by Len Deighton
I pushed at the heating control again. ‘For the last time, Staiger. When are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ In London I had been told to do whatever he said. I was doing so but I did not enjoy being kept in the dark.
He shifted in the driver’s seat as if his spine was becoming stiff. ‘I cannot do that,’ he said affably, as he’d said it so many times before on this endless and uncomfortable journey. ‘My orders are to take you to the place we have to visit: nothing else.’
‘And bring me back?’
He smiled. ‘Yes. Bring you back too. At four o’clock. That’s all I know.’
Until now the few bits of conversation we’d exchanged had been only Viennese gossip, mostly concerning people I knew only slightly or not at all. Even worse, I’d heard Staiger’s detailed observations on Vienna’s confectionery, in particular its Torten. He’d explained exactly why he preferred the single-layer simplicity of the Linzertorte to everything else at Sacher. He revealed every last secret of Demel’s delicate Haselnusstorte and told me which of their vast selection of Torten benefited from the addition of a portion of whipped cream, and which would be spoiled by such a garnish. He even gave me the address of a little café where the extra ordinary quality of the apricot filling they put in their Sachertorte made it preferable to the one they served at Sacher’s.
‘What do I have to do at this meeting? Did they tell you that in your orders?’
He wrenched his mind away from the cakes. ‘They said you would know.’
‘Is it a Russian?’
‘I say I don’t know. This is the truth; I don’t know. Soon we will be there.’ He was disappointed that his thesis on pastries had been so coolly received. Perhaps at some other time I would have enjoyed his dissertation, even joined him for a Kaffeeklatsch tour of the city. But not today.
The clouds were dark and in the dull light the distant mountains loomed unnaturally large. Everything was grey: the sky was grey, the mountains were grey, the farm buildings were grey: even the snow was grey. It was like a poorly printed snapshot: no black nor white anywhere. Life in Eastern Europe was like that nowadays. Belief had gone. Communism had faded but capitalism had not arrived: everyone muddled along, complying but not believing.
On and on we went, slower now that the road was bad. We came to a road junction where two khaki-coloured trucks were parked at the roadside. Three men in camouflaged battle smocks and netted helmets stood by the tailboard of the rearmost vehicle. As we got closer I could see one of them was an officer, the other two were NCOs with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. They turned to watch us pass.
It was at this junction that we turned on to an even worse road. Soon the green car stopped and pulled aside so that we could pass. As we overtook it the men inside stared at us with a curiosity seldom displayed by such people. Staiger seemed undismayed. The road climbed and we bumped and rattled along a pot-holed path where muddy pools were glazed with patterned ice. In the fields, islands of ancient snow had shrivelled to reveal the hard earth. Birds circled in the sky, already deciding where to spend the night. Snow remained everywhere. Alongside this remote and narrow track, drifts of it piled high, its surface shone with tiny diamonds of ice and showed none of the accumulated carbon stains that passing traffic deposits.
‘They’re there,’ said Staiger. ‘See the tyre tracks.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Or perhaps it was the debugging team.’
‘Did you bring anything to eat?’ I asked.
‘I thought we’d have time to stop on the Austrian side. I didn’t expect we’d be this late,’ he said with solemn regret. He lifted his hand from the wheel to indicate another farm ahead.
Built in some ancient time when a farmer’s life was punctu ated with the role of warrior, it was sited to command a field of fire upon the full extent of the wide valley behind us. The cluster of buildings included two enormous barns, their roofs covered with snow. There was an entrance gateway of considerable grandeur, whose sculptured coat of arms had been deliberately chiselled away but not entirely obliterated so that a decapitated lion clung precariously to half a shield. Tucked away from the wind on the lee side of the ruined gate lodge there were two Czech traffic policemen sitting astraddle motorcycles. They watched us pass.
After the gate a long approach road led past wooden troughs, which steamed gently, and corrugated iron pigsties, to what once had been the central building of a fortified farmhouse.
The car only just squeezed through the low narrow archway, bumped over the cobbles into an enclosed yard and stopped at the back door of a farmhouse upon the walls of which the floral patterns of folk-art paintings could barely be discerned. The yard was big, a huge piece of farm machinery was quietly rusting away in the corner, and some chickens – flustered momentarily by the car – resumed their search for sustenance between the stones. There was a smell of rubbish burning or perhaps the stove needed cleaning.
Scrambling about on the roof there were two men, each equipped with powerful binoculars. Two more men, in short leather overcoats and large boots, sat on a bench in the yard. Hats tipped forward over their eyes, they sprawled like drunken sunbathers, but I noted the relaxed postures of men who remained still for long periods. And I noticed the undone top buttons that would make it easy for them to pull something from a shoulder holster in a hurry.
Without moving they watched us from under lowered eyelids. I got out and waited for Staiger as he carefully locked the doors of his car.
Suddenly a large black mongrel dog came flying out from a doorway, barking and snarling. With reckless speed, and suicidal disregard for its leash, the hound threw itself at my throat. But as the long chain reached its fullest extent the dog choked and toppled sideways, its bark strangled. Tugging ferociously at the chain it crouched low and continued to snarl and bare its teeth, making an exaggerated display of aggression as many creatures do when their anger is constrained.
