by Len Deighton
‘You tell me.’
‘That would ruin Dicky’s career, wouldn’t it?’
‘It depends. If it looked like becoming the messy sort of divorce that got into the newspapers, then the Department would get rid of Dicky very quickly.’
‘Does Daphne know that?’
‘She’s very bitter.’
‘She’s put up with a lot.’
‘Has she?’
‘You told me that Dicky was constantly unfaithful to her.’
‘Did I?’
‘Of course you did. And everyone in the office has noticed the way he’s been dandying up on certain evenings. And his wife is always phoning asking where he is.’
‘Everyone knows that?’
‘All the girls know.’
‘Does his secretary talk about it?’
‘You mustn’t ask me questions like that, darling. I can’t be the office stool pigeon.’
‘I don’t like the idea of a secretary who talks about her boss. It’s a short step from that to official secrets…’
‘Don’t be pompous, darling. Dicky gives her a rotten time. I think she’s wonderfully loyal under the circumstances.’
19
I don’t know whether Bret Rensselaer was officially ordered to keep away from Erich Stinnes or even discouraged from doing so, but obviously someone from the Department had to keep in touch with him. Had he been left at Berwick House and neglected, there was always the chance that London Debriefing Centre would encourage the Home Office to take him over.
When Stinnes suddenly stopped talking to the interrogator, the matter became urgent. I was sent to talk with Stinnes. There was a note initialled by Bret waiting on my desk. I don’t know who chose me for the job, but I suppose there weren’t many on the shortlist of suitable visitors.
It was pouring with rain when I arrived at Berwick House. The formalities that had greeted Bret Rensselaer’s Bentley on my previous visit were waived for my second-hand Rover. No pulling to the side after entering the outer gate – just a quick look at my card and a perfunctory salute.
There was no one to see that I parked in the visitors’ marked space in the courtyard and no sign of the Governor or his Deputy anywhere. Instead of the main entrance I used the back door. The duty clerk knew me by sight and he swivelled the visitors’ book for my signature and offered me his Parker pen. Judging by the blank spaces in the book they didn’t have many visitors at Berwick House these days.
Erich Stinnes wasn’t locked up. At certain specified hours he was permitted to exercise in the grounds. When it rained he could come down into the great hall and look through the leaded windows at the bare rosebushes. He had the freedom of the first floor, but I had to notify the key-room clerk that I was going up there. The clerk stopped eating his cheese sandwich long enough to write out the chit that permitted me to leave again. When he passed it to me the chit was marked with his greasy fingerprints. I’m glad that hadn’t happened to Bret.
‘Not like Notting Hill Gate, is it, Erich?’ I said.
‘It’s good enough,’ he said. They’d moved him to Number 4, a large comfortable accommodation at the front. He had a sitting room with a sofa and two armchairs, a coloured print of the Battle of Waterloo, and a medieval electric fire. He had a tiny ‘kitchen’ too, although it was really no more than an alcove equipped with sink, cooking ring, some pans, crockery and an electric kettle.
‘Are you going to make me a cup of tea?’ I said. ‘It’s very warm in here – do you want me to open a window?’
‘They will bring some tea at four,’ he said. ‘You must know that by now. No, don’t open the window. I think I have a chill.’
‘Shall I get the doctor to look at you?’
‘No doctors. I have a horror of them.’ His voice was flat and cold like his eyes. There was some sort of change in the atmosphere since our last meeting. He was suspicious of me and didn’t bother to hide it.
‘Still drawing landscapes?’ I asked. I took off my raincoat and put it on a hook behind the door.
‘There’s not much else to do,’ he said. The whole building was well heated and it was warm in this room, but the electric fire was fully on, and in addition to his grey flannels and dark-green shirt Stinnes wore a heavy sweater. He was sitting on a big chintz-covered sofa and there were several London newspapers beside him. They’d been folded and refolded as if every word in them had been read.
He was able to be very still. It was not the easy stillness that comes with relaxation or the tense stillness that concentration produces, but something else – some quality that couldn’t be defined, something that enabled him to remain always the onlooker no matter how involved he truly felt. He was always the sun; everything moved except him.
I took off my jacket and sat in the chair opposite him. ‘The interrogator went home early yesterday,’ I said. ‘And early the day before that.’
‘Some species of bird are born able to sing, but others have to learn to sing from their parents.’ There was no jocularity. It sounded like something he had ready to recite for me.
‘Is that an ornithological fact or are you trying to tell me something, Erich?’ In fact I knew it was true. Stinnes had told me before. He was fond of displaying such expertise.
‘It was inevitable that you should try to find some way to blame me,’ he said.
‘And which sort of bird are you, Erich? And how do we start teaching you how to sing?’
‘I accepted your offer in good faith. I didn’t promise to run your covert operations department and make it work properly.’
‘What do you see as your side of the bargain?’ I said.
‘I give the interrogator full and truthful answers to everything he asks. But I can’t tell him things I don’t know. I wish you’d explain that to him.’
‘Four men have died,’ I said. ‘You knew one of them: Ted Riley; he was with you in London. He was a personal friend of mine. People are angry.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Stinnes. He didn’t look very sorry, but then he never did look very anything.
