Fen Country (6 page)

“What did I miss?” Wyndham asked.

“Oh, the significance of your fall, when you smashed the china.”

“But she
didn’t
react to that.”

“Quite,” said Fen. “That was how I realized she was shamming deafness—wasn’t, in fact, what she pretended to be. A genuinely deaf person would have felt the vibration of that heavy fall, conducted through the floor and walls, and would have turned at once.”

By the close of Herr Dietrich’s peroration Gervase Fen had become decidedly restive. The hall was chilly and airless, the first delightful impact of Communism’s musty Victorian-sounding zoological similes—”Fascist jackal”, “Capitalist leeches”—had grown stale with repetition, and in general Fen felt that he had had enough of political slumming to last him for quite some time to come. He waited while an inflammatory question about the American president was asked and lengthily answered—Eisenhower, it seemed (pronounced by Herr Dietrich “Eisssenhoer” with all the sibilance of extreme hatred), was directly responsible, along with the vultures of Wall Street, for Germany’s continued partition—and then nudged his companion and crept out. In the streets, breathing soot-laden Stepney air, he lit a cigarette. And presently the other—whose name was Campbell and who belonged to Scotland Yard’s Special Branch—joined him there.

“Well, thanks for bringing me,” said Fen. “Do you have to go back?”

Campbell shook his head. “No, I don’t think it’s necessary. Apart from riots with Fascists, nothing interesting ever happens at these public do’s. What did you think of Dietrich?”

Fen paused a moment before replying. Then he said slowly: “I suppose that really
was
Dietrich?”

Campbell stared. “Good heavens, yes. He’s far too well-known, and far too distinctive-looking, for them to dream of trying to substitute anyone else. Anyway, why should they? From the point of view of the Stepney Communist Party, he’s a great catch.”

“Yes, I suppose so… The sort of man,” Fen added pensively, “who would have a lot of useful information to give us about what’s going on in East Berlin.”

“Would but won’t,” said Campbell. “You can take it as read that he’ll be kept surrounded by watchful comrades the whole time he’s over here. Since Petrov, they’ve been very cagey about that sort of thing. So that even if Dietrich did feel inclined to ask for asylum, he’d have to do a tricky escaping act first… Not,” Campbell went on, probing delicately, “that we have any reason to suppose—”

“Nothing that would convince your superiors, no,” said Fen with a grin. “Just the same, I should like to know where Dietrich and his friends are likely to go when the meeting’s over.”

Campbell regarded him with suspicion. “Look here, you be careful,” he said. “Some of these people are genuinely dangerous. If you’re thinking of trying to strike up an acquaintance—”

“I am not,” said Fen truthfully. “I’m curious, that’s all. How do the comrades relax? Will they go to a pub, I mean, or—”

“They’ll probably go to that pub over there.” Campbell pointed across the road. “The Grapes.”

“Good. I can do with a drink. And don’t you worry about me. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”

Campbell contemplated him for a moment, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I believe you are. Just don’t start heiling Mosley when you’re in The Grapes, that’s all. The clients don’t much like that sort of thing.” He smiled and waved and went.

Fen had no intention of heiling Mosley, in The Grapes or anywhere else. He bought beer and settled down by the bar to read the evening paper, with the Light Program burbling innocuously at his elbow; and after half an hour or so was rewarded by the arrival of Dietrich with three English comrades—a young fanatical-looking one, an older and decidedly tough one, and a clerkly fellow in rimless glasses. They carried their drinks to a table in the corner, and Fen began taking serious stock of the situation.

It was unpromising, he found. Dietrich was obviously being closely watched, and it was clear that conversational overtures from a stranger such as Fen would arouse instant suspicion. Some communication with Dietrich there plainly must be, however, if anything were to be accomplished. As to how—

“…opens our program of ‘Music for the Multitude,’ ” said the radio, “with that rousing…”

At which Fen sat upright abruptly on his stool, and for the first time that evening favored the Light Program with the whole of his attention. For he had recognized the announcer’s voice. By one of those coincidences which ere so much commoner in life then in fiction, this particular announcer was an ex-pupil of Fen’s. Fen knew, moreover, that he had quarreled with the BBC and was leaving them quite shortly. And that being so—

There was a telephone-box a short way along the road. Fen left the bar, and after a rapid reconnaissance of the back of the inn’s premises, made two calls.

