Inge said nothing, but watched him staring wildly out at the night, and then swivelling around, like Long John Silver on the deck of the Hispaniola, and huffing with perplexity and fear, and then stamping his foot, and then staring out at the night again.
‘West Germany!’
Inge said quietly, ‘I was KGB for five years, Timofey. Then the man I loved was found guilty of treason. He was KGB, too. He disappeared. I think that they probably killed him. That was when I decided that I would try to work for liberty, instead of fear. But, I was wise enough to keep my decision to myself. I kept on working for the KGB, and in the meantime I made contact with the people you probably know as Lamprey.’
Golovanov jabbed a stubby finger at her. His eyebrows shot up, and then crowded closely together. ‘You – and you—’ he said, pointing at Dichter, ‘—you are Lamprey?’
‘We are part of Lamprey. Lamprey is made up of intelligence agents from all countries, of all persuasions.’
‘And now you have taken me? Well, my friends, that is your mistake! Your great mistake! Now, Lamprey will be hunted by the KGB, and torn out by its roots!’ Golovanov shook his wrist as if he were shaking radishes.
Inge smiled at him. ‘Too many KGB belong to Lamprey, Timofey, Too many CIA. Too many MI5. No government intelligence agency will ever truly discover what Lamprey is, and how it works, and who belongs. It exists without territory, without files, without offices, without borders, without anything but the constant inspiration that there must be a better way for nations to live together.’
Golovanov sat down on the edge of his cot. The young girl with the plaited hair came back again and handed him a child’s ABC mug brimming with water. She was still carrying the Ingram in her other hand. Before drinking, Golovanov said, ‘A great ideal, my darling Inge. But then, think, both the United States and the Soviet Union were founded on ideals.’
Inge said, ‘The people of Lamprey are not idealists, Timofey. They are realists. They will accept anything, provided it is better, and it works.’
Dichter was growing tired of this conversation. He looked at his watch, and said, ‘Now then, marshal, what about these summer manoeuvres? What about these rumours of war?’
‘War?’ asked Golovanov, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘What kind of nonsense is this?’
‘There are rumours of war,’ said Dichter, flatly.
‘Well, you should not pay attention to rumours, especially in your business,’ Golovanov told him.
Dichter slowly stroked his hair as if he were thinking about something else altogether. ‘You realize we shall have to torture you.’
Golovanov lifted his head pugnaciously. ‘My father was tortured by far more expert torturers than you. You do not frighten me with talk of torture.’
‘Tell me about these summer manoeuvres,’ Dichter repeated. ‘When are your divisions going to stand down?’
‘In the normal course of events, when the manoeuvres are over.’
‘The manoeuvres have been going on for an unconscionably long time.’
‘We have a large army, Herr Dichter,’ said Golovanov. ‘It takes us quite a considerable time to move it all around. Of course, if the Western powers were not so warlike, we would need only a token army, and our manoeuvres would be over much more quickly.’
Dichter said coldly, ‘I asked for an explanation of your military movements, marshal, not a line out of an Izvestia editorial.’
‘My dear young man, you expect too much. But then the young always do, don’t they?’
Dichter was silent for a while, as if he were wailing for Golovanov to say something else. But then he said, in a decisive voice, ‘We are going to move you to another place, further away from the border. Then we are going to ask you these questions once again, and this time we shall expect some sensible and constructive answers. Inge will be going with you.’
‘Well, that is one compensation,’ smiled Golovanov.
‘I don’t think that you will find it so, marshal. Besides being an expert in giving pleasure, Inge is an expert in inflicting pain. She is to be your torturer.’
Sixteen
‘It’s Kress again,’ said Morton Lock, holding up the phone.
‘Oh, shit,’ said the President. ‘All right.’
It was eleven o’clock in the evening, Eastern Standard Time, and for the third time that day the Chancellor of the Federal German Republic, Otto Kress, was calling Camp David to demand an explanation for all of the chaotic military movements throughout southern Germany. Twice, the President had been ‘asleep’ or ‘unavailable’. Now, he was going to have to talk to him.
