Samson 09 spy sinker, p.22
Samson 09 - Spy Sinker, page 22
It is not far from the State Opera on Unter den Linden to the Palast Hotel, and despite Berlin’s everpresent smell of brown coal the walk was good for her. By the time they were seated in the hotel dining room she was restored to something approaching her normal calm. It wasn’t like her to be so shattered, even by surprises. But meeting Harry at the opera house had not simply been a surprise: it had shown her what a fragile hold she had upon herself. She had been physically affected by the encounter. Her heart was still beating fast.
She watched him as he read the menu. Was she in love with him? Was that the explanation of the shock? Or was it more fundamental, was she becoming unbalanced?
Any feeling she had for Harry was not like the stable and enduring love she had for her home, her children and her husband. Harry’s absence from her life had not caused her the heart-rending agony that separation from her family had brought, an agony from which she never escaped. That old love for Harry was something quite different, separate and not in conflict with it. But she could not help recalling that the love she’d once had for Harry was electrifying. It had been illicit and more physical than anything she’d known with Bernard. Sitting here across the table from Harry made her remember vividly the way that not so long ago even a glance from him could be arousing. ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said absently as she realized he was expecting an answer from her.
‘I had it the other night,’ he said. ‘It was rather good.’
‘I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.’
‘The Kabinett is always the driest, at least I’ve learned that in the time I’ve been here.’
‘Wonderful,’ she said vaguely and was relieved when he waved to the waiter and ordered a bottle of some wine he’d discovered and liked. His German was adequate and even his accent was not too grating upon her ear. She looked around the restaurant to be sure there was no one there she recognized. It was crowded with foreigners: the only ones who had access to the sort of foreign money with which the bill had to be paid.
‘My money comes in Western currency. I eat here all the time,’ he told her.
Could he, by any chance, be an emissary from London Central? No. This was not a man whom Bret or Sir Henry would regard as right for the tricky job of intermediary. And yet a paramour would make the perfect cover for a London contact. If that was his role, he’d reveal it soon: that was how such things were done. She’d wait and see what happened: meanwhile she would be the perfect communist. ‘So what do you suggest we eat?’ she asked.
He looked up and smiled. He was so happy that his elation affected her. ‘Steak, trout or schnitzel is all I ever order.’
‘Trout then; nothing to start.’ And then another thought struck her like a bombshell: could he be Moscow’s man? Very very unlikely. At that first encounter in London he’d admitted having no work permit. Had she phoned Immigration they would have pounced on him. Wait a minute, think about it. It was his vulnerability to officialdom that made her decide not to have him officially investigated. That and the fact that Bernard might have started asking questions about him. She lived again through that first encounter on the railway station, step by step, word for word. His ‘niece’ talked to Fiona and then ran away. It could have been a set-up. There was nothing in that meeting that could not have been previously arranged.
‘Fiona,’ he said.
‘Yes, Harry?’
‘I love you desperately.’ He did love her: no one could feign adoration in the way that she saw it in his eyes. But, said the neurotic, suspicious and logical side of her, being in love did not mean that he couldn’t have been sent by Moscow. ‘I know everything about you,’ he said suddenly, and she was alarmed again. ‘Except why you like Der Freischütz. I know every mini-quaver of it by now. I can take Schoenberg and Hindemith, but can you find me ten minutes of real melody in that whole darn opera?’
‘Germans like it because it is about a completely unified Germany.’
‘Is that what you want: a unified Germany?’ he asked.
Red lights flashed. What was the official line on unification? ‘Only on the right terms,’ she said guardedly. ‘What about you?’
‘Who was it who said that he liked Germany so much that he preferred there to be two of them?’
‘I’m not sure.’
He leaned forward and confidentially said, ‘Forget what I said: I’m just crazy about Der Freischütz; every little demi-semi-quaver.’
16
London. October 1983.
