Spy Sinker (28 page)

'That's a silly thing to ask, Werner.'

'Why is it?'

It was extraordinary that Werner, a German who came here regularly, still did not understand. Well, perhaps the best way to start was to make him realize what he was up against. This is the DDR, Werner, and it is 1984. We have a socialist system. The people…'

'The government.'

'The people,' she repeated, 'don't just control the politics and the economy, they control the courts, the lawyers and the judges. They control the newspapers, the youth leagues and the women's associations and chess clubs and anglers' societies. The privilege of writing books, collecting stamps, singing at the opera or working at a lathe – in fact the right to work anywhere – can be withdrawn at any time.'

'So don't ask for a lawyer from the West.'

'So don't ask for a lawyer from the West,' agreed Fiona. 'You'll have to sit in the back of the car. I can't remove the handcuffs. I can't even carry the key. It's a regulation.'

'Can I wash and shave?'

'At the other end. Do you have any personal possessions here?'

Werner shrugged and didn't answer.

'Let's go.'

'Why you?' asked Werner as they were walking across the cobbled courtyard to her Wartburg car.

'
Machtpolitik
,' said Fiona. It meant negotiations under the threat of violence and was a uniquely German word.

None of the long-dead city officials who drew the outlandish shape of the old boundaries could have guessed that one day Berlin would be thus circumscribed and divided. Jutting southwards, Lichtenrade – where the S-Bahn line is chopped off to become a terminal, and where Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms are streets that end at the Wall – provides an obstacle around which Fiona had to drive to get back to her office in central Berlin.

The normal route back kept to the main road through Mahlow, but Fiona went on to back streets that might have saved her a few minutes in travelling time, except that when she got beyond Mahlow she turned off to a sleepy little neighbourhood beyond Ziethen. Here the pre-war housing of a 'Gartenstadt' had spilled over the Wall into the Democratic Republic. Bordered on three sides by the West, these wide tree-lined roads were empty, and the neighbourhood quiet.

'Werner,' said Fiona as she stopped the car under the trees of a small urban park and switched off the engine. She turned to look back at him. 'You are just a card in a poker game. You know that, I'm sure.'

'What happens to a card in a poker game?' asked Werner.

'At the end of the game you are shuffled and put away for another day.'

'Does it hurt?'

'Within a few days you'll be back in the West. I guarantee it.' A car came very slowly up the street. It passed them and, when it was about a hundred yards ahead, stopped. Werner said nothing and neither did Fiona. The car turned as if to do a U-turn but stopped halfway and then reversed. Finally it went past them again and turned to follow the sign that pointed to Selchow. 'It was a car from a driving school,' said Fiona.

'Why are you telling me this?' said Werner. The car had made him jumpy.

'I want you to take a message.'

'A written message?'

Good old Werner. So he wasn't so simple. 'No, Werner, a verbal message.'

'To Bernard?'

'No. In fact you'd have to promise that Bernard will know nothing of it.'

'What sort of game is this?'

'You come through regularly, Werner. You could be the perfect go-between.'

'Are you asking me to work for Moscow?'

'No I'm not.'

'I see.' Werner sat back, uncomfortable with his hands cuffed behind him. Having thought about it he smiled at her. 'But how can I be sure?' It was a worried smile.

'I can't do anything about the handcuffs, Werner. It is not permitted to have keys together with prisoners in transit.'

'How can I be sure of you?' he said again.

'I want you to go and talk with Sir Henry Clevemore. Would that satisfy your doubts?'

'I don't know him. I've never even seen him.'

'At his home, not in the office. I'll give you a private phone number. You'll leave a message on the answering machine.'

'I'm not sure.'

'Jesus Christ, Werner! Pull yourself together and decide!' she yelled. She closed her eyes. She had lost control of herself. The driving school car had done it.

Werner looked at her with amazement and suddenly understood the panic she had shown. 'Why me? Why now? What about your regular contact?'

'I have no regular contact. I have been finding my way around, using dumps. London would probably have sent someone in a month or so. But this is a perfect opportunity. I will enrol you as a Stasi agent. You'll report to me personally and each time you do I will give you the material to take back.'

'That would work,' said Werner, thinking about it. 'Would Sir Henry arrange material for me to bring?'

'All my reports must be committed to memory,' said Fiona. She had done it now: she had put herself at Werner's mercy. It would be all right. Later she would get Werner to tell her about her husband and her children but not now. One thing at a time.

Now he was beginning to believe. His face lit up and his eyes widened. He was to participate in something really tremendous. 'What a coup!' he said softly and with ardent admiration. In that moment he had become her devoted slave.

