London Match

by Len Deighton

  ‘And in Falkenburg?’ said Silas.

  ‘Ah, in my beloved Zlocieniec, Stalin was more thorough. We could find no one there who spoke German. I was born in a house in the country, right on the lake. We went to the nearest village and the priest tried to help us, but there were no records. He even lent me a bicycle so that I could go out to the house, but it had completely disappeared. The buildings have all been destroyed and the area has been made into a forest. The only remains I could recognize were a couple of farm buildings a long way distant from the site of the house where I was born. The priest promised to write if he found out any more, but he never did.’

  ‘And you never went back again?’ asked Silas.

  ‘We planned to return, but things happened in Poland. The big demonstrations for free trade unions and the creation of Solidarity was reported in our East German newspapers as being the work of reactionary elements supported by western fascists. Very few people were prepared to even comment on the Polish crisis. And most of the people who did talk about it said that such “troubles”, by upsetting the Russians, made conditions worse for us East Germans and other peoples in the Eastern Bloc. Poles became unpopular and no one went there. It was as if Poland ceased to exist as a next-door neighbour and became some land far away on the other side of the world.’

  ‘Eat up,’ said Silas. ‘We’re keeping you from your lunch, Walter.’

  But soon von Munte took up the same subject again. It was as if he had to convert us to his point of view. He had to remove our misunderstandings. ‘It was the occupation zones that created the archetype German for you,’ he said. ‘Now the French think all Germans are chattering Rhinelanders, the Americans think we are all beer-swilling Bavarians, the British think we are all icy Westphalians, and the Russians think we are all cloddish Saxons.’

  ‘The Russians,’ I said, having downed two generous glasses of Silas’s magnificent wine as well as a few aperitifs, ‘think you are all brutal Prussians.’

  He nodded sadly. ‘Yes, Saupreiss,’ he said, using the Bavarian dialect word for Prussian swine. ‘Perhaps you are right.’

  After lunch the other guests divided into those who played billiards and those who preferred to sit huddled round the blazing log fire in the drawing room. My children were watching TV with Mrs Porter.

  Silas, giving me a chance to speak privately with von Munte, took us to the conservatory to which, at this time of year, he had moved his house plants. It was a huge glass palace, resting against the side of the house, its framework gracefully curved, its floor formed of beautiful old decorative tiles. In these cold months the whole place was crammed full of prehensile-looking greenery of every shape and size. It seemed too cold in there for such plants to flourish, but Silas said they didn’t need heat so much as light. ‘With me,’ I told him, ‘it’s exactly the opposite.’

  He smiled as if he’d heard the joke before, which he had because I told it to him every time he trapped me into one of these chats amid his turnip tops. But Silas liked the conservatory, and if he liked it, everyone else had to like it too. He seemed not to feel the cold. He was jacketless, with bright red braces visible under his unbuttoned waistcoat. Walter von Munte was wearing a black suit of the kind that was uniform for a German government official in the service of the Kaiser. His face was grey and lined and his whitening hair cropped short. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and polished them on a silk handkerchief. Seated on the big wicker seat under the large and leafy plants the old man looked like some ancient studio portrait.

  ‘Young Bernard has a question for you, Walter,’ said Silas. He had a bottle of Madeira with him and three glasses. He put them on the table and poured a measure of the amber-coloured wine for each of us, then lowered his weight onto a cast-iron garden chair. He sat between us, positioned like a referee.

  ‘It is not good for me,’ said von Munte, but he took the glass and looked at the colour of it and sniffed it appreciatively.

  ‘It’s not good for anyone,’ said Silas cheerfully, sipping his carefully measured portion. ‘It’s not supposed to be good for you. The doctor cut me down to one bottle per month last year.’ He drank. ‘This year he told me to cut it out altogether.’

  ‘Then you are disobeying orders,’ said von Munte.

