by Len Deighton
‘What Russian woman?’ I said.
‘She called herself a princess,’ said Lange. ‘Tall, dark…she’d obviously been a great-looking doll when she was young. She was much older than Bret, but he was the sort of American who goes for all that aristocracy junk. She knew everyone in the city and Bret liked that. He moved her into the apartment he grabbed for himself and lived with her all the time he was here. They had two servants and gave smart little dinner parties and Frank Harrington and Silas Gaunt and the D-G were entertained there. She spoke perfect English, and a dozen more languages. Her father had been a Russian general killed in the Revolution. Or so the story went.’
‘And she was a Nazi,’ Mrs Koby prompted.
‘That’s the real joke,’ said Lange. ‘His White Russian “princess” was a well-known figure in Berlin. She was always being photographed at the night spots and the parties. She was someone the top Nazis always invited along to their parties and balls. Yeah, it was Bret who was really getting close to the Nazis, not me.’
‘Is any of this stuff on Bret’s file?’ I said.
With a flash of the insight for which he was famous, Lange said, ‘Are you vetting Rensselaer? Are you checking the bastard out for some new job?’
‘No,’ I said truthfully.
‘This goddamned conversation always seems to get back to Rensselaer, the way conversations do when people from London Central call here.’
I got to my feet. ‘And a Merry Christmas to you both,’ I said acidly.
‘Sit down, kid, for Christ’s sake. You’re like your dad; too damned prickly for your own good.’ He finished his wine and gave his wife the empty glass. ‘Have a glass of wine, Bernie. No one can make it like Gerda. I didn’t mean you, kid. Shit, you were with Max when he died. Max was one of my best guys. Now was he a Nazi?’
‘Max was one of the best,’ I said.
‘I never heard how it happened,’ said Lange.
For a moment or more I hesitated. Then I said, ‘We’d been in the East nearly three weeks. It was at the time when a lot of things were going wrong for us. A KGB arrest team came for him in a safe house we used in Stendal. I was there with him. It was about nine o’clock in the evening. Max got a car; God knows where he found it. Neither of us had papers; they were in a suitcase at the station.’
‘You should have got the papers. No one in their right mind tries the Wall.’
‘Railway station?’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember what an East German railway station is like? They’re full of cops and soldiers. There’s someone asking you for your papers every step of the way. And by that time the luggage office was probably staked out. No, there was no way but through the wire. We decided to try the border down near Wolfsburg. We chose that section because the Wall was being repaired there, and I’d seen a drawing of it. Okay, no one in their right mind tries the Wall, but the guards were getting to feel the same way and they can be slack on a cold night.
‘The Sperrzone was easy; at that place it was mostly agricultural land still being worked. We spotted the bunkers and the towers and followed the ditch by the road the workers use. We had tools to cut the fences and everything was okay until we were crawling through the Kontrollstreifen. And the night was dark, really dark. Everything went fine at the start. But we must have hit a wire or some alarm because suddenly there was a commotion. They began shooting before they could really get a bead on us. You know how they are; they shoot just to show their sergeant that they’re on the ball. We were okay until we got to the road that they use for the patrol cars. We stopped worrying about disturbing the pattern in the naked strip and ran across into the mine field. The guards chasing us stopped at the edge of the mine field. It was too dark for them to see us so they had to get the searchlight – we were too far into the mine field for their hand lamps to be much use to them. We crawled and stopped. Crawled and stopped. Max was an old man; the crawling was difficult for him. A couple of times the big light in the tower came across us without stopping. We stayed still for a few minutes, but then they got systematic about it and began to sweep the area bit by bit. Max took careful aim and took out the light with two shots. But they saw the flash of his gun. The machine gunner in the tower just fired at the place he’d seen the flash. He kept his finger on the trigger so that Max must have been torn to pieces. I ran. It was a miracle. In the darkness and the general confusion I got right through.’
Just thinking about it made me tremble.
‘Months later, Frank Harrington got hold of the Vopo guard commander’s report. It confirmed that Max had been killed by the machine gunner. They’d decided to say there was only one escaper, and thus make their success rate one hundred per cent.’ I took a drink of coffee. ‘Max saved my life, Lange. He must have guessed what would happen. He saved me.’ Why had I suddenly blurted out this story to Lange? I hadn’t talked about it to anyone since it happened in 1978.