'Bernard must not know,' said Fiona.

'Why?'

'For all kinds of reasons: he'll worry and give the game away. He's not good at concealing his emotions. You must know that.'

He looked out of the window. Fiona had chosen her man well. Werner had always wanted to be a secret agent. He yearned for it as other people crave to be a film star or score goals for their country or host a chat show on TV. Werner knew about espionage. He read books about it, clipped newspapers and memorized its ups and downs with a dedication that bordered on the obsessional. There was no need for him to say yes; they both knew that he couldn't resist it. 'I still can't believe it,' he said.

The driving school car came into sight as it turned the corner. It slowed and stopped, the driver carefully indicating his intentions with unnecessary signals. 'I think we should go,' said Fiona.

'I'll do it,' said Werner quietly.

'I knew you would,' said Fiona as she started the engine.

She overtook the driving school car and turned as if heading back towards Mahlow. It was a silly precaution that meant nothing. 'You're a brave woman, Fiona,' said Werner suddenly.

'No one,' said Fiona. 'Sir Henry and no one else unless he authorizes it to you personally.'

'How long will it go on?' said Werner.

'One year; perhaps two,' said Fiona.

'I thought they might make me persona non grata,' said Werner. 'I was worried about my work.'

'You'll be all right now,' said Fiona. 'It will be a perfect set-up.'

'Bernard must not know,' said Werner. The idea of having a secret from his best friend appealed to Werner. One day he'd surprise Bernard. It would be worth waiting for.

'Let me tell you what to say when we get back to the office. You'll see a Russian KGB colonel named Moskvin. Don't let him bluff you or bully you. I'll make sure you are okay.'

'Moskvin.'

'He's not a long-term problem,' said Fiona.

'Why not?'

'He's not a long-term problem,' said Fiona. 'He is being got rid of. Just believe me. Now let me tell you how we're going to handle this business of your reporting to me.'

Two days later the exchange took place: Erich Stinnes went East to resume his work for the KGB while Werner Volkmann was freed and came West. The KGB inquiry into the treason of Pavel Moskvin sentenced him to death. The court decreed that verdict, sentence and execution must all remain secret: it was the KGB way of dealing with its own senior personnel. The local KGB commander – a general who had been a close friend of Moskvin's father – decided that 'killed in action in the West' would be merciful and expedient, and so arranged matters. But Moskvin did not accept his fate readily. He tried to escape. The resulting exchange of fire took place on the abandoned Nollendorfplatz S-Bahn station in West Berlin, now converted to a flea market. Moskvin died. Bret Rensselaer, demonstrating his loyalty to the Crown, led the chase after Moskvin and was shot and hurt so seriously that he never resumed his duties in London.

The official British version of the events is very short. It was drafted by Silas Gaunt, who omitted any mention of the exchange of men because neither was a British national. It says that Pavel Moskvin – a KGB colonel on official duties in the West sector of Berlin – ran amok in the flea market. He fired his pistol indiscriminately until the Berlin municipal police were able to subdue him. Two passers-by were shot dead, four were injured, two seriously. Moskvin turned his own pistol on himself at the moment of arrest.

The secret file compiled by the West German government in Bonn had the advantage of detailed reports from both the West Berlin police and their intelligence service. It says that Moskvin was part of a KGB party who'd come West to arrange the exchange of a West German and a Soviet national held by the British SIS. This account says that Moskvin's death was an execution carried out by a KGB team which used two motor bikes to follow Moskvin's car. While it was halted on Tauentzienstrasse, near the KaDeWe department store, an accomplice threw a plastic bag filled with white paint over its windscreen. Moskvin left the car and ran to the S-Bahn station, shooting at his pursuers. At this time civilians were injured by gunshot wounds. When Moskvin jumped down from the platform to the train tracks, perhaps believing he could run along the railway and across the Wall, he was shot dead by a round fired from a Russian Army sniper's rifle. The perpetrator was never found but is believed to have been one of the KGB hit team who'd been seen coming through a checkpoint earlier that day. In support of this theory it is pointed out that there was never a request for Moskvin's body to be returned to the East.

A few days after the shooting, an unofficial mention of the body by British contacts brought from the Soviets only puzzled denials that any Colonel Pavel Moskvin had ever existed. There was no post-mortem. The body was buried at the small cemetery in Berlin-Rudow, very near the Wall. It was at this time that the Russians spontaneously offered to return to the West the remains of Max Busby, an American shot while crossing the Wall in 1978, Some inferred that it was part of a secret deal. Both bodies were buried at night in adjoining plots. It was at the time when the new drainage was being installed at the cemetery, and the burials were unattended except for workmen, a city official and two unidentified representatives of the Protecting Powers. The graves were not marked.

