by John Gardner
The answer was soon forthcoming. At the edge of the village, our sergeant called for us to stop. I had noticed nothing—my mind too disturbed by what we had just witnessed. Suddenly a group of men rose from the ground ahead, where they had lain hidden. They turned out to be from the 5th Division: a patrol sent on an anti-partisan mission. Their sergeant approached us, saying they had ‘made an example of the village’. There was no evidence—as far as I could see—that the victims had anything to do with partisans; but the sergeant was one of the most brutal men I have ever met. He laughed with our sergeant, describing how the villagers had ‘squealed like stuck pigs’, and had to be beaten to the gallows. He seemed to take a particular delight in the terror of the little ones, whom he had made stand and watch, as their parents were dispatched.
His men were lying in wait for the partisans. We moved forward, only to find the same scenes of desolate violence in the next village; and at a farm, some three kilometres down the road. There, the farmer, his wife, and some others had been killed—but not before terrible torture. One young woman lay on the wooden steps of the house, her throat slit. Her body, which was naked, showed the marks and wounds of burning, and whipping, not to mention the obvious, obscene, signs of rape. She looked as though a whole section of soldiers had been through her. The final knife cut must have arrived as a merciful release.
A squealing noise came from behind the barn, and I thought it was probably an injured animal. Our sergeant went to investigate, and a few seconds later the squeaking rose to a shriek. Then silence. Apparently, it was a child of about five years. A girl, with both legs broken. All Sergeant Zipperman said was that he had put an end to her with a bayonet—‘there was no point in wasting precious ammunition on a sub-human like that’. I was certain I would kill the man before we were through.
Big Herbie understood the last line, for he had also seen revolting scenes of injustice. The statement caught Herbie Kruger in the throat and heart. Stentor was merely recounting what he saw, in the barest terms.
At the St. John’s Wood building, Herbie said good night to Paul, and took the lift to his flat. There had been an afternoon mail delivery. On the floor lay a small brown package.
Gently, Herbie picked it up, placing it on the table, then removing his coat. With scissors, he clipped away the sellotape, alert to any possible device hidden inside.
There were no sinister traces: no wires or leads. Big Herbie tipped the package on to its side, and a pre-recorded cassette fell, with a clatter, on to the glass table top. Wrapped around the plastic box was a printed slip bearing the heading of a well-known mail order record and tape firm, and the legend—Please find your order enclosed.
He had ordered nothing. Certainly not this, though it was on his list of recordings to purchase. The music magazines had reviewed it well: Mahler. Symphony No. 4. Israel Philharmonic Orchestra ZUBIN MEHTA.
Odd. Big Herbie prided himself on having a collection of the finest recordings of Gustav Mahler’s works. For the Fourth you would have to go a long way to beat Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra, and Raskin singing the final little poem.
Well, never close your mind. He would drink some vodka and listen. Sliding the cassette from its box, Herbie lumbered towards the tape deck. A few feet from his goal he stopped—standing statue-still and alert. Holding the cassette by one corner, his finger and thumb had encountered a small sticky patch.
He held the tape up to the light. There, on either side, at the top, were faint traces on the plastic. Maybe the tape still held some of Mahler’s Fourth, but a pound to a Deutschmark not all of it.
Pre-recorded tapes have small oblong indentations in the plastic, at each end of the top narrow section—to prevent accidental recordings being made over the original, for no tape machine will operate on Record with those small holes in place.
There are many ways of overcoming this—matchsticks, for instance; though the easiest is to cover the holes with small pieces of sellotape. Someone had undoubtedly already done this to the Mahler tape in Herbie’s hand. So, instead of the Israel Philharmonic there would be a voice, or voices. The thought was both intriguing and worrying.
Slowly, Herbie Kruger opened the drawer near the tape deck and removed a pair of lightweight headphones. Adjusting the headphones, he slipped the tape into place and pressed the Play button.
