He sat back and gave a half smile, but not at me. He didn’t even see me at that moment: Rolf Mauser was miles away, and decades back in time, fighting his war in Russia. He rubbed his face. ‘Taking command of six huge 15cm heavy howitzers mounted on tank chassis was quite an event in the life of a young man. I took it very seriously. I went round and spoke to every officer and man under my command: two officers, twenty-nine NCOs and ninety-two enlisted men. Most of them were newly arrived replacements: green kids, not long out of school. The other night in my dream I recalled every name and face. I even remembered the equipment I signed for.’ He looked at me and wanted me to see how important all this was to him. ‘I could even taste that damned Erbsensuppe.’
‘And when you woke up?’
‘Still remembered everything. Twenty-eight lorries, two motorcycles, sixteen light machine guns, twenty machine pistols, forty-eight handguns and seventy-eight rifles. I even remembered the names and ranks. Every one of their stupid faces.’
For a moment I thought he was about to recite all their names and numbers and give me the specifications of the hardware and its state of readiness. Perhaps the conster nation showed on my face, for he said, ‘Take my word for it. I can see those men now. Every face, every accented word they spoke. We left most of them deep under the ice and snow. By summer, only half a dozen of those men were still serving with me.’
For the very first time I saw that Rolf Mauser had spent his life entertaining dreams of military glory. An absurd ambition perhaps, but no more absurd than the dreams of most men. And, if the statistics were to be believed, no more unlikely than ending up with a happy marriage and loving family. ‘General Rolf Mauser had an implausible ring to it but the award of a ‘tin tie’ must have provided new impetus to his hopes of promotion, and certainly he had the necessary ruthlessness.
‘Everyone dreams, Rolf,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing to do with getting old.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘Get another doctor.’
He gave a humourless smile before paying all his attention to the coffee and what remained of his pastry.
For a brief time neither of us spoke. Then, ‘Der grosse Kleiner is dead,’ said Mauser as he stuffed down the final mouthful of his Danish pastry.
‘So I heard. What do you know about it?’
‘Don’t tell me it was suicide.’
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ I protested.
‘Kleindorf wasn’t the type.’ He used the tip of his tongue to remove a crumb from his teeth.
‘So what was it then?’
‘He was a dope dealer. He was behind the refining and he was the contact between East and West.’
‘Who says?’
‘Regular consignments of it were coming through Schönefeld, arriving in the West for re-packaging and then going back there again. There were DDR officials taking a cut. It’s all being hushed up. Even the West Berlin authorities are keeping stumm.’
‘Why?’
‘The official word is that the relationship between the two Germanies must not be threatened by such crimes.’
‘And the unofficial word?’
Rolf let a slow smile spread across his big round face. ‘That officials on both sides are deeply implicated. Big shots, I mean.’
‘Sounds a bit far-fetched,’ I said doubtfully.
‘Does it, Bernd? We’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we? Are you seriously telling me that you’ve never heard rumours or stories about such dealings?’
‘Rumours, yes.’ I wondered if he’d heard the sort of stories Larry Bower had got from Valeri the double agent. ‘Even so…’
‘Kleindorf had a massive dose of heroin; that’s what he died of. You know that?’
‘I thought it was sleeping tablets.’
‘Yes. That’s the story that’s being put around.’ He nodded. ‘Do you happen to have a cigarette on you, Bernd?’
Having stopped smoking for a long period I’d lately been accepting offered cigarettes. This morning my nerve had cracked and I’d bought a packet of cheroots. But I suddenly resolved to try harder. I handed the unopened packet to him. I said, ‘Isn’t that more to your taste?’
‘It’s very kind of you, Bernd. Are you sure?’
‘I’ve stopped smoking.’
He lit one immediately and continued. ‘But the real story is that Kleindorf died while in bed with one of his young dancing girls, a woman with a strong Silesian accent who disappeared long before the police arrived and has never been traced.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘She’d worked for him for only a few days. The name and address she gave to his secretary at the Babylon were false.’ He blew smoke.
