‘Berlin changed you?’
‘The ruins turned us all into rats.’
It sounded like something he’d heard said or had said himself and was simply repeating. Tom tried to imagine the trajectory of the little man’s life. The points through which he’d had to pass to get from the ruins of post-war Berlin to a camp on the Baltic, via children’s homes in the United Kingdom and a club in Soho that sounded to be more of a clearing house.
‘You have your uses. What uses?’
Tom must have sounded sharper than he intended because Wakefield reddened and opened his mouth to say something cutting, took a look at the uniform Tom was now wearing and shut it again.
Institutionalized.
‘No notebooks,’ he said. ‘Not these days. I don’t ask or know the names, occupations or crimes of those I treat. The guards bring me men who are broken. I patch them up or put them out of their misery. Every now and then, the guards bring me their wives or daughters and I do what’s required and another baby who isn’t needed escapes being born …’
‘Back to the club,’ Tom demanded.
‘Upstairs was a meeting place for the like-minded. A place where telephone numbers could be given, addresses swapped.’
‘Of those who went?’
Wakefield sighed. ‘Of places those who went might want to go. As for the club … There were waiters, waitresses. All over the age of consent. Well, the waitresses were. As the boys were the same age they should have been. Sir Cecil was very careful not to have problems brought in.’
‘It wasn’t enough?’
‘The vice squad got greedy and put up their price. When Sir Cecil went over their heads, Vice raided it anyway. MI5 were furious. So I was told. I think it actually cost a chief inspector his job. He died in a car crash the following year so chances are it cost him more than that. All those names delivered to the plod on a plate. There was talk of Cecil setting up a new club and then he vanished. The next anyone knows, he was suddenly a lifelong communist and had defected. He took the last secret with him.’
Tom stared at Wakefield.
‘I have no idea if he ever gave it up.’
‘You didn’t …’
‘Oh. I never knew it.’
The man pulled the pad towards him, reached for his pencil and proved himself a liar. As he began writing, he said. ‘There was a laundry list, Cecil said. Of those who needed to die. It was divided up between cleaners who never met. One target didn’t make it on to the list.’
Turning the pad, he showed Tom the name he’d written. And Tom reached for Wakefield’s drink and downed it without thought.
Lord Brannon.
The Queen’s cousin.
‘We’re talking about the name you never knew?’
‘Yes,’ Wakefield said. ‘We’re talking about the name I never knew.’
‘It died with Sir Cecil?’
‘I would imagine so.’ Reaching for a box of matches, Wakefield folded the note into a neat little fan and set it alight; his eyes following the flames greedily. ‘According to Cecil,’ he said, ‘permission to clean was sought and granted, with one stipulation. It could be an accident, it could be a terrorist outrage, it could be an inexplicable murder by a –’
‘Lone lunatic.’ Tom finished the sentence for him. ‘What it must never ever be was traceable to those who sanctioned it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Pity you don’t know it then.’
Wakefield shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
54
Seventy-six hours later Tom found himself back in East Berlin, dressed in full KGB uniform. He’d been delivered there by a Soviet sergeant, who’d arrived at the camp, saluted smartly and said absolutely nothing for the entire return trip. Since Tom was dosed with painkillers, and his bruises prevented him getting comfortable, he was grateful.
The NCO had been told the colonel was not the talkative type.
So now Tom sat in an office in KGB Karlshorst, reading an obituary for Sir Henry Petty in a three-day-old Daily Telegraph he’d found beside a telephone on the desk. The telephone didn’t work or he’d have tried to call Caro, taped conversation or not.
The actor had been found dead in his dressing room five minutes before a performance. The obit talked of the greatest of his Shakespearean performances, his eccentric family, his famous irascibility, the fact his interest in charity work sprung from helping orphans in post-war Berlin.
Sir Henry had been in the little notebook, and on the cast list for The Importance of being Lady Windermere. As had Colonel James Foley, lately dead by his own hand, and lately of Berlin.
