Spy Hook
‘Do you still play?’ she asked.
‘It’s been years. And you?’
‘Not since Jim went.’
‘I’m sorry about what happened, Cindy.’
‘Jim and me. Yes, I wanted to talk to you about that. You saw him on Friday.’
‘Yes, how do you know?’
‘Charlene. I’ve been talking to her a lot lately.’
‘Charlene?’
‘Charlene Birkett. The tall girl we used to let our upstairs flat to … in Edgware. Now she’s Jim’s secretary.’
‘I saw her. I didn’t recognize her. I thought she was American.’ So that’s why she’d smiled at me: I thought it was my animal magnetism.
‘Yes,’ said Cindy, ‘she went to New York and couldn’t get a job until Jim fixed up for her to work for him. There was never anything between them,’ she added hurriedly. ‘Charlene’s a sweet girl. They say she’s really blossomed since living there and wearing contact lenses.’
‘I remember her,’ I said. I did remember her; a stooped, mousy girl with glasses and frizzy hair, quite unlike the shapely Amazon I’d seen in Jim’s office. ‘Yes, she’s changed a lot.’
‘People do change when they live in America.’
‘But you didn’t want to go?’
‘America? My dad would have died.’ You could hear the northern accent now. ‘I didn’t want to change.’ Then she said, solemnly, ‘Oh, doesn’t that sound awful? I didn’t mean that exactly.’
‘People go there and they get richer,’ I said. ‘That’s what the real change is.’
‘Jim got the divorce in Mexico,’ she said. ‘Someone told me that it’s not really legal. A friend of mine: she works in the American embassy. She said Mexican marriages and divorces aren’t legal here. Is that true, Bernard?’
‘I don’t imagine that the Mexican ambassador is living in sin, if that’s what you mean.’
‘But how do I stand, Bernard? He married this other woman. I mean, how do I stand now?’
‘Didn’t you talk to him about it?’ My eyes had become accustomed to the darkness now and I could see her better. She hadn’t changed much, she was the same tiny bundle of brains and nervous energy. She was short with a full figure but had never been plump. She was attractive in an austere way with dark hair that she kept short so it would be no trouble to her. But her nose was reddened as if she had a cold and her eyes were watery.
‘He asked me to go with him.’ She was proud of that and she wanted me to know.
‘I know he did. He told everyone that you would change your mind.’
‘No. I had my job!’ she said, her voice rising as if to repeat the arguments they’d had about it.
‘It’s a difficult decision,’ I said to calm her. In the silence there was a sudden loud throbbing noise close by. She jumped almost out of her skin. Then she realized that it was the freezer cabinet in the corner and she smiled.
‘Perhaps I should have done. It would have been better I suppose.’
‘It’s too late now, Cindy,’ I said hurriedly before she started to go weepy on me.
‘I know; I know; I know.’ She got a handkerchief from her pocket but rolled it up and gripped it tight in her red-knuckled hand as if resolving not to sob.
‘Perhaps you should see a lawyer,’ I said.
‘What do they know?’ she said contemptuously. ‘I’ve seen three lawyers. They pass you on one from the other like a parcel, and by the time I was finished paying out all the fees I knew that some law books say one thing and other law books say different.’
‘The lawyers can quote from the law books until they are blue in the face,’ I said. ‘But eventually people have to sort out the solutions with each other. Going to lawyers is just an expensive way of putting off what you’re going to have to do anyway.’
‘Is that what you really think, Bernard?’
‘More or less,’ I said. ‘Buying a house, making a will, getting divorced. Providing you know what you want, you don’t need a lawyer for any of that.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What’s more important than getting married, and you don’t go to a lawyer to do that.’
‘In foreign countries you do,’ I told her. ‘Couples don’t get married without signing a marriage contract. They never have this sort of problem that you have. They decide it all beforehand.’
‘It sounds a bit cold-blooded.’
‘Maybe it is, but marriage can be a bit too hot-blooded too.’
‘Was yours?’ She released her grip on the tiny handkerchief and spread it out on her lap to see the coloured border and the embroidered initials LP.
‘My marriage?’ I said. ‘Too hot-blooded?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps.’ I sipped my drink. It was a long time since I’d had one of these heavy bitter-tasting brews. I wiped the froth from my lips; it was good. ‘I thought I knew Fiona, but I suppose I didn’t know her well enough.’
