The Secret of Spandau

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘Where? In France?’

  ‘Somewhere on the north coast, near St Malo.’

  ‘St Malo?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to Justin Stevens in Paris. They managed to trace de Gaulle’s cryptographer and Dick drove out there to see her. She lives right on the coast, on a steep headland some miles west of the town. He spent some time with her and then started back. He was using a powerful car. It seems he misjudged a turning on the cliff road. It was a hundred-foot drop.’

  She made an anguished sound. She had a vivid mental picture of the scene.

  ‘He must have died instantly. He didn’t suffer.’

  ‘Cedric, I can’t believe this. Dick was a careful driver.’

  ‘Yes. I can only presume it was a lapse of concentration. His mind running over the interview. And a car he wasn’t used to … Jane why don’t you pour yourself a stiff drink, and then get in a taxi and come over here to the office? We can talk things over.’

  ‘Dick’s dead. What is there to talk about?’

  ‘My dear, we are a newspaper. I shall have to decide what we say about this.’

  Embittered by the shock, she shouted down the phone, ‘Is that all you can think about, how you report it? Don’t you have any feelings at all, Cedric?’

  After an interval, when she began to suppose he had put down the phone, he answered stiffly, ‘Jane, it isn’t easy to break appalling news like this to a close colleague.’

  She let her breath out slowly, trying to be reasonable. ‘I’m sorry. It’s the shock, I suppose. All right. I’ll come.’ She hung up. She was shivering. She did exactly as Cedric had suggested, taking out the brandy and drinking it from a teacup.

  Dick dead? She bit her lip and crossed her arms and paced the room, trying to come to terms with what she had just been told. The sense of loss was personal and profound. She had felt committed to Dick in a way that went beyond professional ties. She had been trying earnestly to know him and understand him. How could he have allowed this to happen? Of all the men she had known and worked with, he was by far the most stable. Lapses of concentration simply didn’t happen to a guy like that. If this had happened to Red, she would have been devastated, but she would have understood. She could picture him racing a car down a cliff road, but not Dick. It wasn’t in Dick’s character. It wasn’t remotely possible, not as Cedric had described it.

  She couldn’t blame Cedric, but she deeply resented his response to the tragedy. She had lost almost all respect for him over the past two weeks. He might be one of the better editors in Fleet Street, but what had that made him as a man? The whole of humanity, as Cedric perceived it, fell into three groups: newsmen, news subjects and readers. In death, Dick had become a news subject, and Cedric had to decide what angle to take on the story. It sickened Jane.

  Going by recent experience, he wasn’t calling her in for a consultation. He had made the decision already. He just wanted to make sure she didn’t step out of line. In this frame of mind, she left the flat and took a taxi to the office. He was ready with the brandy when she arrived. To do him justice, he looked paler than usual.

  ‘No, thanks. I had a large one before I came.’

  ‘Sensible.’

  ‘I can’t believe this has happened. Have you heard any more about it?’

  ‘A little. Stevens has driven out there. I gather the trip was abortive anyway. The cryptographer woman wasn’t able to help Dick at all. She wasn’t close to de Gaulle and she doesn’t remember much.’

  ‘Are you sure? Why was he distracted, then? What went wrong with his driving?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. The car was checked by a good mechanic before he rented it. The police experts will examine it, no doubt, but I gather it’s a mangled heap now.’

  Jane shivered.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t have that brandy?’

  She shook her head. ‘Have you called Red yet?’

  ‘Been trying all morning, and can’t raise him. I sent a cable asking him to call me urgently. Nothing.’

  She managed a cynical comment. ‘So what’s new?’

  Cedric grunted ill-humouredly and got out a cigar, the usual prelude to a statement from the editorial chair. ‘There’s another reason why I need to speak to him. I had a visitor last night. The security services have been alerted to your investigation.’

  Jane sourly noted the your. ‘I know. We had a tail put on us on Sunday. He followed us all the way out to Henley.’

  Cedric looked shocked. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘We didn’t want to risk it. We had the impression that you were going cold on the story.’

  He observed a Mandarin silence.

  Jane justified herself by adding, ‘Well, you were. You told us it was finished.’

  ‘True,’ conceded Cedric, ‘and if I had stood firm, this would not have happened. I know you can’t legislate for an accident like this, but …’ He shook his head.

  ‘What did the security people want?’

  ‘An undertaking from me to drop the investigation.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They don’t have to give a reason other than the interests of national security.’

  ‘Is this a D Notice?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Cedric, ‘but I was left in no doubt that we’d be in serious trouble if we didn’t back down on this one.’

  ‘So you did?’

  Cedric drew on his cigar and exhaled. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then Dick has died for nothing,’ Jane exclaimed accusingly.

  ‘Jane, that’s unworthy and illogical and I don’t believe you would say it under different circumstances,’ Cedric responded with all the dignity he could command. ‘I’m as shattered as you are at what happened to Dick, and I take some blame for it, but I refuse to commit my newspaper to some sentimental and utterly futile crusade to appease my conscience, or anyone else’s.’

  Jane, too, was implacably controlled in her response. ‘You didn’t use words like sentimental and utterly futile that first weekend at your cottage.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Jane! The story has changed out of all recognition.’