What were the chances of two suicides on that list in the same year? Tom needed to find out if any of their friends had died recently. More than this, Eddington needed to know about Sir Cecil’s claim that Lord Brannon, the Queen’s cousin, had been murdered by British Intelligence. Except that even knowing that put Tom in danger. He trusted Eddington, more or less. But he couldn’t say the same for the high brass at Century House. And it went without saying that he had to keep that information out of the hands of the Soviets.
Tom sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
He knew he should be working out his next move and turning Rafikov’s unexpected, and obviously dangerous, patronage to his advantage but more than anything Tom wanted to talk to Caro.
I’m alive. He needed her to know that. He wanted Caro to be the first person he called. What would Rafikov say if asked to get a message through?
What would he demand in return?
HQ Karlshorst was south of Tierpark, with its huge zoo, rambling park, formal garden and famous palace. The KGB compound itself was less of a campus and more of a small town. And as for Tom’s office …
It looked down upon a tank on a plinth. The Museum of Unconditional Surrender of Fascist Germany in the Great Patriotic War was contained within the compound, Karlshorst being the place where Marshal Zhukov ratified Nazi Germany’s surrender.
Putting his feet on the desk, Tom leant back and stared at the ceiling. Like cracked ceilings everywhere, the cracks could be made to look like anything you wanted. In this case they looked uncannily like a map.
Of where, Tom wasn’t sure.
The delivery of a new colonel to the KGB compound at Karlshorst had drawn stares; but that could have been the brand-new Volga that delivered him to the door, or the way General Rafikov came down the steps, gripped the newcomer warmly by the elbow and steered him away from the others.
‘The Stasi are furious,’ he muttered.
‘About what?’ Tom asked.
‘Your death. I’m not sure Colonel Schneider believes it though. He has men watching the crossings and endlessly picking up litter outside your embassy on Unter den Linden. Best if you don’t contact them or try to cross until things settle a little. A few days at most.’
‘General –’
‘Trust me,’ Rafikov said.
He caught Tom’s expression and burst into laughter.
The sound of it was loud enough to make those in the hallway turn, smile and get on with their own lives. ‘Your face,’ Rafikov said. ‘Find your office, read the paper, then take a walk. The zoo’s nice at this time of year.’
‘The zoo?’
‘A four-hundred-acre oasis in the middle of a city. I’ve always liked the flamingos. Oh, and before I forget, Marshal Milov sends his regards.’
He left Tom staring after him.
55
East Germans moved out of his way as the KGB colonel strode towards them. A few of the younger men made themselves meet Tom’s eyes, then glanced aside. Women blushed or simply pretended not to notice his gaze. Maybe it was the KGB collar tabs that made everybody nervous.
Soviet officers couldn’t be that rare.
Hide in plain sight.
A bunch of Nationale Volksarmee conscripts stepped back to let him through. A traffic officer came to attention without noticing. A grey-haired Kripo major clicked his heels. A move s
o unexpected Tom wondered if it contained some coded insult. If others noticed him Tom didn’t notice them.
At the zoo he walked to the head of the queue and no one complained as he paid his pfennigs, pushed his way through the turnstile and stopped inside to look at the gift shop. A young mother, swollen with milk and busy feeding, saw him stare and Tom dipped his head in apology.
Instead of being cross, she smiled.
He missed Charlie. Caro, too.
A huge map showed where animals could be found.
Notices reminded visitors that the elephant house was being rebuilt, the flamingos had a new lake, now with an island in the middle, and that the huge wolf run about to open on the park’s northern edge was part of a breeding plan for reintroducing the Russian forest wolf (Canis lupus lupus).
Tom watched the woman with the baby for a while, and wondered how much he was simply filling time, and how much of the sadness that the sight of her brought was guilt for not being there when Becca was young.
