by Len Deighton
‘It’s like factoring?’
‘It’s more complicated, because you’re dealing with a lot of people, most of them bureaucrats.’
‘And your pal Volkmann gets a margin on each deal. That’s sweet.’
‘It’s a tough business, Bret,’ I said. ‘There are a lot of people offering to cut a fraction of a percentage off the next one, to get the business.’
‘But Volkmann has no banking background. He’s a hustler.’
I breathed in slowly. ‘You don’t have to be a banker to get into it,’ I said patiently. ‘Werner Volkmann has been doing those forfaiting deals for several years now. He has good contacts in the East. He moves in and out of the Eastern Sector with minimum fuss. They like him because they know he tries to do tie-in deals with East German exports –’
Bret held up his hand. ‘What tie-in deals?’
‘A lot of the banks just want to handle cash. Werner is prepared to shop around for a customer in the West who’ll take some East German exports. In that way he can save them some hard currency or maybe even swing a deal where the export price equals the money due for the imports.’
‘Is that so?’ said Bret reflectively.
‘Volkmann could be very useful for us, Bret,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘Moving money, moving goods, moving people.’
‘We do that already.’
‘But how many people do we have who can go back and forth without question?’
‘So what’s Volkmann’s problem?’
‘You know what Frank Harrington is like. He doesn’t get along with Werner, and never has.’
‘And anyone Frank doesn’t like, Berlin never uses.’
‘Frank is Berlin,’ I said. ‘It’s a small staff there now, Bret. Frank has to approve every damned thing.’
‘And you want me to tell Frank how to run his Berlin office?’
‘Do you ever read anything I send you, Bret? It says there that I just want the Department to approve a rollover guarantee of funds from one of our own merchant banks.’
‘And that’s money,’ said Bret triumphantly.
‘We’re simply talking about one of our own banking outfits, using their own expertise to give Werner normal facilities at current bank rates.’
‘So why can’t he get that already?’
‘Because the sort of banks which best back these forfaiting deals want to know who Werner Volkmann is. And this Department has an old-fashioned rule that onetime field agents shouldn’t go around giving the D-G as a reference, or saying that the way they got to learn about the forfaiting business was by running agents across the Wall since they were eighteen years old.’
‘So tell me how Volkmann has stayed in business.’
‘By going outside the regular banking network, by raising money from the money market. But that means trimming his agent’s fee. It’s making life tough for him. If he gives up the forfaiting business, we’ll lose a good opportunity and a useful contact.’
‘Suppose he fouls up on one of these deals and the bank doesn’t get its money.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Bret. The boys in the bank are big enough to change their own nappies.’
‘And they’ll squeal bloody murder.’
‘What do we have those lousy banks for, unless it’s for this kind of job?’
‘What kind of dough are we talking about?’
‘A million Deutschemark rolling over would be about right.’
‘Are you out of your tiny mind?’ said Bret. ‘A million D-mark? For that no good son of a bitch? No, sir.’ He scratched the side of his nose. ‘Did Volkmann put you up to all this?’
‘Not a word. He likes to show me what a big success he is.’
‘So how do you know he’s strapped for cash?’
‘In this business,’ I said, ‘it does no harm to flip the pages of someone’s bank account from time to time.’
‘One of these days you’ll come unstuck doing one of your unofficial investigations into something that doesn’t concern you. What would you do if the bells started ringing?’
‘I’d just swear it was an official investigation,’ I said.
‘The hell you would,’ said Rensselaer.
I started to leave the room. ‘Before you go,’ he said, ‘what would you say if I told you that Brahms Four asked for you? Suppose I said he won’t trust anyone else in the Department? What would you say about that?’
‘I’d say he sounds like a good judge of character.’
‘Okay, smart ass. Now let’s have an answer for the record.’
‘It could simply mean he trusts me. He doesn’t know many Department people on personal terms.’
‘Very diplomatic, Bernard. Well, downstairs in Evaluation they are beginning to think Brahms Four has been turned. Most people I’ve spoken with downstairs are now saying Brahms Four might have been a senior KGB man from the time Silas Gaunt first encountered him in that bar.’
