‘I’ll stay in bed,’ I said.
‘That would be the best,’ he said, and smiled as if accepting my word of honour. But really his smile was on account of the fact that he was filling his syringe. The next moment, with the merest prick of pain, he pumped enough dope into my arm to float me to the moon and have me doing my one-small-step-for-man routine, without a space-suit.
‘Did Lida send for you?’ I asked him while the room was going soft.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Then who did?’
‘Everyone has your best interests at heart, Mr Samson.’
‘I know. I want to send my benefactor a box of chocolates COD.’
‘Mr Volkmann might like that,’ said the doctor, ‘but his wife tells me he’s on a strict diet at present.’
As my head sank back into the pillow I noticed that the sheets and bedding had all been changed. Looking around the room I could see in the corner of it my sheets and blankets, soiled by vomit, squashed into a black plastic rubbish-bag. ‘That bloody Werner,’ I said sleepily. ‘I’ll kill him.’ I looked up at the doctor. He was watching me with that dispassionate expression with which zoo-keepers observe restless apes. I knew he’d given me a very generous dose of pain-killer; that too was a characteristic of the army medicos.
‘Yes, kill him,’ said the doctor calmly. He pretended to look at my hand while taking my pulse in that furtive way that doctors always do, knowing that pulse-taking is something that will make the pulse-rate quicken. ‘When you are stronger perhaps. I’m going to prescribe some pills for you. They are just aspirin, vitamin C and glucose, but in winter they sometimes help.’
I looked at him suspecting that he was feeding me sleeping pills or some other sort of dope. ‘What do you think is wrong with me, Doctor?’
‘Apart from your fall down the stairs, nothing serious. Debilitating but not serious. I think you must have picked up the virus that has been affecting the young women in the cashier’s office. The newspapers are calling it Chinese ’flu.’
11
West Berlin.
What Lisl called ‘the flashy new American hotel’ was really three Berlin town-houses tastefully converted into unobtrusive ‘residential apartments’. It was the sort of place that rich American businessmen liked. The apartments were no larger than suites, but for men passing through, an apartment number and a street address looked better on the personal notepaper that was supplied to every guest. And each apartment had a study equipped with fax and a photocopier and multiple phone lines and modem plugs. Laptops for rent: call reception.
Gloria was booked into apartment number seven on the third floor. It came complete with antique German-style furniture, colourful drawings of somewhat unlikely traditional costumes from Sachsen and Baden-Württemberg, a bowl of fresh fruit that looked like a Dutch still-life painting, an ornate china dish in which four Niederegger marzipan chocolates were arranged around a miniature room-service menu, and a tall Rosenthal vase holding ten fresh pink long-stem roses. The elaborately painted doors of the armoire were opened to reveal a giant-screen TV complete with VCR and a selection of Hollywood films on video. Through the panelled connecting door I could see the adjoining bedroom, where soft indirect lights shone upon the silk bed cover and oriental carpet.
‘Will you have dinner with me, Gloria?’ I said it hurriedly as if indifferent to her answer.
She looked at me as if I was a complete stranger to her. She no doubt noticed my bruised face and hollow cheeks but she made no reference to any of that. ‘How did you know I was here?’
‘I heard a rumour. I was passing by, so I just called in. Will you have dinner with me?’
She spoke very slowly as if weighing every word: ‘Of course I will, Bernard. I’ll do anything you want. You know that.’
‘Bret’s not here with you?’
‘Bret? No. I came instead of Bret… He had to go to Washington again. Oh, I see. The suite? Yes, it was booked in Bret’s name.’
‘There are things we should talk about.’
‘Are there? What?’
‘It’s good to see you, Gloria.’
‘Is it?’
‘I hoped you’d say it was good to see me,’ I said.
‘No, it’s not good, Bernard. It tears me to pieces if you really want to know. I told you that, didn’t I? That’s why I wanted to take the job in Budapest.’
