by John Gardner
Priam looked up; and, for a second, there was no recognition in his eyes. Schnabeln blurted out, “I haven’t seen you since that terrible day I got the telegram.”
The light dawned. “My God. Man, it’s been a long time.”
The fellow to whom he had been talking turned and looked aggressively at Schnabeln. If it was some rough trade he was after there’d be plenty in later, the man said.
“Do you mind?” Schnabeln all but minced. “He’s an old friend, and I’d like a quick word with him.”
Priam settled the matter with speed. “Is it about your Mama?” he asked.
Schnabeln said, yes; he needed to talk. Privately. It would not take long. “I’ll return him to you in perfect condition,” he glared at Priam’s pick-up, who flounced off, saying he would believe that when he saw it.
In the street Priam asked what was wrong, and how Spendthrift had found him.
That did not matter. Schnabeln was precise, walking fast in the general direction of the car. It would not take a minute, he told Priam, but it was urgent: sizing up the man, making sure he was sober and able to take in orders, which he gave rapidly, stressing times and places; body talk; making him repeat everything.
It took about ten minutes. Schnabeln realised he should not have been so concerned. These people were all seasoned professionals—even the one among them who was doubling. They would obey instructions, though he had no doubt that, once the double was alerted, a lot of back-watching had to be done. He arranged Priam’s pick-up for one-thirty. His would be the first afternoon meeting at the Behrenstrasse house: though, as far as Priam was concerned, the pick-up point would be the meeting place.
He walked back with the scruffy little man, who appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the whole business. They parted near Der Hengst, with Schnabeln’s warning for him to be on time.
Walter Girren, like most theatre technicians, was a man of habit: not the best quality for one engaged in the secret war, but a necessary occupational hazard which, as it happened, suited the purpose of Herbie Kruger and his other masters.
Depending on what was playing, Girren left the Berliner Ensemble at roughly the same time each evening. Tonight Christoph Schnabeln was there about ten minutes ahead of him, sitting in his parked car, adjacent to the stage door: as though waiting to collect him by arrangement.
As the wraith-like Girren came out of the building so Schnabeln quickly opened the car door and hailed him. “Over here, Walter. I’m over here.”
Never show surprise at crash meetings or contacts, they taught at the school. So far that night Schnabeln had experienced nothing but sound professionalism from all concerned. Walter Girren was no exception, raising an arm in greeting, and walking quickly to the Wartburg as though this was an old prearranged appointment. In fact the stage door keeper, who saw the incident—and had no cause to think about it until a long time after—muttered to himself, wondering where the thin, pale Girren was off to this week-end. Perhaps the country with friends?
Schnabeln pulled the car slowly from the kerb. Not much traffic, but they could drive quietly for fifteen minutes without danger. After that Schnabeln would have to use another telephone. Try for Hecuba again. The hotel was the last place from which he wanted to make that call: too many busy ears on the switchboards, and the public ’phones almost certainly had surveillance on a daily tape basis.
Girren was calm, lighting a cigarette as he asked if there was a flap.
As with the others, Christoph Schnabeln told him the briefest, bare facts; though Girren needed more details than the rest. First, he had two subjects with whom crash contact had to be made; second, it would be Girren who would be watching Schnabeln’s—and possibly Herbie Kruger’s—back, through what looked like being a long, traumatic Sunday.
“Jesus,” Girren breathed softly. “Saturday night. The best night, of course, for arranging crash meetings. I might have to cut a few corners.” His subjects were Gemini, the little jokester who worked at the Soviet HQ at Karlshorst; and Nestor, the grey filing clerk at the National People’s Army HQ. Real names—not known officially to Girren—Moritz Winter and Nikolas Monch.
“One’s easy,” Girren said, still speaking softly, as though he had a throat infection and was losing his voice. “I’ve got a brush drop with Nestor early tomorrow. I’ll have to crash him and speak in plain language.”
