by Len Deighton
‘Tarrant, tell the driver that my guest is leaving. And have his coat ready, would you?’ said Frank.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Tarrant in loud sergeant-major style. After Tarrant had gone marching off along the hall, Frank said, ‘Do you ever get lonely, Bernard?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said.
‘It’s a miserable affliction. My wife hates Berlin. She hardly ever comes over here nowadays,’ said Frank. ‘Sometimes I think I hate it too. It’s such a dirty place. It’s all those bloody coal-fired stoves in the East. There’s soot in the air you breathe; I can taste it on bad days. I can’t wait to get back to England. I get so damned bored.’
‘No outside interests, Frank?’
His eyes narrowed. I always overstepped the mark with Frank but he always responded. Sometimes I suspected that I was the only person in the world who talked to him on an equal footing. ‘Women, you mean?’ There was no smile; it was not something we joked about.
‘That sort of thing,’ I said.
‘Not for ages. I’m too old for philandering.’
‘I find that hard to believe, Frank,’ I said.
Suddenly the phone rang. Frank picked it up. ‘Hello?’ He didn’t have to say who he was; this phone was connected only to his private secretary here in the house. He listened for a time and said, ‘Just telex the usual acknowledgement and say we’re sending someone, and, if London want to know what we’re doing, tell them that we are handling it until they give instructions otherwise. Phone me if anything develops. I’ll be here.’
He put the phone down and looked at me. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘You’d better close the door for a moment, while we sort this out,’ said Frank. ‘Paul Biedermann has been arrested by a security officer.’
‘What for?’
‘We’re not exactly sure yet. He’s in Paris, Charles de Gaulle airport. We’ve just had it on the printer. The signal said “Mikado” and that’s a NATO code word for any sort of secret documents.’
‘What’s it got to do with us?’ I said.
Frank gave a grim smile. ‘Nothing, except that some bloody idiot in London has given Biedermann a “sacred” tag. At present no one in London is admitting to it, but eventually they’ll find out who authorized it. You can’t put a tag on anyone without signing the sheet.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. I suddenly went very cold. I was the idiot in question.
Frank sniffed. ‘And if Biedermann is carrying stolen secret papers while getting protection from someone in London there will be a hell of a row.’ He looked at me and waited for my response.
‘It doesn’t sound as if he got much protection. You said he was arrested.’
‘A spot check. No tag could save him from a spot check. But people with “sacred” tags are supposed to be under some sort of surveillance, no matter how perfunctory.’ He smiled again at the thought of someone in London getting into hot water. ‘If he’s got NATO secrets, they’ll go mad. Do you know Paul Biedermann?’
‘Of course I do. We were both on that cricket team you tried to get going for the German kids.’
‘Cricket team. Ah, that’s going back a long time.’
‘And I met his sister Poppy here in this house not so long ago. The last time you had me over for dinner.’
‘Poppy’s a darling. But Paul is a shifty bastard. Didn’t you sell him that Ferrari of yours?’
‘Shifty? And is that an opinion you’ve reached since the phone rang?’ I asked. ‘Yes, I sold him my car. I often wish I’d kept it. He’s been through half a dozen since that one, and even with my car allowance I can’t even afford a new Volvo.’
‘I’ve always wondered if young Biedermann was in the spy game. He’s perfectly placed; all that travelling. And he’s egoistical enough to want to do it. But it sounds as if the other side got in first.’
‘He’s a creep,’ I said.
‘Yes, I know you hate him. I remember your lecturing me about the way he sold his father’s transport yard. How would you like to go to Paris and sort this one out? It will just be a matter of a preliminary talk with the people who are holding him. By that time London will have got hold of whoever signed the “sacred” tag. Whoever signed the tag will have to go to Paris, that’s the drill, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said. I had a cold feeling of foreboding. Whoever had signed the ‘sacred’ tag would have to go to wherever Biedermann was being held. There was no way out of that; it was mandatory. Anyone who knew I’d signed that ‘sacred’ tag could make me go anywhere they wanted me to go; all they had to do was to have Biedermann arrested, and put the NATO signal on the line. I hadn’t thought of that when making Biedermann ‘sacred’, and now it was too late to change anything.