‘She was so lovely. I know she loved you, Bernard.’
‘I think she did.’
‘She showed me that fantastic engagement ring and said, Bernie sold his Ferrari to buy that for me.’
‘It sounds like a line from afternoon television,’ I said, ‘but it was a very old battered Ferrari.’
‘She loved you, Bernard.’
‘People change, Cindy. You said that yourself.’
‘Did it affect the children much?’
‘Billy seemed to take it in his stride but Sally … She was all right until I took a girlfriend home. Lots of crying at night. But I think she’s adjusted now.’ I said it more because I wanted it to be true than because I believed it. I worried about the children, worried a lot, but that was none of Cindy’s business.
‘Gloria Kent, the one you work with?’
This Cindy knew everything. Well, the FO had always been Whitehall’s gossip exchange. ‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘It’s difficult for children,’ said Cindy. ‘I suppose I should be thankful that we didn’t have any.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. I drank some Guinness and sneaked a look at the time.
‘But on the other hand, if we’d had kids perhaps Jim wouldn’t have wanted to go so much. He wanted to prove himself, you see. Lately I’ve wondered if he blamed himself that we never were able to have children.’
‘Jim was talking about that time when the kitchen caught fire,’ I said.
‘Jim spilled the oil. He’s always been clumsy.’
‘Fiona didn’t do it?’
‘She took the blame,’ said Cindy with a sigh. ‘Jim could never admit to making a mistake. That was his nature.’
‘Yes, Fiona took the blame,’ I said. ‘She told me Jim did it but she really took the blame … the insurance … everything.’
‘Fiona was a remarkable woman, Bernard, you know that. Fiona had such self-confidence that blame never touched her. I admired her. I would have given almost anything to have been like Fiona, she was always so calm and poised.’
I didn’t respond. Cindy drank some of her tonic water and smoothed her dress and cleared her throat and then said, ‘The reason I wanted to talk to you, Bernard, is to see what the Department will do.’
‘What the Department will do?’ I said. I was puzzled.
‘Do about Jim,’ said Cindy. I could see her squeezing the handkerchief in repeated movements, like someone exercising their hands.
‘About Jim.’ I blew dust from my spectacle lenses and began to polish them. They’d picked up grease from the air and polishing just made them more smeary. The only way to get them clean was to wash them with kitchen detergent under the warm tap. The optician advised against this method but I went on doing it anyway. ‘I’m not sure what you mean, Cindy.’
‘Will they pay me or this American woman, this so-called “wife”,’ she said angrily.
‘Pay you?’ I put my glasses on and looked at her.
‘Don’t be so difficult, Bernard. I must know. I must. Surely you can see that.’
‘Pay you what?’
Her face changed. ‘Holy Mary!’ she said in that way that only church-going Catholics say such things. ‘You don’t know!’ It was a lament. ‘Jim is dead. They killed him Friday night when he left the office after seeing you. They shot him. Six bullets.’
‘Last Friday.’
‘In the car park. It was dark. He didn’t stand a chance. There were two of them; waiting for him. No one told you?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t think me callous, Bernard. But I want to put in a claim for his pension before this other woman. What should I do?’
‘Is there a pension, Cindy? I would have thought all that would have been wound up when he left.’
‘Left? He’s never stopped working for the Department.’
‘You’re wrong about that, Cindy,’ I said.
She became excited. ‘Do you think I don’t know! By God, I saw …’ She stopped suddenly, as if she might be saying something I wasn’t entitled to know.
‘I was there in Washington asking him to come to London to give evidence. He wouldn’t come,’ I explained quietly.
‘That was the cover-up, Bernard,’ she said. She had her temper under control now but she was still angry. ‘They wanted him in London but it was going to be done as if he came under protest.’
‘It fooled me,’ I said.
‘Jim got into very deep water,’ she said. ‘Was it the money you had to talk to him about?’
I nodded.
‘Jim arranged all that,’ she said sadly. ‘Millions and millions of pounds in some secret foreign bank account. A lot of people were empowered to sign: Jim was one of them.’
‘You’re not saying that Jim was killed because of this, are you, Cindy?’
‘What was it then: robbery?’ she said scornfully.
‘Washington is a rough place,’ I told her.
‘Two men; six bullets?’ she said. ‘Damned funny thieves.’
‘Let me get you a proper drink, Cindy. I need time to think about all this.’