‘Otto!’ he said, with feigned enthusiasm.
‘Good evening, Mr President.’ The Chancellor’s voice was flat and unimpressed. ‘I am glad that you are now available and awake.’
‘What’s eating you, Otto?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I mean, what’s on your mind? Problems?’
‘It is your troop movements that are on my mind, Mr President,’ said Otto Kress. ‘Yesterday, I asked my Defence Minister to speak to General Oliver, but General Oliver replied that he could say nothing, and that any questions on the matter should be referred directly to you.’
‘So they should, Otto, so they should. I’m always here to help.’
Otto Kress launched into a long and technical complaint. The President yawned. Yes, said Otto Kress, there had been agreement that US forces would be able to carry out a ‘general redeployment’ in order to make way for new arms and vehicles from the United States. Yes, he was pleased that updated arms and fresh materiel were arriving in Western Germany. Yes, all of the proper arrangements had been made with the police, the Bundeswehr, the highway authorities, Deutsches Bundesbahn, Lufthansa, and everyone else who was concerned. ‘Mr President, I am not disputing any of this.’
But, southern Germany was already in ‘pandemonium… like the hour before the Flood’.
The roads between the US bases at Ansbach, Wurzburg, and Frankfurt were congested with endless convoys of military trucks and tank-transporters and self-propelled howitzers; the railhead at Illisheim was crowded with hundreds of M1 Abrams battle-tanks. The skies over Mannheim and Darmstadt were thunderous with Hercules and Starlifters and Galaxies, and whatever the official paperwork said about ‘general redeployment’, it appeared that the bulk of US military movement was westwards, away from the East German border, towards the 8th Infantry Division base at Bad Kreuznach.
And where would they go from there?
This afternoon. Chancellor Kress had himself talked to General Oliver at the US Army headquarters at Heidelberg, but General Oliver had begged ignorance of anything but ‘military musical chairs’, and had again suggested ‘with immense respect, sir,’ that the Chancellor should talk to the President.
Kress sounded strained. ‘Mr President, I believe I deserve an explanation for all of these movements, don’t you?’
The President beckoned Morton Lock to pick up the other phone. This kind of nagging politics bored him, and while the West German Chancellor methodically enumerated all of his complaints, he studiously picked a loose thread from the sleeve of his yellow silk bathrobe. He had just been on the point of retiring to bed when Chancellor Kress called, and he was holding in his hand the copy of Reader’s Digest that he was intending to take with him into the toilet.
‘General Oliver did make sure that your people had all the necessary paperwork, didn’t he?’ the President replied reassuringly, in that warm, cracker-barrel voice he always used whenever he appeared on television. On the phone, he didn’t even have to put on the face that went with it. ‘I mean, you have been given all the necessary paperwork, haven’t you?’
‘Mr President, the actual movements appear far to exceed the paperwork.’
The President sniffed. ‘Well, now, that sometimes happens, as far as I understand it, but it’s nothing to get steamed about. You know General Oliver. Remember that dinner in Bruss
els? Well, he’s something of an opportunist, when it comes to regulations. But well-intentioned, you understand; and a fine officer. I don’t know what to tell you, Otto. If the Seventh Army has overstepped the mark, then let me tell you here and now that I’ll get to hear about it, and let me tell you here and now that all the appropriate steps will be taken to admonish those responsible. But you have to remember that we’re preparing to ship something in the order of—’
‘Six billion dollars,’ Morton Lock mouthed, from across the room.
‘—that’s right, something in the order of six billion dollars’ worth of advanced military hardware, tanks, missiles, infantry equipment – right in to Western Germany, in the next few weeks – all for the purpose of enhancing your security. So, we have to make room for it somehow. And if it’s noisy, and causing difficulties. I’m sorry. But what comes first? Freedom, or a few sleepless nights?’
