Samson 01 - Berlin Game, page 18
Dicky nodded as if approving the doctor’s little speech. ‘Will he be fit by tomorrow?’ said Dicky.
‘By the weekend, anyway,’ said the doctor. Thanks to Miss Trent.’ He moved aside to let Giles Trent’s unmarried sister push past him into the room. ‘Her time as a nurse served her well. I couldn’t have done a better job myself.’
Miss Trent did not respond to the doctor’s unctuous manner. She was in her late fifties, a tall thin figure like her brother. Her hair was waved and darkened and her spectacles decorated with shiny gems. She wore a cashmere cardigan and a skirt patterned in the Eraser tartan of red, blue and green. At the collar of her cotton blouse she wore an antique gold brooch. She gave the impression of someone with enough money to satisfy her modest tastes.
The furnishing of the room was like Miss Trent: sober, middle-class and old-fashioned. The carpets, bureau-bookcase and skeleton clock were valuable pieces that might have been inherited from her parents, but they did not fit easily there and I wondered if these were things Giles Trent had recently disposed of.
‘I used my common sense,’ she said, and rubbed her hands together briskly. There was a trace of the Highlands in her voice.
The young doctor bade us all goodnight and departed. Goodness knows what Dicky had told him but, despite his little outburst, his manner was uncommonly respectful.
‘And you’re the man my brother works for,’ said Miss Trent.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Dicky. ‘You can imagine how shocked I was to hear what had happened.’
‘Yes, I can imagine,’ she said frostily. I wondered how much she guessed about her brother’s work.
‘But I wish you hadn’t called in your local doctor,’ said Dicky. He gave her the card listing the Departmental emergency numbers. ‘Much better to use the private medical service that your brother is entitled to.’ Dicky smiled at her, and held his smile despite the stern look she gave both to the card and to Dicky. ‘We’ll get your brother into a nice comfortable room with a night nurse and medical attention available on the spot.’ Again the smile, and again no response. Miss Trent’s countenance remained unchanged. ‘You’ve done your bit, Miss Trent.’
‘My brother will stay here,’ she said.
‘I’ve made all the arrangements now,’ said Dicky. He was a match for her; Dicky had the thick-skinned determination of a rhino. I was interested to watch the confrontation, but again and again my thoughts went back to Fiona. Morbidly I visualized her with Bret: talking, dancing, laughing, loving.
‘Did you not hear what I said?’ Miss Trent asked calmly. ‘My brother needs the rest. You’ll not be disturbing him.’
‘That’s a decision that neither of us need concern ourselves with,’ said Dicky. ‘Your brother has signed a contract under the terms of which his employers are responsible for his medical care. In situations like this’ - Dicky paused long enough to raise an eyebrow - ‘your brother must be examined by one of our own medical staff. We have to think of the medical insurance people. They can be devils about anything irregular.’
‘He’s sleeping.’ This represented a slight retrenchment.
‘If his insurance was revoked, your brother would lose his pension, Miss Trent. Now I’m sure you wouldn’t want to claim that your medical knowledge is better than that of the doctor who examined him.’
‘I did not hear the doctor say he could be moved.’
‘He wrote it out for me,’ said Dicky. He’d put the piece of paper between the pages of his magazine and now he leafed through it. ‘Yes, here we are.’ He passed the handwritten document to her. She read it in silence and passed it back.
‘He must have written that when he first arrived.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Dicky.
‘That was before he examined my brother. Is that what you were doing all the time before he came upstairs?’
‘The ambulance will be here any moment, Miss Trent. Could I trouble you to put your brother’s clothes into a case or a bag? I’ll see you get it back of course.’ A big smile. ‘He’ll need his clothes in a day or two, from what I understand.’
‘I’ll go with him,’ she said.
‘I’ll phone the office and ask them,’ said Dicky. ‘But they almost always say no. That’s the trouble with trying to get things done at this time of night. None of the really senior people can be found.’
