Spy Line
Authors: Len Deighton
Len Deighton
The nine Bernard Samson stories, ten if you include
Winter,
have been written as complete and separate stories. “Beginning, middle and end” said a large yellow sticky note prominently displayed in my workplace. Sometimes visitors asked me what it meant but it wasn’t easy to explain and when I tried most of them looked puzzled. Didn’t every book have a beginning, middle and an end?
Giving each book a proper beginning, middle and end was a part of my assumed contract with the reader. Each book is designed to be read alone and without pre-knowledge. But I began to receive mail asking about the planning and what was to come in the next book. Not wanting to tempt fate I was somewhat evasive in my replies, but now I have an opportunity to explain a little about how the books were designed to fit together. I hope you will forgive the references to the other Samson books. (If you are not in a forgiving mood turn the page and start reading the story.)
First let me say something about the contrived and cryptic atmosphere in which Bernard moves. The intelligence services of the world, the secret police, the electronic snoopers and all the apparatus of poking and prying that governments resort to, are not the smooth, polite and competent organizations that their press and public relations experts wish us to believe they are. They are part of the same government bureaucracy that hides its failures less well. If you
have visited your Town Hall or made a planning application you will have had a demonstration of the slow-moving, myopic misunderstandings that dog the trade of espionage. This is the world in which Bernard Samson works and lives. It is a fraternity where awards and pensions are on everyone’s mind and where departmental vendettas cloud decision making. It is a world where, for the most part, danger and hard work is provided in inverse proportion to pay and promotion.
Just as
Berlin Game, Mexico Set
and
London Match
together make a continuous narrative, so, after a break in the timescale, do
Spy Hook
and
Spy Line.
Three years have passed since the end of the
Game, Set
and
Match
stories. The slippery slope that Bernard first trod in
Hook
has seen him sliding downwards and out of control. As
Line
opens Bernard is still on the run. He is sitting in a sleazy Berlin dive at three o’clock in the morning. With him there is an elderly German whose life has crossed Bernard’s many times.
I must admit that I enjoyed investigating Berlin’s underworld. Sited in what was virtually the no man’s land of the Cold War, this milieu was unique in having a national and political dimension. Perhaps this sad domain was no more violent than New York, Paris or London but here in Berlin one saw that authority could be more ruthless than the crimi nals and more indifferent to suffering. Perhaps that was not unique to Berlin; perhaps it was more a measure of my innocence.
The story of
Spy Line
provides a need to explore more of the city than did the previous Samson books. And it provided a chance to use some of the startling stories that I was by now hearing from a small network of friends and well-wishers. Advised abundantly, guided sometimes, abandoned now and again, I poked and prodded my way into a world that did not welcome questions. Cameras, notebooks or tape recorders were the badges of authority; an enemy that was universally despised, feared, frustrated and fought. I had
spent many years, in many different places, researching books of many different kinds but in Berlin I learned how to do it deadpan.
When I was still at school I was captivated by the world of espionage as depicted, and to some extent created, in the mind of that master craftsman Eric Ambler. On the screen Eric’s wonderful writing was interpreted in the wet-shiny cobbled back alleys and smoke-filled subterranean bars of Central Europe. Women, all resembling Marlene Dietrich, smoked black cigarettes held in long ivory holders while being serenaded by a doleful violin. This was Eric’s world and I revelled in it. Later Eric and his wife became our close friends, and we shared and multiplied the icons of our dreams. For me, Eric’s world of espionage was claustrophobic and I relished it. But things changed rapidly. That was not the world I wrote about in
The Ipcress File
and it was certainly not Bernard’s world.
In planning this Samson series I knew that
Hook
would record a change of mood. Here the story must open out and reflect more of the things happening around me. Bernard goes to Vienna and Salzburg; two cities which I had come to know some years earlier. As will become evident, there was a need to reach a climax, or at least a milestone, in the overall story; a place that would prepare me, and you, for the change in style and method that
Spy Sinker,
the final book of the second trilogy, was to use.
It is a curious feature of all true and real investigations that the most vital breaks come without effort or warning. This is so for Bernard, and
Spy Line
follows him as he stumbles back and resumes his normal life and work, while still absorbed by the questions posed by his wife and the tightlipped men for whom he works.
My wife, and both my sons, have always maintained that my musical taste tends to favour the minor keys. Eventually I yielded to their judgment. I like the minor keys and a whole opera in a minor key is not too much for me.
Line
is a book written entirely in a minor key.
Line
depicts Samson at the nadir of his life and career. A hurtful and foolish outburst directed at someone who loved him desperately shows that he is bruised and battered by events as he moves slowly to a denouement that is professionally successful and personally catastrophic.
