by Len Deighton
Stinnes watched him but kept well back. Moskvin pushed the gun aside and retched again and again. Finally, slowly and carefully, he wiped his face on a towel and then ran the water into the sink. ‘That’s done,’ said Moskvin, trying to put on a show of bravado.
‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ said Stinnes. Taking his time he looked out of both windows. There was no sign that the noise of the shot had attracted any interest from the neighbouring cottages.
‘I’m sure.’
‘Then let’s get out of here,’ said Stinnes. ‘Can you make it to the boat?’
‘Damn your stupid smiling face,’ said Moskvin. ‘I’ll have the last laugh: you just wait.’
But Stinnes wasn’t smiling: he was wondering how much longer he could endure the stupid antics of this brutal peasant.
In Berlin that evening, Fiona went to the State Opera. The indispensable Hubert Renn could always produce an opera or concert ticket for her at short notice, and this afternoon she’d suddenly noticed that it would be the last chance to catch the much-discussed avant-garde production of Der Freischütz.
She sat entranced. It was one of her favourite operas. This extraordinary selection of simple folk melodies and complex romanticism gave her a brief respite from work. For a brief moment it even enabled her to forget her worries and loneliness.
The interval came. Still engrossed with the music, she couldn’t endure the scrum around the bar and there were a lot of West Berliners here tonight, easily distinguished by their jewellery and flamboyant clothes. She turned away to wander through the lobby and look at the exhibition – ‘Electricity for tomorrow’ – atmospheric photos of power-generating stations in the German Democratic Republic. She was looking at the colour print of a large concrete building reflected in a lake when someone behind her said, ‘There you go, sweetheart! How about a glass of white wine?’
She turned and was astounded to see Harry Kennedy standing there with two glasses of wine in his hands and a satisfied smile on his face. ‘The show really starts in the intermission, doesn’t it?’
Her first reaction was not pleasure. She had been dreading an encounter with some old friend, colleague or acquaintance on the street, who would recognize her. Now it had happened and she felt as if she was going to faint. Rooted to the spot, her heart beat furiously. She felt the blood rush to her face and looked down so that he wouldn’t see the flush of her cheeks.
He saw the effect he’d had. ‘Are you all right? I’m sorry…I should have…’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. She was quite likely to be under surveillance. If so, her reaction to this meeting would be noted and recorded.
Harry spoke hurriedly to save her from speaking. ‘I knew you wouldn’t miss Der Freischütz, I just knew. Oh boy, what a production, the pits, isn’t it? And what about those trees! But what a great voice he has.’
‘What are you doing here, Harry?’ she said carefully and calmly.
‘Looking for you, honey-child.’ He handed the wine to her and she took it. ‘I’m sorry to leap on you this way.’
‘I don’t understand you…’
‘I live here,’ he said.
‘In the East?’ She drank some wine without tasting it. She hardly knew what she was doing. She didn’t know whether to keep talking or cut him dead and walk away.
‘I’m here for a year now. A professor from the Charité Hospital was in London and came to see the work we were doing at the clinic. They invited me to spend a year working here. They are not paying me but I finagled a little grant…Enough to keep me going for the year. I was glad to escape from those jerks in London and I suspect the clinic was glad to get rid of me.’
‘Here in East Berlin?’ She drank more wine. She needed a drink and it gave her a chance to study him. He looked even younger than she remembered him: his wavy hair more wavy, and the battered face looking even more battered as he worried how she would react.
‘Yeah. At the Charité. And I knew you wouldn’t miss Der Freischütz. I have been here for every performance…I love you, Fiona sweetheart. I had to find you.’ Again he stopped.
‘You came for every performance?’
‘You once said it was your favourite opera.’
‘I suppose it is,’ she said. She was no longer sure; she was no longer sure about anything.
‘Are you mad at me?’ he asked. He looked like a West Berliner in his black suit and bow tie. Here was a different Harry Kennedy to the one she’d last seen in London: cautious and diffident. But superimposed upon this diffidence, and almost prevailing over it, there was the pride and pleasure of finding her again.
‘No, of course not,’ she said.
Her distant manner made him suddenly anxious. ‘Is there someone else?’
‘Only my husband in London.’
It was as if a load was lifted from his shoulders. ‘When I realized that you’d left him, I knew I had to find you. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved, Fiona. You know that.’ It wasn’t a communication; it was a declaration.
‘It’s not like London,’ she said awkwardly, trying to adjust to the idea of him being here.
‘Say you love me.’ He’d taken so much trouble; he was expecting more of her.
‘Don’t. It’s not as easy as that, Harry. I work for the government here.’
‘Who cares who you work for?’
Why wouldn’t he understand? ‘I defected, Harry.’
‘I don’t care what you did. We are together again; that’s all that matters to me.’
‘Please try and understand what is involved.’
Now, for the first time, he calmed down enough to look at her and say, ‘What are you trying to tell me, baby?’
‘If you see me on a regular basis, your career will be ruined. You won’t be able to go back to London and take up your life at the place you left it.’
‘I don’t care, as long as I have you.’
‘Harry. You haven’t got me.’
