A Small Town In Germany

A Small Town In Germany Page 6

by A Small Town in Germany [lit]

  'It was good of you to come at such an awkward time. You'd better let me have that.' He took the canvas bag and dumped it behind the chair.

  'Christ, it's hot,' said Turner. Walking to the window, he rested his elbows on the sill and gazed out. Away to his right in the far distance, the Seven Hills of Königswinter, chalked over by fine cloud, rose like Gothic dreams against the colour­less sky. At their feet he could make out the dull glint of water and the shadows of motionless vessels.

  'He lived out that way, didn't he? Königswinter?'

  'We have a couple of hirings on the other bank. They are never much in demand. The ferry is a great inconvenience.' On the trampled lawn, workmen were dismantling the mar­quee under the watchful eye of two German policemen.

  'I imagine you have a routine in such cases,' Bradfield con­tinued, addressing Turner's back. 'You must tell us what you want and we shall do our best to provide it.'

  'Sure.'

  'The cypher clerks have a dayroom where you'll be undis­turbed. They are instructed to send your telegrams without reference to anyone else. I've had a desk and a telephone put in there for you. I have also asked Registry to prepare a list of the missing files. If there's anything more you want, I am sure de Lisle will do his best to provide it. And on the social side' - Bradfield hesitated - 'I am to invite you to dine with us tomorrow night. We would be very pleased. It's the usual Bonn evening. De Lisle will lend you a dinner jacket, I am sure.'

  'There's lots of routines,' Turner replied at last. He was leaning against the radiator, looking round the room. 'In a country like this it should be dead simple. Call in the police. Check hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, Salvation Army hos­tels. Circulate his photograph and personal description and square the local press. Then I'd look for him myself.'

  'Look for him? Where?'

  'In other people. In his background. Motive, political associ­ations, boy friends, girl friends, contacts. Who else was involved; who knew; who half-knew; who quarter-knew; who ran him; who did he meet and where; how did he communi­cate; safe houses, pick-up points; how long's it been going on. Who's protected him, maybe. That's what I call looking. Then I'd write a report: point the blame, make new enemies.' He continued to examine the room, and it seemed that nothing was innocent under his clear, inscrutable eye. 'That's one routine. That's for a friendly country, of course.'

  'Most of what you suggest is quite unacceptable here.'

  'Oh sure. I've had all that from Lumlev.'

  'Perhaps before we go any further, you had better have it from me as well.'

  'Please yourself,' said Turner, in a manner which might have been deliberately chosen to annoy.

  'I imagine that in your world, secrets are an absolute stan­dard. They matter more than anything. Those who preserve them are your allies; those who betray them are your quarry. Here that is simply not the case. As of now, the local political considerations far exceed those of security.'

  Suddenly, Turner was grinning. 'They always do,' he said. 'It's amazing.'

  'Here in Bonn we have at present one contribution to make: to maintain at all costs the trust and good will of the Federal Government. To stiffen their resolve against mounting criti­cism from their own electorate. The Coalition is sick; the most casual virus could kill it. Our job is to pamper the invalid. To console, encourage and occasionally threaten him, and pray to God he survives long enough to see us into the Common Market.'

  'What a lovely picture.' He was looking out of the window again. 'The only ally we've got, and he's on crutches. The two sick men of Europe propping one another up.'

  'Like it or not, it happens to be the truth. We are playing a poker game here. With open cards and nothing in our hand. Our credit is exhausted, our resources are nil. Yet in return for no more than a smile, our partners bid and play. That smile is all we have. The whole relationship between HMG and the Federal Coalition rests upon that smile. Our situation is as delicate as that; and as mysterious. And as critical. Our whole future with Europe could be decided in ten days from now.' He paused, apparently expecting Turner to speak. 'It is no coincidence that Karfeld has chosen next Friday for his rally in Bonn. By Friday, our friends in the German Cabinet will be forced to decide whether to bow to French pressure or honour their promises to ourselves and their partners in the Six. Karfeld detests the Market and favours an opening to the East. In the short term he inclines to Paris; in the long term, to Moscow. By marching on Bonn and increasing the tempo of his campaign, he is deliberately placing pressure on the Coalition at the most critical moment. Do you follow me?'

