The Berlin Assignment

by Adrian de Hoog

  Two hundred metres deep in the crowd it would have been difficult to notice something had happened. People saw the Chief of Protocol go towards the President and move away to the side, no more. But TV cameras saw it differently. The image speeding around the world was of a President assailed and of a demonstration that had failed.

  When the President finished and a rock band began setting up, the diplomats departed. Several commiserated with Hanbury over his soiled jacket. The Scandinavian made a little joke about bird droppings; the Latin American concluded the mishap proved that people in public life should wear washable garments. Von Helmholtz came along, saw what had occurred and asked Hanbury to walk with him to his office. The official part of the event was over; the rock concert would be routine.

  As they walked the Chief of Protocol vented his anger. “They weren’t neo-Nazis,” he said grimly. “Merely anarchists. Ineffective, pathetic creatures who lack purpose. Still, we know what the headlines will say. I’m sorry you were hit.”

  “No harm done.” Hanbury replied, keeping up with the Chief of Protocol’s fierce pace. “It was the President who got it on the head. Otherwise everything went fine. Everyone was calm. The mood was serene.”

  Von Helmholtz slowed. The sun was setting behind them through banks of clouds; one strip was nearly black, another lit up red and beneath it a luminous ribbon of yellow. “We knew something was planned,” he said. “Dozens were intercepted. Seven or eight got through. It shouldn’t have happened. We gambled. We didn’t succeed. I must say, the President took it well. He asked if others were hit. When an opportunity arises I’ll introduce you to him. You’re his only co-victim.”

  “Maybe Gundula Jahn will do a column on it,” Hanbury said. She was still in his thoughts. Where had she been at the rally? Had she seen what happened? “Maybe she can recover some ground with a good piece.”

  Von Helmholtz doubted it, but the mention of Gundula changed his mood. Some of his tension drained off. He praised her talent as a journalist, but said he worried she was becoming too identified with the problems of the East. “You could help. You should try to interest her in international affairs. She needs to widen her scope before she hits a dead end.”

  In the Rote Rathaus courtyard, von Helmholtz commanded a car and driver to take the consul home. Hanbury argued he could find his way, but the Chief of Protocol insisted. “You’re one of us now, Tony,” he murmured, opening the door of a limousine. “You too have been embarrassed by the Fatherland.”

  The Monday papers gave the incident in Berlin front page treatment. Randolph McEwen sitting in the breakfast pavilion of a Munich hotel was deciphering the story. The indoor garden with banana plants and palms might be fine in summer, but on this frosty Bavarian morning it was filled with cold convection. On the other hand, the article he was translating – word by word – provided unexpected inner warmth.

  Eggs on their faces, he thought. A rally against xenophobia! A batty idea. In the old Berlin, the one administered by the Allies, the right wing would have gotten short shrift: infiltration of the neo-Nazis, hooligans rounded up as they slept, quick judicial arrangements. But now… well…deep down the Hun’s brain was soft. The demonstration proved it.

  Delightful though the headlines were, they didn’t alter McEwen’s mood. Guidelines for the transfer of operational control of security and intelligence gathering in the Berlin arena to the Germans were part of the agreement on the withdrawal of foreign troops. In accordance with this unknown blip on Germany’s reunification map, McEwen was in Munich to bare his networks to new German counterparts. Who would have predicted a day would come when he would be forced to swallow a pill this bitter?

  Transfer an intelligence-gathering function! An absurd notion. Yet, it was all spelled out in detail in an outrageous, secret annex to the Two Plus Four Agreement which charted the reunification course. Not only that, but the fine print said the handover of Berlin Station operations would be in Munich, in the suburb of Pullach, in Uncle Teut’s own complex. An insult in itself. We won the wars, McEwen kept thinking. I shouldn’t have to go to Uncle Teut.

  There was worse. New operations during the changeover period were to be double key. McEwen needed Uncle Teut’s approval for every initiative as his own resources disappeared. Could there be a greater ignominy than a career ending in dependency on the Hun? McEwen’s frustration was so great he felt his spleen was on the verge of rupturing. Berlin was so delightful before Europe changed. Tussling with the Soviets had been amusing. Uncle Sam had been supportive. Double keys with Uncle Sam meant operations moved like lightning. But Uncle Teut was different. Uncle Teut was grave. He was ponderous. He needed time to think things through. He only acted once the highest court in the land granted clearance. By the time an operation began, the Libyans, Iranians, or Iraqis, not to mention the Russian Mafia, had had their day. Half a nuclear arsenal might have been smuggled in and out. Uncle Teut lacked two ingredients for success: flexibility and instinct. His complicated rules rendered a distressing certainty: operations that were permanently jammed.

