Samson 09 spy sinker, p.35
Samson 09 - Spy Sinker, page 35
He could not suppress a smile of satisfaction: they were coming. His plan to get an agent in the Kremlin, as Nikki had sardonically put it, had worked exactly as he’d predicted it would when he first took it to the D-G just after she ran out on him. Now there was only the long and interesting work of debriefing.
Bernard Samson would be here too. He had tried to get the old man to send Bernard elsewhere but it was good security to have him here where he could be supervised. Tessa’s disappearance had to be accounted for; the idea that she had run away with Bernard was in every way believable.
This morning Bret would go right through all his notes again so as to be prepared for Fiona’s arrival. This would be the last job he’d ever do for London Central and he was determined that it should end perfectly. Werner Volkmann’s last report said that Fiona was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but Bret didn’t give it much credence. He’d heard that too often about other working agents: it was usually the preamble to a demand for more money. Fiona would be all right. Good food, sleep and the California air would soon bring her back to being her old self again.
Bernard Samson would go nowhere, of course. His career was at an end. It was strange to think how near Bernard had come to a senior position on the SIS staff. That evening long ago when Bret had gone to see the D-G, he had been all set to promote Bernard to German Stations
Controller. From there he would have gone to the top floor and perhaps ended up as Director-General. Heaven knows, he wouldn’t be facing any fierce opposition from the line-up of deadbeats that now occupied the top floor. Would Sir Henry and Silas and Frank Harrington, and the rest of that cabal which really ran things, have gone along with Bernard Samson in a top job? They were always saying what a splendid fellow Bernard was, and many of them thought that the Department owed him something for the shabby way his father had been treated. But D-G? Any chance of Bernard as D-G had been eliminated that night when Sir Henry had revealed that Fiona was his choice to go over there.
Bret put down his coffee cup as a sudden thought came to him. The D-G must have known that choosing Fiona meant eliminating Bernard. There were others he could have chosen instead of Fiona: good people, he’d admitted that many times. So, had the D-G’s choice of Fiona been influenced by the fact that it would prevent Bernard getting the top job?
Bret drank his coffee and thought about it. There was always another layer of onion no matter how deep you went. Well, if it was true, the old man would never admit it, and he was the only one who knew the answer. Bret knew that he could never really become English. They were very strange people: tribal in their complex allegiances. He finished his coffee and dismissed such thoughts from his mind. There was a lot of work to do.
Len Deighton, Samson 09 - Spy Sinker
