The Girl in Berlin (19 page)

‘Piffle.’ Jordan frowned. ‘I’ve had my eye on Harris ever since he arrived in 1948 and I can tell you he’s a lamb to the slaughter so far as anything to do with espionage or skulduggery of any kind is involved.’ He stared in an unfriendly way at McGovern. ‘Are you telling me that’s really why you’ve been sent over from the Branch? Very irregular. And pointless.’ And I also don’t believe you, he seemed to be saying.

McGovern hadn’t warmed to his host, a tall, bony, lantern-jawed, public-school specimen of a type he’d too
often encountered in the war, full of militaristic confidence in his own rightness at every turn. He wasn’t surprised to be patronised – MI6 looked down on everyone else – but he wasn’t quite ready to be insulted. Nevertheless he kept his temper.

‘I know it’s irregular,’ he said politely, ‘and obviously I’m not up to speed on all sorts of things. It’s simply that it was thought a fresh eye might be useful. I’ll certainly not be invading anyone’s territory. Harris was planning to return to England with a German girl he wants to marry. There’s a bit of concern about that. Only now it seems he’s changed his mind. So perhaps my presence wasn’t really needed, after all.’

‘Your very presence is an invasion, old chap.’ With that there was a bleak silence until the waiter served their food. Then Jordan continued: ‘If the German woman wants to move to England, to that extent it could be interesting. She could be a spy. Half the refugees who cross over into West Berlin are spies. It’s a massive problem. There are so many of them the chances of picking them up are infinitesimal,’ he said bleakly. ‘Well, we’ll talk more about that later. But tell me your first impressions of Germany.’

‘I’ve only been here a wee couple of days. They seem to be doing a lot.’

‘The determination of the West Germans is extraordinary. Admirable. The Allies have done a lot too. But it changes all the time. At first it was education. Education in democracy, education to get the country going again. Now we’re rowing back on the whole education policy effort, it didn’t work, no support from the Americans. Now it’s more
cultural
policy. We’re trying to de-Nazify the Germans by putting on Shakespeare. As if they didn’t have enough bloody culture of their own. And look where it got them. You know, the Beethoven-loving Nazi, the SS Obergruppenführer who weeps as he listens to Mozart. A caricature, but accurate.’

McGovern thought of Feierabend and his love of opera.
‘My other contact introduced me to a Dr Hoffmann, who knows Colin Harris and arranged for me to meet him.’

The way in which Jordan’s face almost imperceptibly rigidified told Jack that this was significant and unwelcome news. ‘Your other contact being?’

‘Theodor Feierabend.’

‘Feierabend.’ Jordan carefully cut some meat from his shank of pork. He munched. ‘Delicious. Is yours good?’

‘Excellent, thank you.’

‘Feierabend,’ repeated Jordan. ‘Well, well.’

‘Why – is he unreliable?’

‘It makes perfect sense, I suppose, as a way of getting to meet Harris. But beware of Ulrich Hoffmann. He’s about to become a little too well known,’ he said. ‘His secretary was arrested last week.’

‘I didna trust him at all.’

‘Sound instinct.’

McGovern waited to hear more, but Jordan lifted the wine bottle. ‘Another glass? German reds are insufficiently appreciated, in my view. The cherry note in this one is very attractive. You can’t compare it to a good Burgundy or a claret, even a Côtes du Rhône, but pleasant enough all the same.’

McGovern was not a wine drinker. His father drank beer and the occasional wee dram of whisky. Lily’s parents didn’t drink at all. Nevertheless McGovern found he was enjoying the light, soft flavour of the wine. ‘It’s good,’ he said.

‘Let me tell you something,’ said Jordan. ‘Do you know there are more kidnappings in West Berlin than in any other city in the world? This is kidnap capital, McGovern. Now, there are different kinds of kidnappings. Type one: immediately after the war Russian agents would snatch people who were, or who were believed to be, Nazi war criminals. Often as not they were helped by Germans in the Western sectors and the Americans simply allowed it to happen. We were all against the Nazis
then, weren’t we? War crimes suspects? Let them face a firing squad or rot in a Russian labour camp.