4
I was in Dicky Cruyer’s very comfortable office, sitting in his Eames chair and waiting for him to return from his meeting with the Deputy. He’d promised to be no more than ten minutes, but what the Deputy had to say to him took longer than that.
When Dicky arrived he made every effort to look his youthful carefree self, but I guessed that the Deputy had given him a severe wigging about the Bizet crisis. ‘All okay?’ I said.
For a moment he looked at me as if trying to remember who I was, and what I was doing there. He ran his fingers back through his curly hair. He was slim; and handsome in a little-boy way which he cultivated assiduously.
‘The Deputy has to be kept up to date,’ said Dicky, indicating a measured amount of condescension about the Deputy’s inexperience. As long as Sir Henry, the Director-General, had been coming in regularly, the Deputy, Sir Percy Babcock, had scarcely shown his face in the building. But since the old man’s attendance had become intermittent, the Deputy had taken command with all the zeal of the newly converted. The first major change he wrought was to tell Dicky to wear clothes more in keeping with his responsibilities. Dicky’s extensive wardrobe of faded designer jeans, trainers and tartan shirts, and the gold medallion that he wore at his neck, had not been seen recently. Now, in line with the rest of the male staff, he was wearing a suit every day. I found if difficult to adjust to this new sober Dicky.
‘You weren’t at Charles Billingsly’s farewell gathering last night,’ said Dicky. ‘Champagne … very stylish.’
‘I didn’t hear about it,’ I said. Billingsly – German Desk’s more or less useless Data Centre liaison man – wasn’t a close friend of mine. I suppose he thought I might drink too much of his expensive fizz. ‘Are we getting rid of him?’
‘A super hush-hush assignment to Honkers. Forty-eight hours’ notice is all they gave him. So he didn’t let you know about the party? Well, it was all a rush for him.’
‘What would Hong Kong need him for?’
‘No one knows, not even Charles. Hurry and wait. That’s how it goes isn’t it?’
‘Maybe the Deputy just wanted to get rid of him,’ I suggested.
Dicky’s eyes glittered. After his little session on the carpet it probably made him wonder if he might not one day find himself on a fast plane to distant places. ‘Get rid of Charles, why?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said.
‘No. Charles is a good sort.’
Unbid, Dicky’s secretary arrived with a large silver-plated tray bearing the Spode chinaware and a large pot of freshly ground coffee made just the way Dicky liked it. I suppose she hoped it would put Dicky into a better frame of mind as sometimes a heavy shot of caffeine did. He bent over it and gave low murmurs of approval before pouring some coffee for himself. Then he went and sat down behind the big rosewood table that he used as his desk before he tasted the coffee appreciatively. ‘Damn good!’ he pronounced and drank some more. ‘Pour yourself a cup,’ he said when he was quite sure it was okay.
I took one of the warmed cups, poured some for myself and added cream. It always came with cream, even though Dicky drank his coffee black. I often wondered why. For a moment we drank our coffee in silence. I had the feeling that Dicky needed five minutes to recover from his meeting.
‘He’s become an absolute despot lately,’ said Dicky at last. Having devoured a large cup of coffee he took a small cigar from his pocket, lit it and blew smoke. ‘I wish I could make him understand that it’s not like running his law firm. I can’t get a book down from the shelf and read the answers to him.’
‘He’ll get the hang of it,’ I said.
‘In time, he will,’ agreed Dicky. ‘But by then I’ll be old and grey.’ That might be quite a long time, for Dicky was young and fit and two years my junior. He flicked ash into the big cut-glass ashtray on his desk and kept looking at the carpet as if lost in thought.
I pulled my paper-work from its cardboard folder and said, ‘Do you want to run through this stuff?’ I brandished it at him but he continued to stare at the carpet.
‘He’s talking about vertical reorganization.’
I said, ‘What’s that?’
Dicky, short-listed for the Stalin Prize in office politics, said, ‘Jesus Christ, Bernard. Vertical planning! Dividing the German Desk up into groups region by region. He told me that I’d have Berlin, as if that would make me overjoyed. Berlin! With other desks for Bonn and Hamburg and so on. A separate unit would liaise with the Americans in Munich. Can you imagine it!’
‘That idea has been kicking around for ages,’ I said. I began to sort out the work I’d brought for him. I knew that getting him to look at it would be difficult in his present agitated mood, so I put the papers that required a signature on top. There were five of them.
