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‘That’s all past history,’ said Dick, running a thin bony hand through his curly hair so that he could take a surreptitious look at his big black wristwatch, the kind that works deep under water.
I’d always suspected that Dicky would be more comfortable with his hair cut short and brushed, and in the dark suits, white shirts and old school ties that were de rigueur for senior staff. But he persisted in being the only one of us who wore faded denim, cowboy boots, coloured neckerchiefs, and black leather because he thought it would help to identify him as an infant prodigy. But perhaps I had it the wrong way round; perhaps Dicky would have been happier to keep the trendy garb and be ‘creative’ in an advertising agency.
He zipped the front of his jacket up and down again and said, ‘You’re the local hero. You are the one who brought Stinnes to us at a time when everyone here said it couldn’t be done.’
‘Is that what they were saying? I wish I’d known. The way I heard it, a lot of people were saying I did everything to avoid bringing him in because I was frightened his debriefing would drop me into it.’
‘Well, anyone who was spreading that sort of story is now looking pretty damned stupid.’
‘I’m not in the clear yet, Dicky. You know it and I know it, so let’s stop all this bullshit.’
He held up his hand as if to ward off a blow. ‘You’re still not clear on paper,’ said Dicky. ‘On paper … and you know why?’
‘No, I don’t know why. Tell me.’
Dicky sighed. ‘For the simple but obvious reason that this Department needs an excuse to hold Stinnes in London Debriefing Centre and keep on pumping him. Without an ongoing investigation of our own staff, we’d have to hand Stinnes over to MI5 … That’s why the Department haven’t cleared you yet: it’s a department necessity, Bernard, nothing sinister about it.’
‘Who’s in charge of the Stinnes debriefing?’ I asked.
‘Don’t look at me, old friend. Stinnes is a hot potato. I don’t want any part of that one. Neither does Bret … no one up here on the top floor wants anything to do with it.’
‘Things could change,’ I said. ‘If Stinnes gives us a couple more winners like this one, then a few people will start to see that being in charge of the Stinnes debriefing could be the road to fame and fortune.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Dicky. ‘The tip-off you handled in Berlin was just for openers … a few quick forays before Moscow tumble what’s happening to their networks. Once the dust settles, the interrogators will take Stinnes through the files … right?’
‘Files? You mean they’ll be poking into all our past operations?’
‘Not all of them. I don’t suppose they’ll go back to discover how Christopher Marlowe discovered that the Spanish Armada had sailed.’ Dicky permitted himself a smile at this joke. ‘It’s obvious that the Department will want to discover how good our guesses were. They’ll play all the games again, but this time they’ll know which ones have a happy ending.’
‘And you’ll go along with that?’
‘They won’t consult me, old son. I’m just German Stations Controller; I’m not the D-G. I’m not even on the Policy Committee.’
‘Giving Stinnes access to department archives would be showing a lot of trust in him.’
‘You know what the old man’s like. Deputy D-G came in yesterday on one of his rare visits to the building. He’s enraptured about the progress of the Stinnes debriefing.’
‘If Stinnes is a plant …’
‘Ah, if Stinnes is a plant …’ Dicky sank down in his Charles Eames chair and put his feet on the matching footstool. The night was dark outside and the windowpanes were like ebony reflecting a perfect image of the room. Only the antique desk light was on; it made a pool of light on the table where the report and transcript were placed side by side. Dicky almost disappeared into the gloom except when the light reflected from the brass buckle of his belt or shone on the gold medallion he wore suspended inside his open-neck shirt. ‘But the idea that Stinnes is a plant is hard to sustain when he’s just given us three well-placed KGB agents in a row.’
He looked at his watch before shouting ‘Coffee’ loudly enough for his secretary to hear in the adjoining room. When Dicky worked late, his secretary worked late too. He didn’t trust the duty roster staff with making his coffee.
‘Will he talk, this one you arrested in Berlin? He had a year with the Bonn Defence Ministry, I notice from the file.’
‘I didn’t arrest him; we left it to the Germans. Yes, he’ll talk if they push him hard enough. They have the evidence and – thanks to Volkmann – they’re holding the woman who came to collect it from the car.’
‘And I’m sure you put all that in your report. Are you now the official secretary of the Werner Volkmann fan club? Or is this something you do for all your old school chums?’
‘He’s very good at what he does.’
‘And so we all agree, but don’t tell me that but for Volkmann, we wouldn’t have picked up the woman. Staking out the car is standard procedure. Ye gods, Bernard, any probationary cop would do that as a matter of course.’
‘A commendation would work wonders for him.’
‘Well, he’s not getting any bloody commendation from me. Just because he’s your close friend, you think you can inveigle any kind of praise and privilege out of me for him.’
‘It wouldn’t cost anything, Dicky,’ I said mildly.
‘No, it wouldn’t cost anything,’ said Dicky sarcastically. ‘Not until the next time he makes some monumental cock-up. Then someone asks me how come I commended him; then it would cost something. It would cost me a chewing out and maybe a promotion.’
