Samson 07 - Spy Hook, page 5
‘You weren’t at Charles Billingsly’s farewell gathering last night,’ said Dicky. ‘Champagne … very stylish.’
‘I didn’t hear about it,’ I said. Billingsly German Desk’s more or less useless Data Centre liaison man wasn’t a close friend of mine. I suppose he thought I might drink too much of his expensive fizz. ‘Are we getting rid of him?’
‘A super hush-hush assignment to Honkers. Forty-eight hours’ notice is all they gave him. So he didn’t let you know about the party? Well, it was all a rush for him.’
‘What would Hong Kong need him for?’
‘No one knows, not even Charles. Hurry and wait. That’s how it goes isn’t it?’
‘Maybe the Deputy just wanted to get rid of him,’ I suggested.
Dicky’s eyes glittered. After his little session on the carpet it probably made him wonder if he might not one day find himself on a fast plane to distant places. ‘Get rid of Charles, why?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.
‘No. Charles is a good sort.’
Unbid, Dicky’s secretary arrived with a large silver-plated tray bearing the Spode chinaware and a large pot of freshly ground coffee made just the way Dicky liked it. I suppose she hoped it would put Dicky into a better frame of mind as sometimes a heavy shot of caffeine did. He bent over it and gave low murmurs of approval before pouring some coffee for himself. Then he went and sat down behind the big rosewood table that he used as his desk before he tasted the coffee appreciatively. ‘Damn good!’ he pronounced and drank some more. ‘Pour yourself a cup,’ he said when he was quite sure it was okay.
I took one of the warmed cups, poured some for myself and added cream. It always came with cream, even though Dicky drank his coffee black. I often wondered why. For a moment we drank our coffee in silence. I had the feeling that Dicky needed five minutes to recover from his meeting.
‘He’s become an absolute despot lately,’ said Dicky at last. Having devoured a large cup of coffee he took a small cigar from his pocket, lit it and blew smoke. ‘I wish I could make him understand that it’s not like running his law firm. I can’t get a book down from the shelf and read the answers to him.’
‘He’ll get the hang of it,’ I said.
‘In time, he will,’ agreed Dicky. ‘But by then I’ll be old and grey.’ That might be quite a long time, for Dicky was young and fit and two years my junior. He flicked ash into the big cut-glass ashtray on his desk and kept looking at the carpet as if lost in thought.
I pulled my paperwork from its cardboard folder and said, ‘Do you want to run through this stuff?’ I brandished it at him but he continued to stare at the carpet.
‘He’s talking about vertical reorganization.’
I said, ‘What’s that?’
Dicky, shortlisted for the Stalin Prize in office politics, said, ‘Jesus Christ, Bernard. Vertical planning! Dividing the German Desk up into groups region by region. He told me that I’d have Berlin, as if that would make me overjoyed. Berlin! With other desks for Bonn and Hamburg and so on. A separate unit would liaise with the Americans in Munich. Can you imagine it!’
‘That idea has been kicking around for ages,’ I said. I began to sort out the work I’d brought for him. I knew that getting him to look at it would be difficult in his present agitated mood, so I put the papers that required a signature on top. There were five of them.
‘It’s ridiculous!’ said Dicky so loudly that his secretary looked in through the door to see if everything was all right. She was a new secretary or she would have made herself scarce when there was a chance of encountering Dicky’s little tantrums.
‘It will happen sooner or later I suppose,’ I said. I got my pen out so that Dicky could sign while he talked about something else. Sometimes it was easier like that.
‘You’d heard about it before?’ said Dicky incredulously, suddenly realizing what I’d said.
‘Oh, yes. A year or more ago but it had some other name then.’
‘Ye gods, Bernard! I wish you’d told me.’
I put the papers on his desk and gave him the ballpoint pen and watched him sign his name. I hadn’t heard of the vertical planning scheme before, of course, but guessed that the Deputy had simply invented something that would goad Dicky into more energetic action, and I thought it better not to let the old boy down. ‘And these you should look at,’ I said, indicating the most important ones.
