Spy hook: a novel (37 page)

Finally I made a foot space on the window sill and from there I could step down into the bath and ... Jesus, there was water in the bath. Lots of water! What did that bloody Tarrant do if he couldn’t even make sure the bath was drained properly? My shoe was full of soapy water. How disgusting! I didn’t like Frank’s valet and the feeling was mutual. I suppose, if I was to examine my feelings closely, the principal reason I didn’t just knock on Frank’s front door was because I wouldn’t trust that bloody man Tarrant as far as I could throw him. In a jam like the one I was now in, I would give Tarrant just three minutes before catching sight of me and getting on the blower and reporting me. Less than three niinutes: thirty seconds. Frank was downstairs. I knew where he was. I’d known it even when I was on the back lawn looking up at the drainpipes. He was sitting in the drawing room playing his Duke Ellington records. That’s what Frank usually did when he was alone in the house. Volume up really loud, so that you could hear the drums and brass section halfway along the street. Frank said the only way you could really appreciate these old records was to have them as loud as the original band had been when making them, but I think Frank was going deaf.

It was the 1940 band - the best Ellington band ever in my opinion, although Frank didn’t agree - playing “Cotton Tail”. No wonder Frank didn’t hear me come into the room. I could have been driving a combine harvester and still he wouldn’t have heard me above the surging beat of the Ellington band.

Frank was sitting in a chair positioned exactly in line with his two giant speakers. He was dressed in a yellow sweater with a Paisley-patterned silk scarf tucked into his open-neck shirt. It was all very Noel Coward except for the big curly pipe in his fist and the clouds of fierce-smelling tobacco smoke that made me want to cough. He was bent low reading the small print on a record label. I waited for him to look up. I said, “Hello, Frank,” as casually as I could say it.

“Hello, Bernard,” said Frank and held his pipe aloft to caution me. “Listen to Ben Webster.”

Listen to him. How could I do anything else, the tenor solo went through my head like a power drill. But when the immortal Webster had finished, Frank turned the volume down so it was merely very loud.

“Whisky, Bernard?” said Frank. He was already pouring it.

“Thanks,” I said gratefully.

“I enjoy seeing you any time, Bernard. But I wish you’d just knock on the front door, the way other visitors do.”

If Frank knew there was a warrant out for me, he was staying very cool. “Why?’ I said and drank some whisky. Laphroaig: he knew I liked it.

“So you don’t make such a mess on the carpet,” said Frank with a fleeting grin to offset his complaint.

I looked at the carpet. My wet shoe had left marks all the way to the door, and right through the house probably. “I’m sorry, Frank.”

“Why do you have to do everything arse upwards Bernard? It makes fife so difficult for your friends.” Frank had always taken his paternal role seriously, and his way of demonstrating it was to be there when I needed him. Sometimes I wondered what kind of man my father must have been to have made a friendship so deep and binding that I was still drawing upon its capital. “You’re too old now for tricks like climbing up to that damned bathroom. You used to do that when you were very young. Remember?”

“Did I”

“I left the light on in the bathroom so you wouldn’t fall off the ledge and break your neck.”

“You heard what happened?” I said, not being able to endure another moment of Frank’s small-talk.

“I knew you’d come to me,” Frank said, walking towards me with a whisky bottle. He couldn’t resist it. It was the sort of complacent statement my mother made. Why did he have to be such an old woman? Couldn’t he see how it spoiled everything? I let him pour me another drink. It was a wonder he was able to resist telling me I drank too much, but he’d probably find some way to work it into the conversation before long. “When did you hear?” I asked.

“That the old man wanted you collared? I got a “confidential” on the printer about four o’clock. But then a cancellation came through.” He smiled. “Reading between the lines, someone in London must have decided that the old man had gone completely batty. Then, after an hour or more, the same message was repeated. This time with the names of both the D-G and the Deputy on it.” He looked at the carpet. “It”s not grease is it?”

