London Match

4

Taking the children to see Billy’s godfather was an excuse for a day in the country, a Sunday lunch second to none, and a chance to talk to ‘Uncle Silas’, one of the legends of the Department’s golden days. Also it gave me a chance to tie up some loose ends in the arrested woman’s evidence. If Dicky didn’t want it done for the Department, then I would do it just to satisfy my own curiosity.

The property had always fascinated me; Whitelands was as surprising as Silas Gaunt himself. From the long drive, with its well-tended garden, the ancient stone farmhouse was as pretty as a calendar picture. But over the years it had been adapted to the tastes of many different owners. Adapted, modified, extended and defaced. Across the cobbled yard at the back there was a curious castellated Gothic tower, its spiral staircase leading up to a large, ornately decorated chamber which once had been a mirrored bedroom. Even more incongruous in this cottage with its stone floors and oak beams was the richly panelled billiards room, with game trophies crowding its walls. Both architectural additions dated from the same time, both installed by a nineteenth-century beer baron to indulge his favourite pastimes.

Silas Gaunt had inherited Whitelands from his father, but Silas had never been a farmer. Even when he left the Department and came to live here in retirement, he still let his farm manager make all the decisions. Little wonder that Silas got lonely amid his six hundred acres on the edge of the Cotswolds. Now all the soft greenery of summer had gone. So had the crisp browns of autumn. Only the framework of landscape remained: bare tangles of hedgerow and leafless trees. The first snow had whitened rock-hard ridges of the empty brown fields: crosshatched pieces of landscape where magpies, rooks and starlings scavenged for worms and insects.

Silas had had few guests. It had been a hermit’s life, for the conversation of Mrs Porter, his housekeeper, was limited to recipes, needlework, and the steadily rising prices of groceries in the village shop. Silas Gaunt’s life had revolved round his library, his records and his wine cellar. But there is more to life than Schiller, Mahler and Margaux, which trio Silas claimed as his ‘fellow pensioners’. And so he’d come to encourage these occasional weekend house parties at which departmental staff, both past and present, were usually represented along with a sprinkling of the artists, tycoons, eccentrics and weirdos whom Silas had encountered during his very long and amazing career.

Silas was unkempt; the wispy white hair that made a halo on his almost bald head did not respond to combs or to the clawing gesture of his fingers that he made whenever a strand of hair fell forward across his eyes. He was tall and broad, a Falstaffian figure who liked to laugh and shout, could curse fluently in half a dozen languages, and who’d make reckless bets on anything and everything and claimed – with some justification – to be able to drink any man under the table.

Billy and Sally were in awe of him. They were always ready to go to Whitelands and see Uncle Silas, but they regarded him as a benevolent old ruffian of whose sudden moods they should constantly be wary. And that was the way I saw him myself. But he’d had a fully decorated Christmas tree erected in the entrance hall. Under it there was a little pile of presents for both children, all of them wrapped in bright paper and tied neatly with big bows. Mrs Porter’s doing no doubt.

Like all old people, Silas Gaunt felt a need for unchanging ritual. These guest weekends followed a firmly established pattern: a long country walk on Saturday morning (which I did my best to avoid), roast beef lunch to follow, billiards in the afternoon, and a dress-up dinner on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning his guests were shepherded to church and then to the village pub before coming back to lunch which was locally obtained game or, failing that, poultry. I was relieved to find that duckling was on the menu this week. I did not care for Silas’s selection of curious little wild birds, every mouthful with its portion of lead shot.

‘Surprised to see Walter here?’ Uncle Silas asked me again as he sharpened his long carving knife with the careless abandon of a butcher.

I had registered my surprise on first arriving, but apparently I’d inadequately performed my allotted role. ‘Amazed!’ I said, putting all my energies into it. ‘I had no idea …’ I winked at von Munte. I knew him even better than I knew Uncle Silas; once long ago he’d saved my life by risking his own. Dr Walter von Munte smiled, and even the staid old Frau Doktor gave the ghost of a smile. Living with extroverted, outspoken Silas must have come as something of a shock after their austere and tight-lipped life in the German Democratic Republic, where even the von in their name had been taken from them.

I knew that the von Muntes were staying there – it was my job to know such things. I’d played a part in bringing them out of the East. Their presence was, to some extent, the reason for my visit, but their whereabouts was considered a departmental secret and I was expected to register appropriate surprise.

Until a few short weeks ago this lugubrious old man had been one of our most reliable agents. Known only as Brahms Four he’d supplied regular and carefully selected facts and figures from the Deutsche Notenbank, through which came banking clearances for the whole of East Germany. From time to time he’d also obtained for us the decisions and plans of Comecon – the East Bloc Common Market – and memos from the Moscow Narodny bank too. At the receiving end, Bret Rensselaer had built an empire upon the dangerous work of von Munte, but now von Munte had been debriefed and left in the custodial care of his old friend Uncle Silas, and Bret was desperately seeking new dominions.