Three opening bars, then the steady beat of basses, with the violins taking up the first, deceptively jaunty, main theme. Ascending basses and answering horns. Then a sudden cutting of the music, and a voice whispering in his right ear—sending a shiver up the back of Herbie’s neck.
It was a most ingenious recording, done with first class equipment: using a stereo microphone so that the voice began in the right ear and then moved away, behind Herbie. There was even a creak—the sound of a loose board?—which made him turn, expecting to see Jacob Vascovsky standing directly behind him, the face looking, as always, oddly more French than Russian.
Herbie could almost smell the room in the old Magdalenenstrasse jail, to which Vascovsky had him taken after the final entrapment. To have once been in the hands of men like Vascovsky—knowing that you hold precious secrets deep within your head—is to know true fear. That same sense of terror returned, momentarily, now, at the sound of the General’s voice on the tape: whispering, lulling, soothing, like some beckoning siren.
“So, Herbie, my friend, you think you have escaped. You really believe it’s the end between us? Well, I have things to tell you. I understand they’ve finished cleaning you out. Are you a husk, now, Big Herbie Kruger? A shell of a man? You should be, for it was I who fractured the legend of your great career.” At that point, the voice seemed to move behind him, clear in both ears. “I gather they’ve been foolish enough to give you a little work. It will be very little, I assure you.” He paused for a single hard laugh. “They’ve given me more work also, Herbie. Quite important, because you gave me so much—though I doubt if you knew it.
“Now listen carefully, my friend of darkness, my secret adversary, my enemy. At this moment I have only one way of keeping in touch. Later there will be another; but I think it is important for me to talk with you.
“Herbie Kruger, you are a worthy man in our line of business; but the world has changed. Our own kind of work alters with it; practically every day. You know the truth as well as I—and please don’t close your eyes and ears to it. This message is not a lure: our time for traps and lures is gone. This is a genuine offer, believe it or not. Listen, I will meet you; I wish to meet you; I will meet you anywhere”—again the laugh, but more of a chuckle this time—“without any hired guns or hoodlums. Please, I beg you, think about this. I do not know what they have given you to do; but I do know the mentality of your Service. In your deepest heart you know also.
“Herbie, have you had time to really feel it yet? That they don’t trust you? That they will trust you no longer? You will be like a man who is grounded, tied to a desk job after years of flying experience; or an active soldier pensioned off, rooting in a garden, and living on memories. What is worse they will be memories with a bitter taste—the gall of not being trusted at the end. The past is no good for either of us; it is the now that matters. Now, and the future—what is left of it: for there cannot be too many years left to this troubled planet.
“I belong to what they call a superpower; while your adopted country is reduced to being a missile site, launching pad, and giant aircraft carrier, for another superpower.
“When it comes, the new holocaust will concern the survival of the few; and their survival will be in the most primitive of conditions. The days of our great technology are numbered. Do you, like myself, think that mankind is basically psychopathic by nature? We bring our own destruction into the world as snails carry their houses; and the further mankind has travelled along the slow road of discovery, the more dangerous it becomes.
“This time, the wheel cannot be stopped. The food will run out; the harvests will not feed our countl
ess millions; and the battle will come—over grain, and oil, and what we think of as the bare necessities. When it is over, and the destroyers have done their job—with neutron, atom, plague and blight—some must remain to build a path through a barren planet. Men of different races and political beliefs, but similar knowledge of specialised techniques will be required. We are such men, and need a freedom to act and use our qualities.
“Your people will never give you that freedom now they’ve lost trust. We can give it, and we will give it. Soon, I shall let you know how to reply. Consider it, Herbie Kruger. Consider meeting me alone. Consider hard and long, because you have been a worthy adversary.”
