The Girl in Berlin (5 page)

Dinah, who had never much liked Neville Milner, completely took Reggie’s side, as did Alan. Alan, however, had been a little more worldly about it: Reggie’s a bit of a hell-raiser, you know. Never one to leave a heart unturned. But Dinah had loyally pointed out that Reggie was, well, not exactly beautiful, but so fascinating with those long green eyes and white skin.

‘How is William?’

‘He’s very well – very busy, of course. He’s so sweet to me, you know, and he adores the twins. I’m so lucky really.’ Yet her manner was tinged with melancholy. ‘He has to work so hard. Drownes is doing awfully well, but it takes a lot out of
him. And I do get bored, staying at home alone all day.’ It quite suited Regine to feel a little sorry for herself; she said it with a little moue that was almost a smile.

‘You’re not alone, though. There’s the twins!’

‘They’re only three months old, darling, of course I
adore
them, they’re simply wonderful, but they’re hardly ready for stimulating conversation or a good gossip.’

‘You’ll have to make do with me, then,’ said Dinah, while reflecting that, after all, Reggie, having Nanny Holt, could go out at any time. ‘We could go to the cinema,’ she said, ‘if you’d let Tommy stay here with Nanny one afternoon.’ Although, even as she said it, she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to leave poor Tommy with the grim, grey-clad one.

‘That’s a lovely idea, darling. We’ll do that – but please do tell me about the Courtauld. I’m desperate to hear about the glamorous Anthony Blunt. He’s going to be a Drownes author, you know. William’s frightfully chuffed. That’s why he’s so keen to know what’s going on there.’

‘Why should anything be “going on”? I didn’t see him today. I told you. He cancelled his lecture. He never does that,’ said Dinah.

‘Well, there you are. So something is going on.’

Anthony Blunt was at that moment seated in another English garden whose lawn ran down to the bank of the Thames at Sonning. His hands clasped between his knees, he sat forward bonily in his deck chair, and made his arguments as limpidly as if he’d been leading a seminar, but with mounting frustration, as he tried to persuade his host – a man he had always disliked, although they kept up a pretence of friendship – not to speak to the authorities about their common friend, Guy Burgess.

‘I’ve
known
for a long time, Anthony. Guy even hinted … he as much as
confessed
.’ And now that Burgess had disappeared
along with his unbalanced colleague, Donald Maclean – now was surely the time to speak to the police.

‘To
rat
, Rees. Is that what you’re saying?’ Even as Blunt spoke the words he was conscious of the irony. He himself had inwardly ratted or lapsed or just lost his faith or whatever you wanted to call it long ago. His instinct to still protect the friend to whom he was devoted had nothing to do with saving the Cause; it was simply about saving Guy. And possibly himself as well.

five

M
CGOVERN HAD MET
Miles Kingdom at some official police event, but he could no longer remember exactly when. Such occasions blurred into a general memory of boldly decorated hotel banqueting suites with glaring lights. In the early stages senior officers in important suits chatted pompously to colleagues in whom they saw a mirror image of themselves. Later on, they retreated to the bar or danced to hackneyed big-band music with wives who had spent the evening meekly on the sidelines. Lily had only once accompanied him to a police ‘do’ and after the sniggering looks the wives cast at her sari, had vowed never to go to one again. He too did his best to avoid them. And if it harmed his career to have a wife who was part Indian, then so be it.

Kingdom had approached McGovern casually, but it soon became clear that this was no chance meeting. ‘They say you’re good at your job,’ was the clue that Kingdom had specifically sought him out. Kingdom would never otherwise put in an appearance at an event like that. He’d appeared to talk casually, but dropped more than a hint that he knew all about the incident that made McGovern’s name: an IRA bomb plot, intended to disrupt the war effort, had been prevented, thanks to his surveillance and flair.

Promotion had been the result, but recently McGovern
had begun to feel vaguely dissatisfied with the Branch. So Kingdom, taking his leave with a carelessly spoken, ‘Let’s be in touch,’ had intrigued McGovern. And intrigue was the word, the possibility of work more exciting than the Branch routine, of deeper secrets.

