Samson 01 - Berlin Game, page 5
‘It must be a bloody big boat,’ I said.
‘It will sleep six … eight if you’re all very friendly, Daphne told me. She’s not going. She gets seasick.’
I looked at her quizzically. ‘Is your sister having an affair with Dicky Cruyer?’
‘How clever you are,’ said Fiona in a voice from which any trace of admiration had been carefully eliminated. ‘But you are behind the times, darling. She’s fallen for someone much older, she told me.’
‘She’s a bitch.’
‘Most men find her attractive,’ said Fiona. For some reason Fiona got a secret satisfaction from hearing me condemn her sister, and was keen to provoke more of the same.
‘I thought she was reconciled with her own husband.’
‘It was a trial,’ said Fiona.
‘I’ll bet it was,’ I agreed. ‘Especially for George.’
‘You were sitting next to the antique lady - was she amusing?’
‘A lady in the antique business.’ I corrected her description, and she smiled. ‘She told me to beware of dressers, they are likely to have modern tops and antique bottoms.’
‘How bizarre!’ said Fiona. She giggled. ‘Where can I find one?’
‘Right here,’ I said, and jumped into bed with her. ‘Give me that damned hot-water bottle.’
‘There’s no hot-water bottle. That’s me! Oh, your hands are freezing.’
I was awakened by one of the farm dogs barking, and then from somewhere across the river there came the echoing response of some other dog on some other farm. I opened my eyes to see the time and found the bedside light on. It was four o’clock in the morning. Fiona was in her dressing gown drinking tea. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘It was the dog.’
‘I can never sleep properly away from home. I went downstairs and made tea. I brought up an extra cup - would you like some?’
‘Just half a cup. Have you been awake long?’
‘I thought I heard someone go downstairs. It’s a creepy old house, isn’t it? There’s a biscuit if you want it.’ I took just the tea and sipped some. Fiona said, ‘Did you promise to go? Berlin - did you promise?’ It was as if she felt my decision would reveal how important she was to me compared with my job.
I shook my head.
‘But that’s what your billiards game was all about? I guessed so. Silas was so adamant about not having any of us in there. Sometimes I wonder if he realizes that I’m senior staff now.’
They’re all worried about the Brahms Four business.’
‘But why send you? What reason did they give?’
‘Who else could go? Silas?’ I told her the essence of the conversation that had taken place in the billiards room. The dogs began barking again. From downstairs I heard a door closing and then Silas trying to quieten the dogs. His voice was hoarse and he spoke to them in the same way he spoke to Billy and Sally.
‘I saw the memo that Rensselaer sent to the D-G,’ Fiona said, speaking more quietly now as if frightened that we might be overheard. ‘Five pages. I took it back to my office and read it through.’ I looked at her in surprise. Fiona was not the sort of person who disobeyed the regulations so flagrantly. ‘I had to know,’ she added.
I drank my tea and said nothing. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know what Rensselaer and Dicky Cruyer had in store for me.
‘Brahms Four might have gone crazy,’ she said finally. ‘Bret and Dicky both suggest that as a real possibility.’ She waited while the words took effect. ‘They think he might have had some kind of mental breakdown. That’s why they are worried. There’s simply no telling what he might do.’
‘Is that what it said in the memo?’ I laughed. ‘That’s just Bret and Dicky covering their asses.’
‘Dicky suggested that they let some high-powered medical people attempt a diagnosis on the basis of Brahms Four’s reports but Bret squashed that.’
‘It sounds just like one of Cruyer’s bright ideas,’ I said. ‘Let the headshrinkers into a meeting and we’ll be the front page of next week’s Sunday newspapers’ review section, complete with misquotes, misspellings and bits written “by our own correspondents”. Thank Christ Bret killed that one. What form does the Brahms Four madness take?’
‘The usual sort of paranoia: enemies round every corner, no one he can trust. Can he have a full list of everyone with access to his reports? Do we know there are top-level leaks of everything he sends us? The usual sort of loony stuff that people imagine when they’re going round the bend.’
