A Spy's Life

by Henry Porter

  In a short time they were heading along the Vltava River. He tried to get his bearings. At the back of his mind he was orienting himself so that he knew the direction of an area named Dejvice where he was held the first night of his arrest in the StB building. The date was Friday, 17 November 1989, a propitious but bloody day which came to mark the beginning of the Velvet Revolution. Harland didn’t learn the importance of the events he witnessed until long afterwards.

  Harland looked out across the river to the Old Town Hall and remembered Griswald going off to meet his contact. There had been little for Harland to do so he had spent much of the day sightseeing in the Old Town. As the day wore on it became obvious that something was brewing. Every so often he would come across furtive groups of students passing leaflets to each other, then melting away into side streets as the plainclothes security police arrived. A young woman in a white knitted hat had pressed a flyer into his hand, announcing a march in memory of Jan Opletal, a student who’d been killed by the Nazis a little over fifty years before. They talked for a short time. Harland said that it seemed downright perverse that while the world held its breath to see whether the East German uprising would spread to Czechoslovakia, the students were preparing to commemorate an obscure martyr of the Nazi era. She replied that it was a symbolic protest against the regime. In the two decades since the Russian invasion and the collapse of the Prague Spring, it had become second nature to the Czechs to make their protests metaphorically – at one remove.

  Harland was much more alert to the movement of security forces than the students and, as dusk gathered that afternoon, he noticed the discreet arrival of troops dressed in khaki and red berets. It transpired that these were members of the Division for Special Purposes, an anti-terrorist group that had been infiltrated into the city to set a trap. A few hours later they would wade into the students, causing hundreds of casualties. When the fleeing students banged on the doors along Narodni Street to be let in, their fellow Czechs were too frightened to open up.

  He had been tempted to stay and see what happened, but he decided to make himself scarce and returned to the ill-lit room where he and Griswald had camped out for a day and a night. Five StB men and three uniformed policemen were waiting for him. They were convinced that he had been sent by foreign powers to ferment revolution on the streets. The leaflet in his pocket about that evening’s demonstration didn’t help his denial. He was taken to StB headquarters and questioned. The next morning, as open dissent began to break out among all classes and professions in Prague, and Václav Havel hurried back from his retreat at Hradecek to lead the revolution, Harland was handed over to three men who took him to a villa. Time rushed forward for the Czechs but for Harland it went into reverse – back to the Stalinist purges.

  All of that was very near the surface now. Harland made a conscious effort to think of something else.

  The driver took a sharp right, away from the sweep of the Vltava, and rattled down a cobbled side street. As they waited at some lights, he turned round and handed Harland a monochrome tourist map of Prague Castle. Harland unfolded the map and examined it, remembering that before he was arrested he had planned to come up to the ancient citadel which overlooks Prague. In the second courtyard he found a red circle marking an object in the centre, which the key told him was a fountain.

  They tore up the final few hundred yards to a deserted square in front of the castle. There the snow streamed across the headlights almost horizontally. Harland paid off the driver who responded by making a shooing motion with his hands to indicate that he should go through the gateway in front of the castle. It was bitterly cold. He passed between two sentries who did not seem to notice him and stole into the great, dark precincts of the castle. The fountain was ahead of him in the first courtyard, but not a soul was to be seen. Some way off he heard the stamp of more guards marching to their watch. He walked gingerly across new snow and passed under a second archway to find he had run slap-bang up against the west front of St Vitus’s Cathedral. The façade rose up before him with the effect of a photographic negative, the snow picking out the details of the carvings. He looked up for a moment, then retraced his steps back to the fountain, followed by three guards in blue greatcoats and high fur collars who had appeared from the direction of the Old Royal Palace. From nowhere a tall figure had materialised by the fountain and was tracing a circle in the snow with his feet, as he talked animatedly on a phone. He raised a hand in acknowledgement of Harland and finished the conversation.

  In an educated accent reminiscent of Tomas’s, he said, ‘You are Macy Harp’s friend? Harland?’

  ‘Yes.’ Harland took in the gaunt, slightly hunched giant. He wore an ancient brown leather coat which rose up his back and sagged at the front. Under this was a suit and badly knotted tie. His dark hair was lank and long, parted at the side in a style that had been fixed in the seventies.

  ‘I am Zikmund. Mr Harp is a friend of mine also. We have to wait a little so we should welcome the New Year with some beer – no?’

  ‘Zikmund?’

  ‘Zikmund Myslbek.’

  They walked to a Skoda outside the castle and Zikmund folded himself into the driver’s seat. Ten minutes later they were in a nameless bar full of smoke and the smell of beer. Zikmund gestured to a door at the back that turned out to be the entrance to a cavernous pool hall, at the end of which was a stage.

  ‘No band this evening,’ said Zikmund apologetically. ‘The fun was last night.’

  They sat down. Beers were brought, and two horseshoe frankfurters coated in mustard. Harland looked at his companion in the light. He guessed he was in his mid-fifties. His face had once been very striking, but now his cheeks were sunken and his skin was grey from work and cigarettes. He was evidently a prodigious smoker and forked the frankfurter into his mouth while a cigarette smouldered in his left hand.

