The Diplomat's Wife

by Michael Ridpath

  Phil sipped the brown liquid: unpleasant, with a strong taste of chicory. He was watching Emma for her reaction to Kay’s note. Her eyebrows rose as she read. She glanced quickly at Kay and then Phil, her face setting in determination.

  She began scribbling a response. Phil could read the words from where he was sitting.

  I thought so! Do you know where Lothar is now? And what is his current identity?

  ‘So, Philip,’ Kay said, reading the note. ‘Tell me about yourself. Are you at university?’

  ‘I’m going to Edinburgh in September,’ Phil said.

  Kay made a circling motion with her hand, urging him to continue talking as she wrote. Which Phil did, with Emma making occasional proud grandmotherly interjections to keep him going.

  I don’t know his current ID.

  Kay hesitated. Emma mouthed the word ‘Please.’ Kay took a breath and began to write as Phil gave a blow-by-blow account of his A-level papers.

  Three years ago, the Stasi sent me to look for him again. And I found him. I found where he lived. I visited him. The Stasi and the KGB don’t know. He persuaded me not to tell them. So I decided to tell the Stasi I had checked and he wasn’t there.

  Emma wrote:

  Where?

  Kay scribbled:

  Spain.

  Phil started talking about hockey.

  Where in Spain?

  Kay hesitated.

  A town called Jávea. I forget the precise address. His house was at the end of a road, on top of some cliffs overlooking a cove. I think the road is called Calle Cabo Negro. Small place, but there is a large stone lion outside the gate.

  Kay quickly asked Phil whether he had been to West Germany before, and how he liked it. She began writing again:

  It’s really important the Stasi don’t discover I found him. They know I went to Jávea to look for him and believed me when I said he had moved. So make sure they don’t follow you there.

  Emma glanced at her sharply.

  Do you think the Stasi are watching us now?

  Kay wrote:

  Probably. A man came here yesterday to say you might be visiting, so I expect they will be watching this apartment now, and they will listen to the surveillance tapes. If you go to Spain, you must lose them. They must not realize I told you where Lothar is. Of course, he might have moved since I saw him.

  Emma nodded. Kay glared at Phil, who nodded also.

  Then Kay wrote two more words:

  Good luck!

  Emma put down her cup, which was still almost full of the dark brown liquid. ‘Thank you for the coffee. As you say, an experience.’

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with Lothar,’ Kay said. ‘He’s dead, Emma. You just have to accept that.’

  ‘I find that difficult,’ said Emma stiffly.

  As they moved to the door, Kay grabbed Emma and pulled her into an embrace. They stayed like that for several seconds.

  ‘So Lothar’s still alive,’ Phil said as they emerged from the building entrance out into the street.

  ‘And he killed Hugh. I knew it! I spent three years of my life spying for the filthy murderer!’ Emma glared at her grandson, her eyes alight with fury. ‘I tell you, Philip, it makes me so angry I could . . .’

  ‘You could what, Grams?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘Nothing. Let’s find a bus back to Friedrichstrasse.’

  But Phil couldn’t help thinking once again of the gun in Emma’s suitcase, the gun that was now safely out of reach in the woods above Lake Annecy.

  Chapter 51

  Back at the Bristol, Phil followed Emma to her room while the hotel was getting a new one ready for him. She sank into an armchair and closed her eyes. She looked exhausted.

  ‘Do you think they were following us?’ Phil asked. ‘The Stasi?’

  Emma sighed. ‘Probably. I expect they were on the lookout for us when we crossed at Checkpoint Charlie.’

  ‘And was Kay’s flat really bugged?’

  Emma opened her eyes, suddenly alert. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘But . . .’ Phil was stopped in his tracks by Emma raising a finger to her mouth in exactly the same way Kay had. Phil realized what she meant, and let his gaze wander around the room, examining the telephone, the nightstand, the ceiling.

  He nodded to show he understood.

  ‘I fancy a cup of coffee in the bar,’ he said. ‘Do you want to join me?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Emma.

