Ultimate Issue (34 page)

Then he came to the tree. There were a lot of trees around, elders, yew, white poplar, chestnuts, pine, fir. And there was an oak tree, centuries old, a great, solid individual, a chieftain among his tribe.

Ivanov walked on a little and then, abruptly, turned back and retraced his steps. He went back to the ancient tree.

He stopped and lit a cigarette. Then, almost casually, he reached into a cavity inside the big, weatherbeaten trunk. His fingers felt inside it and grasped the matchbox.

He took it and put it in his pocket.

Ivanov didn’t approve of this kind of dubok.Adubok, in the parlance of the organisation, was a clandestine hiding place. Ivanov regarded the system as old-fashioned, just as he did the department’s obsession for cover names. Intermediaries were always “cutouts,” the KGB the “neighbor,” the local Communist party a “corporation,” a legal front for an illegal activity a “roof,” a passport a “shoe.”

And a secret collecting point, like a tree on Hampstead heath, a “dubok.”

It was risky, Ivanov felt. The opposition also knew a thing of two. But there were times when the only safe link with a special contact had to be this way.

Ivanov continued to walk along the path until it led to Hampstead Lane. There he hailed a passing taxi.

“Tottenham Court Road,” he ordered.

“Whereabouts7” asked the driver.

“Drop me at the Dominion.”

He sat back in the cab, and, when it pulled up for a red light, he took out the matchbox and slid it open.

Inside was a tiny piece of paper, neatly rolled up.

He unfolded it. One word was written on it in neat, legible letters:

“Windrush.”

The traffic lights changed, and the cab drove on. But Ivanov still sat, the piece of paper in his hand.

Then, under his breath, he swore in Russian.

He took his lighter and burned the paper. It was very

237

thin paper; it flared up for a second and then disintegrated into nothing.

The taxi stopped outside the movie “heater. Ivanov didn’t even ackowledge the driver’s thanks for the generous tip he gave him. He was not in a good mood.

He went down the steps into the subway, to the row of phone boxes inside the station. He put in two pennies, dialed a number, and, when it answered, pressed button A.

“Laurie?” he said. “I think you and I had better have a little talk.”

It sounded rather like an order.

Thursday, July 27,1961

West Berlin

“OH, YOU want the agentensumpf, eh?” said the cab driver with the peaked cap.

“The what?” Verago spoke German quite well, but this was a new one on him.

“Marienfelde. The spy swamp.” The cab driver laughed at his own wit. “That’s where they keep the ones they can’t trust. It’s crawling with them.”

“Really?” said Verago.

“It’s a long way out,” the cabby pointed out. “Wouldn’t you like a tour of the sights instead?”

“No.”

“Okay,” the driver said resignedly.

He drove Verago through the suburbs, past the cheap housing estates, the drab warehouses, the long rows of allotments and garden plots where many Berliners grew their vegetables.

“You with the army in Berlin?”

“Just visiting,” said Verago.

They came to the Monastery of the Good Shepherd and then the cab, a creaky Mercedes, stopped at the main entrance of the camp

“There you are,” said the driver. “Marienfelde. Gateway to the free world.”

Verago got out.

“You want me to wait?” the cabby offered hopefully. “Not many taxis around here.”

238

“No thanks,” said Verago, and paid him off.

The guard at the gate directed him to the administrative offices.

“Building C,” he said.

He didn’t ask about his business. The army uniform was a good passport.

“Thanks,” said Verago.

The place reminded him of an army barracks. The barbed-wire fences, the anonymous brick barracks, neatly laid out in rows.

He came to building C and entered.

“Yes, Captain?” inquired the girl at the reception desk.

“I want to see Fraulein Braunschweig,” said Verago. “Helga Braunschweig.”

West Beriln

Pech came forward, his hand outstretched, a welcoming smile on his face.

“Captain Verago,” he cried. “You’ve just won a bet for me.”

He held open his office door.

“Come in, make yourself at home. Not that it’s much of a place.”

“You are … ?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Pech. B-One. Documentation. That sort of thing.” He gave a little bow. “Please sit down.”

“You were expecting me?” Verago inquired cautiously, sitting down on the chair Pech indicated.