  ‘What’s different? Hess is still in Spandau. We still don’t know why for certain, but we’re getting close. We must be, if the secret service wants to spike the story. Is this what a so-called independent newspaper does: backs down when the editor’s arm is twisted by MI5?’

  Cedric said, like a judge delivering sentence, ‘Jane, this may be painful for your idealism, but the answer to your question is yes. I’m telling you now that the investigation is over. There will be nothing published. The story is dead.’

  She lowered her eyes and said nothing. This time there would be no timely telephone call from Red to salvage the project. She might never see or hear from Red again. She bit back her despair.

  She had never felt so desolate. She was consumed by one idea, one need: she had to find some way of achieving it. She looked up at Cedric and said, ‘If you can’t contact Red, I’d better go to Berlin and find him. I can tell him what has happened.’

  Cedric studied her for a long time, weighing the suggestion. No doubt, Jane decided as she faced him through the cigar-smoke, he considered it a brazen bid to get a freebie to Berlin. She was demanding a consolation prize. Yet she could also sense that he was genuinely alarmed not to have heard from Red. He had nightmare visions of sparking some international crisis over Hess. He had always feared Red’s impetuosity. He had to be warned off as a matter of urgency. Was it enough to rely on a cable that had so far brought no response?

  He reached his decision: ‘How soon could you be ready?’

  She opened her eyes just a fraction wider, but her heart pumped furiously. ‘I’m ready now.’

  38

  At twenty-five minutes to closing time in the main city branch of one of the largest and oldest banks on the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, the KGB officer referred to as Julius entered the front door and stated his business to the offical on reception duty.
He was admitted to a room known as the secure area and obliged to wait there while the identity he produced was checked. Left alone, monitored by television cameras, unable either to gain admission or leave, Julius waited some four minutes until a female clerk in a navy blue suit and pink blouse came from the inner sanctum and spoke his name. He clicked his heels, gave the suggestion of a formal bow and followed her into the banking hall. She led him across the bronze-coloured marble floor, past the tellers’ positions and through an unmarked door.

  Inside was a large room reserved for consultations between customers and bank executives. Julius was invited to sit in one of the brown leather armchairs ranged in a semi-circle on a deep golden Afghan carpet. Immediately, a door opposite him was unlocked and a slight, balding man in a grey worsted suit with a bow tie stepped forward and introduced himself as the sub-manager responsible for safe deposit facilities.

  Julius presented a visiting-card and explained that he was the nephew of Fraulein Edda Zenk, a West German resident in Berlin, who in 1964 had arranged with the bank to deposit an item of value in one of its lockers. She now wished to retrieve her property, but she was in her seventies and unable to travel. She had nominated Julius as her representative and entrusted him with the key to the locker. The bank should have received a telephone call to this effect during the course of the afternoon.

  The sub-manager confirmed that a lady had phoned from Berlin. He explained that the bank was obliged to insist on a properly authenticated letter of authority before it could authorise the opening of a locker by a customer’s representative. Julius handed over a paper bearing a note in Edda Zenk’s handwriting, naming him as her representative. He also produced the key. The sub-manager thanked him and asked him to wait while the signature on the note was authenticated.

  Alone in the room, but overlooked by the revolving cameras mounted in the ceiling, Julius got up and examined a Corot landscape on the wall opposite until the sub-manager returned with a bank guard. The documents had been verified to the bank’s satisfaction, and Julius was invited to come to the safe deposit room.

  A different door was unlocked and he was led along a passage, through another locked door and down some steps to the vaults. There, a second guard unlocked a gleaming steel grille and relocked it behind them.

  On one side were rows of hundreds of steel lockers, and on the other a set of cubicles where depositors could examine their possessions. The sub-manager walked up one of the aisles with Julius, checking the numbers until he found the right one. There were two locks. The sub-manager used the key held by the bank to open the first, and then withdrew discreetly, allowing Julius to open the locker with the key he possessed.

  Inside was a cheap imitation leather suitcase with chrome fastenings that were beginning to peel. Julius lifted it out, surprised by its heaviness. He closed the locker door and carried the suitcase to a desk where the sub-manager was waiting to obtain his signature against the record of withdrawal. He refused the offer of a porter’s assistance and carried the suitcase himself back through the system of doors and checks to the main hall.

  He thanked the sub-manager, shook hands again, clicked heels and walked out through the exit door to where a chauffeur was waiting in a grey Mercedes. Julius got into the back seat with the suitcase beside him; the chauffeur closed the door and drove off sedately to the Soviet consulate.

  39

  The girl at the British Airways desk explained that there was a trade fair starting in Berlin at the weekend and most flights from Heathrow were fully booked. Jane spent two tense hours waiting for a standby and expecting all the time to hear her name called over the public address. If Cedric could find a reason for stopping her, he would. It only wanted a message from Red. So she had resolved to ignore any announcement; they would have to drag her screaming off the plane if necessary. She finally got a seat on a BA flight that was due to touch down at Berlin-Tegel at 7.20 p.m.