  ‘Please, Grams. I have some questions I need to ask you. We could discuss them here?’ He looked around the room meaningfully.

  ‘Oh, all right. Let’s go downstairs.’

  It was early afternoon, and the bar was emptying of those having coffee after lunch. They found a quiet corner, and spoke in tones barely above a whisper.

  ‘So you think your room might be bugged?’

  ‘It might,’ said Emma. ‘I suspect bugging a West Berlin hotel is easy for the East Berlin secret police. Best to assume it is.’

  Once they had crossed back into the West, Phil had believed they were safe. Wrong.

  ‘Kay said they warned her we might visit, didn’t she?’ Phil said. ‘They could have arrested us on the other side, or worse, if they wanted to.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wonder why they didn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Emma.

  ‘Now we know Lothar is alive, we are looking for him, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Emma examined her grandson. ‘Are you coming with me to Spain?’

  ‘I am,’ said Phil. ‘Even if you don’t want me to.’

  Emma closed her eyes. Phil wasn’t sure whether she was thinking or resting. She smiled, and then opened them. ‘Thank you. I shouldn’t let you do it, but I am grateful. I need your help.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Phil. ‘But I really would like to know what’s going on.’

  Emma nodded. ‘I owe you an explanation.’

  She took a deep breath and paused for the waiter to serve them their coffee. ‘During the war and afterwards I came to believe that Lothar must have had Hugh killed, or done it himself. But I also believed that Lothar had been executed by Stalin in 1938. So when I met Kay in Brussels fifteen years ago, and she told me she thought Lothar was still alive, it brought everything back.

  ‘Of course, there was nothing I could do about it, so I just tried to forget it. Roland retired, we moved to Cornwall, Roland died. And then I got this diagnosis. I am going to die. I asked myself, what do I want to do before I go?

  ‘My thoughts kept on coming back to Hugh, and what had happened to him. I didn’t want to die and him to be erased from history. I wanted to revisit the places I had lived just before the war, when I was trying to make sense of his death, and do something about it. And then Dick sent me that postcard from Crete.’

  Emma sipped her coffee. ‘I realized I might have a chance of finding Lothar – if I could find Kurt and Kurt knew where Kay was. I hoped Kay would confirm what I suspected: that Lothar had killed Hugh.

  ‘Once I’d had that thought, it wouldn’t go away. I knew Dick was coming to Paris on business, and I thought I could perhaps meet him there. I wasn’t confident of finding Kay by myself, especially with the tumour, but I also wasn’t sure I could ask Dick to help me. I was dithering about what to do.

  ‘Then, at Sunday lunch at your house, you mentioned you had had to cancel your hitch-hiking holiday in Europe, and I realized I could go after all if you went with me. I liked the idea of passing on what had happened to Hugh and to me to the next generation. That is to you. So I asked you to join me.’

  ‘To help you find Lothar?’

  ‘To find Lothar.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this?’

  ‘I intended to tell you most of it. Bit by bit as we travelled around Europe. But then when Kurt was killed so horribly . . . well, I realized it was a lot more dangerous than I had thought, and I should keep you out of it.’

  ‘What do you think the
KGB have to do with this?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Emma. ‘Presumably Lothar has managed to evade them for decades, and they still want to find him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He still has secrets. He may have been the one who recruited Burgess, or Philby, or any of the other Englishmen who spied for the Russians. Or if he didn’t recruit them directly, he might know about them.’

  Like Swann’s mole, Phil thought. It seemed unfair that Emma didn’t have the knowledge that there was still another mole burrowing underneath the British establishment and that MI6 thought Lothar knew his identity. Phil considered telling her right then. But he wasn’t sure, yet. Swann had been adamant that he shouldn’t.

  He would wait and see.

  ‘What are you planning to do if we find Lothar?’ Phil asked.

  ‘Look him in the eye and ask him whether he killed my brother.’ There was iron in Emma’s voice.

  ‘And when he denies it? He’ll deny it.’

  ‘I’ll know,’ said Emma.