‘It’s ridiculous!’ said Dicky so loudly that his secretary looked in through the door to see if everything was all right. She was a new secretary or she would have made herself scarce when there was a chance of encountering Dicky’s little tantrums.
‘It will happen sooner or later I suppose,’ I said. I got my pen out so that Dicky could sign while he talked about something else. Sometimes it was easier like that.
‘You’d heard about it before?’ said Dicky incredulously, suddenly realizing what I’d said.
‘Oh, yes. A year or more ago but it had some other name then.’
‘Ye gods, Bernard! I wish you’d told me.’
I put the papers on his desk and gave him the ballpoint pen and watched him sign his name. I hadn’t heard of the vertical planning scheme before, of course, but guessed that the Deputy had simply invented something that would goad Dicky into more energetic action, and I thought it better not to let the old boy down. ‘And these you should look at,’ I said, indicating the most important ones.
‘You’ll have to go and see Frank,’ he said as he signed the final one and plucked at the corners of the rest of the stuff to see if anything looked interesting enough to read.
‘Okay,’ I said. He looked up at me. He’d expected me to object to a trip to Berlin but he’d caught me at a good time. It was a month or more since I’d been to Berlin and there were reasons both official and social for a trip there. ‘And what do I tell Frank?’ I wanted to get it clear because we had this absurd system in which Dicky and Frank Harrington – the Berlin ‘resident’ and as old as Methuselah – had equal authority.
He looked up from the carpet and said, ‘I don’t want to rub Frank up the wrong way. It’s not up to me to tell him how to run his Berlin Field Unit. Frank knows more about the operations side of his bailiwick than all the rest of us put together.’ That was all true, of course, but it wasn’t often the line Dicky took.
‘We’re talking about Bizet, I take it?’
‘Right. Frank may want to put someone in. After all, Frankfurt an der Oder is only a stone’s throw from where he is.’
‘It’s not the distance, Dicky. It’s …’
He immediately held up his hand in defence. ‘Sure. I know I know I know.’
‘Are you hoping he’ll have done something already?’
‘I just want his advice,’ said Dicky.
‘Well, we both know what Frank’s advice will be,’ I said. ‘Do nothing. Just the same advice that he gives us about everything.’
‘Frank’s been there a long time,’ said Dicky, who had survived many a crisis and reshuffle on ‘do nothing’ policies.
I made sure Dicky had signed everything in the right place. Then I drank the coffee and left it at that for a bit. But this seemed a good opportunity to quiz him about the Prettyman business. ‘Remember Prettyman?’ I said as casually as I could manage.
‘Should I?’
‘Jim Prettyman: ended up in “black boxes”. Left and went to America.’
‘Codes and Ciphers, downstairs?’ It was a not a region into which Dicky ever ventured.
‘He was on the Special Operations committee with Bret. He was always trying to organize holidays where you could look at tombs and no one ever put their name down. Wonderful snooker player. Don’t you remember how we went to Big Henty’s one night and he made some fantastic break?’
‘I’ve never been to Big Henty’s in my life.’
‘Of course you have, Dicky. Lots of times. Jim Prettyman. A young fellow who got that job in Washington.’
‘Sometimes I think you must know everyone in this building,’ said Dicky.
‘I thought you knew him,’ I said lamely.
‘A word to the wise, Bernard.’ Dicky was holding a finger aloft as if testing for the direction of the wind. ‘If I was in this room talking to you about this Prettyman fellow you’d change the subject to talk about Frank Harrington and the Bizet business. No offence intended, old chum, but it’s true. Think about it.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Dicky.’
‘You must try and concentrate upon the subject in hand. Have you ever done any yoga?’ He pushed aside the papers that I’d suggested he should read.
‘No, Dicky,’ I said.
‘I did a lot of yoga at one time.’ He ran a finger across the papers as if reading the contents list. ‘It trains the mind: helps the power of concentration.’
‘I’ll look into that,’ I promised, taking from him the signed papers that Dicky had decided not to read, and stuffing them into the cardboard folder.
When I stood up, Dicky, still looking at the carpet, said, ‘My mother’s cousin died and left me a big lion skin. I was wondering whether to have it in here.’
‘It would look just right,’ I said, indicating the antique furniture and the framed photos that covered the wall behind him.