  ‘I got myself another doctor,’ said Silas. ‘We live in a capitalist society over here, Walter. I can afford to get myself a doctor who says it’s okay to smoke and drink.’ He laughed and sipped a little more of his Madeira. ‘Cossart 1926, bottled fifty years later. Not the finest Madeira I’ve ever encountered, but not at all bad, eh?’ He didn’t wait for our response, but selected a cigar from the box he’d brought under his arm. ‘Try that,’ he said, offering the cigar to me. ‘That’s an Upmann grand corona, one of the best cigars you can smoke and just right for this time of day. Walter, what about one of those petits that you enjoyed last night?’

  ‘Alas,’ said von Munte, holding up his hand to decline. ‘I cannot afford your doctor. I must keep to one a week.’

  I lit the cigar Silas had given me. It was typical of him that he had to select what he thought suitable for us. He had well-defined ideas about what everyone should have and what they shouldn’t have. For anyone who called him a ‘fascist’ – and there were plenty who did – he had the perfect response: scars from Gestapo bullets.

  ‘What do you want to ask me, Bernard?’ said von Munte.

  I got the cigar going and then I said, ‘Ever hear of MARTELLO, HARRY, JAKE, SEE-SAW or IRONFOOT?’ I’d put in a few extra names as a means of control.

  ‘What kind of names are these?’ said von Munte. ‘People?’

  ‘Agents. Code names. Russian agents operating out of the United Kingdom.’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘It looks as if one of them was used by my wife.’

  ‘Yes, recently. I see.’ Von Munte sipped his port. He was old-fashioned enough to be embarrassed at the mention of my wife and her spying. He shifted his weight on the wicker seat and the movement produced a loud creaking sound.

  ‘Did you ever come across those names?’ I asked.

  ‘It was not the policy to let my people have access to such secrets as the code names of agents.’

  ‘Not even source names?’ I persisted. ‘These are probably not agent names; they’re the code names used in messages and for distribution. No real risk there, and the material from any one source keeps its name until identified and measured and pronounced upon. That’s the KGB system and our system too.’

  I glanced round at Silas. He was examining one of his plants, his head turned away as if he weren’t listening. But he was listening all right; listening and remembering every last syllable of what was being said. I knew him of old.

  ‘Source names. Yes, MARTELLO sounds familiar,’ said von Munte. ‘Perhaps the others too, I can’t remember.’

  ‘Two names used by one agent at the same time,’ I said.

  ‘That would be unprecedented,’ said von Munte. He was loosening up now. ‘Two names, no. How would we ever keep track of our material?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ I said.

  ‘This was from the woman arrested in Berlin?’ said Silas suddenly. He dropped the pretence of looking at his plants. ‘I heard about that.’ Silas always knew what was happening. In earlier days, while the D-G had been settling in, he’d even asked Silas to monitor some of the operations. Nowadays Silas and the D-G kept in touch. It would be foolish of me to imagine that this conversation would not get back to the Department.

  ‘Yes, the woman in Berlin,’ I said.

  Walter von Munte touched his stiff white collar. ‘I was never allowed to know any secrets. They gave me only what they thought I should have.’

  I said, ‘Like Silas distributing his food and cigars, you mean?’ I kept wishing that Silas would depart and leave me and von Munte to have the conversation I wanted. But that was not Silas’s way. Information was his stock in trade, it always had been, and he knew how to use i
t to his own advantage. That’s why he’d survived so long in the Department.

  ‘Not as generously as Silas,’ said von Munte. He smiled and drank some of the Madeira and then shifted about, deciding how to explain it all. ‘The bank’s intelligence staff went over to the Warschauer Strasse office once a week. They would have all the new material in trays waiting for us. Old Mr Heine was in charge there. He’d produce for us each item according to subject.’

  ‘Raw?’ I said.

  ‘Raw?’ said von Munte. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Did they tell you what the agent said or did they merely tell you the content of his message?’

  ‘Oh, the messages were edited, but otherwise as received. They had to be; the staff handling the material didn’t know enough about economics to understand what it was about.’

  ‘But you identified different sourees?’ I asked yet again.

