by Len Deighton
Werner picked up one of the dishes, still half-filled with chicken curry, and was about to follow her into the kitchen and help her. I took his sleeve and shook my head. He sat down again and sipped some beer.
When Fiona returned she was icily composed and seemed completely recovered. She sat down and asked Werner how he liked living in Zurich, and how early the powder snow was deep enough on the slopes. And eventually Fiona went to bed and left us to drink beer and talk.
‘I think old man Fedosov has probably been marked for years,’ I said.
‘By their people?’
‘Yes. You know how they work, Werner. They don’t vet their people and give them a clean bill of health, the way our Internal Security does it. I heard VERDI say there’d been a KGB report on the old man, dating back to my dad’s time. A serious report about betraying the State, not a complaint from the neighbours about playing the radio too loud. You know what that means, Werner. They will check him and double-check him. They’ll do it again and again and again, for ever. When a suspect comes out of their vetting process with a clean bill of health, they just figure the investigators didn’t try hard enough.’
‘Would that affect us?’
‘It might, if we brought them out together. Or even if the old man tried to cross the Wall alone and some suspicious Grepo checked the records and found VERDI was already in the West.’
‘You think they would stop the old man crossing?’
‘Of course they would. But that’s the least of our problems. They can throw the old bastard into solitary in the Lubyanka and let him rot for all I care. But if they arrest the old man they might blow the whistle on VERDI too soon, and that would screw up the whole operation.’
‘And VERDI wouldn’t like it,’ said Werner.
‘Yes,’ I said irritably. ‘And VERDI wouldn’t like it.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘I’ve nothing very clever to suggest, but let’s bring the old man through a different checkpoint at exactly the same time. And let’s take the old man to France or Belgium or somewhere. And maybe make it all very conspicuous.’
Werner said: ‘You don’t think the old man might be reporting on his own son?’
‘The old man is a devoted Stalinist, but has a crucifix on his wall. Forget the fact that he sold out to my dad during the airlift. It’s the lifetime of indoctrination that wins out in these cases, you know that, Werner.’
‘And make it conspicuous? How do I do that?’
‘There’s a kid I was with in the Magdeburg fiasco. Get him to hold hands with the old man, and bring him through.’
‘He’s a cantankerous old devil.’
‘And the kid is straight out of the training school and looking for action,’ I said. ‘They’ll be conspicuous all right. Just stay well clear of them.’
‘Could I have that last little bit of chicken korma?’
I collected together the left-overs, went into the kitchen and stacked them in the microwave. Werner followed me and watched. ‘I didn’t know you liked curry so much,’ I said.
‘The Indian food in Berlin is Sri Lanka style – too hot for me,’ said Werner. The oven squealed. He scraped the various curries, and the rice, on to his plate and we went back to the dining-room.
‘The samosas go hard in the micro,’ pronounced Werner, savouring a bite from a pastry. ‘But the nan bread is just fine. Sure you don’t want some?’
‘A little curry goes a long way for me,’ I said, declining it.
When Werner had consumed the final morsels of curry he sat back, filled and satisfied, and looked at me. I could see by the nervous way he moved his lips and fidgeted with his glass of beer that there was something serious still to come: ‘You must take into account the tremendous post-traumatic shock she has had,’ he said.
‘I don’t speak psycho-babble, Werner. You’d better tell me in plain English.’
‘You heard what Fiona was saying. She was in East Berlin long enough to develop strong feelings of friendship and loyalty. That old German fellow is on her conscience. When she was wrenched away, at very short notice, there was probably the guilt of the betrayer to add to all the natural anxieties she had about the risks she was running. About being caught and facing trial as a spy.’
‘Go on, Dr Volkmann. Have you been working on this thesis for a long time, or are you just making it up as you go along?’
‘You’re a pitiless bastard, Bernard. You’re my best friend, and my oldest friend. But you are a hard-hearted pig.’
‘I said, go on.’
‘A sort of Doppelgänger! My God, she must have suffered.’
