The Berlin Assignment

by Adrian de Hoog

  Stepney, interested to hear more about Lecurier, prompts Heywood. “Sorry, Manny. My thoughts wandered. Where was I? Lecurier, right? Well, I’ll say this about Jacques, he managed his assignments with biological adroitness. He had always left a place by the time the paternity accusations were ripe. You know, after the fish talks in Europe, I was put into Investitures for a spell. Lecurier had dispersed his seed pretty widely already by then and it fell to me to ask him to slow down. What happened? Naturally, he claimed we had no business digging around in his personal affairs. I couldn’t reprimand him too severely, because to his credit he did his best to support the mothers.”

  “I heard there was something with a princess in the Saudi royal family,” says Stepney. “That must have been a tough one to have paid for.”

  Heywood answers smoothly. “I discount that story, Manny. It arose out of the sheer momentum of his reputation. Lecurier developed a pattern of holding back in high-cost countries. It’s true there was a princess of sorts in Jeddah, but she was English. She did a veil dance in a secret basement suite in the residence of the Ambassador of Argentina, who would invite his friends to watch. Lecurier didn’t stay there long. Not Jeddah, Manny. Kuala Lumpur, Nairobi, Bogota, Peking, those were Lecurier’s hallmarks. The last one was the diciest. He took up with the great-granddaughter of a member of the Central Committee. Somehow he got around Chinese security. It proved his most remarkable characteristic. He could go local, like a chameleon. Disappear. Needless to say, when this happened in China, the complainant was apoplectic.”

  “Did he have some trick to turn himself into a slant-eye?” asks the wily trade commissioner, “or did he pose as a missionary?”

  Heywood doesn’t bite. “He just knew how to go local,” he insists. “And he did brilliant reporting. It makes you wonder whether paternity and political insight are opposite sides of the same coin. Lecurier had a special knack for getting through to the bare bones of a culture and an uncanny ability to predict political decisions.”

  Talk of Lecurier pushes Hanbury once more into Heywood’s thoughts. Hanbury also had chameleon qualities. He disappeared into Berlin the way Lecurier vanished in Peking. Like Lecurier, Hanbury wrote some acceptable reports. Heywood remembers the Berlin reports. They caused a stir. But similarities ended there. Lecurier and Hanbury diverged, as Heywood often pointed out, when it came to flair. Hanbury plodded, whereas a worldliness propelled Lecurier. Yet despite Hanbury’s lack of flair, Heywood always liked him, as he did Lecurier – perhaps even more.

  Shifting his great frame, Heywood slaps at a mosquito on his thigh and wipes his forehead on a shoulder. He’s been sweating profusely. A pungent odour is developing. “Ever read one of Lecurier’s reports?” he asks, knowing Stepney hasn’t. “They were special, they really were. He created an extra dimension, a sense of history in the making. He started off in Athens when the Colonels ran the place, then he was in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, but he really came into his own in Indochina. His work on Cambodia was gripping. It even circulated in Washington. His style was to take a few telling facts, then draw a big picture. His syntheses had energy and ease. I suppose that characterized his night work too, I mean, when he lay down with local ladies. He lived in an enviable world, always injecting order into what seemed all screwed up and crazy. From Cambodia he was sent to South Africa. The issues there were immediate. The business community was squealing about our apartheid sanctions. The Government needed someone who could charm the captains of industry, yet convince them the sanctions would never come off. There were fewer questions in the Commons once he stared down the bankers.”

  “We were much too holier-than-thou with those damn sanctions,” says an annoyed Stepney, beginning to drum his glass. “The Brits and Krauts left themselves more manoeuvring room.”

  “They had more historical investment,” Heywood replies dispassionately.

  “We have a habit of misunderstanding investment generally,” counters Stepney, “so no wonder we never get around to having any that you could call historical.”

  Heywood is not inclined to be drawn in, not on investment and especially not on sanctions and apartheid. He fills his lungs for a dramatic finale. “Lecurier’s end was tragic. His vehicle was rammed by a rhinoceros while on safari and he sustained mortal injuries. That was the official line. Actually, early one morning he was stabbed in a lung as he left a public house in one of the townships, whereupon he drowned in his own blood. We were concerned, of course, that the embassy would be wobbly at a crucial time. Hanbury turned out to be a passably good chargé. After Berlin, who would have expected it?”

