Spy Hook

by Len Deighton

  The taller buildings around the shanty-town of huts that is Checkpoint Charlie give the feeling of being in an arena. So do the banners and the slogans. But the bellicose themes have gone. It is a time of retrenchment. The communist propaganda has abandoned the promises of outstripping the West in prosperity or converting it politically. Now the messages stress continuity and security and tell the proletariat to be grateful.

  Emerging from Checkpoint Charlie you can see all the way to Friedrichstrasse station. There, a steel bridge crossing the street cuts a pattern in the indigo sky. Across the bridge go the trains that connect Paris with Warsaw and eventually Moscow, but the bridge itself is also the Friedrichstrasse station platform of the elevated S-Bahn, the commuter line that runs through both East and West Berlin.

  The sight of the bridge gives the impression that the station is only a short walk, but the distance is deceptive and as I walked up Friedrichstrasse – past the blackened and pockmarked shells of bombed buildings that people said were owned by mysterious Swiss companies that even the DDR did not wish to offend – I remembered too late that it’s worth getting a cab that short distance when one is in a hurry.

  The S-Bahn station Friedrichstrasse provides another demonstration of the enormous workforce that the DDR devotes to manning the Wall. I went through its agonizingly slow passport control – there are even more checks on people leaving than on those entering – and eventually went through the tunnel and up to the platform.

  The station is a huge open-ended hangar-like building with overhead gantries patrolled by guards brandishing machine guns. The S-Bahn’s rolling stock, like the stations and the track, are ancient and dilapidated. The train came rattling in, its windows dirty and the lights dim. I got in. It was almost empty: those privileged few permitted to cross the border are not to be found travelling westwards at this time of evening. It took only a few minutes to clatter over the Wall. The ‘antifascist protection barrier’ is particularly deep and formidable here where the railway crosses the Alexander Ufer: perhaps the sight of it is intended to be a deterrent.

  There is an almost audible sigh of relief from the passengers who alight at Zoo Station. I had to change trains for Grunewald, but there was only a minute or two to wait and it was quicker than taking a cab and getting tangled up in the Ku-Damm traffic which would be thick at this time.

  From the station I walked to Frank Harrington’s home. I approached it carefully in case there was anyone waiting for me. It seemed unlikely. The standard procedure was to cover the frontier crossing points – those for German nationals as well as the ones for foreigners – and the airport. On a Friday night at short notice that would provide more than enough problems. Frank as the Berlin chief was already given special protection by the civil police. My guess was that whoever was allotting the personnel would decide that Frank couldn’t be afforded a car and a three-shift watch. They would describe me as a fugitive special category three: ‘possibly armed but not dangerous’.

  It was Axel Mauser – one of the kids at school here –who first showed me the proper way to climb drainpipes. Until then I’d been using my hands and getting my clothes into a terrible state. It was Axel who said, ‘Climb ropes with your hands; drainpipes with your feet’ and showed me how the burglars did it without getting their hands dirty. I don’t know who showed Axel how to do it: his father probably. His father, Rolf Mauser, used to work in the hotel for Lisl. Rolf Mauser was an unscrupulous old crook. I’d believe almost anything of Rolf.

  I was remembering all that as I climbed into the upstairs master bedroom of Frank’s big house in Grunewald. There were no burglar alarms at the back. I knew where all the burglar alarms were. I’d helped Frank decide where to put them. And Frank always kept the bathroom window ajar. Frank was a fresh-air fiend. He’d often told me it was unhealthy to close the bedroom windows no matter how cold it was. Sometimes I think that’s why his wife doesn’t like living with him; she can’t stand those freezing cold bedrooms. I told Fiona that once: she said don’t be ridiculous but it didn’t seem ridiculous to me. I can’t stand cold bedrooms: I prefer unhealthy warmth.

  Frank wasn’t in bed of course, I knew he wouldn’t be. That’s why I got in upstairs. I got through the window and then had to stand there, carefully removing from the sill about three hundred bottles, tubes and sprays of bath oil, shaving soap, hair shampoo, toothpaste and God knows what. What could Frank ever want with all that stuff? Or was it the unredeemed property of Frank’s girl-friends?

