by Len Deighton
‘Yes, poor Franz,’ said Fiona. ‘But if the KGB report was true, he was an enemy of the State, wasn’t he?’
‘An enemy of the people,’ Wieczorek corrected her sardonically. ‘That’s far worse.’
She looked at him: he was smiling. She knew then beyond any doubt that this was a charade, a charade acted out for her to guess the word. The word was ‘treachery’, and the pathetic zombie they had made of Franz Blum was an example of what would be done to her if she should betray her KGB masters. Is that why he’d quoted Carl Jung: ‘Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you’?
‘It’s good coffee, isn’t it?’ said Doktor Wieczorek. ‘I have a special source.’
‘You’re lucky,’ said Fiona. Perhaps this terrifying warning was a procedure that all senior Stasi staff were subjected to. There was no way to be sure; that was how the country was run. Stick and carrot: award in the morning and warning in the afternoon. This topsyturvy clinic where the ‘sane’ were cured was just how she saw this ‘workers’ state’ where the leaders lived in ostentatious grandeur in fenced compounds paced by armed guards.
‘Yes, I am lucky,’ said Doktor Wieczorek, savouring his coffee. ‘You’re lucky too: we all are.’
18
London. November 1983.
Bret Rensselaer was overplaying his hand. In trying to make Fiona Samson secure he’d even thrown suspicion on to Bernard Samson, suggesting that he might have been an accomplice to his wife’s treachery. It was an effective device, for the Department was just as vulnerable to rumours, and whispered half-truths, as any other organized assembly of competitive humans. The trouble came because opinions were divided about Bernard Samson’s integrity, and so a rumour started that another ‘mole’ was at work within the Department. An unhealthy atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion was developing.
The discovery of the murdered Julian MacKenzie in a Department safe house in Bosham gave further impetus to the gossip. Thanks to what Miranda Keller had told him, Bret knew that it was a case of mistaken identity: the KGB had been after Bernard Samson. But Bret took no action in the matter before getting Samson into the number 3 conference room and admonishing him in the presence of suitable witnesses. Samson shouted back, as Bret knew he would, and Bret ended up by telling everyone who would listen that Bernard Samson was ‘beyond suspicion’.
But spinning the web of deceit that he deemed necessary for Fiona’s safety was taking its toll of Bret Rensselaer. He was by nature an administrator: brutal sometimes, but sustained always by self-righteousness. Running the Economics Intelligence Section had been a task for which he was ideally fitted. But Sinker was different. His original plan to target the East German economy by draining away skilled workers and professional people was not as easy as it once seemed. Fiona had supplied him with regular information about the East German opposition and other reform groups but they could not unite. His overall problem was that keeping Sinker such a close secret meant telling ever more complex lies to his friends and colleagues. It was vital that none of them could see the whole plan. This was demanding in a way he did not relish. It was like playing tennis against himself: criss-crossing the centre line, leaping the net, wrong-footing himself and delivering ever more strenuous volleys that would be impossible to return.
And this double life left him very little time for relaxation or pleasure. Now, at lunchtime on Saturday, a time when he might have snatched a few hours relaxing with friends at the sort of weekend house-party he most enjoyed, he was sitting bickering with his wife about the divorce and her wretched alimony.
It was typical of Nicola that she should insist upon having lunch at Roma Locuta Est, a cramped Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge. Even the name affronted him: ‘Rome has spoken’ was a way of saying no complaints would be listened to, and that was exactly the way Pina ran her restaurant. Pina was a formidable Italian matron who welcomed the rich and famous while ruthlessly pruning from her clientele those of lesser appeal. It had become a meeting place for the noisy Belgravia jet-set, a group which Bret assiduously shunned. This being Saturday they were at their most insufferable: table-hopping and shouting loudly to each other, ordering their Anglicized food in execrable Italian. Bret’s lunch was not made more enjoyable by discovering that just about everyone here seemed to be on first-name terms with his wife Nicola.
