Spy Hook

He must have seen my face go white, and my teeth clench, or whatever happened when I became so terrified that I wanted to scream. ‘The army?’ I said, holding tight to my drink and keeping my voice under control.

‘The Brigadier was reminding me about the Military Mission staff we have with the Russian army headquarters. They are able to move about a little more freely nowadays.’

‘What else did your Brigadier say?’

‘He was quoting the behaviour of these GRU bastards our chaps have to put up with at Bunde. Counting those with the French army at Baden-Baden, and those with the Yanks, there are about fifty Soviet Military Mission staffers. GRU agents every one, and many of them with scientific training. They wear leather jackets over their uniforms and deliberately muddy their car registration plates so they’re not recognized while they go pushing their way into, and photographing, everything that interests them.’ He grinned. ‘“What about tit for tat?” that’s what the Brigadier says.’

‘You didn’t tell your army pal about Bizet?’

‘I’m not senile, Bernard.’

‘The idea of some keen young subaltern sniffing around in Frankfurt an der Oder is enough to give me a nightmare.’

‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘You said the army had wind of it,’ I reminded him.

‘Did I? I should have said that the army know we have a crisis of some sort.’ He looked at me and added, ‘They have a good radio monitoring service, Bernard.’

‘For listening to Russian army signals.’

‘Along the border, that is true. But here in Berlin – right in the middle of the DDR – they hear all the domestic stuff. They monitor GRU and KGB traffic; they like to know what’s going on. I would never object to that, Bernard. In an outpost like this, the army need to keep a finger on the pulse.’

‘Maybe I will have something stronger,’ I said. But at that moment Frank’s German maid came in to say dinner was served.

I pushed all my worries, about what Frank might have said to his army cronies, to the back of my mind. We sat in the grand dining room, just me and Frank at one end of the long polished table. He’d had someone decant a bottle of really good claret: the empty bottle was on the sideboard. It was something of an honour. Frank kept his best wines for people either important enough to merit them, or choosy enough to notice. He poured some for me to taste when the egg and bacon tart arrived. The portions were very small. I suspected that the cook was trying to eke out Frank’s meal and make enough for me. Frank seemed not to notice. He wanted to hear all the latest gossip from the Department, and I told him how the Deputy was slowly but surely changing the Department to his own wishes.

From my own point of view I rather welcomed the new ideas. It was time the old gang were shaken up a bit. Frank agreed, but with less enthusiasm.

‘I’m too old to welcome changes just for the sake of change, Bernard. I was in the Department with your father back in 1943. I did a training course with Sir Henry Clevemore – “Pimples” we called him – a damned great hulking kid. He fell into a drainage ditch on one of the assault courses. It needed four of us to haul him out.’ He drank some more wine, and after a reflective pause added, ‘My wife says I’ve given my life to the Department, and a large chunk of her life too!’ It was a heartfelt declaration of pride, resentment and regret.

He went on talking about the Department through the cottage pie, the bread and butter pudding and the Cheddar cheese. No matter how long he lived here, and how assimilated he became, the output from Frank’s kitchen remained defiantly British public school. I was happy to listen to him, especially when he mentioned my father. He knew that of course, and all the stories he told showed my father in such a glorious light that I knew he was just putting it on for me. ‘Your dad sat for days and days in some filthy apartment with only this German fellow for company: arguing and swearing most of the time according to your dad’s account. They were waiting for news of Hitler’s assassination. When the news came that the assassination attempt had failed, in came this Gestapo agent. Your dad was ready to jump out of the window but it turned out that it was the other chap’s brother … I’m probably getting it all muddled,’ said Frank with a smile. ‘And I’m sure it was all just one of your father’s yarns. But whenever your dad could be persuaded to tell that story he’d have me, and everyone else, in fits of laughter.’ Frank had some more wine and ate some cheese. ‘None of the rest of us had ever been in Nazi Germany of course. We hung on your dad’s every word. Sometimes he’d be pulling our leg mercilessly.’

‘The other day someone hinted that the Department might get to me through my father,’ I said as casually as I could.

‘Pressure you?’

‘That was the implication. How could they do that, Frank? Did Dad do anything …’

‘Are you serious, Bernard?’

‘I want to know, Frank.’

‘Then may I suggest you seek clarification from whoever gave you this bizarre idea.’

I changed the subject. ‘And Fiona?’ I asked as casually as I was able.