  Finally I made a foot space on the window sill and from there I could step down into the bath and…Jesus, there was water in the bath. Lots of water! What did that bloody Tarrant do if he couldn’t even make sure the bath was drained properly? My shoe was full of soapy water. How disgusting! I didn’t like Frank’s valet and the feeling was mutual. I suppose, if I was to examine my feelings closely, the principal reason I didn’t just knock on Frank’s front door was because I wouldn’t trust that bloody man Tarrant as far as I could throw him. In a jam like the one I was now in, I would give Tarrant just three minutes before catching sight of me and getting on the blower and reporting me. Less than three minutes: thirty seconds.

  Frank was downstairs. I knew where he was. I’d known it even when I was on the back lawn looking up at the drainpipes. He was sitting in the drawing room playing his Duke Ellington records. That’s what Frank usually did when he was alone in the house. Volume up really loud, so that you could hear the drums and brass section halfway along the street. Frank said the only way you could really appreciate these old records was to have them as loud as the original band had been when making them, but I think Frank was going deaf.

  It was the 1940 band – the best Ellington band ever in my opinion, although Frank didn’t agree – playing ‘Cotton Tail’. No wonder Frank didn’t hear me come into the room. I could have been driving a combine harvester and still he wouldn’t have heard me above the surging beat of the Ellington band.

  Frank was sitting in a chair positioned exactly in line with his two giant speakers. He was dressed in a yellow sweater with a Paisley-patterned silk scarf tucked into his open-neck shirt. It was all very Noel Coward except for the big curly pipe in his fist and the clouds of fierce-smelling tobacco smoke that made me want to cough. He was bent low reading the small print on a record label. I waited for him to look up. I said, ‘Hello, Frank,’ as casually as I could say it.

  ‘Hello, Bernard,’ said Frank and held his pipe aloft to caution me. ‘Listen to Ben Webster.’

  Listen to him. How could I do anything else, the tenor sax solo went through my head like a power drill. But when the immortal Webster had finished, Frank turned the volume down so it was merely very loud.

  ‘Whisky, Bernard?’ said Frank. He was already pouring it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said gratefully.

  ‘I enjoy seeing you any time, Bernard. But I wish you’d just knock on the front door, the way other visitors do.’

  If Frank knew there was a warrant out for me, he was staying very cool. ‘Why?’ I said and drank some whisky. Laphroaig: he knew I liked it.

  ‘So you don’t make such a mess on the carpet,’ said Frank with a fleeting grin to offset his complaint.

  I looked at the carpet. My wet shoe had left marks all the way to the door, and right through the house probably. ‘I’m sorry, Frank.’

  ‘Why do you have to do everything arse upwards, Bernard? It makes life so difficult for your friends.’ Frank had always taken his paternal role seriously, and his way of demonstrating it was to be there when I needed him. Sometimes I wondered what kind of man my father must have been to have made a friendship so deep and binding that I was still drawing upon its capital. ‘You’re too old now for tricks like climbing up to that damned bathroom. You used to do that when you were very young. Remember?’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘I left the light on in the bathroom so you wouldn’t fall off the ledge and break your neck.’

  ‘You heard what ha
ppened?’ I said, not being able to endure another moment of Frank’s small-talk.

  ‘I knew you’d come to me,’ Frank said, walking towards me with a whisky bottle. He couldn’t resist it. It was the sort of complacent statement my mother made. Why did he have to be such an old woman? Couldn’t he see how it spoiled everything? I let him pour me another drink. It was a wonder he was able to resist telling me I drank too much, but he’d probably find some way to work it into the conversation before long.

  ‘When did you hear?’ I asked.

  ‘That the old man wanted you collared? I got a “confidential” on the printer about four o’clock. But then a cancellation came through.’ He smiled. ‘Reading between the lines, someone in London must have decided that the old man had gone completely batty. Then, after an hour or more, the same message was repeated. This time with the names of both the D-G and the Deputy on it.’ He looked at the carpet. ‘It’s not grease is it?’