The men seated on the bench had hardly moved during this display of canine fury. Now Staiger laughed nervously and made sure his hat was balanced on his toupee. ‘Go in,’ said Staiger. ‘I will be waiting for you.’
By that time I had begun to guess what was to come. Inside, the farmhouse was dark, its tiny windows set low in the thick walls. The floor was rough worn tiles and there was not much furniture except a refectory table, pushed back against the wall because it was so big, and some old chairs with rush seats.
She was standing in the gloom. She spoke in a whisper. ‘Bernard!’ My first impression was that Fiona was shorter and thinner than I remembered. Then, with a twinge of guilt, I realized that this was because I’d been with Gloria so long.
‘What bloody mad game are you up to now?’ I said. The words emerged as a mumble, revealing I suppose my con fusion. I still loved her but I was wary of her, unable to decide what she wanted of me, and unwilling to provide for her another chance of duping me in some way or other.
‘Don’t be angry.’
‘Don’t be angry,’ I said wearily. Her deliberate passivity fuelled my rage and suddenly I shouted, ‘You stupid devious bitch. What are you up to now? Are you raving mad?’
She looked me up and down and smiled. Who knows what kind of animosity lay concealed within her? If she was equally angry with me, she disclosed no sign of it. She waited for the steam to go out of me, as she knew it would, and smiled again. She still had that wonderful smile that had devastated me the first time I met her. It was a humorous smile, with a trace of mockery in it, but it was an invi tation to join her in her view of the world about us, and it was an invitation I never could resist. ‘There is nothing to eat here. Nothing at all. I knew you’d be hungry.’ Her voice was flat, perhaps deliberately so, and even though she was my wife I could not tell what emotions were in her mind. It had always been so. Sometimes I wondered whether this enigmatic quality was what made her so attractive to me and I wondered to what extent she failed to understand me in return. Not much I think.
>
‘Bernard, darling.’ She tried to put her arms round me but I shrank away.
She said, ‘How are the children?’ and I was burned by the warmth of her body; overwhelmed by a perfume I’d almost forgotten.
‘They’re fine. They miss you.’ I amended it: ‘We all miss you.’ Her eyes mocked me. ‘Billy is so big. As tall as you perhaps. He has a craze for motorcars; posters, models and even a big plastic engine that he keeps taking to pieces and reassembling.’
‘Was that your Christmas present?’ she asked, demonstrating her remarkable intuition. It was madness to try to keep any secret from her, and yet I still tried.
‘Yes. It was labelled “educational toy”,’ I said. She gave a little laugh recognizing our long-standing joke that I fell prey to anything so labelled. ‘Sally has been chosen to play Portia at school. I believe Billy is a bit jealous.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, he would be. Billy is the actor. Portia: The Merchant of Venice?’
‘Julius Caesar.’
‘Of course.
‘Am I yourself,
But, as it were, in sort, or limitation,
To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,
Portia is Brutus’ harlot, not his wife.’
‘What a memory you have.’
Fiona said, ‘You’re supposed to reply,
‘You are my true and honourable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart.
‘Didn’t you learn any Shakespeare at school?’
‘I learned it in German,’ I said.
That amused her. ‘I read a lot nowadays: Dickens, Jane Austen, Trollope, Thackeray, Shakespeare.’
A note of alarm sounded somewhere deep in my mind. The books were all English ones. Most security people would be alarmed at what smelled awfully like home-sickness. But I didn’t say that. I said, ‘Portia will have a lovely costume; blue with gold edging.’
She held out her hand to me. I took it. I found an amazing intimacy in this formal gesture. Her hand was small and warm, she’d always had warm hands. She said, ‘How absurd that it should be like this,’ and then hurriedly, as though to preclude other discussions that she wanted to avoid, she added, ‘There were so many difficulties about my leaving Berlin, and then suddenly I had to go to a conference in Prague and it was easy.’ There was an unconvincing gaiety in her voice as she said it, the tone I remembered from times when she tried to make a joke about Billy getting the ’flu and spoiling his birthday, or her opening the car door angrily and scratching the paintwork. ‘How much have they told you?’
I stood back to look at her. She was as lovely as ever. Her hair was drawn back tight in the severe style she’d adopted since going to the East. She wore a simple dark green suit that was almost Chanel, but I guessed it had been made by some wonderful little woman she’d found round the corner. Fiona could always find some ‘treasure’ to do things she wanted done. On her finger she had our wedding band. She looked down at our clasped hands as if in some renewed pledge of her vows. This was the ravishing girl I’d married so proudly. But that was a hundred years ago and the changes that the recent stressful years had brought were evident too. I could see within her something I’d never seen before: some weariness, or was it apprehension? Perhaps that’s what at first I’d mistaken for smallness of stature.
She turned her hand in mine. I said, ‘You’ve lost our engagement ring.’
‘We’ll get another.’
I said nothing.
‘I was working in Dresden. A man was killed. It was a terrible night. I washed my hands at the infirmary. It was careless of me. I turned the car round and went back but it wasn’t there and no one had seen it.’