It was two o’clock in the morning. Bret was in his Thameside house, sitting up in bed reading the final few pages of Zola’s Nona. Influenced by Sylvester Bernstein, Bret had discovered the joy of reading novels. First Sylvy had lent him Germinal and now Bret always subject to deep and sudden passions had decided to read every volume of Zola’s twenty-volume cycle. The phone rang. He let it ring for a long time, but when the caller persisted he reached for it. ‘Hello?’ Bret always said hello; he didn’t believe in identifying himself.
‘Bret, my dear fellow. I do hope I didn’t wake you.’
I’m reading a superb and moving book, Sir Henry.’
‘As long as you’re not in the middle of anything important,’ said the D-G imperturbably. ‘I know you are something of a night owl. Anyway this won’t wait, I’m afraid.’
‘I understand.’ Bret put the book aside and closed it regretfully.
‘Special Branch liaison came through to me at home a few minutes ago. Apparently a young woman, English by all accounts, walked into the police station in Chichester and said she wanted to talk to someone in our line of business.’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said Bret.
‘You’re yawning already, of course. Yes, we’ve seen a lot of those in our time, haven’t we? But this lady says she wants to tell us something about one of our people in London. She’s mentioned a man whose wife recently left him. Furthermore she met that wife recently in Berlin. You’re still with me, are you Bret?’
‘Very much with you, Sir Henry. Met her? By name? Mentioned her by name?’
‘Apparently: but things usually become a bit vague by the time reports come word of mouth all the way to me. Very very urgent she said it was: someone was about to be killed: that kind of thing. But yes the name was given. Special Branch thought they should check to see if the name rang a bell with us. The night duty officer decided it was important enough to wake me up. I think he was right.’
‘Yes, indeed, sir.’
‘A Special Branch inspector is bringing this lady up to London. She gave her name as Mrs Miranda Keller, née Dobbs. No joy there of course, the German telephone books are full of Kellers. I wonder if you would be so kind as to talk to her? See what it’s all about.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Special Branch have that estate agent’s office in Kensington. The house behind the Sainsbury supermarket. You know it, I’m sure.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘They will be there in under the hour.’
‘I’ll get going immediately, sir.’
‘Would you really, Bret. I’d be so grateful. I’ll be in the office tomorrow. We can talk about it then.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Of course it may be nothing at all. Nothing at all.’
‘Well, I’d better hurry.’
‘Or it could be our old pals getting up to naughty tricks. Don’t take any chances, Bret.’
‘I won’t, sir. I’d better get started.’
‘Yes, of course. Goodnight, old chap. Although for you I suppose it would be good morning.’ The D-G chuckled and rang off. It was all right for him; he was going back to sleep.
Mrs Miranda Keller was thirty-six years old, and the wig she was wearing did not make her look younger. It was almost four o’clock in the morning and she’d endured a long car ride through the pouring rain to this grand old house in Kensington, a shabby residential part of central London. Miranda let her head rest back upon the frayed moquette of the armchair. Under the pitiless blue glare of the overhead lighting which buzzed constantly she did not look her best.
‘As I told you, we have no one of that name working for us,’ said Bret. He was behind a desk drinking stale black coffee from the delicate sort of china ware that is de rigueur in the offices of earnest young men who sell real estate. With it on the antique tray there was a bowl of sugar and a pierced tin of Carnation milk.
‘S.A.M.S.O.N.,’ she spelled it out.
‘Yes, I know what you said. No one of that name,’ said Bret.
‘They are going to kill him,’ said Miranda doggedly. ‘Have you sent someone to the house in Bosham?’
‘That’s not something I’m permitted to discuss,’ said Bret. ‘Even if I knew,’ he added.
‘Well, these men will kill him if he goes there. I know the sort of men they are.’ Wind rattled the windows.
‘Russians, you say?’
‘You wrote their names down,’ she said. She picked up her cup, looked at the coffee, and set it aside.
‘Of course I did. And you said there was another woman there too.’