“But of course. That was the bet I had with myself. Sooner or later, I was sure, Captain Tower’s lawyer would show up here. And you have.”

“But why did you think that?”

“Instinct.” Pech beamed. “l know something of this case.”

“You do?” Verago’s eyebrows shot up. It was becoming too easy. And he always worried about people who were too helpful.

Pech unscrewed a Thermos flask. From a drawer he produced two plastic beakers. “Coffee?”

“Please.”

Pech poured out the black liquid. It looked lukewarm and it was. He pulled a face when he tasted his.

“Sorry about that,” he apologised. He put the beaker

239

down on his desk. “You want to see the woman, of course.”

“Right,” said Verago. “Praulein Braunschweig. Helm Braunschweig. I want to ask her some questions.”

“So do I,” Pech said grimly.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Captain Verago, that our little lady has pulled a fast one on us. She’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Back into the East zone.”

Verago stared in disbelief. ‘They’ve kidnapped her?”

“No, no, no, of course not. She walked out. Marienfelde is not a prison. People come here of their own free will. And they can leave to return home. She obviously changed her mind and decided to do just that.” He waved a hand airily. “The zonal boundary is only a few meters away. It’s not difficult.”

“You believe that?” Verago demanded.

Pech shrugged. “My job is to deal in facts. American intelligence brought her over. She had something big to tell them, apparently. So your Captain Tower and a double agent he was working with said.”

“Martin Schneider?”

“Correct. They smuggled her across. B-One had doubts about her. So we’ve kept her here until we could sort it out.”

“Now she’s disappeared, Martin Schneider is dead, and Captain Tower in the hoosegow.”

“Yes, very distressing,” said Pech.

“Did you interrogate her at all?”

“Helga? She was very uncooperative. She refused to be debriefed by us. She would only talk to Captain Tower and he” Pech smiled dryly “was not, shall we say, available. She wouldn’t talk to us because she apparently had a bee in her bonnet that we had been infiltrated. By the SSD.”

“The Staats Sicherheits Dienst? The East German Gestapo?”

Pech looked pleasantly surprised. “Oh, you know, Captain Verago?”

“Yes,” said Verago. “I know.”

“It’s nonsense, of course.”

“Of course.” He nodded his agreement. “But don’t you find it curious that this woman who defects at great risk with some apparently vital information and is so terrified

240

she won’t even talk to West German security in case there’s a leak suddenly decides to return to the other side?”

“Not only curious,” said Pech, “but extremely significant. There’s a simple explanation, isn’t there?”

Verago wondered about this man. How many people had he hooked and played like a fisherman until he had landed them in his net, how many intrigues had he masterminded, how many betrayals?

But aloud he said, “What simple explanation, Herr Pech?”

Pech put his fingertips together, leaned back in his chair, and beamed. “I’m sure you’re there already, Captain. The explanation seems to be that Helga Braunschweig was a plant, foisted on us by the other side. When she saw that my people weren’t fooled, she decided to get out. Before it was too late….”

He sighed. “I’m sorry this can’t be of much help to you or your client.”

“On the contrary,” Verago said cheerfully. “Do you have any records about her?”

“Of course,” Pech said primly. He got up and went to a wall safe. He spun the dial, standing so that Verago’s view was obscured and the combination would remain a secret. There was a click, and he opened the safe door. He took out a folder and returned to his desk.

“6221,” he said.

“E3h?”

“Her number. Everybody here gets a number. To protect their identity. We do take precautions, you know. That’s her.” He pushed a photo across that he had taken from the folder.

It’s a striking face, thought Verago. Distinctive. Big eyes. A determined mouth. The lips slightly curved as if she couldn’t resist a faint, rather mocking smile at the camera.

“What’s her job?” he asked, still looking at the faces “What does she do?”

“She’s bright, there’s no denying it,” said Pech. “Speaks English quite well, and French. Smattering of Russian. Does one hundred ninety words a minute shorthand. I could do with a secretary like that.”

“That doesn’t sound very remarkable.”

“Please, Captain, you’re missing the point. She is a

241

secretary. In fact, she was one of the secretaries in Walter Ulbricht’s personal office.”

London

On the second floor of the mews house near Berkeley Square, the leggy blonde reported to Grierson.