  ‘It’s water,’ I said.

  ‘If it’s grease or oil, tell me now so I can leave a note for Tarrant to do something about it before it soaks in.’

  ‘I told you, Frank. It’s water.’

  ‘Keep your hair on, Bernard.’

  ‘So I’m still on the arrest list?’

  ‘I’m afraid you are. Your ruse with your friend Werner Volkmann didn’t fool the army very long.’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘For you to do a bunk, yes. But Captain Berry got the devil of a rocket.’

  ‘Captain Berry?’

  ‘The provost captain. I hear the commanding general wants him to face a court. Poor little bugger.’

  ‘Screw Captain Berry,’ I said. ‘I have no tears to shed for MP captains who want to throw me into the slammer.’ I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.

  Frank saw me looking at it and said, ‘They won’t come here searching for you.’

  ‘What’s it all about, Frank?’

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me, Bernard.’

  ‘I went to see the old man and reported all that stuff about Bret Rensselaer and the bank funds.’

  ‘I thought you were going to abandon all that nonsense,’ said Frank wearily.

  ‘Did they tell you what the charges against me might be?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were they planning to hold me here, or ship me back to the UK?’

  ‘I don’t know, Bernard. I really don’t know.’

  ‘You’re the Head of Berlin Station, Frank.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth, Bernard. I don’t bloody well know.’

  ‘It’s about Fiona, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fiona?’ said Frank, and seemed genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Is Fiona still working for the Department?’

  It took the wind out of his sails. He drank some of whatever he was drinking and looked at me for what seemed a long time. ‘I wish I could say yes, Bernard. I really do.’

  ‘Because that’s the only conclusion that makes sense.’

  ‘Makes sense how?’

  ‘What would Bret Rensselaer be doing with umpteen million dollars?’

  ‘I can think of a lot of things,’ said Frank, who was not very fond of Bret Rensselaer.

  ‘Money. You know what a tight rein the Department keep on their cash. You can’t really believe Central Funding let millions out of their sight and forget who they’d given it to.’

  ‘Umm.’ He smoked his pipe and thought about it.

  I said, ‘That sort of money is stashed away in secret accounts for pay-outs. For pay-outs, Frank.’

  ‘In California?’

  ‘No. Not California. When I talked to Bret in California, no one, except the Americans, was getting agitated. It was when I traced the money to Berlin that the excitement began.’

  ‘Berlin?’

  ‘So they didn’t tell you that? Schneider, von Schild und Weber, right here on the Ku-Damm.’

  He touched his moustache with the mouthpiece of his pipe. ‘Even so, I’m still not sure…’

  ‘Suppose Fiona’s defection was the end of a very long-term plan. Suppose she is doing her own thing over there in East Berlin. She’d need lots of money, and she’d need it right here in Berlin where it’s easy to get to.’

  ‘To pay her own agents?’

  ‘Good grief, Frank, I don’t have to tell you what she’d need money for. Sure. For all kinds of things: agents, bribes, expenses. You know how it adds up.’

  Frank touched my shoulder. ‘I wish I could believe it. But I’m Head of Station here, as you just reminded me. No one would be planted there without my say-so. You know that, Bernard. Stop fooling yourself, it’s not your style.’

  ‘Suppose it was kept very tight; Bret Rensselaer as the case officer…’

  ‘And the D-G getting direct authorization from the Cabinet Office? It’s an ingenious explanation but I fear the true explanation is simpler and less palatable.’ A puff at his pipe. ‘The Berlin Head of Station is always informed. Even the D-G wouldn’t defy that operational rule. It’s been like that ever since your father’s time. It would be unprecedented.’

  ‘So is having a senior employee arrested at the airport,’ I said.

  ‘The D-G is a stick-in-the-mud. I know him, Bernard. We trained together in the war. He’s careful to a fault. He just wouldn’t go along with such a hazardous scheme.’

  ‘To get an agent into the Stasi at the very top? A trusted agent at committee level? That’s what Fiona is now. You told me that yourself.’