‘How is it going? Your new job with Bret?’
‘I’m on the top floor, Bernard,’ she said, as if that was all I needed to know.
‘Trouble-shooting for Bret. Yes, I know; sounds good to me.’
‘I go and do what Bret tells me to do. He uses me to do his hatchet jobs. But people all think it’s me throwing my weight around. I get a lot of flak, Bernard.’
‘They know it’s Bret; they know it’s his doing, they know it’s not your idea.’
‘It suits them to think it’s me. It gives them someone convenient to hate when hating Bret doesn’t suit them.’
‘Is that why you are in Berlin?’
‘We’re cutting back on the radio monitoring. I broke the news to them this morning; they were furious. They took it out on me; everyone does.’
‘Does Bret know you’re getting that sort of flak?’
‘He says I should use my charm. He says he chose me because it’s going to be a year of flowing blood.’
‘Is that why they brought Bret in? To clear the decks? To do all the firing and demotions and lay-offs, and then let someone else come in and smell of roses?’
‘Of course. And when Bret goes I’ll be dumped.’
‘But you’ll have severance pay?’
‘Yes. Bret was decent about giving me a contract. You were right about that.’
‘Who’ll get Bret’s job?’
‘That’s the really tantalizing question isn’t it?’
‘You must have heard hints,’ I said.
‘No. The plan is that the Director-General retires next year. Whoever is appointed to replace him will have the chance to choose his own Deputy D-G.’
‘I’ve been hearing that the D-G was going to retire next year since I was in knee-pants.’
‘The D-G’s not well. Half the time he’s at home, wrapped in a cashmere shawl, resting and feeling sorry for himself.’
‘Yes, well, the same goes for Dicky, but it doesn’t mean he’s likely to retire any moment.’
‘The D-G will retire within a year, Bernard. An outsider will come in. The D-G will go, Bret will go, I will go and the whole top floor will change.’
‘And Fiona? Would she be in the running for replacing Bret?’
‘I would think that with an outsider at the top of the tree they will need an experienced Deputy.’
‘And Fiona is very experienced. But why not Dicky?’
‘Too much opposition from Bret. You know how it always is with these top jobs. It will have to be someone Bret approves and wants to hand over to.’
‘Shall we eat in the hotel or do you want to go somewhere more cosy?’ I offered.
‘You want to eat here in the room, don’t you?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I know you, Bernard. You don’t want to take the risk of being seen with me. You want to be with me but you don’t want to have any of your friends see us together.’
‘There’s a jazz club in Kantstrasse.’
‘You’re ashamed of being seen with me; and that’s not easy for me to take, Bernard.’
‘Or Hardtke – German food – if you’re hungry. If you want to dance…’
‘I don’t want to dance, Bernard.’
‘I’m sorry. I know I’ve screwed up your life, Gloria. In fact that’s what I really came here to say.’
Her mood softened: ‘You couldn’t help it, Bernard. I was wrong the other day. I didn’t mean what I said.’
‘I hurt too, Gloria. All the time. I hope you know that.’
‘Should that make me feel better? To know that you are s
uffering too?’
‘Fiona is in Jamaica. She’s taken the children.’
‘I know, Bernard,’ she said patiently. ‘I see your wife all day every day. I work on the top floor with her. We exchange sweet bits of news and gossip with all the intensity that women who hate each other always do. It’s ghastly. I thought that as long as I didn’t keep seeing you, I would be okay. But seeing her hurts just as much.’
‘No nice young men to take your mind off the past?’
It was the wrong thing to say and I should have known that. She picked up the phone, stabbed at the buttons and spoke. ‘Room service? Send me two toasted steak sandwiches. Saignant. French mustard. Side salads and a pot of coffee with fresh cream. Two warm apple strudels to follow.’ She hung up the phone and went to the minibar before giving me a chilled export Pils and a glass. For herself she selected a half bottle of German champagne.
‘Okay?’ she said with a big plastic smile.
