The Girl in Berlin (13 page)

Colin shrugged. ‘Old Schröder, her father, is very unpleasant. Frieda’s desperate to get away from him. She just wants to leave, and … it just seems better, that’s all. Or – that’s what I thought, although now I’m not so sure. You see, there’s been a complication. Someone I met – well, he’s died. You must have seen it in the papers. Konrad Eberhardt. He was very well known.’

‘Eberhardt! I interviewed him only a week or so before his body was found. I didn’t know you knew him.’

‘Well,
they
know I knew him, I’m sure of it. And ever since he died I’ve been followed. And actually I didn’t really know him, not exactly, but a friend of mine … it’s all rather involved. Only now they seem to think he was murdered, don’t they, and
I’m just afraid that somehow they’ll pick on me, that they’ll try to pin it on me.’

‘Don’t be crazy – that’s all in the past.’

‘But they tried to frame me then, so why not now?’

‘For God’s sake – look, don’t start getting a persecution complex. No-one’s interested in you. All they can think about is Burgess and Maclean.’

‘Then why am I being followed?’

‘Colin.’ Alan tried to keep his temper. ‘Look, calm down. Let’s talk about this sensibly.’

‘You think I’m raving? I tell you, I’ve seen him. Following me.’ He stood up jerkily. ‘I’d better be going. It’s hopeless talking to you.’

‘Come on, old chap. Don’t be like that. I’ll walk to the underground with you.’

Colin strode furiously along Oxford Street, so that Alan found it hard to keep up with him. ‘D’you think you’re being followed now?’

Colin also glanced back. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. But you don’t believe I am anyway, do you? I only came looking for you because I thought you might be able to help.’

‘Look, I do want to help, but—’

‘I don’t like to keep asking you for favours.’ Colin was slowing down a bit now and seemed calmer. ‘It was just that I wondered – if you did know anyone – whether you could find out what’s going on. You knew Guy Burgess, didn’t you?’

‘Very slightly.’ Alan’s reply was icy and intended to be. In the first days of journalistic hysteria he’d rather exaggerated his acquaintance with Burgess. Then there’d been a self-important thrill in discussing it. To think that men you’d known socially, had even worked with, could all along have been cloaking their real beliefs and secret activities by inventing a false self, an alternative personality. Extraordinarily interesting! At first everyone had wanted a piece of the action. However, as time
passed and it seemed more and more likely that the missing diplomats really had been spies, the boastful voices fell silent. One didn’t want to be smeared by association.

The last thing he wanted now was to give Colin some crazy idea that he had anything to do with spies and spying. That Colin had even mentioned the name annoyed him. And you never knew what Colin in this insane mood might do – go blabbing to someone…

‘You see, I can’t help wondering – they might think I had something to do with all that, that I helped them get away.’

If this was a confession, Alan knew he absolutely didn’t want to hear it. They stood by the underground entrance. The crowds pushed past them, heads down, weary, self-absorbed.

‘What on earth makes you say that?’ He searched in his pocket for his cigarettes and shuffled one from its pack. ‘Sorry—’ and he offered the packet to Colin.

Colin was not so far gone in his anxiety as not to respond to Alan’s tone of voice. ‘Oh, don’t worry. Of course I didn’t have anything to do with it. But … oh, what’s the use? You wouldn’t understand.’

‘No,’ said Alan, irked by the bustle around them and raising his voice against the grinding sound of a bus turning the corner, the bronchitic wheeze of brakes, the general traffic rumble. ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you’re up to or what you’re doing in East Germany.’

‘Well, no, people like you never understand, do you?’ And Colin turned towards the mouth of the underground station.

Alan grabbed his arm. ‘Hang on. It’s just that – look, when I saw you I assumed you wanted to know if I’d done anything about – about seeing if I could get you some work. And the fact is, I have tried, but it isn’t easy.’

Colin stared. ‘I didn’t expect anything to come of that.’

‘Well, I am trying. Have you got a phone number where you’re staying? There are one or two leads—’

‘I’m going back to Berlin the day after tomorrow.’ But he gave Alan the number of the Paddington hotel.

A few evenings later Kingdom rang to suggest a drink. Alan suggested the Stag’s Head, but Kingdom preferred an obscure bar in Soho, which Alan immediately understood. The Third Programme crowd would have been sure to ask questions.