  The egg-splashing yesterday showed the rot. In a sardonic corner of his mind, as he methodically deciphered the front page story, McEwen composed a few remarks he would soon make. Sorry to hear about Berlin, Alex. Frightfully embarrassing. I heard the anarchists had intentions. How did they get through? Dressed as police agents? Nothing wrong with goading Uncle Teut. Uncle Teut wasn’t above delivering insults himself. Why else had an Oxford man been named for this partnership undertaking. Partnership undertaking! That’s what the fine print said.

  Alexander Graf Bornhof spoke English with such nearly perfect Oxford diction that whenever McEwen heard the accent he felt robbed blind.

  No Hun should be allowed to steal the British soul by speaking like a don.

  Graf Bornhof pretended to be friendly; he liked to show himself cooperative; he made out he was self-effacing. The Oxford veneer made him difficult to deal with. But today, at least, McEwen had the unexpected gift of a smelly egg laid in the Hun’s own tidy nest. It mitigated the humiliation – a little.

  The humiliation deepened after breakfast. Transportation to Pullach was in a Mercedes 600, V12, bullet-proof, with a communication system and voice scrambler in the trunk. Somewhat more comfortable than McEwen’s own imported compact. A little faster. Slightly better equipped. Real leather seats. And so deeply, deeply silent.

  He loves to rub it in, the Hun. We won both World Wars. We won the Cold War. We win all the wars, but it’s the Hun that profits.

  The gate to the Pullach complex slid aside. Papers were checked. Für Graf Bornhof, the driver snapped. Warten Sie! Wait, ordered the guard. He telephoned, then returned. In Ordnung. That’s fine. McEwen heard the exchange as a series of short verbal explosions. McEwen knew Pullach by now, but he didn’t like the place. He didn’t like the sound of it. He didn’t like the sound of the orders.

  He was escorted to the conference room. As always, fruit juices, soft drinks and a thermos with good coffee were on offer on the table. Christmas was not far off and there was decoration too: holly twigs, red candles and trays of Christmas cookies. Interspersing the colour were small poinsettias alternately red and white. Into this festive atmosphere Graf Bornhof and two subordinates arrived.

  “Randolph!” Graf Bornhof exclaimed with delight.

  “Terribly pleased to see you, Alexander,” came the flat reply. “Starting the annual celebration, I see. Very pretty.” He nodded to the decorated table.

  “I shall pass your compliment to the ladies. They are quite excited at this time of year. And why not? Intelligence work can have a human face. Allow me to introduce my colleagues.” Graf Bornhof presented Herr Seidel and Herr Heine. “Howwayuh,” said Seidel. “Hi,” Heine added. American accents. Uncle Sam trained. Seidel was bald. Even his eyebrows were thinning into nothing. He wore rimless glasses which heightened the effect of the naked head. A Himmler clone, thought McEwen. But Heine was an imitation Ivy Leaguer: well-trimmed hair,
a Harris Tweed jacket, and thick-soled brocade shoes.

  They settled around the table. “Good to have you here again, Randolph,” Graf Bornhof said. “Trip went well?”

  “Got out just in time, I’d say, Alex. It turned jolly nasty yesterday in Berlin. The President pummelled with eggs. What went wrong?”

  Graf Bornhof’s smile dried up. “We had an emergency post-mortem last night,” he said. “The enforcers flew in and when we sat down, that was indeed the question. Where was the mistake? Was it the information, the manpower, the control system? Once we pieced things together, we decided the question should be otherwise. What went right? Almost everything went right, Randolph. The event was high risk – there were enough arguments against it – but overall it worked. Four hundred thousand people, orderly and peaceful. About fifty anarchists were intercepted on the way, sifted out from four hundred thousand participants. Seven got through, but they were dragged off the moment they cocked their arms to throw. I believe only one egg landed.” Graf Bornhof relaxed. How close to perfection can one get, his posture asked.

