Samson 01 - Berlin Game, page 17
‘He’d get away with it if he didn’t try writing out those instructions for the German staff and pinning them on the notice board. The only time I’ve ever seen Werner laughing, really laughing uncontrollably, was in front of the notice board in the front hall. He was reading Frank’s German language instruction: “What to do in case of fire. ” It became a classic. There was a German security man who used to recite it at the Christmas party. One year Frank watched him and said, “It’s jolly good the way these Jerries are able to laugh at the deficiences of their own language, what? ” I said, “Yes, Frank, and he’s got a voice a bit like yours, did you notice that?” “Can’t say I did,” said Frank. I never was quite sure if Frank understood what the joke was.’
‘Bret said the D-G mentioned your name for the Berlin office.’
‘Have you seen Bret much while I was away?’
‘Don’t start that all over again, darling. There is absolutely no question of a relationship between me and Bret Rensselaer.’
‘No one’s mentioned it to me,’ I said. The job, I mean.’
‘Would you take it?’
‘Would you like to go back there?’
‘I’d do anything to see you really happy again, Bernard.’
‘I’m happy enough.’
‘I wish you’d show it more. I worry about you. Would you like to go to Berlin?’
‘It depends,’ I said cautiously. ‘If they wanted me to take over Frank’s ramshackle organization and keep it that way, I wouldn’t touch it at any price. If they let me reshape it to something better suited to the twentieth century … then it could be a job well worth doing.’
‘And I can easily imagine you putting it to the D-G in those very words, darling. Can’t you get it into your adorable head that Frank, Dicky, Bret and the D-G all think they are running a wonderful organization that is the envy of the whole world. They are not going to receive your offer to bring it into the twentieth century with boundless enthusiasm.’
‘I must remember that,’ I said.
‘And now I’ve made you angry.’
‘Only because you’re right,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s hardly worth discussing what I’d say if they offered me Frank’s job when I know there is not the slightest chance they will.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Fiona. ‘You realize you’ve driven past our house, don’t you? Bernard! Where the hell are we going?’
There was a parked car … two men in it. Opposite our entrance.’
‘Oh, but Bernard. Really.’
‘I’ll just drive around the block to see if there’s any sort of backup. Then I’ll go back there on foot.’
‘Aren’t you taking a parked car with two people in it too seriously? It’s probably just a couple saying good night.’
‘I’ve been taking things too seriously for years,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it makes me a difficult man to live with. But I’ve stayed alive, sweetheart. And that means a lot to me.’
The streets were deserted, no one on foot and no occupied parked cars as far as I could see. I stopped the car. ‘Give me five minutes. Then drive along the road and into our driveway as if everything was normal.’
She looked worried now. ‘For God’s sake, Bernard. Do be careful.’
‘I’ll be okay,’ I told her as I opened the door of the car. ‘This is what I do for a living.’
I took a pistol from my jacket and stuffed it into a pocket of my raincoat. ‘You’re carrying a gun?’ said Fiona in alarm. ‘What on earth do you want with that?’
‘New instructions,’ I said. ‘Anyone who regularly carries Category One papers has to have a gun. It’s only a peashooter.’
‘I hate guns,’ she said.
‘Five minutes.’
She reached out and gripped my arm. ‘There’s nothing between me and Bret,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing between me and anyone, darling. I swear it. You’re the only one.’
‘You’re only saying that because I’ve got a gun,’ I said. It was a rotten joke, but she gave it the best sort of smile she could manage and then slid across to the driver’s seat.
It was cold, and flakes of snow hit my face. By now the snowfall was heavy enough to make patterns on the ground, and the air cold enough to keep the flakes frozen so they swirled round in ever-changing shapes.
I turned into Duke Street, where we lived, from the north end. I wanted to approach the car from behind. It was safer that way; it’s damned awkward to twist round in a car seat. The car was not one I recognized as being from the car pool, but on the other hand it wasn’t positioned for a hot-rubber getaway. It was an old Lancia coupé with a radio-phone antenna on the roof.
