The Girl in Berlin (30 page)

‘Does our friend in London honestly believe that if the East Germans were grooming the Schröder woman as a spy, we wouldn’t have got wind of it? For God’s sake, does he think we’re utter idiots? The whole thing stinks. You were badly briefed, in fact it doesn’t sound as if you were properly briefed at all. So much for MI5 and their meticulous attention to detail. There isn’t the slightest chance Colin Harris was involved with the disappearance of Burgess and Maclean and MI5 knows it. That was just an excuse. So what’s the real
reason you’re here? I think you’d better tell me.’

So Jordan thought that the whole thing was a cover and that there was a secret, hidden agenda.

‘You’re saying I’m lying? That I have some other reason for being here? That isn’t true. I’ve been straight with you. I’m here to find out more about Harris.’

‘But what does our friend really want to know about Harris? Why is he interested? We don’t regard Harris as important. So why does he?’

A closer examination of Kingdom’s motives had been something McGovern had been trying to avoid. It was too unsettling. But he knew Jordan was right. He’d asked the same questions himself.

‘He was interested to hear that Harris was travelling with Schröder to Thuringia. That made him sit up, because he said there are uranium mines down there.’

‘Indeed. We’re well aware that Schröder has been to the Saalfeld region. In fact, he is there at this moment. There is trouble brewing there, I can tell you, by the way,’ said Jordan. ‘Saalfeld is also where the Schröders lived, after all, throughout the war, when Schröder was working at Buchenwald. Do you know anything about that area, other than there’s uranium?’

‘Well—’ McGovern recalled what Colin Harris had told him. ‘I heard there was a wee bit of unrest in the region. Dissatisfied workers. The East Germans wouldn’t like that, I can see.’

‘Damn right, they wouldn’t. But whose side is Harris on? We’re pretty clear about Schröder. He and Hoffmann have worked together for a while. At least, Hoffmann has used Schröder when it suited him. But Harris – we were never that interested in him until you came along. When you were here a few weeks ago everything you told me convinced me our friend in London’s losing his touch. He seems to be panicking. I suppose the question we should be asking is, why is he panicking? Perhaps there is genuinely something to worry
about.’ He laughed. ‘Well, of course there is. There’s always something to worry about. But what particularly in connection with Harris?’

He lifted a hand to attract the attention of the barman and ordered a further round of whisky.

‘In the meantime I have another surprise for you. I don’t believe it’s been reported much back home, but Dr Hoffmann’s been arrested. So it’s hardly surprising he wasn’t in his office when you went to see him there. If you’d informed me beforehand that you were planning to visit him I could have alerted you and then all this wouldn’t have happened.’

‘The men who interrogated me told me that. It was a bit of a shock, I’m telling you. But are you saying Feierabend knew that? He arranged the visit deliberately so that I’d be – what –
killed
?’

‘’Fraid so, old man. Roughed up at any rate. He must have done. So he dropped you in it, didn’t he. That monkey’s full of tricks. Wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him.’

‘Why is Hoffmann under arrest?’

‘Ah, it’s a complicated story. No-one comes out of it well, but that’s normally the case in Berlin. Well, Dr Hoffmann, as I think you know, lives in the British sector, or did, yet he had his legal office in the East. What you probably don’t know is that he was in the Abwehr – Nazi intelligence – during the war. Pretty high up too. On several occasions he invited individuals to his office with the promise of work for them. Several prominent ex-German army and Abwehr men, old wartime friends of his, have disappeared in the last few years after accepting an invitation from Hoffmann. At the time of these disappearances – kidnappings in fact – the families of the missing men raised the alarm, tried to get something done about it, but any enquiries there may have been ran into the ground. The occupying forces weren’t that bothered; in fact they actively hindered the widows’ campaign. When the Americans were in charge of all
things to do with the law, they were content to turn a blind eye to many things, especially at the beginning, before the war on communism took centre stage.’

‘So Hoffmann was working for the Russians. But he was in Nazi intelligence during the war.’

Jordan smiled. ‘Plenty of Nazis have changed sides pretty damned quick. In many cases, of course, they weren’t even that keen on the Nazis in the first place, but they just went along with whoever was in power. However, it was always felt that as Hoffmann was an important figure in the Abwehr – he ran things in Norway for a while – he must have been a signed-up Hitlerite.’

‘So it’s been fairly easy for people to cover their tracks? That’s shocking.’

‘Good God, man, what do you expect? With all the chaos when the war ended it was easy for them to slip away and then with the development of the Cold War, priorities changed.’

‘I’ve heard that explanation, or excuse, but even if it’s not surprising that more Nazis haven’t been brought to trial, I still find it shocking.’

‘In that case you’ll be pleased to hear that in Hoffmann’s case retribution is at hand, or seemed to be. Because recently everything has changed. With the creation of the new West Germany has come the setting up of a separate, autonomous West German judicial system.

‘As soon as this happened two of the widows of the vanished men – well, one has to assume they’re widows – launched legal actions against Hoffmann. The independent West German legal system is keen to show its muscle. As a result, Dr Hoffmann was arrested by the West German authorities and charged with the kidnappings of these two men. Remember I told you this was the kidnap capital of the world? One of them has disappeared completely, someone claims to have seen the other one in some Russian labour camp, but no-one knows whether
this is true. The story that’s emerging is that they were war criminals and were wanted by the Russians, who’ve continued to be rather more zealous in their pursuit of Nazis than we have been since the political priorities changed. The kidnapped men were members of the Abwehr. And because Dr Hoffmann had also been an Abwehr officer he was able to entice former comrades into the Soviet zone, where they were arrested and immediately deported, charged, murdered or sent to a labour camp. Charming show of loyalty to your old war comrades.’