‘Hear that, Gerda?’ said Lange softly. ‘You remember dear old Max, don’t you? What a drinker. Remember how angry you used to get because he never wanted to go home? Then next day he always sent flowers and you forgave him.’
‘Of course I do, darling,’ she said. I understood now why I suddenly had to say it. I couldn’t say it to Max. Max was dead. The next best thing was to say it to Lange who loved him.
‘He was a good man,’ said Lange. ‘He was a Prussian of the old school. I recruited him back in 1946.’
Mrs Koby gave me a glass of her bright red homemade plum wine and gave another one to Lange.
‘Didn’t you ever feel like going back to the States, Lange?’ I said. I drank some of the wine. It was a fierce fruity concoction that made me purse my lips.
‘Nah. Berlin is where I want to be.’ He watched me drinking the wine without commenting. I had the feeling that drinking a glass of Gerda’s plum wine was a test that visitors were expected to endure without complaining.
‘They wouldn’t let us go to America, Bernard,’ said Mrs Koby in contradiction to her husband’s bluff dismissal of the idea. ‘We got all ready to leave, but the Embassy wouldn’t give us a visa.’
‘But you’re a citizen, Lange,’ I said.
‘No, I’m not. When I started working for your dad, he rushed through a British passport for me. Even if they let me in, we’d both be aliens in the US. I’m not sure I’d even get Social Security payments. And when I talked to one of our Embassy people he had the nerve to tell me that “working for a foreign intelligence service” would count against me with the Immigration Department. How do you like that?’
‘He was kidding you, Lange,’ I said. Lange looked at me and said nothing and I didn’t press it. I drained my wine glass and got to my feet again. ‘I must go,’ I said.
‘I didn’t mean anything, Bernie. I know you weren’t sent here by London Central.’
‘No offence taken, Lange. But I’m taking Lisl to Werner Volkmann’s place for a meal. You know how Lisl is about people being late.’
‘It’s going to be a Jewish Christmas, is it? What’s he serving you – gefilte fish and turkey noodle soup?’
‘Something like that,’ I said. I didn’t care for Lange’s jokes.
Lange got up too. ‘I hear Frank is retiring,’ he said. It was an obvious attempt to draw me out. ‘Jesus, he’s said goodbye enough times, hasn’t he?’
‘Sinatra?’ I said facetiously.
‘Frank Harrington,’ said Mrs Koby, to put me right.
Lange gave his snorty little laugh and said, ‘And I hear that some guy named Cruyer is calling the shots in London these days.’
I pulled my trench coat on. ‘Cruyer?’ I said. ‘That name doesn’t ring any bells for me.’
‘You’ve got a great sense of humour, Bernie,’ said Lange, without disguising the bitterness he felt at being excluded from the latest gossip about London Central.
7
It was still early when I left Lange and walked north to the Tiergarten and what is the most mysterious part of the present-day
city of Berlin. The park was empty, its grass brown and dead and glazed with frost. The trees were bare, like scratchy doodles upon the low grey sky. Rising from behind the trees, like a gilt-tipped rocket set for launching, the Siegessäule column. Its winged Victoria – which Berliners call ‘golden Elsie’ – celebrates the last war that Germany won, some hundred and ten years ago.
And as you turn the corner, you see them – stranded along the edge of the Tiergarten like the gigantic hulks of a rusting battlefleet. They are the embassy buildings that until 1945 made this ‘diplomatic quarter’ the centre of Berlin’s most exclusive and extravagant social life – Berlin is not the capital of West Germany; Bonn enjoys that distinction. So these roofless, derelict buildings standing on the sacrosanct foreign ground of other governments have been left untouched for almost forty years.
The ruined embassies had always fascinated me, ever since we had trespassed there to play dangerous games in my school days. There was the window from which Werner launched his model glider and fell thirty feet into the stinging nettles. Through the broken shell I could see the rafters I’d climbed as a dare and won from a boy named Binder one out of his coveted collection of forbidden Nazi badges. The roof was high and the rafters rickety. I looked at the dangers now and shuddered. I looked at many such previously encountered dangers now and shuddered; that’s why I was no longer suitable for employment as a field agent.