Miles Kingdom was in an affable mood. ‘Oh, don’t stick to beer, old man, I’ll sock you a gin and tonic.’

‘Thanks. I’d rather have a whisky, actually.’ The sudden reappearance of Kingdom was slightly disturbing, but he thought he might as well get what he could out of it.

‘You’re looking well, Wentworth. You remind me of a Jewish joke I heard recently. “When you’re in love, the whole world’s Jewish.”’

‘I’m not quite sure I get the point.’ But Alan knew it was a reference to Edith. Only he wasn’t in love with Edith … was he?

‘How are
you
, Miles?’

Kingdom smiled. ‘Well, you know, old chap, the best of times, the worst of times.’

‘I can hardly see how it’s the best of times.’

‘Every cloud has a silver lining. And at least
now we know
.’ He looked calm and icy cool as ever, but, of course, Alan thought, he must be bluffing. They knew for certain, then, that the diplomats really were spies? Perhaps not, for Kingdom added: ‘Or do we?’ He drank. ‘I’m wondering if you can do me an awfully big favour.’

‘If it’s about Guy Burgess, I hardly knew him. I wasn’t even at the Beeb when he was.’

‘I know that. And what more is there to say about him? Far too late. No, it’s your friend Colin Harris who interests me.’

Alan felt slightly dizzy. It couldn’t be the result of just one
whisky. It must be nerves. But he wasn’t going to let bloody Kingdom wind him up. ‘Yes. You said. What about him?’

‘I wondered if you’d seen him again.’

Alan swallowed more whisky. ‘What if I have? In the first place I ran into him quite by accident. I mean … I hadn’t seen him for years. We drifted apart, well, he left the country … just disappeared. I don’t know if you know, but there was this trial. He was very bitter.’

‘Of course I know about the trial. Very odd business. It almost seemed as if he’d been framed.’

Alan looked sharply at his companion. Could it possibly be? Did Kingdom know something about it? In which case, Colin wasn’t so crazy to be afraid. But no, he didn’t believe that. Because if it were true, Kingdom would never have hinted. He was just teasing.

‘But you’ve seen him again? Didn’t you say he wants to come back here? Is life in the People’s Republic not living up to expectations?’

Alan shrugged.

‘And with a wife or a girlfriend, you said?’

Remembering the more harmless parts of earlier conversations with Colin, Alan became more expansive. If he tossed Kingdom a scrap of useless information, perhaps he’d stop asking so many questions. ‘The girl doesn’t get on with her father or something. She wants to get away from Germany, come over here. He showed us a snapshot – she looks nice enough. Frieda Schröder, I think that’s the name. But I did rather wonder if he’s doing it out of kindness … pity. He never cared much for women in the past.’

‘So I gather.’ Kingdom stood up. ‘I think I’ll have another.’

‘My round. Another gin?’

‘Make it a double.’

Kingdom sat down again and extracted a cigarette from his case. When Alan returned Kingdom seemed to have lapsed into
a contemplative mood, but after a while he said: ‘I’d just be awfully interested to know what Harris is up to over here. And over there. Amazing him getting married. I suppose one ought to applaud any effort at normality. Everyone always assumed he was a dedicated homosexual.’

‘Everyone?’

‘Well … you know what I mean.’

‘You really can’t expect me to spy on my friends.’

‘Christ, no! Whatever gives you that idea?’ Kingdom smoked in meditative silence for a while. Then: ‘And how’s the lovely Edith Fanshawe? Very talented woman. I heard her on the wireless again the other day. You’re a lucky man.’

‘Lucky?’ Alan spoke indifferently, but silently stiffened with a mixture of anger and alarm. He suddenly hated Edith. If he hadn’t let her entice him back to the bedroom that morning in Deal they’d have caught the earlier train and he wouldn’t have run into Kingdom at the terminus. In which case he wouldn’t now be in this awkward situation.

Kingdom smiled. ‘I see what you’re getting at. I’ve always thought it would be bloody complicated, trying to run two women at the same time. Never went in for it myself.’

Alan tried to remember if Kingdom was married. He had been, he recalled, but something had happened. That’s it, she’d committed suicide.

Kingdom drained his glass. ‘Don’t worry about Harris. I don’t suppose he’s done anything he shouldn’t have done. It’s just that one can’t trust anyone these days.’

