Lime's Photograph (28 page)

The man referred to as Hippie in the surveillance report had mentioned a number of Spanish names. I recognised only one of them. Today he was a well-known television personality with a string of quiz shows on one of the privately owned TV channels.

I continued to read.

Hippie: I’ve heard about a Danish journalist and photographer who has good contacts with the Basques and the underground scene.

Ljubimov: Yes …

Hippie: He’s travelled a lot. Bit of a nomad, but good at his job. So they say. Lebanon, GDR, Moscow, Basque Country.

He goes where the pictures are.

Ljubimov: Is he right-wing?

Hippie: Progressive, liberal. Like everyone else he flirts with socialism, or rather the naïve Spanish version of Durruti’s
anarchist ideas …

Ljubimov: But that’s reactionary.

Hippie: I don’t think it goes very deep, and he can be moulded. I’d call him progressive. I wouldn’t call him reactionary.

Ljubimov: A potential contract?

Hippie: Maybe. Maybe more likely a source without actually knowing it. He’s never got enough money … drinks too much … likes the ladies … so maybe later it would be worth pursuing the money angle. He’s got a lot of contacts even though he’s only in his mid-20s.

Ljubimov: Sounds promising. What’s his name?

Hippie: Lime. Peter Lime.

Ljubimov: (laughter) Like Harry Lime. Well, rather symbolic.

Hippie: It’s his real name, so they say.

Ljubimov: OK. Follow it up. You’ve had good results with a Dane before. They’re usually naïve and guileless people. They often see that our convictions are right, even though they don’t completely support the working-class cause. But don’t forget the Spanish. They have top priority.

Hippie: OK.

Ljubimov: The money will be at the usual drop. Share it around.

Hippie: OK.

Ljubimov: And take care. It’s a critical time.

Hippie: Isn’t it always?

The subjects leave the room and conclude their conversation in the entrance hall where the electronic surveillance is not operative.

The surveillance group recommends that investigations continue and that surveillance of the named Peter Lime is
implemented, and in addition that funds be allocated to establish Hippie’s identity, that the unit in Navarre be informed and that cross-border surveillance be intensified.

I leant back in my chair and re-read the lines that described my youthful self. It was a very precise description, but it was still strange to have been the subject of a conversation between two agents. It was an encroachment on my privacy, an intrusion. It was as if a huge telephoto lens had been trained on me. It seemed like an act of violence to observe and divulge someone’s secrets, be they political allegiances or love affairs. My hands were trembling slightly, not just because I had been mentioned in the report, but also because I was wondering who Hippie might be. I had pictured a young Oscar, but that didn’t fit with the fact that I had met him – to the best of my knowledge by chance – in the spring of 1977, a year after this conversation had taken place. Wouldn’t he have made contact with me almost immediately? And the impulsive, charming, fun Oscar hardly fitted with the cold-blooded East German who spoke of a supply of explosives as if it were a consignment of bananas. I could see that Hippie wasn’t an East German agent, although maybe he was a double agent. His real employer was the KGB. Maybe the East Germans didn’t know what his game was, but my knowledge of the world of espionage wasn’t extensive enough to understand what was going on.

I thought again about myself and the agent’s description of me. Maybe it was accurate, but who knows what they were like when they were young? We think we remember who we were, but every memory is rewritten and edited, every memory is full of holes.

My legs got twitchy, and I went to see if I could find anything stronger to drink, but Oscar and Gloria hadn’t kept any of the hard stuff in the office for years. So I opened another beer and rang Don Alfonzo. He answered straight away, as if he had been waiting for
my call.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Yes, my friend.”

“I’d like to talk with the man who calls himself Don Felipe.”

“That’s not possible, my friend. But you can talk to me.”

“I feel dirty,” I said. “I know I’m not being rational.”

“It’s a very human reaction, Pedro. It’s as if one has been molested.”

“Did they ever find out who Hippie was?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“As is the case with so much else in this world, random factors spoiled the scheme. The French got tired of Victor Ljubimov’s double game in Paris, blew the whistle on him and expelled him from the country. With his cover blown, he couldn’t travel in the West again. He was of no further use as a handler. Hippie was assigned to another one, but we never found out where they met. That cover address was never used again. Do you know who Hippie was?”