I went round the Diplomatenviertel not once but twice. I wanted to be quite sure that I was being followed; it’s so easy to become paranoid. He was not a real professional; he wasn’t quick enough, for one thing, and what professional would wear a distinctive beard and short tartan-patterned coat? He was carrying a large brown-paper parcel, trying to look like someone taking a Christmas present across town, but he wasn’t delivering a present to somewhere across town; he was following me; there was no doubt about that. I stopped and peered up at the old Italian Embassy. Some rooms at the back seemed to be occupied, and I wondered who would live in such a place. The bearded man stopped and seemed to wonder too.
My decision to visit Lange this morning was a spontaneous one, so my follower must have been with me since I left Tante Lisl’s before breakfast, and that meant he’d probably been outside the hotel all night. All night on Christmas Eve; where do you find such dedication these days? From Tante Lisl’s he must have used a car, otherwise I would have spotted him earlier. He’d have found it easy enough to anticipate the speed and direction of a solitary walker in the almost empty streets. I should have noticed the car right from the start. I was becoming too old and too careless. He stopped again; he must have guessed he’d been spotted, but he was still sticking to the book, ducking out of sight and keeping his distance. He was inexpert but diligent. It was easy to guess that he’d hoped to do the whole job from inside a car, hence the brightly coloured car coat, but now that I’d come poking about in the Tiergarten, he’d had to get out of the car and earn his money. Now he was conspicuous, especially with that big parcel under his arm.
I looked back. I couldn’t see his car but he hadn’t had many alternatives about where to leave it. I walked west, uncertainly changing direction but heading southward enough to keep him hoping that I would return to where he’d left the car. Was he alone? I wondered. Surely no professional would try to tail a suspect without any assistance whatsoever. But it was Christmas and perhaps all he had to do was to report my movements. He wasn’t a private eye; whatever their shortcomings, they can all follow an errant husband and stay out of sight. And if he wasn’t a KGB man and he wasn’t a private eye, what was left? One of our own people from the Berlin Field Unit? Even my advanced paranoia couldn’t believe that one of those lazy bastards could be persuaded into action on Christmas Day. Now I strolled back towards the park. I stopped to examine the trunk of a tree where someone had carved a hammer and sickle that was bent to become a swastika. I used the chance to watch him out of the corner of my eye. The parcel slipped from his grasp and he took his time about picking it up. He was right-handed; well, that was a useful thing to bear in mind.
I paused again at the little river in the park. But today the famous Berliner Luft was too cold for water to survive in. There were two people skating on the ice. A man and a woman, elderly judging by their stately posture and the way they skated side by side, long overcoats, flowing scarfs, and heads held high, like an illustration from some nineteenth-century magazine.
I hurried along the path as if suddenly remembering an appointment. Then I stooped down to hide. It wouldn’t have worked with anyone more experienced, so it was really a test of his expertise. I still had no measure of him and couldn’t guess what his motives might be. As it was, he walked right into it. That is to say, he walked right into me. It was the hurrying that did it; it often stampedes the pursuer into incautious and impulsive actions. That was how Hannibal won the Battle of Lake Trasimene after crossing the Apennines. All it needed was that sudden dash towards Rome to make Flaminius chase after him and blunder right into his ambush. Hannibal would probably have had the makings of a good field agent.
‘Don’t move,’ I said. I had him from behind, my arm round his throat and the other twisting hell out of his right arm while he was still looking for me far down the path. He grunted. I was holding his neck too tight. ‘I’m going to release you,’ I said, ‘but if you move carelessly after that, I’ll have to really hurt you. You understand, don’t you?’
He still didn’t answer properly so I relaxed my hold on his throat a bit more to let him breathe. When I let him go he bent double and I thought he was going to collapse on me. I looked at him with surprise. The arm seam of his coat was torn and his hat was knocked off. He was making terrible noises. I suppose I’d grabbed him too tightly; I was out of practice. But he shouldn’t have been gasping; a young man like him, well under thirty, should have been in better physical shape. Still bent over he clutched his middle, taking very deep breaths.
‘Who the hell are you?’ I said.
‘We’ll ask the questions, Mr Samson!’ There was another of them, a slim bespectacled man in a flashy brown-suede overcoat with fur collar. He was holding a gun and not bothering too much about who saw it. ‘Hands behind your back, Samson. You know how these things are done.’ I cursed my stupid overconfidence. I should have guessed that such clumsiness as the bearded man displayed was all part of the trick. They’d now made me play Flaminius to their Hannibal.
