by Len Deighton
‘Since my duplicity was so bloody obvious, Bret, why didn’t you arrest me then, as soon as I got back here?’
‘We weren’t sure,’ said Bret. He shuffled in his seat. Bret was a shirt-sleeve man. He didn’t look right sitting there with his jacket on like a shop-window dummy.
‘You didn’t ask me to face a board. There wasn’t even an inquiry.’
‘We wanted to see what you would do about enrolling Stinnes.’
‘That’s not very convincing, Bret. The fact that you wanted to enrol Stinnes, and question him, was a measure of your doubt about my guilt.’
‘Not at all. This way, we could confirm or deny your loyalty and have Stinnes as a bonus. Dicky and I talked that one over. Right, Dicky?’ Bret obviously felt that Dicky wasn’t giving him the support he needed.
Dicky said, ‘I’ve always said that there was insufficient evidence to support any action against Bernard. I want to make that clear to everyone round this table.’ Dicky looked round the table making it clear to everyone.
Well, good old Dicky. So he’s not just a pretty face either. He’d realized that this might well turn out to be the opportunity he’d been waiting for; the opportunity to dump a bucket of shit over Bret’s head. Dicky was going to sit on the sidelines, but he’d be cheering for me now that Bret had adopted the role of my prosecutor. And, if I proved to be guilty, Dicky would still be able to wriggle free. The present company were well equipped to understand every nuance of Dicky’s carefully worded communiqué to the future. He’d said there was insufficient evidence to support any action against me. Dicky wasn’t going to stick his neck out and say I wasn’t guilty.
Seeing that Bret was momentarily disconcerted by his remark, Dicky followed with a quick right and left to the body. ‘And if Bernard didn’t manage to persuade Stinnes to defect that would prove his guilt?’ Dicky asked. He used a rather high-pitched voice and a little smile. It was Dicky’s idea of the droll Oxford don that he’d once hoped to be, but it ill fitted a man in trendy faded denim and Gucci shoes. Dicky persisted, ‘Is that it? It sounds like those medieval witch trials. You throw the accused into a lake and if he comes up you know he’s guilty so you execute him.’
‘Okay, Dicky, okay,’ said Bret, holding up a hand and admiring his signet ring, his fraternity ring and his manicure. ‘But there are still a lot more questions unanswered. Why did Bernard make Biedermann sacred?’
It was a good tactic to address the question to Dicky Cruyer, but Dicky leaped aside like a scalded cat. He knew that being cast as my counsel was just one step away from being my accessory. ‘Well, what about that, Bernard?’ said Dicky, turning his head towards me with an expression that said he’d gone as far as any man could go to help me.
I said, ‘I was at school with Biedermann. I knew him all his life. He was never of any importance.’
‘Would you like to see a rough listing of Biedermann’s business holdings?’ said Bret. ‘Not a bad spread for a nothing.’
‘No, I wouldn’t. I’m talking about what he did as an agent. He was of no importance.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ said Bret.
‘Biedermann’s death is a red herring. He could never be anything more than a very small piece of the KGB machinery. There is nothing to suggest that Biedermann has ever had access to any worthwhile secrets.’ They all looked at me impassively; they all knew that I’d play down Biedermann whatever he was.
Tiptree spoke for the first time. He used his hand to smooth his well-brushed ginger hair and then fingered his thin moustache as if making sure it was still gummed on. He was like a nervous young actor just about to make his first stage appearance. He said, ‘Carrying secrets this time though, eh?’
‘I’ll wait for the official assessment before saying anything about that,’ I said. ‘And, even if it’s worthwhile material, I’ll bet you that it will reveal nothing about the Russians.’
‘Well, of course it will reveal nothing about the Russians,’ said Tiptree in his measured, resonant voice. ‘This chap was a Soviet agent, what?’ He looked round the table and smiled briefly.
Morgan spoke for the first time. He explained to Tiptree what I was getting at. ‘Samson means that we’ll learn nothing about Soviet aims or intentions from the submarine construction report that was being carried by Biedermann.’
‘The only thing we’ll learn from it’, I added, ‘is that the KGB chose a document that will involve the maximum number of security organizations: France, Denmark, Norway, Britain, several Latin American customers. Mexico where he was resident and the US because of his passport.’
