Samson 01 - Berlin Game, page 16
Dicky Cruyer ran a finger along the waist of his white denim jeans until he felt the designer’s leather label on his back pocket. Thus reassured, he said, ‘The Harringtons are treated like local gentry in that village, you know. They have his wife presenting prizes at the village fete, judging at the gymkhana, and tasting the sponge cakes at the village hall. No wonder he wants to retire, with all that waiting for him. Have you been there?’
‘Well, I’ve known him a long time,’ I said, although why the hell I should find myself apologizing to Dicky for the fact that I’d been a regular guest at Frank’s house ever since I was a small child, I don’t know.
‘Yes, I forget. He was a friend of your father’s. Frank brought you into the service, didn’t he?’
‘In a way,’ I said.
‘The D-G recruited me,’ said Dicky. My heart sank as he settled down into his Charles Eames leather armchair and rested his head back; it was usually the sign of Cruyer in reminiscent mood. ‘He wasn’t D-G then, of course, he was a tutor - not my tutor, thank God - and he buttonholed me in the college library one afternoon. We got to talking about Fiona. Your wife,’ he added, just in case I’d forgotten her name. ‘He asked me what I thought about the crowd she was running around with. I told him they were absolute dross. They were too! Trotskyites and Marxists and Maoists who could only argue in slogans and couldn’t answer any political argument without checking back with Party headquarters to see what the official line was at that moment. Of course, it was years afterwards that I discovered Fiona was in the Department. Then of course I realized that she must have been mixing with that Marxist crowd on the D-G’s orders all that time ago. What a fool she must have thought me. But I’ve always wondered why the D-G didn’t drop a hint of what was really the score. Did you know Fiona infiltrated the Marxists when she was still only a kid?’
‘Thanks for the drink, Dicky,’ I said, draining my glass and deliberately putting it on his polished rosewood desk top. He jumped out of his chair, grabbed the glass and polished energetically at the place where it had stood. It never failed as a way of getting him back to earth from his long discursive monologues, but one day he was sure to tumble to it.
Having polished the desk with his handkerchief, and peered at the surface long enough to satisfy himself that it had been restored to its former lustre, he turned back to me. ‘Yes, of course, I mustn’t keep you. You haven’t seen much of the family for the last few days. Still, you like Berlin. I’ve heard you say so.’
‘Yes, I like it.’
‘I can’t think what you see in it. A filthy place bombed to nothing in the war. The few decent buildings that survived were in the Russian Sector and they got bulldozed to fill the city with all those ghastly workers’ tenements.’
‘That’s about right,’ I admitted. ‘But it’s got something. And Berliners are the most wonderful people in the world.’
Cruyer smiled. ‘I never realized that you had a romantic streak in you, Bernard. Is that what made the exquisite and unobtainable Fiona fall in love with you?’
‘It wasn’t for my money or social position,’ I said.
Cruyer took my empty glass, the bottle caps and the paper napkin I’d left unused and put them on to a plastic tray for the cleaners to remove. ‘Could Giles Trent be connected to our problems with the Brahms net?’
‘I’ve been wondering that myself,’ I said.
‘Are you going to see them?’
‘Probably.’
‘I’d hate Trent to get wind of your intention,’ said Cruyer quietly.
‘He’s a Balliol man, Dicky,’ I said.
‘He could inadvertently pass it to his Control. Then you might find a hot reception waiting for you.’ He finished his drink, wiped his lips and put his empty glass with the other debris on the tray.
‘And Bret would lose his precious source,’ I said.
‘Don’t let’s worry about that,’ said Cruyer. ‘That’s strictly Bret’s problem.’
14
I collected Fiona from her sister’s house that evening. She’d left a message asking me to take the car there, so she could bring back a folding bed that she’d lent to Tessa at a time when she’d decided to sleep apart from George. The bed had never been put to use. I always suspected that Tessa had used its presence as a threat. She was like that.
