Orders in the vocabulary of the Gestapo filled the air at the Pullach gate. McEwen closed his eyes. One would think, he thought, they would recognize him by now. But no, papers were checked before the gate opened. The system functioned, but only barely, he concluded. If opening a gate took time, imagine how the rest was functioning. As the car moved deep into the complex, he rehearsed his opening remarks. Read the Jahn columns, Alexander? Bozodom! Close to the bone, don’t you think? Is it around? Lurking? Do you expect the latest Constitution will be up to handling it – you know – in the event there’s another outbreak?
McEwen imagined Graf Bornhof’s silky reply in an outrageously perfect Oxford accent. His face went askew. It became so contorted that the chauffeur, examining him in the mirror, momentarily thought the passenger was going into a seizure. But the fit passed. Waiting in the silence of the meeting room McEwen closed his eyes. From long experience he knew it would be more effective if rage didn’t show.
“Randolph, I am terribly pleased to see you!” Graf Bornhof entered with companionable energy. “Short notice, I know. Had a good flight?” He held out one hand and placed the other on McEwen’s shoulder to welcome a colleague, a partner, a friend.
“A trifle bumpy on the way down, Alex. But charming otherwise. I was wonderfully entertained.”
“Really? Tell me. Sit down. Sit down. You do look well.”
“Just us two today?”
“Indeed. We’re off record, Randolph. Gives us a chance to talk as friends.”
“Jolly good. How’s Anne?”
“In the UK at the moment. Family visit plus some research. Well, I’m in suspense. You are a bachelor. Who was beside you on the airplane?”
“I can’t recall actually. I entertained myself. I skimmed through the Jahn columns. Part of the landscape for our case. I’m sure your people have made a detailed analysis. Have you read them?”
The graf shook his head. “I have read of them. How shall I put it? Not flattering, I suppose, the whole subject.”
“Quite right. An unflattering century. We have an expression, Alex. Call a spade a spade. I think she did that. Courageous girl. Most commendable.” McEwen’s hands, finger tips touching, were held just beneath his chin. Smirking like an oil sheik, he gazed at Graf Bornhof over his half glasses. “She has little good to say about the brown shirts. And the red socks don’t fare much better. Anything comparable on the horizon today? What’s your view? Green shorts perhaps?”
Graf Bornhof adopted a wholesome smile. “Your sense of humour, Randolph. It reminds me of Anne’s brother. Why can’t more people have it? I was referring to commentators not having much positive to say about her. One of them suggested she engages in a populist form of journalism unbecoming for a serious paper. Another said she doesn’t go deep enough and her style has perhaps too much innuendo. One of my colleagues claims she’s just another whining Ossi. I personally don’t know. I stay away from the media.” The graf with his intelligent eyes looked steadily at McEwen.
“You ought to pay attention to the Ossis, Alex. Frontier people. Impulses from the frontier always stir up established power centres. We have experience with that over several centuries, I can tell you. Still, a number of interesting suggestions emerge in her columns. The Steamroller notion. Something I would worry about. People who feel pushed around react unpredictably.”
“But Randolph,” Graf Bornhof said soothingly, reaching for a thermos of coffee, “we’re sending two hundred billion marks –billion, Randolph – their way each year. Forty years of development are being squeezed into perhaps five. I wouldn’t call that a Steamroller. Cash Dispenser would be better. Coffee? White?” He placed a cup and saucer before McEwen and poured slowly.
“My reading of the columns is different, Alex. Something is unsettling on the left.”
“Not unsettling so much as still settling out. Former apparatchiks have little to do but preach nostalgia. That will fizzle. Personally, I would be more worried about the right. It is scarcely possible to overestimate the danger there.”
McEwen gave a short, high-pitched laugh, a kind of squeal. “That’s in the columns too. Bozodom !” He took out a handkerchief to blow his nose. “She seems to think the German tribe needs an intrusive state apparatus. She argues one exists today. Could it be your constitution is nothing more than a pretty wrapping hiding that?” McEwen took off his glasses and held them up to the light to see if they needed a polish.
“We can be a little top heavy,” agreed Graf Bornhof pleasantly. “But the second half of the century is different from the first. Our constitution is the divide.”
