardener’s year. There was billowing greenery everywhere but all too soon the summer would be over; the leaves withered; the earth cold and hard. ‘Look at these maincrop carrots,’ said Silas. He bent over to grab the feathery leaves. For a moment he seemed on t
he point of uprooting one but then he changed his mind and let go. ‘Carrots are tricky,’ said Silas. ‘They grow to maturity and you have to decide whether to lift them and store them or leave them in the earth.’
Bret nodded.
‘Leave them in the earth and you get a sweeter-tasting carrot but if there is a really severe frost, you lose them.’ He found a carrot and pulled it up. It was small and thin but of a beautiful colour. ‘On the other hand if you lift them, you can be sure that they haven’t been got at by the worms and slugs. See what I mean, Bret?’
‘So how do you decide when to pull them?’
‘I consult,’ said Silas. ‘I talk to the experts.’
Bret decided to ignore the wider implications of Silas’s agricultural nostrums and return to the subject of Bernard Samson. ‘But once that decision was taken, it might have been wiser to move Bernard Samson out of Operations. He’s too damned curious about what exactly happened.’
‘That’s natural enough,’ said Silas.
‘He pries and asks questions. On that account, and a few others too, Samson was not the man to send to talk to a potential KGB defector in Mexico City, or anywhere else.’
‘Why?’ asked Silas sardonically. ‘Because he hasn’t been to University?’
‘This KGB fellow: Stinnes – whatever his motives or intentions – will be expecting an Oxbridge man. Sending a blue-collar type like Samson will make him think he doesn’t rate.’
‘You’re a dedicated Anglophile, Bret. No disrespect, I’m delighted that you should be. But it sometimes leads you into an exaggerated regard for our old British institutions.’
Bret stiffened. ‘I have always supported Samson, even when he was at his most intractable. But Oxford and Cambridge attract the most competitive students, and will always be the Department’s finest source of recruits. I’d hate to see the day come when that policy changed.’
Silas ran his hand lovingly over the outdoor tomatoes. One of them, full size and deep red, he picked and weighed in his hand. ‘Oxford and Cambridge provide an excellent opportunity to learn, although not better than any well-motivated student can find in a first-class library. But an Oxbridge education can make graduates feel that they are members of some privileged élite, destined to lead and make decisions that will be inflicted upon lesser beings. Such élitism must of necessity be based upon expectations that are often unfulfilled. Thus Oxbridge has not only provided Britain with its most notable politicians and civil servants but its most embittered traitors too.’ Silas smiled sadly, as if the traitors had played a long-forgiven and half-forgotten prank upon him.
‘Elite?’ said Bret. ‘You’d search a long way to find someone more arrogant than Bernard Samson.’
‘Bernard’s arrogance comes from something inside him: some vitality, force and a seemingly inexhaustible fund of courage. Our great universities will never be able to furnish inner strength, no one can. What teachers provide is always superimposed upon the person that already exists. Education is a carapace, a cloak laid upon the soul: a protection, a coloration or something to hide inside.’
To get the conversation back on to a more practical plane Bret said, ‘And Samson drinks too much.’
‘That’s rather judgemental,’ said Silas. ‘Few of us would be absolved from that one, truth be told.’ Silas took a clasp-knife and cut the tomato in half to study it before biting a piece out of it.
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Bret deferentially, and added, ‘Remember I recommended Samson for the German Desk.’
Silas swallowed the piece of tomato but some of the juice dribbled down his chin. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, ‘Indeed you did. But you didn’t do it with enough vigour and follow-through to get it for him.’
‘I plead the Fifth, Silas.’ Bret decided not to explain that his decision was deliberate and reasoned: it would take too long. ‘But let’s not argue. Samson and Cruyer are both in Mexico. We have a lot riding on this one; a careless move now could set us back severely.’
‘Yes, we must move with great caution,’ said Silas. ‘We have the woman installed in the East and now we must hope that all continues to go well for her. No contact yet?’ He offered the remaining half of tomato to Bret, but Bret shook his head. Silas threw the tomato on to the rubbish.
‘No, Silas, no contact. I’m leaving her alone for as long as possible. It’s not primarily an intelligence-gathering operation at this stage of the game. I think you and the D-G both agreed that it shouldn’t be. We said that right at the start.’
‘Yes, Bret, we did. She has enough problems, I’m sure.’
‘For the time being, let her masters digest the material she’s providing them with.’ Bret had been moving restlessly, looking round to be sure that they were not observed or overheard. Now he fixed his eyes on Silas. ‘But before too long we must provide the Soviets with some really solid affirmation of Mrs Samson’s creed. It’s going well but we must exploit and reinforce success.’ These final words were spoken with fervour.
