by Len Deighton
‘Werner has his own ideas,’ said Lisl suddenly. She said it as if we’d both been talking about him, as if she was replying to a question. ‘Werner has his own ideas and he is determined.’
‘What ideas?’
‘He has been back through the records, and is using that word process machine to write letters to all the people who have stayed here over the last five years or more. Also he keeps a record of all the guests, their names, their wives’ names and what they liked to eat and any problems we have had with them.’
‘Excellent,’ I said. She pulled a face, so I said, ‘You don’t think that’s the way to do it?’
‘For years I have run the hotel without such things,’ said Lisl. She didn’t say it wasn’t the way to do it. Lisl would sit on the fence until Werner’s new ideas were tested. That was Lisl’s way. She didn’t like to be proved wrong.
‘Werner is very clever at business affairs,’ I said.
‘And the bridge evenings,’ said Lisl. ‘Frank Harrington’s people come for the bridge evenings. The British like bridge, don’t they?’
‘Some of them,’ I said.
Lisl laughed grimly. She could usually thrash me at bridge. When she laughed her huge frame wobbled and the glossy satin dress rippled. She reached up and touched the corner of her eye with her little finger. It was a delicate gesture with which she tested the adhesion of her large false eyelashes. ‘Werner is like a son to me.’
‘He’s very fond of you, Lisl,’ I said. I suppose I should have told her that Werner loved her, for the sort of sacrifices Werner was making to run this place left no doubt of that.
‘And loves the house,’ said Lisl. She picked up another little piece of apple and crunched it noisily, looking down at her plate again as if not interested in my response.
‘Yes,’ I said. I’d never thought of that before but Werner had been born here during the war. It was the home in which he grew up as a tiny child. The house must have even more sentimental associations for him than it did for me, and yet in all our conversations he’d never expressed any feelings about the place. But how selfish of me not to see what was now so obvious. ‘And you have your niece here too,’ I said.
‘Ingrid.’ Lisl cleared her throat and nodded. ‘She is my niece.’
‘Yes,’ I said. Since Lisl had repeatedly told anyone who would listen that Ingrid was her sister’s illegitimate daughter, and therefore was not her niece, I interpreted this admission as substantial progress for Ingrid.
‘Are you going somewhere?’ she asked truculently. ‘You keep looking at your watch.’
‘I’m going to the bank. There should be money waiting for me and I owe money to Frank.’
‘Frank has plenty of money,’ said Lisl. She shifted about in her chair. It was her way of dismissing both Frank’s generosity as a lender and my integrity in reimbursing him. As I got up to go she said, ‘And I must get you to sort out all that stuff of your father’s some time.’
‘What stuff?’
‘There’s a gun and a uniform full of moth holes – he never wore it except when they ordered him to wear it – and there’s the cot your mother lent to Frau Grieben across the street, and books in English – Dickens, I think – the footstool and a mattress. Then there’s a big bundle of papers: bills and that sort of thing. I would have thrown it all away but I thought you might want to sort through it.’
‘What sort of papers?’
‘They were in that old desk your father used. He forgot to empty it. He left in a hurry. He said he’d be back and collect it but he forgot. You know how absent-minded he could be sometimes. Then I started using that room as storage space and I forgot too.’
‘Where is it all now?’
‘And account books and bundles of correspondence. Nothing important or he would have written and asked me for it. If you don’t want it I’ll just throw it all out, but Werner wants me to clear everything out of the storeroom. It’s going to be made into a bathroom.’
‘I’d like to sort through it.’
‘That’s all he thinks about; bathrooms. You can’t rent a bathroom.’
‘Yes, I’d like to sort through it, Lisl.’
‘He’ll end up with fewer bedrooms. So how will that earn more money?’
‘When can I look at it?’
‘Now don’t be a nuisance, Bernd. It’s locked up and quite safe. That room is crammed full of all sorts of junk and there’s nowhere else to put it. Next week…the week after. I don’t know. I just wanted to know if you wanted it all.’