‘Do you think the woman murdered him?’
‘She arrived in town with an American. They flew out together: two first class tickets to Rome. There were no needle marks on Kleindorf. Except for the marks of the needle that killed him.’ He waited for me to absorb that fact and then said, ‘He’d never take hard drugs: he was a health freak. Jogged every morning without fail.’
‘What did the autopsy say?’
‘No autopsy. The certificate said death was due to an overdose of sleeping tablets. An accident. Hurried burial; a demand for an inquest summarily refused.’
‘I heard he’d drunk a whole bottle of vintage brandy.’
‘There was an empty bottle in the bedroom. Who can say how much he’d drunk unless they open the stomach? Probably he’d had a drink with the girl. Did you ever see Kleindorf drunk?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Exactly. It’s a cover-up. It sounds perfectly credible unless you know what Kleindorf was really like.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘The stuff comes from Asia. They bring it into East Berlin. The Schönefeld airport customs let it go through because it’s official policy to help the decadent West mainline its way to oblivion. Okay. What I don’t get is why it does a turn-around and makes a journey back East again.’
‘The consignments they are tapping into are brown, raw stuff. You have to be pretty desperate to float that shit into your bloodstream. None of the people at that end of the dealing has the know-how, the resources or the equipment to refine it, or the guts to risk it. That was Kleindorf’s contribution to their game.’
‘Have another coffee, Rolf.’ I signalled to the waitress.
‘This is a good place for coffee,’ said Mauser appreciatively. ‘I’m glad I met you, Bernd.’
‘What sort of people in the East would be buying this stuff?’ I said. ‘And where would the money come from?’
Rolf Mauser knew he was being pushed, but that was better than admitting to not knowing. ‘You know how these things work, Bernd. The transaction was drugs for paper-work.’
He paused as if he’d said something self-evidently signi ficant. Perhaps he had but I wasn’t going to let him stop there. ‘Would you enlarge on that notion?’
‘Permissions. Imports. Contracts. A signature and a rubber stamp on a desk over there can mean a lot of money over here. You know that, Bernd. So does your friend Werner Volkmann.’ He puffed smoke. It was a subdued gesture of aggression. He looked at me and waited for a reply.
‘You’re not saying Werner was implicated?’ Before taking over the running of Lisl’s hotel Werner had made a lot of money from avalizing: putting together import and export deals so that the DDR didn’t have to part with hard currency. In that respect Werner’s livelihood had depended upon East Berlin signatures and rubber stamps.
‘I don’t know.’ He waved a hand. ‘But if he was, he got out of that business at exactly the right time. He doesn’t go over there any more.’
‘He’s busy with Lisl’s,’ I said. I watched Rolf tap ash from the cheroot. All my desire to smoke had gone: the smoke, the smell, the ash, the very idea disgusted me.
‘Of course he is,’ said Mauser. ‘And if I were you, Bernd, I’d find myself something to be busy with.’ A meaningful look. ‘Beca
use there are a lot of people on both sides of the Wall who are looking for someone to lay the blame on. You would fit the role nicely.’
‘As a drug courier?’
‘With evidence from both sides? It would be overwhelming. Who would believe anyone protesting his innocence if East and West put together a story?’
‘How do you know all this, Rolf?’
‘I know a lot of people and I keep my ears open.’
I chatted with him for almost another half an hour, but Rolf had decided to say no more, or perhaps knew no more, and the conversation turned to chatter about his family and other people we both knew. His aforementioned relative in Luton was not amongst the people he talked of. I wondered whether his cousin was not just a cover to hide the real reason for his visit. There were several chair-bound Departmental officials not so far away from here who would be pleased to have someone like Rolf Mauser to amplify their long, tedious and tendentious reports about the DDR: writing which bore little resemblance to the reality. It would be rash of him to continue to work for us, but given, on the one hand, the pressure the Department was always ready to apply to anyone who could be useful, and on the other hand Rolf Mauser’s appetite for both risk and extra spending money, I guessed that he might be doing exactly that. An added dimension was provided by the possibility that he was playing a double game reporting everything back to the other side. I hoped any Departmental person dealing with him had considered that and kept it in mind constantly.