‘And most people downstairs,’ I said patiently, ‘wouldn’t recognize a senior bloody KGB officer if he walked up to them waving a red flag.’
Rensselaer nodded as if considering this aspect of his staff for the first time. ‘Could be you’re right, Bernard.’ He always said Bernard with the accent on the second syllable; it was the most American thing about him.
It was at that moment that Sir Henry Clevemore came into the room. He was a tall aloof figure, slightly unkempt, with that well-worn appearance that the British upper class cultivate to show they are not nouveau riche.
‘I’m most awfully sorry, Bret,’ said the Director-General as he caught sight of me. ‘I had no idea you were in conference.’ He frowned as he looked at me and tried to remember my name. ‘Good to see you, Samson,’ he said eventually. ‘I hear you spent the weekend with Silas. Did you have a good time? What has he got down there, fishing?’
‘Billiards,’ I said. ‘Mostly billiards.’
The D-G gave a little smile and said, ‘Yes, that sounds more like Silas.’ He turned away to look at Bret’s desk top. ‘I’ve mislaid my spectacles,’ he said. ‘Did I leave them in here?’
‘No, sir. You haven’t been in here this morning,’ said Bret. ‘But I seem to remember that you keep spare reading glasses in the top drawer of your secretary’s desk. Shall I get them for you?’
‘Of course, you’re right,’ said the D-G. ‘The top drawer, I remember now. My secretary’s off sick this morning. I’m afraid I simply can’t manage when she’s away.’ He smiled at Bret, and then at me, to make it perfectly clear that this was a joke born out of his natural humility and goodwill.
‘The old man’s got a lot on his plate right now,’ said Bret loyally after Sir Henry had ambled off along the corridor muttering apologies about interrupting our ‘conference’.
‘Does anyone know who’ll take over when he goes?’ I asked Bret. Goes gaga, I almost said.
‘There’s no date fixed. But could be the old man will get back into his stride again, and go on for the full three years.’ I looked at Bret and he looked back at me, and finally he said, ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know, Bernard.’
6
The two sisters were not much alike. My wife, Fiona, was dark with a wide face and a mouth that smiled easily. Tessa, the younger one, was light-haired, almost blonde, with blue eyes and a serious expression that made her look like a small child. Her hair was straight and long enough to touch her shoulders, and she sometimes flicked it back behind her, or let it fall forward across her face so that she looked through it.
It was no surprise to find Tessa in my drawing room when I got back from the office. The two of them were very close – the result perhaps of having suffered together the childhood miseries that their pompous autocratic father thought ‘character forming’ – and Fiona had been working hard over the past year to patch together Tessa’s marriage to George, a wealthy car dealer.
There was an open bottle of champagne in the ice bucket,
and already the level was down as far as the label. ‘Are we celebrating something?’ I asked as I took off my coat and hung it in the hall.
‘Don’t be so bloody bourgeois,’ said Tessa, handing me a champagne flute filled right to the brim. That was one of the problems of marrying into wealth; there were no luxuries.
‘Dinner at eight-thirty,’ said Fiona, embracing me decorously, her champagne held aloft so that she would spill none of it while giving me a kiss. ‘Mrs Dias has kindly stayed late.’
Mrs Dias, our Portuguese cook, housekeeper and general factotum, was always staying late to cook the dinner. I wondered how much her labour was costing us. The cost, like so many other household expenses would end up buried somewhere deep in the accounts and paid for out of Fiona’s trust-fund income. She knew I didn’t like it, but I suppose she disliked cooking even more than arguing with me about it. I sat down on the sofa and tasted the champagne. ‘Delicious,’ I said.
‘Tess brought it with her,’ explained Fiona.
‘A gift from an admirer,’ said Tessa archly.
‘Am I permitted to ask his name?’ I said. I saw Fiona glaring at me but I pretended not to be aware of it.
‘All in good time, darling,’ said Tessa. ‘For the moment he remains incognito.’
‘In flagrante delicto, did you say?’