  The truth about Lecurier stuns Stepney. “Holy shit,” he swears softly. “So it wasn’t a rhino?”

  “No,” Heywood confirms harshly. For a moment he thinks he may have gone too far. The real version of Lecurier’s death was always closely held. The trade commissioner is melancholy for a minute, then says, “I’ve heard Hanbury was a tower of strength managing the funeral arrangements. Sounds almost unbelievable.”

  “We’ve all heard that, Manny. There could be some exaggeration.”

  “I guess so. Did you know, I worked with him once. We were on a task force investigating the impact of high sugar prices on the economy.” This link, though decades old and tenuous, allows the trade commissioner a judgement. “When I knew him he gave an impression of treading water. He worked, but he never progressed.” The Investitures priest approves of the analogy. In the Priory, Hanbury routinely had a look about him that suggested he was about to sink, and Heywood often had a paternal urge to throw his deputy a lifeline.

  “Wasn’t he with you for half a dozen years?” Stepney asks. “How did you put up with him that long?”

  “Five years and three months,” Heywood says possessively. Is this the time to open the Berlin file? He decides yes and plunges in. “Disarmament was hot. We worked our tails off. I have to say it, Manny, Hanbury treaded a lot of water, sure, but some things he did fairly well. He once had to produce a crisp piece for the PM who wanted profile at a security conference in Vienna. Hanbury knew the subject. He might have been meek, but he was smart. SS20’s, Minutemen, throw-weight equivalents – he understood the material as well as anyone. All we needed for the statement was some hard analysis and a paragraph or two of great prose. He had no problem with the analysis. It was the style, the elevated tone for the PM that eluded him. So that part I did. What I’m saying is, that after he treaded for a while, I always pulled him in.” Heywood feels a surge of sympathy. His eyes turn moist. “Funny thing is,” he confesses, “Hanbury combed his hair like his mind worked, a part right down the middle.”

  “I found him secretive,” Stepney says. “He never seemed to come or go. He was there, and suddenly he wasn’t there. Stealth, that’s what he had. Well, what happened in Berlin? How did he screw up?”

  “Nobody knows. Just like nobody knew why he went. The Wall was down; the Cold War over. The German Government couldn’t make up its mind to move back from Bonn. Berlin had become uninteresting. An outpost. No self respecting political officer would go. But Hanbury snapped it up.”

  “A marriage made in heaven,” sneers Stepney.

  “At first it unfolded fairly well. It took a while for things to go off the rails. Not like Anderson in Manila.”

  “You mean he consummated the marriage,” says the trade commissioner sarcastically.

  “Well…partially. You know, after Hanbury left the Priory, I did too. They needed me to run Investitures. One day there was a minor blow-up. Seems he hadn’t done any reporting. The high priest asked me. Told me to talk to him. Said he wanted reports from Berlin. I called Hanbury. He was surprised, but began sending reports. The next thing, Manny, a couple of months later – I swear there was no advance warning – the marriage was over. Annulled. By the high priest, not me. I just arranged his next assignment. I sent him to Pretoria. Number two to Lecurier.”

  “Weird,” says Stepney.

  “It was.
”

  “So the high priest held the dagger.”

  “All done in the inner sanctum. I was nowhere around.”

  “When’s the last time that occurred?”

  “It was unprecedented.”

  “Nothing on the files? Not even in Investitures?”

  “Not a scrap. I swear to God. I looked. I’m still looking.” Heywood’s heavy eyebrows lift. A look of innocence unfurls around his mouth. “Pretoria is working out fine for him. Maybe it’s on account of the woman he brought along from Berlin.” Heywood slaps at another mosquito, this one on his cheek. He sighs and reaches for the thermos.

  “A woman?” The trade commissioner is surprised.

  “It happens, Manny.”

  “Well sure, but Hanbury?”

  “The same thing happened to Pochovski,” Heywood says with authority. “He was a changed man once he got a steady woman. A few weeks after finding her he was on a delegation to a UN Conference in Montevideo. Everyone knew something had happened because no matter how desperate the mood in the financial committee, he came out whistling, even in the dead of night.”

  “Wasn’t Burns the head of that delegation?” asks Stepney.