When I left Mauser I found myself disturbed by the conversation we’d had. There was something about his words that unsettled me. I’d known that same feeling since I was a child. Mauser enjoyed alarming people.
14
I dismissed Rolf Mauser from my mind as I walked up to Oxford Street and went into Selfridges hardware department to get a new hinge for the garage door. It had to be big, for the door’s timber was not in first-class condition. Eventually I’d have to fit metal doors, but that was not an outlay I wanted to face in my present circumstances. And when Gloria went to study at Cambridge I might decide to sell the place. One of the store assistants went into a stock room and found the sort of long hinge I needed. I was carrying it with me – wrapped in brown paper – when I went to the address in Upper Brook Street, behind the American Embassy, to meet Posh Harry for his promised lunch.
‘No need to have brought your Kalashnikov, Bernard,’ said Harry when he saw the parcel. ‘Strictly no rough stuff; I promised Dicky that.’ He laughed in that restrained naughty-boy way that oriental people sometimes do. ‘Come and have a drink,’ he said and led the way up to a first floor room. As always he was neatly dressed in somewhat English-style clothes: grey flannels and a dark blazer with ornate metal buttons and, on its pocket, the gold wire badge of a Los Angeles golf club.
Mayfair is an exclusive district of elegant residences most of which are offices in disguise. It is a place of high rents and short leases, of private banks and property developers, art dealers and investment managers all discreetly hidden behind all discreetly hidden behind simple brass nameplates. These houses are small, and the cramped, over-furnished upstairs room into which he showed me was designed for rich transients. The house had been given the sort of refurbishment that my brother-in-law called ‘the gold tap treatment’. There were lots of table lamps made from big robust jars and sturdy shades, sofas with loose covers of glazed chintz, and the sort of carpet that wine doesn’t stain.
However any effect of gracious eighteenth-century living was marred by the ‘refreshment center’ in the corner: a plastic-topped table held a hot-plate with two big glass jugs of coffee, mugs, paper cups and biscuits, and a handwritten notice about putting ten pence into the cash box and not using mugs with names on them.
‘Take the weight off your feet,’ said Harry as he unlocked a reproduction terrestrial globe the upper hemisphere of which hinged at the equator to reveal a core of drink. ‘A Martini or name your poison.’
‘A Martini will do nicely.’ I watched him select the bottles: Beefeater and Noilly Prat.
‘I’ll tell you this, Bernard,’ he said as he went across the room and pulled at a bookcase. ‘You can keep California.’ His exertions bore fruit as a section of antique leather books and shelving came loose in his hand to give access to a small refrigerator that was concealed behind it. ‘Yes, sir!’ With commendable dexterity he threw ice-cubes into a jug and held two chilled glasses while gripping the gin bottle under his arm.
He removed the stopper from the gin bottle and mixed the cocktails with careless skill. ‘Take it easy on the gin,’ I said.
‘I never had you figured for a guy who was heavily into vermouth,’ he said, ignoring my strictures. He held up the glasses as if judging the colour of the concentration and then handed one of them to me. ‘Only one thing I can’t tolerate, Bernard…a vermouth addict. Pass that across your tonsils – the perfect Martini.’
‘I like California,’ I said.
‘Not working for my outfit you wouldn’t like it,’ he said. He went to the window and looked down at the traffic. It came from Hyde Park and into this one-way street like close-packed herds of shiny migrating animals, thudding past without respite. ‘They let me go. Can you believe it?’
