Faith

‘Cipher clerks who gamble or borrow money,’ I said. ‘Department chiefs who drink, analysts who are screwing their secretary, translators who sniff. Vulnerable people.’

‘This one knows you. He’ll talk only to someone he knows.’

‘Yes, you told me. But I’ll take a lot of convincing he’s on the level.’

The car had slowed and the kid was looking at the street signs. ‘I know the house,’ he said. ‘I delivered a package here last month. Money I think.’

‘You live dangerously,’ I told him.

‘All this won’t last much longer,’ he said. ‘I want to get a little excitement while I can. I want to be able to tell my kids about it.’

He must have been talking to Bret. ‘You can have my share,’ I told him, and smiled. But such highly motivated youngsters worried me: so did these people who thought it was so nearly all over. There was once an old chap at the training school who started the very first day’s lecture saying: our job here is to change gallant young gentlemen into nervous old ladies. This kid needed that lecture badly.

2

Magdeburg, where we were headed, is one of the most ancient German cities, a provincial capital tucked into the most westerly bend of the River Elbe at a place where the river divides into three waterways. Its commanding site at the edge of the North German plain has always made it a target for plundering armies. Devastated by the Thirty Years War, it was razed again by the Second World War and even more thoroughly by the Soviet-style city-planners and architects who came after it.

Magdeburg has been a home to men as choosy as Otto the Great and Archbishop Burchard HI and the more refined members of the house of Brandenburg. So great was the power vested here that when they came to build the railway joining Paris to Moscow they diverted the line through Magdeburg. More than a century later, in the postwar race for growth, the city was hastily transformed into one of the world’s most polluted industrial regions, where the proletariat choked on untreated chemical waste and more than half the children were suffering from bronchitis and eczema. Now, as the Marxist empire shrank and its privileged ruling class felt threatened from all sides, the Stasi, the Party’s Moscow-styled secret police and security service, had chosen Magdeburg to make a fortified compound where its most secret and highly treasured documents and artifacts could be guarded and hidden. Even the mortal remains of Hitler and Goebbels had been secreted away in the compound.

‘Do you know where the Smersh compound begins?’ I asked him as we drove through the centre of town.

I’d almost forgotten how dark and bleak East German towns became after dark. There was little traffic, fewer pedestrians and no advertising signs. Two cops standing under a street light watched us pass with interest.

The kid glanced at me and smiled. ‘So they really call it the Smersh compound? I thought that was just something invented by the newspapers.’

We passed slowly along a wall of billboards around a building site. At least two dozen huge posters affirmed with typographic bombast the DDR’s loyalty, obligation and friendship to the mighty USSR and the even mightier socialist brotherhood. We passed the cathedral for a second time. ‘One side is the Westring, I remember that,’ I said, as we came to the billboards again. ‘It’s a long time since I was here.’ Traffic signals brought us to a halt, and then he made a turn and said he knew where he was.

The kid had the car window down and was staring out into the shadowy moonlit streets. ‘Our man lives off to the left.’ He slowed and having spotted Klausenerstrasse – onetime Westendstrasse – signalled a turn and we were in a quiet street, paved with neatly arranged cobblestones and darkened by mature trees. These large comfortable houses had miraculously survived the RAF night bombers, the American day bombers and all the artillery fire that came afterwards.

It is a curious paradox that Hitler’s Third Reich and subsequent communist governments had preserved East Germany as the last remaining European country with domestic servants. Only in the DDR were such grand old households functioning in the old-fashioned way. Senior officials of the Stasi, and lucky detachments of KGB liaison officers like VERDI, had readily settled into this sort of bourgeois comfort, and now this unassailable elite occupied choice tree-lined streets of German towns complete with gardens, garages and quarters at the rear for attentive maid-servants, chauffeurs, cooks and gardeners. Only recently had chipped paintwork, untrimmed hedges and cracks in the glass signalled some tightening of the economy.

‘This is the house where VERDI lives,’ said the kid, reducing his voice almost to a whisper. ‘He shares it with two other officials and their families.’ The wrought-iron gates were closed. He parked at the kerbside and we got out. It was a big house: two storeys, with some of the upper rooms granted access to a long decorative balcony by means of french windows. There were no lights to be seen anywhere, but that might have been a tribute to the heavy curtains.

The front garden of the old house was protected by a more recently installed six-feet-high chain-link fence. It was anchored to stone gateposts and a pair of ancient and elaborate gates. The kid shone his flashlight on the brass plate which bore the house number. Above it a more recent white plastic sign indicated which of two bellpushes should be used by visitors and which by delivery men. It was that kind of house.

He unlatched the gate and we went inside without pressing either bell. In the air there was the smell of burned garden rubbish. ‘We’re only half an hour late,’ said the kid. ‘He’ll wait.’ It was very quiet in Magdeburg. There was not even the sound of traffic, just the hum of a distant plane droning steadily like a trapped wasp. In the silence every movement seemed to cause unnaturally loud noises, our footsteps crunching in the gravel like a company of soldiers marching through a bowl of cornflakes.

Three stone steps led up to a wide entry porch where a panelled front door with a fanlight was flanked by two small wired-glass windows that provided the residents with a chance to make sure that the delivery man was not using the wrong entrance.