I nodded. Fiona didn’t have the faintest idea of what an agent’s life was like. Dicky and Bret had no idea either. None of these desk bastards knew. My father used to say, ‘Eternal paranoia is the price of liberty. Vigilance is not enough.’
‘Maybe Brahms Four is right,’ I said. ‘Maybe there are enemies round every corner over there.’ I remembered Cruyer telling me the way the Department helped Brahms Four to ingratiate himself with the regime. He must have made a lot of enemies. ‘Maybe he’s not so loony.’
‘And top-level security leaks too?’ Fiona said.
‘It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’
‘Brahms Four asked for you. Did they tell you that?’
‘No.’ I concealed my surprise. So that was at the back of all their anxiety in the billiards room.
‘He doesn’t want any more contact with his regular Control. He’s told them he’ll deal with no one but you.’
‘I’ll bet that finally convinced the D-G that he was crazy.’ I put the empty teacup on the side table and switched out my bedside light. ‘I’ve got to get some sleep,’ I told her. ‘I wish I could manage on five hours a night like you, but I need a lot of sack time.’
‘You won’t go, will you? Promise you won’t.’
I grunted and buried my face in the pillow. I always sleep face downwards; it stays dark longer that way.
5
On Monday afternoon I was in Bret Rensselaer’s office. It was on the top floor not far from the suite the D-G occupied. All the top-floor offices were decorated to the personal taste of the occupants; it was one of the perks of seniority. Bret’s room was ‘modern’, with glass and chrome and grey carpet. It was hard, austere and colourless, a habitat just right for Bret, with his dark worsted Savile Row suit and the crisp white shirt and club tie, and his fair hair that was going white, and the smile that seemed shy and fleeting but was really the reflex action that marked his indifference.
The nod, the smile, and the finger pointed at the black leather chesterfield did not interrupt the conversation he was having on his white phone. I sat down and waited for him to finish telling a caller that there was no chance of them meeting for lunch that day, next day, or any day in the future.
‘Are you a poker player, Bernard?’ he said even while he was putting the phone down.
‘Only for matchsticks,’ I replied cautiously.
‘Ever wonder what will happen to you when you retire?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘No plans to buy a bar in Malaga, or a market garden in Sussex?’
‘Is that what you’re planning?’ I said.
Bret smiled. He was rich, very rich. The idea of him working a market garden in Sussex was hilarious. As for Malaga and its plebeian diversions, he’d divert the plane rather than enter its air space. ‘I guess your wife has money,’ said Rensselaer. He paused. ‘But I’d say you’re the type of inverted snob who wouldn’t want to use any of it.’
‘Would that make me an inverted snob?’
‘If you were smart enough to invest her dough and double it, you’d do no one any harm. Right?’
‘In the evenings, you mean? Or would that be instead of working here?’
‘Every time I ask you questions, I find you asking me questions.’
‘I didn’t know I was being questioned,’ I said. ‘Am I being vetted?’
‘In this business it does no harm to flip the pages of someone’s bank account from time to time,’ said Rensselaer.
‘You’ll find only moths in mine,’ I said.
‘No family money?’
‘Family money? I was thirty years old before I got a nanny.’
‘People like you who’ve worked in the field always have money and securities stashed away. I’ll bet you’ve got numbered bank accounts in a dozen towns.’
‘What would I put into them, luncheon vouchers?’
‘Goodwill,’ he said ‘Goodwill. Until the time comes.’ He picked up the short memo I’d sent him about Werner Volkmann’s import-export business. So that was it. He was wondering if I was sharing the profit in Werner’s business.
‘Volkmann is not making enough dough to pay handsome kickbacks, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ I said.
‘But you want the Department to bankroll him?’ He was still standing behind his desk; he liked being on his feet, moving about like a boxer, shifting his weight and twisting his body as if avoiding imaginary blows.