  'I can manage the little words,' Turner said. A Kodachrome portrait of the Queen hung directly behind Bradfield's head. Her crest was everywhere: on the blue leather chairs, the silver cigarette box, even the jotting pads set out on the long confer­ence table. It was as if the monarchy had flown here first class and left its free gifts behind.

  'That is why I am asking you to move with the greatest possible circumspection. Bonn is a village,' Bradfield con­tinued. 'It has the manners, vision and dimensions of the parish pump, and yet it is a State within a village. Nothing matters for us more than the confidence of our hosts. There are already indications that we have caused them offence. I do not even know how we have done that. Their manner, even in the last forty-eight hours, has become noticeably cool. We are under surveillance; our telephone calls are interrup­ted; and we have the greatest difficulty in reaching even our official ministerial contacts.'

  'All right,' Turner said. He had had enough. 'I've got the message. I'm warned off. We're on tender ground. Now what?'

  'Now this,' Bradfield snapped. 'We both know what Harting may be, or may have been. God knows, there are precedents. The greater his treachery here, the greater the potential embarrassment, the greater the shock to German confidence. Let us take the worst contingency. If it were possible to prove - I am not yet saying that it is, but there are indications - if it were possible to prove that by virtue of Harting's activities in this Embassy, our inmost secrets had been betrayed to the Russians over many years - secrets which to a great extent we share with the Germans - then that shock, trivial as it may be in the long term, could sever the last thread by which our credit here hangs. Wait.' He was sitting very straight at his desk, with an expression of controlled distaste upon his hand­some face. 'Hear me out. There is something here that does not exist in England. It is called the anti-Soviet alliance. The Germans take it very seriously, and we deride it at our peril: it is still our ticket to Brussels. For twenty years or more, we have dressed ourselves in the shining armour of the defender. We may be bankrupt, we may beg for loans, currency and trade; we may occasionally... reinterpret... our Nato commit­ments; when the guns sound, we may even bury our heads under the blankets; our leaders may be as futile as theirs.'

  What was it Turner discerned in Bradfield's voice at that moment? Self-disgust? A ruthless sense of his own decline? He spoke like a man who had tried all remedies, and would have no more of doctors. For a moment the gap between them had closed, and Turner heard his own voice speaking through the Bonn mist.

  'For all that, in terms of popular psychology, it is the one great unspoken strength we have: that when the Barbarians come from the East, the Germans may count on our support. That Rhine Army will hastily gather on the Kentish hills and the British independent nuclear deterrent will be hustled into service. Now do you see what Harting could mean in the hands of a man like Karfeld?'

  Turner had taken the black notebook from his inside pocket. It crackled sharply as he opened it. 'No. I don't. Not yet. You don't want him found, you want him lost. If you had your way you wouldn't have sent for me.' He nodded his large head in reluctant admiration. 'Well, I'll say this for you: no one's ever warned me off this early. Christ, I've hardly sat down. I hardly know his full names. We've not heard of him in London, did you know that? He's not even had any access, not in our book. Not even one bloody military manual. He may have been abducted. He may have gone
under a bus, run off with a bird for all we know. But you; Christ! You've really gone the bank, haven't you? He's all the spies we've ever had rolled into one. So what has he pinched? What do you know that I don't?' Bradfield tried to interrupt but Turner rode him down implacably. 'Or maybe I shouldn't ask? I mean I don't want to upset anyone.'

  They were glaring at one another across centuries of sus­picion: Turner clever, predatory and vulgar, with the hard eye of the upstart; Bradfield disadvantaged but not put down, drawn in upon himself, picking his language as if it had been made for him.

  'Our most secret file has disappeared. It vanished on the same day that Harting left. It covers the whole spectrum of our most delicate conversations with the Germans, formal and informal, over the last six months. For reasons which do not concern you, its publication would ruin us in Brussels.'