He looked up sharply. I suppose he knew how much I still missed her. ‘She keeps a very low profile.’

‘But she’s still in East Berlin?’

‘Very much so. Flourishing, or so I hear. Why?’

‘I was just curious.’

‘Put her out of your mind, Bernard. It’s all over now. I suffered for you but now it’s time to forget the past. Tell me about the new house. Do the children like having a garden?’

Our conversation was devoted to domestic small-talk. By the time we went back to the drawing room to drink coffee, Frank was in a mellow mood. I said, ‘Remember the last time we were together in this room, Frank?’

He looked at me and after a moment’s thought said, ‘The night you came over asking me to get Bret Rensselaer off the hook. Is it really that long ago? Three years?’

‘You were packing your Duke Ellington records,’ I said. ‘They were all across the floor here.’

‘I thought I was retiring and going back to England.’ He looked round remembering it all and said, ‘It changed my life, I suppose. By now I would have been pensioned off and growing roses.’

‘And been Sir Frank Harrington,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about the way it all worked out, Frank.’ It was generally agreed that the débâcle resulting from my intervention had deprived Frank of the knighthood he’d set his heart on. London Central had been saved from humiliation, by my warning and Frank’s unilateral action, but they’d still not forgiven either of us. We’d been proved right, and for the mandarins of the Foreign Office that was a rare and unpardonable sin.

‘It must be nearly three years,’ he said, unrolling his tobacco pouch and stuffing his Balkan Sobranie tobacco into the bowl of a curly pipe. Oh God, was Frank going to smoke that pipe of his? ‘I was disappointed at the time but I’ve got over it now.’

‘I suppose Bret got the worst of it.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Frank, lighting his pipe.

‘Last I heard he was having night and day nursing care and sinking fast,’ I said. ‘He’s not still alive?’

Frank took his time getting his pipe going before he replied. Then he said, ‘Bret hung on for a long time but now he’s gone.’ He smiled in that distant way of his and started puffing contentedly. I moved back from him. I could never get used to Frank’s pipe. He said, ‘That’s not to be repeated. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you. I was told in confidence; the Department have said nothing yet.’

‘Poor Bret. That night I flew out of Berlin there was a roomful of men in white coats swearing he couldn’t live beyond the weekend.’

‘His brother arrived with some damned American general in tow. Bret was hauled aboard a US Air Force plane and flown out. I heard they’d put him into that hospital in Washington, where they treat the US Presidents. He was in all kinds of hospitals for a long time: you know what the Americans are like. And then he went to convalesce in a house he owns in the Virgin Islands. He sent me a postcard from there; “Wish you were here”, palm trees and a beach. Berlin was deep under snow and the central heating was giving trouble. I didn’t think it was so funny at the time. I wondered if he meant that he wished I’d stopped the bullet that he’d taken. I don’t know. I never will know, I suppose.’

I said nothing.

There was a lot of prodding at the tobacco. Frank had a special little steel device for pushing it around. He tended that pipe like some Scots engineer at the boiler of an ancient and well beloved tramp steamer. And it gave him time to think about what he was going to say. ‘I’ve never been told officially, of course. I thought it was funny, the way that Bret always made such a big performance of being English. And then he’s injured and he’s off to America.’ Another pause. ‘As I say, Bret never died officially; he just faded away.’

‘Like old soldiers,’ I said.

‘What? Oh, yes, I see what you mean.’

Then the conversation moved to other matters. I asked about Frank’s son, an airline pilot who’d recently gone from British Airways to one of the domestic airlines. He was flying smaller planes on shorter routes but he was at home with his wife almost every night and making more money too. In the old days Frank’s son had often got to Berlin, but nowadays it was not on any of his routes and Frank admitted that sometimes he felt lonely.

I looked around. The house was all beautifully kept up but it was a dark echoing place for one man on his own. I remembered how, many years ago, Frank told me that marriage didn’t fit very well with men ‘in our line of business – women don’t like secrets to which they are not a party’. I’d thought about it ever since.

Frank asked about mutual friends in Washington DC and after talking about some of them I said, ‘Do you remember Jim Prettyman?’

‘Prettyman? No,’ said Frank with conviction. Then Frank asked if everything was all right between me and Gloria. I said it was, because the ever-growing fear that I had, about becoming too dependent upon her, seemed too trivial and childish to discuss.

‘Not thinking of marrying again?’ Frank asked.