  Some of the passengers may have suffered take-off jitters, but Jane closed her eyes and breathed evenly for the first time in many hours. Soon, she let her thoughts return to the circumstances of Dick’s death. Disbelief and outrage were supplanted by more measured reactions as she forced herself to analyse the event as Dick himself would have done. In the light of what had happened in the last forty-eight hours, the chance that he had simply made a driving error was slight. The incident had happened late in the afternoon on a remote section of the French coast. Some time that evening, Cedric had been visited in London by one of the security service and ordered to drop the Hess investigation. Were the incidents unconnected, or was there secret service involvement in Dick’s death? Had he, after all, learned something vital from the Frenchwoman he had visited? It would not be difficult to stage an ‘accident’ on a cliff road, perhaps forcing him off the edge with another vehicle. Nor was it any problem to frighten a lonely old woman into silence. Jane wasn’t going to let it rest, and nor would Red, she was certain. They would go to St Malo and find out what had really happened. To hell with Cedric and his D Notice.

  By the time she had gone through the airport formalities, found a taxi and travelled to the Haselhorst district where Red lodged, it was getting dark. She was put down beside a grey tenement, one of the stark, ten-storey blocks erected in the emergency reconstruction programme of the late forties. Parts of the façade were chipped away and many of the windows were cracked. Two small boys were kicking an empty Coke can against a wall. Five more with cigarettes watched her from the interior of an abandoned Volkswagon.

  The odour of stale urine hung around the entrance, but it had not discouraged a teenage couple in studded leather from choosing the foot of the stairs to explore each other’s intimate parts. Nor were they inconvenienced by Jane switching on the light – a single bulb behind a metal grille – to study the list of floors and rooms.

  She started up the stone stairs, wondering if the accommodation improved as you went higher. Red’s flat was on the eighth. She prayed he would be at home. She was not sure what she would do if he wasn’t. The small amount of money she had happened to have with her, and had changed into Deutschmarks at the airport, had all gone on the taxi. There were credit cards in her bag, but she didn’t relish asking any of the locals where she could use them.

  The air did improve appreciably somewhere above the third level, and there had been attempts to paint over the graffiti. She continued upwards. The eighth was not in bad shape compared with the rest. She looked for 808 and was heartened to find R. Goodbody printed on a sticky label over the doorbell.

  She pressed and listened.

  Pressed again.

  Red was not at home.

  Jane leaned against the door and moaned. She couldn’t take another setback. Be rational, she tried to tell herself. You knew he was out, or he would have answered the cable. But he’ll be back. If you pull yourself together and wait, he’ll come, some time. He’ll come. She squatted on the stone floor with her back against his door and closed her eyes. Welcome to Berlin.

  When she opened them, someone had switched on a light. A female voice asked something in German that she didn’t understand.

  She looked up at a girl in a blue and white tracksuit with short dark hair with silver highlights, who was staring down at her and saying something else that sounded more like an order. She was holding a sportsbag away from her, as if she meant to swing it at Jane to move her on.

  Jane struggled to her feet. ‘Please, do you speak English?’

  A pair of green eyes scrutinised Jane. ‘You’re from England?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you doing outside this door?’

  ‘Waiting for the man who lives here.’

  ‘Red?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Their eyes locked as they assessed each other, a positively feral confrontation. The German girl was neat-featured, with full, sensuous lips and plenty of natural colour in her cheeks. Her breasts were prominent without running to grossness. She could probably have pul
led any man she wanted, though her shoulders were too wide and she hadn’t much waist.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Jane Calvert-Mead. And you?’

  ‘Heidrun Kassner. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to see Red.’

  ‘Have you rung the bell?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jane disdainfully. ‘He isn’t in.’

  Heidrun wasn’t taking that on trust. She pressed her thumb against the bellpush and kept it on for about ten seconds. When there was no response, she said sourly, ‘He ought to be in.’ She tossed her bag against the door and strolled to the end of the passage to look out of the window. There was a definite swagger to the movement. Everything in her manner wanted to assert that she shared the flat with Red, but Jane noted with satisfaction that she didn’t possess a key of her own.

  After an interval to ponder the implications of Jane’s arrival, Heidrun sauntered back and asked, ‘Do you work for a newspaper?’

  ‘The same one as Red.’

  ‘Ah.’ She looked a shade less hostile. ‘Something you want to tell him? If you would like to leave a message with me, I’m going to wait for him.’

  ‘That’s all right. So am I,’ said Jane equably.

  Heidrun gave Jane a long stare. ‘It’s getting late. You should be going home.’ She made it sound like an order.

  ‘My home is in England. I don’t live in Berlin.’

  ‘You mean you’re staying somewhere?’

  ‘Here.’

  Heidrun tightened her mouth into a shape that was small and mean. She rested her hands on her hips and took a menacing step towards Jane. ‘I think you made a mistake.’

  Jane stood with her back to the door and shook her head. She kept her hands where they were, one at her side, the other fingering a button of her jacket.

  Heidrun moved her eyes slowly and calculatingly over the length of Jane’s body and then gave her a pitying look. She was about to say something else when the sound of footsteps came up the stairwell. They both turned to look. Heidrun let her arms drop.