‘You sod!’ she said, and laughed.
‘And how’s George?’ I said.
‘We live our own lives,’ said Tessa.
‘Don’t upset Tessa,’ Fiona told me.
‘He’s not upsetting me,’ Tessa said, tossing her hair back with her bejewelled white hand. ‘I like George and I always will like him. We’re simply not able to live together without quarrelling.’
‘Does that mean you’re getting a divorce?’ I asked, drinking a little more of the champagne.
‘George doesn’t want a divorce,’ she explained. ‘It suits him to use the house like a hotel during the week, and he has the cottage to take his fancy ladies to.’
‘Does George have fancy ladies?’ I said with no more than perfunctory interest.
‘It has been known,’ said Tessa. ‘But he’s making so much money these days, I don’t think he has much time for anything but his business.’
‘Lucky man,’ I said. ‘Everyone else I know is going broke.’
‘Well, that’s where George is so clever,’ Tessa explained. ‘He got the dealerships for smaller, cheaper cars years ago when no one seemed to want them.’ She said it proudly. Even wives who quarrel with their husbands take pride in their achievements.
Fiona reached for the champagne. She wrapped it in a cloth and poured the rest of it into our glasses with the dexterity of a sommelier. She took care not to touch the bottle on the glass, and the cloth was crossed so as to leave the label still visible as she served. Such professional niceties came naturally to someone who’d grown up in a house with domestic servants. As she poured mine, she said, ‘Tess wants me to help her find a flat.’
‘And furnish it and do it up,’ said Tessa. ‘I’m no earthly good at anything like that. Look at the mess I made of the place I’m living in now. George never liked it there. Sometimes I think that was where our marriage began to go all wrong.’
‘But it’s a lovely house,’ said Fiona loyally. ‘It’s just too big for the two of you.’
‘It’s old and dark,’ said Tessa. ‘It’s a bit of a dump, really. I can understand why George hates it. He only agreed to buying it because he wanted to have an address in Hampstead. It was a step up from Islington. But he says we can afford Mayfair.’
‘And this new place,’ I inquired. ‘Is George going to like that?’
‘Give over!’ said Tessa, employing the jocular cockney accent that she thought particularly apt when talking to me. ‘I haven’t found a place yet – that’s what I want help with. I go and see places but I can never make up my mind on my own. I listen to what these sharp estate agents tell me and I believe it – that’s my trouble.’
Whatever kind of trouble Tessa had suffered in her life, it was not on account of her believing anything any man told her, but I did not contradict her. I nodded and finished my drink. It was almost time for dinner. The ever-cheerful Mrs Dias was an adequate cook but I wasn’t sure I could face another plate of her feijoada.
‘You wouldn’t mind, darling, would you?’ said Fiona.
‘Mind what?’ I said. ‘Oh, you helping Tessa find a flat. No, of course not.’
‘You’re a sweetie,’ Tessa told me, and to Fiona she said, ‘You’re lucky to have got your hands on Bernard before I saw him. I’ve always said he was a wonderful husband.’
I said nothing. Only Tessa could make being a wonderful husband sound like a carrier of pestilence.
Tessa leaned back on the sofa. She was wearing a smoky grey silk button-through dress that was shiny on the curves. One hand held her champagne and the other was toying with a real pearl necklace. Nervously she crossed and recrossed her legs and twisted the pearls tight against her white neck.
‘Tessa wants to tell you something,’ Fiona said.
‘Any more of that champagne, darling?’ I said.
‘Tessa’s Dom Pérignon is all finished,’ said Fiona. ‘You’ll have to have Sainsbury’s from the fridge.’
‘Sainsbury’s from the fridge sounds delicious,’ I said, passing my empty glass to her. ‘What do you want to ask me, Tessa?’
‘Do you know a man named Giles Trent?’ she said.
‘Works for the FO. Tall man, grey wavy hair, low voice, upper-crust accent. Older than me, and not nearly so handsome.’
‘Not exactly for the Foreign Office,’ said Tessa archly. ‘His office is in the FO, but he’s part of your organization.’