Big Herbie—shaken at the fact of Vascovsky’s ability, even now, to reach out to him—listened to the tape again. He then poured himself a very large vodka, sat down and tried to out-think Jacob Vascovsky. There was a strong, and logical emotional appeal, together with a moral argument which sounded sincere enough—if you happened to be one who really believed in the inevitability of a world laid waste by the superweapons and greed of man.
Desperately, Herbie wished he could figure Jacob Vascovsky’s angle. There had to be a reason for this. More—the reason must be one of some urgency.
Slowly, Herbie Kruger got out of the chair and walked to the direct line telephone, hoping the DG would still be in his office.
He was there, snappy and gruff, but silent while Herbie told him about the tape.
“Yes.” The Director General appeared to have relaxed. “So glad you told me about it, Herbie. I listened to it this morning. Interesting, isn’t it? Posted in the West End yesterday morning. Curry’s checking on the mail order firm now. No luck as yet. I wonder how we can use it to our own advantage? You might like to think about that, what?”
Herbie muttered an obscenity in German and replaced the receiver. He felt depressed and jittery that Vascovsky could come so close, and be so accurate. Perhaps Martha would help sweep away the gloom.
Herbie had last seen Martha Adler during the final phases of his ill-starred, unofficial visit to East Berlin. For a while, then, he had not trusted her.
She seemed to have lost a little weight. Apart from that, Martha looked incredibly healthy: her skin bronzed and the ash blonde hair silk smooth. To Herbie’s eye, she had changed little since the first time he set eyes on her.
In the split second of their meeting—at the door of a small mock-Georgian bungalow, attached to a row of similar buildings—Herbie re-lived their past.
East Berlin, 1959. Herbie was recruiting. Saturday night at the Rialto, a hotbed of pro-Communists. She had come into the bar—a striking girl, with a tipsy Russian officer. A scuffle. Herbie to the rescue.
She worked for the ruling hierarchy, whom she hated, but held to a philosophy of the nearer you were to the centre of power, the more damage you could accomplish when the time came. She lived for that time; meanwhile, Martha got all she could. In sexual matters she was honest. She usually had a lover; but, between lovers, it was open season. That is how it was when they met; and, for a short time, Herbie had been her temporary lover—for she needed men with power, to supply her personal economic needs. She did not take much recruiting. One of the best who ever worked for him.
Now, all those years from that first, smoky, Saturday night meeting, Herbie put down his suitcase, opened his arms, and gave her a great bear hug.
“They’ve done you well.” He looked around as she closed the door. A neat room with carefully selected furniture—mostly nice old pieces, late eighteenth century. On one wall, a painting of cliffs and sea; a large gilt mirror on the other.
“It’s comfortable, Herbie. But lonely. More lonely than the East, I can tell you.”
“In a place like this?” Herbie showed genuine surprise. “You’ll capture yourself a nice, retired, well-off widower, and live happily ever after.”
“God help you, Herbie. That’s what I don’t need: and you know it. I’ve never needed it. A drink before lunch?”
Herbie grinned enthusiastically. He had quietly put his small suitcase just inside the door. Martha looked at it; and then at Herbie. “Schnapps?”
“Perfect.”
“You’ve known me for a long time, you great oaf.” Her hands moving expertly over the glasses and bottle. “You know what I need. Life. Nights on the town. The comfort of knowing that you’re cared for, even if it’s only transitory. I’ve never believed in love being for ever. For ever if you only want comfort. Not for ever if you get your highs from passion, and life lived at full stretch.” She handed him a glass. “Prosit.”
“Cheers.” They seemed to be alternating between German and English.
“Herbie, you know me. Being cared for—just for a while; knowing there’s someone around; a little companionable fucking.”
Herbie laughed, “From what I remember it’s a lot of companionable fucking.”
She smiled—an imitation sweetness. “Well, you’ll be reminded, tonight. There’s only one bedroom and one bed.”
Herbie glanced at the sofa. Martha Adler smiled her false, sweet, smile again. “No,” she said. “You don’t come down here to keep me company over a weekend and then do that to me, my teddy bear Big Herbie—Schnitzer.” The last word—Blunder, in English—had been a cryptonym for both Herbie and his first East Berlin network.
