Spy Hook

I said, ‘What’s that?’

Dicky, short-listed for the Stalin Prize in office politics, said, ‘Jesus Christ, Bernard. Vertical planning! Dividing the German Desk up into groups region by region. He told me that I’d have Berlin, as if that would make me overjoyed. Berlin! With other desks for Bonn and Hamburg and so on. A separate unit would liaise with the Americans in Munich. Can you imagine it!’

‘That idea has been kicking around for ages,’ I said. I began to sort out the work I’d brought for him. I knew that getting him to look at it would be difficult in his present agitated mood, so I put the papers that required a signature on top. There were five of them.

‘It’s ridiculous!’ said Dicky so loudly that his secretary looked in through the door to see if everything was all right. She was a new secretary or she would have made herself scarce when there was a chance of encountering Dicky’s little tantrums.

‘It will happen sooner or later I suppose,’ I said. I got my pen out so that Dicky could sign while he talked about something else. Sometimes it was easier like that.

‘You’d heard about it before?’ said Dicky incredulously, suddenly realizing what I’d said.

‘Oh, yes. A year or more ago but it had some other name then.’

‘Ye gods, Bernard! I wish you’d told me.’

I put the papers on his desk and gave him the ballpoint pen and watched him sign his name. I hadn’t heard of the vertical planning scheme before, of course, but guessed that the Deputy had simply invented something that would goad Dicky into more energetic action, and I thought it better not to let the old boy down. ‘And these you should look at,’ I said, indicating the most important ones.

‘You’ll have to go and see Frank,’ he said as he signed the final one and plucked at the corners of the rest of the stuff to see if anything looked interesting enough to read.

‘Okay,’ I said. He looked up at me. He’d expected me to object to a trip to Berlin but he’d caught me at a good time. It was a month or more since I’d been to Berlin and there were reasons both official and social for a trip there. ‘And what do I tell Frank?’ I wanted to get it clear because we had this absurd system in which Dicky and Frank Harrington – the Berlin ‘resident’ and as old as Methuselah – had equal authority.

He looked up from the carpet and said, ‘I don’t want to rub Frank up the wrong way. It’s not up to me to tell him how to run his Berlin Field Unit. Frank knows more about the operations side of his bailiwick than all the rest of us put together.’ That was all true, of course, but it wasn’t often the line Dicky took.

‘We’re talking about Bizet, I take it?’

‘Right. Frank may want to put someone in. After all, Frankfurt an der Oder is only a stone’s throw from where he is.’

‘It’s not the distance, Dicky. It’s …’

He immediately held up his hand in defence. ‘Sure. I know I know I know.’

‘Are you hoping he’ll have done something already?’

‘I just want his advice,’ said Dicky.

‘Well, we both know what Frank’s advice will be,’ I said. ‘Do nothing. Just the same advice that he gives us about everything.’

‘Frank’s been there a long time,’ said Dicky, who had survived many a crisis and reshuffle on ‘do nothing’ policies.

I made sure Dicky had signed everything in the right place. Then I drank the coffee and left it at that for a bit. But this seemed a good opportunity to quiz him about the Prettyman business. ‘Remember Prettyman?’ I said as casually as I could manage.

‘Should I?’

‘Jim Prettyman: ended up in “black boxes”. Left and went to America.’

‘Codes and Ciphers, downstairs?’ It was a not a region into which Dicky ever ventured.

‘He was on the Special Operations committee with Bret. He was always trying to organize holidays where you could look at tombs and no one ever put their name down. Wonderful snooker player. Don’t you remember how we went to Big Henty’s one night and he made some fantastic break?’

‘I’ve never been to Big Henty’s in my life.’

‘Of course you have, Dicky. Lots of times. Jim Prettyman. A young fellow who got that job in Washington.’

‘Sometimes I think you must know everyone in this building,’ said Dicky.

‘I thought you knew him,’ I said lamely.

‘A word to the wise, Bernard.’ Dicky was holding a finger aloft as if testing for the direction of the wind. ‘If I was in this room talking to you about this Prettyman fellow you’d change the subject to talk about Frank Harrington and the Bizet business. No offence intended, old chum, but it’s true. Think about it.’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Dicky.’

‘You must try and concentrate upon the subject in hand. Have you ever done any yoga?’ He pushed aside the papers that I’d suggested he should read.

‘No, Dicky,’ I said.

‘I did a lot of yoga at one time.’ He ran a finger across the papers as if reading the contents list. ‘It trains the mind: helps the power of concentration.’

‘I’ll look into that,’ I promised, taking from him the signed papers that Dicky had decided not to read, and stuffing them into the cardboard folder.

When I stood up, Dicky, still looking at the carpet, said, ‘My mother’s cousin died and left me a big lion skin. I was wondering whether to have it in here.’

‘It would look just right,’ I said, indicating the antique furniture and the framed photos that covered the wall behind him.

‘I had it in the drawing room at home but some of our friends made a bit of fuss about shooting rare animals and that sort of thing.’

‘Don’t worry about that, Dicky,’ I said. ‘That’s just because they’re jealous.’

‘That’s just what I told Daphne,’ he said. ‘After all, the damned thing’s dead. I can’t bring a lion back to life can I?’

5 (#ulink_35c745ae-8663-5cd7-82c4-c6b91537977b)

Many civilians have a lifelong obsession about what it would be like to be in the army. Some like the idea of uniforms, horses, trumpets and flags; others just want clearly expressed orders, and a chance to carry them out in exchange for hot meals on the table every day. For some men the army represents a challenge they never faced; for others a cloistered cosy masculine retreat from reality.

Which of these aspects of the soldier’s life Frank Harrington found attractive – or whether it was something entirely different – I never knew. But whenever Frank was not in his office, nor in the splendid Grunewald mansion that he’d arranged should be one of the ‘perks’ of being the Berlin Resident, I knew I’d find him in some squalid dug-out, sitting in the middle of a bunch of begrimed infantry officers, looking thoroughly happy as he told them how to fight their war.

This day, dressed in borrowed army togs with mud on his knees and elbows, he was delivered to the Grunewald house in a big army staff car.

‘I’m awfully sorry, Frank,’ I said.

‘I was only playing soldiers,’ he said in that disarming way he had. ‘And Dicky said it was urgent.’

He looked as if he was going to conduct me straight into his study. ‘It’s not so urgent that you can’t change and take a shower,’ I said. I gave him the report from London.

He took it and shook it at his ear to listen for its rattle. He grinned. We both knew Dicky. ‘Go into the drawing room and get yourself a drink, Bernard,’ he said. ‘Ring for Tarrant if you can’t find what you want. You’re going to eat with me I hope?’

‘Yes. I’d like that, Frank.’

He was a wellspring of cheer after his day with the soldiers. Halfway up the stairs he turned to say, ‘Welcome home, Bernard,’ knowing how delighted I would be at such a greeting. For no matter where I went or what I did, Berlin would always be home for me. My father had been Resident long ago – before they were provided with a grand mansion in which to live and an entertainment allowance – and Berlin held all my happy childhood recollections.