‘She’s not the only one who went over there, Werner.’
‘But Fiona had no experience of field work, Bernard. Can you imagine how she must have felt all the time she was working there? And then, in that terrible state of terror … when she’s being brought out to that damned Autobahn site, she has to watch you killing people she knows. Then she sees her sister shot dead, and even gets spattered with blood.’ He looked at me as if expecting me to deny it; I made no response. ‘You told me you wiped spots of blood off her face before driving through the checkpoint, just in case one of the guards noticed it. I mean …’ He stopped and caught his breath, agitated and distressed, as if it had all happened to him.
‘Okay, Werner. Do you think I haven’t thought about it? Not once; a thousand times. But what are you telling me to do?’
‘I’m telling you to give her a chance. She needs help, Bernard.’
‘She’s getting better.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. But if you think – or she thinks – that she’s ever going to recover from that experience you can think again. She’ll come to terms with what happened, but she will never forget it or recover. I wish I could make you understand that. She won’t get well. Stop waiting for something that will never happen.’
‘Up to a point I suppose you are right, Werner,’ I said. It was a depressing thing to hear, and desperately hateful to believe, and as soon as it was uttered I pushed it back into the recesses of my mind.
‘At present, Bernard, her emotions are totally confused. She has to sort out her thoughts and memories and emotions. Some of them she will repress for ever. Maybe that’s just as well. But what you must realize is that as she becomes adjusted, she will transfer her misery to some other person.’
‘Why?’
‘She needs a scapegoat. She’ll blame someone. That’s how she will recover her balance and adjust to normal life.’
‘Me? Blame me?’
‘The Department? George Kosinski? Dicky for taking Tessa to Berlin? I don’t know. Such things don’t follow logic. She just needs someone to blame. Don’t make it so easy for her to choose you as that scapegoat.’
‘You mean help her blame the Department?’ I said.
‘I suspect she’s on the way to doing that already,’ said Werner.
20
Werner went back to Berlin and began making all the arrangements for VERDI to come to London. I worked hard and soon cleared up the greater part of the backlog of work that Dicky had dumped upon me. On Wednesday, taking Bret at his word, I went off to visit the children in the depths of Surrey’s stockbroker belt.
It started off as one of those beautiful winter days when the sky is almost entirely blue, with just a few scratches of cloud, and the wind is no more than is needed to make the bare trees tremble. Wednesday was the children’s half-day at school, so I picked them up at noon and took them out for lunch at a fish and chip shop in the village. But by the time we got there grey misty cloud was speeding across the sky.
‘Grandad doesn’t like fish and chips,’ said Sally. We were enjoying the English working man’s traditional meal: fried fish in batter, fried potatoes, pickled onions, bread and butter, and hot milky tea. As a child, and coming from Germany, I’d found it a curious meal. But it was what my father liked best to eat whenever he visited England, and I grew fond of it too, although the fearsomely acid p
ickled onion was something I still denied myself.
‘Grandpa says fish and chips is common,’ said Billy.
‘But look at what they’ve done to this place in the last few months,’ I said. ‘They even have printed menus, and the new sign outside says “Fish Restaurant”.’ We’d often called in here for a take-away supper on the way back from visits to their grandparents. Not so long ago it had been called a ‘fish and chip shop’, with scrubbed wood counters and bench seats, linoleum on the floor, and the take-away orders came wrapped in newspaper.
‘I liked it the old way,’ said Billy. We always tried to get a table near the window so that we could keep an eye on the car, and on predatory traffic wardens.
‘No,’ said Sally. ‘It’s nicer now, with the red check tablecloths, and the waitress wearing a proper apron.’
‘She’s not a real waitress,’ said Billy. ‘She was always here. The man at the fryer calls her Mum.’
‘You’ll wind up a detective,’ I said.
‘I’m going to be a museum curator.’
This was an entirely new ambition. ‘Why?’ I asked him.