‘Are you all right, Bernard? You’ve gone a nasty shade of green.’
‘It was the breakfast I had at Lisl’s,’ I said hastily. ‘I can’t digest German breakfasts any more.’
Frank nodded. Too much of an explanation. That was the trouble when dealing with Frank and Werner; they knew me too well. That was the trouble when dealing with Fiona too. ‘Just hold the fort in Paris until London sends whoever signed that tag. I’m very short of people this week, and since you’re on your way back to London anyway…You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Of course not,’ I said. I wondered whether the person who had masterminded this one had known I’d be with Frank today, or whether that was just a lucky coincidence for them. Either way the result was the same. Sooner or later I would have to go to Paris. I was the mouse in the maze; start running, mouse. ‘Can you let me have a hand-gun, Frank?’
‘Now? Right away? You do come up with some posers, Bernard. The army look after our hardware nowadays, and it takes a day or two to get the paperwork through channels and make an appointment with the duty armoury officer. I could have it by the end of the week. What exactly do you want? I’d better write it down so that I don’t get it wrong.’
‘No, don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to know what the score was, in case I was here and needed a gun some time.’
Frank smiled. ‘I thought for one moment you were thinking of taking a gun to Paris. That would mean one of those non-ferrous jobs – airport guns they call them nowadays – and I’m not sure we have any available.’ He was relieved, and now he placed a hand on the phone as he waited for it to ring again. ‘My secretary will be phoning back with all the details, and then the car can get you to the airport in time for the next plane.’ He consulted his gold wrist-watch. ‘Yes, it will all fit together nicely. What a good thing you were here when it happened.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What a good thing I was here when it happened.’
Frank must have heard the bitterness in my voice, for he looked up to see my face. I smiled.
19
Charles de Gaulle is the sort of futuristic airport that you might find inside a Christmas cracker that was made in Taiwan a long time ago. Overhead the transparent plastic was discoloured with brown stains, moving staircases no longer moved, carpeting was threadbare, and the imitation marble had cracked here and there to reveal a black void into which litter had been thrown. There were long lines to get coffee and even longer ones to get a drink, and the travellers who liked to eat while sitting down were sprawled on the floor amid the discarded plastic cups and wrappings from microwave-heated sandwiches.
I was lucky. I avoided the long lines. A uniformed CRS man met me as I stepped from the plane. He took my bag and conducted me through customs and immigration, with no more than a perfunctory wave to the CRS officer in charge there. Now he opened a locked door that admitted me to another world. For behind the chaotic slum that the traveller knows as an airport there is another spacious and leisurely world for the staff. Here there is an opportunity to rest and think and eat and drink undisturbed, except for the sound of unanswered telephones.
‘Where are you holding him?’ I asked the CRS man as he held the door open for me.
‘You’ll
have to talk to Chief Inspector Nicol first,’ said the CRS man. We were in a small upper section of the main building that is used by the police. Most of the offices on this corridor were used by the Compagnie Républicaine de Sécurité who manned the immigration desks. But the office into which I was taken was not occupied by a man who checked passports. Chief Inspector Gérard Nicol was a wellknown personality of the Sûreté Nationale. ‘The cardinal’ they called him, and he was senior enough to have his own well-furnished office in the Ministry building on the rue des Saussaies. I’d met him several times before.
‘Chief Inspector Nicol; I’m Samson,’ I said as I went into his office. I kept it very formal. French policemen demand politeness from colleagues and prisoners alike.
He looked me up and down as if deciding it was really me. ‘It’s a long time, Bernard,’ he said finally. He was dressed in that uniform that Sûreté officers wear when they are not wearing uniform: dark trousers, black leather jacket, white shirt and plain tie.
‘Two or three years,’ I said.
‘Two years. It was the security conference in Frankfurt. There was talk of you getting a big promotion.’