There were other versions too: some less bizarre, some considerably more so. One report, neatly bound and complete with photos of Kleiststrasse, Nollendorfplatz, the S-Bahn station, the U-Bahn station and a coloured street plan showing Moskvin's path in red broken line, had been assembled by the CIA office in Berlin, working in conjunction with its offices in Bonn and London. This revealed that Moskvin had been preparing material to incriminate falsely an unnamed US citizen resident in London. It concluded that the KGB were determined that Moskvin should not be taken alive and questioned by the British.

Bernard Samson was seen firing at Moskvin but his report, given verbally, said that his rounds all went wide. Some people have pointed out that the great preponderance of rounds that Samson has been known to fire, prior to this, hit his targets. Frank Harrington might have thrown some light on the subject, for Frank had been seen on the S-Bahn station brandishing a gun (something that stayed in the minds of those who saw him because Frank had never been seen with a pistol before, or since), but London Central never asked Frank for an account of it.

Bret Rensselaer was also there but Bret was never questioned specifically. He was hit and severely injured, and by the time he'd recovered sufficiently to contribute an account of it, the reports were complete and the incident had passed into Berlin's crowded history. The doctors at the Steglitz Clinic saved Rensselaer's life. He was in the operating theatre for three hours and went from there into an intensive-care ward. Next day his brother flew in on some specially assigned US Air Force jet that came complete with doctors and nurses. He took Bret back to America with him.

England. March, 1987.

Bernard Samson was spending that Saturday at home with Gloria in their little house at 13, Balaklava Road, Raynes Park, in London's commuter belt. He was clearing all sorts of unwanted oddments from the garden shed. Most of them were still in the big cardboard boxes bearing the name of the moving company which had brought their furniture here.

Gloria was upstairs in the bedroom. The wardrobe door was open to reveal a long mirror in which she was studying herself. In front of her she was holding a dress she had found in one of the cardboard boxes. It was an expensive dress with a Paris label, a dramatic low-cut cocktail dress of grey and black, the barber-pole stripes sweeping diagonally with the bias cut. It belonged to Fiona Samson.

As she held it up she tried to imagine herself wearing it. She tried to imagine what Fiona was really like and what sort of a marriage she had enjoyed with Bernard and the children.

Bernard was wearing his carpet slippers and came noiselessly upstairs. Entering the room without knocking he exclaimed, 'Oh!' Then he recognized the dress she was holding and said, 'Far too small! And grey is not your colour, my love.'

Embarrassed to be caught with it, Gloria put the dress on the rail in the wardrobe and closed the door. 'She has been away four years. She will never come back, Bernard, will she?'

'I don't know.'

'Don't be angry. Every time I try to talk about her you become bad-tempered. It's a way of blackmailing me into keeping quiet about her.'

'Is that the way you see it?'

Still selfconscious, she touched her hair. 'It's the way it is, Bernard. You want to have me here with you; and you also want to hang on to the increasingly unlikely chance that you will ever see her again.'

Bernard went close and put his arm round her. At first her anger seemed assuaged, but as Bernard went to kiss her she showed a sudden anger. 'Don't! You always try to wriggle out of it. You kiss me; you say you love me; and you shut me up.'

'You keep asking me these questions and I tell you the truth. The truth is that I don't know the answers.'

'You make me feel so bloody insecure,' said Gloria.

'I'm always here. I don't get drunk or run around with other women.'

It was the sort of indignant answer he always gave: a typically male response. He really couldn't understand that that wasn't enough. She tried male logic: 'How long will you wait before you assume she's gone for ever?'

'I love you. We are happy together. Isn't that enough? Why do women want guarantees of permanence? Tomorrow I could fall under a train or go crazy.
There is no way that you can be happy ever after
. Can't you understand that?'

'Why are you looking at the clock?' she asked, and tried to move apart from him, but he held her.

'I'm sorry. The D-G is going down to Whitelands to see Silas Gaunt this afternoon. I think they are going to talk about Fiona. I'd give anything to know what they say.'

'You think Fiona is still working for London, don't you?'

The question came like an accusation, and it shook him. He made no move whatsoever and yet that stillness of his face revealed the way his mind was spinning. He had never told Gloria of that belief.

'That's why you won't talk of marriage,' she said.

'No.'

'You're lying. I can always tell. You think your wife was sent there to spy-'

'We'll never know the truth,' said Bernard lamely, and hoped that would end the conversation.