‘You’ll have to go and see Frank,’ he said as he signed the final one and plucked at the corners of the rest of the stuff to see if anything looked interesting enough to read.
‘Okay,’ I said. He looked up at me. He’d expected me to object to a trip to Berlin but he’d caught me at a good time. It was a month or more since I’d been to Berlin and there were reasons both official and social for a trip there. ‘And what do I tell Frank?’ I wanted to get it clear because we had this absurd system in which Dicky and Frank Harrington the Berlin ‘resident’ and as old as Methuselah had equal authority.
He looked up from the carpet and said, ‘I don’t want to rub Frank up the wrong way. It’s not up to me to tell him how to run his Berlin Field Unit. Frank knows more about the operations side of his bailiwick than all the rest of us put together.’ That was all true, of course, but it wasn’t often the line Dicky took.
‘We’re talking about Bizet, I take it?’
‘Right. Frank may want to put someone in. After all, Frankfurt an der Oder is only a stone’s throw from where he is.’
‘It’s not the distance, Dicky. It’s …’
He immediately held up his hand in defence. ‘Sure. I know I know I know.’
‘Are you hoping he’ll have done something already?’
‘I just want his advice,’ said Dicky.
‘Well, we both know what Frank’s advice will be,’ I said. ‘Do nothing. Just the same advice that he gives us about everything.’
‘Frank’s been there a long time,’ said Dicky, who had survived many a crisis and reshuffle on ‘do nothing’ policies.
I made sure Dicky had signed everything in the right place. Then I drank the coffee and left it at that for a bit. But this seemed a good opportunity to quiz him about the Prettyman business. ‘Remember Prettyman?’ I said as casually as I could manage.
‘Should I?’
‘Jim Prettyman: ended up in “black boxes”. Left and went to America.’
‘Codes and Ciphers, downstairs?’ It was a not a region into which Dicky ever ventured.
‘He was on the Special Operations committee with Bret. He was always trying to organize holidays where you could look at tombs and no one ever put their name down. Wonderful snooker player. Don’t you remember how we went to Big Henty’s one night and he made some fantastic break?’
‘I’ve never been to Big Henty’s in my life.’
‘Of course you have, Dicky. Lots of times. Jim Prettyman. A young fellow who got that job in Washington.’
‘Sometimes I think you must know everyone in this building,’ said Dicky.
‘I thought you knew him,’ I said lamely,
‘A word to the wise, Bernard.’ Dicky was holding a finger aloft as if testing for the direction of the wind. ‘If I was in this room talking to you about this Prettyman fellow you’d change the subject to talk about Frank Harrington and the Bizet business. No offence intended, old chum, but it’s true. Think about it.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Dicky.’
‘You must try and concentrate upon the subject in hand. Have you ever done any yoga?’ He pushed aside the papers that I’d suggested he should read.
‘No, Dicky,’ I said.
‘I did a lot of yoga at one time.’ He ran a finger across the papers as if reading the contents list. ‘It trains the mind: helps the power of concentration.’
‘I’ll look into that,’ I promised, taking from him the signed papers that Dicky had decided not to read, and stuffing them into the cardboard folder.
When I stood up, Dicky, still looking at the carpet, said, ‘My mother’s cousin died and left me a big lion skin. I was wondering whether to have it in here.’
‘It would look just right,’ I said, indicating the antique furniture and the framed photos that covered the wall behind him.
‘I had it in the drawing room at home but some of our friends made a bit of fuss about shooting rare animals and that sort of thing.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Dicky,’ I said. ‘That’s just because they’re jealous.’
‘That’s just what I told Daphne,’ he said. ‘After all, the damned thing’s dead. I can’t bring a lion back to life can I?’
5
Many civilians have a lifelong obsession about what it would be like to be in the army. Some like the idea of uniforms, horses, trumpets and flags; others just want clearly expressed orders, and a chance to carry them out in exchange for hot meals on the table every day. For some men the army represents a challenge they never faced; for others a cloistered cosy masculine retreat from reality.
