Faith

I pulled a face.

Frank said: ‘And that means that you’ll be put under the microscope … Unless of course you can take Dicky aside and gently persuade him that he’s wrong.’ He prodded his oilskin tobacco pouch as if resenting the torment it offered him. ‘Werner’s contract was ended and he was hounded for no real reason except that he seems to upset someone on high. From what little I hear he’s feeling damned bitter about it all. But he’s not working for us. Don’t let him persuade you he is.’

‘You know what us field agents are like,’ I said.

‘I’m not sure I’m getting through to you.’

‘Tell me again, Frank.’

He had the oilskin pouch in his hand. Now he swung it around. ‘Admit it. Someone talked, didn’t they? It wasn’t just a coincidence that you arrive in Magdeburg and there is a warm corpse waiting for you.’

‘About VERDI?’

‘Don’t be so stupid. Of course. They set him up and killed him. Had they squeezed him before killing him they might have got you too.’

‘And that’s what Dicky thinks?’

‘You have a different theory?’ He had the tobacco pouch in his hand, holding it up as if to admire its lines but also keeping it within olfactory range.

‘It’s one way of looking at it,’ I said grudgingly.

‘Yes, it is,’ said Frank, sniffing at the tobacco pouch. ‘Someone preferred VERDI dead, rather than alive and over here talking to us.’

‘Maybe.’

‘How long were you held up at that militia checkpoint outside Magdeburg?’

‘About half an hour.’

‘And would you say that when you arrived VERDI had been dead for about half an hour?’

‘What are you getting at? Are you suggesting that the delay was arranged so that VERDI could reach the rendezvous and be intercepted and killed before we got there?’

‘It all fits together doesn’t it?’ said Frank.

‘No.’ He looked at me and I yielded a little. ‘It’s possible. But there is no evidence whatsoever to support that theory. Unless you have some evidence to add.’

‘Or … looking at this business and pretending that we didn’t know the agents involved …’ Frank’s voice trailed off. ‘Do you see what I mean, Bernard?’

‘Yes, I see what you mean all right. You mean that if I and that kid invented the hold-up at the checkpoint we could have got there and killed VERDI ourselves.’

‘Using that pistol that came from nowhere,’ added Frank for good measure. ‘It could look bad if someone wanted to throw mud at you.’

‘Ask the kid. He’s Dicky’s man isn’t he?’

‘Very much Dicky’s man,’ agreed Frank amiably. ‘He wants to please Dicky; Dicky says there might eventually be a place for him in London.’

‘He’s a decent kid. He wouldn’t tell lies. He’d tell an inquiry the truth, and blow Dicky’s theory sky-high.’

‘I’m glad you are so confident about that,’ said Frank. ‘That settles my mind. But of course one can’t guarantee anyone a job in London. Nowadays a young chap like that one can find himself posted to some God-forsaken place in Asia or Africa. Some of them are out of touch for years.’ He opened the door of the stove and prodded the burned paper delicately with a poker. For a moment I thought he was going to throw my report in there. Such dramatic gestures by Frank were not unknown. But instead he tried again to light the fire using small pieces torn from a newspaper. He was rewarded by a sudden flame and pushed a piece of kindling into it.

‘Point taken, Frank,’ I said.

He looked up and gave a fleeting smile, pleased perhaps at his success with the fire. ‘Of course I’ve kept this business very need-to-know. Dicky, me, you, and of course what’s-his-name: this youngster who went with you.’

‘Plus secretaries, code-clerks and messengers – any one of them might have leaked it,’ I added, joining in the silly game in an effort to show the absurdity of his conspiracy theory. ‘And there’s VERDI too. He knew we were coming, didn’t he?’

‘Of course he did. And who knows who else got to hear? I’ve no intention of starting a witch-hunt, Bernard. That killing might have had nothing to do with him wanting to defect. A man like that – deep in the secrets of the KGB and Stasi too – is sure to have made plenty of enemies. For all we know the reason he wanted to come to us was because his life was in danger from whoever murdered him.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. I got up to go.

‘I know I can’t stop you visiting Werner,’ said Frank, ‘but you’d better guard your tongue when you are with him. If London gets to hear that you’ve been sharing Departmental secrets with him – even low-grade ones – they will throw the book at you.’

‘I’ll be careful, Frank. I really will.’

As I was going to the door, he undid the pouch and put his empty pipe into his mouth while fingering the tobacco. The smell of it reached me as he grabbed a handful of it. I watched him, thinking he was going to fill the pipe, but he didn’t. He opened the door of the stove and thrust the entire contents of the pouch into the fire. The tobacco flared and hissed and a snake of pungent grey smoke coiled out into the room. ‘I’m determined this time,’ said Frank, looking over his shoulder at me, his eyes wide and birdlike.

I was outside the door, and about to push it closed, when Frank called out to me and I looked back inside.

‘The pistol, Bernard. I haven’t asked you about the pistol.’ He pursed his lips. In Frank’s view anyone using a gun betrayed the Department and all it stood for. ‘You shot the tyres out, it said in the report. But where did the hand-gun come from?’

‘I thought the kid told you about that,’ I said warily.

‘No, he was as puzzled as we were,’ said Frank, watching me with great interest.

‘I found it on the body,’ I said.

‘Fully loaded?’ said Frank formally, as if he was about to write it down and ask me to sign.

‘That’s right, fully loaded. A Makarov – German manufacture: a Pistole M to be precise – I put it in my pocket and that’s what I used when they chased us in the car.’

‘I don’t remember anything of that in your report.’

‘I thought the kid would have covered those sort of details.’

‘Write the whole thing again,’ suggested Frank. ‘Fill in a few of those missing details … the Pistole M, how glass bends and so on. You know what those people in London are like. They might think you collected the gun from one of your East Berlin cronies. And then they won’t give me any peace until I find out who it might have been.’

‘You’re right, Frank,’ I said, wondering how quickly I could close the door and get out of there without offending him, and how soon Dicky would return with a thousand more questions.

‘Smell that tobacco,’ said Frank, wallowing in the smoke coming out of the stove top. ‘I’m beginning to think it’s better than smoking.’

4

‘You just leave it to me, Mr Samson,’ said the cheerful ordnance lieutenant.

The army is always there when you need it. My father’s loyalty to the army remained no matter how long after his army service he worked for the Foreign Office. And Frank Harrington’s devotion to the army was renowned. The army looks after its own and was always ready to take under its wing those who understood the obligations this entailed. And now it was a young army lieutenant who, without any up-to-date paperwork or even a telephone call, had put me into the cab of one of his trucks heading down the Autobahn. The soldiers were posted back to their depot. They were in convoy for Holland, and the ferry to Harwich in England. But I was on my way to Switzerland.

‘We’re getting near to the place you’re wanting, sir,’ said the driver without preamble. ‘You’ll hitchhike south from there.’ He had a Newcastle accent you could cut with a knife, and my German upbringing had left me unable to comprehend the more pronounced British regional voices. ‘Going home,’ he added, doing his best to make me understand. ‘We’re all going home.’