Spy 06- Sinker (1990)

by Len Deighton

  ‘Shall I bring the prisoner?’

  ‘Bring him.’

  Werner Volkmann looked bewildered when he was brought in. Hands cuffed behind his back, he was wearing a scuffed leather overcoat upon which there were streaks of white paint. His hair was uncombed and he was unshaven.

  ‘Do you recognize me, Werner?’

  ‘Of course I recognize you, Frau Samson.’ He was angry and sullen.

  ‘I’m taking you to my office in Karl Liebknecht Strasse. Do I need an armed police officer to keep you under observation?’

  ‘I’m not going to run away, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Have they told you what you are charged with?’

  ‘I want a lawyer, a lawyer from the West.’

  ‘That’s a silly thing to ask, Werner.’

  ‘Why is it?’

  It was extraordinary that Werner, a German who came here regularly, still did not understand. Well, perhaps the best way to start was to make him realize what he was up against. ‘This is the DDR, Werner, and it is 1984. We have a socialist system. The people…’

  ‘The government.’

  ‘The people,’ she repeated, ‘don’t just control the politics and the economy, they control the courts, the lawyers and the judges. They control the newspapers, the youth leagues and the women’s associations and chess clubs and anglers’ societies. The privilege of writing books, collecting stamps, singing at the opera or working at a lathe – in fact the right to work anywhere – can be withdrawn at any time.’

  ‘So don’t ask for a lawyer from the West.’

  ‘So don’t ask for a lawyer from the West,’ agreed Fiona. ‘You’ll have to sit in the back of the car. I can’t remove the handcuffs. I can’t even carry the key. It’s a regulation.’

  ‘Can I wash and shave?’

  ‘At the other end. Do you have any personal possessions here?’

  Werner shrugged and didn’t answer.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Why you?’ asked Werner as they were walking across the cobbled courtyard to her Wartburg car.

  ‘Machtpolitik,’ said Fiona. It meant negotiations under the threat of violence and was a uniquely German word.

  None of the long-dead city officials who drew the outlandish shape of the old boundaries could have guessed that one day Berlin would be thus circumscribed and divided. Jutting southwards, Lichtenrade – where the S-Bahn line is chopped off to become a terminal, and where Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms are streets that end at the Wall –provides an obstacle around which Fiona had to drive to get back to her office in central Berlin.

  The normal route back kept to the main road through Mahlow, but Fiona went on to back streets that might have saved her a few minutes in travelling time, except that when she got beyond Mahlow she turned off to a sleepy little neighbourhood beyond Ziethen. Here the prewar housing of a ‘Gartenstadt’ had spilled over the Wall into the Democratic Republic. Bordered on three sides by the West, these wide tree-lined roads were empty, and the neighbourhood quiet.

  ‘Werner,’ said Fiona as she stopped the car under the trees of a small urban park and switched off the engine. She turned to look back at him. ‘You are just a card in a poker game. You know that, I’m sure.’

  ‘What happens to a card in a poker game?’ asked Werner.

  ‘At the end of the game you are shuffled and put away for another day.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Within a few days you’ll be back in the West. I guarantee it.’ A car came very slowly up the street. It passed them and, when it was about a hundred yards ahead, stopped. Werner said nothing and neither did Fiona. The car turned as if to do a U-turn but stopped halfway and then reversed. Finally it went past them again and turned to follow the sign that pointed to Selchow. ‘It was a car from a driving school,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ said Werner. The car had made him jumpy.

  ‘I want you to take a message.’

  ‘A written message?’

  Good old Werner. So he wasn’t so simple. ‘No, Werner, a verbal message.’

  ‘To Bernard?’

  ‘No. In fact you’d have to promise that Bernard will know nothing of it.’

  ‘What sort of game is this?’

  ‘You come through regularly, Werner. You could be the perfect go-between.’

  ‘Are you asking me to work for Moscow?’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘I see.’ Werner sat back, uncomfortable with his hands cuffed behind him. Having thought about it he smiled at her. ‘But how can I be sure?’ It was a worried smile.

