by John Gardner
The area appeared clean, so he finally approached the apartment block. Funny how one remembered tiny mental things. As he climbed the steps, he heard, not Mahler, but the first repetitive drama of Stravinksy’s thumping, rhythmic strings from Sacre du Printemps. After all these years—fifteen years—to remember such a thing.
He recalled little of his conversation with the Birkemanns: except that Beatrix had remained very calm. He gave them the route they should take. The timings, the distractions that would be made. They could go tonight, though it was about five kilometres journey to the crossing point—they lived near the Brandenburg Gate, but that area was quite unsafe.
Today the Birkemanns lived on a small pension, old and crippled, in Hampshire. They had made it. Not like Gertrude Muller, or Willy Blenden. The list went on for ever—Herbie’s personal roll of honour from those days: Becher, Kutte, Reissven, Emil Habicht, Julie Zudrang. All the Schnitzer Group.
He did remember leaving the apartment, however. Walking away, turning the corner, then feeling the clutching hand on his heart, as he saw the two men loitering on the far corner. He knew, immediately, they were security—in the street lamp it was impossible to tell if they were part of Ulbricht’s State Security Ministry—the SSD—or the Russians.
One of them detached himself from the other, crossing the wet street towards Herbie who tensed himself in readiness. Any fast action would bring retribution from the other man standing only a few metres away.
The man approaching held a cigarette cupped in his hand. “A light, comrade,” he called. Herbie smiled his most ingenuous grin, and used his left hand to take out the matches (always keep things like matches in your left pocket—right, if you’re left-handed—to leave your killing arm free, they had taught him). But the man only wanted a light. He mumbled his thanks, saying it was a filthy night to be out. Then, just as he was moving away, spoke clearly—“Vascovsky wants to meet you, comrade. A private talk. Tomorrow, or Thursday, at eleven. Be at the Thaelmann Platz, near the press office entrance. He’ll come alone by car, and wait for fifteen minutes.”
Herbie had almost forgotten the incident until now. It was in his report, and they had talked about it during the debriefing. After that he had honestly thought there was no way of escape. Vascovsky obviously wanted to take him intact; thinking he might fall for some kind of covert meeting. A ‘dangle’, they had called it. Vascovsky was so sterile nobody could possibly have believed it to be genuine. Yet it was the kind of trick for which at least one of his people—Emil Habicht, he thought—had fallen.
Now Mistochenkov was saying it was genuine. That Vascovsky wanted to deal with him. That Vascovsky knew about his Telegraph Boys.
Herbie slid down in his seat, looking Pavel clear in the eyes. “Telegraph Boys?” he asked, face bland as a child at the font. “So what are the Telegraph Boys?”
To his credit Herbie did not move a muscle as Pavel recited the ciphers—“Horus … Gemini … Priam … Electra … Nestor … Hecuba …”
Music screamed in Herbie’s head. Stravinsky’s violins again; like entering the Birkemanns’ apartment. He used his stupid grin and quoted Shakespeare: Hamlet. “What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba; That he should weep for her?”
Then Pavel Mistochenkov said something that, though he could not know it, brought him very close to death, at Herbie’s hands inside the car. He smiled, unpleasantly. “Shouldn’t you rather say, What’s Electra to him or he to Electra; That he should weep for her?”
Pavel had known it. The secret within the secret. The name Herbie could not dare to breathe, let alone think about. That Mistochenkov should actually know, and voice the fact of Herbie Kruger’s one true affection, seemed obscene. For a moment—a second only—Herbie felt the pain and grief; loneliness, and the unfair life that had given him one love, only to take it away, through duty and responsibility. The thing seemed worse because this seeker for easy pickings—this traitor—had said it.
Herbie gave the Russian a long, sad look, hoping the hatred did not show. He wanted to leave the car, go to Max: tell him to finish Tapeworm there and then. But his professionalism overrode emotion, like some automatic safety valve.
“Tell me what it’s all about, Pavel. You’re not making sense. Tell me from the start. You say Vascovsky wanted to do a deal. To me Vascovsky’s always been the devoted Party man; the complete operative. Why should he want a deal?”