  “He was. Now he was someone you’d go to the wall for. I recall how in New York he’d regularly stonewall dozens of countries with his brilliant interventions. Back home the papers said he was callous, rough at the edges, but he knew the national interest…”

  The talk continues. From the Andersons and Godinskis, the Lecuriers, Hanburys and Pochovskis, on to virgin territory provided by the Bradsworths, Lavallees and Careys. The stories, like rivulets, link up into a brook that meanders through the world’s affairs and discharges into a vast sea, an infinite receptacle which holds all unwritten Service legends. The afternoon on Heywood’s porch ends when the air stirs. A breeze picks up. Forest smells of resin and rich earth waft past, a signal that the heat is moderating. “The girls’ll be back soon,” Heywood says, stretching and yawning and rubbing sweat around inside his jersey. “By the time they’ve told us what they bought, we’ll never get a swim in. What do you say, Manny? God, I’ve gotten stiff sitting.”

  Halfway through the swim, Hannah and Laura return from their afternoon of visiting auctions. They stand on the dock laughing and waving at their men in the water. Afterwards, steaks sizzle and mosquitoes attack the cook. Then they huddle tribally inside a screened-off portion of the porch. Imprisoned by the insect world, the table talk again turns to the Service. With the women, the slant is different: raising children in African outposts, managing servants in New Delhi, finding decent dentists in the Middle East. A night-cap follows and it is then that Stepney says, “I’ve been thinking about Hanbury. Since nothing’s on the file, maybe it’s on account of that German woman. Maybe she played a role.”

  Heywood contemplates this. “Could be,” he says slowly. “Interesting angle, Manny. You know, rumour has it she’s quite the fireball.”

  THE PERFECT MATCH

  Before Berlin, Hanbury didn’t figure much in Service gossip. He had an instinct to hang back, to stick behind cover. But for Berlin he changed. Coming out into the open, he preyed on the assignment. He even penned a memo to Investitures reasoning he was their man.

  When Heywood learned of this he bluntly advised his deputy against Berlin. Shunning the limelight was one thing, the priory priest argued, but why calcify your brain? “There’s nothing there. It’s a dead end,” he said. Hanbury didn’t reply. He stared back as if he and Heywood lacked a common language.

  What Heywood didn’t know – and couldn’t have – was that Hanbury’s note to Investitures had nothing to do with career advancement. It sprang from something deeper…from unvoiced irrational longings. At one time or another most members feel something tug at them. A faint bell chiming deep inside tells them time is passing. They’ll try to keep this secret, for a while, but the day comes when they’ll agitate for assignments in out-of-the-way places, ones known to spell career disaster – Costa Rica for example, where the collection of rare seashells from two oceans can give great satisfaction, or Addis Ababa, where, in the nearby highlands, a retracing of the footsteps of the early explorers searching for the headwaters of the Blue Nile generates true philosophic contentment. But such self-indulgence passes quickly. Reality comes surging back. Soon enough the prodigal children return to the relentless competition that marks life in the fold. Such mid-career symptoms – Madame Tass, the Service career counsellor, once wrote an erudite monograph on the subject for a psychoanalytic journal – came to be bundled in a phrase: the For-Once-Something-For-Me Syndrome. It was this feeling that drove Hanbury when he pushed his interest in Berlin.

  Having sent his memo he next went to see an Investitures cleric in person. Unfortunately, when he used the well-worn phrase the inflection in his voice must have been poor, because immediately he got an earful back. It had to do with the first two words. “What do you mean,for once?” the icy cleric asked. Hanbury shrugged. He said the last five years in the Priory had been like going through a wringer. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” the cleric said severely. He held out no hope for Berlin. “And don’t bother going higher,” he warned. “I’ve discussed your memo with Borowski. He backs me.” The reply went into Hanbury like a dagger. He argued back, saying in twenty-five years he had accepted every assignment he was given and had never quibbled. He’d paid his dues. Furthermore, as explained in the memo, he spoke German, surely not a trivial consideration. But the cleric was adamant. In his view, Berlin required someone with more presence.