The driver must have been looking in his rearview mirror because the door swung open when I got near. A man got out. He was about thirty, wearing a black leather zip-fronted jacket and the sort of brightly coloured knitted Peruvian hat they sell in ski resorts. I was reassured; it would be a bit conspicuous for a KGB hit team.
He let me come closer and kept his hands at his sides, well away from his pockets. ‘Mr Samson?’ he called.
I stopped. The other occupant of the car hadn’t moved. He hadn’t even turned in his seat to see me. ‘Who are you?’ I said.
‘I’ve got a message from Mr Cruyer,’ he said.
I went closer to him but remained cautious. I was holding the peashooter in the pocket of my coat and I kept it pointing in his direction. ‘Tell me more,’ I said.
He looked down at where the gun made a bulge and said, ‘He told me to wait. You didn’t leave a contact number.’
He was right about that. Fiona’s request to move that damned bed had been waiting for me at home. ‘Let’s have it, then.’
‘It’s Mr Trent. He’s been taken ill. He’s in a house near the Oval. Mr Cruyer is there.’ He motioned vaguely to the car. ‘Shall I call him to say you’re coming?’
‘I’ll go in my car.’
‘Sure,’ said the man. He pulled the knitted hat down round his ears. ‘I’ll ask Mr Cruyer to call you and confirm, shall I?’ He was careful not to grin but my caution obviously amused him.
‘Do that,’ I said. ‘You can’t be too careful.’
‘Will do,’ he said, and gave me a perfunctory salute before opening the car door. ‘Anything else?’
‘Nothing else,’ I said. I didn’t let go of the gun until they’d driven away. Then I went indoors and poured myself a malt whisky while waiting for Cruyer’s call. Fiona arrived before the phone rang. She gave me a tight embrace and a kiss from her ice-cold lips.
Cruyer was not explicit about anything except the address and the fact that he’d been trying to get me for nearly an hour, and would I please hurry, hurry, hurry. Not wanting to arrive there complete with folding bed, I lifted it from the roof rack before leaving. The exertion made me short of breath and my hands tremble. Or was that due to the confrontation with the man from the car? I could not be sure.
The part of south London that takes its name from the Surrey County cricket ground is not the smart residential district that some tourists might expect. The Oval is a seedy collection of small factories, workers’ apartments and a park that is not recommended for a stroll after dark. And yet, tucked away behind the main thoroughfares, with their diesel fumes, stray cats and litter, there are enclaves of renovated houses - mostly of Victorian design - occupied by politicians and civil servants who have discovered how conveniently close to Westminster this unfashionable district is. It was in such a house that Cruyer was waiting for me.
Dicky was lounging in the front room reading The Economist. He habitually carried such reading matter rolled up in the side pocket of his reefer jacket which was now beside him on the sofa. He was wearing jeans, jogging shoes and a white roll-neck sweater in the sort of heavyweight wool that trawler-men require for deck duty in bad weather.
‘I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t-matter,’ said Dicky in a tone that meant it did. ‘Trent has taken an overdose.’
‘What did he take? How bad is he?’ I asked.
‘His sister found him, thank God,’ said Dicky. ‘She brought him here. This is her house. Then she called a doctor.’ Dicky said doctor as another man might say pervert or terrorist. ‘Not one of our people,’ Dicky went on, ‘some bloody quack from the local medical centre.’
‘How bad is he?’
Trent? He’ll survive. But it’s probably a sign that his Russian pals are turning the screws a bit. I don’t want them tightening the screws to the point where Trent decides they can hurt him more than we can.’
‘Did he say that? Did he say he’s coming under pressure?’
‘I think we should assume that he is,’ said Dicky. ‘That’s why someone will have to tell him the facts of life.’
‘For instance?’
‘Someone is going to have to explain that we can’t afford to have him sitting in Moscow answering the questions that a KGB debriefing panel will ask. Losing a few secret papers is one thing. Helping them build a complete diagram of our chain of command and the headquarters structure, and filling in personal details about senior officers for their files would be intolerable.’ Dicky held the rolled-up magazine and slapped the open palm of his left hand with it. Ominously he added, ‘And Trent had better understand that he knows too much to go for trial at the Old Bailey.’
