Bernard Samson: Faith - Bernard Samson: Faith Part 22
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Bernard Samson: Faith Part 22

He stroked his smooth talcumed face as if making sure he'd remembered to shave, and waited for a response. He was angry and upset. I had hoped that my unannounced confrontation with the old man would upset VERDI but it hadn't worked out the way I planned. 'Maybe,' I murmured.

'You should be ashamed of yourself, Samson. Coming here to frighten a harmless old man. My father has a heart condition. You might have given him a shock that killed him.'

'Your father can look after himself,' I croaked. 'Say what you want to say.' I tried to sit up, but the movement sent a bolt of pain through my head and I sank back again.

'I've already said what I've got to say. You get back to London and see Sir Henry Clevemore personally. Leave my father out of this. He's nothing to do with it. I don't want him threatened, do you understand? If your people have changed their mind, I'll take it to the Americans. You make sure he knows I'm serious. Got that, Samson?'

'They want it,' I said. By now I was beginning to guess that London Central would be grateful for even twenty-four hours of access to the new mainframe. Anything after that would be a bonus.

'Damned right they do,' he said. 'There is a lot of material on file over here, Samson. But it's not all good news. SIS disasters. SIS cock-ups, SIS betrayals. Heads will be rolling. And there are people in London who prefer to leave things the way they are. Right?'

'It's always like that,' I said.

'And perhaps Sir Henry Clevemore is one of them.'

'Say your say,' I told him. 'I'll handle the guesswork.'

'I've told Volkmann everything they need to know in London. I've been into the circuits and the programs. It's all possible; just as I said it was. I've prepared everything important at this end. It's up to your people from now on. But don't stall too long or I'll go elsewhere.'

'What did that old bastard hit me with?'

'Do you want a drink of water? He hit you with his crucifix,' said VERDI. I could see it now: the large cast-iron crucifix had been replaced on the wall at a slightly drunken angle.

'Scotch would be better,' I said.

'Schnapps?'

'Okay.' He went and poured me a shot of ice-cold Polish vodka; the one flavoured with rowan berries. I sipped it. It didn't get rid of the pain but it made it feel more endurable a more like a hangover.

Experimentally I touched my head with my fingertips. It was very tender and already swelling. I looked at my fingers; there was no blood.

VERDI watched me. 'You phone Clevemore,' he said. 'He'll see you, I guarantee that. This is the biggest operation your people have had in years. What's the problem?'

'The problem is a are you on the level?' I said, turning my head to watch the elder Fedosov kneeling by the window picking up the pieces of broken plant and pot.

'On the level?' he said, his voice raised in anger that may not have been simulated. 'You're the bastard who shot my driver dead. A good thing for you he wasn't one of my staff. I recognized you but I left your name out of my report. I just said that an unidentified British team came in and did the hit, and got away before they could be intercepted. We let the militia and the Vopos put out the net; I knew you'd have no trouble evading those dummies. So what else do you want me to do to persuade you that I'm on the level?'

'You're a lovely fellow, Andrey.'

'What's it worth in cash?' The old man turned his head to see us and hear better and watch my reaction to what his son had asked. 'The Americans would give me a great deal of money.'

'I have no authority to talk money,' I said. 'But you'd better know that there's not so much dough about these days.' The old man sighed and went back to putting his cacti back into their pots.

VERDI looked at me closely trying to decide if I was joking but seemed to think I wasn't. 'If it's not worth serious money, why send that stupid fat pig to pester me? And why send you after him?'

'I don't know any fat pigs except you.'

'Don't play the fool, Samson. Tiny Timmermann.'

'Timmermann?'

'Are you going to sit there and try and pretend you don't know the identity of your own field agent? The one you had sent to California so he could be briefed so carefully? Are you telling me you didn't know the identity of that stiff you frisked in the house in Magdeburg?'

'Timmermann? The dead man in Magdeburg?'

'Who did you think it was?' Now he was confused.

'I thought that was you,' I said truthfully.

'You thought it was me?' he said in a loud coarse scornful voice that took me back to when he'd been a small-time interrogator working the detention cells in the old Polizeiprasidium building in the Alex. He gave a mirthless laugh of derision. 'So who did you think you were shooting at on the road?'

'Timmermann? The dead man? Are you serious?'

'You sent him,' he said.

'I didn't send him. He doesn't work for us and never has done.'