‘You really believe it,’ she was saying. ‘Jesus Christ, Bret. You say you’re poor; and you really believe it. If it wasn’t so goddamned sneaky, it would make me laugh.’ Nicola had obviously taken a lot of trouble with her clothes and makeup, but she was out of his past and he felt no attraction to her.
‘You don’t have to tell everyone in the room, darling,’ said Bret softly. Knowing the sort of place it was, Bret had made appropriate sartorial concessions. He was wearing a suede jacket and tan-coloured silk roll-neck. His normal attire, a good suit, would have looked out of place here on a Saturday lunchtime.
‘I don’t care if all the world knows. I’ll shout it from the house-tops.’
‘We’ve been through all this, before we were married. You saw the lawyers. You signed the forms of agreement.’
‘I didn’t read what I was signing.’ She drank some of her Campari and soda.
‘Why the hell didn’t you?’
‘Because I was in love with you, that’s why I didn’t.’
‘You thought separating would be like it was in old Hollywood movies. You thought I would go to stay in my club and you’d have the house, and the furniture and the paintings and the Bentley and every other damn thing.’
‘I thought I might own half of my own home. I didn’t know my home was owned by a corporation.’
‘Not a corporation: it’s owned by a trust.’
‘I don’t care if it’s owned by The Boy Scouts of America: you let me think it was my home, and now I find it never was.’
‘Please don’t tell me that you gave me the best years of your life,’ said Bret.
‘I gave you everything.’ She stirred her drink so that the ice rattled.
‘You gave me hell.’ He looked round the dining room, ‘I can’t think why that woman Pina allows dogs in here: it’s unhygienic.’ He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘And animal hair affects my sinus.’
‘It doesn’t affect your sinus,’ said his wife. ‘You get your sinus and then you look round for something to blame it on.’
Bret noticed that the demonstrative Pina was making her rounds. She liked to take her customers in a bear hug and scream endearments into their ear before discussing their food. ‘Yes, you gave me hell,’ said Bret.
‘I told you the truth, and you found it hell.’ With quick agitated movements Nicola opened her handbag to get her cigarettes. Under the handbag there was a copy of Vogue and a book called Somebody Stole My Spy. On the cover it said ‘Better than Ludlum’ in letters bigger than the author’s name. Bret wondered whether she was really reading the book, or had brought it here as some kind of provocation. She liked to make jokes about his ‘career as a spy’.
When Bret leaned forward and lit the cigarette for her, he noticed that she was trembling. He wondered why. He found it difficult to believe that he could cause anyone to become so distressed. ‘Jesus!’ said Nicola and blew smoke high into the air so that it made little clouds in the plastic vines that hung from the ceiling.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pina coming. Bret detested her and decided to flee to the toilet but he was too late. ‘And you know my husband,’ Nicola was already saying, her voice strangled as she was enveloped in Pina’s beefy arms, and drowned by a babble of Italian chatter.
Bret stood up and edged sideways to keep the table between them and nodded deferentially. Pina looked at him, rolled her eyes and yelled in Italian. Bret smiled and gave a little bow to acknowledge what he thought was some flowery Roman compliment but it turned out to be Pina shouting for more menus.
When they’d ordered lunch, or more accurately when they had agreed to the meal th
at Pina decreed they should have, Nicola went back to talking about the settlement.
‘Your lawyer is a bastard,’ she said.
‘Other people’s lawyers are always bastards. That comes with the job.’
Nikki shifted her attack. ‘They do what you tell them.’
‘I don’t tell them anything. There’s nothing to tell. The law is explicit.’
‘I’m going to California. I’m going to sue you.’
‘That won’t get you anywhere,’ said Bret. ‘I don’t live in California and I don’t own anything in California. You might as well go to Greenland.’
‘I’m going to take up residence there. They have communal property laws in California. My brother-in-law says I’d do better there.’
‘I wish you’d start using your brains, Nikki. The money my father left me is in a trust. We’re not really a part of the Rensselaer family. My grandmother married into it late in life: she changed her children’s name to Rensselaer. We never inherited the Rensselaer millions. I just have an allowance from a small trust fund. I told you all that before we were married.’