'I must be mad not to have seen that right from the beginning. I was just the stand-in. I was just someone to bed, someone to look after your children and keep the house tidy and shop and cook. No wonder you discouraged all my plans to go to college. You bastard! You've made a fool of me.'

'No, I haven't.'

'Now I understand why you keep all her clothes.'

'You know it's not like that, Gloria. Please don't cry.'

'I'm not bloody crying. I hate you, you bastard.'

'Will you listen!' He shook her roughly. 'Fiona is a Soviet agent. She's gone for ever. Now stop this imagining.'

'Do you swear?'

He stepped back from her. There was a fierce look in her eyes and he was dismayed by it. 'Yes, I swear,' he said.

She didn't believe him. She could always tell when he was lying.

At that moment the meeting between the Director-General and Silas Gaunt was in full swing.

'How long has Mrs Samson been in place now?' asked Silas Gaunt. It was a rhetorical question but he wanted the Director-General to share his pleasure.

'She went over there in eighty-three, so it must be about four years,' said Sir Henry Clevemore. The two men had worked wonders and were rightly proud of what they had achieved. The East German economy was cracking at the seams, the government had become senile and could muster neither will nor resource to tackle the problems. Fiona's information said that the Russian troops would be confined to barracks no matter what political changes came. The USSR had problems of its own. Bret Rensselaer's heady prediction about the Wall coming down by 1990 – considered at the time no more than the natural hyperbole that all SIS projections were prone to – now looked like a real possibility.

They had got some fine material from Fiona Samson that had enabled the two of them to master-mind the campaign as well as facilitating contact with the most level-headed opposition groups. To protect her they had given her a few little victories and a few accolades. Now they were enjoying the feeling of great satisfaction.

These two were alike in many ways. Their family background, education, bearing and deportment were comparable, but Silas Gaunt's service abroad had made him cosmopolitan, which could never be said of the aloof and formal Sir Henry Clevemore. Silas Gaunt was earthy, wily, adaptable and unscrupulous, and despite their years together Sir Henry always had reservations about his friend.

'Do you remember when young Volkmann came knocking at your door in the dead of night?' said Silas.

'The bloody fool had forgotten my phone number.'

'You were in despair,' said Silas.

'Certainly not.'

'I'm sorry to contradict you, Henry, but when you arrived here you said that Fiona Samson had made a dire error of judgement.'

'It did seem somewhat ominous.' He gave a dry chuckle. 'It was the only damn thing he had to commit to memory, and he'd forgotten it.'

'Volkmann turned up trumps. I didn't know he had it in him.'

'I'll get him something,' said the D-G. 'When it's over I'll get him some sort of award. I know he'd like a gong; he's that sort of chap.'

'You know his banking business is being wound down?' said Silas, although he'd briefed the D-G on that already.

'He's taking over that flea-bitten hotel run by that dreadful old German woman. What's her name?'

'Lisl Hennig.'

'That's the one, an absolute Medusa.'

'All good things come to an end,' said Silas.

'There were times,' said the Director-General, 'when I thought we would simply have to pull Mrs Samson out and give up.'

'Samson's a bull-headed young fool,' said Silas Gaunt, voicing what was in the minds of both men. They were sitting in the little-used drawing room of Gaunt's house, while in the next room workmen were slowly rebuilding the fireplace of Gaunt's little study. This room had been virtually unchanged for a hundred years. Like all such farmhouse rooms, with thick stone walls and small windows, it was gloomy all the year round. A big sideboard held well-used willow-pattern plates, and a vase filled with freshly cut daffodils.

Upon the lumpy sofa Silas sprawled, lit by the flickering flames of a log fire. Above him some steely-eyed ancestor squinted through the coach varnish of a big painting, and there was a small table upon which, for the time being, Silas Gaunt was eating his meals. Sir Henry Clevemore had made the journey to Whitelands after hearing that Silas was recuperating after falling from a horse. The old fool shouldn't have gone near a horse at his age, thought the D-G, and had resolved to say as much. But in the event he hadn't done so.

'Samson?' said the D-G. 'You mustn't be hard on him. I blame myself really. Bret Rensselaer always said we should have told Samson the truth.'

'I never thought I'd hear you say that, Henry. You were the one who…'

'Yes, I know. But Samson could have been told at the end of that first year.'

'There's nothing to be gained from a post-mortem,' said Silas. There was a tartan car-blanket over him, and every now and again he pulled at it and rearranged it round his legs. 'Or is this leading up to the suggestion that we tell him now?'

'No, no, no,' said the D-G. 'But when he started prying into the way the bank drafts came from Central Funding, I thought we'd be forced to tell him.'