‘Yes, Lisl,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘And buy me the Guide Michelin for France. The new one! It’s just come out. I don’t want the old one mind.’
‘The Michelin hotel guide to France!’ For years now Lisl had rarely emerged from the hotel except to go to the bank. Since the heart attack she hadn’t even done that. ‘Are you going to France?’ I asked. I wondered if she had some crazy plan to visit her sister Inge who lived there.
‘Why shouldn’t I go to France? Werner’s running things, isn’t he? They keep telling me to go away for a rest.’
Werner was thinking of putting Lisl into a nursing home but I could see no way of explaining that to her. ‘The new Michelin France,’ I said. ‘I’ll get one.’
‘I want to see which are the best restaurants,’ said Lisl blithely. I wondered if she was joking but you couldn’t always be sure.
I spent the rest of the morning strolling along Ku-Damm. The snow had gone and the sunlight was diamond hard. The clouds were torn to shreds to reveal jagged shapes of blue, but under such skies the temperature always remains bitterly cold. Soviet jet fighters were making ear-splitting sonic bangs, part of the systematic harassment that capita l ism’s easternmost outpost was subjected to. After a visit to the bank I browsed in the bookshops and looked round Wertheim’s department store. The food counters in the basement sold all sorts of magnificent snacks. I drank a glass of strong German beer and ate a couple of Bismarck herrings. For an hour the prospect of a lunch meeting that would be discordant, if not to say an outright conflict, was forgotten. My problems vanished. Around me there were the ever cheerful voices of Berliners. To my ears their quips and curses were unlike any others, for Berlin was home to me. I was again a child, ready to race back along the Ku-Damm to find my mother at the stove and father at the lunch table waiting for me at the top of that funny old house that we called home.
Time passes quickly when such a mood of content settles the mind. I had to hurry to get back to Lisl’s for noon. When I went into the bar there was no sign of Teacher. I sat down and read the paper. At half past twelve a man came in and looked round to find me, but it was not Teacher: it was the Berlin resident, Frank Harrington. He took off his hat. ‘Bernard! How good to see you.’ His manner and his warm greeting gave no clue to the reason for this change of plan and I immediately decided that his presence was in some way connected with the enigmatic exchange that Ingrid had overheard.
Perhaps it was Frank’s paternal attitude to me that made his behaviour so unvarying. I do believe that if I surprised Frank by landing on his side of the moon unexpectedly he would not be startled. Nonchalantly he’d say, ‘Bernard! How good to see you,’ and offer me a drink or tell me I was not getting enough exercise.
‘I heard you were out of town, Frank.’
‘London overnight. Just one of the chores of the job.’
‘Of course.’ I tried to see in his face what might be in store but Frank’s wrinkled face was as genial as ever. ‘I went to the bank this morning,’ I said. ‘I have a draft to repay the thousand pounds you let me have.’ I gave it to him. He folded it and put it in his wallet without reading it.
He wet his lips and said, ‘Do you think your friend Werner could conjure up a drink?’ His feeling that this might be beyond Werner’s abilities, or that Werner might be disposed to prevent him having a drink, was evident in his voice. Coat still on, hat in hand, he looked round the room in a way that was a
lmost furtive. Frank had never been fond of Lisl or Werner or the hotel. It seemed his unease at being here was increased now that Werner had taken charge.
‘Klara!’ I said. I did not have to speak loudly, for the old woman had positioned herself ready to take Frank’s hat and coat. ‘A double gin and tonic for my guest.’
‘Plymouth gin with Schweppes?’ said Klara, who apparently knew better than I did what Frank drank. She took Frank’s trenchcoat, felt hat and rolled umbrella.
‘Yes, Plymouth with tonic,’ said Frank. ‘No ice.’ He didn’t immediately sit down in the chair I had pulled out for him but stood there, preoccupied, as if unable to remember what he’d come to tell me. He sighed before sinking down on to the newly chintz-covered banquette. ‘Yes, just one of the chores of the job,’ he said. ‘And it’s the sort of task I could be very happy without at this time.’ He looked tired. Frank was somewhere in his middle sixties. Not so old perhaps, but they’d asked him to stay on at a time when he’d got all ready to retire. From that time onwards some of the zeal had gone out of him.
