Frederick Forsyth - The Deceiver

Over the years, West Germany had been rocked by a series of scandals as private secretaries to ministers, civil servants, and defense contractors had either been arrested by the BfV or had slipped quietly away back to the East. One day, he knew, he would pull Fräulein Erdmute Keppel out of the Cologne BND and back to her beloved German Democratic Republic. Until then, she would continue to arrive at the office an hour ahead of Dieter Aust and copy anything of interest, including the personnel records of the entire staff. She would continue, in summer, to take her lunch in the quiet park eating her salad sandwiches with prim precision, feeding the pigeons with a few neat crumbs, and finally placing the empty sand­wich bag in a nearby trash can. There it would be retrieved a few moments later by the gentleman walking his dog. In winter she would lunch instead in the warm café and drop her newspaper into the garbage container near the door, whence it would be rescued by the street cleaner.

When she came east, Fräulein Keppel would arrive to a state reception, a personal greeting from Security Minister Erich Mielke or possibly Party boss Erich Honecker himself, a medal, a state pension, and a snug retirement home by the lakes of Fürstenwalde.

Of course, not even Marcus Wolf was clairvoyant. He could not know that by 1990 East Germany would have ceased to exist, that Mielke and Honecker would be ousted and dis­graced, that he would be retired and writing his memoirs for a fat fee, or that Erdmute Keppel would be spending her declining years in West Germany in a place of seclusion rather less comfortable than her designated flat at Fürstenwalde.

Major Vanavskaya looked up.

“He has a sister,” she said.

“Yes,” said Wolf. “You think she may know something?”

“It’s a long shot,” said the Russian. “If I could go and see her ...”

“If you can get permission from your superiors,” Wolf prompted her gently. “You do not, alas, work for me.”

“But if I could, I would need a cover. Not Russian, not East German.”

Wolf shrugged self-deprecatingly. “I have certain ‘legends,’ ready for use. Of course. It is part of our strange trade.”

There was a Polish Airline flight to London LOT 104, staged through Berlin-Schönefeld airport at ten A.M. It was held for ten minutes to enable Ludmilla Vanavskaya to board. As Wolf had pointed out, her German was adequate but not good enough to pass. Few people in London that she would meet spoke Polish. She had papers of a Polish schoolteacher visiting a relative. That would be plausible since Poland had a much more liberal regime.

The Polish airliner landed in London at eleven, gaining an hour due to time difference. Major Vanavskaya passed through passport and customs control inside thirty minutes, made two phone calls from a public booth in Terminal Two concourse, and took a taxi to a district of London called Primrose Hill.

The phone on Sam McCready’s desk trilled at midday. He had just put the phone down after talking again to Chelten­ham. The answer was—still nothing. Forty-eight hours, and Morenz was still on the run. The new caller was the man from the NATO desk downstairs.

“There’s a chit came through in the morning bag,” he said. “It may be nothing; if so, throw it away. Anyway, I’m sending it up by messenger.”

The chit arrived five minutes later. When he saw it, and the timing on it, McCready swore loudly.

Normally, the need-to-know rule in the covert world works admirably. Those who do not need to know something in order to fulfill their functions are not told about it. That way, if there is a leak—either deliberate or through sloppy talk—the damage is reasonably limited. But sometimes it works the other way around. Sometimes a piece of information that might have changed events is not passed on because no one thought it was necessary.

The Archimedes listening station in the Harz Mountains and the East Germany-listeners at Cheltenham had been told to pass to McCready without delay anything they got. The words Grauber or Morenz were particular triggers for an instant pass-on. But no one had thought to alert those who listen to Allied diplomatic and military traffic to pass what they picked up to McCready.

The message he held was timed at 4:22 P.M. on Wednesday evening. It said:

Ex-Herrmann

Pro-Fietzau.

Top urgent. Contact Mrs. A. Farquarson, nee Morenz, believed living London stop Ask if she has seen or heard of or from her brother in last four days endit.

He never told me he had a sister in London. Never told me he had a sister at all, thought McCready. He began to wonder what else his friend Bruno had not told him about his past. He dragged a telephone directory from a shelf and looked under the name of Farquarson.

Fortunately, it was not a terribly common name. Smith would have been a different matter entirely. There were fourteen Farquarsons, but no “Mrs. A.” He began to ring them in sequence. Of the first seven, five said there was no Mrs. A. Farquarson to their knowledge. Two failed to answer. He was lucky at the eighth; the listing was for Robert Far­quarson. A woman answered.

“Yes, this is Mrs. Farquarson.”

A hint of German accent?

“Would that be Mrs. A. Farquarson?”

“Yes.” She seemed defensive.

“Forgive my ringing you, Mrs. Farquarson. I am from the Immigration Department at Heathrow. Would you by chance have a brother named Bruno Morenz?”

A long pause.

“Is he there? At Heathrow?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, madam. Unless you are his sister.”

“Yes, I am Adelheid Farquarson. Bruno Morenz is my brother. Could I speak to him?”

“Not at the moment, I’m afraid. Will you be at that address in, say, fifteen minutes? It’s rather important.”

“Yes, I will be here.”

McCready called for a car and driver from the motor pool and raced downstairs.

It was a large studio apartment at the top of a solidly built Edwardian villa, tucked behind Regent’s Park Road. He walked up and rang the bell. Mrs. Farquarson greeted him in a painter’s smock and showed him into a cluttered studio with paintings on easels and sketches strewn on the floor.

She was a handsome woman, gray-haired like her brother. McCready put her in her late fifties, older than Bruno. She cleared a space, offered him a seat, and met his gaze levelly. McCready noticed two coffee mugs standing on a nearby table. Both were empty. He contrived to touch one while Mrs. Farquarson sat down. The mug was warm.

“What can I do for you, Mr. ...”

“Jones. I would like to ask you about your brother, Herr Bruno Morenz?”

“Why?”

“It’s an Immigration matter.”

“You are lying to me, Mr. Jones.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. My brother is not coming here. And if he wished to, he would not have problems with British Immigration. He is a West German citizen. You are a policeman?”

“No, Mrs. Farquarson. But I am a friend of Bruno. Over many years. We go back a long way together. I ask you to believe that because that is true.”

“He is in trouble, isn’t he?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I’m trying to help him, if I can. It’s not easy.”

“What has he done?”

“It looks as if he has killed his mistress in Cologne. And he has run away. He got a message to me. He said he didn’t mean to do it. Then he disappeared.”

She rose and walked to the window, staring out at the late summer foliage of Primrose Hill Park.

“Oh, Bruno. You fool. Poor, frightened Bruno.”

She turned and faced him.

“There was a man from the German Embassy here yester­day morning. He had called before, on Wednesday evening while I was out. He did not tell me what you have—just asked if Bruno had been in touch. He hasn’t. I can’t help you, either, Mr. Jones. You probably know more than I do, if he got a message to you. Do you know where he has gone?”