  ‘I can’t do anything about the handcuffs, Werner. It is not permitted to have keys together with prisoners in transit.’

  ‘How can I be sure of you?’ he said again.

  ‘I want you to go and talk with Sir Henry Clevemore. Would that satisfy your doubts?’

  ‘I don’t know him. I’ve never even seen him.’

  ‘At his home, not in the office. I’ll give you a private phone number. You’ll leave a message on the answering machine.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Werner! Pull yourself together and decide!’ she yelled. She closed her eyes. She had lost control of herself. The driving school car had done it.

  Werner looked at her with amazement and suddenly understood the panic she had shown. ‘Why me? Why now? What about your regular contact?’

  ‘I have no regular contact. I have been finding my way around, using dumps. London would probably have sent someone in a month or so. But this is a perfect opportunity. I will enrol you as a Stasi agent. You’ll report to me personally and each time you do I will give you the material to take back.’

  ‘That would work,’ said Werner, thinking about it. ‘Would Sir Henry arrange material for me to bring?’

  ‘All my reports must be committed to memory,’ said Fiona. She had done it now: she had put herself at Werner’s mercy. It would be all right. Later she would get Werner to tell her about her husband and her children but not now. One thing at a time.

  Now he was beginning to believe. His face lit up and his eyes widened. He was to participate in something really tremendous. ‘What a coup!’ he said softly and with ardent admiration. In that moment he had become her devoted slave.

  ‘Bernard must not know,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For all kinds of reasons: he’ll worry and give the game away. He’s not good at concealing his emotions. You must know that.’

  He looked out of the window. Fiona had chosen her man well. Werner had always wanted to be a secret agent. He yearned for it as other people crave to be a film star or score goals for their country or host a chat show on TV. Werner knew about espionage. He read books about it, clipped newspapers and memorized its ups and downs with a dedication that bordered on the obsessional. There was no need for him to say yes; they both knew that he couldn’t resist it. ‘I still can’t believe it,’ he said.

  The driving school car came into sight as it turned the corner. It slowed and stopped, the driver carefully indicating his intentions with unnecessary signals. ‘I think we should go,’ said Fiona.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Werner quietly.

  ‘I knew you would,’ said Fiona as she started the engine.

  She overtook the driving school car and turned as if heading back towards Mahlow. It was a silly precaution that meant nothing. ‘You’re a brave woman, Fiona,’ said Werner suddenly.

  ‘No one,’ said Fiona. ‘Sir Henry and no one else unless he authorizes it to you personally.’

  ‘How long will it go on?’ said Werner.

  ‘One year; perhaps two,’ said Fiona.

  ‘I thought they might make me persona non grata,’ said Werner. ‘I was worried about my work.’

  ‘You’ll be all right now,’ said Fiona. ‘It will be a perfect set-up.’

  ‘Bernard must not know,’ said Werner. The idea of having a secret from his bes
t friend appealed to Werner. One day he’d surprise Bernard. It would be worth waiting for.

  ‘Let me tell you what to say when we get back to the office. You’ll see a Russian KGB colonel named Moskvin. Don’t let him bluff you or bully you. I’ll make sure you are okay.’

  ‘Moskvin.’

  ‘He’s not a long-term problem,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s not a long-term problem,’ said Fiona. ‘He is being got rid of. Just believe me. Now let me tell you how we’re going to handle this business of your reporting to me.’

  Two days later the exchange took place: Erich Stinnes went East to resume his work for the KGB while Werner Volkmann was freed and came West. The KGB inquiry into the treason of Pavel Moskvin sentenced him to death. The court decreed that verdict, sentence and execution must all remain secret: it was the KGB way of dealing with its own senior personnel. The local KGB commander – a general who had been a close friend of Moskvin’s father – decided that ‘killed in action in the West’ would be merciful and expedient, and so arranged matters. But Moskvin did not accept his fate readily. He tried to escape. The resulting exchange of fire took place on the abandoned Nollendorfplatz S-Bahn station in West Berlin, now converted to a flea market. Moskvin died. Bret Rensselaer, demonstrating his loyalty to the Crown, led the chase after Moskvin and was shot and hurt so seriously that he never resumed his duties in London.