Silas grinned. 'Trying to arrest him when he arrived in Berlin was not the best way to go about it, D-G, if you'll permit me to say so.'

That fiasco was not something the D-G was willing to pursue. He got to his feet and went to the mullioned window. From here there was a view of the front drive and the hills beyond. 'Your elms are looking rather sick, Silas.' There were three of them; massive great fellows planted equidistant across the lawn like Greek columns. They were the first thing you saw from the gatehouse, even before the house came into view. 'Very sick.'

Suddenly Silas felt sick too. Every day he looked at the elms and prayed that the deformed, discoloured leaves would become green and healthy again. 'The gardener says it's due to the frost.'

'Frost fiddlesticks! You should get your local forestry fellow to look at them. If it's Dutch elm disease they must be felled immediately.'

'The frost did terrible damage this year,' said Silas, hoping for a reprieve, or at least reassurance. Even unconvincing reassurance, of the sort the resourceful Mrs Porter his housekeeper gave him, was better than this sort of brutal diagnosis. Silas pleaded, 'You can see that, Henry, from the roses and the colour of the lawn.'

'Get the forestry expert in, Silas. Dutch elm disease has already run through most of the elms in this part of the world. Let it go and you'll make yourself damned unpopular with your neighbours.'

'Perhaps you're right, Henry, but I don't believe it's anything serious.'

'There are still a lot of unanswered questions, Silas. If the time has come to pull her out why don't we just do it without ceremony?'

Silas looked at him for a moment before being sure he was talking about Fiona Samson. 'Because we have a mountain of material that we can't use without jeopardizing her. And when finally she comes back she'll bring more material out with her.'

'We've had a good innings, Silas,' said the D-G, returning to the chintz-covered armchair where he'd been sitting, and giving a little grunt as he dropped into it.

'Let's not cut and run, Henry. In my memory, and privileged knowledge, Fiona Samson has proved the best agent in place the Department has ever had. It wouldn't be fair to her to throw away what is still to come.'

'I really don't understand this plan to keep her alive,' said the D-G.

Silas sighed. The D-G could be rather dense at times: he'd still not understood. Silas would have to say it in simple language. 'The plan is to convince the Soviets she is dead.'

'While she is back here being debriefed?'

'Exactly. If they know she's alive and talking to us they will be able to limit the damage we'll do to them.'

'Convince them?' asked the D-G.

'It's been done in the past with other agents.'

'But convince them how? I really don't see.'

'To give you an extreme example; she is seen going into a house. There is an earthquake and the whole street disappears. They think she's dead.'

'Is that a joke, Silas? Earthquake?'

'No, Director, it is simply an example. But the substitution of a corpse is a trick as old as history.'

'Our opponents are very sophisticated these days, Silas. They might tumble to it.'

'Yes, they might. But if they did, it would not be the end of the world. It would be a set-back but it wouldn't be the end of the world.'

'Providing she was safe.'

'Yes, that's what I mean,' said Silas.

The D-G was silent for a moment or two. The Americans are going to be dejected at the prospect of losing the source.'

'You don't think they guess where it's coming from?'

'I don't think so. Washington gets it from Bret in California, and by that time anything that would identify her is removed.'

'That business with Bret worked out well.'

'He took a dashed long time before he understood that I couldn't have called off that arrest team without revealing the part he played in running Fiona Samson.'

'I didn't mean that, so much as the way he went to convalesce in California.'

'Yes, Bret has organized himself very well over there, and using him as the conduit distances us from the Berlin material.'

'I shouldn't think Fiona Samson submits anything that would identify her,' said Silas. He never handled the material and there were times when he resented that.

'I'm sure she doesn't,' said the D-G, to indicate that he didn't directly handle the material either. 'She is an extremely clever woman. Will you use Bernard Samson to pull her out?'

'I think he should be involved,' said Silas. 'By now I think he guesses what is going on.'

'Yes,' said the D-G. 'That's why you want to bring her home, isn't it?'

'Not entirely,' said Silas. 'But it is a part of it.'

'The Soviets would leave someone like that in place for ever and ever,' said the D-G.

'We are not the Soviets,' said Silas. 'Are you feeling all right, Henry?'

'Just a palpitation. I shouldn't have smoked that cigar. I promised my doctor I would give them up.'

'Doctors are all the same,' said Silas, who had abstained and sniffed enviously while the D-G went through a big Havana after lunch.

The D-G sat back and breathed slowly and deeply before speaking again. 'This business… this business about switching the corpse. I don't see how we are going to handle that, Silas.'