'You got on the plane with him. In Los Angeles. You talked to him.'

I made no response, but I was impressed, and he probably saw that he'd scored a hit. Top marks, VERDI old pal. So I was under surveillance right from the time I left California.

'Just a coincidence,' he said in a pally aside, as if he wanted to reassure me man to man; agent to agent. 'Just luck. Someone I knew was on the same plane.'

'Timmermann? Who killed him? Your people?'

He didn't deny it. 'He stepped out of line, Samson. He went his own way asking questions about the Kosinski killing, and pushing his luck. That's dangerous. We don't encourage academic curiosity this side of the Wall.'

'You got the wrong man,' I said. He shook his head to show he didn't think so, and tugged his coat so it fitted more snugly upon his shoulders. I'd always wanted to wear an overcoat like these Germans and Frenchmen do it; without putting my arms through the sleeves. But when I tried it once, coming out of the Schiller Theatre with Gloria, it fell off and Frank Harrington's wife tripped over it and fell full-length in the street.

He looked at his watch. 'The car will be here by now,' he said, with the confidence that only a Stasi man in a police State would know. 'I'll take you as far as Checkpoint Charlie. Or through it, if you know where you want to go.'

'Okay.'

'Are you meeting your friend Volkmann somewhere?'

'No.'

'So London is employing Volkmann again. They blow hot and cold, don't they? I thought they had blacklisted him. Then all of a sudden I find I'm dealing with him.'

'They don't confide that sort of thing to me,' I said. 'I'm just an office boy.'

'An office boy married to the boss's daughter? Is that the way it is now, Samson?' Without waiting for an answer, he said: 'So where do you want to go?'

My head was singing and I didn't feel well enough to walk back across town. But I wasn't going to accompany him through Checkpoint Charlie in his official car. It would be noted and I'd never hear the last of it.

'Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof.'

'Whatever you say, Samson. But I think you mean Checkpoint Charlie. I can understand your desire to remain anonymous,' he said with a disdainful smirk. 'But you're not in the right state of health to go pushing your way through the unwashed Berlin proletariat.' He glanced at his father. 'And at this time of day that stinking train will be crammed full of grandads and grandmas returning from their day-pass visits.'

'Okay.' He was right: I wasn't in a fit state to go pushing anybody anywhere.

He'd brought a good car for us. Not a Trabbie or a Wartburg, nor even a Skoda: this was a metallic-silver-finish Mercedes 500 SEL with red leather seats and brand-new tyres. Even Stasi men need to show their colleagues that they have made good, but I think I'd seen it before. The only jarring note to our departure came from the old man: 'You mustn't go, little one,' he told his son. 'I only live for you. I couldn't bear it. You on the other side. I couldn't bear it.'

'Don't be a silly old man,' said VERDI, apparently unmoved by this request.

'I'm your father,' said the old man. 'I love you.'

'Then let me live my own life,' said VERDI quietly, and pushed past him to follow me down the stairs.

'You ungrateful little swine,' the old man shouted over the stair-rail. 'I hate you. Go. Stay away for ever. I might as well be dead for all you care.'

'I came, didn't I? I got you out of trouble yet again.'

Perhaps the exchange had embarrassed VERDI. He said: 'They become like children when they grow old.' When I didn't answer he added: 'He let his own parents die still living in the filthy little hovel where he was born. He only went back twice in all those years. He never even sent money.'

At the door a uniformed police lieutenant saluted. A sergeant opened the car door for us to get in. Nothing had been said about any favours owed to anyone. The time long ago, when his men had thrown me off the train instead of arresting me, had put me in his debt. Now the debt was doubled. There was no malevolence, nothing personal. He'd done it all very much the way it was always done when the other side misjudged things. I wasn't resentful. I figured that had he come into the West and browbeaten Tante Lisl I'd probably have treated him worse than he was treating me. There were two police cars parked in the street outside. Half a dozen men with guns standing around with conspicuous idleness. No handcuffs or rubber truncheons. Just a little show of force and then two cars with flashing lights to lead the way to the crossing point and make sure I would be humiliated in a way that I wouldn't quickly forget.

He rode with me. He had a plentiful supply of small-talk, larded with a few questions about Frank Harrington and Dicky and other luminaries of the Department, all contrived to demonstrate how much they knew about us. Fiona wasn't mentioned again, and Gloria not at all, and for that delicate example of professional discretion I was grateful. Although it did leave me wondering exactly what they knew about my domestic problems.