‘Are you all right?’ said the kid, looking at me strangely.

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘They always leave the front door unlocked. It’s all right.’ As if to demonstrate this familiarity he pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside. I followed him. The house was in darkness, and only silky moonlight through the fanlight enabled us to see. A wide staircase with a carved wooden rail descended to a grand hall tiled with large black and white squares. Against one wall a longcase clock stood still and silent, its lifeless hands clasping the number twelve. Occupying the greater part of the opposite wall hung a towering oil-painting: a life-size depiction of a Prussian general stared serenely at the artist, while smoking cannon roared and a bloody mayhem of men and mounts provided a colourful background. The overall effect – of the family home of some nineteenth-century nobleman – was marred only slightly by a pungent smell of carbolic and scented polish that intruded an institutional dimension.

I heard the sound of the kid clicking the light switches, but no light came. ‘Power failure,’ he pronounced after several tries. ‘Or maybe it’s switched off at the main supply.’

For a moment I thought he was just going to stand there until something else happened, but he gathered himself together and went to the door of one of the front rooms and opened it slowly, as if half-expecting a shouted objection from inside.

I followed him. The moonlight coming through the tall windows revealed a big room with over-stuffed armchairs and sofas, and some antique furniture that had seen better days. There was an ornate stove and a large mirror that made the room seem double its size.

‘Look!’ said the kid.

But I’d already seen him: a man sitting on the sofa and toppled slightly to one side, canted at an impossible angle like some discarded doll. The kid directed his torch at the figure.

‘Douse the light. It might be seen through the windows.’ I went to the sofa. The man was dead. It was obvious just from the awkward posture. The moonlight made everything colourless, but the big dark patch on his chest was blood and there was more of it on the sofa and on the carpet too. His head was thrown back and his face was a horrific mess: his skull cracked open like the shell of an egg. ‘Keep still a minute,’ I said.

‘Where did you get the Makarov?’

‘Keep still. It’s just a toy,’ I explained, but the long silencer made the damn thing as conspicuous as a frontier Colt.

I quickly went through the dead man’s pockets. The body was still warm. The blood was wet and becoming tacky. I sniffed the air but there were none of the smells of oil and burned powder that gunfire leaves. Still it was obvious that the shooting had taken place just before we arrived. I was no expert, but it would be foolhardy to think the killer must have left the vicinity.

‘From the guy at the bar,’ said the kid, as the explanation of where I got the gun occurred to him. ‘I should have guessed you didn’t want cigarettes … He gave it …’

‘Shut up,’ I said. It was the sort of stupid carelessness that got good men into trouble. ‘Pull yourself together. Check the windows and the hallway.’

He must have realized what he’d blurted out, for he looked around as if he might spot a microphone or wires. It was his nervousness about being overheard that caused him to spot the broken window. ‘The shot came from outside,’ he said. He was holding the window curtain aside and pointing at a large round hole in the glass pane. It was at about the right level for a prowler to shoot a man sitting on the sofa.

‘Get away from the window – pull the curtain closed. Can the power be switched off from outside?’

‘Yes. The fuses are on the cellar steps.’

‘Close the curtain.’ The kid was still at the window looking at the garden. Then without warning I heard him retch deeply, and then came long and splashy vomiting. Oh boy, that’s all I needed. ‘Let’s go, Kinkypoo,’ I said bitterly as he coughed, spat, and wiped his face with a handkerchief. I could hear him follow me as I went to the hallway and opened the front door. I looked around the garden. There was no sign of movement, but enough big dark shadows for a battalion to be concealed.

‘Run for the car. I’ll cover you as best I can. Get into the back seat: I’ll drive.’ I suppose it was my way of ensuring he didn’t depart without me, but by now I had the nasty feeling that a reception party would be waiting by the car.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. I didn’t reply.

‘Go,’ I said.

He ran across the grass, dragged open the wrought-iron gate and dashed out into the dark street. I followed him, flattening myself against the wall as I got outside. The trees were being shaken by the wind and making shadows on the cobbles. There was no one to be seen in any direction: just silent parked cars. Reassured, I climbed into the driver’s seat, closed my door and started the engine. The kid slammed his door with all the force he could muster, making a noise that could be heard for two or three blocks.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked anxiously.

I was covering my face with both hands, seeking a moment of darkness to gather my wits. I understood the anxiety I heard in his voice. When I was young I’d seen some of the old wartime field agents resorting to that sort of gesture, and I’d written them off as burned out and useless. ‘I’m okay,’ I said.

Gently I revved up and pulled away. I swung my head to get a look at him in the back. The kid had stains and marks down the front of his coat. He looked at me and wiped his mouth self-consciously. He smelled strongly of sour vomit.

‘What a foul-up. Poor VERDI. Are we going to be all right?’ he asked.

‘You stay there in the back seat and watch the road behind us. They’ll probably tail us and arrest us at the Checkpoint. It’s the way they like to work. They’ll want to see what we do.’

‘What’s the score?’ he said. ‘Who killed him?’

‘How do you know VERDI lives there?’

‘As opposed to meeting me there? I don’t know. I just assumed it.’