‘And you want me to explain all that?’ I said.
‘I thought you’d already explained it to him,’ said Dicky.
‘Did it occur to you that a suicide attempt might indicate that he’s already been pressed too hard?’
Dicky became absorbed in the problem of rolling The Economist up so tightly that no light could be seen through it. After a long silence he said, ‘I didn’t tell the stupid bastard to sell out his country. You think because he’s a Balliol man I want to go easy on him.’ He got out his cigarettes and put one in his mouth unlit.
‘I never went to college,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He heaved himself off the sofa and went to the mantelshelf where he rummaged for matches and pulled at a flower petal to see if the daffodils were plastic; they weren’t. ‘You didn’t go to college but sometimes you hit the nail on the head, Bernard old friend. I’ve been thinking of that conversation you had with Bret Rensselaer this afternoon. It was only sitting here tonight that I began to see what you were getting at.’ I’d never seen Dicky so restless. He found a matchbox on the shelf, but it was empty.
‘Is that so?’
‘You think everything’s coming up too neat and tidy, don’t you? You don’t like the way in which that material implicating Trent has conveniently come into Frank’s hands in Berlin. You’re suspicious about his being on duty the night that damned radio intercept was filed. In short, you don’t like the way everything points to Giles Trent.’
‘I don’t like it,’ I admitted. ‘When I get all my questions answered fully, I know I’m asking the wrong questions.’
‘Let’s cut out all this nebulous talk,’ he said. He put the matchbox back on the shelf, having decided not to smoke. ‘Do you think Moscow know we are on to Trent? Do you think Moscow intend to use him as a scapegoat?’ Carefully he put his unlit cigarette back into the packet.
‘It would be a good idea for them,’ I said.
‘To make us think every leak we’ve suffered for the last few years has been the work of Trent?’
‘Yes, they could wipe the slate clean like that. We put Trent behind bars and heave a sigh of relief and convince ourselves that everything is fine and dandy.’
Now Dicky used the magazine to imprint red circles on his hand, examining the result with the sort of close scrutiny fortune tellers give the palms of wealthy clients.
‘There would be only one reason for doing that,’ said Dicky. He looked up from his hand and stared into my blank face. ‘They’d have to have someone placed as well as Trent … someone who could continue to provide them with the sort of stuff they’ve been getting from Trent.’
‘Better,’ I said. ‘Much better.’
‘Why better?’
‘Because Moscow Centre always like to get their people home. They’ll spend money, arrest some poor tourist to use as hostage, or even spring from jail an agent serving a sentence to swop him. But they really try hard to get their people home.’
‘I could tell you a few people who now find they don’t like it “at home”,’ said Dicky.
‘That doesn’t make any difference,’ I said. ‘The motive that Moscow Centre play upon is getting them safely back to Russia … medals and citations and all that hero bullshit that Moscow do so well.’
‘And there is no sign yet that they are going to try getting Trent back to Moscow.’
‘And that will spoil their record,’ I said. ‘They’d have to have a really good reason for letting Trent fall off the tightrope. There’s only one sort of motive they could have, and that’s positioning or making more secure another agent. A better agent.’
‘But maybe the Russians don’t know we’re on to him.’
‘And maybe Trent doesn’t want to go to Moscow. Yes, I thought of both those possibilities, and either could be true. But I think Trent is going to be deliberately sacrificed. And that would be very unusual.’
‘This other person,’ said Dicky. ‘This other agent that Moscow might already have in position… . You’re talking about someone at the very top? Am I right?’
‘Look at the record, Dicky. We haven’t run a good double agent in years and we haven’t landed any of their important agents either. That adds up to one thing only: someone here is blowing everything we do,’ I said. ‘We’ve had a long string of miserable failures, and some of them were projects that Trent had no access to.’