‘Someone else got it,’ I said.
‘You said you wouldn’t get it,’ he reminded me.
‘But I didn’t believe it.’
He protruded his lower lip and shrugged as only a Frenchman shrugs. ‘So now they are sending you to charm us into letting you have custody of our prisoner?’
‘What is he charged with?’ I asked.
By way of answer, Nicol picked up a transparent bag by the corner so that the contents fell on to the desk-top. A US passport crammed with immigration stamps of everywhere from Tokyo to Portugal, a bunch of keys, a wrist-watch, a crocodile-skin wallet, a gold pencil, a bundle of paper money – German and French – and coins, a plastic holder containing four credit cards, a packet of paper hand-kerchiefs, an envelope defaced with scribbled notes, a gold lighter and a packet of the German cigarettes – Atika – that I’d seen Biedermann smoking. Nicol picked up the credit cards. ‘Biedermann, Paul,’ he said.
‘Identification from a credit card?’ I sorted quickly through Biedermann’s possessions.
‘It’s more difficult to get a credit card these days than to get a carte de séjour,’ said Nicol sorrowfully. ‘But there’s a California driving licence with a photo if you prefer it. We haven’t charged him with anything yet. I thought we’d wait until you arrived.’
‘That’s most considerate of you,’ I said. I put the packet of German cigarettes into my pocket. If Nicol saw me do so he made no comment.
‘We always try to oblige,’ said Nicol. There is no habeas corpus in French law. There is no method whereby a man unlawfully detained may be set free. The Prefect of Police doesn’t need a formal charge or evidence that any crime has been committed; he needs no judicial authority to search houses, issue warrants and confiscate letters in the post. He can order the arrest of anyone. He can interrogate them and then hand them over for trial, release them or send them to a lunatic asylum. No wonder French policemen look so relaxed.
‘May I see what he was carrying?’ I asked.
‘He had that small shoulder-bag containing shaving things and some underwear, a newspaper and aspirins and so on. That’s over there. I found nothing of interest in it. But he was also carrying this.’ Nicol pointed to a hard brown leather case on the side-table. It was an expensive piece of luggage without any manufacturer’s labels, a one-suiter with separate spaces for shoes, shirts and socks. I suppose the factory made it to the maximum regulation size for cabin baggage, but it was large enough to get anyone into a lot of arguments with officious check-in clerks.
One compartment inside the lid was intended for business papers. It even had special places for pens, pencils and a notebook. Inside the zippered section there were four lots of typed pages, each neatly bound into varying-coloured plastic folders. I flipped through the pages quickly. It was all in English, but it was unmistakably American in presentation and content. The way in which these reports had been prepared – with coloured charts and captioned photos – made them look like the sort of elaborate pitch that an advertising agency might make to a potential client.
The introduction said, ‘The German yard Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft at Kiel has dominated the market in small-and medium-size diesel submarines for more than 15 years. Two Type 209 (1400 t.) submarines are being fitted out and Brazil has ordered two of the same displacement. Work on these will start almost immediately. Two larger (1500 t.) boats are already begun for delivery to India. These will not be stretched versions of the Type 209 but specially designed to a new specification.’
Soon, however, the detailed descriptions became more technical: ‘The Type 209s carry Krupp Atlas passive/active sonar in the sail but the TR 1700 also have a passive-ranging sonar of French design. The fire-control system made by Hollandse Signaal-Apparaten is standard, but modifications are being incorporated following the repeated failure of the Argentine submarine San Luis in attacks against the Royal Navy task force.’
‘It doesn’t look like you’ve captured a master spy,’ I said.
‘It’s marked secret,’ said Nicol defensively.
‘But so are a lot of things in the museum archives,’ I said.
‘Never mind the archives, this is dated last month. I don’t know anything about submarines, but I know the Russians give a high priority to updating their knowledge of the world’s submarines. And I know that these diesel ones are the hunter-killers that would have to be used to find their nuclear-powered ones.’