She waggled a manicured finger at him. ‘You’re not going to get away with this, Bret. I’ll break that damned trust fund if it’s the last thing I do. I want what I’m entitled to.’
‘Dammit, Nikki. You left me. You went off with Joppi.’
‘Leave Joppi out of this,’ she said.
‘How can we leave him out of it? He’s the third party.’
‘He’s not.’
‘Nikki, dear. We both know he is.’
‘Well, you prove it. You just try and prove it, that’s all.’
‘Don’t drag it all through the courts, Nikki. All you’ll do is make lawyers rich.’
‘Who’s having the insalata frutti di mare?’ yelled the waiter into their ears as he bent over the table.
‘I am,’ said Bret.
‘You want the sole off the bone, madam?’ the waiter asked Nicola.
‘Yes, please,’ she said.
Bret looked down at the mangled lettuce upon which sat four cold damp shrimps and some white rubber rings of inkfish, and he looked at Nicola’s delicious filleted sole. ‘Melted butter?’ said the waiter, ‘and a little Parmesan cheese?’ Nikki always knew what to order: was it skill or was it luck? Or was it Pina?
Bret noticed that the bejewelled woman at the next table was feeding pieces of her veal escalope to a perfectly brushed and combed terrier at her feet. ‘It’s like a damned zoo in here,’ he muttered, but his wife pretended not to hear him.
Nikki abandoned her sole fillets and put down her knife and fork. ‘I gave you everything,’ she said again, having thought about it carefully. ‘I even came to live in this lousy country with you, didn’t I? And what did I get for it?’
‘What did you get? You lived high on the hog, and in one of the most beautiful homes in England.’
‘It wasn’t a home, Bret, it was just a beautiful house. But when did I ever see my husband? I’d go for days and days with no one to talk to but the servants.’
‘You should be able to cope with being alone,’ said Bret.
‘Well, old buddy. Now you’ll be able to find out what it means to be alone. Because I won’t be there when you get home, and no other woman will put up with you. You’ll soon discover that.’
‘I’m not afraid of being alone,’ said Bret smugly. He pushed the shrimp salad aside. His wife was always complaining of being alone and today he had an answer ready: ‘Lots of people have been: Descartes, Kierkegaard, Locke, Newton, Nietzsche, Pascal, Spinoza and Wittgenstein were alone for most of their lives.’
She laughed. ‘I saw that in the letters column of the Daily Telegraph. But those people are all geniuses. You’re not a thinker…not a philosopher.’
‘My work is important,’ said Bret. He was put out. ‘It’s not like working for a biscuit factory. A government job is a government job.’
‘Oh, sure, and we all know what governments do.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Bret, with an uncertainty that was almost comic.
‘They make the rules for you, and break them themselves. They hike your taxes and give themselves a raise in pay. They take your money away and shower it on all kinds of lousy foreign governments. They send your kids to Vietnam and get them killed. They fly in choppers while you’re stuck in a traffic jam. They let the banks and insurance companies shaft you in exchange for political campaign money.’
‘Is that what you really think, Nikki?’ Bret was shocked. She’d never said anything like that before. He wondered if she had been drinking all morning.
‘You’re damn right it’s what I think. It’s what everybody thinks who hasn’t got a hand in the pork barrel.’
Alarm bells rang. ‘I didn’t know you were a liberal.’ He wondered what the security vetting people had made of her. Thank goodness he was getting rid of her; but had any of this gone down on his file?
‘I’m not a goddamned Democrat or a Liberal or a Red or anything else. It’s just that smug guys like you doing your “important work for governments” make me puke.’
‘There’s nothing to be gained from a slanging match,’ said Bret. ‘I know you must be disappointed about the house but that’s outside my control.’
‘Damn you, Bret. I must have somewhere to live!’
He guessed that Joppi was getting rid of her: suddenly he felt sorry for her but he didn’t want her back. ‘That apartment in Monte Carlo is empty. You could lease it from the trustees for a nominal payment.’