‘You just look after things,’ explained Billy, as if he’d penetrated a closely guarded secret of the museum trade, as well he might have. ‘And no one would know they weren’t yours. You could probably even take things home for a day or two.’
‘What sort of museum?’
‘I’m thinking about that,’ he said. ‘Probably guns. A gun museum.’
‘There’s no such thing as a gun museum,’ said Sally.
‘Of course there is, silly Sally.’
‘Don’t call me silly Sally. There isn’t, is there, Daddy?’
‘Not many,’ I said judiciously.
‘I hate guns,’ said Sally. ‘Why do we have to have guns, Daddy? Why don’t they make them against the law?’
‘So that we can shoot bad people,’ Billy said.
‘Do you shoot bad people, Daddy?’ Sally asked me.
Although they went on eating their meal with care and attention, I knew they were both watching me. I had a feeling they’d discussed it. ‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘Policemen do that.’
‘I told you,’ Sally said to Billy. To me she said: ‘Billy said you’ve shot lots of people. You haven’t, have you, Daddy?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d be no good for anything like that: I’d be afraid of the bangs. Would anyone like to eat my chips?’
‘Billy would,’ said Sally.
‘Grandad is going to take me shooting rabbits,’ said Billy. ‘He’s got a lot of guns; he even has a gun-room. I don’t mind bangs.’ He helped himself to my fried potatoes. ‘Or a museum of cars. Then I could drive them home at night.’
‘Cars are better,’ I said. What kind of business were we in, when lying to our children was mandatory? One day I would sit them both down and explain everything, but with average luck I’d be hit by a truck before that day arrived.
After lunch we braved the misty rain and walked across the North Downs. It’s impressive countryside, with Stane Street, forts and camps, and other remains of the Roman occupiers if you know where to look. Luckily most of them had been visited by the children with parties from school, so they were able to put me back on the right trail whenever I was about to go astray. In the more delicate matter of correcting the mistakes I made about the history of Roman Britain they were more tactful.
By the time I returned them to my parents-in-law they were both tired out, and so was I. On the way back, by Sally’s special request, we bought currant buns at the baker’s. After we’d all eaten toasted buns and tea, in front of the open fire with Grandma, they came out to see me get in my car to drive home. I was driving a Volvo that the Department had authorized as a purchase compatible with my grade and rank. Billy admired it and was already making a list of which cars he’d have in his museum. But when I kissed them goodbye, Sally smiled at Billy’s museum plans and told me: ‘Cars are better than guns.’
I simply said yes and let it go, but as I was driving back to London, listening to Mozart piano concertos on the tape player, I had the uneasy feeling that Sally – younger than Billy but more perceptive, more cynical and more demanding, in the way that second children so often are – had seen through my fibs in the fish restaurant.
Early on Friday morning, old man Fedosov and the kid went through to West Berlin without incident. They drove to the airport and took a plane to Paris. At the same time, synchronizing their movements carefully, Werner collected VERDI at Checkpoint Charlie. They flew from Berlin to Cologne and then took an air taxi to Gatwick airport.
Dicky Cruyer and I met them at Gatwick, having arranged that the Customs and Immigration formalities for Werner and his charge would be minimal. He did well, for the formalities were done inside the plane and Dicky took the car through to the ‘air side’ and close to the aircraft where we waited for them to emerge.
‘You can’t use Berwick House,’ said Dicky while we sat there in the car waiting for them. ‘You got the message I sent?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘When did you send it?’ I had difficulty keeping my voice level. I was furious that he should have been sitting alongside me for nearly half an hour before bothering to mention it.
‘I asked Jenni to tell you,’ he said vaguely. I knew he’d done nothing of the kind. I knew it was something that had totally slipped his mind until this very moment.
‘We need Berwick House,’ I said. The Berwick House compound consisted of seven acres of ground with a high wall around it, and armed guards and anti-intruder devices. There was no better place to put people like VERDI who had to be kept hidden and secure.
‘It’s closed down. No one is using it,’ said Dicky.