For a second he did not think the bluff had worked. Then Pavel began to talk. It was soon apparent the bluff had not worked completely, because the Russian made it plain that he was on secure ground.
It was as early as 1961 that Pavel noticed the change in Vascovsky. The Old Man had been on leave. To Moscow. He returned almost a different person. Pavel first put it down to troubles with Madame Vascovsky. He knew the Old Man’s wife pestered him about being allowed to come and live in East Berlin. “Happily for all of us, it was out of the question. Nobody wanted even senior officers’ wives to see conditions in East Germany; let alone East Berlin. His wife was a menace.”
But Pavel soon discovered that the change in the Old Man was not to do with his wife. When the Wall was going up, and everything was at sixes and sevens, Vascovsky’s department was working at full stretch. One night, after a particularly busy day, Pavel was asked back to the apartment. They were alone, and the Old Man started to drink. Suddenly he asked Pavel if his aide ever questioned whether they were right.
“I didn’t know what he meant. I asked him, ‘Right about what?’” Vascovsky laughed, hurting Pavel by coming out with what Herbie knew all too well; saying that Pavel was a political innocent. He kept repeating the word ‘oppression’. “Look at this damned Wall we’re building,” he ranted. “To keep people in. To stop people thinking for themselves. When did you last think for yourself, Pavel?”
At first Mistochenkov had been frightened. Then he listened. Vascovsky still did his work with ability, the same devoted expertise. Yet there were subtle changes. He did not seem to enjoy the chase; the sifting of facts; the manoeuvres of the secret fight. They talked more—alone, late at night. “We all speak with great pride about the Revolution,” the senior man would say. “So we should be proud. The society which bred the Revolution was degenerate, corrupt, unfair. The men and women of 1917 were right. Change, revolution, had to come. But what has happened since then, comrade Pavel? The creed of Communism is all very well: it is similar to the creed of Christianity. Yet neither of these creeds works. For religious and political creeds to function, there must be freedom of choice. Where is your freedom, comrade? Where is your choice?”
He told Pavel what politicians in the West called the frontiers around the Warsaw Pact countries—“The Iron Curtain. That make you happy, living in the freedom of the Iron Curtain?”
Pavel boasted that, on several occasions, he had argued with his superior, and once—he thought it was around the end of 1963—had asked him why he did not go and seek his beloved freedom, in the West.
Herbie asked what Vascovsky had replied.
“It was night. We had been drinking, but talking most seriously. I could follow his arguments. I saw his viewpoint. In a way I agreed.”
“But you didn’t report these conversations?”
Pavel looked away, saying no. That was wrong; he should have reported them. Then he excused himself by claiming that, as a junior officer, he would not have been believed. In any case, the conversations were private. Vascovsky was more than just his chief. He was more like a father.
Herbie pressed him about Vascovsky’s answer to Pavel’s taunt about fleeing to the West.
“I can give you his exact words. He repeated them many times. Almost right up to the end. He said, ‘I dare not go to the West, little Pavel. I would be too important to them here. You’ve seen how we try to do it—without much success. They would keep me for a few hours, then smuggle me back with promises. Promises for my old age. A safe retreat, if I go on doing my job and provide them with information. They are a
s ruthless as ourselves. Twenty-four hours and I would be back, with a good cover story, and it would be I who made dead-drops, and passed information in the streets and cafes.’ He was afraid, Herbie. Afraid of being sent back to penetrate his own service for you. Would you have done such a thing?”
Almost certainly, Herbie told him. The picture was starting to become brilliantly clear now. “You knew he wanted out. He told you as much, Pavel. He capitulated at last, and planned to go: right? What about your conscience?”
The Russian said he had become confused. Vascovsky almost convinced him. There were days when he saw, with his own eyes, that the Old Man was right. Other days he wondered.