“Maybe,” I said. I paused. “What have you got on Oscar?”

I dreaded his reply, feeling the palms of my hands begin to sweat despite the artificial coolness of the office.

“I thought you might ask that. Nothing. Born in Hamburg. Left-wing journalist, very radical in his younger days. Today a solid and affluent citizen who pays his tax on time and contributes to the common good of the nation.”

I was unbelievably relieved.

“What about me. What have they got on me?” I said.

“Nothing on you either.”

“Nothing! Wasn’t I under surveillance?”

“Perhaps, my friend. But we haven’t got anything. That doesn’t mean that you weren’t under surveillance, but the intelligence services are bureaucracies and bureaucracies make lots of mistakes. Reports are
filed in the wrong place, index numbers disappear, aliases are changed and there’s no cross-referencing. The wrong files get destroyed or mislaid. Don’t think of the intelligence services as organisations run by people of infallible genius. They are huge bureaucracies with their share of power struggles, drunkenness, slovenliness, stupidity, paper-pushing, little office dust-ups and love affairs, just like any other. We have your details, know that you fulfil Spanish residence permit requirements and don’t cheat on your tax return, but otherwise nothing.”

I could hear the mirth in his voice. It was one of the longest speeches he had ever made and it was clear that he took great pleasure in it. For some reason the pressure in my head eased and I laughed with him.

“So the game stops here?” I said.

His voice became serious again.

“Indeed it could, were it not for Amelia and Maria Luisa.”

“Yes. Exactly,” I said, and felt the familiar knot in my stomach.

“It puts a different light on the matter. Now it’s more than a case of recording history, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” I said again, and waited for him to play his hand. I realised that he had stepped into character as handler and that I was the one being handled. Without my being aware of it, he had quietly steered me towards an investigation. I thought I had chosen to do it myself, but somewhere along the line he had made the decision for me. As if he could read my thoughts, he said, “You reached that conclusion on your own. I’m just an old man who has a certain amount of experience. But it was your own choice.”

“What does your experience tell you now?” I asked.

“Ring the woman in Copenhagen.”

“Why?”

“Because perhaps the answer is to be found in Berlin, and she can
help you get to the archives there quicker than I can. Take care of yourself, Pedro.”

He hung up, as if he already thought he had said too much on the telephone. Old habits don’t die easily. I lit a cigarette and found the numbers Clara Hoffmann had given me. It was Sunday evening, but I rang her home number anyway.

She answered, and a clear image of her came to mind as I heard her soft, cultivated voice.

“It’s Peter Lime. I’m ringing from Madrid.”

“Good evening, Peter. What a pleasant surprise.”

“I’ve found something out about Lime’s photograph,” I said.

“Ah-ha.”

“I’ve found another photograph and I’ve found a name.”

“That sounds very interesting.”

“But I don’t think we should talk about it on the phone. It would probably be easier to meet face to face. Because I might need your help.”

“One favour is always worth another,” she said. There was the sound of faint music in the background and I could picture her sitting in a comfortable chair, reading a book. I felt myself becoming sentimental at the thought of such snug domesticity. She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring when I’d met her in Madrid, so I imagined her alone. Maybe she was having a quiet drink or a cup of tea. The living room would be snug. Danish women were good at that. Creating an atmosphere of cosiness, making the home a safe, warm and relaxed place. Danes spend so much of the year indoors that they use huge amounts of energy and money making everything as comfortable and attractive as possible. The home has to be an impregnable fortress.

I shook the feeling off. That time had definitively been and gone. I wasn’t going to put down roots again. I wasn’t going to risk such an intense and painful loss again. I thought of a line from an old Janis Joplin number. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

“Are you there, Peter?” she said, probably for the second time. Had we been on first name terms before now?

“Yes. Sorry. I just got distracted for a moment. I didn’t hear what you said.”

“I asked if I should come to Madrid?”

“No. I’ll come to Copenhagen tomorrow, if I can get a ticket. Otherwise the day after. Then I’ll ring.”

“I look forward to seeing you.”