Silas looked blankly at Bret. The words Bret had emphasized were the sort of axiom to be found in the works of Sun-tzu, Vegetius, Napoleon or some wretch of that ilk. Silas did not believe that such teachings embodied truths of any relevance to the craft of espionage, but decided that this was not the right time to take that up with Bret.
Thinking that Silas might not have heard, Bret said it again. ‘We must exploit and reinforce success.’
Silas looked at him and nodded. Despite that glacial personality there was a certain boyish enthusiasm in Bret, a quality not unusual in Americans of any class. Bret combined it with another American characteristic: the self-righteous passion of the crusader. Silas had always thought of him as warrior prince: hand-woven silk under the heavy armour, marching through the desert behind the True Cross. Austere and calculating, Bret would have made an invincible Richard the Lionheart but an equally convincing Saladin.
Silas said, ‘I hope you’re not thinking of anything costly, Bret. The other evening I calculated that the code and cipher changes and so on that the D-G ordered after Mrs Samson went over there must have cost the Department nearly a million sterling. Add in the costs that we don’t shoulder, I’d say there was a worldwide bill for three million. And that’s without the incalculable loss of face we suffered at losing her.’
‘I’m watching the bottom line, Silas.’
‘Good. And what did you conclude about this fellow in Mexico City, Bret? Animal, vegetable or mineral?’ Silas bent over and fingered the spinach like a child dabbling a hand in the water.
‘That’s what I want to talk about. He’s real enough; a forty-year-old KGB major of considerable experience.’ Bret put on the speed-cop style glasses that he used when reading, and, reaching inside the stained waterproof that Silas had loaned him, he produced a concertina of computer printout. ‘No need to tell you that our records don’t normally extend down to KGB majors, but this fellow has a high profile so we know something of his background.’ Bret looked down and read from the paperwork. ‘Sadoff. Uses the name Stinnes. Born 1943. Regular officer as father. Raised in Berlin. Assigned to KGB, Section 44, the Religious Affairs Bureau. With Security Police in Cuba…’
‘For God’s sake, Bret. I can read all that piffle for myself. I’m asking you who he is.’
‘And whether he really wants to come over to us. Yes, of course you’re asking that, but it’s too early yet.’ He passed the computer printout to Silas, who held it without looking at it.
‘What does Cruyer say about him?’
‘I’m not sure that Cruyer has actually seen him yet.’
‘Then what the devil are those two idiots doing out there?’
‘You’ll be pleased to hear that it was Samson who saw Stinnes.’
‘And?’
‘This one is worth having, Silas. We could get a lot out of him if he’s properly handled. But we must go very slowly. For safety’s sake we must assume he is approaching us under ord
ers from Moscow.’
Silas sniffed and handed the printout back unread. A corpulent pirate, scruffy in that self-assured manner that is often the style of such establishment figures, he shuffled along the line of tall stakes up which the broad beans had grown. Long since shunned by the kitchen there were, amongst the leaves, a few beans that had grown huge and pale. He plucked one and broke the pod open to get the seeds inside. He ate one. When he turned round to Bret he said, ‘So: two possibilities. Either he will go back to Moscow and tell them what he discovered, or he is genuine and will do as we say.’
‘Yes, Silas.’
‘Then why don’t we play the same game? Let’s welcome the fellow. Give him money and show him our secrets. What?’
‘I’m not sure I follow you, Silas.’
‘Abduct the bastard. Moscow screams in anger. We offer Stinnes a chance to go back and work for us. He goes back there.’
‘And they execute him,’ said Bret.
‘Not if we abduct him. He is blameless.’
‘Moscow might not see it that way.’
‘Don’t break my heart; this is a little KGB shit.’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘Romance him, turn him round, and send him back to Moscow. Who cares if he betrays us, or betrays them…You don’t see it?’
‘I’m not sure I do,’ said Bret.
‘Damn it, Bret. He finds us in total disarray after the loss of Mrs Samson. We’re distraught. We give him a briefing designed to limit the damage we’ve suffered from her defection. He goes back believing that. Who cares which side he thinks he’s working for? Even if they execute him, they’ll squeeze him first. Come to think of it, that would suit us best.’
‘It’s brilliant, Silas.’
‘Well, don’t sound so bloody woeful.’
‘It will require a lot of preparation.’ Bret was beginning to discover that a secret operation shared only between himself, the Director and Silas Gaunt meant that he himself did virtually all the hard work. ‘It will be a very time-consuming and difficult job.’
