Berlin Game

by Len Deighton

  ‘How bad?’

  Dicky got to his feet and slapped his hands against his legs to get rid of any ash on his fingers. ‘Bloody bad,’ said Dicky. ‘Tell him how you first found out what was going on.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what is going on yet,’ said Frank. ‘But the first real sign of trouble came when I had a call from the police liaison chap in Bonn. The border guards at Hitzacker in Lower Saxony had fished a fellow out of the Elbe. He’d got over the Wall and across all those damned minefields and border obstacles and into the river. He was just about done in, but he wasn’t injured in any way. From the West German police report I gather there’d been no sounds of shooting or anything from the other side. It was as near as you can get to a perfect escape.’

  ‘Lucky man,’ said Dicky.

  ‘Or a well-informed one,’ said Frank. ‘The border runs along the northeast bank of the river there, so the East Germans can’t put obstacles and mantraps in the water. That’s why the DDR keep bellyaching about the way the border should run along the middle of the Elbe. Meanwhile it’s a good place to try an escape.’

  ‘A border crossing? Why did Bonn get involved and why did anyone call you?’

  ‘Bonn got interested when the interrogator at the reception centre found that the escapee was an East German customs official.’

  Frank looked at me as if expecting a reaction. When I gave none, he spent a few moments trying to light his pipe. ‘An East German customs official,’ he said again, and waved the match in the air to extinguish it. He almost tossed the dead match into the fireplace but remembered in time and placed it on the large Cinzano ashtray that Dicky had put at his elbow. ‘Max Binder. One of our people. A Brahms network man.’

  Dicky had had a whole night of Frank’s measured story-telling and now he tried to hurry things along. ‘When Frank put in the usual “contact string” for the rest of the Brahms network next morning, he got no response from anyone.’

  ‘I didn’t say that, Dicky,’ said Frank pedantically. ‘I got messages from two of them.’

  ‘You didn’t get messages,’ said Dicky even more pedantically. ‘You got two “out of contact” signals.’ Dicky had decided that the failure of the Brahms network was his big chance, and he was determined to write the story his own way.

  Frank grunted and sipped his gin.

  Dicky said, ‘Those bastards have been working a racket with the import bank credits, and making a fortune out of it. And Bret’s probably been authorizing false papers and the contacts and everything they needed.’

  ‘Werner keeps complaining about the false papers,’ I said.

  ‘That was just to put us off the scent,’ said Frank. ‘The false papers were what they needed more than anything else.’

  ‘We’ve had a lot of unofficial complaints from the DDR about “antisocial elements given aid and assistance”,’ I said.

  Frank looked up from his pipe and said sharply, ‘I resent that, Bernard. You know only too well that those East Germans keep up a regular bombardment of complaints along those lines. How the hell was I to know that this time their cocktail-party diatribes were based on fact?’

  Dicky could not restrain a grim smile, and he turned away to hide it. The Brahms network being no more than a criminal gang manipulating the Department for its own profit must surely be enough to bring Bret Rensselaer crashing to the ground. And into the bargain Bret would lose his Brahms Four source. ‘Frank says he expects the DDR to prefer murder charges against them,’ Dicky added.

  ‘Who? Where?’ I said. I immediately thought of Rolf Mauser and was sufficiently surprised to allow my consternation to show. I’d been worrying about the way I’d urged Bret to okay a rollover loan for Werner. Would he suspect that I was a part of this racket? To cover myself, I got up and went over to the drinks wagon. ‘Okay if I pour myself a drink, Dicky?’

  ‘Has anyone been in touch with you?’ Frank asked me. ‘Rolf Mauser’s son thinks he went to Hamburg. My bet would be London.’

  ‘Anyone else?’ I said, holding up the gin bottle. ‘No. No one’s contacted me up to now.’

  Frank returned my gaze for a moment before shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I only said that murder charges would be the next step if the net’s been penetrated. It’s a device the DDR use for fugitives,’ he explained. ‘A murder charge automatically makes a fugitive Category One. It gets their descriptions circulated by teleprinter and the call goes out to the armed forces, as well as all the police services and the border guards. And of course there is always more chance of a murderer being reported by the public. These days the man in the East German street has become rather tolerant of black marketeers.’ Frank looked at me again. ‘Right, Bernard?’