‘Why? When?’
‘It’s closed while they take the asbestos out of the ceilings or something.’
‘Jesus Christ, Dicky. I can’t believe it. Taking the asbestos out of it? What are we using in its stead?’
‘Don’t throw a tantrum, Bernard, it’s not my doing. It’s the “Works and Bricks” schedule. There’s nowhere much like it these days, I’m afraid.’
‘Where the hell are you going to put him?’
‘The decision … the final decision that is … must be yours. But I’ve left instructions that your party should have exclusive use of the Notting Hill Gate safe house. I’ve arranged for a team to watch the front and rear entrances. You’ll be safe enough there.’
‘When is someone going to hear and understand what I keep saying over and over? The Notting Hill pad is compromised. They’ve even been using it for overnight stays by out-of-town visitors. You know as well as I do that it’s a place that junior staff take their tarts for an afternoon. It’s not safe and it’s not secret.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Dicky. ‘I know no such thing. About … Who takes tarts there?’
‘Then you must be comatose, Dicky. Haven’t you noticed that when the key is needed, there are all sorts of worried looks and internal telephone calls and red-faced people running around the building to find it?’
‘No, I haven’t. I mean, that’s pretty circumstantial, isn’t it? It doesn’t prove it’s being used by staff to shack up.’
‘I don’t want to argue with you, Dicky. But Notting Hill was never a proper safe house, just a “Home Office notified premises”. How can you think that’s a secure premises to hide, house and protect someone like VERDI?’
‘Where do you want to take him?’ said Dicky. Some of the swagger had gone out of him as he began to see how right I was.
‘It will have to do for tonight. But for God’s sake get on the phone tomorrow and find somewhere properly protected to put him. The police or the army must have secure premises.’
‘Do the junior staff really use it as a place to take their girls?’
‘Ask Jenni-with-an-i,’ I told him.
He looked at me to see if I was joshing him. ‘You are a shit-stirrer, Bernard,’ he said, not without a note of admi
ration in his voice.
So I took Werner and VERDI to the Notting Hill Gate safe house. Someone had given it a very thorough cleaning job since my previous visit. The thing that really annoyed me about Dicky’s stupidity was that deprived of the guards and domestic staff that were routine facilities at Berwick House, I would have to stay with Werner overnight. We would need two of us. There would have to be someone awake at all times to keep an eye on things while VERDI slept. Even if VERDI was being very cooperative we couldn’t run the risk of him walking out of the door and disappearing into the busy streets of central London.
I called Fiona on the car phone and left a message to say that Dicky had assigned me an overnight job and that I would see her the following day at the office. It was vague, but Fiona would easily guess what was happening from that message. And if she didn’t, she could check with Dicky.
‘Look at this, Bernard. And this is just the beginning,’ said Werner. Across the plastic-topped counter in the kitchen Werner was spreading out some of the material VERDI had brought out with him. ‘Tessa Kosinski,’ said Werner.
The fluorescent lights set in the work-counter shone down upon a set of large glossy black and white photographs. Brightly lit, a badly burned corpse was laid out on a mortuary slab. A close-up of the head frontal view, and another in profile, close-ups of the hands and views during the dissection.
‘An army post-mortem?’ said Werner.
‘Yes, they have the best pathologists,’ said VERDI, who was standing behind Werner drinking whisky. ‘You must read the post-mortem and the coroner’s report.’ There were half a dozen pages; closely typed sheets of the usual sort. But the photocopies were poor and it was not easy to decipher the text.
‘What was the verdict?’ I asked.
‘Not burning.’ Still clasping his tumbler of whisky, VERDI shuffled through the pages to find what he wanted in the report. ‘No smoke or traces of carbon in the trachea or the lungs.’ He put his finger on the paragraph. ‘There it is – death was caused by gunshot wounds. A 12-gauge shotgun was used at close range. Lead shot remained in the body … buckshot: large pellet buckshot … lots of pellets.’