“But you came in the end. After his death. You even used papers, and a disguise, provided by him. You must have been party to a conspiracy, Pavel. Consider it carefully. You blame Jacob Vascovsky. You say you ran because he was guilty, and therefore you were guilty by association. You were as guilty as hell, Pavel. You were party to some conspiracy. There must have been some agreement between you about coming to the West.”
It was as though Herbie’s words were the first to make any real impact on Mistochenkov’s conscience. The Russian sat stock still, his face a mask of shock, his mind revolving around the realities which he had refused to face, possibly until this very moment.
There were tears clouding the Russian’s eyes. Under other circumstances Herbie would have felt compassion. Deep within him was the explosive hatred of what Mistochenkov had said about Electra: what he knew about Herbie’s own private life, those many years ago; and, most of all—because Kruger’s dedication lay in his work—the fear which blossomed from that list of cipher names, enumerating the Telegraph Boys with such accuracy.
9
THE TEMPTATION WAS VERY great. Herbie dearly wanted to call Charles over, and drive back to the house. He would have preferred to complete the interrogation in comparative comfort. But there was no safety in it. Having brought Tapeworm this far along the road, the thing had to be completed. Mistochenkov was in an unstable state. The drive back to Charlton might clam him up again—this time for good.
“You were party to some conspiracy,” Herbie repeated. “There must have been some agreement—between yourself and Vascovsky—about beating it to the West.” He continued, calmly; reminding Mistochenkov of his own earlier words, when talking about finding Vascovsky’s body.
“When you went to the apartment you told me your hope was that the Colonel-General would take you into the West with him.”
Pavel nodded again. Behind the eyes the fear turned to anguish. He repeated that they had discussed it.
“You did more than discuss it, Pavel. You prepared it. You had papers, sample lenses to prove your story—that you represented a manufacturer meeting a British businessman. Did Vascovsky have papers also?”
“Yes. After finding his body I burned them. Flushed away the ashes. I knew where they were kept.” His voice rose, suddenly, angrily. “It was his fault. He became dissatisfied. His whole life seemed to be built on lies.”
“In our world we live on lies.” Herbie tasted the bile in his own mouth.
Pavel said it was not just a question of his work. “He lost all respect for the Party; for the State; for Russia itself. He would tell me that we had taken the wrong turning long ago. The dreams of Marx, Lenin and the rest had been twisted: that the fight for peace was a charade.”
“And what’s all this about—what did you call them?—the Telegraph Boys?”
Mistochenkov laughed, telling Herbie not to play the innocent. Then he shrugged. Okay, he would play games: pretend Herbie knew nothing about the Telegraph Boys.
They had worked as a close, élite team—Vascovsky and Mistochenkov—almost from the start. The structure of their department demanded that all information should be limited to a few people only. The same need-to-know principle used by the Americans and by Herbie’s own Service.
Towards the end of 1962 Vascovsky told Mistochenkov that he had made a breakthrough on the British front. “We knew your people were running a long-term network: recruiting; subversion; political, economic, scientific and military intelligence in the DDR. We knew the centre was in East Berlin. The Old Man came up with a sheaf of work names. It was your lot, Herbie. Vascovsky told me we should keep it to ourselves: just the two of us.”
Over the next few months Pavel knew that his chief had made some kind of contact within Herbie’s network. “He was very private about it. A year, a good year, went by before he told me what he knew. Even then there were no names to begin with. Only the work names.”
“And the Telegraph Boys?”
“Much later. Not until March 1965. No names, though. I knew the work names long before the real identities of your people. The Old Man only gave out the real names when we took action. Early in ’65. Karl; Vixen; Peter and Paul—they were that couple, yes? The Birkemanns? Vascovsky let them go. But he knew them all, very early on. All members of what you called the Schnitzer Group.”
“Yet you did nothing?”
“Vascovsky did nothing. He had the knowledge. They were neutralised.”
Like hell, thought Herbie. He knew the full strength of that. His Schnitzer Group had been far from neutralised. At least, not until a few weeks before the blow-out. If Vascovsky had penetrated his group as early as ’62, or ’63, he had let them get away with murder.