Caro had fed both Becca and Charlie, and had a hard time of it. She’d insisted, against her mother’s advice, against her friends’ warnings it would damage her figure, quite possibly against her own wishes. But she did it for Becca, in that bloody-minded way of hers, because it was the right thing, and for Charlie because she’d done it for Becca.
‘You have children at home, sir?’
The woman was in front of him, her blouse re-buttoned and the baby slung over her shoulder to burp on a blanket resting over her blouse. Her Russian was halting and she blushed at having asked the question.
Tom nodded and she sucked her teeth sympathetically.
‘It must be hard,’ she said. ‘Missing them.’
She walked away and stopped by the map, laughing ruefully when the baby hiccuped milk on to her shoulder. Tom watched her go and then struck off in the other direction, the path splitting to offer him a choice of petting zoo or the new lake for flamingos. Remembering Rafikov’s words, he chose the lake.
Those around him had an understanding that Tom simply wasn’t there. They stepped aside as if without noticing. He chose a table in front of a kiosk at the water’s edge, and the woman sitting opposite casually decided she’d had enough of her coffee, stood up and headed for the lake without looking back. Tom stared after her, saw the man beyond, and had to stop himself from swearing.
It was impossible. But it was also true.
Harry FitzSymonds, Tom’s old boss, the man who brought him into the business, was leaning against a fence, watching the flamingos. He was dressed in a blue blazer and fawn trousers, with a panama hat pulled low. In Eastbourne he’d have been invisible. In Tierpark he was unmissable.
As Tom watched, Fitz raised his hat to the woman, swept fingers through his greying hair and scowled at the heat. He had the patrician look of a retired brigadier or a successful confidence trickster. Shooting his cuff, he checked his Rolex. He had it on a NATO strap, for God’s sake.
Although, Tom thought, why not?
No one looking could imagine he was local. And he was entirely too well turned out for a tourist. Tom looked for Fitz’s shadow and identified a pimply youth, who shuffled nervously, looked at Tom and glanced away.
‘What’s your name?’ Tom demanded.
The boy looked round in pretend surprise, bit his lip and mumbled something that ended in sir.
‘Take a walk,’ Tom said.
The boy glanced towards Fitz.
‘He’ll still be here when you get back. And, if not, I’ll return him to here when we’re done.’ Tom had no idea how much of his Russian the boy understood but it didn’t matter because, as far as the boy was concerned, Tom was a KGB colonel, with all the authority that gave.
The boy would write something in his report.
And if anyone bothered to read it, they might pass it up the line, so someone could have a word with Karlshorst about the need for Berlin to be kept in the loop. And that might spark someone in the KGB compound to ask questions.
Then again, maybe not …
Intelligence services believed the more information the better. Tom knew, because he’d seen whole departments drown in it, that this was rubbish. If you wanted to paralyse an enemy’s Intelligence you fed it so much data it didn’t know where to start. Too much time went into filing for anyone to analyse what was really there. The old man staring at the flamingos had taught him that.
56
‘Who are you meant to be meeting?’ Tom asked in Russian.
FitzSymonds almost jumped, but his pride in his tradecraft was too great to allow him to do that. Instead he stared ahead. His knuckles where he gripped the fence were white. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Is it really you?’
‘Yeah,’ Tom said. ‘It’s me.’
‘We were told you were dead.’
‘You were told wrong.’
‘They’ve rebuilt the flamingo lake.’
Tom glanced at it. ‘You’ve been here before?’
‘In the late seventies. Based out of 32–34.’ He used shorthand for the British embassy on Unter den Linden. He’d have been in the cellars, Tom imagined. In the comms room. Most of the really interesting work was done there.
‘That’s when I met Rafikov. Can’t say I was expecting to get a call from him. London was in two minds about letting me come.’
‘You were here officially?’
‘I’m official now too. Embassy-based.’
He stared at the shallows, where pink flamingos stood in warm water up to their knees. The water shimmered in the sun and reflected the blueness of the sky and the occasional white cloud. The afternoon looked and felt idyllic. FitzSymonds’s smile was sour. ‘That uniform suits you rather better than it should.’
