by Len Deighton
‘The D-G is not well,’ I said.
‘He’s as nutty as a fruitcake,’ said Gloria.
‘He has good days and bad days,’ I said. I was sorry for the D-G; he’d been good in his day – tough when it was necessary, but always scrupulously honest. ‘But by taking on the job of being the D-G’s hatchet man – a job no one else wanted – Morgan has become a formidable power in that building. And he’s done it in a very short time.’
‘How long has he been in the Department?’
‘I don’t know exactly – two years, three at the most. Now he’s talking to old-timers like Bret Rensselaer and Frank Harrington as man to man.’
‘That’s right. I heard him ask Bret about taking charge of the Stinnes debriefing. Bret said he had no time. Morgan said it wouldn’t be time-consuming; it was just a matter of holding the reins so that the Department knew what was happening, from day to day, over at London Debriefing Centre. You’d have thought Morgan was the D-G the way he was saying it.’
‘And how did Bret react to that?’
‘He asked for time to think it over, and it was decided that he’d let Morgan know next week. And then Bret asked if anyone knew when Frank Harrington was retiring, and Morgan said nothing was fixed. Bret said, “Nothing?” in a funny voice and they laughed. I don’t know what that was about.’
‘The D-G has a knighthood to dispose of. Rumour says it will go to Frank Harrington when he retires from the Berlin office. Everyone knows that Bret would give his right arm for a knighthood.’
‘I see. Is that how people get knighthoods?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘There was something else,’ said Gloria. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but Morgan said the D-G had decided it would be just as well for the Department if you didn’t work in Operations as from the end of this year.’
‘Are you serious,’ I said in alarm.
‘Bret said that Internal Security had given you a clean bill of health – that’s what he said, “a clean bill of health”. And then Morgan said it was nothing to do with Internal Security; it was a matter of the Department’s reputation.’
‘That doesn’t sound like the D-G,’ I said. ‘That sounds like Morgan.’
‘Morgan the ventriloquist,’ said Gloria.
I kissed her again and changed the subject. It was all getting too damned depressing for me.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, responding to my change of mood. ‘I was determined not to tell you.’
I hugged her. ‘How did you know the children’s favourite cakes, you witch?’
‘I phoned Doris and asked her.’
‘You and Nanny are very thick,’ I said suspiciously.
‘Why don’t you call her Doris?’
‘I always call her Nanny. It’s better that way when we’re living in the same house.’
‘You’re such a prude. She adores you, you know.’
‘Don’t avoid my question. Have you been plotting with Nanny?’
‘With Nanny? About what?’
‘You know about what.’
‘Don’t do that. Oh, stop tickling me. Oh oh oh. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Oh stop it.’
‘Did you connive with Nanny so that she and the children were out for the evening? So that we could go to bed?’
‘Of course not.’
‘What did you give her?’
‘Stop it. Please. You beast.’
‘What did you give her?’
‘A box of chocolates.’
‘I knew it. You schemer.’
‘I hate Greek food.’
4
Taking the children to see Billy’s godfather was an excuse for a day in the country, a Sunday lunch second to none, and a chance to talk to ‘Uncle Silas’, one of the legends of the Department’s golden days. Also it gave me a chance to tie up some loose ends in the arrested woman’s evidence. If Dicky didn’t want it done for the Department, then I would do it just to satisfy my own curiosity.
The property had always fascinated me; Whitelands was as surprising as Silas Gaunt himself. From the long drive, with its well-tended garden, the ancient stone farmhouse was as pretty as a calendar picture. But over the years it had been adapted to the tastes of many different owners. Adapted, modified, extended and defaced. Across the cobbled yard at the back there was a curious castellated Gothic tower, its spiral staircase leading up to a large, ornately decorated chamber which once had been a mirrored bedroom. Even more incongruous in this cottage with its stone floors and oak beams was the richly panelled billiards room, with game trophies crowding its walls. Both architectural additions dated from the same time, both installed by a nineteenth-century beer baron to indulge his favourite pastimes.
