London Match (53 page)

'It sounds as if you were, Bret. They would put your phone on the blink and then turn up.'

'That's right. They arrived after I had trouble — they said they were in the street, working on the lines. It was a Saturday. I said I didn't know you guys work on Saturdays.'

'The KGB work a long week, Bret,' I said.

'He can't sustain it,' said Bret, hoping that I would agree. He was talking about Stinnes. I didn't answer. 'It's a bravura performance and the committee are eating out of his hand right now. But he can't sustain it.'

'When did they arrest you?'

'First the senior grade officer from K7 came to my home. He told me I wasn't to leave the house.'

'Your house?'

'I wasn't to go to the office. I wasn't even to go to the shops in the village.'

'What did you say?'

'I couldn't believe my ears. I told him to remain in the room with
me while I phoned the office. I tried to get the D-G, but Sir Henry was on a train going to Manchester.'

'Clever Sir Henry,' I said.

'No, it was genuine enough. His secretary tried to reach him with messages at both ends.'

'Are you crazy, Bret? Five send a K7 search and arrest team to pick up a senior officer, and the D-G just happens to have another appointment that he can't break and no contact number? Are you telling me the D-G wasn't in on the secret?'

Bret looked at me. He didn't want to believe they could do that to him. Or that they would want to. Bret didn't just happen to be born in England like the rest of us — Bret was an Anglophile. He loved every blade of bright green grass that Shakespeare might have trodden on. 'I suppose you're right,' he said at last.

'And you skipped?'

'I left a message saying that I urgently wanted an appointment with the D-G and gave my phone number. I said I'd stay by the phone and wait for the call.'

'And then you took off. That was good, Bret,' I said with genuine admiration. That's what I would have done. But they'll have you on the airline manifest even if Immigration didn't identify you.'

'I have a friend with a Cessna,' said Bret.

He needn't have told me that, and I felt reassured that he was prepared to fill in the details. 'Did they leave anyone outside the house?' Bret shrugged. 'Do you think they tailed you?'

'I changed cars.'

'And the watchers don't run to anything that could follow a Cessna, so they'll be trying to trace the plane landing.'

'I flew to Hamburg and then came on by car. I rented the car in a false name. Luckily the girl at the counter didn't read the driving licence carefully.'

'You can't win them all, Bret. You forgot about the computer on the autobahn entrance point. They even get traffic violators on that one.'

'I'm innocent, Bernard.'

'I know you are, Bret. But it's going to be tough proving it. Did anyone say anything about a Cabinet memo?'

'Cabinet memo?'

'They're trying to lock you up tight, Bret. There is a Cabinet memo; the numbered copy is the one to which you had access. It's been to Moscow and back again.'

'Are you serious?'

'And a lot of people have been told about it since then.'

'Who?'

'I was singled out to be shown a copy, and so was Dicky Cruyer. You can bet there were others. The implication is that the full report went to Moscow too.'

'I should have been told.'

'You're not wrestling only with Stinnes,' I said. 'You've got the whole of Moscow Centre to contend with, and they've spent a lot of time working on it.'

He drank a tiny sip of whisky as if he didn't trust himself any longer. He didn't ask what it was all about or anything like that. He'd had a lot of time to think what it was all about. He must have known by that time that his chances of getting out of it and becoming Mr Clean again were very slim. The sea was rough. Bret was going down for the third time and there was every chance he'd take me with him. 'So what do I do, Bernard?'

'Suppose I said, "Turn yourself in"?'

'I wouldn't do that.'

'Suppose
I
turned you in?'

'You wouldn't do that,' said Bret. He looked away from me, as if meeting my eyes would increase the chances of my saying I would turn him in.

'What makes you so sure?' I said.

'Because you're an egomaniac. You're cynical and intractable. You're the only son of a bitch in that Department who'd take the rest of them on single-handed.'

It wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear, but it was sincere enough and that would have to do. 'We don't have a lot of time. They'll trace you right to this room. Getting into Berlin without leaving a track is almost impossible, unless you come in from the East, in which case no records are kept.'

'I never thought of it like that,' said Bret. That's crazy, isn't it?'

'Yes, it is, but we don't have time to write to Ripley about it. We don't have tune to do anything very much. I'd say that London Central will trace you to Berlin, and maybe to me at this hotel, within two or three days.'

'Are you saying what I think you're saying?'

'Yes. We'll have to talk to Frank. The only other course is for you to leave town very quickly. Why did you come here, Bret?'

'I decided that you were the only person who could help.'

'You'll have to do better than that, Bret,' I said.

'And I have money here,' he said. I continued to stare at him. 'And a gun.'

'Honesty is the best policy, Bret,' I said.

'You knew, did you?'

'Not about the money. But when a senior officer does anything unusual in Berlin I like to know, and there are people who know I like to know.'

'Who the hell told you about the gun?'

'Buying a gun is very unusual, Bret,' I said. 'Especially for a man who can sign a docket and get one across the counter from Frank Harrington.'

'So Frank knows too?'

'I didn't tell him.'

'Will Frank turn me in?'

'Let's not tempt him too much. Suppose I go along and talk to him while you stay out of sight?'

'I'd appreciate that.'