‘Okay, Gloria,’ I said.
‘So take your shoes off.’ It was what I always did as soon as I arrived home.
The food arrived. We ate the sandwiches and the warm strudel arrived on time. It was only then that she remarked on my bruises and upon the fact that I looked unwell. I had slept until the effects of the medicine wore off, but when I fully awoke I watched the hands of the clock going round, and finally had to get up and go and see if Gloria really was in town. I didn’t tell her that, of course. I didn’t tell her that I so badly needed just to look at her, and be near her, that I had crawled out of my sick-bed. We sat around and talked the sort of lightweight chit-chat that we’d exchanged regularly when we were living together so happily. Then without warning she said: ‘Bret is determined to retire Frank. You know that don’t you?’
‘Frank will never retire; he’s another permanent fixture. He’ll be here in Berlin for ever.’
‘When Frank goes, you could get Berlin. This job you’ve got is a sort of test, to see how you handle things as second-in-command.’
‘Thanks for telling me.’
‘You must have seen that.’
‘It crossed my mind. But thanks for spelling it out for me just the same. Is that why Frank is staying at home over Christmas?’
‘He’s not staying at home. Bret has sent him off to a Harley Street clinic for a complete physical examination.’
I chuckled. ‘He won’t get rid of Frank as easily as that. Frank is a permanent fixture. He’s been to bed with half the pretty women in Berlin, and God knows where else. He’s gone back to smoking that filthy pipe, he drinks nonstop and never seems to need sleep. Frank is made of titanium – silicon-coated. The Wall will fall down, Honecker will die of old age, and still Frank will be here running the Field Unit. You’ll see.’
‘Bret wants you promoted. It’s not just that he doesn’t like Frank. He’s determined to make some radical changes while he’s in a position to do so. You are one of them.’
There was a knock at the door and a hotel room maid came in. She had a jangling bundle of keys in one hand and some clean pressed bedsheets draped over her arm. Her Saxon-accented German was too rapid for Gloria, and I translated. ‘They had a girl sick today. The bedsheets were not changed, and you need fresh towels in the bathroom. She says is it okay if they do it now? They don’t need to come through here.’
‘It looked all right to me,’ said Gloria. ‘Do we look as if we are in urgent need of a bed?’ she asked me.
‘Maybe,’ I said, not sure whether she was being provocative or cruel. I only knew that bedding Gloria right now would be a disastrous mistake that would make all three people even more miserable than we were at present. In any case I was not going to risk being rebuffed; my ego was too fragile. ‘Go ahead,’ I told the maid.
In order not to disturb us the maids went into the bedroom from the corridor. Discreetly they closed the bedroom door and I could hear them as they dashed about changing the bed linen and the bath towels and whatever else room maids do.
‘I guess the maids were hoping we’d go out to dinner, so they could fix things without you knowing they’d got things wrong,’ I said.
When they had finished they went away without disturbing us again. ‘Have they gone?’ Gloria asked, and without waiting for a reply she went to the connecting door to listen for them talking. Failing to hear any conversation, she looked at me and shrugged.
‘Finish your strudel,’ I said.
‘I don’t want any more.’
‘Finish my champagne then.’
She tried the handle of the door as if about to burst in on them, but decided against it and came back to the sofa and sipped her champagne. ‘When I was with the big-wigs of the monitoring service today… They guessed what I’d come for. They brought along boxes of signals. They wanted to show me some intercepts from the peripheral monitoring, that Bret is determined to close down. They wanted to prove it brings in some worthwhile material.’
‘Yes, they would,’ I said and waited for the rest of it.
‘Some of the signals, dated over the last three weeks, concerned Berlin-Warsaw routine radio traffic. There is an important package going to the Stasi desk in Warsaw on the Berlin–Warsaw express train. No date as yet. Preparations are well advanced and look elaborate. Half of the signals are in codes we still can’t break, but I think I know what it was all about.’