‘You’d better get yourself some new bifocals,’ I said. There’s no suggestion that the Department give him a penny.’
Bret smiled. When he got tired of playing the shy Mr Nice Guy, he’d suddenly go for confrontation, accusation and insult. But at least he was unlikely to go behind your back. ‘Maybe I read it hurriedly. What the hell is forfaiting anyway?’
Bret was like those High Court judges who lean over and ask what is a male chauvinist, or a mainframe computer. They know what they think these things are, but they want them defined by mutual agreement and written into the court record.
‘Volkmann raises cash for West German companies so they can be paid promptly after exporting goods to East Germany.’
‘How does he do that?’ said Bret, looking down and fiddling with some papers on his desk.
‘There’s a hell of a lot of complicated paperwork,’ I said. ‘But the essential part of it is that they send details of the shipment and the prices to an East German bank. They sign them and rubber-stamp them and agree that it’s all okay with the East German importers. They also agree on the dates of the payments. Volkmann goes to a bank, or a syndicate of banks, or any other source of cash in the West, and uses that “aval” to discount the cash that pays for the goods.’
‘It’s like factoring?’
‘It’s more complicated, because you’re dealing with a lot of people, most of them bureaucrats.’
‘And your pal Volkmann gets a margin on each deal. That’s sweet.’
‘It’s a tough business, Bret,’ I said. ‘There are a lot of people offering to cut a fraction of a percentage off the next one, to get the business.’
‘But Volkmann has no banking background. He’s a hustler.’
I breathed in slowly. ‘You don’t have to be a banker to get into it,’ I said patiently. ‘Werner Volkmann has been doing these forfaiting deals for several years now. He has good contacts in the East. He moves in and out of the Eastern Sector with minimum fuss. They like him because they know he tries to do tie-in deals with East German exports - ’
Bret held up his hand. ‘What tie-in deals?’
‘A lot of the banks just want to handle cash. Werner is prepared to shop around for a customer in the West who’ll take some East German exports. In that way he can save them some hard currency or maybe even swing a deal where the export price equals the money due for the imports.’
‘Is that so?’ said Bret reflectively.
‘Volkmann could be very useful for us, Bret,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘Moving money, moving goods, moving people.’
‘We do that already.’
‘But how many people do we have who can go back and forth without question?’
‘So what’s Volkmann’s problem?’
‘You know what Frank Harrington is like. He doesn’t get along with Werner, and never has.’
‘And anyone Frank doesn’t like, Berlin never uses.’
‘Frank is Berlin,’ I said. ‘It’s a small staff there now, Bret. Frank has to approve every damned thing.’
‘And you want me to tell Frank how to run his Berlin office?’
‘Do you ever read anything I send you, Bret? It says there that I just want the Department to approve a rollover guarantee of funds from one of our own merchant banks.’
‘And that’s money,’ said Bret triumphantly.
‘We’re simply talking about one of our own banking outfits using their own expertise to give Werner normal facilities at current bank rates.’
‘So why can’t he get that already?’
‘Because the sort of banks which best back these forfaiting deals want to know who Werner Volkmann is. And this Department has an old-fashioned rule that onetime field agents shouldn’t go around giving the D-G as a reference, or saying that the way they got to learn about the forfaiting business was by running agents across the Wall since they were eighteen years old.’
‘So tell me how Volkmann has stayed in business.’
‘By going outside the regular banking network, by raising money from the money market. But that means trimming his agent’s fee. It’s making life tough for him. If he gives up the forfaiting business, we’ll lose a good opportunity and a useful contact.’
‘Suppose he fouls up on one of these deals and the bank doesn’t get its money.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Bret. The boys in the bank are big enough to change their own nappies.’
‘And they’ll squeal bloody murder.’
‘What do we have those lousy banks for, unless it’s for this kind of job?’
‘What kind of dough are we talking about?’
‘A million Deutschemark rolling over would be about right.’