  They drank in silence for a while, Zikmund eyeing up a voluptuously built woman who was packed into jeans and a blouse and teetered on high heels. Without taking his eyes from her, he said suddenly, ‘I am sorry for what happened to you here in Prague, Mr Harland.’

  ‘Macy filled you in,’ said Harland. ‘Do you mind me asking how you know him?’

  ‘Not at all. We met back in the seventies when he was working for your people.’ Harland remembered that Macy and The Bird had briefly had legitimate jobs with SIS. ‘I passed on the work of dissidents that could not be published here to Macy. He took them to the West.’

  ‘And what do you do now?’

  ‘I used to be deputy director of the new intelligence services for the Czech Republic.’

  Harland couldn’t conceal his surprise. Zikmund smiled again. ‘We had an excellent chief after the revolution. I was his deputy when we set up the new service. Here we have one service that combines domestic and foreign work.’

  ‘So what do you do now?’

  ‘I do jobs here and there and get to sleep till noon when I want.’

  Harland looked at Zikmund with new eyes.

  ‘What did you train in?’

  ‘Architecture. I was an architect but I could not have a job under the Communist regime. So I translated for a living and I cooked.’

  ‘You cooked!’

  ‘Yes, I cooked and I wrote a couple of cookery books – traditional Bohemian recipes and my own. Cooking became a passion for us after the Prague Spring. The Czechs hibernated. We each lit a fire inside and kept warm and waited for another spring to come. We made love, we talked to people we trusted and we cooked. Cookery was a good business to be in – more cookery books were sold than any other type of book in the seventies.’ He paused. ‘So, about this woman. Macy told me about her but none of the names mean anything to me. If she lived in Prague, I am sure I would know her. Still, a lot of those people who worked for the StB in the old regime keep their heads down now.’

  Harland showed him the three cards – Eva Houresh’s student ID of 1975 and the Communist party membership cards for Irina Rath f
rom 1980 and Irina Kochalyin from 1988.

  The last one appeared to mean something to Zikmund. He looked at all three again and seemed to be about to say something, then thought better of it.

  ‘Are we to assume that her maiden name was Irina Rath?’

  ‘Yes. Her son is named Rath and I know that Eva was not her real name.’

  ‘But she is not in any phone book in the Czech Republic. I looked today.’

  ‘But you have access to the old files?’

  ‘Unofficial access,’ said Zikmund, with a smile. ‘I hear that this woman was once regarded as important. Her file is kept away from the others. We will have to wait until my contact calls me.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Harland, ‘do you know if anyone from the British SIS has recently had access to the archive?’

  Zikmund looked longingly at the buttocks of the girl in stiletto heels who was stretching over the pool table for a difficult shot.

  ‘This lady here, she is the girlfriend of one of the big Russian mafia bosses when he is in town. She is an athlete. She throws the discus for Czech Republic. A mighty woman, no?’ He looked at Harland. ‘Yes, they were here two weeks ago. I do not know what they were looking for. They spent a short time here and they didn’t get to see any of the special files. Very few do.’

  Harland explained that they must have seen something of Eva’s file because they’d obtained pictures of her from the early years.

  ‘Maybe something, but not all. We will hear later. My friend will be able to tell you what they saw.’

  They drank for a further hour. Harland found himself warming to the Czech’s lack of ceremony. Secrecy for him was plainly a matter of occasional expedience, not a religious faith. He said something on these lines when he leaned over and grasped Harland’s shoulder.

  ‘Tell me why you English believe espionage is like gardening.’

  Harland said he didn’t know what he meant.

  ‘Listen to the language used in intelligence work – you cultivate contacts, you plant listening devices or bugs, you have moles and you weed documents. Why is this so?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I think the mole was invented by a novelist.’

  At half past midnight Zikmund received a call and they left, this time for a much longer drive to the southern outskirts of the city. Eventually they pulled up outside a building with an anonymous brick façade and got out. Zikmund pressed the bell at the only door and spoke into an entry-phone. There was a buzz and then a clunk as the action of a heavy electronic lock worked. They passed into a short corridor and repeated the procedure at a second door, which opened inwards into a long, cool space lit by fluorescent strips. Harland realised that the StB archive was housed in what had once been a refrigerated warehouse. A sprinkler system had been installed and rows of shelves stretched to the end of the building, but its original use was evident from the rails, chains and lifting gear that still hung from the ceiling. To one side was a long metal table with half a dozen reading lights, and beyond this four construction site offices joined together to provide desk space for the staff.

  ‘Here the guilt of a nation is stored,’ said Zikmund quietly. ‘Every betrayal, small or large, of fifteen million people is in these shelves: every whisper of the neighbourhood informant, every dirty little compromise made by the ordinary man trying to keep his head above water. Every single squalid word is here, kept under lock and key. Very few of our people have seen inside this building.’

  ‘Did you ever read your own file?’ Harland now saw that the space was much greater than he had thought and that the archives ran off into the distance where the lights had not been turned on. He also spotted some sort of safe, way off in the distance.