  She sounded certain. But . . .

  ‘Is that why you brought that gun with you, Grams?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘To shoot Lothar.’

  Emma was about to deny it but then decided not to.

  ‘I don’t have the gun any more,’ she said. ‘You made me throw it away.’

  Thank God for that, Phil thought. ‘So. Spain next?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll follow us? The Stasi or the KGB or whoever they are?’

  ‘Let’s hope they don’t know what Kay told us. In which case they might not. But, yes, I think they probably will try to follow us. And we will try to lose them. We have a whole continent to do it in.’

  ‘As long as they don’t decide to stop messing about and just kill us.’

  Emma frowned. ‘I know. You can still back out, Philip. In some ways, I wish you would.’

  She lifted her eyes to Phil, her expression a mixture of fear, hope and pleading.

  Phil grinned as reassuringly as he could. ‘No, Grams. I’m coming too.’

  Emma gave a small smile of relief. ‘Philip?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Promise me you won’t be in touch with Heike before we go?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m sorry to say this, but I fear she might be working for the East Germans. For the Stasi.’

  ‘But she’s only twenty!’

  ‘She’s older than that, Philip. She’s twenty-five at least.’

  ‘No she’s not.’

  ‘And it was quite a coincidence she found you at the Hollow-Tooth Church yesterday.’

  ‘She said she was looking for me,’ Phil said. ‘She likes me.’

  Emma raised her eyebrows. ‘I wonder why a gorgeous twenty-five-year-old German woman would travel across Europe to meet an eighteen-year-old schoolboy.’

  That hurt. That hurt a lot. It was true that Heike was way out of Phil’s league, but he felt that he and she had had a real connection. She understood him. And she wasn’t twenty-five, she was twenty. And why did his grandmother have to be so bloody offensive, when Phil had done so much for her?

  ‘You just don’t understand, Grams,’ Phil muttered, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll see you at dinner.’

  Chapter 52

  Phil was fuming as he went down to reception to get the key to his new room. He knew he had only met Heike a couple of times, but he really really liked her. They understood each other. Sure, she was a couple of years older than him, but she got him. It was nice to talk to a girl like that. And there was the sex. He wanted more of that. He just did.

  There was a message waiting for him in an envelope. He opened it as soon as he got up to his room. Inside, there was a note, handwritten on the headed paper of another Berlin hotel, the Hotel Zoo.

  Dear Philip,

  I hope your trip to East Berlin was interesting. If you have something to report to Mr Swann, I would be happy to pass

  it on to him. Can you get away to meet me this evening? I am staying at the Hotel Zoo, address above. It’s very close. Please telephone the hotel number to let me know when you can come. It’s important.

  And don’t let your grandmother know you are meeting me. I apologize for the necessity for secrecy, but I am sure you understand.

  Yours sincerely,

  Freddie Pelham-Walsh

  So Freddie was in cahoots with Swann after all. No surprise there.

  It did surprise him that Freddie knew he had joined Emma in the east. It turned out the Stasi were not the only people watching them.

  But what to tell Freddie? Phil did have something to report, that Lothar was alive and living in a town in Spain. But to do that would be to betray his grandmother. Yet wasn’t he betraying his grandmother already by omitting to tell her about Swann’s interest in her?

  Could he trust Freddie? Sure, Freddie had been a government minister, but he had also been a communist. As had Emma, for that matter.

  Shouldn’t he, in fact, be telling Emma about Swann?

  The truth was, Phil didn’t know whom he could trust.

  He decided to see Freddie and play it by ear. If Freddie could convince him that he really did know Swann and would pass on Phil’s message to him, then Phil would tell him about Lothar. It would be useful to have British intelligence on their side in the next couple of days. But if Phil’s doubts remained, he would keep quiet for now.

  So he rang the number of the Hotel Zoo, which he had noticed stood a little further up the Kurfürstendamm, and asked to be put through to Freddie. There was no reply from Freddie’s room, so Phil left a message that he would meet Freddie in the hotel bar at 6.30 p.m. He didn’t leave his own name.

