by Len Deighton
‘I don’t know, Bernie. One of them said that she was taken out using the papers of a patient who was due to be moved that day. Another one said there was a policeman outside with the ambulance, so it seemed to be all in order. We’ll probably never find out exactly what happened. It’s a hospital, not a prison; the staff don’t worry too much about who’s going in and out.’
‘What do you make of it, Werner?’
‘They knew she was talking, I suppose. Somehow what she was telling us got back to Moscow and they decided there was only one way of handling it.’
‘Why not take her straight back into East Berlin?’ I said.
‘In an ambulance? Very conspicuous. Even the Russians are not too keen on that sort of publicity. Snatching a prisoner from police custody and taking her across the wire would not look good at a time when the East Germans are trying to show the world what good neighbours they can be.’ He looked at me. I pulled a face. ‘It’s easier this way,’ added Werner. ‘They got rid of her. They were taking no chances. If she had talked to us already, they’d be making sure she couldn’t give evidence.’
‘But it’s a drastic remedy, Werner. What made them get so excited?’
‘They knew she was handling the radio traffic your wife provided.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘And Fiona is over there. So why would they be worried about what she might tell us?’
‘Fiona is behind it? Is that what you mean?’
‘It’s difficult not to suspect her hand is in it.’
‘But Fiona is safe and sound. What has she got to worry about?’
‘Nothing, Werner, she’s got nothing to worry about.’
He looked at me as if puzzled. Then he said, ‘The radio traffic then. What did Dicky think about the multiple codes?’
‘Dicky didn’t seem to be listening. He was hoping the Miller woman would just fade away, and he’s forbidden me to speak with Stinnes.’
‘Dicky was never one to go looking for extra work,’ said Werner.
‘No one is interested,’ I said. ‘I went down to talk to Silas Gaunt and von Munte and neither of them were very interested. Silas waggled his finger at me when I brought the matter up with von Munte. And he told me not to rock the boat. Don’t start digging into all that again, he said.’
‘I don’t know old Mr Gaunt the way you do. I just remember him in the Berlin office at the time when your dad was Resident. We were about eighteen years old. Mr Gaunt bet me that the Wall would never go up. I won fifty marks from him when they built the Wall. And fifty marks was a lot of money in those days. You could have an evening out with all the trimmings for fifty marks.’
‘I wish I had one mark for every time you’ve told me that story, Werner.’
‘You’re in a filthy mood, Bernie. I’m sorry you got this rotten job, but it’s not my fault.’
‘I’d really looked forward to a couple of days with the kids. They’re growing up without me, Werner. And Gloria is there too.’
‘I’m glad that’s going well…you and Gloria.’
‘It’s bloody ridiculous,’ I said. ‘I’m old enough to be her father. Do you know how old she is?’
‘No, and I don’t care. There’s an age difference between me and Zena, isn’t there? But that doesn’t stop us being happy.’
I turned to Werner so that I could look at him. It was dark. His face was visible only because it was edged with light reflected from the array of floodlights. His heavy-lidded eyes were serious. Poor Werner. Was he really happy? His marriage was my idea of hell. ‘Zena is older than Gloria,’ I said.
‘Be happy while you can, Bernie. It’s nothing to do with Gloria’s age. You still feel bad about losing Fiona. You haven’t got over her running away yet. I know you, and I can tell. She was a sort of anchor for you, a base. Without her you are restless and unsure of yourself. But that’s only temporary. You’ll get over it. And Gloria is just what you need.’
‘Maybe.’ I didn’t argue with him; he was usually very perceptive about people and their relationships. That was why he’d been such a good field agent back in the days when we were young and carefree, and enjoyed taking risks.
‘What’s really on your mind? Code names are just for the analysts and Coordination staff. Why do you care how many code names Fiona used?’