And in its last chapters there are three finales. In one Bernard learns more about his father and we learn about the cryptic end of the book
Winter.
Stunned and depressed Bernard discovers too late that what is said can never be unsaid. His immediate sense of loss is palpable. A third finale follows; it is both an end and a beginning. The next book –
Spy Sinker
– will have to start the story all over again.
Len Deighton, 2010
‘Glasnost is trying to escape over the Wall, and getting shot with a
silenced
machine gun!’ said Kleindorf. ‘That’s the latest joke from over there.’ He spoke just loudly enough to make himself heard above the strident sound of the piano. His English had an American accent that he sometimes sharpened.
I laughed as much as I could now that he’d told me it was a joke. I’d heard it before and anyway Kleindorf was hopeless at telling jokes: even good jokes.
Kleindorf took the cigar from his mouth, blew smoke at the ceiling and tapped ash into an ashtray. Why he was so finicky I don’t know; the whole damned room was like a used ashtray. Magically the smoke appeared above his head, writhing and coiling, like angry grey serpents trapped inside the spotlight’s beam.
I laughed too much, it encouraged him to try another one. ‘Pretty faces look alike but an ugly face is ugly in its own way,’ said Kleindorf.
‘Tolstoy never said that,’ I told him. I’d willingly play the straight man for anyone who might tell me things I wanted to know.
‘Sure he did; he was sitting at the bar over there when he said it.’
Apart from regular glances to see how I was taking his jokes, he never took his eyes off his dancers. The five tall toothy girls just found room on the cramped little stage,
and even then the one on the end had to watch where she was kicking. But Rudolf Kleindorf – ‘Der grosse Kleiner’ as he was more usually known – evidenced the truth of his little joke. The dancers – smiles fixed and eyes wide – were distinguished only by varying cellulite and different choices in hair dye, while Rudi’s large lop-sided nose was surmounted by amazingly wild and bushy eyebrows. The permanent scowl and his dark-ringed eyes made unique a face that had worn out many bodies, not a few of them his own.
I looked at my watch. It was nearly four in the morning. I was dirty, smelly and unshaven. I needed a hot bath and a change of clothes. ‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘I must get some sleep.’
Kleindorf took the large cigar from his mouth, blew smoke, and shouted, ‘We’ll go on to Singing in the Rain, get the umbrellas!’ The piano stopped abruptly and the dancers collapsed with loud groans, bending, stretching and slumping against the scenery like a lot of rag dolls tipped from a toybox. Their bodies were shiny with sweat. ‘What kind of business am I in where I am working at three o’clock in the morning?’ he complained as he flashed the gold Rolex from under his starched linen cuffs. He was a moody, mysterious man and there were all manner of stories about him, many of them depicting him as bad-tempered and inclined to violent rages.
I looked round ‘Babylon’. It was gloomy. The fans were off and the place smelled of sweat, cheap cosmetics, ash and spilled drinks, as all such places do when the customers have departed. The long chromium and mirror bar, glittering with every kind of booze you could name, was shuttered and padlocked. His clients had gone to other drinking places, for there are many in Berlin which don’t get going until three in the morning. Now Babylon grew cold. During the war this cellar had been reinforced with steel girders to provide a shelter from the bombing but the wartime concrete seemed to exude chilly damp. Two blocks away down Potsdamerstrasse one of these shelters had for years provided Berlin with cultivated mushrooms until the health authorities condemned it.
It was the ‘carnival finale’ that had made the mess. Paper streamers, webbed tables still cluttered with wine bottles and glasses. There were balloons everywhere – some of them already wrinkled and shrinking – cardboard beer mats, torn receipts, drinks lists and litter of all descriptions. No one was doing anything to clear it all up. There would be plenty of time in the morning to do that. The gates of Babylon didn’t open until after dark.
‘Why don’t you rehearse the new show in the daytime, Rudi?’ I asked. No one called him Der Grosse to his face, not even me and I’d known him almost all my life.
His big nose twitched. ‘These bimbos work all day; that’s why we go through the routines so long after my bedtime.’ It was a stern German voice no matter how colloquial his English. His voice was low and hoarse, the result no doubt of his devotion to the maduro leaf Havanas that were aged for at least six years before he’d put one to his lips.
‘Work at what?’ He dismissed this question with a wave of his cigar. ‘They’re all moonlighting for me. Why do you think they want to be paid in cash?’
‘They will be tired tomorrow.’
‘Yah. You buy an icebox and the door falls off, you’ll know why. One of these dolls went to sleep on the line. Right?’