Chancellor Kress didn’t sound at all amused. ‘I regret that your explanation sounds a little thin, Mr President, under the circumstances. Let me say this: I am relying on all the treaties and understandings that exist between us. I have to. For if I did not, I would look at the activity which is taking place in your military bases throughout southern Germany, and I would have to say that all of your movement of men and ordnance is beginning to take on the appearance of a full-scale withdrawal.’
The President had been reading Life’s Like That, in his Reader’s Digest. It was always good for a wisecrack or two, during political speeches.
‘Well now, Otto,’ he said, ‘all I can tell you now is that the United States is as committed as ever to the political and military integrity of the Federal German Republic. I understand your anxieties. The Soviets have been particularly threatening of late. And let me say this: if General Oliver has been insensitive enough to unnerve your people by moving his equipment too boisterously; if he’s shipped even one can of beans more than the paperwork allows; well, let me assure you of this, Otto, he’s going to get his keister kicked.’
Otto Kress said, ‘Keister?’
The President covered the mouthpiece of his phone with his hand, and rolled up his eyes to Morton Lock in despair.
Otto Kress said edgily, ‘I think that some kind of public statement would be of material assistance.’ His voice was trembling, and Morton Lock could tell how angry he was. Even as Chancellor of West Germany, he was in no position to challenge the validity of the President’s personal reassurance, but all the same he wanted the President to commit himself as openly and as positively as possible, in Time and Die Welt and the Herald-Tribune.
The President silently broke wind beneath his robe and wished that Chancellor Kress would get off the line. ‘Let me tell you, Otto, I’ll look into this whole business straight away. You’ll have a full report in the morning. Yes, that’s a promise. And meanwhile. I’ll have Morton Lock speak directly to General Oliver, and see what’s going on. I’m sure it’s all going to turn out to be nothing more than a little bureaucratic mix-up, something of that kind. Well, very good. Yes. And you, too.’
The President put down his phone, and said, ‘Damn it. He’s as jumpy as a polecat with a chili up its ass. I knew this would happen. Didn’t I tell the Premier? What did I tell him? I told him this would happen, if we had to pull out any quicker.’
Morton Lock said, ‘There are only two days left to go, sir. We should be able to baby Chancellor Kress along until then.’
‘Oh, damn it all,’ protested the President. He was less irritated by the anxious nagging of Chancellor Kress than he was by the way in which the Soviets had forced him to bring the whole operation forward.
This morning, in a blustering five-minute phone call, the Soviet premier had advised the President that word of GRINGO had somehow leaked through to West German intelligence; and that the source of the leak was undoubtedly an American double agent. Of course! For how could an agent of the KGB have done such a thing, with the whole future of the Soviet Union at stake?
It was therefore imperative that Operation Byliny be started as soon as possible; and as soon as possible was Sunday morning, only two days away. The President had argued, but Chernenko had been adamant.
Afterwards, the President had yelled for ten solid minutes at the director of the CIA. The director of the CIA for most of the time had remained red-faced and silent. He had no knowledge of any US agents who might have any acquaintance with the meaning of GRINGO or Byliny. No CIA agents were missing; security as far as he was concerned was tight. That morning, a note had been left on his desk to the effect that Marshal T.K. Golovanov had not attended a dinner given for him the previous evening by Commander Zhukilov, one of those titbits of information for which the CIA paid anything between $25–$50; but the director had not made the connection. He was too concerned with the wrath of a President who hated having America blamed for anything, and who more than anything hated to be hustled.
Morton Lock sensed what was annoying his chief, and held up his clipboard. ‘Boggsley has one or two names that might lead us to something on that security leak, sir.’
‘Oh, yes?’
Morton lifted the top sheet of his board. ‘A guy called Wallace T. Greenbaum, a clerk who worked for the State Department. He was dealt with yesterday, though, and we don’t have any reason to suspect that he managed to pass on any specific information about GRINGO. Then there was Jack Levy, a correspondent for—’
‘Wallace Greenbaum?’ interrupted the President, frowning. ‘Don’t I know that name?’