‘Are you out of your tiny mind?’ said Bret. ‘A million D-mark? For that no good son of a bitch? No, sir.’ He scratched the side of his nose. ‘Did Volkmann put you up to all this?’
‘Not a word. He likes to show me what a big success he is.’
‘So how do you know he’s strapped for cash?’
‘In this business,’ I said, ‘it does no harm to flip the pages of someone’s bank account from time to time.’
‘One of these days you’ll come unstuck doing one of your unofficial investigations into something that doesn’t concern you. What would you do if the bells started ringing?’
‘I’d just swear it was an official investigation,’ I said.
‘The hell you would,’ said Rensselaer.
I started to leave the room. ‘Before you go,’ he said, ‘what would you say if I told you that Brahms Four asked for you? Suppose I said he won’t trust anyone else in the Department? What would you say about that?’
‘I’d say he sounds like a good judge of character.’
‘Okay, smart ass. Now let’s have an answer for the record.’
‘It could simply mean he trusts me. He doesn’t know many Department people on personal terms.’
‘Very diplomatic, Bernard. Well, downstairs in Evaluation they are beginning to think Brahms Four has been turned. Most people I’ve spoken with downstairs are now saying Brahms Four might have been a senior KGB man from the time Silas Gaunt first encountered nun in that bar.’
‘And most people downstairs,’ I said patiently, ‘wouldn’t recognize a senior bloody KGB officer if he walked up to them waving a red flag.’
Rensselaer nodded as if considering this aspect of his staff for the first time. ‘Could be you’re right, Bernard.’ He always said Bernard with the accent on the second syllable; it was the most American thing about him.
It was at that moment that Sir Henry Clevemore came into the room. He was a tall aloof figure, slightly unkempt, with that well-worn appearance that the British upper class cultivate to show they are not nouveau riche.
‘I’m most awfully sorry, Bret,’ said the Director-General as he caught sight of me. ‘I had no idea you were in conference.’ He frowned as he looked at me and tried to remember my name. ‘Good to see you, Samson,’ he said eventually. ‘I hear you spent the weekend with Silas. Did you have a good time? What has he got down there, fishing?’
‘Billiards,’ I said. ‘Mostly billiards.’
The D-G gave a little smile and said, ‘Yes, that sounds more like Silas.’ He turned away to look at Bret’s desk top. ‘I’ve mislaid my spectacles,’ he said. ‘Did I leave them in here?’
‘No, sir. You haven’t been in here this morning,’ said Bret. ‘But I seem to remember that you keep spare reading glasses in the top drawer of your secretary’s desk. Shall I get them for you?’
‘Of course, you’re right,’ said the D-G. ‘The top drawer, I remember now. My secretary’s off sick this morning. I’m afraid I simply can’t manage when she’s away.’ He smiled at Bret, and then at me, to make it perfectly clear that this was a joke born out of his natural humility and goodwill.
‘The old man’s got a lot on his plate right now,’ said Bret loyally after Sir Henry had ambled off along the corridor muttering apologies about interrupting our ‘conference’.
‘Does anyone know who’ll take over when he goes?’ I asked Bret. Goes ga-ga, I almost said.
‘There’s no date fixed. But could be the old man will get back into his stride again, and go on for the full three years.’ I looked at Bret and he looked back at me, and finally he said, ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know, Bernard.’
6
The two sisters were not much alike. My wife, Fiona, was dark with a wide face and a mouth that smiled easily. Tessa, the younger one, was light-haired, almost blonde, with blue eyes and a serious expression that made her look like a small child. Her hair was straight and long enough to touch her shoulders, and she sometimes flicked it back behind her, or let it fall forward across her face so that she looked through it.
It was no surprise to find Tessa in my drawing room when I got back from the office. The two of them were very close - the result perhaps of having suffered together the childhood miseries that their pompous autocratic father thought ‘character forming’ - and Fiona had been working hard over the past year to patch together Tessa’s marriage to George, a wealthy car dealer.
