Samson 05 - Hope, page 25
I arrived little short of midnight, and Bret was there already. He’d just flown back from Washington and had stopped off only long enough to change into his official undress uniform. The Savile Row outfit, obligatory in the halls of power, had been exchanged for what Bret liked to think was ‘leisure wean’ tailored gray flannel pants, silk kerchief escaping from an open-neck white tennis shirt and a dark blue blazer. It made him look like he’d been washed ashore from some long-ago summer’s Jazz Festival. On his knees he was balancing a lovingly framed section of weather-worn fabric bearing the national emblem of Imperial Germany.
‘Part of the tailplane from von Richthofen’s Albatross,’ explained Dicky, tapping it so energetically that it almost slipped from Bret’s grasp. ‘Should be in a museum really.’ He glanced up at me and waved a greeting.
‘I can see that,’ said Bret.
I dumped my coat on the chair. The house was silent I suppose Daphne had long since gone up to bed. ‘All right if I help myself to a drink?’ I knew that Bret and Dicky both thought I drank too much. Had I been born with half of Dicky’s natural guile, I would have spent the meeting sipping Perrier water, looking alert and dependable, and leaning forward poised to laugh at the jokes. But I could never resist reinforcing their stupid prejudices. ‘I really need one.’
‘What the hell happened to you?’ Dicky inquired as he noticed my bruises.
‘I fell downstairs.’
‘Help yourself,’ said Dicky, rebuffed by what he thought a flippant reply. For a moment I thought he was going to insist upon taking my temperature, a device he had more than once wielded on office staff to exercise his tiresome sense of humor. ‘But hurry, Bernard. We’ve been waiting for you.’ He was dressed in khaki gabardine pants and a forest-green British army style woolen sweater, its elbows and shoulders reinforced with leather patches.
‘Yes,’ I said and, malt whiskey bottle in hand, raised an eyebrow at Bret.
Bret shook his head sternly and reached out to the side table, covering his Pepsi, to indicate that he didn’t want any. It was not a good omen.
So I smiled at Rupert a malt whiskey drinker if I’ve ever seen one and he smiled in return. He used a finger and thumb to indicate a moderate refill and I gave him a dash of booze.
Rupert Copper, ‘our man from the Warsaw embassy,’ was the only other person at our meeting. He was about forty, a constipated stuffed shirt but a very able linguist. As well as Polish he had a good grasp of those Balkan languages which I’d seen defeat some of the brightest and most ambitious of our Foreign Office colleagues. He was particularly up to date on the intricate details of Greek political extremists. He wasn’t a close friend: we’d chatted together at dull conferences and meetings. He’d started off with the diplomatic people and then transferred to SIS as a way of staying in Warsaw. Married with two teenage children, he was the subject of persistent rumors that his real love affair with Poland came in the shape of a middle-aged Polish countess who’d been seen in close attendance on him for at least ten years.
Rupert was elegantly perched, legs crossed, on the chair where the Cruyers’ cat was usually curled up asleep. Rupert had just been taken out of his box: dark blue suit, crisp striped shirt, Wykehamist tie and polished black brogues. He had dark deep-set eyes, thin bloodless lips and a hairline moustache that looked as if it had been applied with an eyebrow pencil. Even more than other FO employees, he had the sleek and shiny look of a prosperous pimp. But it had to be said that he was competent, cautious and precise; qualifications so rarely found among employees of the Foreign Office that I was reassured by his presence.
After sampling the whiskey I added an extra measure and settled down on the sofa alongside a brightly lit glass case containing model aircraft. Dicky was still explaining something about Richthofen’s military funeral to Bret. Rupert caught my eye but his face was expressionless. He upended his whiskey and the ice cubes slid down and hit his nose. Hiding any surprise he might have felt, he took a monogrammed handkerchief from his cuff and dabbed his face. Then he put his glass on the sideboard as if distancing himself from further temptations.
‘Well, let’s get down to business,’ said Bret eventually. He rested the framed section of fabric down on the carpet while Dicky went and sat in his recliner, pulling the lever tight so that he didn’t slide into the horizontal position.