Morton quickly scanned the sheet of biographical background on Wallace Greenbaum. ‘No, sir,’ he said, pursing his lips. ‘Greenbaum was a left-of-centre type character, came from KC originally, graduated in law from Kansas State U. at Manhattan. Thirty-one years old, white. Baptist; unmarried, but had some pretty bizarre sexual predilections apparently, including rubber fetishism and sado-masochism. Often frequented s/m clubs both in New York and in Baltimore.’
‘In that case,’ said the President, seriously, ‘I don’t think I do know the name. What happened to him? When you say dealt with, what does that mean?’
‘It seems he had a calculated misadventure, sir. He was attempting to pass classified State Department memoranda to some unidentified woman at a sex club in Lower Manhattan. What he didn’t know was that he had been under surveillance for some months by a CIA plant called Heidi van Cruyf. According to Boggsley, Heidi van Cruyf is some tough lady recruited by the CIA from the Doma Club in Amsterdam, with a view to keeping an intimate eye on all of those government and United Nations officials who like to dress in raincoats and garter-belts and get themselves whipped. Boggsley says that sado-masochism and high security clearances are a volatile combination. Anyhow, Miss van Cruyf managed to dispose of Mr Greenbaum during a sexual performance. Quite common at this type of club, so Boggsley remarks here. Clients are always strangling or choking or sitting on the wrong end of a stiletto heel. The local police are used to it.’
‘Any lead on the woman?’ asked the President.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The woman he was supposed to be passing the information to.’
‘Oh. Oh, no. No trace so far, at least none recorded.’
‘All right,’ said the President. ‘I’m going to get to bed. I’m just about beat. Damned Chancellor Kress; put me right off my regularity now.’
‘What do you want me to do about General Oliver, sir?’
‘General Oliver?’
‘Well, do you think he ought to be asked to keep GRINGO a little more low-profile?’
The President thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Let’s leave Kress guessing. He only has 48 hours, as you say. If he calls again, though, don’t put him on to me. Just tell him that everything’s fine, and that he’ll get his report by the weekend.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The President retired, closing the door. Morton Lock sat back for a while, looking through the papers on his clipboard. He wondered if he ought to have to
ld the President that the FBI had already identified Wallace Greenbaum’s contact at the Hellfire Club as Esther Modena, secretary and occasional lover of the junior senator from Connecticut, David Daniels.
But no, not yet. The time would come when he would be able to use the information to its maximum potential profit. For he was one of the very few people who happened to know that the President’s daughter Janie had been ‘close’ with Senator Daniels, on and off. And he could think of no two more lucrative pieces of intelligence in the world today than that Senator Daniels had been associating with a sado-masochistic spy; and that Janie had been associating with Senator Daniels. Morton Lock saw an assured career for himself, in high places. He smiled, and put down the clipboard.
*
In London, the 4 a.m. edition of the Daily Telegraph, which had just arrived at the Department of Trade and Industry in Victoria Street, carried for the first time in two years a banner headline that ran all the way across the top of its eight columns. TUC Threatens General Strike On May 30. Underneath, there was a strapline which read, Troops Will Maintain Essential Services, PM Declares.
The Daily Mirror trumpeted. All Out On May 30, and carried a front-page editorial in heavy black type which spoke of ‘the day of reckoning’ for ‘this repressive, uncaring government’.
The Secretary of Trade hung his crumpled jacket over the back of his chair, unbuttoned his waistcoat with one hand, and shuffled through the early newspapers with the other. The news was uniformly serious. In an unexpected display of solidarity and industrial intransigence, every major union had called for ‘indefinite’ strike action against the government’s social and economic policies. Arthur Grange, the President of the National Union of Mineworkers, had spoken of ‘complete victory for the working-classes’.
The door of the minister’s office quietly opened, and his secretary Miss Forbes stood just outside the circle of lamplight, her spectacles reflecting the dull orange shade. The minister looked up. He was overweight, with thinning grey hair, and the large sad face of a downtrodden public schoolboy.
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