Silas stood at the end of the long table and dismembered the duck, apportioning suitable pieces to each guest. He liked to do it himself. It was a game he played: discussing and arguing what each and every guest should have. Mrs Porter watched the cameo with an expressionless face. She arranged the pile of warmed plates, positioned the vegetables and gravy, and, at exactly the right psychological moment, brought in the second roasted duckling. ‘Another one!’ said Silas as if he hadn’t ordered the meal himself and as if he didn’t have a third duckling in the oven for extra portions.

Before pouring the wine, Silas lectured us about it. Château Palmer 1961, he said, was the finest claret he’d ever tasted, the finest perhaps of this century. He still hovered, looking at the wine in the antique decanter as if now wondering whether it would be wasted on the present company.

Perhaps von Munte sensed the hesitation for he said, ‘It’s generous of you to share it with us.’

‘I was looking through my cellar the other day.’ He stood up straight, looking out across the snow-whitened lawn as if oblivious of his guests. ‘I found a dozen bottles of 1878 port down there. My grandfather bought them for me, to mark my tenth birthday, and I’d completely forgotten them. I’ve never tasted it. Yes, I’ve got a lot of treasures there. I stocked up when I had the money to afford it. It would break my heart to leave too much magnificent claret behind when I go.’

He poured the wine carefully and evoked from us the sort of compliments he needed. He was like an actor in that and many other respects – he desperately needed regular and earnest declarations of love. ‘Label uppermost, always label uppermost; when you store and when you pour.’ He demonstrated it. ‘Otherwise you’ll disturb it.’

I knew it would be a predominantly masculine lunch, a departmental get-together, Silas had warned me beforehand, but I still came. Bret Rensselaer and Frank Harrington were both there. Rensselaer was in his middle fifties; American-born, he was trim almost to the point of emaciation. Although his hair was turning white, there was still enough of the blond colouring left to prevent him looking old. And he smiled a lot and had good teeth and a face that was bony so that there weren’t many wrinkles.

Over lunch there was the usual seasonal discussion about how quickly Christmas was approaching and the likelihood of more snow. Bret Rensselaer was deciding upon a place to ski. Frank Harrington, our senior man in Berlin, told him it was too early for good snow, but Silas advised Switzerland.

Frank argued about the snow. He liked to think he was an authority on such matters. He liked skiing, golfing and sailing, and generally having a good time. Frank Harrington was waiting for retirement, something for which he’d been strenuously practising all his life. He was a soldierly-looking figure with a weather-beaten face and a blunt-ended stubble moustache. Unlike Bret, who was wearing the same sort of Savile Row suit he wore to the office, Frank had come correctly attired for the upper-class English weekend: old Bedford cord trousers and a khaki sweater with a silk scarf in the open neck of his faded shirt. ‘February,’ said Frank. ‘That’s the only time for any decent skiing anywhere worth going.’

I observed the way Bret was eying von Munte, whose stream of high-grade information had taken Bret into the very top ranks of the Department. Bret’s desk was now closed down and his seniority had been in peril ever since the old man had been forced to flee. No wonder the two men watched each other like boxers in a ring.

Talk became more serious when it touched upon that inevitable subject in such company, the unification of Germany. ‘How deeply ingrained in East Germans is the philosophy of Communism?’ Bret asked von Munte.

‘Philosophy,’ said Silas, interrupting sharply. ‘I’ll accept that Communism is a perverted sort of religion – infallible Kremlin, infallible Vatican – but philosophy, no.’ He was happier with the von Muntes here, I could tell from the tone of his voice.

Von Munte didn’t take up Silas’s semantic contention. Gravely he said, ‘The way in which Stalin took from Germany Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia made it impossible for many of us Germans to accept the USSR as a friend, neighbour, or example.’

‘That’s going back a long while,’ said Bret. ‘Which Germans are we talking about? Are young Germans interested in the tears and cries of pain we hear about the lost territories?’ He smiled. This was Bret being deliberately provocative. His charming manner was frequently used like this – the local anaesthetic that accompanied the lancet of his rude remarks.

Von Munte remained very calm; was it a legacy of years of banking or years of Communism? Either way, I’d hate to play poker against him. ‘You English equate our eastern lands with Imperial India. The French think we who talk about reasserting Germany’s border to the frontiers of East Prussia are like the pieds-noirs, who hope once again to have Algeria governed from Paris.’

‘Exactly,’ said Bret. He smiled to himself and ate some duckling.

