Funeral in Berlin

‘All systems go,’ I said.

‘Colonel Stok puts up a very convincing case,’ said Vulkan.

‘So does the “find the lady” mob in Charing Cross Road,’ I said, ‘but they never come through with the QED.’

Stok threw back two vodkas in quick succession and stared at me earnestly. He said, ‘Look, I don’t favour the capitalist system. I don’t ask you to believe that I do. In fact I hate your system.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘And you are in a job where you can really do something about it.’

Stok and Vulkan exchanged glances.

‘I wish you would try to understand,’ said Stok. ‘I am really sincere about giving you my allegiance.’

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘I bet you say that to all the great powers.’

Vulkan said, ‘I’ve spent a lot of time and money in setting this up. If you are so damn clever why did you bother to come to Berlin?’

‘OK,’ I told them. ‘Act out the charade. I’ll be thinking of words.’

Stok and Vulkan looked at each other and we drank and then Stok gave me one of his gold-rimmed oval cigarettes and lit it with a nickel-silver sputnik.

‘For a long time I have been thinking of moving west,’ said Stok. ‘It’s not a matter of politics. I am just as avid a communist now as I have ever been, but a man gets old. He looks for comfort, for security in possessions.’ Stok cupped his big boxing-glove hand and looked down at it. ‘A man wants to scoop up a handful of black dirt and know it’s his own land, to live on, die on and give to his sons. We peasants are a weak insecure segment of socialism, Mr Dorf.’ He smiled with his big brown teeth, trimmed here and there with an edge of gold. ‘These comforts that you take for granted will not be a part of life in the East until long after I am dead.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We have decadence now – while we are young enough to enjoy it.’

‘Semitsa,’ said Stok. He waited to see what effect it would have on me. It had none.

‘That’s what you are really interested in. Not me. Semitsa.’

‘Is he here in Berlin?’ I asked.

‘Slowly, Mr Dorf,’ said Stok. ‘Things move very slowly.’

‘How do you know he wants to come west?’ I asked.

‘I know,’ said Stok.

Vulkan interrupted, ‘I told the colonel that Semitsa would be worth about forty thousand pounds to us.’

‘Did you?’ I said in as flat a monotone as I could manage.

Stok poured out his fruit vodka all round, downed his own and poured himself a replacement.

‘It’s been nice talking to you boys,’ I said. ‘I only wish you had something I could buy.’

‘I understand you, Mr Dorf,’ said Stok. ‘In my country we have a saying, “a man who trades a horse for a promise ends up with tired feet”.’ He walked across to the eighteenth-century mahogany bureau.

I said, ‘I don’t want you to deviate from a course of loyalty and integrity to the Soviet Government to which I remain a friend and ally.’

Stok turned and smiled at me.

‘You think I have live microphones planted here and that I might attempt to trick you.’

‘You might,’ I said. ‘You are in the business.’

‘I hope to persuade you otherwise,’ said Stok. ‘As to being in the business: when does a chef get ptomaine poisoning?’

‘When he eats out,’ I said.

Stok’s laugh made the antique plates rattle. He groped around inside the big writing-desk and produced a flat metal box, brought a vast bunch of tiny keys from his pocket and from inside the box reached a thick black file. He handed it to me. It was typed in Cyrillic capitals and contained photostats of letters and transcripts of tapped phone calls.

Stok reached for another oval cigarette and tapped it unlit against the white page of typing. ‘Mr Semitsa’s passport westward,’ he said putting a sarcastic emphasis on the ‘mister’.

‘Yes?’ I said doubtfully.

Vulkan leaned forward to me. ‘Colonel Stok is in charge of an investigation of the Minsk Biochemical labs.’

‘Where Semitsa used to be,’ I said. It was coming clear to me. ‘This is Semitsa’s file, then?’

‘Yes,’ said Stok, ‘and everything that I need to get Semitsa a ten-year sentence.’

‘Or have him do anything you say,’ I said. Perhaps Stok and Vulkan were serious.

(#ulink_4b1e4b2c-aa00-5cfe-8d5d-aa00597098b9) To catch people with stolen passports, or people who spend nights in the East, the passports are often marked with a tiny pencil spot on some pre-arranged page.

6 (#ulink_d24415ca-1b6e-5ddf-81b5-a9816b45065e)

A bad bishop is one hampered by his own pawns.

Monday, October 7th

Going along the Unter den Linden wasn’t the fastest way of getting to the checkpoint but I had to keep to the main roads in order to find my way about. I saw the ‘S’ signs on the Schnellstrasse and moved up to the legal 60 kph. As I came level with the old Bismarck Chancellery, black and gutted in the bright velvet moonlight, a red disc was moving laterally across the road ahead. It was a police signal. I stopped. A Volkspolizei troop carrier was parked at the roadside. A young man in uniform tucked the signal baton into the top of his boot, walked slowly across to me and saluted.

‘Your papers.’

I gave him the Dorf passport and hoped that the department had gone to the trouble of getting it made up by the Foreign Office and not been content with one of the rough old print jobs that the War Office did for us.

A Skoda passed by at speed without anyone waving it down. I began to feel I was being picked on. Around at the rear of the Taunus another Vopo shone a torch on the US Army plates and probed the beam across the rear seat and floor. My passport was slapped closed and it came through the window accompanied by a neat bow and salute.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the young one.

‘Can I go?’ I said.

‘Just switch on your lights, sir.’

‘They’re on.’

‘Main beams must be on here in East Berlin. That is the law.’