Silas Gaunt had inherited Whitelands from his father, but Silas had never been a farmer. Even when he left the Department and came to live here in retirement, he still let his farm manager make all the decisions. Little wonder that Silas got lonely amid his six hundred acres on the edge of the Cotswolds. Now all the soft greenery of summer had gone. So had the crisp browns of autumn. Only the framework of landscape remained: bare tangles of hedgerow and leafless trees. The first snow had whitened rock-hard ridges of the empty brown fields: crosshatched pieces of landscape where magpies, rooks and starlings scavenged for worms and insects.
Silas had had few guests. It had been a hermit’s life, for the conversation of Mrs Porter, his housekeeper, was limited to recipes, needlework, and the steadily rising prices of groceries in the village shop. Silas Gaunt’s life had revolved round his library, his records and his wine cellar. But there is more to life than Schiller, Mahler and Margaux, which trio Silas claimed as his ‘fellow pensioners’. And so he’d come to encourage these occasional weekend house parties at which departmental staff, both past and present, were usually represented along with a sprinkling of the artists, tycoons, eccentrics and weirdos whom Silas had encountered during his very long and amazing career.
Silas was unkempt; the wispy white hair that made a halo on his almost bald head did not respond to combs or to the clawing gesture of his fingers that he made whenever a strand of hair fell forward across his eyes. He was tall and broad, a Falstaffian figure who liked to laugh and shout, could curse fluently in half a dozen languages, and who’d make reckless bets on anything and everything and claimed – with some justification – to be able to drink any man under the table.
Billy and Sally were in awe of him. They were always ready to go to Whitelands and see Uncle Silas, but they regarded him as a benevolent old ruffian of whose sudden moods they should constantly be wary. And that was the way I saw him myself. But he’d had a fully decorated Christmas tree erected in the entrance hall. Under it there was a little pile of presents for both children, all of them wrapped in bright paper and tied neatly with big bows. Mrs Porter’s doing no doubt.
Like all old people, Silas Gaunt felt a need for unchanging ritual. These guest weekends followed a firmly established pattern: a long country walk on Saturday morning (which I did my best to avoid), roast beef lunch to follow, billiards in the afternoon, and a dress-up dinner on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning his guests were shepherded to church and then to the village pub before coming back to lunch which was locally obtained game or, failing that, poultry. I was relieved to find that duckling was on the menu this week. I did not care for Silas’s selection of curious little wild birds, every mouthful with its portion of lead shot.
‘Surprised to see Walter here?’ Uncle Silas asked me again as he sharpened his long carving knife with the careless abandon of a butcher.
I had registered my surprise on first arriving, but apparently I’d inadequately performed my allotted role. ‘Amazed!’ I said, putting all my energies into it. ‘I had no idea…’ I winked at von Munte. I knew him even better than I knew Uncle Silas; once long ago he’d saved my life by risking his own. Dr Walter von Munte smiled, and even the staid old Frau Doktor gave the ghost of a smile. Living with extroverted, outspo
ken Silas must have come as something of a shock after their austere and tight-lipped life in the German Democratic Republic, where even the von in their name had been taken from them.
I knew that the von Muntes were staying there – it was my job to know such things. I’d played a part in bringing them out of the East. Their presence was, to some extent, the reason for my visit, but their whereabouts was considered a departmental secret and I was expected to register appropriate surprise.
Until a few short weeks ago this lugubrious old man had been one of our most reliable agents. Known only as Brahms Four he’d supplied regular and carefully selected facts and figures from the Deutsche Notenbank, through which came banking clearances for the whole of East Germany. From time to time he’d also obtained for us the decisions and plans of COMECON – the East Bloc Common Market – and memos from the Moscow Narodny bank too. At the receiving end, Bret Rensselaer had built an empire upon the dangerous work of von Munte, but now von Munte had been debriefed and left in the custodial care of his old friend Uncle Silas, and Bret was desperately seeking new dominions.