  ‘Sometimes we could, sometimes that was easy. Some of it was total rubbish.’

  ‘From different agents?’ I persisted. My God, but it was agony to deal with old people. Would I be like this one day?

  ‘Some of their agents sent only rumours. There was one who never provided a word of good sense. They called him “Grock”. That wasn’t his code name or his source name; it was our joke. We called him “Grock”, after the famous clown, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. But I’m glad von Munte had told me it was a joke; that gave me the cue to laugh. ‘What about the good sources?’ I said.

  ‘You could recognize them from the quality of their intelligence and from the style in which it was presented.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Perhaps I should explain what it was like in the Warschauer Strasse office. It wasn’t our office. It is supposed to be an office belonging to Aeroflot, but there are always police and security guards on the door, and our passes were carefully scrutinized no matter how often we visited there. I don’t know who else uses the building, but the economic intelligence staff met there regularly, as I said.’

  ‘And you were included in “economic intelligence staff”?’

  ‘Certainly not. They were all KGB and security people. My superior was only invited to attend when there was something directly affecting our department. Other bank officials and Ministry people came according to what was to be discussed.’

  ‘Why didn’t the briefing take place at the KGB offices?’ I asked. Silas was sitting upright on his metal chair, his eyes closed as if he were dozing off to sleep.

  ‘The Warschauer Strasse office was – perhaps I should say is – used at arm’s length by the KGB. When some Party official or some exalted visitor has enough influence to be permitted to visit the KGB installation in Berlin, they are invariably taken to Warschauer Strasse rather than to Karlshorst.’

  ‘It’s used as a front?’ said Silas opening his eyes and blinking as if suddenly coming awake from a deep slumber.

  ‘They wouldn’t want visitors tramping through the offices where the real work was being done. And Warschauer Strasse has a kitchen and dining room where such dignitaries can be entertained. Also there is a small lecture hall where they can see slide shows and demonstration films and so on. We liked going over there. Even the coffee and sandwiches served were far better than anything available elsewhere.’

  ‘You said you could tell the source from the quality and the style. Could you enlarge on that?’ I asked.

  ‘Some communications would begin an item with a phrase such as “I hear that the Bank of England” or whatever. Others would say, “Last week the Treasury issued a confidential statement.” Others might put it, “Fears of an imminent drop in American interest rates are likely to bring…”. These different styles are virtually sufficient for identification, but correlated with the proved quality of certain sources, we were soon able to recognize the agents. We spoke of them as people and joked about the nonsense that certain of them sometimes passed on to us.’

  ‘So you must have recognized the first-class material that my wife was providing.’

  Von Munte looked at me and then at Silas. Silas said, ‘Is this official, Bernard?’ There was a note of warning in his voice.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said.

  ‘We’re sailing a bit close to the wind for chitchat,’ Silas said. The choice of casual words, and the softness of his voice, did nothing to hide the authority behind what he said; on the contrary, it was the manner in which certain classes of Englishmen give orders to their subordinates. I said nothing and von Munte watched Silas carefully. Then Silas drew on his cigar reflectively and, having taken his time, said, ‘Tell him whatever you know, Walter.’

  ‘As I told you, I only saw the economic material. I can’t guess what proportion of any one agent’s submissions that might be.’ He looked at me. ‘Take the material from the man we called “Grock”. It was rubbish, as I said. But for all I know, Grock might have been sending wonderful stuff about underwater weaponry or secret NATO conferences.’

  ‘Looking back at it, can you now guess what my wife was sending?’

  ‘It’s only a guess,’ said von Munte, ‘but there was one tray of material that was always well written and organized in a manner one might call academic.’

  ‘Good stuff?’

  ‘Very reliable but inclined towards caution. Nothing very alarming or exciting; mostly confirmations of trends that we could guess at. Useful, of course, but from our point of view not wonderful.’ He looked up at the sky through the glass roof of the conservatory. ‘Eisenguss,’ he said suddenly and laughed. ‘Nicht Eisenfuss; Eisenguss. Not iron foot but cast iron or pig iron; Gusseisen. Yes, that was the name of the source. I remember at the time I thought he must be some sort of government official.’

