by Len Deighton
‘Why is the D-G so set against it?’
‘He’s too old be sympathetic to new-fangled gadgets like computers. He has never let his secretary have one; not even to do the mail. He is frightened that his lovely old-fashioned Department is being taken over by little black boxes.’
‘I know the feeling.’
‘Harry Strang is doubtful too. He keeps saying that electronic data can be tampered with. He believes that you can usually see if a printed document or photograph or something in handwriting has been altered, forged or faked. But the print-out from electronic data is always fresh and clean. It assumes an authority that is difficult to challenge.’
‘What about you?’ I asked. Although it was quite evident that her career was bound into the success of the new operation.
‘I’m pushing the VERDI operation for all I’m worth.’
‘Are you?’ I said, surprised to hear a tone of commitment that went far beyond her loyalty to Dicky.
‘The Stasi data will go back as far as January. That will be enough to give us all the reports and relevant material on Tessa’s death.’
So that was still in the very forefront of Fiona’s mind. ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ I told her. ‘Tapping into communications is the ultimate dream of the people who sit behind desks. Intelligence gathering without all the expense, trouble and bother that maverick field agents bring. What a lovely thought that must be for everyone on the top floor.’
‘It’s understandable,’ said Fiona. ‘People at the sharp end are always intransigent and difficult. But tapping into the flow is not without precedent. Didn’t they dig under the road to Berlin-Karlshorst back in the Fifties and plug into the telephone landlines of the Soviet Army?’
‘Yes, Operation Prince. And in Vienna in 1950 when Red Army HQ was in the Imperial Hotel; Operation Lord.’
‘And reputations were made?’ I could tell she’d looked it up already.
‘Except that getting the recording equipment needed in Berlin was the job given to George Blake, who, while working for us had been moonlighting as a KGB agent. He told Moscow.’
‘And George Blake was a field agent; is that what you mean?’
‘Fiona, please. Of course not. That would be in contravention of the “Praising the Enemy Act of 1836” wouldn’t it?’
‘We won’t need recording equipment,’ said Fiona, who could never take jokes about the Department’s failures. ‘We’ll be getting everything along the phone line, and the print-outs will make it simple to assess and classify and evaluate.’
‘But does it come into our Departmental authority? The people at GCHQ will say that communications are their job. They will be furious.’
‘That will be a top-level decision, Bernard. That’s what Dicky is doing right now. I’ve spent the last few days preparing his briefing sheets.’ So I was right about Fiona having been reading the history books.
‘And Dicky is going to make certain that our colleagues at GCHQ are permanently sidelined?’
‘It’s been approved at all levels internally: they even cleared it with Uncle Silas. This morning the Foreign Office Adviser is holding Dicky’s hand while they put it to the Permanent Undersecretary and the Chairman of the JIC. If they give it the nod, it will go political.’
I was impressed. That was the way the big operations went. Instead of being subject only to internal decisions, they had to have the blessing of the Civil Service. That meant the approval of Permanent Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, the Cabinet Secretary and all the babbling brass on the Joint Intelligence Committee. But only the really delicate ones ‘went political’, and had to have the approval of the politicians themselves. That’s why there were many piddling successes, but so little of substance was ever achieved. ‘Have you seen a sample of this material?’ I asked.
‘Not yet. But it will be good, really good, believe me.’ Fiona had worked over there; she knew what sort of material they would be putting into the computer. But she also must have known that these were the most paranoid people in the world. It wouldn’t have escaped their attention that modems provide ways of hacking into multi-million dollar computers by dropping a coin into any pay-phone in the high street. In protecting their intelligence material they were perceptive and efficient, frighteningly so.
‘And that idiot Dicky will be adding this long-term operation to his official duties elsewhere, will he?’ I said. ‘God help us.’
She said: ‘You could have been running this Department years ago if you had made a few concessions to people you don’t like.’
‘You mean now it’s too late?’
‘Everyone makes so many concessions to you, darling. I don’t think you realize how many people here do that.’
‘Next week I shall start taking vitamins,’ I said.