As the drop was early—“When he goes to collect his milk,” Girren said—they mentally pencilled him in for number three on the morning schedule. Schnabeln did some calculations. At Weibensee he had Horus for eleven o’clock. Now, Girren would fix Nestor for one o’clock. He had Priam set for the three o’clock at the Behren Strasse house, and Electra for the four o’clock—final—meeting.
This meant that Gemini and Hecuba would have to be fitted for the noon date at Weibensee and the two o’clock at the Behrenstrasse. The pick-ups were to be scheduled on the half-hours—a crime in the school’s book, for they hated meetings on the dot of hours, quarters or halves. By right you had to play the numbers and set meetings for odd times—twelve minutes-past or twenty-two minutes before the hour.
Herbie had said forget the strict ground rules. Make it simple. There were six to be interviewed, backs to be watched, and no one subject had to bump into another. So they were doing it on the hour, driving the next candidate around until the coast was clear. The only real problem was getting Herbie down from Weibensee to the Behrenstrasse after the one o’clock meeting, and in time for that at two o’clock. Watching was going to be one hell of a problem. Schnabeln even considered using a sympathetic taxi driver who imagined he dealt with a smuggler.
Girren took the news that he would be looking after Schnabeln’s moves without comment. That was easy. So was Nestor. Gemini was his headache. He looked slyly towards Schnabeln. “You fancy a trek around the bars on the Karl-Marx-Allee?”
Schnabeln did not have the time for games like that. “Have to do it myself, then.” Girren sighed. He asked for a pick-up time for Gemini (Schnabeln told him eleven-thirty—for the noon meeting at Weibensee). Girren nodded. Leave it to him. He would wear out shoe leather finding Gemini. “I’ve picked up drops from him on Saturdays. Always on the piss. Probably ends the night with a whore. But I’ll find him.”
Schnabeln said that was good, but without much feeling. He then ran off a list of pick-up points, times and places of meetings. Girren repeated them back. He would be there, watching. There was an actor friend who would lend him a car. It was one of the first things he had organised for himself when the Quartet came into the field. An old and battered Merc. They had cobbled papers for him in London. He gave Schnabeln the licence number and colour—dirty, unwashed grey—then said he had better be dropped off in the Karl-Marx-Allee. There was a lot to do before his dawn patrol to bounce Nestor.
Both men were preoccupied as they parted, Schnabeln driving away and giving the Trepan team another quick bleep. He wondered what sort of panics were now raging there, and how London was reacting to Herbie’s ‘defection’. The tension was already stiffening the back of his neck: giving him a mild headache. It had sounded straightforward in the Dahlmannstrasse house. It appeared more complicated and dangerous now they were committed.
He stopped the car, to give Hecuba one last try, before going back to the hotel.
As Martha Adler had predicted to herself, the Russian, Major Kashov, had intended his presents to come off. Over dinner they had drunk a good deal—though Hecuba was careful to get rid of most of her drinks by pouring them under the table. The food had been good, and the major talkative: exceptionally so for the good KGB man he was. Now the time for payment had arrived, back at her little apartment, provided by the State for a good servant of the DDR’s ruling establishment.
He was a lively man, very anxious to please, and a shade smooth in his approach, she thought. His kisses had not been unpleasant, and she was getting quite aroused by the time he had her skirt off. He smelled of expensive cologne, not the junk th
e Ivans usually wore to cover up sweat.
They had moved to the bedroom, and the last wisps of her underwear were just being gently removed when the telephone extension rang.
Kashov gave a small explosive oath in Russian, and told her not to answer. “It could be my mother,” she lied. Her mother was old and ailing, she had told him the other day. Old she was, but still in high spirits, boasting that she had never had a day’s illness in her life.
Kashov put his hand between her thighs, moving his fingers with the deft precision of an expert as she picked up the receiver. She never answered with a number. Just—“Hello. Yes?”
“Oh,” said the voice at the other end. “It’s possible I’ve dialled a wrong number. Quite possible.”
Martha Adler was alert now, trying to anaesthetise her sexual senses against Kashov’s hand so that she could concentrate on the caller, who had just given her the verbal signal for an imminent crash meeting with her handler. “What number did you want?” she asked; snappily, for Kashov’s benefit.