‘She used one,’ I snapped. ‘They all use one. Our people have one name per source and so do their agents. That’s what von Munte confirmed. Fiona was Eisenguss – no other names.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I’m not one hundred per cent sure,’ I told him. ‘Special circumstances come up in this business; we all know that. But I’m ninety-nine per cent sure.’
‘What are you saying, Bernie?’
‘Surely it’s obvious, Werner.’
‘It’s Christmas, Bernie. I had a few drinks just to be sociable. What is it you’re saying?’
‘There are two major sources of material that the Miller woman handled. Both top-grade intelligence. Only one of them was Fiona.’
Werner pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger and closed his eyes. Werner did that when he was thinking hard. ‘You mean there’s someone else still there? You mean the KGB still have someone in London Central?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Don’t just shrug it off,’ said Werner. ‘Don’t hit me in the face with that kind of custard pie and then say you don’t know.’
‘Everything points to it,’ I said. ‘But I’ve told them at London Central. I’ve done everything short of drawing a diagram and no one gives a damn.’
‘It might just be a stunt, a KGB stunt.’
‘I’m not organizing a lynching party, Werner. I’m just suggesting that it should be checked out.’
‘The Miller woman might have got it wrong,’ said Werner.
‘She might have got it wrong, but even if she got it wrong, that still leaves a question to be answered. And what if someone reads the Miller transcript and starts wondering if I might be the other source?’
‘Ahh! You’re just covering your arse,’ said Werner. ‘You don’t really think there’s another KGB source in London Central, but you realized that you’d have to interpret it that way in case anyone thought it was you and you were trying to protect yourself.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘I’m not stupid, Bernard. I know London Central and I know you. You’re just running round shouting fire in case someone accuses you of arson.’
I shook my head to say no, but I was wondering if perhaps he was right. He knew me better than anyone, better even than Fiona knew me.
‘Are you really going to hang on until they get that motor car out of the water?’
‘That’s what I’m going to do.’
‘Come back for a bite of dinner. Ask the police inspector to phone us when they start work again.’
‘I mustn’t, Werner. I promised Lisl I’d have dinner with her at the hotel in the unlikely event of my getting away from here in time.’
‘Shall I phone her to say you won’t make it?’
I looked at my watch. ‘Yes, please, Werner. She’s having some cronies in to eat there – old Mr Koch and those people she buys wine from – and they’ll get fidgety if she delays dinner for me.’
‘I’ll phone her. I took her a present yesterday, but I’ll phone to say Happy Christmas.’ He pulled the collar of his coat up and tucked his white silk scarf into it. ‘Damned cold out here on the river.’
‘Get back to Zena,’ I told him.
‘If you’re sure you’re not coming…Shall I bring you something to eat?’
‘Stop being a Jewish mother, Werner. There are plenty of places where I can get something. In fact, I’ll walk back to your car with you. There’s a bar open on the corner. I’ll get myself sausage and beer.’
It was nearly ten o’clock at night when they dragged the ambulance out of the Havel. It was a sorry sight, its side caked with oily mud where it had rested on t
he bottom of the river. One tyre was torn off and some of the bodywork ripped open where it had collided with the railings that were there to prevent such accidents.
There was a muffled cheer as the car came to rest. But there was no delay in finishing the job. Even while the frogmen were still packing their gear away, the car’s doors had been levered open and a search was being made of its interior.
There was no body inside – that was obvious within the first two or three minutes – but we continued to search through the car in search of other evidence.
By eleven-fifteen the police inspector declared the preliminary forensic examination complete. Although they’d put a number of oddments into clear-plastic evidence bags, nothing had been discovered that was likely to throw any light on the disappearance of Carol Elvira Miller, self-confessed Russian agent.
We were all very dirty. I went with the policemen into the toilet facilities at the wharfside. There was no hot water from the tap, and only one bar of soap. One of the policemen came back with a large pail of boiling water. The rest of them stood aside so that the inspector could wash first. He indicated that I should use the other sink.
‘What do you make of it?’ said the inspector as he rationed out a measure of the hot water into each of the sinks.