‘And you’ll become Dr Jekyll. It sounds lovely, but I’ll still be Mrs Hyde, won’t I? Where shall we go for lunch?’ She reached for her handbag and put it on the desk in front of her to rummage through it.
‘We could go home,’ I said. ‘It’s so close now that we live in town.’
She snatched a quick look at herself in the tiny mirror of her powder compact and snapped it shut. ‘There’s nothing to eat at home,’ she said.
‘Who wants to eat?’
Five minutes would have saved us. Another five minutes and we would have been in the lift on our way to the main entrance lobby. But as Fiona was reaching for her coat, Dicky came bursting through the connecting door shouting for coffee over his shoulder.
‘Fiona, darling! And Bernard too,’ he said as he looked at us. ‘Magnificent! Exactly the two people I wanted to see.’ He was carrying a large canvas artist’s portfolio which he dropped on to a chair and rubbed his hands together. The portfolio was the one in which Dicky carried his presentations: large colourful cards with diagrams, pie charts, maps with arrows on, simple ideas reduced to slogans and itemized and numbered so that even the men he briefed in the Cabinet Office would be able to grasp them. Not that Dicky used these carefully prepared briefs to reveal as much as possible; on the contrary the object was always to sell the idea. Dicky had explained that to me many times when I had pointed out errors in his words and pictures.
‘Hello, Dicky,’ said Fiona dutifully as she put her coat back on the hook.
‘Were you off somewhere?’ asked Dicky, as if it wasn’t lunch time.
‘No,’ said Fiona. ‘I was just getting my handkerchief.’
‘You’ve got a cold,’ said Dicky. ‘I noticed you sneezing.’
‘It’s the dust,’ said Fiona and, using a handkerchief she’d retrieved from her coat, blew her nose loudly to prove we hadn’t been about to go to lunch.
‘It’s a virus; everyone’s got it. You should have a damned big Scotch and jump into bed,’ said Dicky.
‘Just what I was telling her when you came in,’ I said. Fiona pursed her lips and glared at me angrily.
‘What’s the joke?’ said Dicky, looking quizzically from Fiona to me, and then back at Fiona again. When neither of us answered, he shrugged as if proclaiming his bewilderment to the world. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re here, Bernard,’ he said, smiling and nodding at me in the sort of uncharacteristic display of good will that sometimes resulted from high excitement. He paraded up and down in his new winter overcoat, a full-length woolly garment made from pale untreated sheepskins and surmounted with a big fur collar. ‘It’s damned cold outside,’ he said as he unbuttoned his coat and, with both hands in its pockets, flapped noisily around the room like a baby albatross learning to fly. When he got as far as the connecting door without becoming airborne, he snatched it open and yelled: ‘Bring the coffee in here: three cups and some of those oatmeal biscuits.’ He closed the door and then opened it again. ‘And cream,’ he shouted. ‘Mr Samson takes cream and sugar.’
‘So it went well?’ Fiona said as Dicky turned back to us. Neither of us was hanging on Dicky’s reply, because it clearly had gone well. He was in that state of euphoria th
at I would have guessed only a knighthood or a new Lloyd Webber album could have brought about.
‘Shall we tell hubby?’ Dicky asked Fiona. ‘Yes, they all think it’s a wonderful opportunity.’ He threw his coat across a chair and stood in a statuesque pose, thumbs hooked into his leather belt. ‘In a way I have Bernard to thank,’ he announced. ‘After debriefing him in Berlin, I thought it only fair to circulate a memo telling everyone concerned that VERDI must be presumed dead.’ He grinned artfully. ‘That must have taken the wind out of the sails of my most garrulous opponents, because today, when I announced that we’d had a field agent come back with the news that VERDI was very much alive and kicking, I went through the same routine again. This time at the end I was practically given a standing ovation.’
‘Well let’s hope VERDI is alive,’ I said.
‘I’m exaggerating of course,’ Dicky admitted. ‘Our masters are keeping their options open. They always do; that’s how they got to the top. But even if VERDI proves to be dead after all, no one is going to move me out of Ops while this one is on-going.’