  “Excellent work, Alex. Suspected as much. I know from experience how challenging such events can be. The line between what goes right and what goes wrong can be faint, difficult to define. Too bad about that one egg…and on the President too.”

  “Indeed,” said Graf Bornhof.

  As Graf Bornhof spoke, Seidel, the Himmler clone, had been fingering a stack of newspaper clippings. “Correction,” he drawled in a gutturally modulated southern states’ accent. “See here. A diplo was in the line of fire too.” He pulled out a story with a paragraph circled in red and placed it in front of his boss who pushed it impatiently to the side.

  “A diplomatic incident as well? Oh dear, worse than I imagined,” McEwen said.

  Graf Bornhof didn’t bite. “Shall we commence?” he said.

  The agenda had two items: Phase Three of the handover and, at McEwen’s request, the need for an urgent twenty-four-seven, double-key operation.

  No aspect of the partnership undertaking caused McEwen more pain than Phase Three. Phase One catalogued Berlin Station operations. Phase Two passed electronic listening facilities, targeted mostly at Russian military camps around Berlin, plus surveillance responsibilities of German threats in Berlin, over to Uncle Teut. But Phase Three hurt. McEwen was to bare his covert networks and transfer control.

  With two half-round slotted keys, McEwen opened a case. He removed a dozen thin files marked Top Secret. He grabbed the top file, his least complicated operation, a pipeline into Berlin’s Lebanese underworld. Three Arab-Israelis with Beirut credentials had infiltrated the Lebanese community. The information haul – details on arms deals, timetables for shipments of chemical weapon ingredients, circumventions of export controls on inertial guidance systems – was significant. The meta-diplomat, master of Berlin Station, described the network, the procedures for information downloading, the intercepts of shipments destined for Libya, Iraq, Iran. When McEwen finished, Graf Bornhof took the file, studied it, asked questions and passed it to his subordinates who also looked it over.

  They worked their way meticulously through all the files. Information on the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union had been obtained from a group of social workers looking after refugees. There was a nearly completed organization chart of the Berlin branch of the Russian mafia put together by a diverse group – office cleaners, taxi drivers and some long haired youths running a bogus parcel delivery service. Reports had been assembled on an international armaments dealers’ association that met in a picturesque villa on the Tegeler See, using as cover an annual conference there on improving aid flows to poor countries. McEwen also had a handle on an international biological warfare cartel run from the laboratories of the Free University under the code name Sherry Trifle. And an army of paid informers in the Russian Army in East Germany had been productive over the years, but this group was beginning to disperse. Clerks in three banks in Berlin reported on the laundering of profits from European sales of pirated video and audio tapes from China. The fake patents business, the heroin trade, shady forms of counter-trade, Russian girls sent into prostitution around the world: the files were portraits of the black side of humanity. They symbolized McEwen’s view of the world, and his stand against it.

  As Phase Three proceeded and McEwen’s world passed into the responsibility of Uncle Teut, the ticking of a wall clock sounded like a dirge. Regularly a cuckoo defiantly stepped out, but its voice had been suppressed, so there was only the sound of a mechanism whirring. Which was how McEwen felt. He darkly believed that the clock, so sadly emasculated, had been hung there for a purpose.

  Seidel, eyes full of admiration, was the most vocal of the three. “Hey!” he would say. “This is neat. Real good. Full marks. Congrats.” Graf Bornhof was fascinated too, but more subdued. “Ingenious,” he occasionally allowed. “Clever. Innovative, Randolph. A master’s touch.”

  McEwen didn’t need to be told that. Innovation was his hallmark. He’d always been months ahead of global developments: Rhodesia when it became a break-away republic; Uganda at the time of Idi Amin; Jo’burg when apartheid was at its ugliest. He had had a stint in Cairo where he predicted the assassination of Sadat. In New Delhi he knew Indira Gandhi would not live much longer. Some of his networks still functioned, still churned out information, just kept ticking over – as regular as the bloody cuckoo clock. Berlin Station was the culmination. A lifetime of experience had come together. It had a master’s touch. He had predicted three anti-communist revolutions in eastern Europe. But the Wall was a very special chapter. Twelve hours. London knew twelve hours in advance that the Wall would open. Uncle Sam was informed by London thirty minutes later. We knew every peep made in the East German Central Committee. Had for years. And what did Uncle Teut know? Nothing beyond what he watched on television. The Chancellor was out of the country when it happened. He had to hurry back the next day! Resentment welled up in McEwen. Look at them. Three excited children eager for the goodies which Master Randolph was hanging on their Christmas tree.