Tessa had prepared dinner. It was the sort of nouvelle cuisine extravaganza that Uncle Silas had been complaining of. A thin slice of veal with two tiny puddles of brightly coloured sauces, peas arranged inside a scooped-out tomato, and a few wafers of carrot with a mint leaf draped over them. Tessa had learned to prepare it at a cookery school in Hampstead.
‘It’s delicious,’ said Fiona.
‘He was yummy,’ said Tessa when she’d finished eating. She never seemed to need more than a spoonful of food at any meal. Nouvelle cuisine was invented for people like Tessa, who just wanted to go through the pretence of eating a meal for the sake of the social benefits. ‘He had these wonderful dark eyes that could see right through your clothes, and when he was demonstrating the cooking he’d put his arm round you and take your hands. “Like zis, like zis, ” he used to say. He was Spanish, I think, but he liked to pretend he was French of course.’
Fiona said, ‘Tessa has cooked the most wonderful things for me while you were away.’
‘Like zis?’ I asked.
‘And meals for the children,’ said Fiona hurriedly, hoping to appeal to my feelings of obligation. ‘She has given me a gallon of minestrone for the freezer. It will be so useful, Tess darling, and the children just love soup.’
‘And how was Berlin?’ said Tessa. She smiled. We understood each other. She knew I didn’t like the tiny ladies’ snack she’d prepared, or her supposed antics with the Spanish cookery teacher, but she didn’t give a damn. Fiona was the peacemaker, and it amused Tessa to see her sister intercede.
‘Berlin was wonderful,’ I said with spurious enthusiasm.
‘German food is more robust than French food,’ said Tessa. ‘Like German women, I suppose.’ It was directed at me and more specifically at the buxom German girl I was with when Tessa first met me, back before I married Fiona.
‘You know that German proverb: one is what one eats,’ I said.
‘Feast on cabbage and what do you become?’ said Tessa.
‘A butterfly?’ I said.
‘And if you eat dumplings?’
‘At least you are no longer hungry,’ I said.
‘Give him some more meat,’ Fiona told her sister, ‘or he’ll be bad-tempered all evening.’
When Tessa returned from the kitchen with my second helping of dinner, the plate no longer exhibited the finer points of la nouvelle cuisine. There was a chunky piece of veal and a large spoonful of odd-shaped carrot pieces that showed how tricky it was to slice thin even slices. There was only one kind of sauce this time, and it was poured over the meat. ‘Where’s the mint leaf?’ I said. Tessa aimed a playful blow at the place between my shoulders, and it landed with enough force to make me cough.
‘Did you notice anything different in the hall?’ Tessa asked Fiona while I was wolfing the food.
‘Yes,’ said Fiona. ‘The lovely little table, I was going to ask you about it.’
‘Giles Trent. He’s selling some things that used to belong to his grandmother. He needs the extra room and he has other things for sale. Anyone who could find space enough for a dining table… . Oh, Fiona, it’s such a beautiful mahogany table, with eight chairs. I’d sell my soul for it but it would never fit here and this table belonged to George’s mother. I dare not say I’d like to replace it.’
‘Giles Trent?’ I said. ‘Is he selling up?’
‘He’s working with you now, isn’t he?’ said Tessa. ‘He told me he has talked with you and everything is going to be all right. I’m so pleased.’
‘What else is he selling?’
‘Only furniture. He won’t part with any of his pictures. I wish he’d decide to let me have one of those little Rembrandt etchings. I’d love one.’
‘Would George agree?’ asked Fiona.
‘I’d give it to George for his birthday,’ said Tessa. ‘There’s nothing a man can do if you buy something you want and say “Happy birthday” when he first sees it.’
‘You’re quite unscrupulous,’ said Fiona without bothering to conceal her admiration.
‘I’d go carefully on Rembrandt etchings,’ I told her. ‘There are lots of plates around, and the dealers just print a few off from time to time, and ease them into the market through suckers like Giles Trent.’
‘Are they allowed to do that?’ Tessa asked.
‘What’s to stop them?’ I said. ‘It’s not forgery or faking.’
‘But that’s like printing money,’ said Fiona.
