Funeral in Berlin

by Len Deighton

  ‘Was it all worth it?’ said Dawlish.

  I said, ‘We are talking about a quarter of a million pounds; it’s a hell of a lot of money.’

  ‘You misunderstand me,’ said Dawlish. ‘I meant, did he need to live in fear? After all, this was an old wartime political assassination…’

  ‘Carried out by order of the Communist Party,’ I finished. ‘Would you like to enter present-day France with a tag like that?’

  Dawlish gave a sour smile. ‘Communist Party,’ he repeated. ‘Do you think that Stok knew everything all the time? Knew who Vulkan really was, and who he had been and whom he had killed? They could really have him in a cleft stick if they had all that on their war-time files, squeezing him until he cracked?’

  ‘I thought about that,’ I said.

  ‘You are sure about all this?’ said Dawlish anxiously. ‘It’s not just guesswork, the dead man was Broum?’

  ‘Positive,’ I said. ‘It was the scars that settled it. Grenade confirmed it yesterday. I sent Albert six bottles of whisky on expenses.’

  ‘Six bottles of whisky in exchange for losing one good operative doesn’t seem a good way to do business.’

  ‘No,’ I said. Alice brought the coffee in Dawlish’s one-and-six penny cups from Portobello Road. Alice never went home.

  ‘I guessed in a way,’ I said, ‘when the old man said that a doctor in a concentration camp can even cure you. Cure, you see—to be released—or to die. It could be arranged by a doctor willing to fiddle a certificate of death. The extraordinary aspect of Broum’s situation was the way he must impersonate his victim—Vulkan the guard—because in doing so Vulkan was still alive and his first victim assassinated by someone else.’

  ‘And Hallam?’

  ‘As soon as he was offered money he co-operated with Vulkan to the utmost. He was the only person authorized to issue documents of that sort. Without his connivance it wouldn’t have been so easy for them.’

  ‘Hallam didn’t have much to lose, if he was getting the sack as a security risk.’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘It all depended upon me getting panicky when they made Semitsa persona non grata right at the last minute. Their theory was that I’d clear out and leave Vulkan holding the baby.’

  ‘They trusted Stok to deliver Semitsa?’

  ‘Hilarious, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘They were so pleased with themselves that they couldn’t bear to consider that Stok might be smarter than them. That he might be just kidding around to see what he could find out.’

  ‘But it was obvious, you said.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Stok and I are in the same business—we understand each other only too well.’

  ‘There were people,’ said Dawlish drily, ‘who thought you might end up as his assistant.’

  ‘You weren’t one of them, I trust?’

  ‘Gracious no,’ said Dawlish. ‘I said that he would end up as yours.’

  Chapter 50

  Originally the piece we now call a queen was a

  counsellor or Government adviser.

  Thursday, November 7th

  It was just like Hallam had said, there were so many accidents on November 5th that the ‘awful death of man on fireworks night’ didn’t get into the national press at all and the local paper only gave it a couple of paragraphs and that was mostly devoted to a spokesman from the RSPCA.

  November 7th was the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Jean gave me four aspirins, which was her friendly overture, and Alice a coffee made with milk, which was her cure-all. I sent Colonel Stok an Eton tie from Bond Street, which was my revolutionary gesture.

  The Mother-in-law’s Tongue was coming along nicely. Jean said that on the window-sill over the radiator was the best place for it and it certainly seemed to thrive there. Dawlish had decided that he was going to spend a few days busy in the country, which I suppose was to make himself scarce. He had taken Chico with him so the office was quiet enough for me to finish It pays to increase your word power. My rating was ‘fair’.

  They wouldn’t let us offer Harvey Newbegin a job partly because he was foreign, and partly because I wore woollen shirts and said ‘like’ instead of ‘as though’. This left us weaker in both Berlin and Prague.

  ‘Going to the Home Office on Sunday?’ Jean asked. ‘You have an invitation. It’s the Remembrance Service. I said I’d phone them back this morning. There are only twelve places in Hallam’s room.’

