by Len Deighton
‘So VERDI came here?’
‘It’s the rule isn’t it? The first contact must be on home ground?’
‘What do you want me to say, Werner? Do you want me to ask you to lecture at the training school or would writing an instruction manual be enough?’
‘VERDI came here to West Berlin. I showed him the written enrolment contract that Dicky sent to me. VERDI locked himself into a room the Russian Army keep for the soldiers who guard the memorial, and read it carefully three hundred times. I sat outside in the car and got a chill.’
‘And he agreed?’
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘So you’ll set up a network?’
Werner gave a mirthless little snort. ‘Set up a network? How would I do that?’
‘Isn’t that what Dicky wants?’
‘It’s early days. Let’s see what VERDI can provide.’
‘I thought Dicky was in a hurry,’ I said.
‘Yes, he is,’ said Werner cryptically.
‘What did the contract offer?’
‘It was a contract – a sealed pack.’
‘But what did it say?’ I persisted.
‘Dicky said I was just to be a messenger. He said it was safer for me personally to stay at arm’s length from the deal. VERDI doesn’t know that I’m the one who is supposed to set up the channel to handle his material. No danger of VERDI expecting answers to his questions if I am just the messenger.’
‘So what was in the contract?’
‘I thought I’d better have a quick look through it,’ he admitted, shifting uneasily. ‘You won’t say anything in London?’
‘You know me, Werner. I’ll go back there and tell Dicky everything you say. I’ve already promised him to have your room bugged.’
‘The usual contract,’ said Werner, and gave me an uneasy smile. He wouldn’t budge. He didn’t believe I would spy on him but simply hearing me say it was enough to have him give all his attention to picking imaginary cotton threads from his dark shirt.
I watched him for a moment and then I said: ‘I used to know someone named Werner Volkmann. A nice kid: four beats to a bar. Maybe not always straight and level but I knew his rate-one turns would have just enough bank and rudder. Do you see anything of that kid nowadays?’
‘What do you want from me, Bernd?’ I was Bernd now; no longer Bernie.
‘You’ve changed,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where I am with you any more. Back in the old days you would never have told me not to go back to Dicky and spill anything you told me. We were partners. So what’s the deal nowadays? What did I do, Werner? Or what did you do?’
‘Zena was reporting on me. Reporting back to London.’ So it hurt that much.
‘So she told me.’
‘On me!’ he said. I obviously had not reacted energetically enough to his cry of pain. I scowled. ‘Checking on me while I was living with her,’ he added, just to make it clear.
‘I got it, Werner. So how does that have any bearing on why you won’t tell me what was in VERDI’s contract?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me what Zena was up to? Did you think it was smart to play with me like that?’
‘Come along, Werner, you don’t think I knew that she was on the payroll? London doesn’t tell me things like that.’
‘You’re one of them.’
‘One of what?’
He shrugged. ‘You’re British; I’m German.’
‘Go and take a cold shower, Werner. Then come back and tell me what was in that contract.’
‘Why?’
‘Because tomorrow I’m going over there to talk to VERDI’s dad.’
His eyes fixed on mine as his brain searched rapidly through the computer. ‘Yes, I heard the old man was still alive. Is he still in Pankow?’
‘Sure to be. You don’t move out of one of those pension houses in Pankow. Not when the alternative is living in an unheated barracks in Moscow. None of the Russians want to go back.’
‘Watch your step with him,’ Werner said. ‘He’s sure to be a believer of the old school.’
‘He was on the payroll. Our payroll. Do you know that, Werner?’ I could see that I’d surprised him, despite his trying to hide it. ‘Dad paid him right through the Berlin airlift. Wonderful stuff about the Soviet estimates. Dad was running him personally.’
‘That explains a number of things.’
‘For instance?’
‘Those gold sovereigns we took to Zurich – remember?’
‘No, Werner. That was years and years afterwards. We were only kids at the time of the airlift.’
‘Your dad wouldn’t let a contact like that go cold. How many agents did your father run? Run personally, I mean? I’ll bet your dad kept paying him. I’ll bet the monthly payments we used to make to Madame Xavier were a Swiss bank account for him.’
