Len Deighton - Spy Hook

Frank was downstairs. I knew where he was. I'd known it even when I was on the back lawn looking up at the drainpipes. He was sitting in the drawing room playing his Duke Ellington records. That's what Frank usually did when he was alone in the house. Volume up really loud, so that you could hear the drums and brass section halfway along the street. Frank said the only way you could really appreciate these old records was to have them as loud as the original band had been when making them, but I think Frank was going deaf.

It was the 1940 band – the best Ellington band ever in my opinion, although Frank didn't agree – playing 'Cotton Tail'. No wonder Frank didn't hear me come into the room. I could have been driving a combine harvester and still he wouldn't have heard me above the surging beat of the Ellington band.

Frank was sitting in a chair positioned exactly in line with his two giant speakers. He was dressed in a yellow sweater with a Paisley-patterned silk scarf tucked into his open-neck shirt. It was all very Noel Coward except for the big curly pipe in his fist and the clouds of fierce-smelling tobacco smoke that made me want to cough. He was bent low reading the small print on a record label. I waited for him to look up. I said, 'Hello, Frank,' as casually as I could say it.

'Hello, Bernard,' said Frank and held his pipe aloft to caution me. 'Listen to Ben Webster.'

Listen to him. How could I do anything else, the tenor sax solo went through my head like a power drill. But when the immortal Webster had finished, Frank turned the volume down so it was merely very loud.

'Whisky, Bernard?' said Frank. He was already pouring it.

'Thanks,' I said gratefully.

'I enjoy seeing you any time, Bernard. But I wish you'd just knock on the front door, the way other visitors do.'

If Frank knew there was a warrant out for me, he was staying very cool. 'Why?' I said and drank some whisky. Laphroaig: he knew I liked it.

'So you don't make such a mess on the carpet,' said Frank with a fleeting grin to offset his complaint.

I looked at the carpet. My wet shoe had left marks all the way to the door, and right through the house probably. I'm sorry, Frank.'

'Why do you have to do everything arse upwards Bernard? It makes life so difficult for your friends.' Frank had always taken his paternal role seriously, and his way of demonstrating it was to be there when I needed him. Sometimes I wondered what kind of man my father must have been to have made a friendship so deep and binding that I was still drawing upon its capital. 'You're too old now for tricks like climbing up to that damned bathroom. You used to do that when you were very young. Remember?'

'Did I?'

'I left the light on in the bathroom so you wouldn't fall off the ledge and break your neck.'

'You heard what happened?' I said, not being able to endure another moment of Frank's small-talk.

'I knew you'd come to me,' Frank said, walking towards me with a whisky bottle. He couldn't resist it. It was the sort of complacent statement my mother made. Why did he have to be such an old woman? Couldn't he see how it spoiled everything? I let him pour me another drink. It was a wonder he was able to resist telling me I drank too much, but he'd probably find some way to work it into the conversation before long.

'When did you hear?' I asked.

'That the old man wanted you collared? I got a "confidential" on the printer about four o'clock. But then a cancellation came through.' He smiled. 'Reading between the lines, someone in London must have decided that the old man had gone completely batty. Then, after an hour or more, the same message was repeated. This time with the names of both the D-G and the Deputy on it.' He looked at the carpet. 'It's not grease is it?'

'It's water,' I said.

'If it's grease or oil, tell me now so I can leave a note for Tarrant to do something about it before it soaks in.'

'I told you, Frank. It's water.'

'Keep your hair on, Bernard.'

'So I'm still on the arrest list?'

'I'm afraid you are. Your ruse with your friend Werner Volkmann didn't fool the army very long.'

'Long enough.'

'For you to do a bunk, yes. But Captain Berry got the devil of a rocket.'

'Captain Berry?'

'The provost captain. I hear the commanding general wants him to face a court. Poor little bugger.'

'Screw Captain Berry,' I said. 'I have no tears to shed for MP captains who want to throw me into the slammer.' I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.

Frank saw me looking at it and said, 'They won't come here searching for you.'

'What's it all about, Frank?'

'I was hoping you'd tell me, Bernard.'

'I went to see the old man and reported all that stuff about Bret Rensselaer and the bank funds.'

'I thought you were going to abandon all that nonsense,' said Frank wearily.

'Did they tell you what the charges against me might be?'

'No.'

'Were they planning to hold me here, or ship me back to the UK?'

'I don't know, Bernard. I really don't know.'

'You're the Head of Berlin Station, Frank.'

I'm telling the truth, Bernard. I don't bloody well know.'

'It's about Fiona, isn't it?'

'Fiona?' said Frank, and seemed genuinely puzzled.

'Is Fiona still working for the Department?'

It took the wind out of his sails. He drank some of whatever he was drinking and looked at me for what seemed a long time. 'I wish I could say yes, Bernard. I really do.'

'Because that's the only conclusion that makes sense.'

'Makes sense how?'

'What would Bret Rensselaer be doing with umpteen million dollars?'

'I can think of a lot of things,' said Frank, who was not very fond of Bret Rensselaer.

'Money. You know what a tight rein the Department keep on then-cash. You can't really believe Central Funding let millions out of their sight and forget who they'd given it to.'

'Umm.' He smoked his pipe and thought about it.

I said, That sort of money is stashed away in secret accounts for payouts. For pay-outs, Frank.'

'In California?'

'No. Not California. When I talked to Bret in California, no one, except the Americans, was getting agitated. It was when I traced the money to Berlin that the excitement began.'

'Berlin?'

'So they didn't tell you that? Schneider, von Schild and Weber, right here on the Ku-Damm.'

He touched his moustache with the mouthpiece of his pipe. 'Even so, I'm still not sure…'

'Suppose Fiona's defection was the end of a very long-term plan. Suppose she is doing her own thing over there in East Berlin. She'd need lots of money, and she'd need it right here in Berlin where it's easy to get to.'

'To pay her own agents?'

'Good grief, Frank, I don't have to tell you what she'd need money for. Sure. For all kinds of things: agents, bribes, expenses. You know how it adds up.'

Frank touched my shoulder. 'I wish I could believe it. But I'm Head of Station here, as you just reminded me. No one would be planted there without my say-so. You know that, Bernard. Stop fooling yourself, it's not your style.'

'Suppose it was kept very tight; Bret Rensselaer as the case officer…'

'And the D-G getting direct authorization from the Cabinet Office? It's an ingenious explanation but I fear the true explanation is simpler and less palatable.' A puff at his pipe. 'The Berlin Head of Station is always informed. Even the D-G wouldn't defy that operational rule. It's been like that ever since your father's time. It would be unprecedented.'

'So is having a senior employee arrested at the airport,' I said.

'The D-G is a stick-in-the-mud. I know him, Bernard. We trained together in the war. He's careful to a fault. He just wouldn't go along with such a hazardous scheme.'

'To get an agent into the Stasi at the very top? A trusted agent at committee level? That's what Fiona is now. You told me that yourself.'