Fiona looked at him with manifest admiration. He was right, of course. As long as he kept the VERDI operation on the boil, no one would want to disturb things by replacing him. And if he scored a significant success with VERDI during his probationary period they would have to confirm him. His growing confidence and power were evidenced by the clothes he was wearing: his tailored denim jacket and jeans. There was a time when Dicky confined his fancy dress to his office and his peers and juniors. Now he’d actually gone to see the stuffed shirts of the Cabinet Office in this worn and whitened denim.
He swung his head to me and said: ‘There’s a lot of work to do, Bernard. It’s not just a matter of good old VERDI strolling through the Checkpoint with the Stasi phone number scribbled into his little black book. These computers are highly strung animals. They will have communications-security goons putting all manner of protection into the lines. There will be codes and challenges and a whole lot of electronic mumbo-jumbo. And it will be changing frequently. VERDI must have someone over there who will give us updates and details of changes to the equipment so we can go on with the scheme.’ As Dicky’s technological knowledge dwindled, his voice trailed off until he paused and looked out of the window as if he’d forgotten what he was about to say.
I said: ‘The best way would be to get all the supplementary material and changes through your new man in the London embassy.’
For a moment there was that special kind of silence that tells you when you’ve dropped a brick.
‘How do you know about him?’ said Dicky.
‘Because I’ve been sitting in on the Notting Hill meetings. Your written orders, Dicky.’
‘Oh, yes, you’re right. I forgot.’ He wet his lips nervously. ‘Well keep it under your hat, Bernard. “Five” are still whining and whingeing about the last time we went into an embassy. “Five” claim all embassies and consuls in the UK are their territory. And anyway our new boy from the embassy is too nervous for something big like this.’
‘He’s nervous because he’s frightened we are going to bungle things for him.’
‘He’s just inexperienced,’ said Dicky.
‘We’ve used that safe house too many times,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t originally intended as a safe house; it was just an overnight bed for overseas staff and people we didn’t want to bring in here. It’s never been really secret. The other side are bound to know about it, and your new boy has reason to be nervous.’
‘I’m not using him,’ said Dicky petulantly. ‘So let’s drop it. I want to do it through Berlin. It’s better and cleaner if it goes directly to us in Berlin.’
‘I’m too well known in Berlin,’ I said hurriedly.
‘Don’t worry, Bernard. I wasn’t thinking of asking you to set it up. It must be someone who will be there all the time. Someone who knows the city and has an instinct for when things go wrong. You are needed for other things, Bernard. I want you free to go backwards and forwards. And anyway you should be here with your wife.’ He smiled at Fiona.
‘We could bring Werner Volkmann back on to the payroll,’ said Fiona. ‘He answers all the requirements.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Dicky. Then the coffee arrived, brought by Jennifer, a nervous, gangling young woman whose venerable landowning family had protected her against learning to spell, type or take dictation. With commendable haste she’d mastered the art of making coffee the way Dicky preferred it. Today she had quickly decided that the note of triumph Dicky had broadcast merited the Spode china and the silver creamer. ‘That’s good,’ said Dicky, examining the tray. ‘Ten out of ten, Jenni.’ She beamed.
‘Smells good,’ said Fiona.
‘It’s only Nescafé,’ I said, annoyed that Fiona too should join in these absurd games to warm Dicky’s heart. ‘They ran out of Higgins coffee,’ I told her in a quiet conversational voice. ‘Jennifer borrowed instant from the canteen.’
‘No, it’s not instant from the canteen,’ said Dicky calmly. I had played such games too many times before for it to have the desired effect. ‘It’s lightly roasted chagga. Your husband likes juvenile jokes, Fiona.’ Then turning to me he reached out and ruffled my hair and said: ‘But we love him just the same. Don’t we, Bernard?’ I suppose I glowered at him and pushed my hair back into place. ‘No matter, Bernard. It will soon be Christmas,’ he said. ‘Think of all those jokes you’ll find in the crackers and in the kiddies’ annuals.’
‘Thank you,’ said Fiona as Dicky passed a cup of coffee to her.
‘You had best pour your own, Bernard,’ he said. ‘Since you like putting so much cream and sugar into it.’