‘Where would a body turn up?’ I asked.
‘Spandau locks, that’s where we fish them out,’ he said without hesitation. ‘But there was no one in that car when it went into the water.’ He took off his jacket and shirt so that he could wash his arms where mud had dribbled up his sleeve.
‘You think not?’ I stood alongside him and took the soap he offered.
‘The front doors were locked, and the back door of the ambulance was locked too. Not many people getting out of a car underwater remember to lock the doors before swimming away.’ He passed me some paper towels.
‘It went into the water empty?’
‘So you don’t want to talk about it. Very well.’
‘No, you’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s probably just a stunt. How did you get the information about where to find it?’
‘I looked at the docket. An anonymous phone call from a passer-by. You think it was a phony?’
‘Probably.’
‘While the prisoner was taken away somewhere else.’
‘It would be a way of getting our attention.’
‘And spoiling my Christmas Eve,’ he said. ‘I’ll kill the bastards if I ever get hold of them.’
‘Them?’
‘At least two people. It wasn’t in gear, you notice, it was in neutral. So they must have pushed it in. That needs two people; one to push and one to steer.’
‘Three of them, according to what we heard.’
He nodded. ‘There’s too much crime on television,’ said the police inspector. He signalled to the policeman to get another bucket of water for the rest of them to wash with. ‘That old English colonel with the kids’ football team…he was your father, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I realized that afterwards. I could have bitten my tongue off. No offence. Everyone liked the old man.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said.
‘He didn’t even enjoy the football. He just did it for the German kids; there wasn’t much for them in those days. He probably hated every minute of those games. At the time we didn’t see that; we wondered why he took so much trouble about the football when he couldn’t even kick the ball straight. He organized lots of things for the kids, didn’t he. And he sent you to the neighbourhood school instead of to that fancy school where the other British children went. He must have been an unusual man, your father.’
Washing my hands and arms and face had only got rid of the most obvious dirt. My trench coat was soaked and my shoes squelched. The mud along the banks of the Havel at that point is polluted with a century of industrial waste and effluents. Even my newly washed hands still bore the stench of the riverbed.
The hotel was dark when I let myself in by means of the key that certain privileged guests were permitted to borrow. Lisl Hennig’s hotel had once been her grand home, and her parents’ home before that. It was just off Kantstrasse, a heavy grey stone building of the sort that abounds in Berlin. The ground floor was an optician’s shop and its bright façade partly hid the pockmarked stone that was the result of Red Army artillery fire in 1945. My very earliest memories were of Lisl’s house – it was not easy to think of it as a hotel – for I came here as a baby when my father was with the British Army. I’d known the patched brown carpet that led up the grand staircase when it had been bright red.
At the top of the stairs there was the large salon and the bar. It was gloomy. The only illumination came from a tiny Christmas tree positioned on the bar counter. Tiny green and red bulbs flashed on and off in a melancholy attempt to be festive. Intermittent light fell upon the framed photos that covered every wall. Here were some of Berlin’s most illustrious residents, from Einstein to Nabokov, Garbo to Dietrich, Max Schmeling to Grand Admiral Dönitz, celebrities of a Berlin now gone for ever.
I looked into the breakfast room; it was empty. The bentwood chairs had been put up on the tables so that the floor could be swept. The cruets and cutlery and a tall stack of white plates were ready on the table near the serving hatch. There was no sign of life anywhere. There wasn’t even the smell of cooking that usually crept up through the house at night-time.
I tiptoed across the salon to the back stairs. My room was at the top – I always liked to occupy the little garret room that had been my bedroom as a child. But before reaching the stairs I passed the door of Lisl’s room. A strip of light along the door confirmed that she was there.
‘Who is it?’ she called anxiously. ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s Bernd,’ I said.
‘Come in, you wretched boy.’ Her shout was loud enough to wake everyone in the building.