  As Graf Bornhof and his men looked through the files, McEwen thought about the next agenda item. He rehearsed what he had on the consul. The case was not yet well-enough defined, but an instinct told him it was big, a major post-Cold War operation. If handled with discernment, Friend Tony would be his valedictory address. He had worked on the twenty-four-seven proposal for hours. Sipping port, puffing Havanas, he had read through his material, sifted, re-read, thought. His chin had dropped to his chest and he had closed his eyes. Who owned Friend Tony? What was the game? He had contemplated the quarry to try to gain entry to its soul. A patient, cunning man, the consul, a type that’s the most dangerous of all.

  The handover, coupled with explanations, questions and further elucidations, neared completion. McEwen indicated casually that a few, rich items were not yet ready for Stage Three. “The diplomatic scene, for one,” he said. “Subversion arriving via the diplomatic bag, that sort of thing. Insight about that channel has consistently been put to good use elsewhere: Mozambique, the Kurds, the Tamils. Next time, Alex? Is that alright? Move along to agenda item two?” McEwen was fiercely calm.

  “Of course,” said Graf Bornhof. “A snack, Randolph? Are you familiar with Nürnberger Lebkuchen? A local delicacy. It competes with shortcake I’d say, and Christmas pudding.”

  “Better than both, I’m sure,” Randolph McEwen said politely, taking two.

  “Agenda item two then,” Graf Bornhof said brightly.

  “We have a little problem in Berlin at the moment,” the master of Berlin Station began thoughtfully. “Actually, it could be a big problem if something isn’t done. If things get out of hand you might have to do the clean up, Alex.”

  McEwen returned Graf Bornhof’s pleasant gaze. He described the proven value over the years of a reliable source in one of the diplomatic missions, the initial suspicions the consul had triggered, the Spandau mystery, the solitary walks in Ea
st Berlin. He laid emphasis on Hanbury’s diffidence, the best ever seen, an extraordinary manipulation of an image. Expertly, always in a low, sometimes mournful voice, eyelids drooping, McEwen wove the facts into a story. A troubled upbringing, a two year gap in the official biography, the evidence in the Stasi archives. “Those files are useful, Alex. I’ve looked at them. They record secret meetings Hanbury had in the late sixties in East Berlin.” McEwen’s voice dropped further still. “At the same time he was arrested at a disturbance instigated by the Red Army Faction in West Berlin, but immediately released. Lack of evidence. Next, he’s home. He joins the Canadian foreign service.” McEwen’s tranquil hands momentarily unclasped with disbelief, as if the lunacy of it was too great to comprehend. He remained lost in dismal thoughts, shaking his head, until Graf Bornhof asked him to continue. With a tremor the master of Berlin Station restarted.

  “He throws a blanket over the Berlin period. No one knows about it. He embarks on a dull career. More than twenty years of foreign service humdrum. A feint, Alex. A marvellous example of taking time to acquire perfect cover…” McEwen’s voice trailed off. “I don’t have all the answers, but I know this: he’s been a sleeper all these years and now he’s becoming active. Something big is happening. We must step in. Twenty-four-seven. I don’t see an alternative. We ought to set it up, double quick.” The master stopped; his eyes narrowed to slits.

  Graf Bornhof cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “food for thought, if not quite sustenance for action.” “And this guy is Canadian?” said Heine in his Ivy League accent. McEwen nodded wearily. “I’ll be damned.” Heine continued. “Then he’s the one that got it at the rally. Look, he’s the other guy that got an egg.” He pushed the press clipping back under Graf Bornhof’s nose who, with scarcely a glance, shoved it towards McEwen. “Jumpin’ Jesus,” Seidel said. “We’re letting him get that close to the President?” McEwen nodded. He appreciated the alarm. “Let’s not rush,” cautioned Graf Bornhof. He pointed out that twenty-four-seven operations were difficult to set up, and expensive; there were legal implications deriving from the constitution; it had to withstand the scrutiny of the courts. “I know,” the master said wearily. “I know all that.”