Or perhaps that was just my fancy, for today Frank had the sort of appearance that almost restored my faith in the British public school system. He radiated fidelity, trustworthiness and good breeding. His hair was wavy and greying, but not so wavy that he looked like a ladies’ man and not so grey that he looked like he couldn’t be. Even the wrinkles in his face were the sort of wrinkles that made him look like a good-natured outdoors man. And of course Frank had a valet to press his Savile Row suits and polish his hand-sewn shoes and make sure his Jermyn Street shirts had exactly the right amount of starch in the collars.
‘You heard about my son?’ He was rummaging through his pockets. The question was put in that casual manner and tone of voice that, with a certain sort of Englishman, indicates a matter of vital importance.
‘No,’ I said. ‘What about him?’ Frank had never made any secret of his hope that his son would find a place in the Diplomatic Service. He’d prepared the ground well in advance. So when the boy came down from Cambridge with the declared intention of getting a commercial pilot’s licence, Frank still didn’t take it too seriously. It was only after he’d seen him flying the routes for a few years that Frank reluctantly faced the fact that his son was going to live a life of his own.
‘Failed his medical.’
‘Frank, I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes, for an airline pilot that’s a sentence of death. He said that to me on the phone. “It’s a sentence of death, Dad.” Until that very moment I don’t think I understood what that damned flying job meant to him.’ Frank wet his lips nervously; I knew that I was the first person to whom he’d confided his true feelings. ‘Flying. It must be so boring. So repetitious.’ This was of course exactly the superior attitude that his son had so resented, and which had created the unsurmountable barrier between them. ‘Not much of a job for a fellow with a good degree, I would have thought.’ He looked at me quizzically and then realized that I didn’t have a college degree of any kind.
‘What will he do?’ I asked hurriedly to cover his discomfort.
‘He’s still in a state of shock,’ said Frank and gave a little laugh, trying to hide the distress he felt at the abrupt ending of his son’s career.
‘It will be all right,’ I said, improvising as I went. ‘They’ll find him a ground job. He’ll end up with a seat on the board.’ I knew that such a tedious administrative job would be something that Frank would really approve.
‘There are too many of them,’ said Frank. ‘Too many unemployed aviators who don’t know anything except how to drive an airbus. He’d be no damned use behind a desk, Bernard, you know that.’ Frank had been going through his pocket in a distracted way; finally he brought out a yellow oilskin tobacco pouch. From his top pocket he got out his cherry-wood pipe and blew through it experimentally before he snapped open the pouch.
‘I’m not sure they permit smoking in here any more, Frank,’ I said.
‘Nonsense,’ said Frank. He sat down and began pushing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe and pressing it down with his thumb.
Klara brought Frank’s gin and tonic. As she set it down before him she saw his pipe and said, ‘Hier darf nicht geraucht werden, Herr Harrington.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Frank.
Despite Frank’s devastating smile, Klara waggled a finger at him and said, ‘Die Pfeife! Die Pfeife ist strenglich verboten!’
Frank kept smiling and said nothing. Klara looked at me and pulled a fierce face that asked me how Lisl would deal with such a dilemma. Then she shrugged her shoulders and marched off. I don’t think Klara cared very much whether guests smoked in the dining room: she’d done her duty as laid down by Lisl. That was enough.
Perhaps Klara’s warning took effect, for Frank continued to toy with his smoking equipment but did not light up. At first I thought his mind was still wholly occupied with the consequences of his son’s failure to pass his pilot’s medical, but there was something else. ‘But I bring good news for you, Bernard,’ he said.
‘What’s that, Frank?’ I said.
‘You’re free.’ Perhaps my face didn’t show the joy that he’d anticipated for he added, ‘Free to go to England. All charges dropped. No board to face, not even a tribunal.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you. All charges against you are to be dropped.’
‘I thought you said they had been dropped.’
‘You’re in a captious mood today, Bernard.’