I’d never thought of that. ‘It’s possible,’ I agreed finally.
‘Madame Xavier,’ he repeated.
‘Maybe.’
‘You thought your dad had a woman over there,’ said Werner. ‘You thought Madame Xavier was his fancy woman.’
‘I never did.’
‘You never said it; but that’s what you thought. Admit it, Bernd.’
‘It crossed my mind.’
‘VERDI’s old man is probably still living on the money he earned from your dad. Things are tough for Russian army pensioners these days. Even the Guards regiments are weeks and weeks behind with their pay. A few Swiss francs would go a long way over there.’
‘I’m going to see what I can get out of the old man, Werner. But I need to know what it’s all about. Does VERDI’s contract provide for him to come over here to live? And if so, when? Or is Dicky going to keep him over there as long as possible? Is the old man coming over too? Or is the whole thing bullshit – just one of Dicky’s dreams?’
‘Reading the ashes of that contract Dicky offered him won’t help you figure out any of that.’
‘He didn’t keep it?’
‘He burned it.’
‘Is he on the level?’
‘If he goes through with it, his people will spend a lot of time and trouble trying to find him and kill him,’ said Werner. ‘They would have to. If he got away with a big one like this, others would try.’
‘Perhaps we both have spent too much time with devious people, Werner. I almost feel sorry for VERDI trying to decide which way to jump.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for VERDI,’ said Werner feelingly. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work and always has been. You know that. And you’re his meal-ticket.’
‘You said you didn’t think he would come over to us.’
‘No, I said his people will seek him out to kill him. But that won’t stop a man like VERDI. He’ll ignore Dicky’s contract. He’ll wait for you to make contact and then he’ll start the real bargaining.’
I sighed. What a prospect. ‘And his father? Is he a part of the deal?’
‘He must be a hundred years old. Forget about the old man. Watch out for VERDI. He’s not the same greasy little thug we used to know, Bernard, hanging around in the Polizeipräsidium with his hands in his pockets and nothing to do. He’s been to the Military Diplomatic Academy and spent some years behind an Area Desk before being transferred to the Stasi. He’s acquired a polished arrogance you’ll never believe.’
‘But isn’t he a codes and ciphers man?’
‘He was, and that’s why Dicky needs him, but since going to the Stasi he’s a big shot. All the Russian-trained senior staff are big shots.’
‘Do we know why he moved to the Stasi? Wasn’t he better off with the KGB?’
‘Who said he volunteered? They always get rid of them, Bernard. Even the Volga Germans are not permitted to serve in Germany, lest they become too pally with the locals. Having a German mother put VERDI in that same doubtful category. If he volunteered to move, it was only because he knew he would never get the papakha in the KGB.’ The papakha was the peaked hat with the oversize top that
is worn by Soviet colonels and above. It sounded right, and Werner had an instinct that I always trusted.
We sat there in that dark room watching the sun go down. Berlin was cold, as cold and grey as only Berlin can be. There was not a breath of wind, and the unusual calm added to the strange unreality. Summer had gone but winter had not arrived.
Strangers who hated the city complained about the wide streets and the larger-than-life stone apartment blocks that dwarfed the people below. And on days like this even Berlin’s most loyal inhabitants were tempted to ponder ways to escape. The sun was low, its last rays dribbled down the top of the next apartment house like rich German mustard on a boarding-house dumpling. The trees were bare, and on Tante Lisl’s cherished rose-bushes just one large white bloom survived: brown-streaked with frost, and drooping, it hung by a thread. ‘But I’ll see the father too,’ I said, breaking a long silence.
Werner seemed not to have heard: ‘Remember the days when hotel staff over there turned away tips, haughtily telling us that that was not the way things were done in their new socialist State? Remember when they were all so proud and condescending? Remember when spying was done by patriots? That’s not so long ago, Bernie. Now those same bastards will sell their own mother for a Black and Decker power drill and a Rolling Stones album. It’s dog eat dog and getting worse every day.’ I could only just see him in the darkness but I knew he’d turned to look at me. Perhaps I wasn’t registering the appropriate rage. My capacity to hate VERDI was limited. He had after all let me get away at a time when there was an arrest-on-sight order on his desk. Even being thrown off the Warsaw–Berlin Express was better than what was waiting for me at journey’s end. ‘Why are you doing this anyway?’ Werner said, and sighed.