‘I love you…I’ll do anything, I’ll live anywhere; I’ll wait forever. I’m a desperate man.’
She looked at him and smiled but she knew it was an unconvincing smile. She felt one of her bad headaches coming on and she wanted to scream. ‘I can’t be responsible, Harry. Everything has changed, and I have changed too.’
‘You said you loved me,’ he said in that reproachful way that only lovers do.
If only he would go away. ‘Perhaps I did. Perhaps I still do. I don’t know.’ She spoke slowly. ‘All I’m sure about is that right now I can’t take on all the complications of a relationship.’
‘Then promise nothing. I ask nothing. I’ll wait. But don’t ask me to stop telling you that I love you. That would be an unbearable restriction.’
The opera bell started to ring. With German orderliness the crowd immediately began to move back towards the auditorium. ‘I can’t go back to the performance,’ she said. ‘My head is whirling. I need to think.’
‘So let’s go to the Palast and eat dinner.’
‘You’ll miss the opera.’
‘I’ve seen it nine times,’ he said grimly.
She smiled and looked at her watch. ‘Will they serve dinner as late as this?’ she said. ‘Things finish so early on this side of the city.’
‘The ever-practical Fiona. Yes, they will serve as late as this. I was there two nights ago. Give me the ticket, and I’ll collect your coat.’
It is not far from the State Opera on Unter den Linden to the Palast Hotel, and despite Berlin’s ever-present smell of brown coal the walk was good for her. By the time they were seated in the hotel dining room she was restored to something approaching her normal calm. It wasn’t like her to be so shattered, even by surprises. But meeting Harry at the opera house had not simply been a surprise: it had shown her what a fragile hold she had upon herself. She had been physically affected by the encounter. Her heart was still beating fast.
She watched him as he read the menu. Was she in love with him? Was that the expla
nation of the shock? Or was it more fundamental, was she becoming unbalanced?
Any feeling she had for Harry was not like the stable and enduring love she had for her home, her children and her husband. Harry’s absence from her life had not caused her the heart-rending agony that separation from her family had brought, an agony from which she never escaped. That old love for Harry was something quite different, separate and not in conflict with it. But she could not help recalling that the love she’d once had for Harry was electrifying. It had been illicit and more physical than anything she’d known with Bernard. Sitting here across the table from Harry made her remember vividly the way that not so long ago even a glance from him could be arousing. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said absently as she realized he was expecting an answer from her.
‘I had it the other night,’ he said. ‘It was rather good.’
‘I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.’
‘The Kabinett is always the driest, at least I’ve learned that in the time I’ve been here.’
‘Wonderful,’ she said vaguely and was relieved when he waved to the waiter and ordered a bottle of some wine he’d discovered and liked. His German was adequate and even his accent was not too grating upon her ear. She looked around the restaurant to be sure there was no one there she recognized. It was crowded with foreigners: the only ones who had access to the sort of foreign money with which the bill had to be paid.
‘My money comes in Western currency. I eat here all the time,’ he told her.
Could he, by any chance, be an emissary from London Central? No. This was not a man whom Bret or Sir Henry would regard as right for the tricky job of intermediary. And yet a paramour would make the perfect cover for a London contact. If that was his role, he’d reveal it soon: that was how such things were done. She’d wait and see what happened: meanwhile she would be the perfect communist. ‘So what do you suggest we eat?’ she asked.
He looked up and smiled. He was so happy that his elation affected her. ‘Steak, trout or schnitzel is all I ever order.’
‘Trout then; nothing to start.’ And then another thought struck her like a bombshell: could he be Moscow’s man? Very very unlikely. At that first encounter in London he’d admitted having no work permit. Had she phoned Immigration they would have pounced on him. Wait a minute, think about it. It was his vulnerability to officialdom that made her decide not to have him officially investigated. That and the fact that Bernard might have started asking questions about him. She lived again through that first encounter on the railway station, step by step, word for word. His ‘niece’ talked to Fiona and then ran away. It could have been a set-up. There was nothing in that meeting that could not have been previously arranged.
‘Fiona,’ he said.
‘Yes, Harry?’
‘I love you desperately.’ He did love her: no one could feign adoration in the way that she saw it in his eyes. But, said the neurotic, suspicious and logical side of her, being in love did not mean that he couldn’t have been sent by Moscow. ‘I know everything about you,’ he said suddenly, and she was alarmed again. ‘Except why you like Der Freischütz. I know every mini-quaver of it by now. I can take Schoenberg and Hindemith, but can you find me ten minutes of real melody in that whole darn opera?’
‘Germans like it because it is about a completely unified Germany.’
‘Is that what you want: a unified Germany?’ he asked.
Red lights flashed. What was the official line on unification? ‘Only on the right terms,’ she said guardedly. ‘What about you?’
‘Who was it who said that he liked Germany so much that he preferred there to be two of them?’
‘I’m not sure.’
He leaned forward and confidentially said, ‘Forget what I said: I’m just crazy about Der Freischütz; every little demi-semi-quaver.’
16
London. October 1983.