Which of these aspects of the soldier’s life Frank Harrington found attractive or whether it was something entirely different I never knew. But whenever Frank was not in his office, nor in the splendid Grunewald mansion that he’d arranged should be one of the ‘perks’ of being the Berlin Resident, I knew I’d find him in some squalid dug-out, sitting in the middle of a bunch of begrimed infantry officers, looking thoroughly happy as he told them how to fight their war.
This day, dressed in borrowed army togs with mud on his knees and elbows, he was delivered to the Grunewald house in a big army staff car.
‘I’m awfully sorry, Frank,’ I said.
‘I was only playing soldiers,’ he said in that disarming way he had. ‘And Dicky said it was urgent.’
He looked as if he was going to conduct me straight into his study. ‘It’s not so urgent that you can’t change and take a shower,’ I said. I gave him the report from London.
He took it and shook it at his ear to listen for its rattle. He grinned. We both knew Dicky. ‘Go into the drawing room and get yourself a drink, Bernard,’ he said. ‘Ring for Tarrant if you can’t find what you want. You’re going to eat with me I hope?’
‘Yes. I’d like that, Frank.’
He was a wellspring of cheer after his day with the soldiers. Halfway up the stairs he turned to say, ‘Welcome home, Bernard,’ knowing how delighted I would be at such a greeting. For no matter where I went or what I did, Berlin would always be home for me. My father had been Resident long ago before they were provided with a grand mansion in which to live and an entertainment allowance and Berlin held all my happy childhood recollections.
When after thirty minutes or more Frank returned he was dressed in what for him were informal clothes: an old grey herringbone tweed jacket and flannels, but the starched shirt and striped tie wouldn’t have disgraced any Mess. Just as I was able to make new clothes look shabby, so Frank was able to invest even his oldest garments with a spruce look. His cuffs emerged just the right amount and there was a moire kerchief in his top pocket and hand-sewn Oxfords that were polished to perfection. He went across to the drinks trolley and poured himself a large Plymouth gin with a dash of bitters. ‘What have you got there?’ he asked.
I’m all right, Frank,’ I said.
‘Wouldn’t you rather have a real drink?’
‘I’m trying to cut back on the hard stuff, Frank.’
‘That bottle must have been on that trolley for years. Is it still all right?’ He picked up the bottle I’d poured my drink from, and studied the label with interest, and then he looked at me. ‘Vermouth? That’s not like you, Bernard.’
‘Delicious,’ I said.
He came and sat opposite me. His face had the war-painted look that dedicated skiers wore at this time of the year. His skin was dark, with pale surrounds where his goggles had been. Frank knew a thing or two about the good life. I didn’t ask after his wife. She spent most of the time at their house in England nowadays. She had never liked Berlin, and rumours said there had been a row when Frank accepted the invitation to stay on past his official retirement date.
He’d read the interim report in his bath, he told me. We knew that it had been roughly cobbled together in London and we both knew it was just a lengthy way of saying nothing at all. He flicked through it very quickly again and said, ‘Does Dicky want me to deposit someone in there?’
‘He’s going to great pains not to say so,’ I said.
‘I’ll do anything for the poor bastards who are in trouble,’ he said. ‘But this is Berlin. I can’t think of anyone here who could go to Frankfurt an der bloody Oder and do anything to help them.’ He touched his blunt military moustache. It was going very grey.
‘They don’t like to sit in London doing nothing,’ I said.
‘How do they think I like it?’ said Frank. Just for a moment his face and his voice revealed the strain of the job. I suppose there were plenty of agents being picked up all the time but it was only when there was monitored Soviet radio traffic about them that London got interested and concerned. ‘The army got wind of it,’ said Frank. ‘They’re keen to try their hand.’
He must have seen my face go white, and my teeth clench, or whatever happened when I became so terrified that I wanted to scream. ‘The army?’ I said, holding tight to my drink and keeping my voice under control.