At The Grapes, when he returned there, he was gratified to find everything as before. He resumed his position at the back, and presently, when the second item of “Music for the Multitude” had reached its tawdry conclusion, stretched out his hand, as if idly, to twist the radio’s volume control.

“We come now,” said the announcer, “to a popular march based on the old German folk-tune ‘Der hohe Herr am Barwird Ihnen winken: dann, deutscher Kamerad, gehen Sie bitte sofort in die Herren.’ Ladies and gentlemen—’Anchors Aweigh.’”

A great splurge of brass and cymbals filled the room. At a glare from the landlord Fen hurriedly turned the volume down again and went back to his paper. Perhaps ten minutes later, a very large, very drunk young man appeared and demanded a double whisky. With an air of great self-approval, he drank about half of this. Then all at once his expression altered; he mumbled something; holding a hand to his mouth, he made hurriedly for one of the doors at the back.

“There’s another of them can’t take it,” said Fen to the landlord. The landlord nodded, and with mournful emphasis Fen nodded back.

Dietrich got to his feet. Now he was heading for the door the young man had disappeared through. The tough middle-aged comrade was following, while the younger one slipped out into the street—no doubt with a view to stationing himself strategically under the relevant window. Fen finished his drink and left. In the narrowing deserted street behind The Grapes he was in time to see a car’s tail-light vanishing. The youthful comrade, though unlikely to recover consciousness for some minutes, was not seriously injured, Fen thought. He went and found himself a taxi.

“Most irregular,” said Sir Somebody two hours later, in an office of the Special Branch whose whereabouts is not known to the general public. “Two respected citizens of Stepney with great stunning bruises on the backs of their heads, and no trace of miscreants…”

“Undergraduates, perhaps,” Fen suggested. “For instance, I happen to know that a couple of pupils of mine are in London at the moment—”

“No, they’ll never be caught.” Sir Somebody was firm. “Not a chance of it, I’m afraid. As to this business of kidnapping an important personage from East Berlin… well, really…”

Herr Dietrich grinned all over his broad, florid face. “Such a very good plan,” he murmured. “At the first, you realize, I am a little surprised that it is carried out by amateurs. But then I understand that most probably my hint is too slight to be acted on by your—what do you call it? by your big brass. I am surrounded all the time, so I do not dare to do anything more emphatic, but I hope that perhaps it will be thought I am a masquerader, for always at these political meetings there are secret police listening. When I heard the instruction from the BBC—”

“Which reminds me.” Fen reached for the telephone, dialed a number, asked for a certain extension, spoke, listened, chuckled.

‘It seems,’ he told them, ringing off, “that quite a surprising number of German-speakers listen to ‘Music for the Multitude.’ They’ve all been ringing up wanting to know why the BBC should suppose that ‘Anchors Aweigh’ is based on the German folk-song ‘The tall man at the bar will give you a signal: then, German Comrade, please go straight to the Gents.’”

Sir Somebody laughed. But Campbell, the fourth member of the party, said rather irritably: “I still don’t see it; I still don’t see how you could tell from that meeting that Herr Dietrich was wanting to stay in this country.”

“Oh, simple,” said Fen. “He pronounced ‘Eisenhower’ wrong. Despite the spelling of the last two syllables, it’s a German name, of course, which every German recognizes as such. What’s more, we in England and America pronounce it exactly as a German would. ‘Eisssenhoer,’ from a Berliner, was just ridiculous. Either Herr Dietrich wasn’t Herr Dietrich at all, or else he was relying on the Stepney Communist Party’s ignorance of German—as I relied on it in arranging for that broadcast message—to send out a distress signal. Ike to the rescue! A good thing, in the circumstances, that they didn’t elect Stevenson.”

“So what it comes down to,” said the young American, in a voice which no amount of self-discipline could keep entirely steady, “is just this: either this top guy in Washington is a traitor, or I am. The FBI’s picked me for the honor—and if they could get any kind of concrete evidence against me, I’d be going back to the States for a long, long spell in jail. Even as it is—well, but never mind me. All I’m saying now, in italics, capitals, is that I was
NOT
careless and I did
NOT
sell out. And if you accept that, there’s only the one alternative.”

