London Match

‘That’s all past history,’ said Dick, running a thin bony hand through his curly hair so that he could take a surreptitious look at his big black wristwatch, the kind that works deep under water.

I’d always suspected that Dicky would be more comfortable with his hair cut short and brushed, and in the dark suits, white shirts and old school ties that were de rigueur for senior staff. But he persisted in being the only one of us who wore faded denim, cowboy boots, coloured neckerchiefs, and black leather because he thought it would help to identify him as an infant prodigy. But perhaps I had it the wrong way round; perhaps Dicky would have been happier to keep the trendy garb and be ‘creative’ in an advertising agency.

He zipped the front of his jacket up and down again and said, ‘You’re the local hero. You are the one who brought Stinnes to us at a time when everyone here said it couldn’t be done.’

‘Is that what they were saying? I wish I’d known. The way I heard it, a lot of people were saying I did everything to avoid bringing him in because I was frightened his debriefing would drop me into it.’

‘Well, anyone who was spreading that sort of story is now looking pretty damned stupid.’

‘I’m not in the clear yet, Dicky. You know it and I know it, so let’s stop all this bullshit.’

He held up his hand as if to ward off a blow. ‘You’re still not clear on paper,’ said Dicky. ‘On paper … and you know why?’

‘No, I don’t know why. Tell me.’

Dicky sighed. ‘For the simple but obvious reason that this Department needs an excuse to hold Stinnes in London Debriefing Centre and keep on pumping him. Without an ongoing investigation of our own staff, we’d have to hand Stinnes over to MI5 … That’s why the Department haven’t cleared you yet: it’s a department necessity, Bernard, nothing sinister about it.’

‘Who’s in charge of the Stinnes debriefing?’ I asked.

‘Don’t look at me, old friend. Stinnes is a hot potato. I don’t want any part of that one. Neither does Bret … no one up here on the top floor wants anything to do with it.’

‘Things could change,’ I said. ‘If Stinnes gives us a couple more winners like this one, then a few people will start to see that being in charge of the Stinnes debriefing could be the road to fame and fortune.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Dicky. ‘The tip-off you handled in Berlin was just for openers … a few quick forays before Moscow tumble what’s happening to their networks. Once the dust settles, the interrogators will take Stinnes through the files … right?’

‘Files? You mean they’ll be poking into all our past operations?’

‘Not all of them. I don’t suppose they’ll go back to discover how Christopher Marlowe discovered that the Spanish Armada had sailed.’ Dicky permitted himself a smile at this joke. ‘It’s obvious that the Department will want to discover how good our guesses were. They’ll play all the games again, but this time they’ll know which ones have a happy ending.’

‘And you’ll go along with that?’

‘They won’t consult me, old son. I’m just German Stations Controller; I’m not the D-G. I’m not even on the Policy Committee.’

‘Giving Stinnes access to department archives would be showing a lot of trust in him.’

‘You know what the old man’s like. Deputy D-G came in yesterday on one of his rare visits to the building. He’s enraptured about the progress of the Stinnes debriefing.’

‘If Stinnes is a plant …’

‘Ah, if Stinnes is a plant …’ Dicky sank down in his Charles Eames chair and put his feet on the matching footstool. The night was dark outside and the windowpanes were like ebony reflecting a perfect image of the room. Only the antique desk light was on; it made a pool of light on the table where the report and transcript were placed side by side. Dicky almost disappeared into the gloom except when the light reflected from the brass buckle of his belt or shone on the gold medallion he wore suspended inside his open-neck shirt. ‘But the idea that Stinnes is a plant is hard to sustain when he’s just given us three well-placed KGB agents in a row.’

He looked at his watch before shouting ‘Coffee’ loudly enough for his secretary to hear in the adjoining room. When Dicky worked late, his secretary worked late too. He didn’t trust the duty roster staff with making his coffee.

‘Will he talk, this one you arrested in Berlin? He had a year with the Bonn Defence Ministry, I notice from the file.’

‘I didn’t arrest him; we left it to the Germans. Yes, he’ll talk if they push him hard enough. They have the evidence and – thanks to Volkmann – they’re holding the woman who came to collect it from the car.’

‘And I’m sure you put all that in your report. Are you now the official secretary of the Werner Volkmann fan club? Or is this something you do for all your old school chums?’

‘He’s very good at what he does.’

‘And so we all agree, but don’t tell me that but for Volkmann, we wouldn’t have picked up the woman. Staking out the car is standard procedure. Ye gods, Bernard, any probationary cop would do that as a matter of course.’

‘A commendation would work wonders for him.’

‘Well, he’s not getting any bloody commendation from me. Just because he’s your close friend, you think you can inveigle any kind of praise and privilege out of me for him.’

‘It wouldn’t cost anything, Dicky,’ I said mildly.

‘No, it wouldn’t cost anything,’ said Dicky sarcastically. ‘Not until the next time he makes some monumental cock-up. Then someone asks me how come I commended him; then it would cost something. It would cost me a chewing out and maybe a promotion.’

‘Yes, Dicky,’ I said.

Promotion? Dicky was two years younger than me and he’d already been promoted several rungs beyond his competence. What promotion did he have his eye on now? He’d only just fought off Bret Rensselaer’s attempt to take over the German desk. I’d thought he’d be satisfied to consolidate his good fortune.

‘And what do you make of this Englishwoman?’ He tapped the roughly typed transcript of her statement. ‘Looks as if you got her talking.’

‘I couldn’t stop her,’ I said.

‘Like that, was it? I don’t want to go all through it again tonight. Anything important?’

‘Some inconsistencies that should be followed up.’

‘For instance?’

‘She was working in London, handling selected items for immediate shortwave radio transmission to Moscow.’

‘Must have been bloody urgent,’ said Dicky. So he’d noticed that already. Had he waited to see if I brought it up? ‘And that means damned good. Right? I mean, not even handled through the Embassy radio, so it was a source they wanted to keep very very secret.’

‘Fiona’s material probably,’ I said.

‘I wondered if you’d twig that,’ said Dicky. ‘It was obviously the stuff your wife was betraying out of our day-to-day operational files.’

He liked to twist the knife in the wound. He held me personally responsible for what Fiona had done; he’d virtually said so on more than one occasion.

‘But the material kept coming.’

Dicky frowned. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘It kept coming. First-grade material even after Fiona ran for it.’

‘This woman’s transmitted material wasn’t all from the same source,’ said Dicky. ‘I remember what she said when you played your tape to me.’

He picked up the transcript and tried to find what he wanted in the muddle of humms and hahhs and ‘indistinct passage’ marks that are always a part of transcripts from such tape recordings. He put the sheets down again.

‘Well anyway, I remember there were two assignment codes: Jake and Ironfoot. Is that what’s worrying you?’

‘We should follow it up!’ I said. ‘I don’t like loose ends like that. The dates suggest that Fiona was Ironfoot. Who the hell was Jake?’