“Hang on one moment, please. I have it written down here. There is not much light. I can’t quite read it. Yes …” Then, very slowly, as they taught you in London, “92 13 30. Have I not got that number?”
“No, you haven’t. Nothing like it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She allowed her voice to lose its pique for a moment, “I understand. Good-night,” turning to Kashov, “Wrong number. Always on a Saturday I get wrong numbers … Ooooh. You’ve got the right number, though.” She curled her naked body towards him, and reached down.
The telephone number her handler had given was straightforward. The 9 meant a crash meeting at the appointed place—which, for her, was at the junction of Invalidenstrasse and Brunnenstrasse, outside a cake shop which she often used. The 2 signified the following day—tomorrow, Sunday. The rest was simple: 13 30. Thirteen thirty. Half-past one in the afternoon.
Martha Adler slid her tongue between the major’s parted lips and, with surprise, realised that he wore a dental plate.
All done. Everything organised. Christoph Schnabeln headed the Wartburg towards the Metropol and hoped to blazes that his boss, Hoffer, had not gone looking for him when the tour party arrived. He had time to spare before meeting with Herbie Kruger at midnight.
He parked the car and entered the hotel through a side entrance, surveying the foyer through one of the interior glass doors, making certain it was empty—but for the desk clerk—before he ventured in.
The desk clerk grinned, asking if he had enjoyed himself. My god, Schnabeln told him. You’d never believe. Legs all the way to her navel. Kiss like a vampire. Probably marked him for life. “Hope Uncle Hoffer hasn’t been nosing around?” Casually.
The desk clerk shook his head. “Asked if you’d seen the doctor. I told him I didn’t know, but you’d gone straight to bed. Asked not to be disturbed. He went with the tour. They’ve only just left. Herr Hoffer went with them to the checkpoint.” He put an accent on the Herr: maliciously.
Schnabeln grinned and nodded. He thought he just might make it to his room.
“I’m off at midnight,” the desk clerk called after him. “You give me her ’phone number?”
Schnabeln made a rude gesture, stepping into the elevator that would take him to the sixth floor and his room.
There was a guest—about to open his door—next to Schnabeln’s room as he got out of the elevator. Friendly and polite, Schnabeln wished him the customary good night, and unlocked his own door. The guest, who was a tall, somewhat rumpled-looking man, just stood and grinned, nodding his good-night, the key to his room still in his hand. As Schnabeln pushed at his door so the guest’s strong arm closed around Schnabeln’s wrist.
Before he knew what was happening Christoph Schnabeln was on his back, sprawled on the carpet in the middle of his room. The lights were on, the door closed and the tall guest leaning against it, still grinning.
“Pax and all that, cocker,” the guest said in English. “Same flag. Spendthrift, isn’t it? Sorry about the throw. Seemed the only way.” He held out a hand. “Name of Curry Shepherd. Don’t travel with a nom de plume or under false papers. Quick in and out job, that’s me. Come to utter warnings and whisper in your ear. Give help if needed, cocker. Bring ’em back alive if possible.”
Schnabeln shook his head. This he did not like. In English he asked. “Who played the Young Shepherd in The Winter’s Tale at Stratford-on-Avon in the 1960 season?”
“Bloke called Ian Holm. Come on a lot since then.”
“Who was the director?”
“Peter Wood.”
Schnabeln nodded. Mr. Curry Shepherd was clean. “You have a message?”
“Everybody out.”
“That it?”
“Just about. London says everyone’s blown by some crypto called Trapeze. Moscow Centre. So, everyone out.”
Schnabeln asked how quickly they had to go, and Curry Shepherd sat down, stretching his long legs in front of him. “London says it’s probably too late now. Yesterday would have been a good idea.”
Very coolly, Schnabeln told him that it would be tomorrow night at the earliest. “We have an operation running.”
“Yes, cocker, I know. Other point actually. Take me to your leader, and that kind of thing. Good idea if I saw him.”
“Who?”
“The Master. Big Herbie. The living legend. He’s here, isn’t he?”
Schnabeln said nothing.