  I sipped a little of the gin I’d poured for myself and wondered to what extent Frank guessed that I’d seen Rolf or one of the network. Dicky wasn’t suspicious; he could obviously think of nothing except how to use this new situation for his own advancement, but Frank had known me since I was a child. It was not so easy to fool Frank. ‘It had to come,’ said Frank. ‘Brahms have been no use to us except to channel back material from Brahms Four. They’ve got into mischief, and now they’re in trouble. We’ve seen it happen before, haven’t we?’

  ‘You say they’re running, without backup or any support or anything from us?’

  ‘No. That’s Dicky’s interpretation. They might simply be taking cover for a couple of days,’ said Frank. ‘It’s what they do when the security forces are having a routine shakeout.’

  ‘But no matter how routine the shakeout,’ I said, ‘they might be picked up. And Normannenstrasse will give them an offer they can’t resist and maybe blow another network or so. Is that what you’re thinking, Frank?’

  ‘What kind of offer they can’t resist?’ said Dicky.

  I didn’t answer but Frank said, ‘The Stasis will make them talk, Dicky.’

  Dicky poured himself a drink. ‘Poor bastards. Max Binder, old Rolf Mauser – who else?’

  ‘Let’s leave the mourning until we know they are in the bag,’ I said. ‘Where’s Max Binder now?’

  ‘He’s still in the reception centre in Hamburg. The interrogation people won’t let us have him until they are through.’

  ‘I don’t like that, Frank,’ said Dicky. ‘I don’t like some little German interrogator grilling one of our people. Get him out of there right away.’

  ‘We can’t do that,’ said Frank. ‘We have to go through the formalities.’

  ‘Our Berlin people don’t go into the reception centre,’ said Dicky.

  Patiently Frank explained, ‘Berlin is still under Allied military occupation, so in Berlin we can do things our way. But things that happen in the Federal Republic have to go through the state BfV office and then through Cologne, and these things take time.’

  ‘When did you see him, Frank?’

  Daphne Cruyer tapped and put her head round the door. ‘I’m off to the agency now, darling. We’re auditioning ten-year-olds for the TV commercial. I can’t leave my assistant to face that horde of little monsters on her own.’ She was wearing a broadbrimmed hat, long blue cloak and shiny boots. She had changed her image since her visit to Silas in floral pinafore and granny glasses.

  ‘Bye, bye, darling,’ said Dicky, and kissed her dutifully. ‘I’ll phone you at the office if I’m working late again.’

  Daphne gave me an affectionate kiss too. ‘You men are always working late,’ she said archly. Now I was convinced she knew about Dicky and Tessa. I wondered if her amazing outfit was also a reaction to Dicky’s infidelity.

  Only after we’d all watched Daphne climb into her car and drive away did Frank answer my question.

  ‘The positive identification was enough for me,’ said Frank. ‘No sense in trailing all the way out to some godforsaken hole in Lower Saxony. I wasted all next day trying to contact the rest of them.’

  ‘Daphne’s forgotten to take her portfolio,’ said Dicky, picking up a flat leather folder from
the table where she’d put it while kissing him. ‘I’ll phone her office and tell them to send a motorcycle messenger.’ It was the sort of solicitude shown only by unfaithful husbands.

  Dicky left the room to make his phone call from the hall. His loud voice was muffled by the frosted glass panel.

  ‘You’d better tell me the real story,’ I told Frank. ‘While Dicky’s phoning.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A DDR customs man swimming across the Elbe would excite the police liaison man in Bonn like a plate of cold dumplings. And even if this discovery did get him so animated, why would he think of you as someone who must be told immediately?’ Frank didn’t respond, so I pushed. ‘Police liaison in Bonn aren’t given any phone numbers for SIS Berlin, Frank. I thought even Dicky would sniff at that one.’

  ‘They went to Max Binder’s home to arrest him.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘We don’t know. It must have been something to do with their forfait racket. His wife was home. She got a message to him and he cleared out quickly.’