‘You’ve been watching too many TV documentaries,’ I said.
‘And I’ve learned enough at NATO security conferences to know that a report like this which reveals secrets about submarines built in German yards for the Norwegian and Danish navies will get everyone steamed up.’
‘There’s no denying that,’ I said. ‘We think Biedermann is a small-time KGB agent working out of Berlin. Where was he going?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Can’t tell me, or don’t know?’ I said.
‘He arrived from Paris in a taxi cab and hadn’t yet bought a ticket. Look for yourself.’ Nicol indicated Biedermann’s personal possessions which were still on the desk.
‘So it was a tip-off?’
‘A good guess,’ said Nicol.
‘Don’t give me that, Gérard,’ I said. ‘You say he hadn’t bought a ticket. And he hadn’t arrived by plane. So he wasn’t going through Customs, immigration or a security check when you found the papers. Who tipped you off to search him?’
‘Tipped off?’
‘The only reason you know all that printed junk is secret is because you were tipped off.’
‘I hate policemen, don’t you, Bernard? They always have such nasty suspicious minds. I never mix with them off-duty.’
‘American passport. Have you told the embassy?’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Where is Biedermann resident?’
‘Mexico. He has companies registered there. For tax purposes, I suppose. Is he talking?’
‘He helped us a little with some preliminary questions,’ admitted Nicol.
‘A passage à tabac?’ I said. It was delicate police euphemism for the preliminary roughing up that was given to uncooperative prisoners under interrogation.
He looked at me blank-faced and said, ‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen any more. That all stopped fifty years ago.’
‘I was only kidding,’ I said, although I could have opened my shirt and showed him a few scars that proved otherwise. ‘What’s the official policy? Are you holding on to the prisoner, or do you want me to take him away?’
‘I’m waiting for instructions on that,’ said Nicol. ‘But it’s been agreed that you talk to him.’
‘Alone?’
Nicol gave me a mirthless grin. ‘Providing you don’t get rough with him and try and blame it on to our primitive police methods.’
&nb
sp; So my taunt did find its mark. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll do the same for you some time.’
‘It was a tip-off. It was phoned through to my office, so it was someone who knew how the Sûreté works. The caller said a man would be at the Alitalia desk; a scarred face, walks with a limp. A clerk took the call. There’s no chance of identifying the voice or tracing the call but you can talk to the clerk if you wish. A man; perfect French, probably a Paris accent.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Sounds like you’ve already narrowed it down to eight million suspects.’
‘I’ll get someone to take you downstairs.’
They were holding Paul Biedermann in the specially built cell block that is one floor below the police accommodation. It is a brickbuilt area with a metal-reinforced ceiling. In 1973 – by which time airports had become a major attraction for hijackers, assassins, demonstrators and lunatics and criminals of every kind – the cell block was tripled in size and redesigned to provide twenty-five very small solitary cells, eight cells with accommodation for three prisoners each (current penology advising that four prisoners together fight, and two get too friendly), and four rooms for interrogating prisoners in secure conditions. Three cells for women prisoners were also built at that time.
Paul Biedermann was not in a cell of any sort. They were holding him in one of the interrogation rooms. Like most such rooms it had a small observation chamber large enough for two or three people. The door to that was unlocked and I stepped inside it and watched Paul Biedermann through the mirrored glass panel. There was all the usual recording equipment here but no sign of its being recently used.
The interrogation room in which Biedermann was being held had no bed; just a table and two chairs. Nothing to be broken, bent or used as a weapon. The door was not a cell door; there was no iron grill or bolts, and it was secured only by a heavy-duty mortise lock. After I’d had a good look at him I opened the locked door and went inside.
‘Bernd. Am I glad to see you.’ He laughed. The scars down the side of his face puckered, and his smile was so broad that his twisted face looked almost demented. ‘Jesus. I was hoping it would be you. They said that someone was coming from Berlin. I can explain everything, Bernd. It’s all a crazy mistake.’ Even under stress he still had that lowpitched hoarse voice and the strong American accent.