  ‘I promised to go,’ I said.

  ‘Is it true that Hallam is in hospital?’ said Jean.

  ‘Ask them,’ I said.

  ‘I heard…’

  ‘Ask them,’ I said.

  ‘I did,’ said Jean. ‘They were very short and rude.’

  ‘That’s OK then,’ I said. ‘HO are like London theatres: if they answer politely, you can be sure the show is a little shaky.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jean. She gave me a memo from Dawlish that said that some of the Broum documents had been damaged by grease and would I please submit a full explanation in writing. There was another document that authorized the cashier’s department to pay me £1,000 subject to my signing that it could be deducted from my pay over a twoyear period.

  I said to Jean, ‘How would you like a spin in the country this weekend in a new car?’ ‘Perhaps,’ said Jean. ‘I’ve got every kind of eyebrow pencil.’ ‘In that case,’ said Jean, ‘how can I refuse?’ ‘Friday then,’ I said. ‘Back Sunday morning.’ ‘Without fail,’ said Jean. ‘I’m looking after Hallam’s cats.’

  Chapter 51

  Repetition rule: it is a rule of chess that

  when the same sequence recurs three times

  the game can be terminated.

  Sunday, November 10th

  It is one of those misty London mornings when the British Travel and Holiday Association stock up with colour photos. Whitehall is a vast stadium of grey granite and thin white geometrical shapes have appeared on the black roadway overnight so that representatives of the whole nation can stand in their allotted places. Soldiers in black bearskins and grey overcoats are lined up to form three sides of a square and a cruel wind blows across the scene that so closely resembles a military execution. The pipes and drums are playing the Skye Boat Song. A general fidgets with a sword that the wind has wrapped into his greatcoat and the cocked hats flutter like frightened hens.

  An aged civil servant beside me says, ‘Here comes Her Majesty’, as the Queen steps out of the front door below us. Dominating the whole scene is the gleaming stone pillar of the Cenotaph like the freshly built leg of a new overpass. Beyond the memorial the Chapel Royal choirboys in their bright scarlet Tudor costumes are blowing on their blue hands.

  Mrs Meynard is laying rows of coffee cups across the desk behind us. I hear her say, ‘Mr Hallam is not well, sir. He’s having a few days off.’ There is polite condolence. ‘Nothing serious,’ Mrs Meynard adds in a motherly voice. ‘Just been overdoing it.’ She didn’t say what he’d been overdoing.

  ‘Waaaaaahhhhhh.’ The throaty cry of a drill sergeant bounces down the lines of bearskins and bayonets. Senile statesmen stand pierced by the chilly damp November air that has called so many predecessors away.

  ‘Yip.’ Fleshy palms smack artfully loosened metal as a few hundred rifles click into rows.

  There is a sudden cannonade of artillery rumbling across the low cloud as Big Ben tolls eleven. Blancoed webbing and polished metal shine in the dull wintry light and there is a sudden flash of brandished trumpets. The notes of the Last Post crawl dolefully up the still thoroughfare as a thousand stand tensely silent.

  Across the silent, wet street, a newspaper tumbles gently like an urban tumbleweed. It floats just buoyant on the wind, kisses a traffic sign, lightly dabs a slide trombone and plasters itself across army boots. The newspaper is rain-soaked to a dull yellow colour but the large headline is blunt and legible. ‘Berlin—a new crisis?’

  APPENDIX 1

  Poisonous insecticides

  In
the late ‘thirties a German scientist, Gerald Schrader, discovered a group of organic phosphorus insecticides from which Parathion1 and Melathion were developed. The German Government immediately put a security blank over all this work, seeing the potential value of nerve gas as a weapon. They filmed the effect of them upon concentration-camp prisoners. The films and the research came into Allied hands during the war and the research was continued by UK, USSR and USA and still continues to be important as a military weapon.