I smiled and tasted my drink. Whatever failings Posh Harry had exhibited in California, mixing Martinis could not be amongst them.
Harry said, ‘There are a couple of files I want to ask your advice about before lunch.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Our table is booked for one o’clock. Okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘Am I glad we had this meeting today, Bernard. You don’t know what a favour you’re doing me.’
‘I am?’
‘Providing me with an excuse to stay clear of the office. Joe Brody is in town and kicking ass like there is no tomorrow.’
‘Joe Brody?’
I suppose he saw my antenna wobbling. He said, ‘Yeah, Joe Brody! Joe Brody has flown in from Vienna and is lunching with the Ambassador today, but that didn’t stop him from coming in to the office and raising hell with just about everyone working there.’
‘Is Brody such a tough guy?’
‘He can be: unless you know how to handle him.’ He gave a foxy smile. ‘He needs the velvet touch, if you know what I mean. You must know Brody?’
‘We’ve met in Berlin.’
‘Brody is itchy for a big promotion. The buzz is that he will go into Operations at a senior level.’
‘Brody is too old.’
‘In the CIA, old buddy, no one is ever too old. That’s what keeps us all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and breathing down the necks of our bosses.’
‘Brody?’
‘And he’s making sure Washington knows he’s alive and kicking. Get the picture?’
‘I thought Brody was in Vienna.’
‘Forget Brody. I can handle Brody. Let me show you these files. You tick some boxes and tell me anything we’re getting wrong, then we go and write off the rest of this month’s expenses in the Connaught. What about that?’
‘It’s a deal,’ I said.
‘Look through this while I go and get the rest of the stuff from the safe upstairs.’ He handed me a coloured file and a felt-tip pen.
I looked through the file. It had the expected pink addendum sheet at the back, arranged with a question and answer format that the CIA designed for ‘day by day turn-around’ of urgent material. There was nothing very difficult about the framed questions, even though I was depending entirely upon my memory. But there were a lot of them.
Harry came back with two more files and slammed them on to my knees. Noticing that my glass was empty he went and mixed two more of his ‘perfect’ Martinis.
‘There’s another file but I can’t find it. One of the clerks says it went to Grosvenor Square. Could be Brody wanted it. It might arrive with the messenger at noon. Anyway do what you can and then we’ll go and eat. Leave your parcel here. We’ll come back after lunch and if that damned file’s arri
ved maybe you’d take a look at that one too.’
‘Okay.’
My work done, we walked to the Connaught Hotel in Carlos Place, the cold air only partially undoing the effect of Harry’s Martinis.
He’d reserved a seat by the window and Posh Harry did everything he’d promised. We struck into the à la carte side of the menu and the wines he selected were appropriately excellent. It was the first time I’d ever had such a friendly conversation with Posh Harry. I’d known him for many years but met him only in the line of business.
If an agent’s competence was measured by his personal cover then Posh Harry was one of the most proficient I’d known. For years no one seemed quite certain if he was linked to the CIA. Even now I was not sure if he worked for them on a permanent basis. Harry’s brother – much older than Harry – had died miserably on a CIA mission in Vietnam, and the way I heard it Harry blamed the Company for his death. But that wasn’t anything I’d ever mentioned to him, and if any trace of bitterness remained from that ancient episode there would be little chance of him revealing his feelings.
Harry, no less assertive and no less devious than Rolf Mauser, was everything the old man wasn’t. Mauser was a bully who enjoyed the rough-and-tumble process of getting his own way. For Harry the end result was all that mattered. It was I suppose the fundamental difference between Europe and the Orient, between the visible and the concealed, between force and stealth, boxing and judo.
It would have been wiser of me to have given more weight to such reflections before lunch, for by the time I got back to the house in Brook Street I was unprepared for the furious reception that awaited us.
‘Do you know what time it is?’ yelled Joe Brody, whose lunch with the Ambassador had apparently been a briefer and more austere refreshment than ours.