by Len Deighton
‘Of course. Was she in Warsaw?’
‘Not her. Last I heard, she had a cushy job in Brussels with lots of money and lovely tax-free allowances and lots of good restaurants. Or perhaps it was Strasbourg; some kind of European Community pen-pusher’s racket anyway.’
‘Lucky her. She was the first person I showed my engagement ring to.’
‘That’s a long time ago.’
‘I was so proud. I told her, Bernard sold his Ferrari to buy my ring.’
‘You didn’t tell her it was up on blocks and needed a new transmission?’
She smiled. It was a joke. That old Ferrari could make a little black smoke when it was in a bad mood. And it stalled to show how much it didn’t like being slowed up in heavy traffic. But it could still do its stuff when I sold it. When I saw it drive off, with its new owner at the wheel, there were tears in my eyes.
I said: ‘Cindy came to me with a story that Jim Prettyman was embezzling millions from the Department.’
‘He was,’ said Fiona. ‘It was the funding for my operation in the East. Jim Prettyman was on the Special Operations Committee. He was named as the account holder along with Bret Rensselaer, who arranged the chain of payment from Central Funding through a few brokers to a West Berlin bank Bret’s family are associated with.’
‘Could Cindy’s lovely job have been arranged just to stop her prying further into the money set-up?’
‘I would imagine so,’ said Fiona, clearly untroubled by the ethics of such a recourse. ‘Having someone like Cindy trumpeting our fiscal secrets up and down Whitehall would have brought disaster.’
‘She came to me ready to blow the whistle on what sounded like a big embezzlement. She thought it was some kind of KGB slush fund. She’d been notified that Jim had just been killed in a parking lot in Washington DC and the Department said she wasn’t entitled to the pension because he’d married again.’
‘Jim married again? I didn’t know,’ said Fiona.
‘And it was a Mexican divorce. But Jim wasn’t dead, he was put on the back-burner. Eventually the Department paid both widows rather than let Jim’s bogus death come under scrutiny.’ I looked at Fiona. She nodded. She knew all this already. How many more dark secrets were inside her head? ‘So Cindy was right?’ I said. ‘There was an illegal transfer?’
‘It was fundamental to placing me in the DDR. I had to get the Church people over there organized and motivated. They are not all selfless dedicated people with money of their own. You know that; you’re the field agent.’
‘You don’t have to be defensive, Fi. You did a great job.’
‘Five point seven million pounds sterling. It will work, Bernard. A bargain. They’ll topple the regime eventually but they need time.’
‘And then Jim suddenly came back to life and visited us in California,’ I reminded her. ‘I wonder if the Department asked Cindy for her money back.’
‘It wouldn’t be a lump sum,’ said Fiona, as if she had already found out what happens to those widowed in the service of their country. ‘Is there a connection? A connection with Tessa’s death?’
‘Cindy clammed up suddenly. The Europe job came through and she didn’t want to continue the crusade she’d started. Crusade… I mean she’d really built up a head of steam when I saw her. This is Tessa country. There must be more behind it.’
‘Are you going to find her?’
‘Cindy? No,’ I said. ‘I’ve other things to do right now. And if Dicky is going to be sick in bed, suffering from Polish plague or something, there will be all his work piling up on my desk.’
‘The funny thing is that Daphne thought he’d be away in Poland at least another week. She arranged for the builders to come in and fix the damp in the attic and refurbish both bathrooms. It will be hell for Dicky. He won’t even have a loo to himself.’
‘I must drop in and say hello,’ I said. ‘I love hammering. I hope they all have transistor radios.’
‘You are going to find Cindy aren’t you? I can always tell when you are lying to me.’ She said it in a genial way, as if my lies pleased her; or perhaps it was always being able to catch me out in my lies that gave her that satisfied look.
‘Lucinda Matthews,’ I said. ‘She prefers her maiden name nowadays. Have we got an up-to-date Michelin Guide that would cover it?’