‘You heard what happened?’ Bret asked me.
‘No,’ I said. No is my default reply. There’s nothing to be gained from saying yes to such questions.
‘George Kosinski has been sighted,’ said Bret. ‘In Poland.’
‘Oh, in Poland,’ I said, and turned to look at Rupert, who nodded to confirm this entirely unsurprising item of information.
‘Just when we were all quite certain he was dead,’ prompted Dicky.
‘He certainly keeps us on our toes,’ I said, in order not to disturb the mood of heightened expectancy.
I thought I’d been summoned to London on account of the murder of the kid in Berlin. Alternatively I thought they might have unraveled the material that the monitoring service had shown to Gloria. But neither of these subjects was brought up, and my instinct for self-preservation told me I shouldn’t mention either matter myself.
‘Rupert says there is another Kosinski house,’ said Dicky, motioning for Rupert to join in the conversation.
Rupert said, ‘They have a guest house out there. It’s a couple of miles away from the family home-, maybe more. Used to be a hunting lodge back in the old days. Nazis, such as Field Marshal Göring, liked to go there to hunt wild game when that region was part of Germany. The lodge was badly damaged by the war but they have spent a bit of money doing it up.’
‘That’s where they were hiding him,’ said Dicky. ‘The bastards had us dangling on a string.’
‘They are family,’ I said mildly.
‘He’s on some damned vendetta,’ said Dicky angrily, but a warning look from Bret calmed him.
‘Why is he there, Bernard?’ Bret asked me.
‘He’s been moving heaven and earth to find out how his wife died,’ I said. ‘He’s upset; he’s not entirely rational.’
‘But why are the Stasi and the Bezpieca playing along with him?’
‘Are they doing that?’
‘Come along, Bernard,’ said Bret. ‘You know how these folk operate. They are helping him. I’m asking you why.’
‘They want to monitor him, I suppose. George has money, and money talks in the intelligence game. It’s what makes the wheels go round. George can afford the best. He employed “Tiny” Timmermann to go over there and find out how his wife died. Tiny was a pro, a tough old-time CIA man who burrowed his way right into the Smersh compound in Magdeburg. Tiny was worth his pay. How would we feel if some joker was employing some capable rent-a-spies to come digging in our vegetable patch?’
Bret nodded. There was no need to draw a diagram for Bret, but Dicky made sure I didn’t come out of the story unsullied. ‘And the Stasi blew the top of Tiny’s head off and left him for you to find. Except that you misidentified the corpse and played right into their hands.’
Bret ignored Dicky and said, ‘If George was giving the other side a headache wouldn’t they just blow him away?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not in Poland, and George knows that. George has a brother, very influential, very pally with the army regime in Warsaw. With things getting tough for commies everywhere these days, Normannenstrasse need all the help and good will they can get from the Poles. None of them are going to be cheering when George sends pensioned-off CIA men to probe their secrets it sticks in our throats too, doesn’t it? But they probably figure that the way to counter a crazy man like George is to cosy up to him; to help and advise him, and make George a good friend.’
‘Quite a turnaround,’ said Dicky. ‘How would they start on that one?’
‘They go to George and say don’t waste your money on private investigators who just make trouble for everyone. We are just as interested in getting to the truth about Tessa Kosinski as you are. Let us prove to you that we are not bad people.’
‘But the Brits and the Yanks are bad people.’ Bret finished the story for me. ‘Drip by drip they poison his mind against us. Yes, I’ll buy that one. Patience and planning: that’s always been the Moscow method, and it’s the way all their stooges do it. While we run around in a constant panic, putting Band-Aids on wounds that need major surgery, our opponents are screening and recruiting university students who will be agents of influence in twenty years’ time.’
I said, ‘Is this an official abandoning of the theory that George ran away because the stock market crashed?’
Dicky, who had been clinging to that theory for some time, decided that his best course of action was to throw a spanner into the works. He said, ‘Bernard believes Tessa Kosinski is still alive.’