At Checkpoint Charlie none of his tame Grepos, or the plain-clothes men, came anywhere near us. His driver took the car as near to the white wooden US Army hut as he could get without crossing over. Then the driver jumped out and opened the car door for me.

'Does Timmermann have family?' said VERDI as I started to get out.

'I've no idea.'

'If I don't hear in a couple of days I'll let them bury him here. Okay?'

I looked at VERDI. He sat back in the soft leather, folded his arms and smiled at me. He knew what I was going to say, but he wasn't going to make it easier for me. He wasn't that obliging. 'What about the woman?' I said. 'What about my sister-in-law?'

'No, no, no. They might want another post-mortem. The coroner won't release that one.'

'There is a lot of bad feeling,' I said. 'You don't really want the body do you?'

'Evidence. They say she was decapitated,' he said. 'I'll let you have the post-mortem documents and the coroner's reports. The army took care of it. That's a part of the deal. Didn't Volkmann tell you that?'

'I thought she was in a burned-out car. Carbonized. I thought there was very little of her left.'

'Maybe that's was how it was supposed to be, Samson. Perhaps someone miscalculated. You'd better explain that to your Director-General too. Or maybe he can explain it to you.'

'Okay,' I said. I closed the car door. I could see I'd get nothing else from him. He was a pigheaded brute who'd seen everything. I'd caught him off-guard by tackling his father, but he'd recovered his composure now. Such men were difficult to surprise.

When I walked through the Checkpoint the American sergeant in the box didn't even look up from his paperback book. I went to the cab rank on the corner and got inside the first cab. It could have been one of VERDI's people staked out for me but I didn't think so. What else did he have to gain?

'Kantstrasse,' I said. 'Hotel Hennig.'

I looked back to the Checkpoint. VERDI was still in his silver Mercedes watching me. He hadn't moved, right up to the time we turned into Kochstrasse and he was lost to view.

While the cab was driving along the bank of the Landwehr Canal, I thought about what VERDI said. I remembered the day they'd fished poor old Johnny Walker from the oily waters of the Canal. My father came home that night and didn't eat his dinner. That was a most unusual development; my mother thought he was ill. He just sat at the table staring into space. Poor Johnny, he kept saying. Blackmailed by a choice seducer from the KGB's selection of male prostitutes, he was sure to yield. Johnny was always a pushover for a pretty face, as I knew from being in some of the down-town bars with him. They all recognized him and said hello. I wonder if Dad suspected Walker was selling out to the Russians. And from that I began wondering how long it would take before Werner and Frank Harrington got to hear about today's fiasco. And while I was thinking of that a in that curious way that one's brain keeps working 'background' while you listen to music or deal with everyday problems a the whole thing clicked into place.

Timmermann. Timmermann! Why had I been so slow to get it? Even when Bret's cryptic Bible message arrived I still hadn't understood. What did the message say: UNKNOWN DEAD NEVERTHELESS REVEALED 4 WIFE'S SERVANT Timmermann was of course the 'expert' field agent that George Kosinski, encouraged by my idiotic father-in-law, had engaged to go and investigate the death of Tessa. And because Timmermann was vain and stupid enough to go in without proper preparation or back-up, he said yes. Or maybe poor old Timmermann was so short of money that he had little alternative. That's how field agents, driven to such lousy freelance jobs, so often end their days: riskier and riskier assignments for less and less money until the trap closes on your neck. Sometimes I worried that I would end up like that. With the present penny-pinching atmosphere at London Central, and my tenuous employment contract, it was looking more and more likely every day.

VERDI understandably thought Timmermann was from London Central, and no doubt continued to think so despite my denials. But Timmermann was doing a freelance job; he'd been in Los Angeles to be secretly briefed by Fiona. Bret a no fool when it comes to watching what's going on around him a had tumbled to what was afoot between Fiona and Timmermann.

And that was why Timmermann had avoided getting into conversation with me. In line with Departmental standing orders for operational assignments, my seat on the plane had not been booked until two hours before I travelled; Timmermann must have been dismayed to encounter me on that same flight.

I noticed the way that VERDI said he had shifted blame for Timmermann's murder on to an unidentified British team. More likely he'd left his masters in no doubt that I had killed Timmermann; VERDI wasn't the sort of man who submitted don't-know reports.