‘But the material was important enough for him to be killed,’ said Tiptree.
‘He was killed to incriminate me,’ I said.
‘Well,’ said Tiptree with studied patience. ‘There’s no avoiding the fact that you gave him the drink that poisoned him.’
‘But I didn’t know what it was. We’ve been through all that. Just before we came in here Bret told me that the Sûreté have even found someone who identified the girl who gave me the poisoned coffee.’
Bret fidgeted in his chair. He liked to swing round in his swivel chair in his office. This wasn’t a swivel chair but Bret kept throwing his weight from one side to the other as if hoping that it might become one. He corrected me. ‘I said, the Sûreté found someone in the building who remembered seeing the girl you described. Hardly the same thing, Bernard. Hardly the same thing.’
‘You say that Biedermann was of no account,’ said Tiptree, still exhibiting that mannered patience with which great minds untangle ignorance. ‘I wish you could give us just one reason for believing that.’
‘Biedermann was so unimportant that the KGB killed him just to implicate me. Doesn’t that prove something?’
Bret said, ‘It proves nothing, as well you know. For all we can figure, Biedermann was in this up to his neck and you were working with him. That sounds a more likely motive for his murder. That explanation shows why you made him sacred without putting his name on our copy of the filing sheets.’
‘I wanted a favour from him. I was preparing the way for it.’
‘What favour?’
‘I wanted him to help me persuade Stinnes.’
Bret said, ‘What help were you going to get from the unimportant little jerk you described?’
‘Stinnes was in contact with Biedermann. I thought Stinnes would choose to work through him instead of Werner Volkmann.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s what I would have done.’
‘So why didn’t Stinnes do it through Biedermann?’
‘I think he planned to do it that way but that the KGB began to get worried about what was happening and stopped him.’
‘Play that back at half-speed,’ said Bret.
‘I think Moscow encouraged Stinnes to tease us a little at first. But then Stinnes realized he had the perfect cover for coming over to us. But Moscow never trusts anyone, so I think they are monitoring Stinnes and his contacts with us. He has an assistant – Pavel Moskvin – who might be someone assigned by Moscow Centre to spy on him. It could well be that they have other people spying on him. We all know that Moscow likes to have spies who spy on spies who spy on spies. I think someone higher up told Stinnes not to use Biedermann as the go-between. They had other plans for Biedermann. He was to be murdered.’
Bret fixed me with his eyes. We both knew that by ‘someone higher up’ I meant Fiona. I half expected him to say so. Once I’d suspected him of being Fiona’s lover. Even now I’d not entirely dismissed the idea. I wonder if he knew that. He said, ‘So you thought Biedermann would be valuable to us. That’s why you made him sacred?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Wouldn’t it be simpler, and more logical, to think you covered for Biedermann because he was a buddy?’
‘Are we looking for simplicity and logic?’ I said. ‘This is the KGB we’re talking about. Let’s just stick to what is likely.’
‘Then how l
ikely is this?’ said Bret. ‘Biedermann is your KGB contact. You make him sacred to keep everyone else off his back. That way you’ll be the first to hear if he attracts the attention of any NATO intelligence agency. And your excuse for contacting him, any time you want, night or day, is that you are continuing the investigation into his activities.’
‘I didn’t like Biedermann. I’ve never liked him. Anyone will tell you that.’ It was a feeble response to Bret’s convincing pattern and he ignored it.
‘That sort of cover – investigation – has been used before.’
‘Biedermann was killed in order to frame me for his murder, and because while he was alive his evidence would support everything I’ve told you. There’s no other reason for what was otherwise a completely gratuitous killing.’
‘Oh, sure,’ said Bret. ‘All to get you into deep trouble.’
I didn’t answer. The KGB’s operational staff had done their work well. Given all the facts against some other employee of the department, I too would have been as suspicious as Bret was.