  ‘Now calm down, Bernard. I can see why this scenario appeals to you. Fiona is rehabilitated and you have taken on the Department and penetrated their most jealously guarded secret.’

  And, he might have added, made Bret into Fiona’s colleague instead of her paramour. ‘So what is your explanation?’

  ‘A deadly dull one, I’m afraid. But after a lifetime in the service, you look back and see how much time you’ve wasted chasing bizarre solutions while the true answer was banal, obvious and under your nose the whole while.’

  ‘Fiona leaving her home and children and going to work for the Stasi? Bret embezzling millions of departmental funds and sitting in California pretending to be penniless? Prettyman reassigned from Washington and his wife told he was dead? Uncle Silas telling me what a wonderful fellow Dodo is, while getting on the phone to have him roughed up and silenced? Except I got there first. A warrant issued for my arrest because I tell the D-G about it? Is this the deadly dull explanation that has the ring of truth?’

  Frank looked at me. This was the first mention I’d made of Silas Gaunt’s duplicity – I’d not even told Werner – and I watched Frank carefully. He nodded as if considering everything I’d said but showed no surprise. ‘The last one certainly does,’ he said grimly. ‘I tore it off the printer myself this evening. Do you want to see it?’

  ‘The old man wants me held because he’s frightened that my inquiries are going to blow Fiona’s cover. They got me to California just so that Bret could persuade me to forget the whole thing. They sent Charlie Billingsly to Hong Kong because of what he might have seen on the computer about Bret’s bogus companies. They gave Cindy Prettyman a nice job in Strasbourg to keep her quiet. They panicked at the idea of Dodo loud-mouthing their secrets, and chose Prettyman to lean on him.’

  ‘It’s all very circumstantial,’ said Frank. But I had his attention now.

  ‘I suppose they are desperate, but I didn’t realize how desperate until I landed here. When I took my questions to the D-G they couldn’t think of anything to do with me except to put me in the cooler while they worked out how to shut me up.’

  Frank looked at me pitifully and said, ‘You’d better sit down, Bernard. There’s something else you should know.’

  I sat down. ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not like that. When the second teleprinter message came through I phoned London for clarification. I thought…under the circumstances…’

  ‘You spoke to the D-G? This afternoon?’<
br />
  ‘No but I had a word with the Deputy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Sir Percy told me in confidence.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘They’ve opened an Orange File, Bernard.’

  ‘On me?’

  There was still a chance for him to say no but he didn’t say no. He said, ‘Ladbrook is coming on the plane tomorrow.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ I said. An Orange File is only started when someone in the Department is accused of treachery, and prima facie evidence has already been collected against them. Ladbrook is the senior interrogator. Ladbrook prepares the prosecution.

  ‘Now do you see?’ Frank asked.

  ‘You still don’t believe me, do you, Frank?’

  ‘I don’t dare believe you,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d rather believe that you were guilty than believe that Fiona was over there playing a double game. Especially if you have started tongues waggling. Have you thought about what you are saying? Have you thought what it would mean for her if they tumbled to her? You’d face prison, but if she got to committee level and betrayed them they’d…’ He stopped. We were both thinking of Melnikoff, who’d reported back to one of Silas’ networks. Over a dozen eye-witnesses had watched Melnikoff being pushed alive into a factory furnace. The KGB had wanted it talked about. ‘Be careful how you declare your innocence,’ said Frank. ‘You could be signing your wife’s death warrant; whether what you say is true, or not true.’

  I sat down. It was all happening too quickly. I felt like vomiting but I got myself under control and looked at my watch. ‘I’d better get out of here.’ I hated this room. All the worst things that ever happened to me seemed to happen in this room, but I suppose that was because when something bad happened to me I came running along to Frank. I said, ‘Don’t you think Tarrant…?’

  ‘I gave Tarrant the evening off. Is there anything…?’

  ‘You’ve done your bit already, Frank.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Bernard.’

  ‘What’s wrong with them all, Frank? Why can’t they just call the dogs off?’