‘We were bounced, Erich. Both times we were bounced.’
‘I don’t know the full details,’ he said. It was a very Russian response; he knew all the details.
‘Both times we walked into a booby trap,’ I said.
‘Then both times you were a booby.’
‘Don’t get too damned smug,’ I said, and then regretted that he’d made me angry.
‘Are you a professional or have you been behind a desk too long?’ He paused, and when I didn’t answer he said, ‘Don’t toy with me, Mr Samson. You know that Rensselaer is an amateur. You know he refused to let your Operations staff plan these meetings. You know that he did it that way because he wanted to show everyone that he could be a wonderful field agent.’
It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. Stinnes showed no anger about Bret Rensselaer’s actions even though they’d brought Stinnes near to being killed. In fact his interpretation of the fiasco put Bret into the role of hero – an amateur, blundering hero, but a hero nevertheless. ‘Did you criticize these “amateurish” ideas?’ I asked.
‘Of course I did. Didn’t you?’
He had me there. ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I criticized them.’
‘So would anyone with half an hour’s field experience. Rensselaer is a desk man. Why wasn’t he ordered to use your Operations planners? I urged him to do that over and over again.’
‘There were problems,’ I said.
‘And I can guess what the problems were,’ said Stinnes. ‘Your boss Rensselaer is determined to make his name before the MI5 people take over my interrogation?’
‘Something like that,’ I said.
‘He’s at the dangerous age,’ said Stinnes with studied contempt. ‘It’s the age when desk men suddenly want to grab a final chance for glory.’
There was a knock at the door and a middle-aged woman in a green apron brought in a tray of tea with buttered toast and a plate of
sliced cake. ‘They do you very well in here, Erich,’ I said. ‘Do you get this sort of stylish tea every day or only when visitors come?’
The woman smiled at me but said nothing. They were all vetted people, of course; some of the domestic help were retired clerical staff from London Central. She set out the cups and teapot and left silently. She knew that even one word can destroy the mood of an interrogation.
‘Every day,’ said Erich. There was a packet of five small cigars on the tray. I suppose it was his daily ration, but he seemed to have stopped smoking for there was a pile of unopened packets on the mantelpiece.
‘But you still don’t like it here?’ His uncooperative attitude towards the interrogator was what had brought me down here. There was obviously something he didn’t like.
‘You trust me well enough to act on my information and risk the lives of your agents, but you keep me locked up in case I run away.’ He drank some tea. ‘Where is it that you think I will run to? Will I run back to Moscow and face trial?’
I was tempted to tell him how vociferously I had opposed his being brought back to Berwick House, but that wasn’t the way to do it. And in any case, I didn’t want him to know how little effect my opinions had upon London Central’s top-floor decisions. ‘So what sort of bird are you, Erich? You haven’t answered that one yet.’
‘Let me out of here and I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘Let me do what Rensselaer failed to do.’
‘Penetrate the Cambridge network?’
‘They’ll trust me.’
‘It’s risky, Erich.’
‘The Cambridge network is the best thing I brought over to you. It’s what delayed me in Mexico City. It’s what forced me to go back to Berlin before coming over to you. Do you have any idea what risks I took to get enough information to penetrate that network?’
‘Tell me.’
It was a sardonic reaction to his plea and he knew it. He said, ‘And now you want to throw it away. Well, it’s your loss.’
‘Then why do you care?’
‘Only because you are determined to blame me for disasters of your own making. Why should I be blamed? Why should I be punished? I don’t want to spend month after month locked up in this place.’
‘I thought you liked it,’ I said.
‘It’s comfortable enough, but I’m a prisoner here. I want to live like a human being. I want to spend some of that money. I want to…I want to do all sorts of things.’
‘You want to see Zena Volkmann? Is that what you were going to say?’
‘Have you seen her?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Did she ask about me?’
‘She thinks she did all the work, I got all the credit, and you got all the money.’
‘Is that what she said?’
‘More or less.’
‘I suppose it’s true.’ He took off his glasses and polished them carefully.
‘I don’t know that she did all the work, and I certainly didn’t get all the credit. Other than that, I suppose it’s true.’
He looked at me but didn’t smile at my allegation. ‘You needn’t worry. If I am freed, I won’t go rushing off to find her.’
‘The love has cooled?’
‘I’m fond of her. But she is another man’s wife. I no longer have the stamina for that sort of love affair.’
‘But you have the stamina to try breaking into the Cambridge net?’
‘Because it’s the only way I’ll ever be able to get free of you people.’
‘By giving us proof positive of your loyalty to us?’
‘As I’ve told you, that network is the best prize I can offer you. Surely even you English will not want to keep me locked up after I deliver them to you?’ These were his own agents, yet he said it without any sign of emotion. He was a cold-blooded animal.
‘There is the problem of protecting you, Erich. You are a big investment. They put a bomb under your car last week.’