‘Dicky no doubt has one in his office.’
‘We could both go. In the old days they were our closest friends, weren’t they?’
‘I might have to remind you of that, Bernard.’
‘I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Cindy.’
‘You’d shop your own mother if she stood in the way of you finding out something you really wanted to know.’ Fiona laughed in that sincere and friendly way that married couples do laugh when they have said something to their partner that they really mean. When her smile faded she said: ‘This morning there was a “resources” meeting. There are going to be big cut-backs, Bernard.’
‘They are always talking about cut-backs and it winds up with a memo asking everyone to save the paper clips on their incoming mail.’
‘Not this time. Even people on permanent contract are not safe. Central Funding have set aside separate money for severance pay.’
‘I’m not on a permanent contract,’ I said flippantly.
‘I can’t argue with them on your behalf, darling. You understand that don’t you?’
‘No of course not. It would look bad if friends or family argued on behalf of someone it was expedient to get rid of. The only people who can legitimately argue on my behalf are my enemies.’
‘Dicky isn’t your enemy.’
‘Who said anything about Dicky?’
‘That shooting at the Campden Hill flat… VERDI was killed. The inquiry exonerated you and Werner, but losing such a promising source leaves a bad impression.’ She paused. ‘You want it straight, don’t you? You don’t want me to baby you along?’
‘No, don’t baby me along, Fi.’
She ignored the bitter tone in my voice and said: ‘Nothing is decided yet, but all senior staff will be asked to submit a list of people they…’
‘They want to get rid of.’
‘Yes, and if that won’t provide savings enough, they will start listing the necessary cuts… so many grade threes, so many grade fives and so on. Bret says there may be constitutional implications. He said it might be beyond the government’s lawful powers to demand big cuts in the nation’s security services without consulting Parliament and getting all-party consent.’
‘Good old Bret. He’s a flag-waver, isn’t he?’ I got to my feet and patted the stopper on the whisky bottle to be sure it was tightly plugged. I wasn’t enjoying this conversation.
‘You’ll be all right Bernard.’
‘I’ve got no contract; no pension plan; no tenure; no severance pay, no rights at all. I’d be the cheapest employee to get rid of. Even the doorman has a trade union to back him if he appeals to a tribunal for unfair dismissal. They could push me out of the door at a minute’s notice.’
‘At least I will be able to tell you what’s happening and when, darling. It won’t just come out of the blue like that.’
‘I’m not going to stay awake all night worrying,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing I can do about keeping my job, so screw them.’
She came close to me and I held her. She was still wearing her big soft fur coat and my fingers disappeared. With uncharacteristic spontaneity, she put her hand to the back of my head and kissed me with unusual verve. Holding me tight she said: ‘There is something you can do: stop fighting Dicky.’ The soft mellowness of her voice was laced with wifely concern. This was the voice she used to hint that I was drinking too much; the voice that had persuaded me to give up smoking.
‘I’m not fighting him.’
She pulled away from me and modelled her coat in the mirror, as if there was no one there watching her. Then she looked up and said: ‘Explain to Dicky your reasons for thinking that George is
still alive. Get him to tell you what he’s trying to achieve. Do whatever is needed to help him clear up the George Kosinski file. A neat success might see him confirmed as Controller Europe. Bret wants that ghastly Australian fellow back, I suppose he thinks Dicky is getting too powerful. The D-G is wavering.’
‘So I heard.’
‘And yet you are standing back to watch Dicky fall flat on his face? Your best bet is to stand behind Dicky and make sure he gets everything right. Let him take the credit.’
‘Is that what you are doing?’ She’d known him since they were at Oxford together and, no matter how clearly she saw what a fool he was, that gave them an intimacy which I could never share.
‘For Dicky? Perhaps. I’ve never thought about it.’ A grin. ‘You’re surely not jealous. You think Dicky has got his eye on me?’ She laughed. ‘I can’t believe it.’ She went and sat in a chair near her tonic water.