“That is most reassuring.” McEwen began to wipe his glasses with the lower part of his tie. “Yes, well, Gundula Jahn. We both know she is part of something nasty. Fine writer, I think, but not so expert at the other things.” McEwen’s voice changed. “What’s your cover name for the operation, Alex?” he said coldly. “I thought of Sherwood Forest – you know, all three of them, Robin Hood, Maid Marian and Little John. How ought we to manage it? Have your people thought of timing?”
“I’m sorry, Randolph. You’ve left me,” a mystified Graf Bornhof said. “I don’t recall an operation called Sherwood Forest in your case files.”
“The twenty-four-seven operation. The consul in Berlin.” McEwen said impatiently. “We are to deal with the results, informally, off-the-record. Correct?”
“Yes. Of course. I am sorry. I wasn’t quite sure what you meant.”
“You are keeping me on edge, Alex. What is the news? I presume it is good.”
Graf Bornhof opened a thin binder. “I believe so, Randolph. The enforcers went in. An expensive operation.” Graf Bornhof looked at the top page of the report. Six people, three weeks. A considerable amount of overtime. But worth it, I suppose. Consul Hanbury is clean. We’re very pleased. It restored our confidence in diplomats from the Commonwealth.”
The meta-diplomat sat passively. Some of the most sulphurous eggs in the world had been laid in the Commonwealth and if one person knew that, it was him. McEwen looked at Graf Bornhof. He looked at the binder. “May I have a peek?” he whispered. “Is everything there? Three weeks, did you say? Had we not agreed on two months?”
“I obtained approval for four weeks, but after three Cologne cut the operation. Zero yield. Missing a week of zero yield is not a loss,” he explained calmly. “Do have a look.” He pushed the binder towards McEwen.
McEwen regarded Bornhof’s slender binder with suspicion. Out of a jacket pocket he produced his notebook, then the stubby pencil. And from the secure briefcase with the scruffy corners emerged a thick folder held together with a ribbon. Resorting to a ritual developed over decades, he placed his folder methodically on the table to the side. As the muted cuckoo clock ticked, McEwen began paging with slow deliberation through Bornhof’s binder. The Graf silently observed. He watched his visitor turn the pages, forwards, backwards, forwards again, occasionally licking his pencil. Graf Bornhof left the room, returned and re-assumed his patient pose. McEwen, immersed in study, acknowledged neither departures nor arrivals, until at last he spoke.
“Well. Yes. Indeed.” He expelled a long breath of air. “Fascinating material. May I ask two or three tiny questions on mechanics?”
“Of course, Randolph.”
“Observations commenced on December 23. The consul is at work that day, has lunch with his staff and subsequently goes to Tegel Airport. No observations are made inside the terminal, but he emerges shortly afterwards with a woman.” McEwen’s voice was soft.
“That is correct.”
“I notice she is nowhere identified.”
“Indeed.”
“She spends three days and nights with the consul, shares his bed, then disappears as if from start to finish she was nothing but an apparition. Yet all the agents saw her. One of them managed, early one morning as I understand, to get a glimpse of her in full carnal integrity. Yet she could not be identified?” McEwen asked this genially, consulti
ng his notebook closely and flipping the binder in an exaggerated show of searching.
“That is correct,” repeated Graf Bornhof.
“Thank God, I suppose, that they were sure she was indeed a woman. I don’t see the passenger manifests of the incoming flights on December 23 in the binder.”
“On December 23, Randolph, in the afternoon, there were fifty-seven arriving flights in Berlin bringing in over eight thousand passengers. I know what you are thinking. A computer matching with passengers on departing flights on December 26 would narrow her down. But she didn’t leave by air. She departed by train.”
“Yes,” mused McEwen. “I did see a reference to a railway station. But I notice a departure is not confirmed. She was last seen emerging from a taxi next to Bahnhof Zoo. She was not sighted going into any train. She might have taken public transport to the airport. Was no computer match considered, just to be on the safe side? Excuse my pedantry. Let’s not stumble. Another tiny issue. Curious, don’t you think, how the consul and his concubine appear each morning, manage to escape surveillance early in the day, then reappear at home late at night. Might there have been a purpose to such controlled disappearing and appearing? Were they playing with enforcement? Do tell me the agents’ names. Maxi, Wolfi, possibly Heini?”
“It’s a big, busy, complicated city, Randolph,” said Graf Bornhof, gazing steadily at McEwen.