  The official British version of the events is very short. It was drafted by Silas Gaunt, who omitted any mention of the exchange of men because neither was a British national. It says that Pavel Moskvin – a KGB colonel on official duties in the West sector of Berlin – ran amok in the flea market. He fired his pistol indiscriminately until the Berlin municipal police were able to subdue him. Two passers-by were shot dead, four were injured, two seriously. Moskvin turned his own pistol on himself at the moment of arrest.

  The secret file compiled by the West German government in Bonn had the advantage of detailed reports from both the West Berlin police and their intelligence service. It says that Moskvin was part of a KGB party who’d come West to arrange the exchange of a West German and a Soviet national held by the British SIS. This account says that Moskvin’s death was an execution carried out by a KGB team which used two motor bikes to follow Moskvin’s car. While it was halted on Tauentzienstrasse, near the KaDeWe department store, an accomplice threw a plastic bag filled with white paint over its windscreen. Moskvin left the car and ran to the S-Bahn station, shooting at his pursuers. At this time civilians were injured by gunshot wounds. When Moskvin jumped down from the platform to the train tracks, perhaps believing he could run along the railway and across the Wall, he was shot dead by a round fired from a Russian Army sniper’s rifle. The perpetrator was never found but is believed to have been one of the KGB hit team who’d been seen coming through a checkpoint earlier that day. In support of this theory it is pointed out that there was never a request for Moskvin’s body to be returned to the East.

  A few days after the shooting, an unofficial mention of the body by British contacts brought from the Soviets only puzzled denials that any Colonel Pavel Moskvin had ever existed. There was no post-mortem. The body was buried at the small cemetery in Berlin-Rudow, very near the Wall. It was at this time that the Russians spontaneously offered to return to the West the remains of Max Busby, an American shot while crossing the Wall in 1978. Some inferred that it was part of a secret deal. Both bodies were buried at night in adjoining plots. It was at the time when the new drainage was being installed at the cemetery, and the burials were unattended except for workmen, a city official and two unidentified representatives of the Protecting Powers. The graves were not marked.

  There were other versions too: some less bizarre, some considerably more so. One report, neatly bound and complete with photos of Kleiststrasse, Nollendorfplatz, the S-Bahn station, the U-Bahn station and a coloured street plan showing Moskvin’s path in red broken line, had been assembled by the CIA office in Berlin, working in conjunction with its offices in Bonn and London. This revealed that Moskvin had been preparing material to incriminate falsely an unnamed US citizen resident in London. It concluded that the KGB were determined that Moskvin should not be taken alive and questioned by the British.

  Bernard Samson was seen firing at Moskvin but his report, given verbally, said that his rounds all went wide. Some people have pointed out that the great preponderance of rounds that Samson has been known to fire, prior to this, hit his targets. Frank Harrington might have thrown some light on the subject, for Frank had been seen on the S-Bahn station brandishing a gun (something that stayed in the minds of those who saw him because Frank had never been seen with a pistol before, or since), but London Central never asked Frank for an account of it.

  Bret Rensselaer was also there but Bret was never questioned specifically. He was hit and severely injured, and by the time he’d recovered sufficiently to contribute an account of it, the reports were complete and the incident had passed into Berlin’s crowded history. The doctors at the Steglitz Clinic saved Rensselaer’s life. He was in the operating theatre for three hours and went from there into an intensive-care ward. Next day his brother flew in on some specially assigned US Air Force jet that came complete with doctors and nurses. He took Bret back to America with him.

  23

  England. March, 1987.