The record can be a can of worms - we both know that,’ said Dicky. ‘If they had someone highly placed, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to act on everything he told them. That would leave a trail a mile wide. They are too smart for that.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘So the chances are that Moscow know even more than the evidence suggests.’
‘Do you think it could be me?’ said Dicky. He beat a soft but rapid tattoo on his hand.
‘It’s not you,’ I said. ‘Maybe it’s not anyone. Maybe there is no pattern of betrayal - just incompetence.’
‘Why not me?’ Dicky persisted. He was indignant at being dismissed so readily as a suspect.
‘If you’d been a Moscow agent, you would have handled the office differently. You would have kept your secretary in that anteroom instead of moving her inside where she can see what you are doing all the time. You’d make sure you know all kinds of current matters that you don’t bother to find out. You wouldn’t leave top-secret documents in the copying machine and cause a hue and cry all round the building the way you did three times last year. A Moscow agent wouldn’t draw that kind of attention to himself. And you probably would know enough about photography not to make such a terrible mess of your holiday snapshots the way you do every year. No, you’re not a Moscow man, Dicky.’
‘And neither are you,’ said Dicky, ‘or you wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. So let’s stick together on this one. You’re going to Berlin to contact the Brahms net. Let’s keep your reports of .that trip confidential verbal ones. And from now on let’s keep the wraps on Trent and everything we do, say or think about him. Between us, we can keep a very tight hold on things.’
‘You mean, don’t tell Bret?’
‘I’ll handle Bret. He’ll be told only what he needs to be told.’
‘You can’t suspect Bret?’ Immediately I thought of Fiona. If she was having an affair with Bret, any investigation of Bret would reveal it. Then there would be the very devil of a fuss.
‘It can be anyone. You’ve said that yourself. It could be the D-G.’
‘Well, I don’t know, Dicky,’ I said.
Dicky became agitated. ‘Oh, I see what you’re thinking. You think this might be a devious method of starving Bret of information. So that I can take over his job.’
‘No,’ I said, although that was exactly what had crossed my mind.
‘Let’s not kick off to a bad start,’ said Dicky. ‘We’ve got to trust each other. What do I have to do to make you trust me?’
‘I’d want something in writing, Dicky. Something that I could produce just before they sentence me.’
‘Then you’ll do as I suggest?’
‘Yes.’ Now that Dicky had voiced my fears, I felt uneasy - or, rather, I felt frightened, bloody frightened. A Moscow agent in place endangered all of us, but if he was caught, maybe he’d leave the whole Department discredited and disbanded.
Dicky nodded. ‘Because you know I’m right. You bloody well know I’m right. There is a Moscow agent sitting right at the top of the Department.’
I didn’t remind Dicky that he’d started off by saying that it was my conversation with Bret that eventually made him see what I was getting at. It was better that Dicky thought it was all his own idea. Balliol men like to be creative.
There were footsteps and a knock at the door. The doctor came in. ‘The patient is sleeping now, Mr Cruyer,’ he said respectfully. Given the Victorian setting, I had expected a man with muttonchop whiskers and stovepipe hat. But the doctor was young, younger than Dicky, a wide-eyed boy, with long wavy hair that reached down to his stiff white collar, and carrying a battered black Gladstone bag that he must have inherited from some venerable predecessor.
‘So what’s the prognosis, Doc?’ said Dicky. ‘ The doctor put his bag down on the floor while he put his overcoat on. ‘Suicide is no longer the rare tragedy it once was,’ he said. ‘In Germany, they have about fourteen thousand a year, and that’s more than die there in traffic accidents.’
‘Never mind the statistics,’ said Dicky. ‘Is our friend upstairs likely to try again?’
‘Look, Mr Cruyer, I’m just a GP, not a soothsayer. But whether you like statistics or not, I can tell you that eight out of ten suicides speak of their intentions beforehand. If someone sympathetic had been available to your friend, he probably wouldn’t have taken this desperate step. As to whether he’ll try again, if you give him the care and attention he obviously requires, then you will know what he’s going to do long before any quack like me gets called in to mop up the mess.’