‘It’s better,’ I said. ‘It’s like using your husband’s money and saying ‘Happy birthday’.’
‘Have you had enough veal?’ said Tessa.
‘It was delicious,’ I said. ‘What’s for dessert - Chinese gooseberries?’
Tess wants to watch the repeat of “Dallas” on TV tonight. We’d best be getting that bed downstairs and go home,’ said Fiona.
‘It’s not heavy,’ said Tessa. ‘George carried it all by himself, and he’s not very strong.’
I had the folding bed tied onto the roof rack of the car and we were on our way home by the time Tessa sat down to watch TV. ‘Drive carefully,’ said Fiona as we turned out of the entrance to the big apartment block where George and Tessa lived and saw the beginning of the snow. ‘It’s so good to have you home again, darling. I do miss you horribly when you’re away.’ There was an intimacy in the dark interior of the car and it was heightened by the bad weather outside.
‘I miss you too,’ I said.
‘But it all went smoothly in Berlin?’
‘No problems,’ I said. ‘Snow in April … my God!’
‘But nothing to clear poor Giles?’
‘Looks like he’s even deeper in, I’m afraid.’
‘I wish Tessa wouldn’t keep seeing him. But there’s nothing serious between them. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Why would he be selling his furniture?’ I said.
‘Antiques and furniture have been getting good prices lately. It’s the recession, I suppose. People want to put their money into things that will ride with inflation.’
‘Sounds like a good reason for hanging onto them,’ I said. ‘And if he must sell them, why not send them to a saleroom? Why sell them piece by piece?’
‘Is there tax to be paid on such things? Is that what you mean?’
‘The etchings are small. The lithographs can be rolled up,’ I said. ‘But the furniture is bulky and heavy.’
‘Bernard! You don’t think Giles would be idiot enough to run for it?’
‘It crossed my mind,’ I said.
‘He’d be a fool. And could you imagine poor old Giles in Moscow, lining up to collect his vodka ration?’
‘Stranger things have happened, darling. Surprises never end in this business.’
I turned onto Finchley Road and headed south. There was a lot of traffic coming the other way, couples who’d had an evening on the town and were now heading for their homes in the northern suburbs. The snow was melting as it touched the ground but the air was full of it, like a TV picture when an electric mixer is working. The flakes drifted past the neon signs and glaring shopwindows like coloured confetti. A few dabbed against the windscreen and clung for a moment before melting.
‘I was talking to Frank about the old days,’ I said. ‘He told me about the time in 1978 when the Baader-Meinhof gang were in the news.’
‘I remember,’ said Fiona. ‘Someone got the idea that there was to be a second kidnap attempt. I was quite nervous, I hadn’t seen one of those security alerts before. I was expecting something awful to happen.’
‘There was a radio intercept from Karlshorst. Something about an airport in Czechoslovakia.’
‘That’s right. I handled it. Frank was in one of his schoolmaster moods. He told me all about the intercept service, and how to recognize the different sorts of Russian Army signals traffic by the last but one group in the message.’
‘Frank never passed that intercept back to London,’ I said.
‘That’s very likely,’ said Fiona. ‘He always said that the job of the Berlin Resident is to ensure that London is not buried under an avalanche of unimportant material. Getting intelligence is easy, Frank said, but sorting it out is what matters.’ She shivered and tried to turn up the heater of the car, but it was already fully on. ‘Why? Is Frank having second thoughts? It’s a long time ago - too late now for second thoughts.’
I wondered if she was thinking of other things; too late perhaps to be having second thoughts about a marriage. ‘Look at that,’ I said. A white Jaguar had skidded on the wet road and mounted the pavement so that its rear had swung round and into a shop window. There was glass all over the pavement, white like snow, and a woman with blood on her hands and her face. The driver was blowing into a plastic bag held by a blank-faced policeman.
‘I’m glad I didn’t take the Porsche over to Tessa’s tonight. You don’t stand a chance with the police if they find you behind the wheel of a red Porsche. When are you getting the new Volvo?’