“It’s water,” I said.

“If it’s grease or oil, tell me now so I can leave a note for Tarrant to do something about it before it soaks in.” “I told you, Frank. It’s water.”

“Keep your hair on, Bernard.”

“So I’m still on the arrest list?”

“I’m afraid you are. Your ruse with your friend Werner Volkmann didn’t fool the army very long.”

“Long enough.”

“For you to do a bunk, yes. But Captain Berry got the devil of a rocket.”

“Captain Berry?”

“The provost captain. I hear the commanding general wants him to face a court. Poor little bugger.”

“Screw Captain Berry,” I said. “I have no tears to shed for MP captains who want to throw me into the slammer.” I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.

Frank saw me looking at it and said, “They won’t come here searching for you.”

“What’s it all about, Frank?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me, Bernard.”

“I went to see the old man and reported all that stuff about Bret Rensselaer and the bank funds.”

“I thought you were going to abandon all that nonsense,” said Frank wearily.

“Did they tell you what the charges against me might be?”

“No.”

“Were they planning to hold me here, or ship me back to the UKF

“I don’t know, Bernard. I really don’t know.”

“You’re the Head of Berlin Station, Frank.” “I’m telling you the truth, Bernard. I don’t bloody well know.”

“It’s about Fiona, isn’t it?”

“Fiona?” said Frank, and seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Is Fiona still working for the Department?” It took the wind out of his sails. He drank some of whatever he was drinking and looked at me for what seemed a long time. “I wish I could say yes, Bernard. I really do.”

“Because that’s the only conclusion that makes sense.”

“Makes sense how?”

“What would Bret Rensselaer be doing with umpteen minion dollars?”

“I can think of a lot of things,” said Frank, who was not very fond of Bret Rensselaer.

“Money. You know what a tight rein the Department keep on their cash. You can’t really believe Central Funding let millions out of their sight and forget who they’d given it to.” “Umm.” He smoked his pipe and thought about it. I said, “That sort of money is stashed away in secret accounts for pay-outs. For pay-outs, Frank.”

“In California?”

“No. Not California. When I talked to Bret in California, no one, except the Americans, was getting agitated. It was when I traced the money to Berlin that the excitement began.” “Berlin?”

“So they didn’t tell you that? Schneider, von Schild and Weber, right here on the Ku-Danun.”

He- touched his moustache with the mouthpiece of his pipe.

“Even so, I’m still not sure . . .”

“Suppose Fiona’s defection was the end of a very long-term plan. Suppose she is doing her own thing over there in East Berlin. She’d need lots of money, and she’d need it right here in Berlin where it’s easy to get to.”

“To pay her own agents?”

“Good grief, Frank, I don’t have to tell you what she’d need money for. Sure. For all kinds of things: agents, bribes, expenses. You know how it adds up.”

Frank touched my shoulder. “I wish I could believe it. But I’m Head of Station here, as you just reminded me. No one would be planted there without my say-so. You know that, Bernard. Stop fooling yourself, it’s not your style.” “Suppose it was kept very tight; Bret Rensselaer as the case officer . . .”

“And the D-G getting direct authorization from the Cabinet Office? It’s an ingenious explanation but I fear the true explanation is simpler and less palatable.” A puff at his pipe.

“The Berlin Head of Station is always informed. Even the D-G wouldn’t defy that operational rule. It’s been like that ever since your father’s time. It would be unprecedented.” “So is having a senior employee arrested at the airport,” I said. “The D-G is a stick-in-the-mud. I know him, Bernard. We trained together in the war. He’s careful to a fault. He just wouldn’t go along with such a hazardous scheme.”

“To get an agent into the Stasi at the very top? A trusted agent at committee level? That’s what Fiona is now. You told me that yourself”

“Now calm down, Bernard. I can see why this scenario appeals to you. Fiona is rehabilitated and you have taken on the Department and penetrated their most jealously guarded secrets.