  There are many stories demonstrating the enormous potency of these poisons, like the crop-sprayer who reached his hand into a tank of it to retrieve a nozzle and was dead within twenty-four hours.

  Dr Samuel Gershon and Dr F.H. Shaw (Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Australia) reported in the Lancet on sixteen cases of schizophrenic symptoms, depression, blackouts, impaired memories and inability to concentrate among horticultural workers where this group of insecticides was used.

  Organo-phosphorus compounds although they break down quickly have a dangerous tendency to ‘potentiate’ one another. That is to say, two tiny harmless amounts get together and make a lethal combination.

  * * *

  1 Parathion is a popular suicide drug.

  APPENDIX 2

  Gehlen organization

  Gehlen came from an old Westphalian family but the family motto—Laat vaaren niet—was Flemish. The motto means, ‘Never give up’. Gehlen entered the Reichswehr under General von Seeckt in 1921 and was seconded to military intelligence even before Hitler took power.

  The Abwehr department he made his own was Group 111 F, directed against the USSR. By 1941 Major Gehlen was in charge of Abwehr Ost. His districts included the Ukraine and Byelorussia. He received many decorations including the Knight’s Cross. When he compiled a report suggesting that the Germans formed a resistance based upon the Polish Resistance, it was suppressed by Himmler for being ‘defeatist’.

  In 1945 he was in a better position to summarize the world’s position than Hitler was. Gehlen went to the Abwehr Archives at Zossen1 and burned every document there—after microfilming it and locking the microfilms into steel canisters.

  Gehlen allowed himself to be captured by the Americans and, after a little trouble, gained an interview with Brigadier-General Patterson, the US Army Intelligence chief.

  The US Army gave Gehlen the ‘Rudolf Hess Wohngemeinde’2—which was a large modern housing estate built for Waffen SS officers in 1938—they put stars and stripes on the roof, US Army sentries on the gates and lots and lots of dollars in the kitty. He was allowed to call upon old comrades of the Sicherheitsdienst and the Abwehr and some of his agents abroad scarcely had a break in their payments and communications.

  * * *

  1 Now a Soviet Army Intelligence Unit.

  2 Pullach, Bavaria, not very far from Dachau.

  APPENDIX 3

  The Abwehr

  Nomenclature.

  Group 1. Intelligence.

  Group 2. Sabotage (a very small group consisting mostly of a structure without operatives).

  Group 3. Counter-Intelligence. This group is subdivided according to function and a suffix letter is added to indicate its activities as follows:

  H = Army

  M = Navy

  L = Air Force

  F = .The detection and penetration of enemy intelligence.

  APPENDIX 4

  Soviet security systems

  One still hears Russian security men speak of Chekist operators. Originally these were an anti-sabotage, anti-revolutionary force which became a battle gendarmerie during the civil war and was empowered to hold courts martial and execute Whites, or Reds who were getting a little bleached. It remained as a part of the army although nowadays has become merely a slang word. The actual organization underwent many changes of structure, responsibility and name. It became GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB and in 1946 split into MVD and MGB. The latter was renamed KGB in 1954; it is responsible for the most vital part of security and intelligence at home and overseas. (The MVD now handles police, prisons, immigration, highway police and fire services.) Stok’s branch of KGB is the counter-intelligence unit GUKR.

  In 1937 Marshal Tukhachevsky tried to throw off Chekist control and was executed for plotting with Trotsky to betray Russia to Hitler. Thousands of Red Army officials were executed at the same period and the Red Army was in bad repute. At the twentieth Party Congress in 1956 there was a movement towards proving the innocence of the executed men.

  Colonel Stok had had extensive politicalmilitary experience, starting from when he stormed the Winter Palace in Leningrad in 1917. He worked with Antonov Ovseyenko when the latter was military adviser in Barcelona. Some say that he was responsible for Ovseyenko’s removal. As a KGB officer, Stok’s loyalty is to the Communist Party, but as an officer he must sometimes sympathize with the aims of the professional soldiers with whom he works. Stok is not a member of GRU (military intelligence) which is entirely separate.

