London Match

‘He looks much younger than thirty-two, doesn’t he?’ said Werner.

‘You can’t rely on those computer printouts, especially with listed civil servants or even members of the Bundestag. They were all put onto the computer when it was installed, by copy typists working long hours of overtime to make a bit of spare cash.’

‘What do you think?’ said Werner.

‘I don’t like the look of him,’ I said.

‘He’s guilty,’ said Werner. He had no more information than I did, but he was trying to reassure me.

‘But the uncorroborated word of a defector such as Stinnes won’t cut much ice in an open court, even if London will let Stinnes go into a court. If this fellow’s boss stands by him and they both scream blue murder, he might get away with it.’

‘When do we take him, Bernie?’

‘Maybe his contact will come here,’ I said. It was an excuse for delay.

‘He’d have to be a real beginner, Bernie. Just one look at this place – lit up like a Christmas tree, cops outside, and no room to move – no one with any experience would risk coming into a place like this.’

‘Perhaps they won’t be expecting problems,’ I said optimistically.

‘Moscow know Stinnes is missing and they’ve had plenty of time to alert their networks. And anyone with experience will smell this stakeout when they park outside.’

‘He didn’t smell it,’ I said, nodding to our crew-cut man as he swigged at his beer and engaged a fellow guest in conversation.

‘Moscow can’t send a source like him away to their training school,’ said Werner. ‘But that’s why you can be quite certain that his contact will be Moscow-trained: and that means wary. You might as well arrest him now.’

‘We say nothing; we arrest no one,’ I told him once again. ‘German security are doing this one; he’s simply being detained for questioning. We stand by and see how it goes.’

‘Let me do it, Bernie.’ Werner Volkmann was a Berliner by birth. I’d come to school here as a young child, my German was just as authentic as his, but because I was English, Werner was determined to hang on to the conceit that his German was in some magic way more authentic than mine. I suppose I would feel the same way about any German who spoke perfect London-accented English, so I didn’t argue about it.

‘I don’t want him to know any non-German service is involved. If he tumbles to who we are, he’ll know Stinnes is in London.’

‘They know already, Bernie. They must know where he is by now.’

‘Stinnes has got enough troubles without a KGB hit squad searching for him.’

Werner was looking at the dancers and smiling to himself as if at some secret joke, the way people sometimes do when they’ve had too much to drink. His face was still tanned from his time in Mexico and his teeth were white and perfect. He looked almost handsome despite the lumpy fit of his suit. ‘It’s like a Hollywood movie,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The budget’s too big for television.’ The ballroom was crowded with elegant couples, all wearing the sort of clothes that would have looked all right for a ball at the turn of the century. And the guests weren’t the desiccated old fogies I was expecting to see at this fiftieth birthday party for a manufacturer of dishwashers. There were plenty of richly clad young people whirling to the music of another time in another town. Kaiserstadt – isn’t that what Vienna was called at a time when there was only one Emperor in Europe and only one capital for him?

It was the makeup and the hairdos that sounded the jarring note of modernity, that and the gun I could see bulging under Werner’s beautiful silk jacket. I suppose that’s what was making it so tight across the chest.

The white-coated waiter returned with another big tray of glasses. Some of the glasses were not empty. There was the sudden smell of alcohol as he tipped cherries, olives, and abandoned drinks into the warm water of the sink before putting the glasses into the service lift. Then he turned to Werner and said respectfully, ‘They’ve arrested the contact, sir. Went to the car just as you said.’ He wiped the empty tray with a cloth.

‘What’s all this, Werner?’ I said.

The waiter looked at me and then at Werner and, when Werner nodded assent, said, ‘The contact went to the suspect’s parked car … a woman at least forty years old, maybe older. She had a key that fitted the car door. She unlocked the glove compartment and took an envelope. We’ve taken her into custody but the envelope has not yet been opened. The captain wants to know if he should take the woman back to the office or hold her here in the panel truck for you to talk to.’

The music stopped and the dancers applauded. Somewhere on the far side of the ballroom a man was heard singing an old country song. He stopped, embarrassed, and there was laughter.

‘Has she given a Berlin address?’

‘Kreuzberg. An apartment house near the Landwehr Canal.’

‘Tell your captain to take the woman to the apartment. Search it and hold her there. Phone here to confirm that she’s given the correct address and we’ll come along later to talk to her,’ I said. ‘Don’t let her make any phone calls. Make sure the envelope remains unopened; we know what’s in it. I’ll want it as evidence, so don’t let everybody maul it about.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the waiter and departed, picking his way across the dance floor as the dancers walked off it.

‘Why didn’t you tell me he was one of our people?’ I asked Werner.

Werner giggled. ‘You should have seen your face.’

‘You’re drunk, Werner,’ I said.

‘You didn’t even recognize a plainclothes cop. What’s happening to you, Bernie?’

‘I should have guessed. They always have them clearing away the dirty dishes; a cop doesn’t know enough about food and wine to serve anything.’

‘You didn’t think it was worth watching his car, did you?’

He was beginning to irritate me. I said, ‘If I had your kind of money, I wouldn’t be dragging around with a lot of cops and security men.’

‘What would you be doing?’

‘With money? If I didn’t have the kids, I’d find some little pension in Tuscany, somewhere not too far from the beach.’

‘Admit it; you didn’t think it was worth watching his car, did you?’

‘You’re a genius.’

‘No need for sarcasm,’ said Werner. ‘You’ve got him now. Without me you would have ended up with egg on your face.’ He burped very softly, holding a hand over his mouth.

‘Yes, Werner,’ I said.

‘Let’s go and arrest the bastard … I had a feeling about that car – the way he locked the doors and then looked round like someone might be waiting there.’ There had always been a didactic side to Werner; he should have been a schoolteacher, as his mother wanted.

‘You’re a drunken fool, Werner,’ I said.

‘Shall I go and arrest him?’

‘Go and breathe all over him,’ I said.

Werner smiled. Werner had proved what a brilliant field agent he could be. Werner was very very happy.

He made a fuss of course. He wanted his lawyer and wanted to talk to his boss and to some friend of his in the government. I knew the type only too well; he was treating us as if we’d been caught stealing secrets for the Russians. He was still protesting when he departed with the arrest team. They were not impressed; they’d seen it all before. They were experienced men, brought in from the BfV’s ‘political office’ in Bonn.

They took him to the BfV office in Spandau, but I decided they’d get nothing but indignation out of him that night. Tomorrow perhaps he’d simmer down a little and get nervous enough to say something worth hearing before the time came when they’d have to charge him or release him. Luckily it was a decision I wouldn’t have to make. Meanwhile, I decided to go and see if there was anything to be got out of the woman.

Werner drove. He didn’t speak much on the journey back to Kreuzberg. I stared out of the window. Berlin is a sort of history book of twentieth-century violence, and every street corner brought a recollection of something I’d heard, seen, or read. We followed the road alongside the Landwehr Canal, which twists and turns through the heart of the city. Its oily water holds many dark secrets. Back in 1919, when the Spartakists attempted to seize the city by an armed uprising, two officers of the Horse Guards took the badly beaten Rosa Luxemburg – a Communist leader – from their headquarters at the Eden Hotel, next to the Zoo, shot her dead and threw her into the canal. The officers pretended that she’d been carried off by angry rioters, but four months later her bloated corpse floated up and got jammed into a lock gate. Now, in East Berlin, they name streets after her.