‘For Dicky.’
‘For Dicky,’ said Werner scornfully.
‘I’m not in a position to argue with London Central,’ I said. ‘And Fiona thinks that tapping into their records will tell us what happened that night Tessa was killed.’
‘You were there, weren’t you?’
‘I was there on the Autobahn,’ I admitted. ‘We were at a section of road that was being rebuilt. It was staked out. It was dark and the rain was bucketing down. And all I could think about was getting Fiona out of there in one piece. So I don’t know what happened. Not what really happened.’
‘You’re in one piece, and so is Fiona,’ said Werner. ‘Does it matter what really happened?’
‘I’d like to sort it out, Werner. I’d like to have an explanation that eased Fiona’s mind.’
‘Let it go, Bernard. Just do your duty the way the book says. Screw it all up. Invite VERDI over here and say hello to him and make sure he doesn’t like the offer. Let him say whatever he wants to say but then forget it. Scribble one of your famous reports that take five pages to say nothing. And go back to London and tell Dicky that it won’t work. Dicky will believe you. And I’ll back you up one hundred per cent.’ I knew he was pulling the funny face that he kept for situations very serious. ‘This is heap bad medicine, pale-face.’
‘Fiona and George Kosinski … they won’t let it go, Werner. They loved Tessa – I did myself. She’s my family in a way. And bereaved families won’t let go until they are satisfied. People are like that when they lose a relative; somehow it brings them a crumb of comfort to know who did it and why.’ Werner nodded. No need to tell a Jewish Berliner that about the mysterious deaths of relatives, but I could see he hadn’t given up on persuading me to drop it. I wondered if he had some motive that I wasn’t party to. ‘It’s better to get it sorted out,’ I said.
‘You know best, I suppose. And you’ve got to live with the family.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’m pleased it’s all worked out for you,’ Werner said. He was almost back to being the old Werner now. ‘I hear Fiona is looking beautiful and working in London Central.’
‘Yes, and the children are coming home in a week or so.’
‘And you have a new home.’
‘The Kosinski apartment in Mayfair; furnished with antiques and deep pile carpets. It’s like a museum. Fiona just wallows in the luxury of it. I could never have done anything like it out of my salary.’
‘And you are comfortable there too?’
‘It’s spectacular, it’s London and I can walk to work.’
‘So life is perfect?’
‘Except that I love Gloria.’ I couldn’t believe that I’d said it. I was saying to Werner something I’d not even admitted to myself.
Werner looked at me and said nothing for a long time. Perhaps he was wondering if he’d heard aright, or he was waiting for me to retract this admission. ‘Have you told Gloria that?’ he said eventually.
‘No.’
‘Fiona?’
‘Of course not.’
‘So why tell me?’ said Werner, as if he didn’t want to be burdened by my secrets.
‘Because I felt that if I didn’t tell someone soon I would turn into a frog.’
‘A prince,’ said Werner. ‘You’re already a frog.’ He was making light of it while he wrestled with the implications. The sun had finally disappeared now. The street outside was dark, Werner only the faintest shadow against a glimmer of light that was coming from somewhere down the hall. Tante Lisl’s ugly old clock struck the hour. I wondered how she ever got a full night’s sleep with that chiming all the time. ‘I’m sorry, Bernie,’ he said finally. He coughed and turned his head as if avoiding my eyes. Werner had been through all this with Zena and Ingrid. He knew the implications. ‘When I saw you together – you and Gloria …’ He stopped. I’ll never know what he was about to say.
‘I suppose it will pass,’ I said. ‘I hear that everything passes in time: the pain of love, death, failure, humiliation, hatred, bereavement … the pain of everything fades eventually.’
‘No,’ said Werner.
‘Becomes an endurable ache.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Werner.
‘But is it fair to Fiona?’ I said to myself as much as to him. ‘I mean, suppose I make sure I never speak with Gloria again, and smile a lot and make like a loving husband and perfect father? Is that enough?’