‘The dealer keeps saying next week. He’s hoping my nerve will break and I’ll take that station wagon he’s trying to get rid of.’
‘Go to some other dealer.’
‘He’s giving me a good trade-in price on this jalopy.’
‘Why not have the station wagon, then?’
‘Too expensive.’
‘Let me give you the difference in price. Your birthday is coining up soon.’
‘I’d rather not, darling. But thanks all the same.’
‘It would be awfully useful for moving beds,’ she said.
‘I’m not going to give your father the satisfaction of using any of his money.’
‘He’ll never know.’
‘But I will know, and I’m the one who told him where to put his dowry.’
‘Where to put my dowry, darling.’
‘I love you, Fiona,’ I said, ‘even if you do forget my birthday.’
She put her fingertips to her lips and touched my cheek. ‘Where were you that night in 1978?’ she said. ‘Why weren’t you at my side?’
‘I was in Gdansk, involved in that meeting with the shipyard workers who never turned up. It was all a KGB entrapment. Remember?’
‘I must have repressed the memory of it. Yes, Gdansk, of course. I was so worried,’
‘So was I. My career has been one fiasco after another, from that time to this.’
‘But you have always got out safely.’
‘That’s more than I can say for a lot of the others who were with me. We were in good shape in 1978 but there’s not much left now.’
‘You were always away on some job or other. I hated being in Berlin on my own. I hated the dark streets and the narrow alleys. I don’t know what I would have done without dear old Giles to take me home each night and cheer me up with phone calls and books about Germany that he thought I should read to improve myself. Dear old Giles. That’s why I feel so sorry for him now he’s in trouble.’
‘He took you home?’
‘It didn’t matter what time I finished work - even in the middle of the night when the panic was on - Giles would come up to Operations and have a cigarette and a laugh and take me home.’
I carried on driving, swearing at someone who overtook us and splashed filth on the windscreen, and only after a few minutes’ pause did I say, ‘Didn’t Giles work over in the other building? I thought he’d need a red pass to come up to Operations.’
‘Officially he did. But at the end of each shift - unless one of the panjandrums from London was there - people from the annex used to come into the main building. There was no hot water in the annex, and most of us felt we needed to wash and change after eight hours in that place.’
‘But there was an inquiry. A man named Joe Brody questioned everyone about a leak that night.’
‘Well, what are you supposed to say, darling? Do you think anyone is going to let Frank down? I mean, are you going to say that people from the annex come up and steal paper and pencils and take their girlfriends up to that sitting room on the top floor?’
‘Well, I didn’t know all that was going on.’
‘Girls talk together, darling. Especially when there are just a few girls in a foreign town. And working in an office with the most disreputable lot of men.’ She squeezed my arm.
‘So everyone told lies to Joe Brody? Giles Trent did have access to the signals?’
‘Brody is an American, darling. You can’t let the old country down, can you?’
‘Frank would throw a fit if he knew,’ I said. It was appalling to think of all Frank’s regulations, memoranda and complicated routines being flouted by everyone even when he was there in the office. In those days I’d spent most of my working hours off on the sort of assignment that the more artful executives avoid by pleading their German isn’t fluent enough. Clever Dicky, stupid Bernard.
‘Frank is just a selfish pig,’ said Fiona. ‘He likes the money and the prestige but he hates the actual work. What Frank likes is playing host to the jet set while the taxpayer gets the bill.’
‘There has to be a certain amount of that,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I think the D-G only keeps Frank over there to pick up all the gossip. The D-G loves gossip. But Frank understands what is gossip and what is important. Frank has got a talent for anticipating trouble long before it arrives. I could give you a dozen examples of him pulling the coals out of the fire, acting only on gossip and those hunches he has.’
‘Who will get Berlin when Frank retires?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘I suppose they will go to that computer and see if they can find someone who hates Berlin as much as Frank does, who wastes money as extravagantly as Frank does, who speaks that same Kaiserliche German that Frank does, and who looks like an Englishman on a package tour, as Frank manages to look.’
‘You’re cruel. Frank’s so proud of his German too.’