Dicky stopped biting his nail. ‘Shall I tell you what I think,’ said Dicky. His voice was high and nervous but it wasn’t a question; Dicky was determined to share his theory. ‘I think Stinnes never gave a damn about Biedermann. That night in Mexico, when he first made contact with the Volkmanns, he apparently went across to the table because he mistook Zena Volkmann for the Biedermann girl. I say Stinnes was after Zena Volkmann. Hell, she’s a stunner, you know, and Stinnes has a reputation as a woman chaser. I think we’re making too much of Biedermann’s role in all this.’
‘Well, think about this one,’ I said. ‘Suppose Stinnes was sent to Mexico City only because Zena and Werner were already there. He told them that he’d been there a few weeks but we have no proof of that. We’ve been congratulating ourselves on the way that we put out an alert and then the Volkmanns spotted him. But suppose it’s the other way round? Suppose Stinnes knew exactly who the Volkmanns were that night when he went over to their table in the Kronprinz Club? Suppose the whole scenario had been planned that way by the KGB operational staff.’
I looked around. ‘Go on,’ said Bret. ‘We’re all listening.’
I said, ‘How could he mistake Zena Volkmann for Poppy Biedermann? No one could mistake one for the other; there’s no resemblance. He pretended to mistake Zena for the Biedermann girl in order to bring Biedermann into the conversation, knowing that we’d find out Paul Biedermann was in Mexico and that we’d make contact with him. Suppose they were thinking of involving Biedermann right back when we started?’
‘With what motive?’ said Dicky and then regretted saying it. Dicky liked to nod things through as if he knew everything. He touched his bloodless lips as if making sure his mouth was shut.
‘Well, he’s not done too badly, has he?’ I said. ‘He’s got everyone here jumping up and down with excitement. You’re accusing me of being a KGB agent and of murdering Biedermann on KGB instructions. Not bad. We’d be very proud to have the KGB floundering about like this, trying to find out who’s on which side.’
Bret frowned; my accusation of floundering found a target. Frank Harrington leaned forward and said, ‘So how far will they go? Send Stinnes here to give us a lot of misinformation?’
‘I doubt if he could sustain a prolonged interrogation.’
‘Then why the hell would they bother?’ said Bret.
‘To get me to run, Bret,’ I said.
‘Run to Moscow?’
‘It fits. They send Stinnes to Mexico so that Volkmann will spot him because they guess that I’ll be the chosen contact. And then they plan Biedermann’s murder so that they can incriminate me. They might even have guessed I’d make Biedermann NATO sacred – it’s been done before: we all know that – and now they want to pin his murder on me.’ There were all sorts of other things – from the black girl’s clumsy approach, to MacKenzie’s murder – that supported my theory but I had no intention of revealing those. ‘The whole thing adds up to a way of making me run.’
‘That’s what physicians call a “waste-paper basket diagnosis”,’ said Bret. ‘You throw all the symptoms into the pot and then invent a disease.’
‘Then tell me what’s wrong with it,’ I said.
‘I’d want to see you completely cleared of suspicion before I started racking my brains about why they might be framing you,’ said Bret. ‘And we’ve still got a long way to go on that one.’
Frank Harrington looked round the table and said, ‘It would be worth a lot to them to have Bernard there asking for political asylum. I think we have to take into account the way that Bernard has stayed here and faced the music.’ Until that moment I’d wondered if Frank’s offer to let me run off to Checkpoint Charlie had been in response to some directive from London. But now I decided that Frank had done it on his own. I was more than ever grateful to him. And if Frank seemed lukewarm in his contribution to this meeting that might be because he could offer more support to me behind the scenes if he showed no partisanship.
To me Bret said, ‘That’s your considered opinion, is it; that all this evidence against you is part of a Moscow plan to have you running over there?’ He paused, but no one said anything. Sarcastically Bret added, ‘Or could it just be your paranoia?’
‘I’m not paranoid, Bret,’ I said. ‘I’m being persecuted.’
Bret exploded with indignation. ‘Persecuted? Let me tell you –’
Frank put a hand on Bret’s arm to calm him. ‘It’s a joke, Bret,’ he said. ‘It’s an old joke.’
‘Oh, I see. Yes,’ said Bret. He was embarrassed at losing self-control if only for a moment. ‘Well, it’s hard to imagine KGB Operations cooking that one up.’