  He was sitting on his bed, staring at the phone, still wrestling with the problem of what to say, when it rang.

  He picked it up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Phil! You’re still here!’

  Phil couldn’t help smiling at the sound of Heike’s voice.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You hinted you might not be going back to London after all, so I thought I would call you at your hotel on the off-chance. What happened?’

  ‘I decided to stay.’

  ‘And did you go to the east?’

  ‘I did. I actually surprised my grandmother in a taxi on the other side.’

  ‘How did she take that?’

  ‘She was a bit pissed off, but then she seemed happy.’

  ‘Great. Look, can we meet up this evening?’

  ‘I’d like to.’ Once again, Phil wasn’t sure what to do. He had promised to see Emma for dinner and it would be hard to ditch that, especially if he said he was meeting Heike. He could sneak out of the hotel afterwards. Or he could see Heike for a quick drink before he met Freddie.

  ‘Tell you what, I have to see someone at the Hotel Zoo at six thirty. Can you meet me before then?’

  ‘I can do that,’ said Heike. ‘How about that café in Tauentzienstrasse where your grandmother took us before? Half past five?’

  ‘That’s good. See you then.’

  Chapter 53

  Phil had time to pick up his rucksack from the left luggage office at Zoo Station before he met Heike, all the time stewing over what his grandmother had said about her.

  Heike was waiting for him at the café, wearing a yellow Atomkraft? Nein Danke T-shirt and tight black jeans. She looked gorgeous. Images of her naked in the dim light of the squat the previous night slid their way to the forefront of Phil’s brain.

  She didn’t look anything like the men in hats and raincoats of the classic spy film, or even the pneumatic women with enormous breasts and tight-fitting dresses of the Bond films.

  But she didn’t look twenty. Phil’s friend Mike’s older sister Rachel was twenty-one, and Heike looked older than her.

  They kissed each other hesitantly, a quick brush on the lips. Phil ordered a beer, and Heike a glass of wine. She did seem pleased to see him.


  She asked all about his trip to East Berlin, and he admitted he had seen Kay, the woman he had told her about in Paris and Berlin before the war. He told Heike Emma had asked Kay about the man who had ‘handled’ her on behalf of the Russians, but Kay had insisted the man was dead.

  Naturally enough, Heike was fascinated. It was a fascinating story.

  ‘So are you staying in Berlin?’

  ‘No. We’re off tomorrow.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Grams discovered from someone else where this guy is. And we’re going to see him tomorrow. It’s going to be a very long drive.’

  ‘Really? Where are you going?’

  *

  Phil strolled past the Hollow-Tooth Church down the Kurfürstendamm to the Hotel Zoo, which was a flashy hotel only half a block from the Bristol. He was five minutes late, but Freddie was not in the bar.

  Phil sat down, somewhat uncomfortably. He felt what he was, a scruffy boy in a hotel for international jet-setters. After he had twice turned down a disapproving waiter trying to offer him drinks, he left the bar and headed for the front desk in the hotel lobby. Something was up: a ripple of suppressed anxiety surrounded the half-dozen men and women conferring behind the desk.

  Phil stood politely next to the desk while they ignored him. Finally, a woman came over and smiled stiffly.

  ‘I’m waiting for a guest in your hotel. Herr Pelham-Walsh,’ Phil stated in German. ‘Can I telephone his room, please?’

  The smile disappeared. ‘One moment.’ She turned to the group of staff. ‘Herr Klauber? This gentleman is supposed to be meeting Herr Pelham-Walsh.’

  An immaculate man of about fifty, with perfectly groomed hair and a neatly trimmed moustache, instantly detached himself from the group and introduced himself as the manager.

  He led Phil through to the recesses of an office behind the desk and bade Phil sit down.

  ‘I am sorry to say that Herr Pelham-Walsh was killed this afternoon in a road accident,’ the man said in English. ‘Just a couple of blocks from here. It was a hit-and-run.’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Is he a relative of yours?’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘A friend perhaps?’