And, he might have added, made Bret into Fiona’s colleague instead of her paramour. “So what is your explanation?” “A deadly dull one, I’m afraid. But after a lifetime in the 31, service, you look back and see how much time you’ve wasted chasing bizarre solutions while the true answer was banal, obvious and under your nose the whole while.” Fiona leaving her home and children and going to work for the Stasi? Bret embezzling millions of departmental funds and sitting in California pretending to be penniless? Prettyman reassigned from Washington and his wife told he was dead?

Uncle Silas telling me what a wonderful fellow Dodo is, while getting on the phone to have him roughed up and silenced? Except I got there first. A warrant issued for my arrest because I tell the D-G about it? Is this the deadly dull explanation that has the ring of truth?”

Frank looked at me. This was the first mention I’d made of Silas Gaunt’s duplicity - I’d not even told Werner - and I watched Frank carefully. He nodded as if considering everything I’d said but showed no surprise. “The last one certainly does,” he said grimly. “I tore it off the printer myself this evening. Do you want to see it?”

“The old man wants me held because he’s frightened that my inquiries are going to blow Fiona’s cover. They got me to California just so that Bret could persuade me to forget the whole thing. They sent Charlie Billingsly to Hong Kong because of what he might have seen on the computer about Bret’s bogus companies. They gave Cindy Prettyman a nice job in Strasbourg to keep her quiet. They panicked at the idea of Dodo loud-mouthing their secrets, and chose Prettyman to lean on him.”

“It’s all very circumstantial,” said Frank. But I had his attention now.

“I suppose they are desperate, but I didn’t realize how desperate until I landed here. When I took my questions to the D-G they couldn’t think of anything to do with me except to put me in the cooler while they worked out how to shut me up.” Frank looked at me pitifully and said, “You’d better sit down, Bernard. There’s something else you should know.” I sat down. “What?” I said.

It’s not like that. When the second teleprinter message came through I phoned London for clarification. I thought ... under the circumstances . .

“You spoke to the D-G? This afternoon?”

“No but I had a word with the Deputy.”

“And?”

“Sir Percy told me in confidence.”

“Told you what?”

“They’ve opened an Orange File, Bernard.”

“On me?”

There was still a chance for him to say no but he didn’t say no.

He said, “Ladbrook is coming on the plane tomorrow.” “Jesus Christ!” I said. An Orange File is only started when someone in the Department is accused of treachery, and prima facie evidence has already been collected against them. Ladbrook is the senior interrogator. Ladbrook prepares the prosecution.

“Now do you see?” Frank asked.

“You still don’t believe me do you, Frank?”

“I don’t dare believe you,” he said.

“What?”

“I’d rather believe that you were guilty than believe that

Fiona was over there playing a double game. Especially if you have started tongues waggling. Have you thought about what you are saying? Have you thought what it would mean for her if they tumbled to her? You’d face prison, but if she got to committee level and betrayed them they’d. He stopped. We were both thinking of Melnikoff, who’d reported back to one of Silas’networks. Over a dozen eye-witnesses had watched Melnikoff being pushed alive into a factory furnace. The KGB had wanted it talked about. “Be careful how you declare your innocence,’ said Frank. “You could be signing your wife’s death warrant; whether what you say is true, or not true.” I sat down. It was all happening too quickly. I felt like vomiting but I got myself under control and looked at my watch. Td better get out of here.” I hated this room. All the worst things that ever happened to me seemed to happen in this room, but I suppose that was because when something bad happened to me I came -running along to Frank. I said, “Don’t you think Tarrant .

“I gave Tarrant the evening off. Is there anything ... ?”

“You’ve done your bit already, Frank.”

“I’m sorry, Bernard.”

“What’s wrong with them all, Frank? Why can’t they just call the dogs off?”

“Whatever the real truth may be, you’ll never get a completely clean bill of health. Not after your wife defected.