  ‘You got this from Max Binder?’

  ‘I got it from someone who was told by Werner,’ admitted Frank. ‘Werner is in no danger. There’s no evidence that anyone but Binder was involved. And Max Binder escaped by swimming the Elbe at Hitzacker, just as I described. He’s still in the reception centre. I want to contact Brahms Four, but no one will tell me how.’

  From the hall I could still hear Dicky’s voice. He had explained in considerable detail what the portfolio contained and from where it had to be collected, but now he was worrying if a motorcycle messenger would be able to carry it. The doorbell rang twice and Dicky shouted to tell the electrician to stop testing it. ‘You got it from someone who told Werner,’ I repeated. ‘And who was that, Frank?’

  ‘Zena told me,’ said Frank, prodding about in the bowl of his pipe so that he wouldn’t have to meet my stare. ‘She’s a captivating creature, and I adore the little thing. She has to see Werner from time to time. She filled in some details of this Max Binder story.’ He sucked at his pipe but no smoke came.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You know about me and Zena Volkmann, don’t you?’ He probed into the bowl of his pipe. When he was sure that the tobacco was not alight, he put the pipe into his top pocket and took a swig at his drink.

  ‘Yes, I know, Frank. I guess she gave you that box of papers that I came to Berlin to look at.’

  ‘It was genuine,’ said Frank.

  ‘All too bloody genuine,’ I agreed. ‘It was straight from Moscow Centre. Top-grade stuff, carefully selected to make it look as if Giles Trent was their only man in London. Where did she get it from?’

  ‘Zena knows a lot of people,’ said Frank.

  ‘She knows too many people, Frank. Too many of the wrong people.’

  ‘It’s better that we don’t go into all that with Bret, and everyone at London Central.’

  ‘Zena is obviously in on this racket that Brahms have been running.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Frank. He finished his gin and licked his lips.

  ‘It’s not possible, Frank. It’s all too bloody obvious. That girl’s been making a fool of you. She’s been in league with Werner and all the others all the time.’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me that your pal Werner was pimping for his own wife?’ Frank’s voice was harsh; he was determined to forgo his own illusions only by destroying mine too.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps the breakup with Werner came first. Then she found herself with something she could sell to the Brahms net and Werner was the only contact with them she had.’

  ‘Sell what to the Brahms net?’ Frank was uneasy now. He clipped and unclipped the flap of his yellow tobacco pouch and studied the tobacco as if it was of great interest to him.

  ‘Information, Frank.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting that I told her anything that could become critical?’

  ‘We’d better find out, Frank,’ I said. ‘We’d better find out damned soon. We’ve got field agents who must be warned if Zena Volkmann has been providing your pillow talk to men who might wind up in Normannenstrasse.’

  ‘Don’t let’s overreact,’ said Frank. ‘I get information from her; she gets none from me.’

  ‘It won’t seem like overreaction to me, Frank,’ I said. ‘Because I’m going to be there. I’m going to be on the wrong side of Charlie pulling your chestnuts out of the fire, and trying to dance quickly enough to keep the Stasis a jump or two behind me. So just to make sure Zena doesn’t hear about my travel plans, I’m going to keep well clear of you and your extramarital activities, Frank.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Bernard. Do you think any of those clowns you drink with in Steglitz would know how to get you through the wire safely? Do you think any of those kids you were at school with know the town as well as I know it? I’ve spent most of my life reading about, looking at and talking to Berliners. I get my information from a million different sources and I study it. That’s what I do all day long, Bernard. I know Berlin like a librarian knows his shelves of books, like a dentist knows a patient’s mouth, like a ship’s engineer knows the bits and pieces of his engine. I know every square inch of that stinking town, from palace to sewer.’

  ‘You know the town, Frank. You know it better than anyone, I’ll admit that.’

  Frank looked at me quizzically. ‘For God’s sake!’ he said suddenly. ‘You’re not saying you don’t trust me.’ He stood up to face me and banged his chest with a flattened hand. ‘This is Frank Harrington you’re talking to. I’ve known you since you were a tiny tot.’