Pavel suddenly laughed aloud. “Schnitzer”—the laugh rising—“Schnitzer. Blunder. That was you, Herbie, wasn’t it? Blunder?”
Herbie gave a slow nod. He asked how many people knew details of the network. Only Vascovsky and himself, Pavel told him. “We kept it sealed up. Hermetic. The Old Man knew real names: identities. I knew only the work names. Until he fingered you. March ’65. When he found out about the Telegraph Boys.”
“So the pair of you knew about the Schnitzer Group—my group—for about two or three years: a long time. But it was not passed on for action.”
Pavel shook his head. In the mid-sixties he had finally fallen in with the Old Man. Rightly or wrongly, he came to believe Vascovsky. Mistochenkov agreed that he was also disenchanted with the way things were going. “We decided to try and make contact. We used subordinates. But nothing was kept on file; nobody knew names except ourselves. That was when we began to search for you. The Old Man wanted to talk to you—to make certain that, if we came over together, there would be no plans to play us back. He needed to be clear on that.”
Vascovsky married up the work name, Schnitzer, with Kruger at about the same time as he found out about the Telegraph Boys. “The Old Man’s contact within your group kept some of the cards close to the chest. Then—that was March ’65—he got another lead. New information. But even that one held out on him. He told me about it one evening. I got a ’phone call to go to his apartment.”
Lotte was there, but they had quarrelled about something. Vascovsky sent her packing. He drank a lot, sat Pavel down, and gave him the full strength on Schnitzer’s Group: names and everything. He knew where most of them could be found, and where they were placed. Then, after more drinking, he told his partner that he had a new contact. Schnitzer had recruited six special operators, back in 1961. He gave Pavel the ciphers—Priam, Horus, Electra, Gemini and the others—and disclosed their purpose. “It was a clever move.”
“Did he say where the information came from?”
“One of the six. He sometimes became boastful, particularly when he’d had a few drinks. He laughed a lot, and said he had Schnitzer by the balls: he had spun one of his group; and now he’d spun one of these Telegraph Boys. They would do a deal. You would do a deal to save your people.”
That night, in the apartment, the two KGB men made their plans. They would draw Herbie out of cover. The last thing they wanted was to arrest him. That would have made it too official.
“You went along with him, then?”
“By then I was sure he was right. Herbie, that was my last moment of peace. It was the Old Man’s la
st moment also, I suppose. There was no turning back.”
They had to let Herbie know his people were blown. Sitting in the car, looking at the sombre drizzle, Herbie remembered very clearly how he had first got the message. Julie Zudrang was arrested. Then, a day later, a whole crop went—Reissven, Kutte, Becher.
He flashed Berlin Station and waited, for nearly twenty-four hours, before a courier came over. He was a man they often used, a tub-like fellow with thick glasses. He had been killed in a border shooting a few months later. Herbie never knew his real name, calling him Blucher. The man looked like a bullfrog, but was really a bit of a chameleon. Blucher gave him orders. Not instructions; direct orders from London. He was to close up shop. Keep the Telegraph Boys in place, but reassure them. London did not think they were in danger: there was a list of emergency communication measures. The Telegraph Boys were Herbie’s priority. It would take a day, at least, for him to go through the various cut-outs and drops; get new instructions to them. Blucher said Berlin was arranging new handlers. After dealing with the Telegraph Boys Herbie was free to issue warnings to whoever was left; then get out himself.
Herbie recalled how Blucher had neatly gone over London’s choice of his own people—the ones they would prefer out—as they sat talking, in one of the only two safe houses the network kept in East Berlin. This one was above an Apotheke near the Alexanderplatz, and smelled musty, damp. Chemical odours rose from the little dispensary below.
London suggested the Birkemanns, Emil Habicht, Moritz Zeich and a girl called Luzia Gabell. Herbie agreed, did his rounds of the Telegraph Boys in quick time, then went for Habicht—because he happened to be the nearest.
Habicht had already gone. An important meeting, his landlady said. A man had come. Emil left soon after. Herbie went straight on to the Birkemanns, and had the experience with Vascovsky’s messengers.