‘No, I’m not jealous of him,’ I said.
‘Dicky will need someone reliable in Berlin. Frank Harrington has asked for a Deputy.’
‘So that’s official now? He’s managed without one for a long time.’
‘Deputy to the Berlin Rezident? Berlin Field Unit. You’d love that, darling, I know you would. Allowances and expenses! You would be upgraded to a senior staff pension. And it would make you virtually invulnerable to the cutback.’ So this is what she really wanted to tell me. I suppose she’d planned to explain it over a brandy in some fancy restaurant, rather than over a can of Schweppes tonic water in the kitchen, but this was the sponsor’s message all right.
‘Did Dicky mention my name?’
‘It’s in his gift and there’s no one better suited,’ she said. ‘And if Dicky felt sure you were his man, he’d back you to the hilt.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘What’s the matter? What did I say?’
‘As Dicky’s snooper, you mean? I go to Berlin to keep an eye on Frank Harrington, and undermine him if he ever tries to go against Dicky’s good advice.’
‘Of course not, darling,’ she said, but she wasn’t standing on the table and shouting the denial.
‘My children are here in London,’ I said. ‘You are here in London.’
‘You’re so loyal to us, Bernard. To your family, I mean. It’s what I love about you. But careers count too. Loyalty to the job.’
‘You don’t mind that our children are living with your father, do you? It suits you to have them there in the country with your parents, and visit them when you can.’
‘You’d be back and forth regularly, to consult with Dicky. How much more would we see of the children if they were living here in this apartment with us? You are always being sent off to the other side of the world at little or no notice. I leave early in the morning and work into the night. What kind of life would they have?’
‘It sounds as if you don’t want the children back home ever,’ I said.
‘That’s not true, Bernard. It’s a beastly thing to say.’ She shifted in her chair and tugged at her coat to wrap it more closely around her legs.
‘Fi, suppose I do help Dicky find George, and then coax from him whatever there is to know about his Stasi contacts…? Can you live with that?’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Have you asked yourself how it’s going to look if George has been helping the Stasi, or the KGB, or some other enemy outfit? There’ll be one hell of a rumpus. You’ll be implicated. He’s your brother-in-law.’
She pursed her mouth. She obviously hadn’t considered that angle before, but she didn’t take long to resolve it. ‘We can’t take that into account, darling. We can’t… it’s national security, whatever the consequences to us personally.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, but I was far from convinced. Fiona’s middle-class schooling and upbringing had made her rigidly patriotic, so that serving the Crown – and the nation – was life’s highest ambition. I didn’t yield to her on high motives but I had come from different stock. The rough and tumble of my work as a field agent had made me hard and distrustful, so that one small part of my psyche – and of all my other resources – was reserved for me and mine. ‘This job that’s waiting for me in Berlin,’ I said. ‘That wouldn’t be something you and Dicky have cooked up to get me away from Gloria, would it?’
Fiona was holding her tonic aloft and trying again to interpret the note from Mrs Dias. She looked up. ‘So that’s it? No one is conspiring against you, darling. But suppose it was a scheme that Dicky and I had cooked up, would that make a difference?’
‘No, it wouldn’t make any difference,’ I said without getting angry. ‘There is no way I am taking any job in Berlin. I know what it entails and I’m too old for all that tough-guy stuff. And too cynical to believe in it.’
Her head was bent as she studied the note and she gave no sign that she had heard my response. ‘Do let’s eat out,’ she said, and put her glass back on to the note. ‘Somewhere lovely: Annabel’s. I’ll pay. Daddy’s raised my allowance this month.’
She raised her eyes to mine. Her lips smiled sweetly as if she adored me. She didn’t answer my question of course. She didn’t have to; her eyes said gotcha.
7
Fletcher House (SIS annexe), London.
‘Your wife loathes me,’ said Gloria. ‘She won’t be happy until I am fired.’