‘That wasn’t intended for me. That was an accident. Surely you don’t believe that they identified me?’ He leaned back in the sofa and grasped his hands together and cracked the knuckles. It was an old man’s gesture that didn’t fit my picture of him. Was it this captivity that was aging him? He was a ‘street man’ – his whole career had been based upon dealing with people. If he was allowed to try breaking the Cambridge net, at least he’d be doing the thing he was best at. Perhaps all betrayals – marital, professional and political – are motivated by the drive to do what you’re best at, no matter whom you’re doing it for.
‘You seem very certain,’ I said.
‘I’m not paranoid, if that’s what you mean.’
I left it like that for a moment and drank some tea. ‘You’re not smoking these days, I notice.’ I picked up the packet of cheroots from the tray and sniffed them. I hadn’t smoked for ages. I put the cheroots down again, but it wasn’t easy.
‘I don’t feel like smoking,’ he said. ‘It’s a good chance for me to give up altogether.’
I poured myself some tea and drank it without milk or sugar the way he drank his; it was awful. ‘How would you start?’ I didn’t have to explain what I meant. The idea of Stinnes trying to crack a Soviet network using his own methods was uppermost in both our minds.
‘First, I’ve got to have my freedom. I can’t work if you are going to have someone watching me night and day. I must be able to go to them completely clear of all your strings. You understand?’
‘They’re alarmed now,’ I said. ‘They must have been in touch with Moscow. Moscow might have told them about you.’
‘You have too much faith in Moscow. Just as we have always had too much faith in the efficiency of London Central.’
‘I’d stand very little chance of convincing my masters that you could bring that network home alone. They don’t want to believe it; they’d consider it some kind of reflection upon their competence. They’d be afraid of another disaster and this time one in which we lost you too. Moscow are searching for you, Erich. Surely you must know that.’
‘Moscow doesn’t put out alerts for defectors until there has been publicity about them. The policy is to play down such things in case other Soviet citizens get the same idea.’
‘You weren’t just a defector,’ I said. ‘Your going dealt a big blow to them.’
‘All the more reason why they would keep quiet. Have your analysts reported anything yet?’
‘I’ll try and find out,’ I promised. Erich knew that my reply was an evasion, and yet there was no way I could keep him from guessing the right answer to that question. The analysts had been monitoring the East Bloc radio and TV and watching the press for anything that could relate to Erich Stinnes. And they’d especially scrutinized the restricted publications and given particular attention to the diplomatic KGB radio traffic by means of which Moscow controlled its embassies and agents throughout the world. So far there had been nothing that could be recognized as a reference to Erich Stinnes or his enrolment by our Department. It was as if he’d disappeared into outer space. He smiled. He knew there had been nothing.
‘I’d need only ten days, two weeks at the most. I know this network, and I’d approach it another way. If you were prepared to pick them up without evidence, I could give them to you in less than a week.’
‘No. Here on this side of the world we have this inconvenient necessity to provide the courts with clear evidence. Even then, the juries free half the people sent up for trial.’
‘Plant something on them. I’ll give evidence.’
‘We haven’t had a clear decision on whether we can use you in court yet,’ I said.
‘If I agree…’
‘It’s not that easy. There are legal difficulties. My Department isn’t empowered to handle this sort of prosecution. If you were cross-questioned in open court, it might become embarrassing.’
‘And your Home Office won’t help? Why don’t you change this antiquated system? The KGB is centrally controlled to work aga
inst the enemies within and the enemies without. Separate agencies – one working to locate foreign agents within Britain and another to penetrate foreign countries – is cumbersome and inefficient.’
‘We like it a bit cumbersome and inefficient,’ I said. ‘An agency like the KGB can take over its government any time it wishes.’
‘It hasn’t happened yet,’ said Stinnes primly. ‘And it never will. The Party remains supreme and no one challenges its power.’
‘You don’t have to proclaim the Party line any more, Erich. We both know the Soviet Union is facing a crisis.’
‘A crisis?’ he said. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and hands clasped tight together. His pinched face was very pale and his eyes bright.
‘There are urgent demands for incentives to be built into the declining economy. I don’t have to tell you all that, Erich.’ I smiled but he didn’t respond to my smile. I seemed to have touched a nerve.
‘And who is fighting against such reforms?’ He hunched his shoulders more. I wondered exactly where Stinnes had placed himself in this struggle. Or was he still denying that there was one?
Well, if this was the only way to bring him alive, I’d pursue it. ‘The moribund Party officials, who meddle with the economy at grass-roots level and skim the cream from it. They don’t want to be replaced by skilled factory managers, technical experts, and trained administrators, the only ones who might be able to create the kind of system of incentives that eventually produces an expanding economy.’
‘The Party…’
‘…remains supreme. Yes, you already said that.’
‘Is close to the work force,’ said Stinnes. He was clearly agitated by my remarks.
‘It’s close to the work force because of the way in which the Party’s come to a tacit agreement with them. The workers stay out of politics and the Party makes sure that no one has to work very hard. That was all right in Lenin’s time but it can’t go on much longer. The Russian economy is a disaster.’
Stinnes rubbed his cheek, seemingly alarmed at the idea. ‘But if they let the factories get rid of the lazy and hire only the hard workers, then they will be reintroducing into the system all the greed, fears, and strife of competitive capitalism. The Revolution will have been for nothing; they will have revived the class war.’