‘I’m not free to marry,’ I reminded him. ‘I’m still legally married to Fiona, aren’t I?’

‘Of course.’

‘I have a nasty feeling she’ll try for custody of the children again,’ I said. I hadn’t intended to tell him but I’d got to the point where I had to tell someone.

‘I hope not, Bernard.’

‘I had a formal letter from my father-in-law. He wants regular access to the children.’

He took his pipe from his mouth. ‘And you think he’s in touch with Fiona?’

‘I’m not going to rule it out; he’s a two-faced old bastard.’

‘Don’t meet trouble halfway, Bernard. What does Gloria think?’

‘I haven’t told her yet.’

‘Bernard, you are an ass. You must stop treating her as if she’s half-witted. A woman’s point of view, Bernard.’

‘You’re right,’ I said.

‘Yes, I am. Stop brooding. Talk to her. She must know the children by now.’

‘I’d better get going, Frank,’ I said. ‘It’s been like old times.’

‘I’m glad you stayed to dinner. I wish I’d known you were coming, I could have laid on some decent grub for you.’

‘It was just like home,’ I said.

‘Have you got a car?’ he asked.

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t rent cars at the airport. It’s not good security.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ I admitted.

His pipe was burning fiercely now, its smoke so dense that Frank’s eyes were half-closed against it. ‘Staying with Frau Hennig?’ He always called her Frau Hennig. I don’t think he liked her very much but he hid his emotions about her as he did about a lot of other things.

‘Yes,’ I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tarrant glide in, scowling. Frank’s longtime valet always materialized like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. I swear he listened at the door. How else could he appear at the exact right – or sometimes no less exact wrong – moment?

When Frank turned to him, Tarrant said, ‘Colonel Hampshire phoned to say Headquarters won the tournament.’

I looked at Frank, who took the pipe from his mouth, smiled at me and said, ‘Bridge.’

So I’d dragged Frank from some damned Officers’ Mess bridge final. No doubt the meal we’d eaten was Tarrant’s supper. But appearances could be deceptive; Tarrant’s big eyebrows were always lowered menacingly, like a bull about to charge. Perhaps he wasn’t hungry and resentful: maybe he was drunk.

‘Thank you, Tarrant. You can go to bed. I’ll see Mr Samson out.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Don’t go,’ said Frank to me. ‘Let’s open a bottle of tawny and make a night of it.’

Frank’s choice in vintage port was always a temptation but I declined. ‘I must put my head round the door before Lisl goes to sleep,’ I said, looking at my watch.

‘And what time is that?’

‘Pretty damned late,’ I admitted.

‘You heard she’s closing down?’

‘The hotel? No more than that. Werner wrote me one of his cryptic notes but that’s all he said.’

‘It’s too much for her,’ said Frank, ‘and those bloody people who work for her turn up only when they feel like it.’

‘You don’t mean Klara?’ Klara was Lisl Hennig’s maid and had been for countless ages.

‘No, not Klara, of course not. But Klara is very old now. They’re a couple of very old ladies. They should both be in a nursing home, not trying to cope with all the problems of a broken-down hotel.’

‘What will Lisl do?’

‘If she takes the advice everyone is giving her, she’ll sell the place.’

‘She’s borrowed on it,’ I said.

He prodded the pipe. ‘If I know anything about the mentality of bank managers, the bank won’t have loaned her more than half of what it will fetch on the market.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘She’d have enough cash to live her last few years in comfort.’

‘But the house means such a lot to her.’

‘She can’t have it both ways,’ said Frank.

‘I can’t imagine coming to Berlin and not being able to go to Lisl’s,’ I said selfishly. My father had been billeted in that house, and eventually my mother took me there to join him. We lived there all through my schooldays and my youth. Every room, every stick of furniture, every bit of frayed carpet held memories for me. I suppose that was why I was pleased that so little was done to bring it up to date. It was my private museum of nostalgia, and the thought of being deprived of it filled me with dread. It was tantamount to someone wrenching from me memories of my father.

‘Just one?’ said Frank. He laid his pipe on the ashtray with reverential care, and went to the drinks trolley. ‘I’m opening the bottle anyway.’

‘Yes, thanks,’ I said changing my mind and sitting down again while Frank poured a glass of his tawny port for me. I said, ‘The last time I was at Lisl’s, only three rooms were occupied.’