  He thought at first that it was the roar of the aeroplane engines still ringing in his ears, but the traffic in Bonn is as constant as the mist. Gazing out of the window he was suddenly assailed by the feeling that from now on he would neither see nor hear with clarity; that his senses were being embraced and submerged by the cloying heat and the disembodied sound. 'Listen.' He indicated his canvas bag. 'I'm the abortionist. You don't want me but you've got to have me. A neat job with no aftermath, that's what you're paying for. All right; I'll do my best. But before we all go over the wall, let's do a bit of counting on our fingers, shall we?'

  The catechism began.

  'He was unmarried?'

  'Yes.'

  'Always has been?'

  'Yes.'

  'Lived alone?'

  'So far as I know.'

  'Last seen?'

  'On Friday morning, at the Chancery meeting. In here.'

  'Not afterwards?'

  'I happen to know the pay clerk saw him, but I'm limited in whom I can ask.'

  'Anyone else missing at all?'

  'No one.'

  'Had a full count have you? No little long-legged bird from Registry?'

  'People are constantly on leave; no one is unaccountably absent.'

  'Then why didn't Harting take leave? They usually do, you know. Defect in comfort, that's my advice.'

  'I have no idea.'

  'You weren't close to him?'

  'Certainly not.'

  'What about his friends? What do they say?'

  'He has no friends worth speaking of.'

  'Any not worth speaking of?'

  'So far as I know, he has no close friends in the community. Few of us have. We have acquaintances, but few friends. That is the way of Embassies. With such an intensive social life, one learns to value privacy.'

  'How about Germans?'

  'I have no idea. He was once on familiar terms with Harry Praschko.'

  'Praschko?'

  'We have a parliamentary opposition here: the Free Demo­crats. Praschko is one of its more colourful members. He has been most things in his time: not least a fellow-traveller. There is a note on file to say they were once friendly. They knew one another during the Occupation, I believe. We keep an index of useful contacts. I once questioned him about Praschko as a matter of routine and he told me that the relationship was discontinued. That is all I can tell you.'

  'He was once engaged to be married to a girl called Mar­garet Aickman. This Harry Praschko was named as a character reference. In his capacity as a member of the Bundestag.'

  'Well?'

  'You've never heard of Aickman?'

  'Not a name to me, I'm afraid.'

  'Margaret.'

  'So you said. I never heard of any engagement, and I never heard of the woman.'

  'Hobbies? Photography? Stamps? Ham radio?'

  Turner was writing all the time. He might have been filling in a form.

  'He was musical. He played the organ in Chapel. I believe he also had a collection of gramophone records. You would do better to enquire among the Junior Staff; he was more at home with them.'

  'You never went to his house?'

  'Once. For dinner.'

  'Did he come to yours?'

  There was the smallest break in the rhythm of their interro­gation while Bradfield considered.

  '0nce.'

  'For dinner?'

  'For drinks. He wasn't quite dinner party material. I am sorry to offend your social instincts.'

  'I haven't got any.'

  Bradfield did not appear surprised.

  'Still, you did go to him, didn't you? I mean you gave him hope.' He rose and ambled back to the window like a great moth lured to the light. 'Got a file on him, have you?' His tone was very detached; he might have been infected by Brad­field's own forensic style.

  'Only paysheets, annual reports, a character reference from the Army. It's all very standard stuff. Read it if you want.' When Turner did not reply, he added: 'We keep very little here on staff; they change so often. Harting was the exception.'

  'He's been here twenty years.'

  'Yes. As I say, he is the exception.'

  'And never vetted.'

  Bradfield said nothing.

  'Twenty years in the Embassy, most of them in Chancery. And never vetted once. Name never even submitted. Amazing really.' He might have beep commenting on the view.

  'I suppose we all thought it had been done already. He came from the Control Commission after all; one assumes they exacted a certain standard.'

  'Quite a privilege being vetted, mind. Not the kind of thing you do for anyone.'

  The marquee had gone. Homeless, the two German policemen paced the grey lawn, their wet leather coats flap­ping lazily round their boots. It's a dream, Turner thought. A noisy unwilling dream. 'Bonn's a very metaphysical place,' de Lisle's agreeable voice reminded him. 'The dreams have quite replaced reality.'