Von Munte nodded. ‘But our eastern provinces have always been German and a vital part of Europe’s relationship with the East. Culturally, psychologically and commercially, Germany’s eastern lands, not Poland, provided the buffer and the link with Russia. Frederick the Great, Yorck and Bismarck – and indeed all those Germans who instituted important alliances with the East – were ostelbisch, Germans from the eastern side of the River Elbe.’ He paused and looked round the table before going on with what was obviously something he’d said time and time again. ‘Czar Alexander I and Nicolas who succeeded him were more German than Russian, and they both married German princesses. And what about Bismarck who was continually defending Russian interests even at the expense of Germany’s relations with the Austrians?’

‘Yes,’ said Bret sardonically. ‘And you have yet to mention the German-born Karl Marx.’

For a moment I thought von Munte was going to reply seriously to the joke and make a fool of himself, but he’d lived amid signals, innuendos, and half-truths long enough to recognize the joke for what it was. He smiled.

‘Can there ever be lasting peace in Europe?’ said Bret wearily. ‘Now, if I’m to believe my ears, you say Germany still has territorial aspirations.’ For Bret it was all a game, but poor old von Munte could not play it.

‘For our own provinces,’ said von Munte stolidly.

‘For Poland and pieces of Russia,’ said Bret. ‘You’d better be clear on that.’

Silas poured more of his precious Château Palmer in a gesture of placation for all concerned. ‘You’re from Pomerania, aren’t you, Walter?’ It was an invitation to talk rather than a real question, for by now Silas knew every last detail of von Munte’s family history.

‘I was born in Falkenburg. My father had a big estate there.’

‘That’s near the Baltic,’ said Bret, feigning interest to make what he considered a measure of reconciliation.

‘Pomerania,’ said von Munte. ‘Do you know it, Bernard?’ he asked me, because I was the closest person there to being a fellow-countryman.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Many lakes and hills. They call it Pomeranian Switzerland, don’t they?’

‘Not any longer.’

‘A beautiful place,’ I said. ‘But as I remember it, damned cold, Walter.’

‘You must go in the summer,’ said von Munte. ‘It’s one of the most enchanting places in the world.’ I looked at Frau Doktor von Munte. I had the feeling that the move to the West was a disappointment for her. Her English was poor and she keenly felt the social disadvantage she suffered as a refugee. With the talk of Pomerania she brightened and tried to follow the conversation.

‘You’ve been back?’ Silas asked.

‘Yes, my wife and I went there about ten years ago. It was foolish. One should never go back.’

‘Tell us about it,’ said Silas.

At first it seemed as if the memories were too painful for von Munte to recount, but after a pause he told us about his trip. ‘There is something nightmarish about going back to your homeland and finding that it’s occupied exclusively by foreigners. It was the most curious experience I’ve ever had – to write “birthplace Falkenburg” and then “destination Zlocieniec”.’

‘The same place, now given a Polish name,’ said Frank Harrington. ‘But you must have been prepared for that.’

‘I was prepared in my mind but not in my heart,’ said von Munte. He turned to his wife and repeated this in rapid German. She nodded dolefully.

‘The train connection from Berlin was never good,’ von Munte went on. ‘Even before the war we had to change twice. This time we went by bus. I tried to borrow a car, but it was not possible. The bus was convenient. We went to Neustettin, my wife’s home town. We had difficulty finding the house in which she’d lived as a child.’

‘Couldn’t you ask for directions?’ said Frank.

‘Neither of us speaks much Polish,’ said von Munte. ‘Also, my wife had lived in Hermann-Göring-Strasse and I did not care to ask the way there.’ He smiled. ‘But we found it eventually. In the street where she lived as a girl we even found an old German woman who remembered my wife’s family. It was a remarkable stroke of luck, for there are only a handful of Germans still living there.’

‘And in Falkenburg?’ said Silas.

‘Ah, in my beloved Zlocieniec, Stalin was more thorough. We could find no one there who spoke German. I was born in a house in the country, right on the lake. We went to the nearest village and the priest tried to help us, but there were no records. He even lent me a bicycle so that I could go out to the house, but it had completely disappeared. The buildings have all been destroyed and the area has been made into a forest. The only remains I could recognize were a couple of farm buildings a long way distant from the site of the house where I was born. The priest promised to write if he found out any more, but he never did.’

‘And you never went back again?’ asked Silas.

‘We planned to return, but things happened in Poland. The big demonstrations for free trade unions and the creation of Solidarity was reported in our East German newspapers as being the work of reactionary elements supported by western fascists. Very few people were prepared to even comment on the Polish crisis. And most of the people who did talk about it said that such “troubles”, by upsetting the Russians, made conditions worse for us East Germans and other peoples in the Eastern Bloc. Poles became unpopular and no one went there. It was as if Poland ceased to exist as a next-door neighbour and became some land far away on the other side of the world.’

‘Eat up,’ said Silas. ‘We’re keeping you from your lunch, Walter.’