  Zikmund nodded slowly.

  ‘It was the first thing I did when I got my job. One of the worst decisions I ever made. I discovered too much about the people I thought I trusted. I tried to put what I knew behind me, but it was difficult to forget that a friend I had known since architectural school had kept tabs on me for the authorities. Every conversation we had had was noted. It was for this reason that he found himself a very good job and that I was never permitted to work as an architect. I do not see him.’

  A man issued from the office and approached them. He looked at Harland over a pair of glasses and started speaking rapidly in Czech. Zikmund translated.

  ‘He says he has found the file you are looking for but that it only goes up to the early eighties. This he did not give to the two gentlemen who were here before Christmas. He says they were interested in seeing your file, but although there are cross-references to your name, it appears to have gone missing. He did not like the men who came. He says they were arrogant and he didn’t oblige them too much. They took copies of some pictures from the Intelligence Operations Section. But they didn’t get much information.’

  ‘Would he mind also showing me the files that he gave them?’ asked Harland.

  The man appeared to understand. He handed Harland a green folder and pointed to the desk, then set off to the far end of the building.

  ‘I must sit here with you,’ said Zikmund. ‘I’m responsible for you.’

  Harland turned on a reading light and opened the file. ‘I’m glad you’re here because this is all in Czech.’

  With little sense of expectation or dread, Harland began to sift through the pages of Eva’s file, inspecting each entry then handing it to Zikmund for translation. Her full name turned out to include Eva. She was Irina Eva Rath, the only daughter of Hanna Rath. She was born in 1952 in Prague and attended school and university in the city, passing out top of her languages course in 1970. Zikmund remarked that it was unusual for someone to leave university so early and that she must have possessed a lot of natural talent. Copies of her grades in English and German were included, which confirmed this.

  There was a long section devoted to her mother’s circumstances and what her neighbours said about her and her daughter. They appeared to have kept to themselves, although mother and daughter were known to be active supporters of the regime and both possessed Communist party membership. The mother was on several local committees and was thought to be a willing, though unproductive, informant. When she left university, Irina Rath was recruited into the StB and trained. No details of this were given but it was mentioned that she operated under the code name Lapis. ‘She was plainly very promising material,’ said Zikmund, ‘and attractive too. I understand what you saw in her, Mr Harland.’ He picked up the black and white study of Lapis that had slipped from a cellophane envelope.

  Harland had been looking at it too. It was odd: he felt none of the excitement that he’d experienced when Tomas first showed him the identity cards in New York.

  Zikmund read on in silence, which made Harland impatient. He pressed him to say what he had found.

  ‘Everything about Rome is here. It seems you were not her first conquest. There was an American named Morris who helped the StB at Nato – he was Drew Morris, a naval attaché, aged thirty.’ That was news to Harland. Zikmund flipped a couple of pages. ‘Her controller is this man who is referred to as K.’

  ‘What else does it say?’

  ‘This document has been weeded.’ He looked up and winked. ‘There are two pages missing. You see, you appear at the bottom of this page and then there is no mention of you again. Also a name has been erased here and here.’ He held up the paper to show how words had been razored out of the typescript and replaced with tiny strips of paper which had been stuck over the back of the sheet. ‘This must have happened before the revolution. Nobody would bother now. Nor would they get access to the files.’ He stopped and looked again. ‘From the sense of these pages I guess they have cut out mentions of the man known as K. But they have missed one or two, especially at the end. Do you know who K is, Mr Harland?’

  ‘It could be Josef Kapek – but somehow I doubt it. Kapek was one of my contacts after 1980. He worked in the Czechoslovak Trade Mission in London and would be in no position t
o control Lapis. Besides, he was very low grade. He drank a lot and in the time I knew him, which was about ten years, he never gained a single piece of useful intelligence. A dunderhead.’

  ‘Dunderhead,’ repeated Zikmund, relishing the word. ‘Then we look for another Mister K. But, still, Kapek tells us something, does he not? It means that you were being handled through the StB, not the KGB. That gives me an idea about K.’

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘All in good time. Tell me, did you help these dunderheads, or were you leading them up the garden path? Did you give them much genuine information?’ Zikmund contemplated him over narrow spectacle frames.

  ‘No. I gave them things that would mislead or stuff they already knew. You’re familiar with the nonsense of intelligence work: you know what I’m talking about. Look, why don’t you read the file from beginning to end? I feel I’d get a better idea of it then.’

  Zikmund began in a reluctant monotone. There was a lot of operational detail – the record of their being followed in Rome and to Ancona, but not Orvieto. The conversations they had about his exact role at the British embassy in Rome were also described. There wasn’t much that surprised or shocked Harland. In Orvieto she had given him an account of everything that she could remember telling them. There were a few other notes. One stated that Lapis ceased all operational work in 1988 and that for five years before that she had served as a translator and code expert, occasionally on attachment to the service of a friendly power. ‘That means KGB,’ said Zikmund.

  They looked through the file again. The librarian brought two much thicker folders from the dark interior of the archive before returning to the cabin where he put his feet up to doze.