I said, ‘I could tell you some even more stupid ideas that we’ve followed through.’
Bret didn’t invite me to tell him any of the stupid ideas. He said, ‘But what you describe would be a change of style, wouldn’t it? The sort of thing someone new might dream up, to show what a genius they were.’ Everyone round the table knew what he meant but when he remembered there were no notes or recordings he said it anyway. ‘Someone like your wife?’
‘Yes. Fiona. She could have had a hand in something like that.’
‘She makes you run. She gets you and gets your kids. Ummm,’ said Bret. He had a gold ball-point pen in his fist, and he clicked the top two or three times to show us he was thinking. ‘Would Fiona think you could be stampeded that way? She knows you well. Why would she guess wrong? Is she wrong?’
‘Hold it, Bret,’ I said. ‘Just four beats to the bar.’
Bret said, ‘Because we still have another unreported incident.’ He looked at Tiptree.
Tiptree continued right on cue. Maybe it hadn’t been rehearsed but this interview had obviously been discussed in detail. Tiptree looked at me and said, ‘A black woman asked for a lift in your car and you took her to London Airport. There you both had a brief exchange of words with a second woman.’
I looked at Tiptree and then at Bret. I was shaken. They’d caught me off-guard with that one. And bringing it up so late was a part of the effect it had. ‘That was nothing to do with the department.’
‘Well, I say it was to do with the department,’ said Bret.
‘We’re all allowed a private life, Bret,’ I reminded him. ‘Or are we starting a new game? We all come in on Monday mornings and discuss each other’s private lives as revealed by the surveillance teams. Do you want to start right away?’ Bret, who wasn’t above taking some of the more shapely secretaries to his riverside mansion for a cosy weekend, was not keen to get into an exchange of confidences.
To take the pressure off Bret, Henry Tiptree said, ‘By that time we were checking your journeys between home and the office. You were under suspicion from the time you returned, Bernard. Surely you must have guessed that.’
‘No, I didn’t. At least, I didn’t think you were sending Internal Security teams to follow me home.’
‘So who was sh
e?’ said Tiptree.
‘It was a neighbour. She has a friend who works at the airport and I was going to employ her to look after the children. She’s a qualified nurse who wanted to earn some extra money on her days off. But, the way things are now, I have to have someone full-time.’
It was a hasty improvisation and I was by no means sure that Tiptree believed me. Tiptree looked at me for a long time and I stared back at him in mutual antipathy. ‘Well, we’ll leave that for the time being,’ he said, as if making a concession to me. I wondered if he too had been trying to trace the black girl with rather less luck than poor old MacKenzie. ‘Let’s move on to MacKenzie,’ said Tiptree, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Tell me what he was doing for you at the time of his death.’
Was it a trick? ‘I don’t know the time of his death,’ I said. ‘I just know what the doctor estimated it might have been.’
Tiptree smiled grimly. ‘If you don’t know the time of his death,’ he said, carefully inserting that proviso as if not believing it, ‘tell me about MacKenzie. You gave him quite a few errands. From what I hear of you, it’s not like you to use a probationer. You’re the one who’s always complaining about the lack of experience around here. You’re the one who won’t tolerate amateurism. Why MacKenzie, then?’
I kept as near to the truth as possible. ‘He wanted to be a field agent,’ I told them. ‘He really wanted that.’ They nodded. We’d all seen lots of probationers who wanted to be field agents, even though the various selection boards tried to screen out anyone with that perverted ambition. Soon even the most headstrong such probationer came to realize that his chances of being sent off to operate as a field agent were very slim. Field agents were seldom chosen from recruited staff. Field agents didn’t get sent anywhere. Field agents were there already.
‘You used him a lot,’ said Tiptree.
I said, ‘He would always find time to help. He’d type reports when all the bloody typing pool had refused to work overtime. He’d stand in the rain all night and never ask questions about the premises he’d watched. He’d go into municipal offices and spend hours rummaging through boxes of old birth certificates or ratings slips or voters’ lists. And because he was a particularly rude and badly dressed probationer, and spoke ungrammatical English with a regional accent, he had no trouble convincing anyone that he was a reporter on one of our great national newspapers. That’s why I used him.’