Silas stood at the end of the long table and dismembered the duck, apportioning suitable pieces to each guest. He liked to do it himself. It was a game he played: discussing and arguing what each and every guest should have. Mrs Porter watched the cameo with an expressionless face. She arranged the pile of warmed plates, positioned the vegetables and gravy, and, at exactly the right psychological moment, brought in the second roasted duckling. ‘Another one!’ said Silas as if he hadn’t ordered the meal himself and as if he didn’t have a third duckling in the oven for extra portions.
Before pouring the wine, Silas lectured us about it. Château Palmer 1961, he said, was the finest claret he’d ever tasted, the finest perhaps of this century. He still hovered, looking at the wine in the antique decanter as if now wondering whether it would be wasted on the present company.
Perhaps von Munte sensed the hesitation for he said, ‘It’s generous of you to share it with us.’
‘I was looking through my cellar the other day.’ He stood up straight, looking out across the snow-whitened lawn as if oblivious of his guests. ‘I found a dozen bottles of 1878 port down there. My grandfather bought them for me, to mark my tenth birthday, and I’d completely forgotten them. I’ve never tasted it. Yes, I’ve got a lot of treasures there. I stocked up when I had the money to afford it. It would break my heart to leave too much magnificent claret behind when I go.’
He poured the wine carefully and evoked from us the sort of compliments he needed. He was like an actor in that and many other respects – he desperately needed regular and earnest declarations of love. ‘Label uppermost, always label uppermost; when you store and when you pour.’ He demonstrated it. ‘Otherwise you’ll disturb it.’
I knew it would be a predominantly masculine lunch, a departmental get-together, Silas had warned me beforehand, but I still came. Bret Rensselaer and Frank Harrington were both there. Rensselaer was in his middle fifties; Americanborn, he was trim almost to the point of emaciation. Although his hair was turning white, there was still enough of the blond colouring left to prevent him looking old. And he smiled a lot and had good teeth and a face that was bony so that there weren’t many wrinkles.
Over lunch there was the usual seasonal discussion about how quickly Christmas was approaching and the likelihood of more snow. Bret Rensselaer was deciding upon a place to ski. Frank Harrington, our senior man in Berlin, told him it was too early for good snow, but Silas advised Switzerland.
Frank argued about the snow. He liked to think he was an authority on such matters. He liked skiing, golfing and sailing, and generally having a good time. Frank Harrington was waiting for retirement, something for which he’d been strenuously practising all his life. He was a soldierly-looking figure with a weather-beaten face and a blunt-ended stubble moustache. Unlike Bret, who was wearing the same sort of Savile Row suit he wore to the office, Frank had come correctly attired for the upper-class English weekend: old Bedford cord trousers and a khaki sweater with a silk scarf in the open neck of his faded shirt. ‘February,’ said Frank. ‘That’s the only time for any decent skiing anywhere worth going.’
I observed the way Bret was eying von Munte, whose stream of high-grade information had taken Bret into the very top ranks of the Department. Bret’s desk was now closed down and his seniority had been in peril ever since the old man had been forced to flee. No wonder the two men watched each other like boxers in a ring.
Talk became more serious when it touched upon that inevitable subject in such company, the unification of Germany. ‘How deeply ingrained in East Germans is the philosophy of Communism?’ Bret asked von Munte.
‘Philosophy,’ said Silas, interrupting sharply. ‘I’ll accept that Communism is a perverted sort of religion – infallible Kremlin, infallible Vatican – but philosophy, no.’ He was happier with the von Muntes here, I could tell from the tone of his voice.
Von Munte didn’t take up Silas’s semantic contention. Gravely he said, ‘The way in which Stalin took from Germany Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia made it impossible for many of us Germans to accept the USSR as a friend, neighbour, or example.’
‘That’s going back a long while,’ said Bret. ‘Which Germans are we talking about? Are young Germans interested in the tears and cries of pain we hear about the lost territories?’ He smiled. This was Bret being deliberately provocative. His charming manner was frequently used like this – the local anaesthetic that accompanied the lancet of his rude remarks.