‘I thought you were senior,’ she said.
‘Exactly!’ said Dicky. That’s what I mean. No one will be senior enough to countermand my decision.’
‘Poor Giles,’ said the woman. ‘That he’d be working for a man such as you.’
‘For a lot of the time, he was left on his own,’ said Dicky.
Miss Trent looked up suddenly to see what he meant, but Dicky’s face was as blank as hers had been. Angrily she turned to where I was sitting holding a folded newspaper and pencil. ‘And you,’ she said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s a crossword,’ I said. ‘Six letters: the clue is “Married in opera but not in Seville”. Do you get it?’
‘I know nothing of opera. I hate opera, and I know nothing of Seville,’ said Miss Trent. ‘And if you’ve nothing more important than that to ask me, it’s time you took yourself out of my house.’
‘I’ve nothing more important than that to ask you, Miss Trent,’ I said. ‘Perhaps your brother will be able to solve it.’
Jesus, I thought, suppose Bret turned out to be a Moscow man and was trying to recruit Fiona to his cause. That would really be messy.
‘It’s not a crossword at all,’ said Miss Trent. ‘You’re making up questions. That’s the classified page.’
‘I’m looking for another job,’ I explained.
15
Dicky had Trent taken out to Berwick House, an eighteenth-century manor named after a natural son of James II and the sister of the Duke of Marlborough. It had been taken over by the War Office in 1940 and, like so many other good things seized temporarily by the government, it was never returned to its former owners.
The seclusion could hardly have been bettered had the place been specially built for us. Seven acres of ground with an ancient fifteen-foot-high wall that was now so overgrown with weeds and ivy that it looked more like a place that had been abandoned than one that was secret.
On the croquet lawn the Army had erected black creosoted Nissen huts, which now provided a dormitory for the armed guards, and two prefabricated structures which were sometimes used for lectures when there was a conference or a special training course in the main building. But, despite these disfigurements, Berwick House retained much of its original elegance. The moat was the most picturesque feature of the estate and it still had its bullrushes, irises and lilies. There was no sign of the underwater devices that had been added. Even the little rustic teahouse and gate lodge had been convened to guard posts with enough care to preserve their former appearance. And the infrared beams and sonic warning shields that lined the perimeter were so well hidden in the undergrowth that even the technicians who checked them did not find them of easy access.
‘You’ve got a nerve,’ said Giles Trent. ‘It’s kidnapping, no matter what fancy explanations Dicky gives me.’
‘Your taking an overdose of sleeping tablets upset him,’ I said.
‘You’re a sardonic bastard,’ said Trent. We were in his cramped second-floor room: cream-painted walls, metal frame bed, and a print of Admiral Nelson dying at Trafalgar.
‘You think I should feel sorry for you,’ I said. ‘And I don’t feel sorry for you. That’s why we are at odds.’
‘You never let up, do you?’
‘I’m not an interrogator,’ I said cheerfully. ‘And, unlike you, I never have been. You know most of our interrogation staff, Giles. You trained some of them, according to what I saw on your file. Say who you’d like assigned to you and I’ll do everything I can to arrange that you get him.’
‘Give me a cigarette,’ said Trent. We both knew that there was no question of Trent’s being permitted anywhere near one of the interrogators. Such a confrontation would start rumours everywhere, from Curzon Street to the Kremlin. I passed him a cigarette. ‘Why can’t I have a couple of packets?’ said Trent, who was a heavy smoker.
‘Berwick House regulations forbid smoking in the bedrooms, and the doctor said it’s bad for you.’
‘I don’t know what you wanted to keep me alive for,’ said Trent in an unconvincing outburst of melancholy. He was too tail for the skimpy cotton dressing gown provided by the housekeeper’s department, and he kept tugging at its collar to cover the open front of his buttonless pyjama jacket. Perhaps he remembered the interrogation training report in which he’d recommended that detainees should be made to suffer ‘a loss of both dignity and comfort’ while being questioned.