  APPENDIX 5

  French Security System

  A very complex arrangement of interlapping units which—like all intelligence units—tend to develop special allegiances.

  The Secret Service as such is the top dog. I will not elaborate on that. Next in importance is the DST. (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire) of which Grenade is a member. This unit combines the function of what is, in Britain, the Special Branch with MI5.

  Thirdly, there is the General Intelligence which holds the files of politicians and trade union leaders. It is comprised of two parts; one part overlaps with the Sûreté Nationale and the other with the Paris Police Prefecture.

  The Sûreté Nationale also leads a life of its own and has all sorts of specialized departments—from gambling to the huge phone-tapping department. The Ministry of the Interior controls General Intelligence as well as having its own private intelligence unit rather like WOOC(P) except that while Dawlish is responsible to the Cabinet via the Prime Minister, the French Minister gets access to his reports before the President.

  The military have their own intelligence networks which co-operate with the above departments now and again.

  The lowest echelon of agent consists of the so-called barbouzes or semi-official informers, who often speed up a slow season by fomenting antigovernment plots in order to expose them.

  APPENDIX 6

  Official Secrets Act 1911 (as amended by the OS Acts of 1920 and 1939)

  Section 6 provides that the police (or etc) may question someone suspected of having information in regard to a breach of Section 1 of the Act. Failure to answer such questions is punishable as a misdemeanour. It is under this section that results can be obtained from uncooperative persons. The law does not provide that Section 6 can be invoked to solve a breach of the less serious Section 2 of the Act. (The maximum penalty for misdemeanour is two years’ imprisonment.) But until the information is gained by means of Section 6, it is not always clear whether Section 1 or Section 2 is the relevant one (if you see what I mean!).

  Another interesting aspect of the application of the OS Acts is the use to which the prosecution puts the charge of ‘conspiring to contravene the OS Acts’, for a conspiracy charge automatically renders the Attorney-General’s permission unnecessary and gives the Crown a catch-all way to plaster the sum of the charges across all the persons charged (some of whom might not have otherwise been liable for prosecution). This convenience is illustrated by the frequency with which the conspiracy charge arises in prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act.

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  THE IPCRESS FILE

  Len Deighton

  ‘A stone cold, cold war classic’ Guardian

  When a number of scientists mysteriously disappear in Berlin, what seems to be a straightforward case rapidly becomes a journey to the heart of a dark and deadly conspiracy. It is a conspiracy that takes Len Deighton’s working-class hero on a journey that will test him to the limits of his ingenuity and resolve, and call
on him to prove himself as a spy at the very top of his game.

  The Ipcress File was not only Len Deighton’s first novel, it was his first bestseller and the book that broke the mould of thriller writing.

  ‘Deighton has written a spy thriller which outbonds Bond’ Daily Express

  ‘Deighton in top form…the best kind of action entertainment’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘Deliciously sharp and flawlessly accurate dialogue, breathtakingly clever plotting, confident character drawing…a splendidly strongly told story’

  The Times

  978 0 586 02619 9

  HORSE UNDER WATER

  Len Deighton

  ‘Lives brilliantly up to the promise of The Ipcress File’ Books and Bookmen

  The Ipcress File was a debut sensation. Here in the second Secret File, Horse Under Water, skin-diving, drug trafficking and blackmail all feature in a curious story in which the dead hand of a long-defeated Hitler-Germany reaches out to Portugal, London and Marrakech, and to all the neo-Nazis of today’s Europe.

  The detail is frightening but unfaultable; the story as up to date as ever it was. The unnamed hero of The Ipcress File the same: insolent, fallible, capricious—in other words, human. But he must draw on all his abilities, good and bad, when plunged into a story of murder, betrayal and greed every bit as murky as the waters off the coast of Portugal, where the answers lie buried.

  ‘James Bond’s most serious rival’ Queen