‘Sir. What are you doing here?’
‘Coming out of retirement to clean up your mess. You were photographed coming out of that building where they butchered Cecil Blackburn. I mean … Christ, Tom. Did I teach you nothing?’
Tom felt his face redden.
He was one of Fitz’s boys. Fitz’s boys didn’t let things like that happen.
‘How do you rate your chances?’ Fitz asked.
‘Of what, sir?’
‘Getting out of this alive,’ Fitz said flatly. ‘Rafikov claimed I’d be meeting a Soviet attaché who could confirm your death. Because that’s what London currently thinks, you know. That you’re dead. A heart attack in some godforsaken Baltic slave camp. I was the man who told Blackburn to ask for you. Told him you were a good man. You’d keep him safe.’
‘You said you were here in the seventies.’
‘Didn’t say I hadn’t been back since. This is a fuck-up, Tom. Even for you.’
‘Fitz. That’s not fair.’
FitzSymonds fed Tom’s words back at him and they stung.
‘We should walk,’ Tom said.
‘Don’t want to make it easy for them,’ Fitz agreed.
‘Although where’d they position a parabolic mic?’
‘No mic could filter out that lot.’ Fitz nodded to a group of Young Pioneers in shorts or short dresses, with white shirts, and red scarfs tied neatly round their necks. For all their neatness they were noisy. And for all there were flamingos, the children walked right past them.
Birds doing nothing were birds doing nothing. There were more interesting animals ahead. Three rhinos for a start. Tom and Fitz fell into step behind the group and let their chatter wash over them.
‘Never expected to have you to blame for me being dragged away from my roses. First I’m told you’re on the run in East Berlin. Then I’m told the GDR have you and want to swap. Suddenly that’s off and you’re dead. Really sorry and all that.’
‘Surprising honesty.’
‘Made me wonder what they were hiding. And now here you are, popping up like Hamlet’s father to scare the children. Who knows you’re poncing round the city dressed like this? Because I’m pretty sure the Stasi don’t. So, my next question has to be, has Rafikov turned you?’
<
br /> ‘Of course not.’
‘And you wouldn’t tell me if he had. Make no mistake about it, Tom. Rafikov’s a nasty piece of work. I’m surprised he hasn’t got you locked up. That would fit better with his style. Make us waste years wondering if you’re alive.’
‘Like Tony Wakefield?’
Fitz blinked. Tom saw it. When the old man spoke, his tone was entirely too casual. ‘You ran into Flo Wakefield?’
‘Very briefly.’
‘And where was that?’
‘The camp near the Baltic.’
‘Were you still in East Germany?’
Tom thought about the journey and had to admit he didn’t know if they’d crossed a border or not. He’d seen no border post on his return. But the landscape had been flat and wild and the roads narrow and largely deserted.
Up ahead, the Young Pioneers had stopped to stare at rhinos standing desolately in the middle of a dusty field. It wasn’t much of a swap for the savannah, but it was better than a cage. Shutting one eye, Fitz tipped his head slightly sideways and pretended to aim. His bullet noise sounded authentically silenced. Not something a big-game rifle might produce.
‘You used to hunt?’ Tom asked.
‘Back in the days when it wasn’t reprehensible. I was based in Mombasa for a while. Suppose I should ask: get much of a chance to talk to Tony?’
Tom hesitated. ‘Not really,’ he said.
‘Pity. And Rafikov extracted you, I imagine?’
‘Ahead of a Stasi colonel called Schneider ordering me killed. If Rafikov can be believed.’
‘Which he can’t. He’s probably running some sort of double bluff designed to keep you unsettled. I still wouldn’t have thought he’d let you run free. I’d have expected something altogether nastier.’
‘Nastier, sir?’
‘You know, dripping stone cell, unearthly screams from your neighbours, wild dogs howling outside your window, waves clashing against a cliff …’
Nightfall Berlin Page 18