‘Is this a rhetorical question, or are you going to sit there looking at me and expecting an answer?’
‘Tell me, Werner.’
‘Who am I to advise anyone?’ Werner said calmly. ‘Zena drives me crazy. She spied on me. I’m beginning to wonder if she didn’t get me kicked out of Berlin. She thinks of nothing but money. You think she’s a bitch; maybe she is, but I can’t live without her. What do you want me to tell you? You’ll do what you have to do. There is no such thing as decision-making, that’s just a gimmick the gods provide to refine and add to the torment.’
‘I know that old man Fedosov is the key to it.’
‘You mean you have a hunch?’
‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’
‘Your hunches have been wrong before, Bernie. Let me come with you tomorrow.’
‘No. I might need you here.’
‘Okay. Anything else?’
‘Yes. Would you by any chance still have the keys to the bar, Werner?’ I said.
14
Whatever trauma may have been troubling the deeper recesses of the collective communist mind in the Politburo, it did not mean that the gun-toting bureaucrats manning the frontier were any less obnoxious. It might even be felt that the contrary was true; that the more that Gorbachev conceded to the restless masses of the USSR the more vicious became the stranglehold that East Germany’s communist dictatorship exerted upon its long-suffering proletarians.
I travelled to East Berlin by train, alighting at Friedrichstrasse station in the hope that the crowded concourse would mean faster processing through the control point there. I should have known better. The grey-faced men of the Grepo were at their most obdurate, sitting behind the bullet-proof glass, examining every passport and travel document as if they were learning to read. In the baggage hall bodies and b
ags were examined with the same malevolent scowl. I stood in the long line of passive travellers and waited my turn.
The railway station was a huge glasshouse on stilts with the trains echoing through it on their way around town on elevated tracks. It was all just as magical as it had been when I was a child, its glass-filled metalwork curving high into the grey sky above. But you were never alone on Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. Here was the Kafka show as Busby Berkeley might have staged it. Dancing their slow ballet on walkways high in the air, a grim chorus line was silhouetted against the grey light of the sky, twirling sniper rifles and machine pistols and staring down at us menacingly.
It was bitterly cold that day, and the wind came through the station like a blast through a wind-tunnel. I couldn’t help reminding myself how quickly and conveniently an army car would have taken me through Checkpoint Charlie. As an officer of the ‘occupying power’ I would not have been subject to the prying fingers and hard-eyed hatred of the Grepos.
But in a car marked with all the trappings of the British Army I’d have been conspicuous. They would have picked me up as I went through. And, with those abundant facilities always provided to East German secret policemen, they would have followed me wherever I went, difficult to detect and even more difficult to throw off.
So I lined up on the cold platform and waited my turn to go across as Peter Hesse, construction company’s site-clerk and native of Hanover. It was an identity I’d used before. There was back-up from a builder’s merchant in Düsseldorf and an address where the residents were ready to swear that Peter Hesse was their neighbour.
Once outside in the dirty Berlin air, I breathed freely again. Friedrichstrasse was busy with buses and bicycles and cars – some of them stinking and noisy with their rattling two-stroke engines. Friedrichstrasse station has always been the very centre of old Berlin; what the Westies called Stadtmitte, and the Ossis called the Zentrum. It was a popular crossing point, and always busy with Vopo cops and soldiers and the Grepo border police.
Back in the Twenties Friedrichstrasse was the busiest street in the city, its commercial centre and entertainment section too. Here some of Berlin’s famous old theatres – the Wintergarten, the Apollo, the Metropol and the Admiralspalast – had provided the most outrageous entertainment in the whole outrageous city. Fight your way through the grotesquely painted hookers that crowded these streets, and, for the price of a drink, you could have seen Richard Tauber sing ‘Dein ist mein ganzes Herz’ or watched a youthful Marlene Dietrich croon ‘Naughty Lola’. In those days the songs of the cabaret had been biting, topical and wicked, and in the audiences could be spotted everyone from Brecht to Alfred Döblin; from Walter Gropius to Arnold Schönberg. This was the Berlin you read about in the history books.