‘Right.’ I looked at the women with new interest. They were pretty but none of them were really young. How could they work all day and half the night too?
The pianist shuffled quickly through his music and found the sheets required. His fingers found the melody. The dancers put on their smiles and went into the routine. Kleindorf blew smoke. No one knew his age. He must have been on the wrong side of sixty, but that was about all he was on the wrong side of, for he always had a huge bundle of high-denomination paper money in his pocket and a beautiful woman at his beck and call. His suits, shirts and shoes were the finest that Berlin outfitters could provide, and outside on the kerb there was a magnificent old Maserati
Ghibli with the 4.9 litre engine option. It was a connoisseur’s car that he’d had completely rebuilt and kept in tune so that it could take him down the Autobahn to West Germany at 170 mph. For years I’d been hinting that I would enjoy a chance to drive it but the cunning old devil pretended not to understand.
One persistent rumour said the Kleindorfs were Prussian aristocracy, that his grandfather General Freiherr Rudolf von Kleindorf had commanded one of the Kaiser’s best divisions in the 1918 offensives, but I never heard Rudi make such claims. ‘Der Grosse’ said his money came from ‘car-wash parlours’ in Encino, Southern California. Certainly not much of it could have come from this shabby Berlin dive. Only the most intrepid tourist ventured into a place of this kind, and unless they had money to burn they were soon made to feel unwelcome. Some said Rudi kept the club going for his own amusement but others guessed that he needed this place, not just to chat with his cronies but because Rudi’s back bar was one of the best listening points in the whole of this gossip-ridden city. Such men gravitated to Rudi and he encouraged them, for his reputation as a man who knew what was going on gave him an importance that he seemed to need. Rudi’s barman knew that he must provide free drinks for certain men and women: hotel doormen, private secretaries, telephone workers, detectives, military government officials and sharp-eared waiters who worked in the city’s private dining rooms. Even Berlin’s police of ficials – notoriously reluctant to use paid informants – came to Rudi’s bar when all else failed.
How Babylon kept going was one of Berlin’s many unsolved mysteries. Even on a gala night alcohol sales didn’t pay the rent. The sort of people who sat out front and watched the show were not big spenders: their livers were not up to it. They were the geriatrics of Berlin’s underworld; arthritic ex-burglars, incoherent con-men and palsied forgers; men whose time had long since passed. They arrived too
early, nursed their drinks, leered at the girls, took their pills with a glass of water and told each other their stories of long ago. There were others of course: sometimes some of the smart set – Berlin’s
Hautevolee
in fur coats and evening dress – popped in to see how the other half lived. But they were always on their way to somewhere else. And Babylon had never been a fashionable place for ‘the young’: this wasn’t a place to buy smack, crack, angel-dust, solvents or any of the other powdered luxuries that the Mohican haircut crowd bartered upstairs on the street. Rudi was fanatically strict about that.
‘For God’s sake stop rattling that ice around. If you want another drink, say so.’
‘No thanks, Rudi. I’m dead tired, I’ve got to get some sleep.’
‘Can’t you sit still? What’s wrong with you?’
‘I was a hyper-active child.’
‘Could be you have this new virus that’s going around. It’s nasty. My manager is in the clinic. He’s been away two weeks. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Yes, you told me.’
‘You’re so pale. Are you eating?’
‘You sound like my mother,’ I said.
‘Are you sleeping well, Bernd? I think you should see a doctor. My fellow in Wannsee has done wonders for me. He gave me a series of injections – some new hormone stuff from Switzerland – and put me on a strict diet.’ He touched the lemon slice floating in the glass of water in front of him. ‘And I feel wonderful!’
I drank the final dregs of my scotch but there was no more than a drip or two left. ‘I don’t need any doctors. I’m all right.’
‘You don’t look all right. You look bloody ill. I’ve never seen you so pale and tired-looking.’
‘It’s late.’
‘I’m twice your age, Bernd,’ he said in a voice that mixed
self-satisfaction and reproof. It wasn’t true: he couldn’t have been more than fifteen years older than me but I could see he was irritable and I didn’t argue about it. Sometimes I felt sorry for him. Years back Rudi had bullied his only son into taking a regular commission in the Bundeswehr. The kid had done well enough but he was too soft for even the modern army. He’d taken an overdose and been found dead in a barrack room in Hamburg. The inquest said it was an accident. Rudi never mentioned it but everyone knew that he’d blamed himself. His wife left him and he’d never been the same again after losing the boy: his eyes had lost their sheen, they’d become hard and glittering. ‘And I thought you’d cut out the smoking,’ he said.
‘I do it all the time.’