‘Lease it from the trustees for a nominal payment,’ she repeated sarcastically. ‘How nominal can you get? Like a dollar a year, do you mean?’
‘If it would end all this needless wrangling, a dollar a year would be just fine. Shall we agree on that?’ He waved a hand to attract a waiter, but it was no use. The staff were all standing round a table in the corner smiling at a TV newsreader who was being photographed cuddling a smooth-coated chihuahua. ‘Do you want coffee?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes to both questions: but I want furniture – good furniture – in the first, and cream and sugar in the second.’
‘You’ve got a deal,’ said Bret. He was relieved. Had Nikki resolutely pressed for the Thameside house it would have put him in a difficult position. He would have had to resign. There was no way that the Department would have tolerated him getting into a divorce action, and the risk of its attendant publicity. And yet if he resigned, where would that leave Fiona Samson? He was the only person who knew the whole story, and he felt personally responsible for her mission. There were many times when he worried about her.
Bret looked up to see his chauffeur Albert Bingham easing his way through the crowded dining room. ‘What now?’ said Bret. Nicola turned round to see what he was looking at.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Rensselaer,’ said Albert politely. He reasoned that ex-wives sometimes resumed their authority as employers, and should not be slighted. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir, but the hospital came through on the car phone.’
‘What did they say?’ Bret was already on his feet. Albert wouldn’t interrupt the lunch unless it was something very important.
‘Could you be early?’
‘Could I be early?’ repeated Bret. He found his credit card in his wallet.
‘They said you would know what it was,’ said Albert.
‘I’ll have to go,’ said Bret to his wife. ‘It’s an old friend.’ He flicked the plastic card with his fingernail so that it made a snapping noise. She remembered it as one of his many irritating habits.
‘That’s all right,’ said Nicola, in the brisk voice that proclaimed her annoyance.
‘Let’s do it again,’ said Bret. He bent forward – the hand holding his credit card extended like a stage magician palming something from the air – and kissed his wife on the cheek. ‘Now it’s all settled, let’s do it again.’ He heard the terrier growl as he trod too near its food.
She n
odded. He didn’t want to have lunch with her again, she could see that as clearly as anything. She saw how relieved he was at this opportunity to escape from her. She felt like crying. She was pleased to be separating from Bret Rensselaer but she found it humiliating that he seemed pleased about it too. She got out her compact and flipped up the mirror to look at her eye make-up. She could see Bret reflected in it. She watched him while he paid the bill.
Bret’s original appointment with the Director-General had been for drinks at six o’clock at his house in the country. Now the Director-General had phoned to suggest that they meet at Rensselaer’s mews house in London. That was the call on the car phone that Albert had reported. The Department’s calls were always described by Albert as being calls from an anonymous hospital, school or club, according to Bret’s company and the circumstances in which the message was delivered.
‘Are you sure he said the mews house?’ Bret asked his driver.
‘Quite sure,’ said Albert.
‘What a memory he has,’ said Bret with grudging admiration.
Back at the turn of the century, the mews house had been the stables and coach house for Cyrus Rensselaer’s grand London home. The first time Bret saw the big house in the square it was an Officers’ Club run by the American Red Cross. After the war it had been sold but the uncomfortable little mews house had been retained. Just a couple of rooms with kitchen, bathroom and garage, it was used by various members of the Rensselaer family, and sometimes by lawyers and agents coming to London on the family’s behalf. But because Bret lived in England, he had a key and, by the generous consent of other members of the family, he could use it when he wanted. In return Bret kept an eye on the place and had the leaky roof fixed from time to time. He hadn’t slept there for years.
Bret was surprised that the D-G should remember that he had access to the house and was annoyed that he should suggest it for their meeting. He had no consideration; the place was terribly neglected now that there was no permanent tenant to maintain it. ‘Go to the mews right away,’ Bret told his driver. ‘We’ll try and get it straightened out before Sir Henry arrives.’