‘Yes, Dicky,’ I said.
Promotion? Dicky was two years younger than me and he’d already been promoted several rungs beyond his competence. What promotion did he have his eye on now? He’d only just fought off Bret Rensselaer’s attempt to take over the German desk. I’d thought he’d be satisfied to consolidate his good fortune.
‘And what do you make of this Englishwoman?’ He tapped the roughly typed transcript of her statement. ‘Looks as if you got her talking.’
‘I couldn’t stop her,’ I said.
‘Like that, was it? I don’t want to go all through it again tonight. Anything important?’
‘Some inconsistencies that should be followed up.’
‘For instance?’
‘She was working in London, handling selected items for immediate shortwave radio transmission to Moscow.’
‘Must have been bloody urgent,’ said Dicky. So he’d noticed that already. Had he waited to see if I brought it up? ‘And that means damned good. Right? I mean, not even handled through the Embassy radio, so it was a source they wanted to keep very very secret.’
‘Fiona’s material probably,’ I said.
‘I wondered if you’d twig that,’ said Dicky. ‘It was obviously the stuff your wife was betraying out of our day-to-day operational files.’
He liked to twist the knife in the wound. He held me personally responsible for what Fiona had done; he’d virtually said so on more than one occasion.
‘But the material kept coming.’
Dicky frowned. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘It kept coming. First-grade material even after Fiona ran for it.’
‘This woman’s transmitted material wasn’t all from the same source,’ said Dicky. ‘I remember what she said when you played your tape to me.’
He picked up the transcript and tried to find what he wanted in the muddle of humms and hahhs and ‘indistinct passage’ marks that are always a part of transcripts from such tape recordings. He put the sheets down again.
‘Well anyway, I remember there were two assignment codes: Jake and Ironfoot. Is that what’s worrying you?’
‘We should follow it up!’ I said. ‘I don’t like loose ends like that. The dates suggest that Fiona was Ironfoot. Who the hell was Jake?’
‘The Fiona material is our worry. Whatever else Moscow got – and are still getting – is a matter for Five. You know that, Bernard. It’s not our job to search high and low to find Russian spies.’
‘I still think we should check this woman’s statement against what Stinnes knows.’
‘Stinnes is nothing to do with me, Bernard. I’ve just told you that.’
‘Well, I think he should be. It’s madness that we don’t have access to him without going to Debriefing Centre for permission.’
‘Let me tell you something, Bernard,’ said Dicky, leaning well back in the soft leather seat and adopting the manner of an Oxford don explaining the law of gravity to a delivery boy. ‘When London Debriefing Centre get through with Stinnes, heads will roll up here on the top floor. You know the monumental cock-ups that have dogged the work of this Department for the last few years. Now we’ll have chapter and verse on every decision made up here while Stinnes was running things in Berlin. Every decision made by senior staff will be scrutinized with twenty-twenty hindsight. It could get messy; people with a history of bad decisions are going to be axed very smartly.’
Dicky smiled. He could afford to smile; Dicky had never made a decision in his life. Whenever something decisive was about to happen, Dicky went home with a headache.
‘And you think that whoever’s in charge of the Stinnes debriefing will be unpopular?’
‘Running a witch-hunt is not likely to be a social asset,’ said Dicky.
I thought ‘witch-hunt’ was an inaccurate description of the weeding out of incompetents, but there would be plenty who would favour Dicky’s terminology.
‘And that’s not only my opinion,’ he added. ‘No one wants to take Stinnes. And I don’t want you saying we should have responsibility for him.’
Dicky’s secretary brought coffee.
‘I was just coming, Mr Cruyer,’ she said apologetically. She was a mousy little widow whose every sheet of typing was a patchwork of white correcting paint. At one time Dicky had had a shapely twenty-five-year-old divorcee as secretary, but his wife, Daphne, had made him get rid of her. At the time, Dicky had pretended that firing the secretary was his idea; he said it was because she didn’t boil the water properly for his coffee. ‘Your wife phoned. She wanted to know what time to expect you for dinner.’
‘And what did you say?’ Dicky asked her.
The poor woman hesitated, worrying if she’d done the right thing. ‘I said you were at a meeting and I would call her back.’
‘Tell my wife not to wait dinner for me. I’ll get a bite to eat somewhere or other.’
‘If you want to get away, Dicky,’ I said, rising to my feet.
‘Sit down, Bernard. We can’t waste a decent cup of coffee. I’ll be home soon enough. Daphne knows what this job is like; eighteen hours a day lately.’ It was not a soft, melancholy reflection but a loud proclamation to the world, or at least to me and his secretary who departed to pass the news on to Daphne.
I nodded but I couldn’t help wondering if Dicky was scheduling a visit to some other lady. Lately I’d noticed a gleam in his eye and a spring in his step and a most unusual willingness to stay late at the office.