McGovern felt out of his depth. ‘So he must have changed sides. He
is
working for the Russians.’

‘Ah – but that’s what’s so interesting. I don’t think so, because CIC, the Americans, that is, are furious. They have challenged the legality of the steps taken by the West Germans and are trying to get Hoffmann out of prison. Now, why should they do that unless he was working for them? I have my contacts in CIC, of course, but I haven’t been able to get much out of them, they play their cards bloody close to the chest. Not the most obliging allies, I must say, but it seems clear he was working for them, well, working on both sides up to a point, but mainly for them. He threw the regime in Berlin a few titbits, some of his former Abwehr friends, but he was actually working predominantly for CIC. And one thing they didn’t tell me, but which I’ve found out by other means: he had visited the uranium mines, he and Schröder together. One presumes they were trying to find out as much as they could about that for the Americans – quantities of ore, how quickly they’re getting it out, all that sort of thing.’ Jordan paused and eyed McGovern. His look was not entirely friendly. ‘But where does Harris come into all this? How did he come to be so closely involved with the two of them, with Schröder? If there’s one thing we know it’s that Harris is a committed communist.’

Now McGovern could at last justify his existence and feel less of a fool. ‘I don’t think he is any more. I’ve managed to
talk quite a bit to him. I managed to gain his confidence. I liked him. He’s fundamentally decent, but the East Germans semiblackmailed him into informing on Schröder for them. I think he’s pretty disillusioned with the regime.’

‘I see, one of those. Not so starry-eyed any more about the East German sector’s Stalinist regime, found out it’s not the socialist paradise he was expecting. That figures. He did want to return to Britain, after all.’

‘He’d changed his mind, but he’d not be happy there or here. He told me he was going to the Saalfeld region to find out exactly what’s happening down there. The East Germans think he’s spying on Schröder, but in reality he’s spying on them. Or possibly a bit of both.’

‘So he’s gone to Saalfeld to spy for and against the East Germans at one and the same time. That’s twisted, even for Berlin.’

‘I feel sorry for Harris. He’s an idealist.’

‘There’s no place for feeling sorry in this business, I’m afraid. Absolutely fatal to get bogged down in pity. So many people we come across have got into trouble through a series of mistakes and poor judgement and bad luck and stupidity. There’s no end to it if once you start feeling sorry for everyone. No room for idealism either, I’m sorry to say. Least of all in Berlin.’

It was McGovern’s turn to signal the barman for more whisky.

‘Let me tell you something.’ Jordan looked around the bar, but there was only one other couple, a man and a woman, seated at the other end of the room. He’d spoken quietly all along, but now he lowered his voice further. ‘You see, our relationships, with one another, with the other side, are delicate and complicated. The web of information isn’t quite how it might seem to an onlooker.’

‘I’m nae an onlooker,’ said McGovern.

‘Well, that’s the problem, you are and you aren’t. You’re half in and half out. Here in Berlin, at least. No doubt it’s different at home. But here you’re an anomaly, McGovern, and what I’m curious to know is why the anomaly? But you’ll have to ask your MI5 friend about that. Our system here works pretty well on the whole. It’s not really, or not wholly, a question of concealing information from the other side or wrenching their secrets from them by fair or foul means. That’s what the general public imagines, but it’s more that it acts as a system of keeping the equilibrium going with an
exchange
of suitable information. The situation is self-perpetuating. It’s checks and balances essentially. Secrets are leaked to forestall worse dangers. They get in a panic about something. We reassure them it ain’t going to happen. Someone at our end gets paranoid about the Red Army crossing the border; they tell us nothing doing. Normal service as usual. That’s how it works, McGovern. So we don’t really like it when someone like our friend in London sticks an oar in. Could be very dangerous. More particularly because the Russians are in the process of setting up the East Germans as their major spying system against the West. We’re monitoring it very closely. The last thing we want is someone from MI5 butting in just now. Extremely irregular. I think when you get back to London, you should do your damnedest to find out what his game is.’

‘Don’t think I’ve not asked myself these questions.’ Yet, and it made him angry with himself, McGovern knew he hadn’t asked as many questions as he should have done.

Jordan stood up. McGovern, assuming it was the agent’s parting shot, stood up as well and stuck out his hand as a prelude to saying goodbye. But Jordan patted him on the shoulder. ‘I’d like to invite you round for a meal with some friends this evening, if that suits you. I think you might get on. You might find them interesting.’

At six, Jordan collected McGovern from the hotel. They took a tram to Charlottenburg and on the way Jordan revealed there was a purpose in the visit.

‘It’s not just a social occasion, although they’ll be pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Major Black has been in charge of a section of the refugee work here since 1946. They’re still flooding across the borders, I don’t know if you realise that. His wife was working with the Allies in the refugee camps directly after the war. That’s how they met. They were especially concerned with children and while we were talking earlier today I remembered something. I didn’t mention it then, because I wanted to check up on it, see if I got my facts right. Not that there were facts as such, but there were a lot of rumours. There was rape of course, we all know that, and prostitution, but there was also child prostitution and that was very murky. They’ll tell you about it.’

‘Child prostitution?’

‘There were murders too, or unexplained deaths. But I remembered there were a couple of murders of children which did cause a bit of a stir even in the midst of the chaos.’

McGovern was too surprised to react, other than with a shocked: ‘I’d not thought of that. Of children being exploited.’

The devastation in Charlottenburg was less than in some parts of the city, but there was still a vast flattened area of cleared rubble next to where Jordan’s friends lived, a pompous, late-nineteenth-century block, with heavy plaster swags and pilasters that had been chipped and cracked. They rose to the first floor in a creaking lift, and waited on a dark landing.