‘Perhaps. But which is it?’
He coughed. Was it a sign of nervousness, the way the interrogation teams said, or was it something that came with that damned pipe tobacco? ‘A couple of formalities still remain. Nothing more, I assure you.’
‘Either or,’ I said. ‘Did London send you to hold a pistol to my head?’ I looked out of the window. The blue sky had only been a brief interlude, a deception. Now it had clouded over and it looked like more snow, or with the thermometer going up, rain.
‘Come along, Bernard. It’s nothing like that.’
‘What formalities?’
He tapped the table with his pipe. ‘Well, we wouldn’t want you selling your memoirs to one of the Sunday papers.’ He smiled as if the restriction was upon something outrageous like leaping from the topmost pinnacle of Big Ben holding an umbrella. ‘We don’t want you starting an action in the High Court.’ Another big smile.
‘Wait a minute, Frank. Action in the High Court? I couldn’t do that if I was still working for the Department.’ I looked at him: his expression was unchanging. I said, ‘Was that order for my arrest just some bizarre way of getting rid of me? Did they want me to run? Was someone half hoping that I might go East?’
‘God forbid!’ A gust of air rattled the windows like some demon trying to break in. Despite the double windows, the noise of the wind continued low and undulating, crooning a lament.
‘From the Department’s point of view that would make things easier, wouldn’t it? If I ran East I’d be labelled a defector…For their reputation that would be marginally better than having me in an English courtroom, or even facing a military court in Berlin.’
‘Bernard, please. They are simply asking for a signed sup ple mentary agreement, covering the matters of confidence, contract and official secrets and so on. Formalities; just as I said.’
‘Are you telling me I’m fired? Is that the “final solution” to the Samson problem? I’m to be tightly gagged and put out to grass?’
‘Hold your horses, Bernard.’
‘Then tell me, Frank. But tell me straight.’
‘They want you to resign…They suggest you give a year’s notice. You’ll work the year normally.’
‘Severance pay? Pension rights?’
‘To be agreed.’
‘Oh, I see the hand of Morgan in this one. I work a year relegated to some remote job where nothing classified will pass across my desk. If I be
have myself and keep my mouth shut, and sign a hundred forms to make sure I can’t say a word to anyone without dire consequences, then I will tiptoe off stage and get my pension. But if I shake rattle and roll during that twelve months, I’m cut off without the proverbial penny.’
‘These matters always have two sides, Bernard.’
‘But am I right?’
‘That would be one way of looking at it. But I hope you’ll see that it’s good for you too. It’s a chance to cut loose from an impossible situation.’
‘The answer is no,’ I said.
‘Wait a minute, Bernard.’
‘I’ve done nothing dishonest. They know that. Jesus! When Fiona took off I faced positive vetting teams from the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office. They pronounced me clean and I am still. That’s why they’ve dropped this lunatic plan of arresting me. The lawyers have told them that there is no case for me to answer. Not even here in occupied Berlin, where they can virtually invent their own laws. If they’d arrested me in England I would have been headline news, and by now the Department would be looking damned stupid.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Frank with what might have been a sigh. ‘In fact I understand the Deputy discussed you, and the order to arrest you, with someone from the Attorney-General’s office.’
‘And came out with his arse in a sling.’
‘I don’t know what was said.’ He was looking down and giving all his attention to his tobacco pouch. Frank’s position as Berlin Head of Station had brought him into many head-on collisions with London Central. He couldn’t entirely conceal his pleasure at the hash London had made of this whole business. That he was being asked to pull their coals from the fire must have made it even more piquant.
‘I’m not resigning,’ I told him. ‘I’ll work the year as they suggest but only if I continue in the same job. If in twelve months’ time the Department still wants my head we’ll talk about compensation then.’
‘I don’t see the difference, Bernard.’
‘Don’t you, Frank? The difference is that if I resign now it’s like admitting that I’ve done something wrong: that I’ve sold secrets to a foreign power or taken the office pencils home. If they employ me normally for another year it will be a tacit admission that I was wrongly accused.’