I said, ‘They’re not keeping you fit and well for the Old Bailey, if that’s what you mean.’
He lit his cigarette with the matches I gave him and then hunched himself in order to take that very deep first breath that the tobacco addict craves. Only when he’d blown smoke did he say, ‘You think not?’
‘And have you centre stage for a publicity circus? You know too much, Giles.’
‘You flatter me. I know only tidbits. When was I a party to any important planning?’ I heard in his voice a note of disappointed ambition. Had that played a part in his treachery, I wondered.
‘It’s tidbits the government really hate, Trent. It’s tidbits that are wanted for the papers and the news magazines. That’s why you can never get into the Old Bailey through the crowds of reporters. They know their readers don’t want to read those long reports about the Soviet economy when they could find out how someone bugged the bedroom of the Hungarian military attachés favourite mistress.’
‘If not the Old Bailey, then what - ?’
‘I keep telling you, Giles. Just keep your friend Chlestakov happy.’ I sat down on his bed. I wanted to show Trent that I was settling in for a long talk, and I knew that rumpling up his bed would irritate him. Irritation could make a man captious and indiscreet; that too was something I’d read in Trent’s training report. I said, ‘He had a sense of humour, your contact from the Embassy, calling himself Chlestakov. That was the name of the impostor in Gogol’s The Government Inspector. He’s the man who fills his pockets with bribes, seduces the prefect’s daughter, lies, cheats and swindles all the corrupt officials of the town, and then gets away scot free as the curtain falls. He does get away scot free, doesn’t he? Or does he get imprisoned at the end?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Gogol had a sense of humour,’ I persisted.
‘If not the Old Bailey, what?’
‘Don’t shout, Giles. Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Either they will feel you’ve cooperated and you’ll be put out to grass, and finish your days with the senior citizens of some seaside resort on the south coast - or you refuse to cooperate, and you will end up in the ambulance with the flashing lights that doesn’t get to the emergency ward in time.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Well, I hope so,’ I said. ‘I’m trying like hell to get some sense into your brainless head.’
‘Chlestakov, or whatever his real name is, suspects nothing. But if you keep me locked up in this place you’ll certainly change that. Where are we, by the way? How long was I unconscious?’
‘Don’t keep asking the same thing, Giles. You know I can’t answer. The immediate question is: when are you going to start telling us the truth?’ There was no reaction from him except to examine his cigarette to see how many more puffs he had left. ‘Let’s go right back to that first interrogation. I was reading it this morning… .’ He looked up. ‘Oh, yes. I keep at it, Giles. I’m afflicted with the work ethic of the lower class. In that first interrogation you said you regularly went to the opera with your sister and Chlestakov, to pass photocopied documents to him. I was interested to notice that you used the word “treff”.’ I paused deliberately, wanting to see if my mention of his sister and the visits to the opera had any effect upon him. Now I watched him carefully as I prattled on. ‘It’s a spy word, treff. I can’t say I remember ever using it myself, but I’ve often heard it used in films on TV. It has those romantic overtones that spying has for some people. Treff! German for meet, but also for strike or hit. And it has those irresistible military connotations: “battle”, “combat”, or “action”. It means “line of battle” too. Did you know that, Giles?’
His vigorous puffing had already burned the cigarette down and now he was nursing it, holding it to his lips and trying to make it last. ‘I never thought about it.’
‘That’s probably why Chlestakov used it on you. It made you both feel more daring, more rakish, more like men who change history. I once asked one of the KGB people why they gave their agents all those gadgets of the sort they gave you. The camera that looks like a cigarette lighter, the radio transmitter disguised like a video recorder and the onetime pads and all that. Chlestakov never asked you to use any of that junk - the KGB almost never do. Why would they bother, when all they have to do in a free society is have one of their hoodlums take a cab across town and have a chat or spend a couple of minutes in a photocopy shop? And this KGB man told me that it gave their agents confidence. Is that what it did for you, Giles? Did it make you feel more sure of yourself to have all that paraphernalia? It was fatal, of course. When we found all that stuff under the floorboards, you were sunk. Silly place, under the floorboards. Floorboards and attics - always the first place the searchers look. Was that Chlestakov’s suggestion?’