Bret didn’t ask me if that was what I thought. He looked at me and said, ‘George Kosinski has been told that a contract killer named Thurkettle killed his wife.’ He finished his drink and waited for me to respond. Looking up, he said, ‘No reaction, Bernard?’
‘Told?’ I said. ‘Who told him?’
Bret responded to that question with one of his own. ‘Could he be persuaded to come back?’
‘George Kosinski?’ I said.
‘As you convincingly surmise, the Stasi and their Bezpieca buddies will be playing with him. We hear stories that they may have promised to finger Tessa’s killer for George, and we wouldn’t like that. I don’t want anyone standing in the dock in Warsaw facing murder one, and making headlines in a trial that has a feature role for Fiona’s sister. The Department couldn’t handle that kind of exposure. We’d have busloads of Japanese TV crews sorting through our shredder bags, and airing talking heads of your Portuguese help.’ A pause. ‘Do you hear me, Bernard?’
I said, ‘And George has been spotted?’
Rupert spoke. ‘By one of our people.’ Did I hear a measure of reservation?
‘Someone who knows George Kosinski?’ I asked him.
Dicky interposed: ‘It’s a positive identification. There can’t be two people who look like George Kosinski.’
‘Three Warsaw purchases for which George Kosinski’s Visa card was used,’ said Rupert, looking at me quizzically. ‘Two high-priced restaurants and a man’s shop.’
‘Sounds like George,’ I said. I was flattered that they were all regarding me as the person who had to be convinced, but then I saw that this was because I was going to be the idiot who returned there, trudging through the snow and ice, and resuming the goose chase for a man who’d already demonstrated commendable skill at hiding.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to Poland, if that is what it’s all about. Can I have authority to look at all the Berlin monitoring traffic?’
‘Anything you want; make a list,’ said Bret. ‘When would you plan to be in Warsaw?’
‘Right away, Bret,’ I said, not without a touch of sarcasm. With Christmas only days away I felt a resentment at the way I was being steamrollered.
‘Good,’ he said, and got to his feet and went to rip open another can of chilled Pepsi, giving me a mangled kind of smile in passing. ‘You’ll have diplomatic cover, but Copper will be de facto case officer. Can you hold still for that, Bernard?’
‘Okay.’
‘Diplomatic cover,’ said Bret. ‘You won’t be deniable; so play safe.’ He held his glass, and the rum bottle, high so that he could accurately measure the amount of booze he was pouring.
‘Play safe,’ I said and nodded. That summed up the top floor’s win-without-risk philosophy. Do the impossible but play safe.
‘Copper will keep in touch with Dicky,’ said Bret. ‘Do as you are told and don’t argue.’
‘Could you top this one up too, Bret?’ I said, holding out my empty glass.
Rupert gave me a lift home in his rented Ford when he heard I had no car. He was staying with his sister in Fulham. He said that Mayfair was on his way, and took me right to my door. I noticed him studying the quiet grandeur of the portals of my apartment block but he didn’t comment like everyone else in the Department, he knew it was Fiona’s legacy.
‘Thanks for the ride home,’ I said. I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock in the morning.
‘So you lost one of your people? I’m sorry.’ Rupert, suitably unemotional, was staring ahead through the windscreen at the nocturnal comings and goings in the busy street.
‘How did you hear?’
‘Cruyer and Rensselaer were talking about it before you arrived.’ He had never abandoned that Oxbridge habit of referring to his equals by their family names.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I wonder why they said nothing to me about it.’
‘Cruyer’s frightened of you.’
‘That will be the day.’
‘I was at Oxford with him. I knew him well in those days. He’s always dreaded people making a fool of him.’
‘Do I do that to him?’
‘At times you do it to everyone.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said.
A taxi cab swerved and pulled to the curb ahead of us. An elderly couple emerged. The man cut a dignified figure in evening clothes, the woman in shiny furs. I recognized them as our long-married next-door neighbors. The man dug into his pocket to pay off the cabby. The woman slammed the cab door with an intemperate display of strength. Then, as they passed us, they resumed some bitter argument, their faces contorted with anger. I found something exceptionally gloomy in this demonstration that time brought no mellowing of marital strife.