“To be sure, Alex. I live there.” McEwen looked tired, nearly apathetic. “Forgive me. I was being niggling. One last trifling question. The listening devices in the house. The dailies are remarkably empty. Only some fragments of conversation are transcribed. A technical problem?”
“Only partially. Consul Hanbury is a music lover, Randolph. The blanks show he was listening to music. It seems that’s mostly what he does.”
McEwen nodded his understanding. “They didn’t place the listening devices directionally, to minimize stereophonic interference? A standard element in the art.”
“Of course,” Graf Bornhof patiently replied. “But it seems he suddenly changed the furniture around and adjusted the direction of the speakers. As a result the music got aimed at the table lamp where the bug was placed.” The graf switched to a personal tone and lowered his voice. “Randolph, look at it from a different perspective. A woman arrives to spend Christmas with a man. They go sightseeing. They listen to music. They go to bed. They go for a winter walk in the forest. All of it normal. Most people at one time or another spend a few days like that. Haven’t you?”
McEwen nodded again, more wearily this time, not to agree that he once had his share of women who were casual about sex, but as a personal recognition that in Pullach things were far worse than he had imagined. His eyelids sank until they nearly shut. As on the train the previous day, he experienced a surge of empathy with the seeing eye of Gregor and the pertinent questions Gregor asked. Too bad, McEwen thought, that Gundula Jahn was part of Sherwood Forest. If she were clean –if only she were clean! – he would recruit her on the spot. He would arrange a short assignment. He saw it clearly. Place her strategically inside Pullach. Not that she would learn much that was useful, McEwen was sure of that. But it would provide good copy for more columns. She could publish another diary. My Errant Ways: by Uncle Teut. With a melancholy smile McEwen massaged one hand with the other, his habit for keeping rage bottled up. “Perhaps the consul is not quite as innocent as you think,” he said slowly. “I have taken a few facts down from your material, Alex. May I read them to you? I also have here a few facts of my own.” He patted the thick folder held together by a ribbon.
Graf Bornhof, without expression, nodded to McEwen.
“Fact one. The consul perceives he’s under observation almost from the moment it commences. Does he show he knows that? Does he panic? No. He has a textbook response. As I was trained. You too. Look at the dailies. Take any one, Alex. Let’s take day two on the Ku’damm. He and the woman stop walking. Here, read it.” McEwen pushed Graf Bornhof’s thin binder over. “He acts as a tourist but scans the scene without moving his head, as in Volume One, page one, of The Polished Agent – available in eighteen languages, including Russian. Evidently he knows Heini is on duty and wants a fix on Heini’s coordinates. Then comes evasive action, standard behaviour. Page two of the manual. Into the subway, onto a train, to the next station, into another train, out again as the doors close. Heini – poor Heini – is forced to take the rest of the day off. Beautifully described by Heini by the way. A succinct style of writing. Each day the consul finds a way to get beyond his prying eyes. Rather odd, I’d say. The simple question is, why?
“And let us have a peek at fragments of speech recorded in between symphonic sounds by Heini’s well-placed bugs.” McEwen consulted his notebook, then paged through the binder. “Ah, here we are. What words do we find?…nuclear weapon grade material…Russia… There’s a reference to a market too. Might the consul and his lady have been discussing business? Some deal on dangerous commodities? Russian plutonium perhaps? Oughtn’t that to be worth a moment or two of close attention?
“Next, we note the mystery lady is slightly coloured. A touch of Asian blood? Heini isn’t sure, although he lyrically describes the beauty of the unclothed form he observes one morning through a window. Which countries are interested in illicit plutonium, Alex? May I guess? Countries that produce sultry women inside lovely amber skins?”
Graf Bornhof sat without expression. In Pullach they had been through all this and drawn negative conclusions. He didn’t mind the sarcasm, nor the venom. He liked McEwen’s Englishness. His principal challenge, Graf knew, was to coax the old warrior into retirement, to convince him to begin it sooner. In The Lake District perhaps, or Kent, or the Cotswolds? The Cotswolds! Graf Bornhof loved the Cotswolds. He was younger than McEwen, though not by many years. He and Anne had made their retirement preparations. They had their Cotswolds cottage. Long walks after breakfast each day in the English countryside. The prospect inspired Bornhof. Why did McEwen not live in such happy anticipation? He was already a living legend. What drove the man? Why this lamentable insistence on breathing life into a stillborn case?