It was two o’clock in the morning. Bret was in his Thameside house, sitting up in bed reading the final few pages of Zola’s Nana. Influenced by Sylvester Bernstein, Bret had discovered the joy of reading novels. First Sylvy had lent him Germinal and now Bret – always subject to deep and sudden passions – had decided to read every volume of Zola’s twenty-volume cycle. The phone rang. He let it ring for a long time, but when the caller persisted he reached for it. ‘Hello?’ Bret always said hello; he didn’t believe in identifying himself.
‘Bret, my dear fellow. I do hope I didn’t wake you.’
‘I’m reading a superb and moving book, Sir Henry.’
‘As long as you’re not in the middle of anything important,’ said the D-G imperturbably. ‘I know you are something of a night owl. Anyway this won’t wait, I’m afraid.’
‘I understand.’ Bret put the book aside and closed it regretfully.
‘Special Branch liaison came through to me at home a few minutes ago. Apparently a young woman, English by all accounts, walked into the police station in Chichester and said she wanted to talk to someone in our line of business.’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said Bret.
‘You’re yawning already, of course. Yes, we’ve seen a lot of those in our time, haven’t we? But this lady says she wants to tell us something about one of our people in London. She’s mentioned a man whose wife recently left him. Furthermore she met that wife recently in Berlin. You’re still with me, are you, Bret?’
‘Very much with you, Sir Henry. Met her? By name? Mentioned her by name?’
‘Apparently: but things usually become a bit vague by the time reports come word of mouth all the way to me. Very very urgent she said it was: someone was about to be killed: that kind of thing. But yes the name was given. Special Branch thought they should check to see if the name rang a bell with us. The night duty officer decided it was important enough to wake me up. I think he was right.’
‘Yes, indeed, sir.’
‘A Special Branch inspector is bringing this lady up to London. She gave her name as Mrs Miranda Keller, née Dobbs. No joy there of course, the German telephone books are full of Kellers. I wonder if you would be so kind as to talk to her? See what it’s all about.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Special Branch have that estate agent’s office in Kensington. The house behind the Sainsbury supermarket. You know it, I’m sure.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘They will be there in under the hour.’
‘I’ll get going immediately, sir.’
‘Would you really, Bret. I’d be so grateful. I’ll be in the office tomorrow. We can talk about it then.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Of course it may be nothing at all. Nothing at all.’
‘Well, I’d better hurry.’
‘Or it could be our old pals getting up to naughty tricks. Don’t take any chances, Bret.’
‘I won’t, sir. I’d better get started.’
‘Yes, of course. Goodnight, old chap. Although for you I suppose it would be good morning.’ The D-G chuckled and rang off. It was all right for him; he was going back to sleep.
Mrs Miranda Keller was thirty-six years old, and the wig she was wearing did not make her look younger. It was almost four o’clock in the morning and she’d endured a long car ride through the pouring rain to this grand old house in Kensington, a shabby residential part of central London. Miranda let her head rest back upon the frayed moquette of the armchair. Under the pitiless blue glare of the overhead lighting – which buzzed constantly – she did not look her best.
‘As I told you, we have no one of that name working for us,’ said Bret. He was behind a desk drinking stale black coffee from the delicate sort of chinaware that is de rigueur in the offices of earnest young men who sell real estate. With it on the antique tray there was a bowl of sugar and a pierced tin of Carnation milk.
‘S.A.M.S.O.N.,’ she spelled it out.
‘Yes, I know what you said. No one of that name,’ said Bret.
‘They are going to kill him,’ said Miranda doggedly
. ‘Have you sent someone to the house in Bosham?’
‘That’s not something I’m permitted to discuss,’ said Bret. ‘Even if I knew,’ he added.
‘Well, these men will kill him if he goes there. I know the sort of men they are.’ Wind rattled the windows.
‘Russians, you say?’
‘You wrote their names down,’ she said. She picked up her cup, looked at the coffee, and set it aside.
‘Of course I did. And you said there was another woman there too.’
‘I don’t know anything about her.’
‘Ah, yes. That’s what you said,’ murmured Bret, looking down at his notes. ‘My writing is not very elegant, Mrs Keller, but I think it is clear enough. I want you to read through the notes I’ve made. Start here: the conversation you had in the car at London airport, when you were imitating the voice of this woman you met in Berlin-Grünau.’ He gave the sheet to her.
She read it quickly, nodded and offered it back. The wind made a roaring noise in the chimney and the electric fire rattled on its mounting. On the window there was the constant hammering of heavy rain.
Bret didn’t take the papers from her. ‘Take your time, Mrs Keller. Maybe read it twice.’
She looked at his notes again. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you believe me?’
‘It sounds like a mighty banal conversation, Mrs Keller. Was it worth having you go to all that trouble, when in the final confrontation you simply say things about the children and about laying off this fellow Stinnes?’
‘It was just to jolt him: so that he would follow the black girl to find his wife again.’
‘Yes,’ said Bret Rensselaer doubtfully. He took the sheets of notes and tapped them on the desk-top to get them tidy. Outside a car door slammed and an engine was started. A man yelled goodnight and a woman screamed ‘Good riddance!’: it was that kind of place.
‘And I’ve asked for nothing.’