‘I had it in the drawing room at home but some of our friends made a bit of fuss about shooting rare animals and that sort of thing.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Dicky,’ I said. ‘That’s just because they’re jealous.’
‘That’s just what I told Daphne,’ he said. ‘After all, the damned thing’s dead. I can’t bring a lion back to life can I?’
5
Many civilians have a lifelong obsession about what it would be like to be in the army. Some like the idea of uniforms, horses, trumpets and flags; others just want clearly expressed orders, and a chance to carry them out in exchange for hot meals on the table every day. For some men the army represents a challenge they never faced; for others a cloistered cosy masculine retreat from reality.
Which of these aspects of the soldier’s life Frank Harrington found attractive – or whether it was something entirely different – I never knew. But whenever Frank was not in his office, nor in the splendid Grunewald mansion that he’d arranged should be one of the ‘perks’ of being the Berlin Resident, I knew I’d find him in some squalid dug-out, sitting in the middle of a bunch of begrimed infantry officers, looking thoroughly happy as he told them how to fight their war.
This day, dressed in borrowed army togs with mud on his knees and elbows, he was delivered to the Grunewald house in a big army staff car.
‘I’m awfully sorry, Frank,’ I said.
‘I was only playing soldiers,’ he said in that disarming way he had. ‘And Dicky said it was urgent.’
He looked as if he was going to conduct me straight into his study. ‘It’s not so urgent that you can’t change and take a shower,’ I said. I gave him the report from London.
He took it and shook it at his ear to listen for its rattle. He grinned. We both knew Dicky. ‘Go into the drawing room and get yourself a drink, Bernard,’ he said. ‘Ring for Tarrant if you can’t find what you want. You’re going to eat with me I hope?’
‘Yes. I’d like that, Frank.’
He was a wellspring of cheer after his day with the soldiers. Halfway up the stairs he turned to say, ‘Welcome home, Bernard,’ knowing how delighted I would be at such a greeting. For no matter where I went or what I did, Berlin would always be home for me. My father had been Resident long ago – before they were provided with a grand mansion in which to live and an entertainment allowance – and Berlin held all my happy childhood recollections.
When after thirty minutes or more Frank returned he was dressed in what for him were informal clothes: an old grey herringbone tweed jacket and flannels, but the starched shirt and striped tie wouldn’t have disgraced any Mess. Just as I was able to make new clothes look shabby, so Frank was able to invest even his oldest garments with a spruce look. His cuffs emerged just the right amount and there was a moiŕe kerchief in his top pocket and hand-sewn Oxfords that were polished to perfection. He went across to the drinks trolley and poured himself a large Plymouth gin with a dash of bitters. ‘What have you got there?’ he asked.
‘I’m all right, Frank,’ I said.
‘Wouldn’t you rather have a real drink?’
‘I’m trying to cut back on the hard stuff, Frank.’
‘That bottle must have been on that trolley for years. Is it still all right?’ He picked up the bottle I’d poured my drink from, and studied the label with interest, and then he looked at me. ‘Vermouth? That’s not like you, Bernard.’
‘Delicious,’ I said.
He came and sat opposite me. His face had the war-painted look that dedicated skiers wore at this time of year. His skin was dark, with pale surrounds where his goggles had been. Frank knew a thing or two about the good life. I didn’t ask after his wife. She spent most of the time at their house in England nowadays. She had never liked Berlin, and rumours said there had been a row when Frank accepted the invitation to stay on past his official retirement date.
He’d read the interim report in his bath, he told me. We knew that it had been roughly cobbled together in London and we both knew it was just a lengthy way of saying nothing at all. He flicked through it very quickly again and said, ‘Does Dicky want me to deposit someone in there?’
‘He’s going to great pains not to say so,’ I said.
‘I’ll do anything for the poor bastards who are in trouble,’ he said. ‘But this is Berlin. I can’t think of anyone here who could go to Frankfurt an der bloody Oder and do anything to help them.’ He touched his blunt military moustache. It was going very grey.
‘They don’t like to sit in London doing nothing,’ I said.
‘How do they think I like it?’ said Frank. Just for a moment his face and his voice revealed the strain of the job. I suppose there were plenty of agents being picked up all the time but it was only when there was monitored Soviet radio traffic about them that London got interested and concerned. ‘The army got wind of it,’ said Frank. ‘They’re keen to try their hand.’