  'Shall I tell you something?'

  'I can hardly stop you.'

  'All right: you've warned me off. That's usual enough. But where's the rest of it?'

  'I've no idea what you mean.'

  'You've no theory, that's what I mean. It's not like anything I've ever met. There's no panic. No explanation. Why not? He worked for you. You knew him. Now you tell me he's a spy; he's pinched your best files. He's garbage. Is it always like that here when somebody goes? Do the gaps seal that fast?' He waited. 'Let me help you, shall I? "He's been working here for twenty years. We trusted him implicitly. We still do." How's that?'

  Bradfield said nothing.

  'Try again. "I always had my suspicions about him ever since that night we were discussing Karl Marx. Harting swallowed an olive without spitting out the pip." Any good?'

  Still Bradfield did not reply.

  'You see, it's not usual. See what I mean? He's unimportant. How you wouldn't have him to dinner. How you washed your hands of him. And what a sod he is. What he's betrayed.' Turner watched him with his pale, hunter's eyes; watched for a movement, or a gesture, head cocked waiting for the wind. In vain. 'You don't even bother to explain him, not to me, not to yourself. Nothing. You're just... blank about him. As if you'd sentenced him to death. You don't mind my being personal, do you? Only I'm sure you've not much time: that's the next thing you're going to tell me.'

  'I was not aware,' Bradfield said, ice-cold, 'that I was expected to do your job. Nor you mine.'

  'Capri. How about that? He's got a bird. The Embassy's in chaos, he pinches some files, flogs them to the Czechs and bolts with her.'

  'He has no girl.'

  'Aickman. He's dug her up. Gone off with Praschko, two on a bird. Bride, best man and groom.'

  'I told you, he has no girl.'

  'Oh. So you do know that? I mean there are some things you are sure of. He's a traitor and he's got no bird.'

  'So far as anyone knows, he has no woman. Does that satisfy you?'

  'Perhaps he's queer.'

  'I'm sure he's nothing of the sort.'

  'It's broken out in him. We're all a bit mad, aren't we, round about our age? The male menopause, how about that?'

  '
That is an absurd suggestion.'

  'Is it?'

  'To the best of my knowledge, yes.' Bradfield's voice was trembling with anger; Turner's barely rose above a murmur.

  'We never know though, do we? Not till it's too late. Did he handle money at all?'

  'Yes. But there's none missing.'

  Turner swung on him. 'Jesus,' he said, his eyes bright with triumph. 'You checked. You have got a dirty mind.'

  'Perhaps he's just walked into the river,' Turner suggested comfortingly, his eyes still upon Bradfield. 'No sex. Nothing to live for. How's that?'

  'Ridiculous, since you ask.'

  'Important to a bloke like Harting, though, sex. I mean if you're alone, it's the only thing. I mean I don't know how some of these chaps manage, do you? I know I couldn't. About a couple of weeks is as long as I can go, me. It's the only reality, if you live alone. Or that's what I reckon. Apart from politics of course.'

  'Politics? Harting? I shouldn't think he read a newspaper from one year to the next. He was a child in such matters. A complete innocent.'

  'They often are,' said Turner. 'That's the remarkable thing.' Sitting down again, Turner folded one leg over the other and leaned back in the chair like a man about to reminisce. 'I knew a man once who sold his birthright because he couldn't get a seat on the Underground. I reckon there's more of that kind go wrong than was ever converted to it by the Good Book. Perhaps that was his problem? Not right for dinner parties; no room on the train. After all, he was a temporary, wasn't he?'

  Bradfield did not reply.

  'And he'd been here a long time. Permanent staff, sort of thing. Not fashionable, that isn't, not in an Embassy. They go native if they're around too long. But then he was native, wasn't he? Half. Half a Hun, as de Lisle would say. He never talked politics?'

  'Never.'

  'You sensed it in him, a political spin?'

  'No.'

  'No crack-up? No tension?'

  'No.'

  'What about that fight in Cologne?'

  'What fight?'

 

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