But soon von Munte took up the same subject again. It was as if he had to convert us to his point of view. He had to remove our misunderstandings. ‘It was the occupation zones that created the archetype German for you,’ he said. ‘Now the French think all Germans are chattering Rhinelanders, the Americans think we are all beer-swilling Bavarians, the British think we are all icy Westphalians, and the Russians think we are all cloddish Saxons.’

‘The Russians,’ I said, having downed two generous glasses of Silas’s magnificent wine as well as a few aperitifs, ‘think you are all brutal Prussians.’

He nodded sadly. ‘Yes, Saupreiss,’ he said, using the Bavarian dialect word for Prussian swine. ‘Perhaps you are right.’

After lunch the other guests divided into those who played billiards and those who preferred to sit huddled round the blazing log fire in the drawing room. My children were watching TV with Mrs Porter.

Silas, giving me a chance to speak privately with von Munte, took us to the conservatory to which, at this time of year, he had moved his house plants. It was a huge glass palace, resting against the side of the house, its framework gracefully curved, its floor formed of beautiful old decorative tiles. In these cold months the whole place was crammed full of prehensile-looking greenery of every shape and size. It seemed too cold in there for such plants to flourish, but Silas said they didn’t need heat so much as light. ‘With me,’ I told him, ‘it’s exactly the opposite.’

He smiled as if he’d heard the joke before, which he had because I told it to him every time he trapped me into one of these chats amid his turnip tops. But Silas liked the conservatory, and if he liked it, everyone else had to like it too. He seemed not to feel the cold. He was jacketless, with bright red braces visible under his unbuttoned waistcoat. Walter von Munte was wearing a black suit of the kind that was uniform for a German government official in the service of the Kaiser. His face was grey and lined and his whitening hair cropped short. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and polished them on a silk handkerchief. Seated on the big wicker seat under the large and leafy plants the old man looked like some ancient studio portrait.

‘Young Bernard has a question for you, Walter,’ said Silas. He had a bottle of Madeira with him and three glasses. He put them on the table and poured a measure of the amber-coloured wine for each of us, then lowered his weight onto a cast-iron garden chair. He sat between us, positioned like a referee.

‘It is not good for me,’ said von Munte, but he took the glass and looked at the colour of it and sniffed it appreciatively.

‘It’s not good for anyone,’ said Silas cheerfully, sipping his carefully measured portion. ‘It’s not supposed to be good for you. The doctor cut me down to one bottle per month last year.’ He drank. ‘This year he told me to cut it out altogether.’

‘Then you are disobeying orders,’ said von Munte.

‘I got myself another doctor,’ said Silas. ‘We live in a capitalist society over here, Walter. I can afford to get myself a doctor who says it’s okay to smoke and drink.’ He laughed and sipped a little more of his Madeira. ‘Cossart 1926, bottled fifty years later. Not the finest Madeira I’ve ever encountered, but not at all bad, eh?’ He didn’t wait for our response, but selected a cigar from the box he’d brought under his arm. ‘Try that,’ he said, offering the cigar to me. ‘That’s an Upmann grand corona, one of the best cigars you can smoke and just right for this time of day. Walter, what about one of those petits that you enjoyed last night?’

‘Alas,’ said von Munte, holding up his hand to decline. ‘I cannot afford your doctor. I must keep to one a week.’

I lit the cigar Silas had given me. It was typical of him that he had to select what he thought suitable for us. He had well-defined ideas about what everyone should have and what they shouldn’t have. For anyone who called him a ‘fascist’ – and there were plenty who did – he had the perfect response: scars from Gestapo bullets.

‘What do you want to ask me, Bernard?’ said von Munte.

I got the cigar going and then I said, ‘Ever hear of Martello, Harry, Jake, See-saw or Ironfoot?’ I’d put in a few extra names as a means of control.

‘What kind of names are these?’ said von Munte. ‘People?’

‘Agents. Code names. Russian agents operating out of the United Kingdom.’

‘Recently?’

‘It looks as if one of them was used by my wife.’

‘Yes, recently. I see.’ Von Munte sipped his port. He was old-fashioned enough to be embarrassed at the mention of my wife and her spying. He shifted his weight on the wicker seat and the movement produced a loud creaking sound.

‘Did you ever come across those names?’ I asked.

‘It was not the policy to let my people have access to such secrets as the code names of agents.’

‘Not even source names?’ I persisted. ‘These are probably not agent names; they’re the code names used in messages and for distribution. No real risk there, and the material from any one source keeps its name until identified and measured and pronounced upon. That’s the KGB system and our system too.’

I glanced round at Silas. He was examining one of his plants, his head turned away as if he weren’t listening. But he was listening all right; listening and remembering every last syllable of what was being said. I knew him of old.