  ‘It means poured iron,’ said Silas, who spoke a perfect and pedantic German and couldn’t tolerate my Berlin accent.

  ‘I know the word,’ I said irritably. ‘The audiotypist was careless, that’s all. None of them are really fluent.’ It was a feeble excuse and quite untrue. I’d done it myself. I should have listened more carefully when I was with the Miller woman or picked up my mistranslation when typing from the tape recording.

  ‘So now we have a name to connect Fiona with the material she gave them,’ said Silas. ‘Is that what you wanted?’

  I looked at von Munte. ‘Just the one code word for Fiona’s tray?’

  ‘It all came under the one identification,’ said von Munte. ‘Why would they split it up? It wouldn’t make sense, would it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I finished my drink and stood up. ‘It wouldn’t make sense.’

  Upstairs I could hear the children growing noisy. There was a limit to the amount of time that TV kept them entertained. ‘I’ll go and take charge of my children,’ I said. ‘I know they tire Mrs Porter.’

  ‘Are you staying for supper?’ said Silas.

  ‘Thanks, but it’s a long journey, Silas. And the children will be late to bed as it is.’

  ‘There’s plenty of room for you all.’

  ‘You’re very kind, but it would mean leaving at crack of dawn to get the children to school and me to the office.’

  He nodded and turned back to von Munte. But I knew there was more to it than simple hospitality. Silas was determined to have a word with me in private. And on my way downstairs, after I’d told the children that we’d be leaving soon after tea, he emerged from his study and, with one hand on my shoulder, drew me inside.

  He closed the study door with great care. Then, in a sudden change of mood that was typical of him, he said, ‘Do you mind telling me what the bloody hell this is all about?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t what me, Bernard. You understand English. What the hell are you cross-questioning von Munte about?’

  ‘The arrested woman…’

  ‘Mrs Miller,’ he interrupted me, to show how well informed he was.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Carol Elvira Johnson, née Miller, father’s name Müller, born London 1930, occupation schoolteacher. That’s the one.�
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  ‘That was quite uncalled for,’ said Silas, offended at my reply. ‘Well, what about her?’

  ‘Her testimony doesn’t fit what I know of KGB procedures and I wanted to hear about von Munte’s experience.’

  ‘About using multiple code names? Did the Miller woman say they used multiple code names?’

  ‘She handled two lots of exceptionally high-grade intelligence material. There were two code names, but the Department is happy to believe that it all came from Fiona.’

  ‘But you incline to the view that it was two lots of material from two different agents?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ I said. ‘I’m still trying to find out. It can’t hurt to improve upon our knowledge, can it?’

  ‘Have you spoken to anyone at the office about this?’

  ‘Dicky Cruyer knows.’

  ‘Well, he’s a bright lad,’ said Silas. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He’s not interested.’

  ‘What would you do in Dicky Cruyer’s place?’

  ‘Someone should check it with Stinnes,’ I said. ‘What is the point of debriefing a KGB defector if we don’t use him to improve upon what we already know?’

  Silas turned to the window; his lips were pressed tight together and his face was angry. From this first-floor room there was a view across the paddock all the way to the stream that Silas called his ‘river’. For a long time he watched the flecks of snow spinning in the air. ‘Drive slowly. It will freeze hard tonight,’ he said without looking round at me. He’d suppressed his anger and his body relaxed as the rage drained out of him.

  ‘No other way to drive in that old banger of mine.’

  When he turned to me he had his smile in place. ‘Didn’t I hear you telling Frank that you’re buying something good from your brother-in-law?’ He never missed anything. He must have had superhuman hearing and, in defiance of the laws of nature, it improved with every year he aged. I had been telling Frank Harrington about it, and, in keeping with our curious father-son sort of relationship, Frank had told me to be very careful when I was driving it.