I didn’t want his lousy coffee, but to refuse it would look childish, so I poured a cup and sat down on Bret’s old buttoned sofa and took a deep breath. Unlike the glass-topped desk, Bret’s sofa had taken quite a beating since he left us. It had been put in the waiting-room, and that was where the duty night officer hid, and bedded down, in the small hours when all was quiet. Half the buttons were missing and there were scars and burn marks on the arms where neglected cigarettes had toppled out of ashtrays.
I said: ‘It won’t take them long to tumble to the fact we are reading from their mainframe. They’ll seek VERDI out. They’ll search to the ends of the earth to find him and he’ll get it in the neck.’
‘I don’t think so, Bernard,’ said Dicky, who was ready for that one and had perhaps faced the same question at his meeting. ‘When they discovered that we’d run a cable under the street in Berlin to get their Karlshorst secrets, they circulated it as propaganda to all their friends and allies, and enemies too. This will be the same. It will be used all around the world to show what wicked things we do.’
Fiona looked at me before saying: ‘It sounds good, Dicky. It’s going to be a big breakthrough.’ I suppose any other reaction would have made it look as if her concern for me would stand in the way of her doing her real job of supporting Dicky through thick and thin.
He looked at me and waited for my response. ‘It’s ingenious, Dicky,’ I admitted. ‘It could work.’
‘Well, thank you,’ said Dicky. ‘That’s praise indeed coming from you, Bernard.’ He waggled a silver coffee spoon at me.
‘We should let Bernard think about it,’ said Fiona. ‘He might remember more about who this VERDI person is.’
‘For instance?’ said Dicky looking at me. ‘What is it about VERDI that you don’t remember?’
‘You’d better share the true facts with me, Dicky. All this stuff about VERDI being desperate to come over to us doesn’t ring true. These stories about him wanting to talk to some old buddy he knows, and that he’s just itching to defect with a box full of floppy disks. All that stuff is bullshit, Dicky. Admit it! The truth is that you’ve targeted VERDI because he has all this electronic know-how. Maybe he is showing no interest in defecting. Maybe he’s got a better offer from the Americans. You’ve been sending him boxes of chocolates and p
olishing his apples and whatever else you do for these jerks, but it’s not VERDI wooing us, it’s us wooing him. Admit it? I need to know.’
Dicky became very agitated; I was asking all the wrong questions. He went over to his canvas folio as if he was going to get out his charts and diagrams, and give me an off-Broadway rendering of his whole presentation. ‘He’s wavering,’ admitted Dicky, shifting ground a little. ‘He’s paranoid. He’ll only deal with people he recognizes.’
‘I see,’ I said.
Dicky said: ‘He’s frightened the KGB will send a couple of goons around to see him, pretending that they’re our people.’ He turned to Fiona and said: ‘Didn’t you tell me that’s the standard KGB tactic if they want to test a man’s loyalty? That’s why he was asking for Bernard.’
‘Is that what he’s been selling you?’ I said. ‘Listen, Dicky, a man like that, a Moscow-trained senior Stasi officer, has on his desk every morning a list of all the contracted employees, contacts, informants and hangers-on used by Frank’s office. Names and addresses; sweethearts and wives; habits and preferences. Complete with photos and medical sheets.’ I was exaggerating of course. Dicky had gone pale at the thought of it. ‘He doesn’t have to worry about us sending someone to call on him that he doesn’t recognize,’ I said.
‘He’s nervous,’ Dicky persisted. ‘We’ve been through all this before, haven’t we?’
‘You bet we have,’ I said. A hard-nosed KGB man named Stinnes had come to us with a bag full of Spielmaterial, and everyone had taken it seriously. So seriously that MI5 sent a K-7 search and arrest team to pick Bret up. There is no telling what mischief would have been made, except that Bret escaped to Berlin and, helped and protected by Frank Harrington, we provoked a showdown.
I suppose Dicky guessed what was going through my mind. He said: ‘VERDI is the right one, Bernard. We’ve checked with the Americans: they aren’t negotiating with him, and they are not going to. We’ll share him with the Yanks. Believe me, he’s what we want and he’s ready to roll our way.’