  Bernard Samson was spending that Saturday at home with Gloria in their little house at 13, Balaklava Road, Raynes Park, in London’s commuter belt. He was clearing all sorts of unwanted oddments from the garden shed. Most of them were still in the big cardboard boxes bearing the name of the moving company which had brought their furniture here.

  Gloria was upstairs in the bedroom. The wardrobe door was open to reveal a long mirror in which she was studying herself. In front of her she was holding a dress she had found in one of the cardboard boxes. It was an expensive dress with a Paris label, a dramatic low-cut cocktail dress of grey and black, the barber-pole stripes sweeping diagonally with the bias cut. It belonged to Fiona Samson.

  As she held it up she tried to imagine herself wearing it. She tried to imagine what Fiona was really like and what sort of a marriage she had enjoyed with Bernard and the children.

  Bernard was wearing his carpet slippers and came noiselessly upstairs. Entering the room without knocking he exclaimed, ‘Oh!’ Then he recognized the dress she was holding and said, ‘Far too small! And grey is not your colour, my love.’

  Embarrassed to be caught with it, Gloria put the dress on the rail in the wardrobe and closed the door. ‘She has been away four years. She will never come back, Bernard, will she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t be angry. Every time I try to talk about her you become bad-tempered. It’s a way of blackmailing me into keeping quiet about her.’

  ‘Is that the way you see it?’

  Still selfconscious, she touched her hair. ‘It’s the way it is, Bernard. You want to have me here with you; and you also want to hang on to the increasingly unlikely chance that you will ever see her again.’

  Bernard went close and put his arm round her. At first her anger seemed assuaged, but as Bernard went to kiss her she showed a sudden anger. ‘Don’t! You always try to wriggle out of it. You kiss me; you say you love me; and you shut me up.’

  ‘You keep asking me these questions and I tell you the truth. The truth is that I don’t know the answers.’

  ‘You make me feel so bloody insecure,’ said Gloria.

  ‘I’m always here. I don’t get drunk or run around with other women.’

  It was the sort of indignant answer he always gave: a typically male response. He really couldn’t understand that that wasn’t enough. She tried male logic: ‘How long will you wait before you assume she’s gone for ever?’

  ‘I love you. We are happy together. Isn’t that enough? Why do women want guarantees of permanence? Tomorrow I could fall under a train or go crazy. There is
no way that you can be happy ever after. Can’t you understand that?’

  ‘Why are you looking at the clock?’ she asked, and tried to move apart from him, but he held her.

  ‘I’m sorry. The D-G is going down to Whitelands to see Silas Gaunt this afternoon. I think they are going to talk about Fiona. I’d give anything to know what they say.’

  ‘You think Fiona is still working for London, don’t you?’

  The question came like an accusation, and it shook him. He made no move whatsoever and yet that stillness of his face revealed the way his mind was spinning. He had never told Gloria of that belief.

  ‘That’s why you won’t talk of marriage,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re lying. I can always tell. You think your wife was sent there to spy.’

  ‘We’ll never know the truth,’ said Bernard lamely, and hoped that would end the conversation.

  ‘I must be mad not to have seen that right from the beginning. I was just the stand-in. I was just someone to bed, someone to look after your children and keep the house tidy and shop and cook. No wonder you discouraged all my plans to go to college. You bastard! You’ve made a fool of me.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Now I understand why you keep all her clothes.’

  ‘You know it’s not like that, Gloria. Please don’t cry.’

  ‘I’m not bloody crying. I hate you, you bastard.’

  ‘Will you listen!’ He shook her roughly. ‘Fiona is a Soviet agent. She’s gone for ever. Now stop this imagining.’

  ‘Do you swear?’

  He stepped back from her. There was a fierce look in her eyes and he was dismayed by it. ‘Yes, I swear,’ he said.

  She didn’t believe him. She could always tell when he was lying.

  At that moment the meeting between the Director-General and Silas Gaunt was in full swing.

  ‘How long has Mrs Samson been in place now?’ asked Silas Gaunt. It was a rhetorical question but he wanted the Director-General to share his pleasure.