She was propped up in bed; there must have been a dozen lace-edged pillows behind her. She had a scarf tied round her head, and on the side table there was a bottle of sherry and a glass. All over the bed there were newspapers; some of them had come to pieces so that pages had drifted across the room as far as the fireplace.
She’d snatched her glasses off so quickly that her dyed brown hair was disarranged. ‘Give me a kiss,’ she demanded. I did so and noticed the expensive perfume and the makeup and false eyelashes that she applied only for very special occasions. The heiliger Abend with her friends had meant a lot to her. I guessed she’d waited for me to come home before she’d remove the makeup. ‘Did you have a nice time?’ she asked. There was repressed anger in her voice.
‘I’ve been working,’ I said. I didn’t want to get into a conversation. I wanted to go to bed and sleep for a long time.
‘Who were you with?’
‘I told you, I was working.’ I tried to assuage her annoyance. ‘Did you have dinner with Mr Koch and your friends? What did you serve them – carp?’ She liked carp at Christmas; she’d often told me it was the only thing to serve. Even during the war they’d always somehow managed to get carp.
‘Lothar Koch couldn’t come. He had influenza and the wine people had to go to a trade party.’
‘So you were all alone,’ I said. I bent over and kissed her again. ‘I’m so sorry, Lisl.’ She’d been so pretty. I remember as a child feeling guilty for thinking she was more beautiful than my mother. ‘I really am sorry.’
‘And so you should be.’
‘There was no way of avoiding it. I had to be there.’
‘Had to be where – Kempinski or the Steigenberger? Don’t lie to me, Liebchen. When Werner phoned me I could hear the voices and the music in the background. So you don’t have to pretend you were working.’ She gave a little hoot of laughter, but there was no joy in it.
So she’d been in bed here working herself up into a rage about that. ‘I was working,’ I repeated. ‘I’ll explain tomorrow.’
‘There’s nothing you have to expl
ain, Liebchen. You are a free man. You don’t have to spend your heiliger Abend with an ugly old woman. Go and have fun while you are young. I don’t mind.’
‘Don’t upset yourself, Lisl,’ I said. ‘Werner was phoning from his apartment because I was working.’
By this time she’d noticed the smell of the mud on my clothes, and now she pushed her glasses into place so that she could see me more clearly. ‘You’re filthy, Bernd. Whatever have you been doing? Where have you been?’ From her study there came the loud chimes of the ornate ormolu clock striking two-thirty.
‘I keep telling you over and over again, Lisl. I’ve been with the police on the Havel getting a car from the water.’
‘The times I’ve told you that you drive too fast.’
‘It wasn’t anything to do with me,’ I said.
‘So what were you doing there?’
‘Working. Can I have a drink?’
‘There’s a glass on the sideboard. I’ve only got sherry. The whisky and brandy are locked in the cellar.’
‘Sherry will be just right.’
‘My God, Bernd, what are you doing? You don’t drink sherry by the tumblerful.’
‘It’s Christmas,’ I said.
‘Yes. It’s Christmas,’ she said, and poured herself another small measure. ‘There was a phone message, a woman. She said her name was Gloria Kent. She said that everyone sent you their love. She wouldn’t leave a phone number. She said you’d understand.’ Lisl sniffed.
‘Yes, I understand,’ I said. ‘It’s a message from the children.’
‘Ah, Bernd. Give me a kiss, Liebchen. Why are you so cruel to your Tante Lisl? I bounced you on my knee in this very room, and that was before you could walk.’
‘Yes, I know, but I couldn’t get away, Lisl. It was work.’
She fluttered her eyelashes like a young actress. ‘One day you’ll be old, darling. Then you’ll know what it’s like.’
6
Christmas morning. West Berlin was like a ghost town; as I stepped into the street the silence was uncanny. The Kudamm was empty of traffic and, although some of the neon signs and shop lights were still shining, there was no one strolling on its wide pavements. I had the town virtually to myself all the way to Potsdamer Strasse.