‘No,’ I said. I’d had no warning that she was going to track me down to the other side of Oxford Street and burst into this miserable little office, hugging a parcel, her face filled with indignation and despair.
‘And I say yes,’ she said.
I remembered the way Gloria always said ‘your wife’ as if Fiona existed only by means of the status our marriage conferred upon her. ‘You’re imagining it,’ I said. In wishful and stupid desperation I added: ‘I’m not sure she even knows about us.’
Gloria glared at me for a moment and then said: ‘I’m not completely bonkers,’ spitting out the words with anger that made me flinch. Of course I had gone too far. Gloria no doubt needed reassurance of some kind, but there was no way that her self-deception would extend to believing that Fiona didn’t know that, after she’d gone away, I’d fallen foolishly and irretrievably in love with this beautiful girl, about the way we’d set up house, and the way in which Gloria had loved, cared for and enchanted the children.
‘I’m sorry.’ I worried what she would do next. She was cuddling a large white polystyrene box in her arms. I wondered if she’d brought it to throw it at me, and if so what it might contain.
‘You’re a smooth talker, Bernard. Perhaps that’s why I fell for you in the first place. You’re a smooth talker and I’m the most gullible woman in the world.’
Some of the initial rage seemed to have gone out of her and she stood there looking at me, silent as if trying to think of the next thing she’d planned to say. She was dressed in a long suede coat and fur hat; an outfit that suited her so well that it was the image of her that returned to my mind when I thought of her. A great ball of fur like a clown’s fright-wig. She’d never taken off that hat during the entire night that we spent together waiting in the hospital, worrying about little Billy’s bronchitis. It was a long time ago but I remembered it vividly. Brown roll-neck sweater, brown wool skirt, pale leather ankle-boots and that crazy hat. No one could have taken Billy’s plight more to heart than she did. She paced up and down, I remember, disappearing into the toilet so that I wouldn’t see her crying.
‘What a spooky place to work. I’ve never been here before.’ She’d tracked me to Fletcher House, a Departmental annexe building lost in the confusion of offices and cheap dress factories behind Tottenham Court Road. A neo-Georgian building of dull red brick with Portland stone, it dated from the early Thirties and followed the design that the government then favoured for Britain’s telephone exchanges.
‘I’m not working here permanently; just for a few days while Dicky talks to the surveyors and looks at the library and so on. They want the Depart
ment to vacate the building. The Treasury people say they need it.’
‘Where will the library go?’
‘It’s not really a part of our main library. It’s a leftover consignment of German-language books and documents brought over in 1945 – Nazi Party publications and reference books and even some ancient telephone directories – some of it still in its packing cases. I’d send it all back to Bonn and let the Germans sort it out.’
‘Is that what Dicky will do?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. The books provide our only legitimate excuse for hanging on to the building; we’re using less than half the office space, and there’s no way of hiding that.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘There are sixteen parking spaces in the back yard here. The car pool uses them. Dicky would get hung, drawn and quartered if he gave way and the Department lost any of its Central London parking spaces.’
‘I’m relieved to hear that they are not locking you away here for ever, Bernard.’
‘Just while Dicky thinks up reasons for hanging on to it.’
‘Couldn’t you find a better room than this?’
‘Not all the floors are heated,’ I explained. ‘And I had to have a phone that was working.’ I’d made myself at home with a decrepit desk and a couple of chairs in a long narrow room. It was little better than a corridor really, situated between a seldom occupied ‘police liaison office’ and a room where three cheerful women clerks kept frantically active operating a dozen or so copying machines.
‘No one seemed to know where you’d gone to.’ Gloria put her parcel down on my desk and then went rummaging in her handbag for a handkerchief. The white foam box was sealed with sticky tape, and adorned with labels and writings that indicated that it had been on a roller-coaster ride through every last nook and cranny of the Foreign Office, a place with a surfeit of nooks and crannies. She wiped her nose on her handkerchief and put it away before saying: ‘They asked me to bring this parcel over to you. It’s fragile.’