Which was pretty rich, Alan thought, coming from a spy.

thirteen

T
HE COMFORTABLE LOUNGE OF
the Hotel Am Zoo with its deep chairs and panelled walls was closer to luxury than McGovern had ever been before, other than on two visits to Lily’s grandparents’ house. The foyer had Turkish carpeting and was decorated with fake-looking portraits of nineteenth-century statesmen or businessmen, as if trying to imitate a stately home. Outside the revolving door the porter, a pantomime figure in a pale blue and silver uniform, patrolled the pavement. McGovern found it ironic that he should have been introduced to this pompous performance of the good life in Berlin of all places.

It had also surprised him to have been provided with a room at such a grand hotel. After settling in he had explored as much of the place as he could, roaming down empty corridors, investigating laundry rooms and looking for emergency exits in case he needed to get away quickly. He’d searched his room for hidden mikes. He’d moved outside and walked all round the building and through the immediate neighbourhood. He had to be prepared for the unexpected.

In fact, there had already been something unexpected: the note that had been waiting for him when he’d arrived the previous evening. A Dr Hoffmann welcomed him to West Berlin and begged permission to meet him the following morning at
10.00 a.m. Kingdom had given McGovern the names of two contacts, but neither of them was called Hoffmann, and no-one had answered the telephone number McGovern had dialled.

As he waited for the unknown Dr Hoffmann his thoughts reverted to Lily. He’d made a brief trip to Glasgow to see her before he left. She’d wanted to know all about his mission, as she called it, to Berlin. They’d walked through the Botanical Gardens. McGovern had his arm tightly round Lily. She’d said how exciting it sounded and hoped it wasn’t dangerous. And wasn’t his job to stop enemies of the state in Britain, not follow them abroad? She’d hit on exactly the nub of it. He’d tried to explain it as a kind of special mission. And no, it wasn’t what he’d normally do. To check up on Harris once he’d left the country was certainly outside the parameters of the work of the Branch. Berlin must be stuffed with secret service personnel who were perfectly capable of keeping tabs on the Englishman.

Kingdom had said: I trust you. I’ve squared it with Gorch. What he hadn’t explained was who he
didn’t
trust, why it was necessary to have McGovern instead and how he’d managed to square things with Gorch, who was normally both a stickler for the correct use of his men and mindful of expense. He’d have expected Gorch to say it was out of the question for a member of the Branch to take unofficial leave in order to undertake some ill-defined assignment overseas.

McGovern had tried to explain to Lily that in the confusion and panic over the missing diplomats, unusual measures had had to be taken. He’d also wondered if it was something to do with the fact that MI5 and MI6 didn’t get on anyway. Kingdom had given him the name of an MI6 man he was to see in Berlin, but had given the impression he’d no great faith in him. He didn’t seem to trust anyone and had told McGovern to keep as quiet as he could the reason for his being in Berlin.

Lily had worried and he’d had to reassure her. He’d miss her so much, he said.

At the same time he couldn’t wait to go. It would take him further from Lily, even if it was only for ten days or so, but it would be the first time he’d ever been to the Continent. That his first trip to Europe was to Berlin of all places brought a rush of adrenalin. It might be his chance to spring free of the stagnant waters of the Branch and find a new sphere of action.

The tension that fizzed through him was a strange heady mixture of loss at leaving and excitement for what lay ahead.

‘
Guten Morgen
, Herr Roberts. You are David Roberts, I presume? Hoffmann. At your service. You received my message, I hope.’

Miles away, McGovern had momentarily forgotten his new name and looked up, startled, at the stranger, then scrambled to his feet and confusedly held out his hand. The German smiled glintingly, eyes shielded behind rimless spectacles.

‘Herr Dr Hoffmann. I was surprised to find your note waiting for me. I was expecting Theodor Feierabend to contact me.’ He watched Hoffmann to see how he reacted.

‘Unfortunately he wasn’t free today,’ said Hoffmann smoothly. ‘I am here instead.’

‘
Sehr freundlich
.’ But McGovern was uneasy. ‘I wasn’t expecting a reception committee,’ he said. His nervousness made him sound rude, but that couldn’t be helped.

‘You speak excellent German, Herr Roberts,’ said the stranger, although McGovern had uttered only a few words. ‘But we can speak in English if you prefer.’

‘I welcome the opportunity to practise my German.’ That he spoke German was, of course, one of the excuses Kingdom had given to justify sending him here. But it was a flimsy one, because there must be hundreds of agents who spoke the language.