Since that first conversation there had been meetings, hints, suggestions, instructions. McGovern had shared information and investigated suspect individuals for the man from MI5. He’d thought he should mention the ongoing contact with Kingdom to Gorch, but when he did, he found that Gorch knew about it already. Still, McGovern could not rid himself of the feeling that the arrangement – informal though it was – was what Kingdom would have termed ‘left field’, but that made it all the more exciting. That it was slightly irregular gave it an extra frisson. If it furthered his ambitions, so much the better, but for the time being it was enough that it held out a tantalising promise of new and expanded horizons.

This evening the two men met in an anonymous bar near Victoria Station, where commuters downed a quick pint to get rid of the taste of the office before the homeward journey. Lonely men stared into their drink; over-hearty groups of colleagues snatched a half-hour of freedom between the demands of work and those of the little woman.

McGovern nodded almost curtly at Kingdom and muttered a greeting, but his apparent surliness arose out of uncertainty as to how to address his companion. Clearly ‘Miles’ was out of the question, but as between ‘Sir’, ‘Kingdom’ or ‘Mr Kingdom’ he had no idea. And the ambiguity was part of the relationship itself. What, after all, was Kingdom? Colleague? Superior? Agent?

This uncertainty was part of McGovern’s more general ambivalence, an ever-fluctuating attitude that unsettled him, as he tried not to admire the agent too much, but to keep his sceptical detachment. He even feared it might be deference or
snobbery (feelings he’d certainly not learned in childhood) as he looked across the small wooden table at his companion. For Kingdom’s father, as McGovern had taken the trouble to find out, had been governor of Madras, his mother a society girl, Lady Vanessa Pyke. One ancestor had been a Nabob, another an officer in the Indian Army. There were landed connections as well.

As if that wasn’t enough, Kingdom was also good-looking. Melancholy, greenish eyes stared out of a ruddy face with the daunting inherited arrogance bestowed by two hundred years of imperial rule. He wore his thick blond hair effetely long, to McGovern a gesture of startling bravura, almost anarchistic. On this warm evening he wore a light grey suit and a black tie striped with blue. McGovern was sure the tie meant something, but what – a school, a regiment – he didn’t know. What impressed him most and against his will, however, was the man’s unshakeable sangfroid. It seemed as much part of him as his elegant suits, his crested signet ring, his heavy watch and his silver cigarette case, the outward signs of that inner sense of entitlement.

Kingdom entertained McGovern with tales of secret-service cock-ups and wartime disasters. His persona of raconteur and connoisseur of black farce seduced McGovern because it spoke to the Scot’s own deep scepticism. But Kingdom was more than a sceptic. He appeared to be blessed or cursed with the nihilistic view that life was inherently absurd. His careless cynicism shocked, but that was part of his spell. They were two men of the world, Kingdom implied, who understood the infinite folly of human nature and the futility of hoping for a redemption of mankind. That was, ultimately, the fatal flaw in communism, was it not, its naive belief in human betterment.

Above all, the charm was potent because Kingdom represented a conduit to the hidden world where, McGovern was convinced, the engines of power throbbed and the wheels that
changed the world turned. Every meeting with Kingdom was a rendezvous with power.

Now Kingdom brought out the cigarette case. ‘How was Glasgow? Your father-in-law’s ill, I understand.’

McGovern accepted a cigarette, although State Express wasn’t his favourite brand. It flattered him that Kingdom took a personal interest. It also slightly worried him, but Kingdom had never hinted at any knowledge of McGovern’s Red Clydeside connection.

‘All hell is about to break loose down here,’ murmured Kingdom. ‘You have absolutely no bloody idea of the fucking catastrophe. Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’ He laughed at what seemed to be a quotation, but it meant nothing to McGovern. ‘The Trojan horse, anyway. Yes, I think we can say there was a Trojan dobbin. The shit hitting the fan, as the Americans would say, will be as nothing to the Krakatoa of evacuated material that is about to engulf us. I won’t divulge the sordid cloacal details, you’ll know soon enough. And it’s not what I wanted to see you about.’ He looked at the tip of his cigarette. ‘Although it’s all connected.’ And he sipped his gin and tonic, a beverage McGovern considered effeminate.

‘I need some information about a man called Colin Harris. He’s living in East Berlin, but he’s over here at the moment and it might be useful to find out what he’s up to. I’d like him placed under surveillance. I don’t want that stupid police unit, A4 in on it. They’re such bumbling fools.’