‘Did he tell you that?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Tessa.
‘He shouldn’t have,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said Tessa. ‘I was talking to Fiona about him, and she says that Giles Trent was working with your lot in Berlin back in 1978. She says he’s quite important.’
Fiona came in with the champagne and poured a glass for me. I said, ‘Well, if that’s what Fiona says…’
Fiona said, ‘Tessa is my sister, darling. She’s not going to go blurting out all your secrets to the Russians. Are you, Tess?’
‘Not until the right Russian comes my way. Even then…I mean, did you ever see those photos of Russian ladies?’ She held the pearl necklace in her mouth; it was a babyish gesture; she liked being a baby.
‘What about Giles Trent?’ I said.
Tessa toyed with the necklace again. ‘I got to know him last summer. I met him at a dinner party given by some people who live down the road from us. He had tickets for Covent Garden – Mozart. I forget the name of the opera, but everyone was saying how difficult it was to get tickets, and Giles could get them. Well, it was heavenly. I’m not awfully keen on opera but we had a box and a bottle of champagne in the interval.’
‘And you had an affair with him,’ I finished it for her.
‘He’s a handsome brute, Bernie. And George was away watching the Japanese making motorcars.’
‘Why not go with him?’ I said.
‘If you’d ever been on one of those trips that car manufacturers provide for the dealers, you wouldn’t ask. Wives are superfluous, darling. There are hot and cold running girls in every bedroom.’
Fiona poured champagne for herself and Tessa, and said, ‘Tess wants to tell you about Giles Trent. She doesn’t want your advice on her marriage.’ This admonition, like all such wifely admonitions, was delivered with a smile and a laugh.
‘So tell me about Giles Trent,’ I said.
‘You were joking just now, I know. But Giles is older than you, Bernie, quite a bit older. He’s a bachelor, very set in his ways. I thought he was queer at first. He’s so neat and tidy and fussy about what he wears and what he eats and all that. In the kitchen – he has a divine house off the King’s Road – all his chopping knives and saucepan
s are placed side by side, smallest on the left and biggest on the right. And it’s so perfect that I was frightened to boil an egg and slice a loaf in case I spilled crumbs on the spotless tiled floor or marked the chopping board.’
‘Tell me how you first discovered he wasn’t queer,’ I said.
‘I said he wouldn’t listen to me,’ Tessa complained to Fiona. ‘I said he’d just make sarcastic remarks all the time, and I was right.’
‘It’s serious, Bernard,’ said my wife. She only called me Bernard when things were serious.
‘You mean it’s wedding bells for Tessa and Giles?’
‘I mean Giles Trent is passing intelligence material to someone from the Russian Embassy.’
There was a long silence until finally I said, ‘Shit.’
‘Giles Trent has been in the service a long time,’ said Fiona.
‘Longer than I have,’ I said. ‘Giles Trent was lecturing at the training school by the time I got there.’
‘In Berlin he was in Signals at one time,’ said Fiona.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And he compiled that training report for interrogators. I don’t like the sound of that. Giles Trent, eh?’
‘Giles Trent doesn’t seem the type,’ said Fiona. All the ladies had a soft spot for the elegant and gentlemanly Giles Trent. He raised his hat to them and always had a clean shirt.
‘They never are the type,’ I said.
‘But no contacts with field agents,’ said Fiona.
‘Well, let’s be thankful for that at least,’ I said. I looked at Tessa. ‘Have you mentioned all this to anyone?’
‘Only to Daddy,’ said Tessa. ‘He said forget all about it.’
‘Good old Daddy,’ I said. ‘Always there when you need him.’
Mrs Dias came in bearing a large platter of shrimp fried in batter. ‘Don’t eat too many, sir,’ she said in her shrill accent. ‘Make you very fat.’ The Portuguese are a lugubrious breed, and yet Mrs Dias was always smiling. I had the feeling that we were paying her too much.
‘You’re wonderful, Mrs Dias,’ said my wife, smiling, although the smile faded when she recognized the shrimps as those she’d set aside in the kitchen to thaw for next day’s lunch.