‘I don’t know anything about her.’
‘Ah, yes. That’s what you said,’ murmured Bret, looking down at his notes. ‘My writing is not very elegant, Mrs Keller, but I think it is clear enough. I want you to read through the notes I’ve made. Start here: the conversation you had in the car at London airport, when you were imitating the voice of this woman you met in Berlin-Grunau.’ He gave the sheet to her.
She read it quickly, nodded and offered it back. The wind made a roaring noise in the chimney and the electric fire rattled on its mounting. On the window there was the constant hammering of heavy rain.
Bret didn’t take the papers from her. ‘Take your time, Mrs Keller. Maybe read it twice.’
She looked at his notes again. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you believe me?’
‘It sounds like a mighty banal conversation, Mrs Keller. Was it worth having you go to all that trouble, when in the final confrontation you simply say things about the children and about laying off this fellow Stinnes?’
‘It was just to jolt him: so that he would follow the black girl to find his wife again.’
‘Yes,’ said Bret Rensselaer doubtfully. He took the sheets of notes and tapped them on the desk-top to get them tidy. Outside a car door slammed and an engine was started. A man yelled goodnight and a woman screamed ‘Good riddance!’: it was that kind of place.
‘And I’ve asked for nothing.’
‘I was wondering about that,’ said Bret.
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic.’
‘Forgive me. I didn’t intend to be.’
‘Could you switch off some of these lights? The glare is giving me a headache.’
‘You said it! I hate fluorescent lighting but this place is used as an office. They are all on the same switch.’
‘I want nothing for what I’ve told you. Nothing at all.’
‘But?’
‘But if you want me to go back there, it’s only fair that I get something in return.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘A passport for my five-year-old son.’
‘Ahhh!’ said Bret in what was unmistakably a groan of agony as he envisaged the arguments that he would have to endure to get a passport for someone not entitled to one. Those professional obstructionists he dealt with in Whitehall would work overtime producing excuses to say no to that one.
‘It will cost you nothing,’ said Miranda.
‘I know,’ said Bret in a soft warm voice. ‘It’s a modest enough request, Mrs Keller. I’ll probably be able to do it.’
‘If I don’t go to Rome tomorrow, or next day at the latest, I’ll have a lot of explaining to do.’
‘You’re British. I would have thought that your son could claim British nationality.’
‘I was born in Austria. My father was on a five-year contract there. My son was born in Berlin: I can’t pass my citizenship on to him.’
‘That’s a lousy break,’ said Bret. ‘I’ll do what I can.’ He brightened as a sudden solution came to mind. Maybe a counterfeit passport would do: he wouldn’t say it was counterfeit of course.. ‘I suppose any Western passport would serve to get him out of there: Irish Republic, Brazil, Guatemala, Belize or Paraguay.’
The woman looked at him suspiciously. ‘Providing I got a certificated right to reside in Great Britain, but I don’t want some Mickey Mouse passport that I have to renew every two or three years and bribe some embassy official every time I do it.’
Bret nodded assent. ‘Do you have suitable photos of your son?’
‘ Yes.’ From her handbag she took three passport pictures and passed them to him together with a piece of paper upon which she had written the other necessary description.
‘So you had this planned before you left Berlin?’
‘These Russian pigs are intolerable,’ said Miranda. ‘I always carry passport pictures.’
How enterprising, thought Bret. That’s about all we can do right now,’ he said. ‘Leave it all with me. How can I contact you in East Berlin?’
‘I’ll need the passport,’ said Miranda ‘Until I have the passport in my hand I’ll do nothing for you.’
Bret looked at her. She was an intelligent woman. She must have realized that if she went back to the East she was delivering herself into his hands. But she gave no sign of that: she was one of those people who expected everyone to act fairly. It was good to know that such people still existed: Bret would not disabuse her at this stage. ‘Would you accept a small payment?’
‘I just want the passport for my son.’