“That is in your binder, Alex,” McEwen summarized frostily. “It has no insight whether the dark lady came to buy or sell plutonium, but I know that. She came to acquire it. Would you be interested in knowing why I know that?”
Graf Bornhof continued to look at his guest with bemused kindness.
McEwen’s quick fingers then undid the ribbon. His voice became a little sharper, the movements of his hands a little crisper, as he pushed document upon document crammed full of facts towards Graf Bornhof, who examined a page here, a page there, stacking the documents neatly in a rising pile before him. “Sherwood Forest!” McEwen revealed with a flourish. “Let’s focus on Maid Marian first.” McEwen described how Gundula Jahn had been checked out by both Moscow and Kiev Stations and the resulting information was conclusive. “One of her former lovers, a certain Vassiliev – extract seven before you, Alex – manages a nuclear reprocessing plant in the Ukraine. He has plutonium coming out of his ears. It’s rather informative to read the letters he wrote her. Extract eight.” McEwen pointed at the impressive pile. “What an irony it is, Vassiliev writes,that we have great wealth all around us, but we can’t sell it to meet our needs. We are counting on your help. That, or something like it, is in several of the letters. Vassiliev wants Gundula to organize a sale. And since Gundula is on the sales side, we can conclude the Asian lady came to buy.”
Graf Bornhof flipped through the photocopied letters, stopping to read several. “Part Russian, part broken German, Randolph,” he said. “I read Russian. Do you? The references to commodities for sale sound more like a description of the local economy. Vassiliev may be meaning vegetables for all we know. Carrots. Turnips. It sounds to me he wants Germany to help them get a distribution system going.”
“Much too charitable, Alex,” McEwen countered. “Our responsibility is to think worst case scenarios. These
are clever people. They know how to lull authorities. Don’t fall into that trap.” Lines on the graf’s mouth tightened. He waited for the old man to go on.
McEwen was turning the pages of his notebook with more ceremony. “How far have we come? We have a seller of plutonium; we have a buyer. Missing only is a centre.” With scarcely concealed triumph he pushed a last document forwards. “This, Alex, is the centre.” A tolerant Graf Bornhof took a dozen, hand-written, stapled sheets, rifled through and placed them on the others. McEwen observed the disinterested nonchalance. “Then I shall tell you the contents.” He described a conversation overheard by one of his last spectators in East Berlin. “Picture Sherwood Forest, Alex, a dark place, a cellar in Prenzlauerberg. Who should be waiting there with open arms for Robin Hood and Maid Marian to come along? Little John is waiting. Do you remember Günther Rauch?”
“Quite well,” Graf Bornhof replied. He did not hide a first hint of irritation. “We checked him out. Not much there. A misguided, bitter Ossi who has a problem with the past, the present and the future. He is quite harmless.”
“You may not have checked with adequate thoroughness,” McEwen said coldly. “Knowing what transpired in that cellar would put most people on alert. There was a long political discussion with a great deal of love expressed for Marx. Marxists are bad at many things, but at one thing they excel. They know how to hijack constitutions. And Little John, I’m afraid, wants yours. He merely needs a little money. So Robin Hood comes onto the scene to help. Read what the consul says: A couple of phone calls and you’ll all be in power. It’s there, Alex, black on white. All one needs do is read it.”
But Graf Bornhof had become inscrutable. “Randolph,” he said quietly at last. “Randolph, really.”
McEwen turned one more page in his notebook. He was icy calm. “I shall summarize,” he said. “The consul is a lifelong Marxist – we know that from his Berlin student days. For years, he bides his time and develops wonderful cover. An opportunity to return comes just as his old friend Günther Rauch is planning a new left wing movement. All he needs is cash to get it going. The consul meanwhile has developed exquisite connections to the international nuclear weapons scene through his work on disarmament issues. He is informed Gundula Jahn will be the go-between. He looks her up under the guise of routine diplomacy. He knows the buyers too. A mystery lady comes to talk business. If the consul brokers a deal, Günther Rauch’s finances will be secure forever.” The meta-diplomat pushed what was left of his folder, an empty shell, towards Graf Bornhof and as an afterthought flicked him the ribbon through the air. “Sherwood Forest. Time to send the bailiff in.”
The Berlin Assignment Page 35