‘As a matter of fact, it was,’ said Trent. He got to his feet and, pulling the belt of his dressing gown tighter, went to the door. He opened it and looked along the corridor. When he came back again, he muttered something about wanting a cup of tea. He said he thought he’d heard the nurse coming, but I knew I had him worried.
‘To get back to the point, Giles. You said that you got opera tickets for Chlestakov and your sister, so that the three of you would look’ - I paused - ‘less conspicuous. That was a funny thing to say, Giles. I was thinking about that last night when I couldn’t get to sleep. Less conspicuous than what, I thought. Less conspicuous than two men? It didn’t make sense to me. Why would you take your sister along to the opera when you wanted to keep your meetings with Chlestakov as secret as possible? So I got up and started reading your transcript again. I found your descriptions of those visits to the opera. You quote your sister as saying that ‘Mr Chlestakov was a pleasant man, considering he was a Russian.’ I suppose you said that to emphasize the fact that your sister had no particular liking for Russians.’
‘That’s right,’ said Trent.
‘Or even that she was prejudiced against Russians.’
‘Yes.’
‘Whatever your sister’s feelings about Chlestakov and his comrades, it certainly seems from your transcript that she was aware of his name and his nationality. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’ Trent had stopped pacing now. He stood by the little electric fire built into the fireplace and rubbed his hands together nervously. ‘She loved the opera. Having her with, us provided a reason for the meeting.’
‘Your sister hasn’t been entirely honest with you, Giles,’ I said. ‘Last night I invented a question that even the worst-informed opera buff in the world would have been able to answer. Your sister told me she didn’t like opera. She said it vociferously. She said it as if she had some special reason for hating it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at.’
‘Are you cold, Giles? You’re shivering.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘We know the way it really happened, don’t we, Giles? They got to you by means of your sister. Did Chlestakov, a nice gentleman of about the right age, go into that little wool shop your sister owns and ask help in choosing wool? For his mother? For his sister? For his daughter? Not for his wife - what had happened to her? Was he a widower? That’s what they usually say. And then when the relationship had flowered - they’re never in a hurry, the KGB, and I do admire that; we are always in a rush and the Americans even more so - eventually your sister suggests that you join their outings. And you say yes.’
‘You make it sound so carefully planned.’ He was angry, but his anger was not directed at me. It was not directed at anyone. It exploded with a plop, like a bullet thrown onto the fire.
‘And you still want to believe it wasn’t, eh? Well, I don’t blame you. It must make a man angry to find he’s performed his prescribed role in a play written in Moscow.’
‘She nursed my father for ten years. She turned down good proposals of marriage. Was I supposed to crush her little chance of happiness?’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me that you thought it was all true? You thought Prince Charming had walked through the door of the wool shop, and your sister’s foot just happened to fit the glass slipper? You thought it might be just a coincidence that he worked for the KGB and you worked for the Secret Intelligence Service?’
‘He worked for the Soviet Trade Delegation,’ growled Trent.
‘Don’t make jokes like that, Giles,’ I said. ‘You’ll have me fall over laughing.’
‘I wanted to believe it.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Just like me and Santa Claus, but one day you have to ask yourself how he gets those bloody reindeer down the chimney.’
‘What’s the difference whether I went to the opera with them, or she came to the opera with us?’
‘Now that’s a question I can answer,’ I said. ‘The D-G wouldn’t want to put you into the dock, for reasons we’ve already discussed. But there would be no such inhibitions about putting your sister there.’
‘My sister?’
‘With you as unnamed witness. You know how these things are done. You’ve read newspaper accounts of spy trials. In your circumstances, I’d have thought you’d read them with great care and attention.’