They lunched on a consommé—“It came from a tin, darling. Can you see me sweating to make this?”—and a delicious Sauerbraten, complete with potato dumplings. “Yes, darling, I did sweat over this. I have a long memory.”
It came back to Herbie. She had cooked Sauerbraten for him when they were lovers—and Martha between semipermanent lovers.
Children almost. Puppies playing games. No, Herbie should not think like that: for, in those days, you were full-grown, emotionally advanced, streetwise, and full of the world’s darkest knowledge, by the time you reached your teens. Martha was barely out of her teens when they first met.
Over the meal, she made him laugh. “I shall go mad, here. The available men are too frightened—they paw and pet and make noises: ‘I say, old girl, better be careful, what?’” Her parody English accent made Herbie smile to himself.
“As for the retired married ones. Well, horny as hell, but scared stiff of their wives.” She threw back her head to laugh at the little play on words.
“That’s good for someone who does not speak really excellent English.” Big Herbie grinned.
“Oh I learn, here. I learn, Oxo. Not until the sun crosses the yard-arm. Coffee Morning. You must come to dinner. Drop in any old time. Jumble sale. Sale of work. I learn. No wonder we have Communists. The bourgeoisie still triumph in these enclaves, Herbie.”
Big Herbie nodded. “You get used to it, my dear. Like we got used to cover. By the way, who did they exchange you for?”
“Didn’t you know? Oh, some little turnaround defector. KGB. Name of Mistochenkov.” Herbie said he thought as much. Pavel Mistochenkov had been Vascovsky’s ADC at one time. Then he asked what had gone on, when the KGB had her in Berlin.
“The usual things”—a bitter, one-note, high-pitched laugh. “Irony, Herbie. I’d been screwing the little bastard who arrested me. He tried coaxing. Promised the earth. Then it got unpleasant for a while—sensory deprivation. You know.”
Herbie knew. A cell in which you could neither stand fully, nor sit in comfort. Darkness and solitude. Occasional noises off. Unless you’d had training—or practised meditation—it took around two days to become disorientated; four to six days before you thought you would go mad.
They walked in the afternoon. Down by the yacht club, and out along the coast. She still had that long, leggy, stride he remembered so well. The wind whipped in from the sea, blowing her hair into an untidy mop, and she hung tightly to Herbie’s arm, as he rolled and lumbered over the grass.
Herbie did not speak of the immediate past. Instead, they talked of the times two decades ago: the early ’sixties. Over tea, in a snug cafe, Herbie felt the
old trust; that special intimacy—between control and agent—returning: It crossed his mind that his future could be worse. She was intelligent. They both knew the job. He supposed the DG could provide a reasonable pension for him. Life might be very comfortable with Martha Adler.
The telephone was ringing when they got back to her little bungalow.
“It’s for you.” She frowned, holding out the receiver.
Herbie covered the mouthpiece, looking at her eyes. “I have to tell them where I’m going. They know anyway. Surveillance, because of what happened last year.”
She gave a little nod of understanding, as he heard Curry Shepherd’s voice in his ear. “Awfully sorry. Fun and games over. Urgent, from the boss man. Needs you in London pronto. Car in ten minutes be okay?”
“Yes”—putting the phone down; turning to Martha. “I’m so sorry, my dear.”
She raised her arms, straight, from her sides; then let them fall back into place. “There goes my fucking weekend.”
“There can be others. A lot of others.”
Martha nestled in his arms, holding him very close. “You mean that, Herbie. Not just saying... ?”
“Not just saying. I’m on duty, my dear.”
She clung even harder. “I’m so bloody frightened, Schnitzer. It must be age catching up. I’m more frightened of the loneliness here, than I ever was out there. Please come and see me—properly see me—soon.”