  Yet, less than three weeks later, having been overruled by someone somewhere, the cleric called back in a voice brimming with poison. “Damn you, Hanbury,” he hissed, “and damn Berlin. Just so you know, as far as I’m concerned, you and the Krauts, you deserve each other.” The uncharitable words rang in Hanbury’s ears after the call, but only for about a second. Putting the phone down he leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk and sat without moving for nearly an hour. Deliverance had come. No more Heywood. An end to purgatory in the Priory. Not only that, but the chance had come to look after unfinished business. He had olive branches to deliver. The opening had come to atone for acts committed in his youth.

  The final days were hectic. The movers were the only ones that had it easy. They explored Hanbury’s apartment like eager crows, but the pickings were disappointing. They found an enormous stereo, and shelves and cabinets filled with ancient records and new CDs. But after that it was all downhill: some scrawny household items, a dearth of clothing, no fancy glassware, no splendid silver, nothing much by way of works of art. “He ain’t like the others, Tiny,” the head packer scowled to his assistant. What he meant to convey was that they were expecting the materialism of a bishop, but had run into the asceticism of a monk.

  Getting ready to depart, Hanbury spent hours waiting outside the doors of overbearing clerks. He got a new passport which identified him as consul; changes had to be made to insurance policies; financial matters required updating; he worked his way through an endless list of things to cancel and filled out a form describing the location of his will. He even crammed in a few minutes of briefing on Berlin with one of the European Zealots. But the worst of the ordeal was the office good-byes, some from characters he considered worse than crows. Not until the aircraft door closed – that moment of finality, that sealing off from all that went before – did he experience release. The Priory days were over – even if the unctuous farewell speech by Heywood still rang in his head. Hanbury grimaced as bits of it replayed, as if a demon force was making one last attempt to haul him back. Tony was brought up in Indian Head, so I was not surprised to find that he can be a fighter and fortunately for me, from time to time, he was. Painful remarks. Heywood was the only priest Hanbury knew who could turn short and peppy words of appreciation into a funeral oration. Heywood droned on and on at the staff lunch, inventing his deputy’s biography as he went. He even managed to include a referenc
e to a dream: he and his deputy shipwrecked on the way to a disarmament conference; together they cling to a chunk of driftwood; rationally they discuss improvements to an intervention which he, Heywood, the country’s highest ranking delegate to the meeting would make. The dream – disaster striking, the will to survive, fellowship in adversity, a commitment to excellence while suffering duress – symbolized, the priory priest claimed, what he and his deputy had experienced. In an awful show of emotion Heywood had used a table napkin to wipe his eyes.

  Now, above the clouds, the new consul tried to dispel all thoughts of Heywood. He ordered champagne. His ritual. He always drank champagne when change was happening, when a fresh assignment was hours away. Studying the rising bubbles made him feel he, too, was bursting free.

  That was the good thing about such passages. Not only were they prominent boundaries drawn on Hanbury’s map of time, they also spelled renewal. He had served in six cities in five countries on four continents over twenty-five years. But this time felt especially heady. Not only was he leaving behind a suffocating bureaucratic mantle with its pockets full of worn out issues (not to mention people), he was going to a place that was also embarking on a new beginning. Berlin, he sensed, would be a kindred spirit.

  Despite the champagne, Hanbury’s thoughts oozed back once more to the Priory, to the heated discussions over the years on theoretical issues now destined to remain unresolved forever. The merit of MAD – mutually assured destruction – was never clearly demonstrated. The world left MAD behind to embark on fresh forms of lunacy. Forty years of Cold War ended in collapse. The issues simply went away and his work on esoteric disarmament subjects had not been worth finishing. The files were now collecting dust. As the relentlessly merry bubbles continued rising in his glass, Hanbury saw that the priory years had been wasted.

  He drank and sank into himself a little. Heywood’s former deputy tried to form a picture of more than just the Priory. He fought to see his twenty-five years in the Service as a set of neatly interlocking pieces. Did the six cities, the six packets of experience, add up to something larger? Was there a connecting thread and, if so, where was it leading? Hanbury occasionally marvelled at how some Service men treated the progression of their assignments – their careers – with a ghastly possessiveness, as if it allowed them to gain some warped form of immortality, while others treated them as a collection. But of what? Of a batch of urns stored and ignored in a necropolis vault? For Hanbury, well, his career has been too random to amount to a collection. All he’d had were disconnected lunges, like Brownian motion which leads nowhere and just is. The elements of his career were not worth keeping. They were mostly worth forgetting. The priory farewell lunch had been just like that.