'Frank could defy the Department for weeks, and if Five sent anyone here, Frank has authority enough to have them refused entry at the airport. If we got Frank on our side . . .'

'It would start looking good,' said Bret appreciatively.

'Not good, Bret, but a bit less bloody doomy.'

'So you'll see Frank in the morning?'

'I'll see Frank now. We haven't got enough time for luxuries like night and day. And at night we won't have his secretarial staff to get an eyeful of you and me talking to him. If we see him on his own and he says "No deal", we might persuade him to forget he ever saw us. But once his secretary enters it in the appointment diary, it will be more difficult to deny.'

'He'll be asleep.' Bret obviously thought it would prejudice our chances of success to wake Frank from a deep dreamless slumber.

'Frank never sleeps.'

'He'll be with a girl? Is that what you mean?'

'Now you're getting warmer.'

Frank Harrington, Berlin Resident and head of Berlin Field Unit, was not asleep. He was sitting on the floor of the large drawing room of his magnificent house at Grunewald surrounded by records. On every side of him there were piles of Duke Ellington records while music played on his hi-fi. 'Frenesi' — it was a lush orchestral arrangement into which the vocalist sang: 'A long time ago I wandered down into old Mexico. . . .' Or was it something quite different? Was it just that I still felt bad about the way in which I'd contrived that the Stinnes enrolment had taken place in Mexico, rather than in Berlin where Frank would have got a measure of the credit? Whatever the music, I still felt guilty at having deprived Frank of that 'mention' and self-conscious about asking him for help in matters arising from that same event. '. . . Stars were shining bright and I could hear romantic voices in the night. . . .'

Frank's valet, the inscrutable Tarrant, showed me in. He was wearing his dressing gown and his hair was slightly disarranged, but he gave no sign of being surprised by this visit in the small hours of the morning. I suppose Frank's frequent love affairs had provided Tarrant with enough surprises to last a lifetime.

'Bernard,' said Frank very calmly, as if I often visited him in the small hours. 'What about a drink?' He had a record in his hand. Like all the other records it was in a pristine plain-white jacket with a number written in the corner. He hesitated before placing it on one of the piles, then he looked up at me. 'Whisky and water?'

'Yes, please. Shall I help myself?'

There was a cut-glass tumbler on the drinks trolley, some ice cubes in it not yet melted, and traces of bright lipstick on its rim. I picked it up and sniffed at it. 'Campari and orange juice,' said Frank as he watched me. 'Still playing detectives, Bernard?'

There had been another visitor — obviously female — but Frank did not supply her name. 'Force of habit,' I said. Campari and orange juice was one of Zena Volkmann's favourite drinks.

'It must be urgent.' He didn't get up from where he was sitting in the middle of the carpet. He reached for his pipe and tobacco pouch and for the big ashtray that was already half filled with ash and unburned tobacco.

'Yes,' I said. 'It was good of you to let me come right away.'

'You didn't give me much chance to decline.' He said it ruefully. Had he sent her away on my account or was she waiting for him upstairs in the bedroom? Was it Zena Volkmann or just some girl he'd met at a frantic Berlin party as he met so many of the females with whom he got entangled?

'The Stinnes committee have gone mad,' I said.

'Don't sit there!' It was a shout, almost a cry of pain. 'They're my very earliest ones. I'd die if one of those was damaged.'

'This is your Ellington collection, is it?' I asked, looking at the records everywhere.

'The only chance I get is at night. I'm shipping them to England. I have to have them valued for the insurance. It's not easy to put a price on the rare ones.'

I paused politely and then said again, 'The Stinnes committee have gone crazy, Frank.'

'It happens,' said Frank. He was still sitting the way he'd been when I came into the room. Now he charged his pipe, packing the bowl with the shreds of tobacco and pushing them down with his fingertip. He did it very very carefully as if to show me that it was a difficult thing to do.

I said, 'Stinnes seems to have convinced them that Bret Rensselaer is some kind of KGB mole. They put him under house arrest.'

'And what do you want me to do?' said Frank. He didn't light his pipe. He rested it against the ashtray while he read the label on another record, entered details of it into a loose-leaf notebook, and placed it on the appropriate pile.

'Did you know that was going to happen?'

'No, but I should have guessed that something like it was in the wind. I've been against that damned committee right from the start.' He sipped at his drink.
⁴
We should have turned Stinnes over to Five and let it go at that. These combined committees always end in a power struggle. I never saw one that didn't.'

'Stinnes is driving the wedge in deep, Frank.' I didn't remind him that he'd showed no sign of being against the committee when I'd seen him with the D-G.

Frank picked up his pipe while he thought about it. 'House arrest? Bret? Are you quite sure? There was talk of an enquiry, but arrest . . . ?' He lit the pipe with a match, holding the bowl inverted so that the flame could get to the tightly packed tobacco.

'A witch-hunt has started, Frank. It could cause permanent damage to the Department. Bret has a lot of friends, but he has implacable enemies too.'

'Lange?' Was that a gibe at me? He puffed at the pipe as he looked at me, but he didn't smile.

'Some more influential than Lange,' I said. 'And even worse is the way that people — even senior staff — are trying to find evidence to confirm Bret's guilt.'