‘Let’s have it.’
‘I think it must be the body of Tessa Kosinski. Her husband is in Poland, isn’t he? Now we know what he’s waiting for.’
‘Why a body?’
‘Because there are so many documents to be delivered with the package. Everything to be signed two or three times. Certified translations of the documents to be prepared for the Polish customs officials. It must be something very unusual. To be put into a separate reserved compartment on the train, with a lock on the door? That was a specified item: the lock on the compartment door. An officer courier? All this for a package? I ask you, Bernard…’
‘Did you point all this out to your radio wallahs?’
‘Why should I? It’s not normal procedure to interpret their signals. Translate them, yes.’
I helped myself to a couple of the potato chips she’d abandoned. ‘Do you want anything more?’ I said. ‘Brandy?’
‘No. And neither do you,’ she said.
‘How do you know what I want?’
‘I know. Girls know these things.’
‘The restaurant downstairs used to be famous for the Klump,’ I said.
‘But it’s gone downhill lately,’ she said soberly, and then laughed, unable to stare at me and keep the sober face. ‘What is Klump?’ she said, still giggling.
‘Potato dumplings. They come in a cabbage stew called Krautklump…’
‘You’re making it up.’
‘No. It’s true.’
‘You beast. You’re always trying to make a fool of me.’ She laughed. ‘And I always fall for it.’
‘Do you?’
‘I used to.’ She put down her glass and got up to go to the connecting door again. This time she opened it. She went inside and from the next room I heard a little gasp and a choked-off shriek. I turned to see her backing out of the bedroom. She turned to me. Her face was white and bloodless and she seemed to have difficulty speaking. ‘Bernard,’ she said. ‘Bernard.’
‘What is it?’ But by the time I was with her and holding her I could see what it was.
There was someone asleep in her big double bed: a young man as white-faced as she was. His pale lips were half-open to reveal uneven teeth. He was tall. The outline of the bedclothes showed the way his feet were stretched to the very end of the bed. His bare arms were above the bedclothes, arranged like the arms of a dummy; or a corpse.
‘It’s one of our people,’ I said, without letting go of her. ‘He went over there a few days ago.’
‘He’s dead?’
‘Yes, he’s dead.’ I gently broke away from her and went to look at him.
G
loria remained by the door as if nervous of being in the same room with the dead man. ‘One of your Berlin people?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you send him?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘What shall we do now? Shall I phone London and tell Bret? I have contact numbers – his car and his mobile phone.’
‘Berlin is my territory.’
‘Why don’t you go? Leave it to me? There’s no need for you to be involved.’
I looked at her. She was as scared as hell. I never loved her more than I did that moment. ‘Thanks, Gloria, I appreciate your offer,’ I said. ‘But it’s better if I do it.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Pour me a drink while I use the phone.’
If this had happened while Frank was in town, he would have started off by making a few calls to his highly placed chums. Frank’s influence in Berlin, his ability to get things done by everyone from top German officials to British army brass, was due more to his energetic social life than to the authority Whitehall granted to him. I didn’t have even a fraction of those top-level contacts. My friends and acquaintances functioned at a much lower level. That was why I doubted my ability to take over from Frank and run Berlin in a way that Whitehall would approve. Over the years he had managed to suppress scandals, cover up disasters and smooth over all those happenings that had in the past got other Rezidents into deep trouble.
But Frank wasn’t in town. I was in charge. So I did the next best thing to summoning Frank, I telephoned Lida.
‘We have a “worst case” on Robin,’ I told her. ‘No need to look any further. Do you follow? A worst case and it is here at the Kronprinz Apartments in Wilmersdorfer Strasse. Third floor. I am in the one booked for Mr Rensselaer.’
‘Ja, Herr Samson,’ she said with reassuring calm.
‘First we need the army. Bomb-squad technicians acquainted and equipped for anti-personnel. Have we got a reliable contact at this hotel?’