Dicky got up from his easy chair and fussed over the antique butler’s tray which his secretary had placed so carefully on his side table. He emptied the Spode cups of the hot water and half filled each warmed cup with black coffee. Dicky was extremely particular about his coffee. Twice a week he sent one of the drivers to collect a packet of freshly roasted beans from Mr Higgins in South Molton Street – chagga, no blends – and it had to be ground just before brewing.
‘That’s good,’ he said, sipping it with all the studied attention of the connoisseur he claimed to be. Having approved the coffee, he poured some for me.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to stay away from Stinnes, Bernard? He doesn’t belong to us any longer, does he?’ He smiled. It was a direct order; I knew Dicky’s style.
‘Can I have milk or cream or something in mine?’ I said. ‘That strong black brew you make keeps me awake at night.’
He always had a jug of cream and a bowl of sugar brought in with his coffee although he never used either. He once told me that in his regimental officers’ mess, the cream was always on the table but it was considered bad form to take any. I wondered if there were a lot of people like Dicky in the Army; it was a dreadful thought. He brought the cream to me.
‘You’re getting old, Bernard. Did you ever think of jogging? I run three miles every morning – summer, winter, Christmas, every morning without fail.’
‘Is it doing you any good?’ I asked as he poured cream for me from the cow-shaped silver jug.
‘Ye gods, Bernard. I’m fitter now than I was at twenty-five. I swear I am.’
‘What kind of shape were you in at twenty-five?’ I said.
‘Damned good.’ He put the jug down so that he could run his fingers round the brass-buckled leather belt that held up his jeans. He sucked in his stomach to exaggerate his slim figure and then slammed himself in the gut with a flattened hand. Even without the intake of breath, his lack of fat was impressive. Especially when you took into account the countless long lunches he charged against his expense account.
‘But not as good as now?’ I persisted.
‘I wasn’t fat and flabby the way you are, Bernard. I didn’t huff and puff every time I went up a flight of stairs.’
‘I thought Bret Rensselaer would take over the Stinnes debriefing.’
‘Debriefing,’ said Dicky suddenly. ‘How I hate that word. You get briefed and maybe briefed again, but there is no way anyone can be debriefed.’
‘I thought Bret would jump at it. He’s been out of a job since Stinnes was enrolled.’
Dicky gave the tiniest chuckle and rubbed his hands together. ‘Out of a job since he tried to take over my desk and failed. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
‘Was he after your desk?’ I said innocently, although Dicky had been providing me with a blow-by-blow account of Bret’s tactics and his own counterploys.
‘Jesus Christ, Bernard, you know he was. I told you all that.’
‘So what’s he got lined up now?’
‘He’d like to take over in Berlin when Frank goes.’
Frank Harrington’s job as head of the Berlin Field Unit was one I coveted, but it meant close liaison with Dicky, maybe even taking orders from him sometimes (although such orders were always wrapped up in polite double-talk and signed by Deputy Controller Europe or a member of the London Central Policy Committee). It wasn’t exactly a role that the autocratic Bret Rensselaer would cherish.
‘Berlin? Bret? Would he like that job?’
‘The rumour is that Frank will get his K. and then retire.’
‘And so Bret plans to sit in Berlin until his retirement comes round and hope that he’ll get a K. too?’ It seemed unlikely. Bret’s social life centred on the swanky jet setters of London South West One. I couldn’t see him sweating it out in Berlin.
‘Why not?’ said Dicky, who seemed to get a flushed face whenever the subject of knighthoods came up.
‘Why not?’ I repeated. ‘Bret can’t speak the language, for one thing.’
‘Come along, Bernard!’ said Dicky, whose command of German was about on a par with Bret’s. ‘He’ll be running the show; he won’t be required to pass himself off as a bricklayer from Prenzlauer Berg.’
A palpable hit for Dicky. Bernard Samson had spent his youth masquerading as just such lowly coarse-accented East German citizens.
‘It’s not just a matter of throwing gracious dinner parties in that big house in the Grunewald,’ I said. ‘Whoever takes over in Berlin has to know the streets and alleys. He’ll also need to know the crooks and hustlers who come in to sell bits and pieces of intelligence.’
‘That’s what you say,’ said Dicky, pouring himself more coffee. He held up the jug. ‘More for you?’ And when I shook my head he continued: ‘That’s because you fancy yourself doing Frank’s job … don’t deny it, you know it’s true. You’ve always wanted Berlin. But times have changed, Bernard. The days of rough-and-tumble stuff are over and done with. That was okay in your father’s time, when we were a de facto occupying power. But now – whatever the lawyers say – the Germans have to be treated as equal partners. What the Berlin job needs is a smoothie like Bret, someone who can charm the natives and get things done by gentle persuasion.’
‘Can I change my mind about coffee?’ I said. I suspected that Dicky’s views were those prevailing among the top-floor mandarins. There was no way I’d be on a short list of smoothies who got things done by means of gentle persuasion, so this was goodbye to my chances of Berlin.
‘Don’t be so damned gloomy about it,’ said Dicky as he poured coffee. ‘It’s mostly dregs, I’m afraid. You didn’t really think you were in line for Frank’s job, did you?’ He smiled at the idea.