She was clenching her hands as if telling me about the lost ring had been a fearsome ordeal. But I could also see that Fiona was as undaunted as she’d ever been. I knew the way she contained her fear by means of willpower, as some brilliant actress might play a role and bring an unconvincing character to life. Giving me no time to reply she added, ‘They are not the trousers for that suit. The new lady in your life is not looking after you, dearest.’ She was cool and relaxed now; the gruesome memories locked away again.
‘I’m all right.’
‘Does she iron your shirts? You were always so fastidi ous about your shirts. Sometimes, away from you, I have found myself worrying about the laundry. It’s silly isn’t it?’ There was bitterness there. A trace of the real Fiona showing through. It was all jokes of course: the laundry and these exploratory probes about other women. Everything was a joke until Fiona blew the whistle and joking ended.
‘She’s decent: she’s loyal and she loves me,’ I blurted out in the face of Fiona’s sarcasm. No sooner was it said than I regretted it, but it was what she wanted. Once I’d revealed my feelings, Fiona was ready to proceed. ‘How much have they told you?’ she asked again.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘They told me nothing.’ I thought back to Stowe’s furrowed brow and guarded answers. Obviously Stowe had been told nothing either. I wondered who the hell did know exactly what was going on.
‘Poor darling, but perhaps it was the best way.’
‘You’re coming out now,’ I said, confirming by my words what my eyes found it hard to believe. ‘I was right wasn’t I?’ Even now I was not unquestionably sure that she’d been working for London all the time.
‘Not long now,’ she said.
‘You’re not going back to Berlin?’
‘Just for a little while.’
‘Why?’
‘You know how it is…there are other people who would be in danger. I’ll have to tidy things up. A few weeks, that’s all. Perhaps only days.’
I didn’t reply. The dog in the yard barked as if at an approaching stranger. Fiona looked at her watch. I suddenly remembered how much I’d hated the way that Fiona’s dedic ation to the Department came before everything. Competing with her career was worse than having to compete with an irresistible lover. She must have seen those feelings in my face for she said, ‘No recriminations, Bernard. Not now anyway.’
I knew then that I had handled the whole thing wrongly. With grotesque misjudgement I had taken her at face value, and all women hate that. Some other kind of man would have swept her off her feet, made love to her here and now, and damn the consequences. Some other kind of woman might have provided the opportunity for me to do so. But we were us: two professionals discussing technique man to man.
She stepped away from me and, while studying her wedding ring, said, ‘I’m the only one who can make that sort of decision and I say I must go back.’
‘Why come here? Why take the chance?’ I said. I’m sure she’d found a convincing excuse for this meeting with the enemy but it was madness for her to risk her life meeting me. I could remember so many good men who had been lost because of such foolishness. Men who had to see a girlfriend for the last time. Men who couldn’t resist a meal in a favourite café, or men like old Karl Busch who hid me for three agonizing days in Weimar, then, after we’d got away, went back home to get his stamp collection. They were waiting for him. Karl Busch was taken down to the security barracks in Leipzig and was never heard of again.
‘Oh Bernard.’ There was a sigh.
‘Why?’
‘Because of you. Don’t be so dense.’
‘Me?’
‘You were raking through everything…About me…’ She made a gesture of despair with her open hand.
‘Are you telling me that you’ve made this reckless sidetrip just to tell me to stop digging out the facts?’
‘London Central tried everything to reassure you but you carried on.’
‘They tried everything, except simply telling me the truth,’ I said emphatically.
‘They hinted and advised. Finally they couldn’t think of any way to persuade you. I didn’t know ho
w far they would go…I said you must hear it from me. We put together this official – but off-the-record – meeting. London has already made concessions: I go back looking like a skilful negotiator. It will be all right.’
‘The bloody fools! Didn’t you tell them how dangerous it is for you sitting out here talking with me?’
‘They know it’s dangerous but you kept snooping into everything. You were putting together a picture of the whole operation. Leaving a trail too. That was even more dangerous.’
‘Of course I was snooping. What did you expect me to do? You are my wife.’ I stopped. I was exasperated. Although my theory had been proved correct I couldn’t accept the enormity of it: London Central had sent Fiona to be a field agent in the East and decided not to confide in me. ‘For God’s sake…’
‘It seemed a clever idea at the time,’ said Fiona calmly. Despite the phrase there was nothing in her voice to suggest it wasn’t a clever idea now.
‘Who thought it was a clever idea?’
‘Your surprise, or let’s rather say astonishment…Your anger, indignation and obvious bewilderment protected me, Bernard.’
‘I asked you, “Who thought it was a clever idea?”’
‘I wanted to tell you everything, darling. I insisted upon it at first. I wanted you in at the briefings and the preparation. The original idea was that you would be my case officer, but then it became obvious that there couldn’t be a case officer in the ordinary sense of that term. There was no question of frequent regular contact.’
‘So who decided otherwise?’
‘At the beginning the D-G was against the whole scheme. He gave it no more than a twenty-five per cent chance of coming off.’
‘I would have given it less than that.’
‘The D-G made it a condition that you would not be told.’