‘You want me to shadow him?’

‘I don’t care how you go about it. Shadow him, possibly. You might even find some way of getting to know him. Under cover. It’s up to you.’

They had been speaking quietly, their conversation drowned in the general noise, but Kingdom lowered his voice still further to add: ‘He has a record – a rather odd one.’

McGovern looked round carelessly. They were just two men seated at a table in a pub, alongside other similar men. Yet whenever he met Kingdom like this he felt an invisible field of energy surrounding them, and it astonished him that the strangers who brushed past them were not jolted by its electricity. In no other aspect of his work did he feel this self-consciousness, this excitement.

‘Ready for another?’ said Kingdom.

Normally McGovern would have refused, preferring to get home to Lily. Tonight with no Lily to go home to, he was happy to carry on drinking.

Kingdom returned with their drinks. His mask was proof against all the slings and arrows outrageous fortune could throw at him. At the end of the day, old boy, it’s water under the bridge.

Today, however, there did seem to be a bit of tension.

‘Why is this particular subject of interest?’

‘Just curious to know what he’s doing over here. Might even have something to do with our other little problem.’

‘Doesn’t sound as if it is so little,’ said McGovern casually, hoping to hear more.

‘We’ve been such bloody fools. We’ve known there was a mole, or moles, for months. We were getting so close. And now two of them have done a bloody runner.’

McGovern stared, trying to take it in. ‘Done a runner?’ he repeated stupidly. ‘You mean – defected?’

‘There’s no point going into the whole story now. You’ll find out soon enough. I just want to know what Harris is doing over here. Bloody poofs – the bloody poof mafia, he must be mixed up in it somewhere. He’s staying in one of those dumps in Paddington that’s not quite a brothel. We’ve put a tap on the telephone, but that won’t get us far. He’d use a public phone for anything sensitive. He’s over here from Berlin. For how long, I wonder. How would you feel about going to Berlin?’

‘Berlin?’

‘You speak German, don’t you? How did that come about, by the way? An unusual accomplishment for a policeman.’

‘Policemen aren’t all thick.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry if you thought that. I meant
German
. Why that particular language?’

McGovern’s olive complexion never flushed red, but his face felt hot. It was so difficult to explain. In part it had to do with his father’s communism, a confused compulsion to understand the other side. At one stage he’d even been obscurely attracted to the dark glamour of it all, although he’d soon got over that. He’d gone to German classes as part of his project of self-education. ‘I thought it might come in useful,’ he said. ‘I’ve studied Russian as well.’

‘How very prescient.’ Kingdom stared around the hot smoky saloon. Then his gaze returned to his companion. Impenetrable.

‘Well … we might send you off to Berlin. Though actually it’s all too bloody late, of course.’

On the day they were to shadow Harris, McGovern reached the office at seven-thirty, only to find that Jarrell had beaten him to it. Indeed, Jarrell looked so pale and dishevelled that McGovern wondered if he’d not gone home at all.

‘You’ve been here all night, have you? You’re a wee vampire, are you, Jarrell? That would explain the name. Manfred. Well, the cock’s crowed now, you’d better get back to your coffin.’

‘My parents – well, my mother – called me Manfred after a work by the poet Byron,’ said Jarrell sniffily.

‘Oh, really.’ And trying not to laugh, McGovern made his way to the records department. MI5 might be in charge of all things communist, but the Branch had records as well. It wasn’t difficult to find what he was looking for.

Colin Harris: card-carrying communist; fought in the Spanish Civil War; distinguished World War Two record, fought in Italy; briefly in films after the war. From a police point of view, however, the strangest information was Colin Harris’s conviction for the murder of some painter of whom McGovern had vaguely heard – Lily must have mentioned the name. The conviction had been quashed on appeal. The way the report was written subtly suggested that the whole thing had been botched and the prosecution was a mistake based on tenuous evidence – or something more sinister. Either way, whoever had been in charge of the investigation must have been wiping the egg off his face ever since. McGovern didn’t recognise the officer’s name, but he did now recall the case. It had been big news at the time. After the trial, Harris had reappeared in East Berlin, where he’d been since 1948. A mug shot was attached to the file: bony face; a shock of hair – fairly distinctive, a recognisable face.