Von Munte remained very calm; was it a legacy of years of banking or years of Communism? Either way, I’d hate to play poker against him. ‘You English equate our eastern lands with Imperial India. The French think we who talk about reasserting Germany’s border to the frontiers of East Prussia are like the pieds-noirs, who hope once again to have Algeria governed from Paris.’
‘Exactly,’ said Bret. He smiled to himself and ate some duckling.
Von Munte nodded. ‘But our eastern provinces have always been German and a vital part of Europe’s relationship with the East. Culturally, psychologically and commercially, Germany’s eastern lands, not Poland, provided the buffer and the link with Russia. Frederick the Great, Yorck and Bismarck – and indeed all those Germans who instituted important alliances with the East – were ostelbisch, Germans from the eastern side of the River Elbe.’ He paused and looked round the table before going on with what was obviously something he’d said time and time again. ‘Czar Alexander I and Nicolas who succeeded him were more German than Russian, and they both married German princesses. And what about Bismarck who was continually defending Russian interests even at the expense of Germany’s relations with the Austrians?’
‘Yes,’ said Bret sardonically. ‘And you have yet to mention the German-born Karl Marx.’
For a moment I thought von Munte was going to reply seriously to the joke and make a fool of himself, but he’d lived amid signals, innuendos, and half-truths long enough to recognize the joke for what it was. He smiled.
‘Can there ever be lasting peace in Europe?’ said Bret wearily. ‘Now, if I’m to believe my ears, you say Germany still has territorial aspirations.’ For Bret it was all a game, but poor old von Munte could not play it.
‘For our own provinces,’ said von Munte stolidly.
‘For Poland and pieces of Russia,’ said Bret. ‘You’d better be clear on that.’
Silas poured more of his precious Château Palmer in a gesture of placation for all concerned. ‘You’re from Pomerania, aren’t you, Walter?’ It was an invitation to talk rather than a real question, for by now Silas knew every last detail of von Munte’s family history.
‘I was born in Falkenburg. My father had a big estate there.’
‘That’s near the Baltic,’ said Bret, feigning interest to make what he considered a measure of reconciliation.
‘Pomerania,’ said von Munte. ‘Do you know it, Bernard?’ he asked
me, because I was the closest person there to being a fellow-countryman.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Many lakes and hills. They call it Pomeranian Switzerland, don’t they?’
‘Not any longer.’
‘A beautiful place,’ I said. ‘But as I remember it, damned cold, Walter.’
‘You must go in the summer,’ said von Munte. ‘It’s one of the most enchanting places in the world.’ I looked at Frau Doktor von Munte. I had the feeling that the move to the West was a disappointment for her. Her English was poor and she keenly felt the social disadvantage she suffered as a refugee. With the talk of Pomerania she brightened and tried to follow the conversation.
‘You’ve been back?’ Silas asked.
‘Yes, my wife and I went there about ten years ago. It was foolish. One should never go back.’
‘Tell us about it,’ said Silas.
At first it seemed as if the memories were too painful for von Munte to recount, but after a pause he told us about his trip. ‘There is something nightmarish about going back to your homeland and finding that it’s occupied exclusively by foreigners. It was the most curious experience I’ve ever had – to write “birthplace Falkenburg” and then “destination Zlocieniec”.’
‘The same place, now given a Polish name,’ said Frank Harrington. ‘But you must have been prepared for that.’
‘I was prepared in my mind but not in my heart,’ said von Munte. He turned to his wife and repeated this in rapid German. She nodded dolefully.
‘The train connection from Berlin was never good,’ von Munte went on. ‘Even before the war we had to change twice. This time we went by bus. I tried to borrow a car, but it was not possible. The bus was convenient. We went to Neustettin, my wife’s home town. We had difficulty finding the house in which she’d lived as a child.’
‘Couldn’t you ask for directions?’ said Frank.
‘Neither of us speaks much Polish,’ said von Munte. ‘Also, my wife had lived in Hermann-Göring-Strasse and I did not care to ask the way there.’ He smiled. ‘But we found it eventually. In the street where she lived as a girl we even found an old German woman who remembered my wife’s family. It was a remarkable stroke of luck, for there are only a handful of Germans still living there.’