Blaming me for the killing was obviously the true purpose of getting both me and Timmerman to Magdeburg that same night. He was devious beyond compare. There was no point in wasting any time wondering how VERDI had discovered that I was on the plane with Timmermann. VERDI was not the sort of man who killed people without squeezing them. And VERDI was an expert with the squeezer, as I knew from personal experience.

16.

Had I persisted with my plan to return to the hotel, and to stretch out in my room, nurse my head and recover slowly, everything would have turned out differently. But as my taxi from Checkpoint Charlie turned off Kantstrasse I spotted Werner Volkmann. He was wearing his 'impresario's overcoat' with its large shawl-collar of curly astrakhan. He was outside the optician's shop that occupied the ground floor of the Hennig Hotel premises and talking to Tante Lisl. She was attired in a golden-coloured fur coat and matching hat, the highlight of the complete new wardrobe she'd bought to celebrate her successful surgery. They seemed to be arguing, and I recognized the way they were throwing their arms around as the frantic exasperation that precedes the hug of reconciliation. Lisl had lost weight, in compliance with the promise the surgeon had exacted from her. But fur coats didn't suit her figure or her style. As much as I loved them both, there was no denying that my first impression, of the pair of them gesticulating excitedly, was of a ringmaster trying to control his ferocious dancing bear.

I knew beyond doubt that if I got out of the cab at the hotel entrance they were bound to comment on my being dishevelled and nursing an injured head. They'd ask questions which unanswered would provoke jokes that I was not in the mood to share. I didn't want to encounter either of them at that moment. I wanted a glass of warm milk, a couple of aspirins, and the chance of going to bed to sleep for ever.

'Keep going,' I told the cab driver. It suddenly struck me that it might be a good plan to tell Frank Harrington my version of the events of the day. Any other account of my spontaneous and extracurricular excursion a even an account from someone as well-meaning as Werner a might give rise to a lot of official questions.

I gave the driver Frank's address in the Grunewald district. Frank was certain to be at home. Even in normal times he was never in his office after four in the afternoon, and lately a as the construction work continued at the Field Unit premises a he'd been working from home all the time.

The door was opened to me by Frank's valet, Tarrant. I had never liked Tarrant and Tarrant didn't approve of me. He believed that Frank's close friendship with my father had made him too ready to overlook my informal and insubordinate manner. And Tarrant was a fearsome upholder of life's formalities.

'I have to see Mr Harrington. I know he's here,' I added quickly before Tarrant could proclaim that he was not at home and a battle of wills develop as it had done before.

'The master is dressing a preparing to go out,' said Tarrant.

'I won't need more than five minutes,' I said.

'Wait here, sir,' said Tarrant. He didn't believe I needed only five minutes; I always said five minutes.

As I stood in the hallway I could hear the murmured voices from somewhere upstairs. When I was permitted to go up and see Frank, he was standing in his dressing room, struggling with a stiff dress-shirt and old-fashioned wing collar that had gone out of fashion and come back without Frank noticing. Behind him there was a long closet, upon the rail of which hung dozens of suits and jackets and pants. Standing six feet high there was a purpose-built rack of shoes, and drawers for linen. One of the drawers was open to reveal more dress-shirts wrapped in soft white tissue paper: Tarrant's careful hand, no doubt. Frank was wearing his evening suit pants, patent shoes and a black formal waistcoat over a stiff shirt. He was struggling with his heavily starched cuffs and looking at himself in a large mirror while he did so. As I came in he watched my reflection without turning to face me.

'I'm sorry to interrupt you, Frank,' I said.

'Bring Mr Samson a big Laphroaig whisky and water, Tarrant. I'll have a small Plymouth gin with bitters: two or three dashes of bitters, Tarrant. Laphroaig and ice? Right, Bernard?' he turned and asked me this with a smile. He was always pleased to remember what I liked to eat and drink; it was Frank at his most motherly. Not wishing to spoil his obvious pleasure, I smiled and said that would be wonderful.

Tarrant brought the drinks on a tray and then hovered. Frank told him: 'Mr Samson will help me if I can't manage it.' Tarrant went away not hiding his resentment at being displaced.

'I've upset him?' I asked Frank after Tarrant had gone.

'He's getting old. We have to indulge him. He's frightened you'll leave finger-marks on my nice clean shirt.'

I smiled. It seemed an unlikely reason for Tarrant's surliness.