‘The Brigadier was reminding me about the Military Mission staff we have with the Russian army headquarters. They are able to move about a little more freely nowadays.’
‘What else did your Brigadier say?’
‘He was quoting the behaviour of these GRU bastards our chaps have to put up with at Bunde. Counting those with the French army at Baden-Baden, and those with the Yanks, there are about fifty Soviet Military Mission staffers. GRU agents every one, and many of them with scientific training. They wear leather jackets over their uniforms and deliberately muddy their car registration plates so they’re not recognized while they go pushing their way into, and photographing, everything that interests them.’ He grinned.’ “What about tit for tat?” that’s what the Brigadier says.’
‘You didn’t tell your army pal about Bizet?’
‘I’m not senile, Bernard.’
‘The idea of some keen young subaltern sniffing around in Frankfurt an der Oder is enough to give me a nightmare.’
‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’
‘You said the army had wind of it,’ I reminded him.
‘Did I? I should have said that the army know we have a crisis of some sort.’ He looked at me and added, ‘They have a good radio monitoring service, Bernard.’
‘For listening to Russian army signals.’
‘Along the border, that is true. But here in Berlin right in the middle of the DDR they hear all the domestic stuff. They monitor GRU and KGB traffic; they like to know what’s going on. I would never object to that, Bernard. In an outpost like this, the army need to keep a finger on the pulse.’
‘Maybe I will have something stronger,’ I said. But at that moment Frank’s German maid came in to say dinner was served.
I pushed all my worries, about what Frank might have said to his army cronies, to the back of my mind. We sat in the grand dining room, just me and Frank at one end of the long polished table. He’d had someone decant a bottle of really good claret: the empty bottle was on the sideboard. It was something of an honour. Frank kept his best wines for people either important enough to merit them, or choosy enough to notice. He poured some for me to taste when the egg and bacon tart arrived. The portions were very small. I suspected that the cook was trying to eke out Frank’s meal and make enough for me. Frank seemed not to notice. He wanted to hear all the latest gossip from the Department, and I told him how the Deputy was slowly but surely changing the Department to his own wishes.
From my own point of view I rather welcomed the new ideas. It was time the old gang were shaken up a bit. Frank agreed, but with less enthusiasm.
‘I’m too old to welcome changes just for the sake of change, Bernard. I was in the Department with your father back in 1943. I did a training course with Sir Henry Clevemore “Pimples” we called him a damned great hulking kid. He fell into a drainage ditch on one of the assault courses. It needed four of us to haul him out.’ He drank some more wine, and after a reflective pause added, ‘My wife says I’ve given my life to the Department, and a large chunk of her life too!’ It was a heartfelt declaration of pride, resentment and regret.
He went on talking about the Department through the cottage pie, the bread and butter pudding and the Cheddar cheese. No matter how long he lived here, and how assimilated he became, the output from Frank’s kitchen remained defiantly British public school. I was happy to listen to him, especially when he mentioned my father. He knew that of course, and all the stories he told showed my father in such a glorious light that I knew he was just putting it on for me. ‘Your dad sat for days and days in some filthy apartment with only this German fellow for company: arguing and swearing most of the time according to your dad’s account. They were waiting for news of Hitler’s assassination. When the news came that the assassination attempt had failed, in came this Gestapo agent. Your dad was ready to jump out of the window but it turned out that it was the other chap’s brother … I’m probably getting it all muddled,’ said Frank with a smile. ‘And I’m sure it was all just one of your father’s yarns. But whenever your dad could be persuaded to tell that story he’d have me, and everyone else, in fits of laughter.’ Frank had some more wine and ate some cheese. ‘None of the rest of us had ever been in Nazi Germany of course. We hung on your dad’s every word. Sometimes he’d be pulling our leg mercilessly.’
‘The other day someone hinted that the Department might get to me through my father,’ I said as casually as I could.
‘Pressure you?’