“He entered the Spaniards about one fifteen,” she said, reading from a little notepad with a tasteful crocodile leather cover. “He stood by the bar and had a lager.”

“By himself?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did anyone approach him?”

“No.”

“You sure he didn’t talk to anybody?”

“Definitely not, sir.”

Grierson grunted. The full surveillance Whitehall had ordered on Ivanov was proving troublesome. Sometimes it was difficult to keep tabs on him; when, for instance, he went on his aristocratic weekends in feudal Berkshire and disappeared behind the high walls of a lordly estate. On other occasions it wasn’t so difficult, but the results were always negative.

Like his little excursion to Hampstead Heath.

“Were you on your own7” asked Grierson.

“No, sir. Miss Shepherd was with me.”

“So nothing happened in the pub?”

“Nothing unusual.”

“And then?”

“He finished his drink and went for a walk.”

“Go on.”

“Well,” said the blonde, a little awkwardly, “it was rather difficult to follow him.”

“Why?” Grierson demanded coldly.

“He strolled around and then went into a rather secluded part of Kenwood. He would have noticed anybody shadowing him.”

“You lost him?”

But the blonde was an expert at her job, and she resented that.

“It just became difficult. Miss Shepherd and I split up. I played a little hide-and-seek. Kept myself concealed behind trees.”

“I hope he didn’t see you,” remarked Grierson.

The blonde smiled ‘No way.”

“What happened next?”

242

The blonde glanced at her notepad. “Well, he came to a big tree. I I think he took something out of it. I couldn’t see too well from where I was hiding, but it looked to me “

Grierson leaned forward, interested. “What do you mean, took something out of it?”

“From a sort of hole in the tree trunk.”

“Ah.” For the first time, Grierson seemed to be satisfied.

“Then he walked away and picked up a cab in Hampstead Lane.”

Grierson glanced down at the typed report in front of him. “Yes, I have the rest. After you handed over to Kirby.’,

The blonde hesitated. Grierson nodded encouragingly. “Something else, Susan?”

“Well, yes, sir,” she said. “There was this other man. A big fellow. He was in the pub too and I had a feeling he was watching Ivanov as well. Bulky sort of chap, but he had the knack of making himself inconspicuous. You know, like a pro.”

“I know. Go on.”

“He left the pub when Ivanov did. And Jenny thought she saw him once. In Kenwood.”

Grierson’s eyes never left her face. “You mean, he was following Ivanov too. What a jolly little convoy. Did this chap see you?”

“Oh, no, sir,” said the blonde, scandalised at the suggestion. “But he was good. We didn’t see him again. But Jenny spotted him in Hampstead Lane. He was still on Ivanov’s tail. He looked … sort of American. You can tell ‘em, can’t you?”

“Oh, indeed.” Grierson sighed.

“Are the Yanks in on this?” she inquired.

He opened a folder containing a sheaf of typewritten pages. Pinned to the top of them was a photograph.

“Was this the man?” asked Grierson, not answering her question. “The man who followed Ivanov?”

The blonde looked at the photograph of Unterberg “Yes, sir,” she said firmly. “That was him. No question.’;

Grierson covered up the photo again with a screening sheet. “Susan,” he said, “you deserve a bottle of champers.’,

243

West Berlin

Like a man who hasn’t seen one of his dearest friends for a long time, Pech appeared reluctant to part company.

Four hours later they were still together, sitting in the corner of a smoky establishment in Zehlendorf. The Rote Fuchs was a small drinking dive in a back street, and Pech drove there from Marienfelde.

He seemed more relaxed once they were away from the barracks and barbed-wire fences of the sprawling refugee camp.

“You’re not in a rush, are you?” he asked Verago.

You’re keeping tabs on me, thought Verago. You want to know what I’ll do next, where I go. The joke is, I wish I knew.

“This is a good place,” Pech confided over the third schnapps. “A kneipe. A real kneipe. Not a bar. Not a club. Not a pub. In Berlin, you got to go to a kneipe.”

“And what’s so special about it?” asked Verago.

“My friend, just smell. Look around you. The atmosphere. That’s what’s different. Here a man can do serious drinking, uninterrupted by the world. Like we should do

He downed the schnapps.