“You too.”

“And your photograph,” she said.

“That’s a different matter,” I said, and hung up.

There was an SAS flight the next day with plenty of spare seats, leaving Madrid at 15.15, arriving in Copenhagen at 18.25. It was just as well that it was an afternoon flight because that night I fell seriously off the wagon. I stayed at the office drinking beer for another half hour and then I went back to the hotel and downed most of a large bottle of vodka that Carlos in reception fetched for me. Up until then I had controlled my intake of alcohol, naïvely thinking that I could drink like other people, but of course it couldn’t last. I spent an evening and a night filled with booze and self-contempt, sentimentality and disgust. Fortunately I didn’t have a gun. In the worst haze of drunkenness I realised that I didn’t want to live, but I was too drunk to go downtown and try to find a weapon that could end it all. Besides, I probably knew that I wouldn’t have the nerve when it came to it. But life was shit. I looked at myself in the mirror above the bed and didn’t like what I saw. Unkempt hair, bloodshot, desolate and furious eyes, the pain of missing Amelia and Maria Luisa as strong as the day they had left me. At some point in the middle of the night I felt their presence in the room, and I talked with them, and they answered. In the end I went out like a light.

Next morning I woke with trembling hands, a burning sensation in my stomach and a splitting headache. The room stank of smoke and
booze. From down on Calle Echégaray I could hear the dustcart lumbering along the narrow street. Clanking and clattering, metallic grating and crashing like thousands of cymbals, the dustmen’s warning shouts to pedestrians who had to pin themselves against the walls, all the morning sounds flooded in through the open window. I rolled up my bed linen and threw the clothes I had slept in into the wastepaper basket. The staff of the Hotel Inglés had undoubtedly seen worse. I drank a couple of bottles of mineral water and washed down two pills with cola. I didn’t indulge in the empty promise of never doing it again. I knew my own weakness, but maybe self-contempt could be turned into something constructive. Would I want to look at myself in the mirror again? Had Amelia and Maria Luisa really been there during the night? What had they said? I seemed to hear their voices – “You mustn’t kill yourself. You mustn’t die and leave us!” But that couldn’t be right. Because they had died and left me. They had been taken from me. That was the whole injustice.

I took a long shower, dressed in clean clothes from top to bottom and went down to a bar, where I ordered a huge glass of coffee with milk and another bottle of water. The street buzzed with normal, Monday morning activity. It smelled fresh now that the water truck had driven through and sluiced the weekend grime down the drains. I began to feel better and greeted acquaintances and the bartenders standing outside their premises in the lovely morning light. The air was fresh and invigorating and the heat had yet to take hold and cast its clammy mantle over Madrid.

I packed my spare jeans, last t-shirt, cotton shirt, socks and underwear into my bag along with my toiletries, and carried the suitcase of photographs down to reception. Of course they would store the suitcase for me. They could put it in the basement, and it could stay there for as long as I wanted. For as long as the Hotel Inglés continued to exist, and after all, it had survived both revolution and civil war,
Carlos reminded me. I rang SAS and booked my ticket, and got them to reserve me a room at the Hotel Royal in Copenhagen. That left me enough time to buy some clothes and have a lunch of vegetable soup and trout, plus more water.

Once I was on the plane I had a Bloody Mary and felt my jangling nerves settle down. After that I stuck to a quarter bottle of wine, suppressing my bad conscience and fell asleep. I woke when I heard the sound of the engine change and my ears registered the fall in pressure. Looking out of the little window I could see the Øresund, the strait between Denmark and Sweden, sparkling blue and speckled with a myriad of tiny, colourful yachts.

Copenhagen looked like its old self, lovely in the evening sunshine, with swarms of brightly coloured bikes and the traffic running smoothly and calmly. People grumbled about the heat, but after stifling Madrid it felt pleasant and fresh with a faint smell of salt drifting in from the Øresund.

I didn’t ring anyone, but stayed in the hotel and avoided the minibar. I switched on the television, and was channel hopping, thinking about Bruce Springsteen’s “57 Channels (And Nothing On)” when I came upon one of my old colleagues, Klaus Pedersen, on the News with a feature about Lola.