‘That’s only half of the trouble,’ said Frank. ‘The doctor said running that place is too much for her. He told Werner that he wouldn’t give her more than six months if she doesn’t rest completely.’

‘Poor Lisl.’

‘Yes, poor Lisl,’ said Frank handing me a brimming glass of port wine. There was a sardonic note in his voice: he usually called her Frau Hennig.

‘I know you never liked her,’ I said.

‘Come, Bernard. That’s not true.’ He picked up his pipe and got it going again.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘I said she was a Nazi,’ he said in a measured way and smiled to acknowledge his dissembling.

‘That’s nonsense.’ She was like a second mother to me. Even if Frank was like a second father I wasn’t going to let him get away with such damaging generalizations about her.

‘The Hennigs were social climbers in Hitler’s time,’ said Frank. ‘Her husband was a member of the Party, and a lot of the people she mixed with were damned shady.’

‘For instance?’

‘Don’t get so defensive, Bernard. Lisl and her friends were enthusiastic Hitler supporters right up to the time when the Red Army started waving a flag from the Brandenburger Tor.’ He sipped. ‘And even after that she only learned to keep her political opinions to herself.’

‘Maybe,’ I said grudgingly. It was true that Lisl had always had a quick eye for any failings of socialism.

‘And that Lothar Koch … Well, we’ve been through all that before.’

Frank was convinced that Lothar Koch, an old friend of Lisl’s, had some sort of Nazi past. One of Frank’s German pals said Koch was a Gestapo man but there were always stories about people being Gestapo men, and Frank had said the same thing about many other people. Sometimes I thought Frank spent more time worrying about the Nazis than he did about the Russians. But that was something common to a lot of the old-timers.

‘Lothar Koch was just a clerk,’ I said. I emptied my glass and got to my feet. ‘And you’re just a romantic, Frank, that’s your problem. You’re still hoping that Martin Bormann will be discovered helping Hitler to type his memoirs in a tin hut in the rain forest.’

Still puffing his pipe Frank got to his feet and gave me one of his ‘we’ll-see-one-day’ smiles. When we got to the door he said, ‘I’ll acknowledge Dicky’s memo on the teleprinter, and we’ll get together late tomorrow so you can take a verbal back to him. Will that suit you?’

‘Just right! I wanted to have a day sightseeing,’ I said.

He nodded knowingly and without enthusiasm. Frank didn’t approve of some of my Berlin acquaintances. ‘I thought you might,’ he said.

It was about one-thirty when I got back to Lisl Hennig’s little hotel. I’d arranged that Klara should leave the door unlatched for me. I crept up the grand front staircase under crippled cherubs that were yellowing and cobwebbed. A tiny shaded table lamp in the bar spilled its meagre light across the parquet floor of the salon, where the enormous baroque mirrors – stained and speckled – dimly reflected the tables set ready for breakfast.

The pantry near the back stairs had been converted to a bedroom for Lisl Hennig when her arthritis made the stairs a torment to her. There was a wedge of yellow light under her door and a curious intermittent buzzing noise. I tapped lightly.

‘Come in, Bernd,’ she called, with no hint in her voice of the frailty I’d been led to expect. She was sitting up in bed, looking as perky as ever: cushions and pillows behind her and newspapers all over the red and green quilt. Reading newspapers was Lisl’s obsession.

Parchment lampshades made the light rich and golden and made a halo of her disarranged hair. She had a small plastic box in her hands and she was pushing and pulling at it. ‘Look at this, Bernd! Just look at it!’

She fiddled with the little box again. A loud buzz with a metallic rattle came from behind me. I was visibly startled and Lisl laughed.

‘Look at it, Bernd. Careful now! Isn’t that wonderful!’ She chuckled with delight. I jumped aside as a small olive-coloured jeep came rattling across the carpet, but it swerved aside and rushed headlong at the fireplace, hitting the brass fender with a loud clang before reversing and swinging round – antenna wobbling – to race across the room again.

Lisl, who was wrestling with the controls of this little radio-controlled toy, was almost hysterical with joy. ‘Have you ever seen anything like it, Bernd?’

‘No,’ I said. Not wanting to tell her that every toy shop in the Western world was awash with such amusements.

‘It’s for Klara’s nephew’s son,’ she said, although why Lisl should be playing with it in the small hours was left unexplained. She put the control box alongside a glass of wine on the bedside table where the wind-up gramophone, and a pile of old 78 records, were at her elbow. ‘Give me a kiss, Bernd!’ she ordered.