The bearded one – still gasping for breath – rubbed me down quickly and thoroughly and said, ‘He has nothing.’
‘No gun, Samson? This is not the expert we’ve heard so much about. You’re getting old and careless.’
I didn’t answer. He was right. I’d chosen not to go to Lange with a gun under my arm because it would have made it harder to deny my connection with London Central.
‘Here he comes,’ said the man. ‘It took him long enough, didn’t it.’ He was watching a dented panel truck trundling over the brown grass. The skaters were nowhere to be seen now: they were all part of the same team sent to get me.
The rear doors of the van opened to reveal a gleaming wheel chair. They pushed me up onto the chair and strapped my ankles and neck to the steel framework. Then they blindfolded me as the van drove away. It was all over in five minutes.
The roads were empty. The journey took no more than twenty minutes. The blindfold was good enough to prevent me seeing where I was, but I was bumped up steps and the gates of an elevator were carelessly slammed against my arm.
They unstrapped me and locked me in a room. I was left to remove my own blindfold, not so easy when one’s arms are cuffed behind one’s back. It was impossible not to admire their efficiency and to deplore my own unpreparedness. There was no doubt where they’d brought me: I was in East Berlin, just a few minutes’ walk from Checkpoint Charlie. But from this side of the Wall, it’s a long walk back.
There were two windows. It was an anteroom – really a place where people waited. But the people who
waited here had to have bars on the windows and heavy locks on the doors, and the window glass was frosted to make it difficult to see out. At the top of each window there was a small ventilation panel. I could reach that far only by putting a stool on the tabletop. With hands cuffed behind me I almost toppled as I scrambled up. Now through the narrow gap – the panel opened only as far as the bars permitted – I could see across the city. There was no movement: no cars, no trucks, no people. I recognized the massive USSR Embassy in the Linden from the shape of the roof. Nearby there was the last remaining section of the Adlon Hotel; a few cramped rooms in the rear that in the thirties were used only for the personal servants of the hotel’s clients. And there were the parking lot and the hillock that marked the site of the Führerbunker where Hitler had fought his last battles against marriage and the Red Army and, defeated by both Venus and Mars, blew out his troubled brains. Now I knew where I was: this was Hermann Göring’s old Air Ministry, one of the few examples of Nazi architecture to escape both Anglo-American bombers and Soviet planners.
I went back to the hard wooden chair and sat down. It was Christmas Day – not a festival that any sincere Communist cares to celebrate, but there were enough insincere ones to empty the building. It was silent except for the occasional, distant sounds of a slammed door or the hum of the lift. I looked round the room: no books or papers, the only printed item a brightly coloured poster that was a part of the Kremlin’s contribution to the anti-nuke debate. But the missile to be banned was labelled ‘NATO’. There was no mention of Russian missiles – just a handsome young Communist and a snarling GI. There was a second door in the room. It had a glass panel over which had been stuck patterned translucent paper. Such paper was commonly used in the East Bloc where frosted glass was sometimes in short supply. Standing with my back to the door I was able to peel a little of it back from the corner. A sticky compound remained on the glass, but I scratched it away with my fingernail.
By resting my face close against the glass it was possible to see into the next room. There were two people there, a man and a woman. Both wore white linen: a doctor and nurse. The woman was about forty; over her greying hair she wore a small starched cap. The man was younger, twenty-five or so. His white jacket was unbuttoned and there was a stain on the lapel that might have been blood. A stethoscope hung from his neck. He stood by the door writing in a small notebook. He consulted his wristwatch and then wrote more. The nurse was leaning against a two-tier bunk bed looking at something bundled there on the lower bed. She looked back to catch the doctor’s eye. He looked up from his writing and she shook her head. The movement was almost imperceptible, as if she’d been shaking her head all morning. She was Russian, I had no doubt of that. She had the flat features, narrowed eyes, and pale colouring that are typical of people from Russia’s eastern Arctic. She turned back to the bundle of clothes and touched it tenderly. It was too small to be a person – except a very small person. She leaned closer, fussing in the way that mothers do when babies sleep face down. But this was too big for a baby. She moved a trifle. It was a child – a red woolly striped hat had slipped from its head. Swaddled in thick blankets an elbow protruded from between. A yellow sleeve – an anorak. And shiny boots. Jesus Christ, they had Billy! Little Billy. Here in Berlin.