  ‘Let it go, Frank,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Frank. ‘I told your father I’d look after you. I told him that when you joined the Department, and I told him it at the very end. I said I’d look after you, and if you’re going over the other side, you’re going to do it my way.’

  I’d never seen Frank get so emotional. ‘Let me think about it,’ I said.

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Frank. ‘You go my way or you’re not going.’ It was a way of avoiding it, and for a moment I felt like taking the opportunity. ‘My way or I’ll veto it.’

  From the hall I could hear Dicky telling the electrician that he was charging too much to fix the bell. Then Dicky put his head round the door and borrowed a fiver from me. ‘It’s the black economy,’ explained Dicky as he took the money. ‘You can only get things done if you pay spot cash.’

  ‘Okay, Frank,’ I said when Dicky had gone. ‘We’ll do it your way.’

  ‘Just you and me,’ said Frank. ‘I’ll get you over there.’ He didn’t promise to get me back again, I noticed.

  ‘Dicky is keeping everything very tight,’ I said. ‘Did he tell you that?’

  Frank was examining his oilskin pouch again to see how much tobacco he had left. ‘You can’t go wrong that way,’ he said.

  ‘Not even Bret,’ I said.

  ‘It’s coming from someone,’ said Frank. ‘It’s coming from someone with really good access to material.’

  I didn’t say anything. Such a remark from Frank was lèse-majesté and I could think of nothing to reply.

  I looked at the clock over the fireplace and wondered aloud if that was really the time. I told Frank to come and have dinner with us some time, and he promised to phone if he could fit it in. Then I shouted goodbye to Dicky, who was still on the phone explaining that Daphne’s folio of breakfast-food roughs was vitally important. It was a contention that someone on the other end of the phone seemed to doubt.

  Of the Departmental safe houses in which to meet Giles Trent I had chosen the betting shop in Kilburn High Road. The girl behind the counter nodded as I came in. I pushed past three men who were discussing the ancestry of a racehorse, and went through a door marked ‘staff only’ and upstairs to a small front room. Its window overlooked the wide pavement, where a number of secondhand bathtubs and sinks were displayed.

  ‘You’r
e always in time for the coffee,’ said Trent. He was standing at a wooden bench. Upon it there was a bottle of Jersey milk, a catering-size tin of Sainsbury’s powdered coffee and a bag of sugar from which the handle of a large spoon protruded. Trent was pouring boiling water from an electric kettle into a chipped cup with the name Tiny painted on it in nail varnish. ‘No matter how long I wait for you, the moment I decide to make coffee, you arrive.’

  ‘Something came up,’ I said vaguely. For the first time I could see Trent as the handsome man who was so attractive to Tessa. He was tall, with a leonine head. His hair was long and wavy. It was not greying in that messy mousy way that most men’s hair goes grey; it was streaked with silver, so that he looked like the sort of Italian film star who got cast opposite big-titted teenagers.

  ‘I really don’t think it’s necessary for us to go through this amazing rigmarole of meeting here in this squalid room.’ His voice was low and resonant.

  ‘Which squalid room would you prefer?’ I said, taking a cup from those arranged upside down on the draining board of the sink. I put boiling water, coffee powder, sugar and milk into it.

  ‘My office is no distance from yours,’ said Trent. ‘I come across to that building several times a week in the normal course of my work. Why the devil should I be making myself conspicuous in this filthy betting shop in Kilburn?’

  ‘The thing I don’t like about powdered coffee,’ I said, ‘is the way it makes little islands of powder. They float. You get one of those in your mouth and it tastes horrible.’

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘I didn’t realize you wanted an answer,’ I said. ‘I thought you were just declaiming about the injustice of life.’

  ‘If you put the coffee in first, then poured the hot water on it a little at a time, it would dissolve. Then you put the cold milk in.’

  ‘I was never much good at cooking,’ I said. ‘First of all, you are not nearly as conspicuous going into a broken-down betting shop in Kilburn as you like to think. On race days, that shop downstairs is crowded with men in expensive suits who put more on a horse than you or I earn in a year. As to your point that it would be better security procedure for us to meet in my office or yours, I can only express surprise at your apparent naïveté.’