‘Cigars are not so dangerous,’ he said and puffed contentedly.
‘Nothing else then?’ I persisted. ‘No other news?’
‘Deputy Führer Hess died…’ he said sarcastically. ‘He used to live in Wilhelmstrasse – number forty-six – after he moved to Spandau we saw very little of him.’
‘I’m serious,’ I persisted.
‘Then I must tell you the real hot news, Bernd: you! People are saying that some maniac drove a truck at you when you were crossing Waltersdorfer Chaussee. At speed! Nearly killed you, they say.’
I stared at him. I said nothing.
He sniffed and said, ‘People asked what was a nice boy like Bernd Samson doing down there where the world ends. Nothing there but that ancient checkpoint. You can’t get anywhere down there: you can’t even get to Waltersdorfer, there’s a Wall in the way.’
‘What did you say?’ I asked.
‘I’ll tell you what’s there, I told them. Memories.’ He smoked his cigar and scrutinized the burning end of it as a philatelist might study a rare stamp. ‘Memories,’ he said again. ‘Was I right, Bernd?’
‘Where’s Waltersdorfer Chaussee?’ I said. ‘Is that one of those fancy streets in Nikolassee?’
‘Rudow. They buried that fellow Max Busby in the graveyard down there, if I remember rightly. It took a lot of wheeling and dealing to get the body back. When they shoot someone on their side of the Wall they don’t usually prove very cooperative about the remains.’
‘Is that so?’ I said. I kept hoping he’d insist upon me having another shot of his whisky but he didn’t.
‘Ever get scared, Bernd? Ever wake up at night and fancy you hear the footsteps in the hall?’
‘Scared of what?’
‘I heard your own people have a warrant out for you.’
‘Did you?’
‘Berlin is not a good town for a man on the run,’ he said reflectively, almost as if I wasn’t there. ‘Your people and the Americans still have military powers. They can censor mail, tap phones and jail anyone they want out of the way. They even have the death penalty at their disposal.’ He looked at me as if a thought had suddenly come into his mind. ‘Did you see that item in the newspaper about the residents of Gatow taking their complaints about the British army to the High Court in London? Apparently the British army commander in Berlin told the court that since he was the legitimate successor to Hitler he could do anything he wished.’ A tiny smile as if it caused him pain. ‘Berlin is not a good place for a man on the run, Bernd.’
‘Who says I’m on the run?’
‘You’re the only man I know who both sides would be pleased to be rid of,’ said Rudi. Perhaps he’d had a specially bad day. There was a streak of cruelty in him and it was never far from the surface. ‘If you were found dead tonight there’d be ten thousand suspects: KGB, CIA, even your own people.’ A chuckle. ‘How did you make so many enemies, Bernd?’
‘I don’t have any enemies, Rudi,’ I said. ‘Not that kind of enemies.’
‘Then why do you come here dressed in those old clothes and with a gun in your pocket?’ I said nothing, I didn’t even move. So he’d noticed the pistol, that was damned careless of me. I was losing my touch. ‘Frightened of being robbed, Bernd? I can understand it; seeing how prosperous you are looking these days.’
‘You’ve had your fun, Rudi,’ I said. ‘Now tell me what I want to know, so I can go home and get some sleep.’
‘And what do you want to know?’
‘Where the hell has Lange Koby gone?’
‘I told you, I don’t know. Why should I know anything about that schmuck?’ It is not a word a German uses lightly: I guessed they’d had a row, perhaps a serious quarrel.
‘Because Lange was always in here and now he’s missing. His phone doesn’t answer and no one comes to the door.’
‘How should I know anything abut Lange?’
‘Because you were his very close pal.’
‘Of Lange?’ The sour little grin he gave me made me angry.
‘Yes, of Lange, you bastard. You two were as thick…’
‘As thick as thieves. Is that what you were going to say, Bernd?’ Despite the darkness, the sound of the piano and the way in which we were both speaking softly, the dancers seemed to guess that we were quarrelling. In some strange way there was an anxiety communicated to them. The smiles were slipping and their voices became more shrill.
‘That’s right. That’s what I was going to say.’
‘Knock louder,’ said Rudi dismissively. ‘Maybe his bell push is out of order.’ From upstairs I heard the loud slam of the front door. Werner Volkmann came down the beautiful chrome spiral staircase and slid into the room in that demonstratively apologetic way that he always assumed when I was keeping him up too late. ‘All okay?’ I asked him. Werner nodded. Kleindorf looked round to see who it was and then turned back to watch the weary dancers entangle umbrellas as they danced into the nonexistent wings and cannoned against the wall.