“Well, isn’t he?”
“Cat got my tongue,” Schnabeln smiled.
“London’s pretty upset with him. Really in everyone’s interests if we can get him out—and the others.”
Schnabeln said he did not think there was a chance in hell. As he said it, his hand moved to his watch, bleeping Trepan, wondering if they had already dismantled, and if it was a waste of time.
6
THE TREPAN TEAM HAD not packed up and gone home. Worboys and Miriam had been taken off watch—sent to rest while Tubby Fincher and Tiptoes Corn kept an eye on the machines.
Max remained hors de combat, while Charles sat, curled like a cat, in the chair originally intended for Herbie. He looked about as lethal as a kitten, but for the pistol lying in his lap.
Before taking complete control, and organising a dual watch system, Tubby Fincher explained the situation, as authorised by the Director: therefore a truncated and incomplete version. The double, who was to have been gouged from the East under the original brief to the Trepan team, was probably a long-term prospect from Moscow Centre, known as Trapeze. “It makes a difference.” Tubby laced his dry stick fingers together, “Herbie worked on the assumption that we were going after one of his people who had been spun in the wrong direction.” Someone, he continued, trained, and a career officer in the Soviet Service, was a very different kettle of fish. The job these men and women were doing in East Berlin was important, but required only the minimum instruction. Their experience, though considerable in years, and—up until recently—their understanding of loyalty did not require full professional status. The double Herbie chased now was almost certainly a person of skill.
Berlin Station remained in the dark, just in case Herbie—who had taken the most rash and dangerous action, in a career full of danger—managed to pull it off. “I’m hoping, though,” Fincher looked at the machines, and not the team, “that he will be persuaded to get out and come home before Trepan turns to catastrophe.”
While they might have to call upon the full services of Berlin Station eventually, a small operation (“Limited to basics”) was already under way. Head of Berlin Station had briefed one of their street men with good cover in the East. He was even now on his way with a message to Spendthrift.
Tubby had run a small subterfuge of his own. Berlin’s man had been contacted—personally by Tubby Fincher—just before he left. “I got to him, and blocked any feedback to Head of Berlin Station,” Fincher gave his thin, rather ruthless smile. “The messenger boy’s t
aking a personal plea from the Director to Herbie. Come home now and all will be forgiven: there’ll always be a lamp in the window for our wandering boy.”
All they could do now was wait. Berlin knew Tubby was in town, on a domestic matter, but he had facilities to talk directly to London, through the Station’s machines: if that proved unavoidable.
Worboys and Miriam Grubb, off watch, lay in each other’s arms: the door safely locked against sudden intrusion. The loving had been subdued. Now Worboys smoked, while Miriam silently stared at the ceiling. Both had forebodings; gloomy and grey as winter. “You know him better than I,” Miriam clasped Worboys’ hand, asking the odds on Herbie’s chances.
“He’s got magic powers. That’s on the record. Big Herbie’s slipped his large self through tight nets before. But …”
“Are they all going to end up dead in East Berlin?” She did not look at Worboys, her voice quivering.
Worboys did not even reply. His thoughts were directed on Herbie who was at that moment walking into the foyer of the Metropol Hotel.
Herbie was smiling to himself, wondering how Spendthrift had fared. With luck everything would be arranged.
Unlike Christoph Schnabeln he had felt the tension before the operation started. Now that tension was turned into a driving force, almost a professional obsession. There was fear, naturally. Only fools felt no fear in the field. There were still grave question-marks drifting in his brain, like odd patterns made from cigarette smoke. They were with him always—Who? How? What means had Vascovsky used? Was Vascovsky’s end game really an escape to the West? He hardly dared think of the consequences if this had not been the case—as Mistochenkov had sworn.
In spite of all these forces, now that Herbie had seen Ursula and was back on what he liked to think of as his old beat he was essentially at ease. Watchful, worried, frightened, but paradoxically at ease. Being in the field was really like swimming or riding a cycle. An old hand should be able to slip back into the second skin of that secret life as easily as a good swimmer could plunge into a pool.