‘That didn’t last. Then we move on to type two. It wasn’t long before CIC – the American Gestapo, as the natives call the American intelligence corps – realised how badly they needed some of these Germans. So the game became more complicated. The Germans began to realise what was in it for them and it wasn’t long before they were offering their services on all sides. West Berlin’s the best place in the world for spying on the Russians. That doesn’t surprise you, does it? And it’s rapidly becoming the best place to spy on
us
. That’s part of the point of the so-called German Democratic Republic. It’s fast developing into the Soviet’s intelligence arm.’

‘Does this have to do with Hoffmann?’

‘I don’t know why his secretary has been arrested. Perhaps he had nothing to do with any kidnappings. But he’s certainly not to be trusted.’

‘So why is Colin Harris mixed up with him?’

‘Good question. But as I said, Harris is an innocent abroad. God knows why he wants to marry some German girl, but I’d bet he’s doing it for the most honourable or even charitable reasons. A more interesting question is, why is
she
doing it?’

‘Hoffmann introduced us. She just wants to get away, that’s the feeling I got.’

‘You met her, did you?’ Jordan eyed McGovern as if surprised at this evidence of enterprise. ‘And Hoffmann introduced you. Interesting. But if she’s so keen to get away, why doesn’t she just go, claim refugee status?’

‘I think she’s terrified of her father.’

They ate in silence until Jordan said: ‘How long have you worked with our friend?’

‘About eighteen months.’

‘What do you think of him?’

The question completely threw McGovern. He had no
idea what on earth he was supposed to say. It was the sort of question you just shouldn’t be asked. He struggled to put into words his complex feelings about the man he admired and to some extent tried to emulate. ‘He seems very able.’

‘He is.’

McGovern ventured a question of his own. ‘Have you worked with him?’

‘At the end of the war. He was here then. A brave man. Awarded the MC for some wartime exploit, I can’t remember now what it was. His job here was sifting through the refugees. He was the absolutely best interrogator we had. He was outstanding. The Americans liked him because of that. And even before they got hold of the idea, he was one of the first to see how very useful some of our erstwhile enemies might be. He had the Cold War mentality right from the start. He was criticised for it at first, but in the end of course we all came round to his point of view.’ Jordan signalled to the waiter. ‘You’ll have pudding? They do very good fruit tarts.’ As the waiter cleared their plates Jordan continued: ‘Yes, he was viewed with suspicion at first, was our friend. He was the Robespierre of the Allies – you know, purer than the pure and yet the most fanatical of the lot.’

‘Fanatical?’ This didn’t at all fit in with McGovern’s image of Kingdom.

‘Our American friends were shipping everything they could lay their hands on back across the Atlantic, silver, grand pianos, art works, you name it, and that was quite apart from all the low-level stuff – drugs, cigarettes, money and so on. Kingdom very much disapproved of the occupying forces who got involved in the black market. Found it all very
infra dig
. And the way women were treated. What the Allies did to women isn’t something to be proud of, you know. The Russians were the worst, but everyone did their bit. Although I have to say we were considered a bit more decent than the others. Well,
Kingdom was rather strict about all that, which didn’t make him exactly popular. As a result there were one or two attempts to float rumours about him.’

‘Rumours?’

‘That he wasn’t quite what he seemed. Either that he was lining his pockets like everyone else or that he had some other line of activity that no-one knew about. But no-one could ever stick anything on him. Nothing
to
stick. And anyway all those rumours died down when it became clear how useful he was. Absolutely bloody indispensable. I do wonder, though, if he’s lost his touch a bit now. He does seem to have a bit of an
idée fixe
about Harris, wouldn’t you say, he does seem to exaggerate his importance. I don’t understand that. In no way is Harris agent material. For either side.’

‘Harris certainly spoke out very much against it when I met him.’

‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he. But in his case I believe it’s the truth.’

McGovern lay in bed in the Hotel Am Zoo, restless and unable to sleep. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t get used to the peculiar eiderdown with no sheets and the mattress which was far too soft. He could not stop thinking about the lunch with Jordan. The muted hostility hadn’t surprised him, but Jordan’s hints and innuendoes had been unsettling, to say the least.