I rescued the little toy jeep from where it had come to a halt on the rumpled carpet and gave her an affectionate hug and kiss. She smelled of snuff, a heavy spicy mixture that she’d spilled down the front of her bed jacket. The idea of losing this crazy old woman was a terrible prospect. She was no less dear to me than my mother.

‘How did you get in?’ she said and glared at me. I moved back from her, trying to think of a suitable answer. She put on her glasses so that she could see better. ‘How did you get in?’

‘I …’

‘Did that wretched girl leave the door on the latch?’ she said angrily. ‘The times I’ve told her. We could all be murdered in our beds.’ She hit the newspaper with her loose fingers so that it made a loud smack. ‘Doesn’t she read the papers? People are murdered for ten marks in this town nowadays … muggers! heroin addicts! perverts! violent criminals of all kinds. You only have to go a hundred metres to the Ku-Damm to see them parading up and down! How can she leave the door wide open? I told her to wait up until you arrived. Stupid girl!’

The ‘stupid girl’ was almost Lisl’s age and would be up at the crack of dawn collecting the breakfast rolls, making coffee, slicing the sausage and the cheese, and boiling the eggs that are the essential constituents of a German breakfast. Klara deserved her sleep but I didn’t point this out to Lisl. It was better to let her simmer down.

‘Where have you been?’

‘I had dinner with Frank.’

‘Frank Harrington: that snake in the grass!’

‘What has Frank done?’

‘Oh, yes, he’s an Englishman. You’d have to defend him.’

‘I’m not defending him. I don’t know what he’s done to upset you,’ I said.

‘He’s all schmaltz when he wants something but he thinks only of himself. He’s a pig.’

‘What did Frank do?’ I asked.

‘Do you want a drink?’

‘No thanks, Lisl.’

Thus reassured she drank some of her sherry, or whatever it was, and said, ‘My double suite on the first floor had a new bathroom only a year or two ago. It’s beautiful. It’s as good as anywhere in any hotel in Berlin.’

‘But Frank’s got this big house, Lisl.’

She waved her hand to tell me I’d got it wrong. ‘For Sir Clevemore. He stayed here long ago when your father was here. That’s before he became a “sir” and he’d be happy to stay here now. I know he would.’

‘Sir Henry?’

‘Clevemore.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Frank got him a suite at the Kempi. Think of the expense. He would have been happier here. I know he would.’

‘When are we talking about?’

‘A month … two months ago. Not more.’

‘You must have made a mistake. Sir Henry has been sick for nearly six months. And he hasn’t been in Berlin for about five years.’

‘Klara saw him in the lobby of the Kempi. She has a friend who works there.’

‘It wasn’t Sir Henry. I told you: he’s sick.’

‘Don’t be so obstinate, Bernd. Klara spoke with him. He recognized her. I was so angry. I was going to ring Frank Harrington but Klara persuaded me not to.’

‘Klara got it wrong,’ I said. I didn’t like to say that it was the sort of story that Klara had been known to invent just to needle her autocratic and exasperating employer.

‘It’s a beautiful suite,’ said Lisl. ‘You haven’t seen that bathroom since it was done. Bidet, thermostatic control for the taps, mirrored walls. Beautiful!’

‘Well, it wasn’t Sir Henry,’ I said. ‘So you can sleep easy on that one. I would know if Sir Henry came to Berlin.’

‘Why would you know?’ she said. She grinned from ear to ear, delighted to catch me out in a self-contradiction, for I’d always kept up the pretence that I worked for a pharmaceutical company.

‘I get to hear these things,’ I said unconvincingly.

‘Good night, Bernd,’ she said still smiling. I kissed her again and went upstairs to bed.

As my foot touched the first stair there came a sudden blast of sound. A Dixieland band, with too much brass, giving ‘I’m for ever blowing bubbles’ a cruel battering. The volume was ear-splitting. No wonder Lisl’s hotel wasn’t overcrowded.

I had my usual garret room at the top of the house. It was a room I’d had as a child, a cramped room, overlooking the back of the house and the courtyard. It was chilly at this time of year. The effects of the hot-water pump didn’t seem to reach up to the top of the house nowadays, so the massive radiator was no more than tepid. But the indomitable Klara had put a hot-water bottle between the crisp linen of my bed and I climbed into it content.