‘Okay, Mrs Keller. I’ll do everything I can to get it for you.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ she said.
‘One last, and vitally important thing, Mrs Keller. The woman you met in Berlin, Mrs Fiona Samson, is a KGB officer. She is a very smart woman. Don’t underestimate her.’
‘Are you saying she works for Russian intelligence?’
‘Very much so. Mean, I should have said: a mean and dangerous woman. Under no circumstances should you confide anything to her.’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘So it wasn’t a complete waste of time, Bret?’ The D-G was making one of his rare visits to Bret Rensselaer’s magnificent monochrome office, He sat on the black leather chesterfield picking at the buttons and determined not to smoke.
There were times when the D-G’s distant joviality reminded Bret of Sassoon’s World War One general: ‘ “He’s a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack … But he did for them both with his plan of attack.’
‘No, sir. Very instructive,’ said Bret, who was sitting behind his glass-topped desk wearing a white shirt and spotted bow tie.
‘It was a plan to kill Bernard Samson?’
‘That is her story.’
‘And this other young man was killed instead?’
‘Yes, but she doesn’t know that. And of course I didn’t tell her.’
‘Did Samson report being approached by this black girl?’
‘No, sir, he did not.’ Bret tidied the papers on his desk, although they didn’t need tidying.
‘And what else did the house in Bosham reveal? Have your chaps reported back to you?’
‘I have done nothing about the house in Bosham, and I intend to do nothing.’
After a deliberately audible intake of breath, the Director-General stared at him, thought about it, and finally said, ‘Very prudent, Bret.’
‘I’m glad you approve, Sir Henry.’
‘Where is Samson?’
‘Samson is alive and well.’
‘You didn’t warn him?’
‘No sir. I sent him away on a job.’
‘Yes, that was wise.’ He sniffed. ‘So they acted on Mrs Samson’s information about the Bosham safe house. They were quick off the mark on that one. Ummm.’
‘We come out of it very well, sir.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that, Bret. We’re not out of it yet. I don’t like the fact that Samson didn’t report back that approach. Do you think he believed it was his wife in the back of that car?’
‘Yes, probably. But Samson thinks before he acts. All these ex-field people become ultra-cautious: that’s why we have to retire them.’
‘You’d better make sure Mrs Samson knows about this impersonation.’ He sniffed. ‘So Bernard Samson didn’t report any of it. I don’t like that, Bret.’
‘No, sir, but there is no reason to think that Samson is in any way disloyal. Or contemplating disloyalty.’
‘This Mrs Keller, is she a potential agent for us?’
‘No, sir. Out of the question.’
‘But we can use her?’
‘I don’t see how. Not at present anyway.’
‘Did you get photos of her?’
‘Yes, the Kensington office is good from that point of view. Lots of good clear pictures.’
The D-G tapped his fingers on the leather arm of the chesterfield. ‘On the matter of safe houses, Bret. When we agreed that Mrs Samson should reveal the existence of the Bosham safe house, I understood that it was to be kept under surveillance.’
Bret pursed his lips, feeling that he was being admonished for something outside his frame of reference. He said, ‘At present my hands are tied … but when it becomes safe to do so, disciplinary action will be taken.’
‘I do hope so, Bret. But the scheme is to just wait until the housekeeping people go into the Bosham safe house on a routine check-up and find the body?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘Good.’ He produced an encouraging smile, albeit humourless. ‘And now this KGB fellow Stinnes. Silas is pestering me about him. He says we mustn’t let his approach grow cold.’
‘I thought that might be what you wanted to talk about, sir,’ said Bret, diving down into a document case. From it he brought a red cardboard file which he opened to display a concertina of that grey angular computer printout that the D-G found difficult to read. And then he found four 10 x 8 inch shiny photos of Stinnes. Reaching across he placed them on the glass-topped desk where the D-G could see them, but the D-G didn’t crane his neck to look closely.