Next morning he sat for a long time over breakfast, reading a copy of
Der Spiegel
, in which there was a brief, factual report of the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean. He had nothing to do until his rendezvous with Harris at the hotel in the afternoon. The city waited outside to be explored and he was free to wander round it. That was an intriguing prospect. It was a long time since he’d had such an opportunity. It would also allow him to see if he was being followed. He set off with enthusiasm.

He found a bookshop and spent an hour browsing the shelves, trying to interpret the mood of the nation (or rather the half-nation) from the new novels laid out on the tables at the front. He sat in a café for a while, and then walked again with no determined purpose. There was nothing to make him feel anyone was shadowing him. From time to time, in the bookshop and the café, he attempted to get into conversation, but his fellow customers were guarded and he didn’t get far.

West Berlin was a discordant mixture of bomb site and building site. Impossible to settle down to an interesting walk because at every turn you were jarred by the destruction and thwarted by dead ends. In other places your ears were battered by the tumult of building sites with their wrecking balls, tractors and cement mixers. To get away from it all he went into a church that had survived the bombs because he saw the poster outside advertising a lunchtime concert of string quartets by Brahms. There was just a small audience scattered along the pews to hear the music, which was unfamiliar to McGovern. He found it tragic and uplifting at the same time, but also soothing, beautiful.

As the time drew near for his meeting with Harris he made his way slowly back to the hotel, still watchful, but plotting what questions he could ask the Englishman without arousing suspicion. He even wondered if Harris would turn up, so it was a relief to find the Englishman waiting for him in the foyer.

‘Mr Harris. I’m delighted to see you. It’s good of you to spare the time.’

They shook hands.

‘Let’s get out of here. This place makes me feel uncomfortable. Full of profiteers, I should imagine.’

McGovern couldn’t help grinning to himself. None of his dad’s Communist Party friends had had the impeccable upper-class accent with which Harris spoke. These patrician Reds mystified him. Yet it was too easy to dismiss them all as
futile romantics or malcontents trying to work off some grudge against the system that had nurtured them so richly.

‘We’ll find a café somewhere,’ said McGovern soothingly.

The place they found on the Kurfürstendamm could hardly have been more congenial to Harris than the Hotel Am Zoo, but he sat down resignedly enough and took out his cigarettes.

‘Have one of mine – they’re no so easy to get hold of here still, I understand.’

Harris smiled. ‘I was in London recently. I brought my own supply back with me, but thanks, anyway. So what do you want to find out about Berlin?’

‘Whatever you can tell me.’

Harris looked at the tip of his cigarette. ‘The people? The place? The politics?’

‘Anything,’ said McGovern amiably. ‘Your own impressions and, of course, how you yourself came to be here. There must be a story there, too.’

‘Not really. Well, to start with the people: they’ve shown tremendous resilience. They don’t think about the past. They just look forward. The Nazis – swept under the carpet in the West. But that’s a strength in a way. I was in London recently and honestly it depressed me. The British are so weighed down by the past; we’re shucking off the Empire, but in the worst possible way, cutting loose and leaving a mess – and at the same time there’s all that triumphalism about the war. We stood alone, we won the war, all that. It was the Russians who really won the war, but no-one gives them any credit.’

‘So what you’re saying is all in all you prefer Berlin.’

Harris smiled rather grimly. ‘Well, there are problems here too.’

‘Tell me about them.’

Harris was well informed, but he painted a rather abstract picture. He was keen to emphasise the benefits of the new
East Germany, yet his account was shot through with hints of criticism.

‘Very interesting, but my paper will be wanting the odd wee personal story or two, to flesh out the statistics. Not just that production’s soared, but what that means for the people with jobs, how your neighbours cope with the housing problem.’

‘I tried that line myself, I thought I could sell a few articles to
Picture Post
or something like that but, as I said, the Germans prefer not to talk about themselves. They haven’t time and many of them have too much to hide. Even in the East.’

‘It must be complicated,’ said McGovern, and his sympathy was genuine, ‘and for you too.’

Harris shook his head. ‘It’s impossible to settle here – there’s so much under the surface, undercurrents. I didn’t feel at home in London any more, but I don’t feel at home here either.’

Who can say why two individuals take to each other? But the two men had. McGovern had not forgotten about his task, but now his wanting to know more about Harris was no longer simply an informational exercise. The man intrigued him.