‘There are photos,’ said Rupert. ‘They decided not to show them to you. Photos of George Kosinski. My people took them four days ago. You want to see them?’
‘Yes, please.’
Rupert reached over his seat for a leather document case on the floor of the car. From it he brought three photos; color snapshots taken in a busy street. He took a tiny flashlight from the case and shone it for me to see better.
‘George Kosinski,’ said Rupert. ‘Here, and here.’ Leaning across he stabbed a finger at a blurred head and shoulders amid a dozen or more people on a busy street. The picture had been taken on one of those cameras that imprint a date and time on the negative. It was in any case obviously made recently. The people were bundled up in fur hats and woolen hats, and most of them looked blue with the cold. I recognized shop signs and a section of the Nowy Swiat, Warsaw’s main street.
‘Why didn’t they want me to see these?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t make too much of that. You are more familiar with George Kosinski’s appearance than any of us. If you had dismissed the photos as being of someone else, it would have ended the discussion, wouldn’t it? Cruyer didn’t want to provide you with that amount of leverage.’
‘Can I keep these?’
‘I’m afraid not, old chap. I have to show them to the D-G tomorrow.’
‘I heard he was sick.’
Rupert looked at me as if suspecting that I’d tried to catch him out. ‘I’m invited to the D-G’s home,’ he said very slowly.
‘Take sandwiches,’ I advised. ‘His idea of lunch these days is tea with lemon in it and a dry biscuit.’
‘I owe you a big favor, Samson,’ he said, as if he’d been bottling it up and rehearsing this announcement. ‘I never did say thank you.’
‘A favor?’
‘A long time back, when that ghastly fellow Kosciuszko was blackmailing my chief … Everyone, that is to say everyone who worked in the office at that time, felt deeply indebted to you.’
‘Oh, that,’ I said, although I had only a vague recollection of the business he was talking about.
‘I don’t know what you did, and I don’t care. He was a poisonous reptile. Someone told me you threw the little bastard into the river somewhere and left him swimming for his life through the ice-floes. My God! I would have enjoyed the sight of it. I hope your good deed didn’t go entirely unrewarded.’ I was tired; I didn’t respond. He said awkwardly: ‘And I believe the best way I can return that favor is to speak to you frankly.’ It was a question. I looked at him but made no response. ‘Man to man,’ he added.
I appreciated the effort he was making. Rupert Copper wasn’t the sort of man who readily resorted to man-to-man conversations, especially with outsiders, the sort of outsiders who tossed men into the water for fun and profit. ‘Shoot,’ I said.
‘Tonight I watched you talking to Cruyer, and that chap Rensselaer. And quite honestly, old chap, I wonder exactly what goes on in that head of yours.’
‘Not much,’ I admitted.
‘The whole service, from London to the other side of the world, seems concerned with nothing but rumor after rumor.’
‘It’s what the service does to earn its keep,’ I said. ‘We’re in the rumor business aren’t we?’
‘Rumors about you, Samson,’ he said with emphasis. ‘Rumors about your wife. They are still asking if that business really was … what it was later described to be. Or whether she really defected with a lot of choice material, and then was lured back. No, no …’ He raised his hand, stopping my objections while he went on. ‘I hear more rumors about that girl you lived with, the one that Rensselaer now seems to have some claim upon. That was a somewhat sudden elevation to the top floor, wasn’t it? There are endless rumors about who killed your sister-in-law, and why. And now, a new one going the rounds in the last few days says that she was never really dead. She’s alive and living in Moscow or some bloody nonsense. Now there is all this shenanigan with your brother-in-law. And that’s in my bailiwick, and not something I can ignore. Do you see?’
‘I don’t know what I can do to stop people telling each other ludicrous stories,’ I said.
He sighed and tried again. ‘You’re a danger to all concerned, Samson. To Whitehall and to Normannenstrasse. What do you think would have been the reaction here in London Central, had it been you stretched out dead in the Berlin mortuary tonight, instead of that kid who worked for you?’