Gervase Fen, in whose rooms at St. Christopher’s the conversation was taking place, regarded his visitor thoughtfully. “In strict grammar,” he observed, “there is of course never more than one alternative; sometimes, though, the list of candidates for the position is rather larger than one imagines…” He hesitated. “Look, Christopher, why have you come to me?”

Christopher Bradbury considered; then he answered slowly: “I guess I just had to tell somebody. A man can’t keep a thing like this boiling inside of him indefinitely without going haywire. And the question now is, do you believe I’m telling the truth?”

“Yes, I do,” Fen assured him. “But before I say anything more then that, I’d like to go over the facts once again and make sure there’s nothing I’ve missed.

“Like this: on going down after a misspent career here at Oxford, you got a job in a top-secret department of the FBI, working in London in collaboration with our Special Branch.”

“Check,” said Bradbury.

“Your only relative in England is—no, was: you said he’d just died, didn’t you?—was a stepbrother of your mother’s, an elderly retired lawyer called Darling who lived in Sussex by the sea.”

“Check.”

“Last month you were given a fortnight’s leave; and you went to Sussex for the second week of it to stay with Darling. “There you met, among other people, a family called Anderson—mother, father, grown-up daughter—who were old acquaintances of Darling’s and who had rented a house near by for their summer holiday.

“On the day before you left you were due to telephone direct to your top man in Washington for instructions. Your uncle was in poor health, and more or less permanently confined to one room—and unfortunately that was the room with the telephone in it. So rather than embark on the insane enterprise of trying to get through to Washington from a public call-box, you went along to the Andersons’ house and asked to use
their
telephone.”

“So far, correct.”

“The Andersons,”—Fen went on—”showed you into the parlor, where the telephone was, and left you alone there. You closed and fastened the door and the windows, so that even if anyone had been listening outside them, they could have heard nothing. And—”

“And also,” said Bradbury, “I made sure—it was just routine, of course, but I was still thorough about it—that there were no ventilators, to let out sound, and no hidden persons or recording machines.”

“Good. You then picked up the telephone and asked for your number. I’m not quite clear about these technical precautions you mentioned…”

“If anyone asks for that particular number,” Bradbury explained, “by the time the exchange rings him back he’s through to a special switchboard, on a line which can’t be tapped and has no operators to overhear. The FBI checked that part of it—naturally—and it was foolproof. That has to be accepted, whether we like it or not.”

“All right. You got through, were given your instructions, rang off, thanked and paid the Andersons, and went back to your uncle.”

“And twelve hours later, before I’d even left Sussex,” Bradbury concluded grimly, “a valuable man was shot dead in Hampstead, and months of work collapsed in ruins, because those instructions were known.

“Not even my colleagues or my boss in this country, not even your Special Branch, had any idea what those instructions would be. It wasn’t necessary for me to pass them on, any part of them, to anybody, and they weren’t written down. They went direct into my head, and that’s where they stayed.”

And with a despairing gesture Bradbury fell back in his chair. “So what, I ask you, is the answer to that?”

Fen chose to regard the question as rhetorical; and a heavy silence descended on the room. Presently, without much appearance of optimism: “I can understand,” Fen ventured, “how the line from your special switchboard to Washington could be made safe from tapping. But the line from the Anderson house to the switchboard, now…”

Bradbury shook his head. “No soap. They have instruments to detect if a line’s being tapped, and this line just wasn’t.”

“In that case there’s got to be something you haven’t told me… These Andersons, for instance. What sort of people are they?”

“Ordinary. Middle class. Fairly well off, I’d say. Not intellectual giants, but reasonably lively and pleasant. Marion, that’s the daughter, was crazy about some guy her parents didn’t approve of—he wasn’t down there in Sussex, though…” Bradbury paused. “Yes, go on,” said Fen impatiently.

“About Marion? Well, naturally she was wanting to marry this guy. She knew her parents thought he was after her for her money—she has a bit of her own—so that was holding her back. But I got the idea that if they’d seriously tried to prevent her seeing him, she’d have eloped with him there and then: she’s twenty-five, twenty-six maybe, so there’d have been nothing to stop her. Mind you, she didn’t seem too happy about things…”