Len Deighton - Spy Sinker

'I am not a Berliner, nor even a German by birth…' She did not finish.

'But you speak the most beautiful German,' said Renn, interrupting her. 'Everyone remarks upon it: wonderful Hochdeutsch. When I hear it, I feel selfconscious about my miserable accent.' He looked at her. 'Do you have a headache?'

She shook her head. 'Do you not sometimes wonder if I am a class enemy, Herr Renn?'

He pursed his lips. 'Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born into a bourgeois family,' said Renn in what was a typically ambivalent reply.

'Leaving the birth of Comrade Lenin aside for the moment,' said Fiona. 'If there was an attempt to have me removed from this job, what would be your attitude?'

His already contorted face became agitated as he wet his lips and frowned to indicate deep thought. 'I would have to consider the facts,' he said finally.

'Consider the facts?'

'I have a wife and family,' said Renn. 'It is them that I have to consider.' He turned to see the river, slow and unctuous now; once it had been fast, clear and fresh. Not so long ago anglers had landed big fish here, but there was no sign of any now. He stared down into the water and hoped the Frau Direktor would be satisfied.

'Are you saying that you would throw me to the wolves?' said Fiona.

'Wolves? No!' He turned to her. 'I am not a thrower, Frau Direktor. I am one of the people who are thrown.' The church clock struck six. His working day was over and done. He opened his overcoat in order to reach into his back pocket for a flask. 'About this time I sometimes take a small glass of schnapps… If the Frau Direktor would permit.'

'Go ahead,' said Fiona. She was surprised. She didn't know that the old man was such a dedicated drinker but it explained a lot of things.

He unscrewed the top to use it as a cup, and poured a sizeable measure. He offered it to her. 'Would the Frau Direktor…?'

'No, thank you, Herr Renn.'

He brought it up towards his mouth carefully, so as not to spill it, bending his head to meet it. He drank half of it in one gulp, looked at her as it warmed his veins, and said, 'I'm too old to get into vendettas.' A pause. 'But that doesn't mean I have no guts for it.' A street-car went past, its wheels screaming protest on the rails as it turned the corner. 'Is the Frau Direktor quite sure…?'

'Quite sure, thank you, Herr Renn.'

He held the drink and stared across the river as if she wasn't there, and when he spoke it was as if he was talking to himself. 'Most of the people on our floor are Germans, time-serving officials like me. None of them are looking for a battle: they are waiting for their pension. The eight "friends" are another matter.' He drank the rest of the schnapps from the metal cup.

Fiona nodded. Since 1945 Russians were always called 'friends', even when some German war veteran found himself recounting the way in which such 'friends' had jumped into his trench and bayoneted his comrades. 'Perhaps I will have a drink,' said Fiona.

Renn wiped the rim of the cup with his fingers and poured one for her. 'Six of those friends are in other departments, and would not be promoted whatever happened to you.'

Fiona took a tiny sip of schnapps. It was damned strong stuff: she nearly choked on it. No wonder the old man had a red-veined face. 'I see what you mean,' she said. It left the two Russians, both German specialists: Pavel Moskvin and the one who affected the operating name of Stinnes (as Lenin and Stalin had assumed theirs). These were the two men she had clashed with during the conference that afternoon. Tough professionals who had let her know that working for a woman was not a relationship to which they would gladly accede. The argument had come about because of a proposed operational journey to Mexico City. She suspected that the whole thing was chosen simply as a way of showing her how formidable their combined strengths could be against her.

Renn said, The big man – Moskvin – is the dangerous one. He has considerable influence within the Party machine. At present he is in disgrace with Moscow – some black-market scandal which was never made public – and such men will go to absurd lengths to prove their worth. He is emotional and violent; and well-adjusted people fall victim to action that is sudden and unpremeditated. The other man – Erich Stinnes – with his convincing Berlin German, complete with all the slang and expletives, is an intellectual: icy cold and calculating. He will always think in the long term. For someone as clever as you, he will prove easier to deal with.'

'I hope so,' said Fiona.

'We must drive a wedge between them,' said Renn.

'How?'

'We will find a way. Moskvin is a skilful administrator but Stinnes has been a field agent. Field agents never really settle down to the self-discipline and cooperation that our work demands.'

'That's true,' said Fiona, and for a moment thought of her husband and his endless difficulties at the London office.

'Don't allow your authority to be undermined. Moscow has put you here because they want to see changes. If there is resistance, Moscow will support change and whoever is making the changes. Therefore you must be sure you are the one making the changes.'

'You are something of a philosopher, Herr Renn.'

'No, Frau Direktor, I am an apparatchik.'

'Whatever you are, I am grateful to you, Herr Renn.' She looked in her handbag, found some aspirins and swallowed two of them without water.

'It is nothing,' said the old man as he watched her gulp the pills, although of course they both knew he'd stuck his neck out. Even more important, he'd indicated to her that under other circumstances he'd probably yield more. Fiona wondered whether he was already calculating what she could do for him in return. She dismissed the idea; better to wait and see. Meanwhile he might prove an invaluable ally.

'To you, perhaps, but a friendly word goes a long way in a new job.'

Renn, who'd been watching the bridge, touched his hat as if in salutation but in fact he eased the hat because the band was too tight. 'From each according to ability; to each according to need,' quoted the old man, stuffing the flask back into his pocket. 'And here comes our Volvo.' Not car, she noted, but Volvo. He was proud that she rated an imported car. He smiled at her.

In a year or so she would scuttle off back to the West and Hubert Renn would be left to face the music: Stasi interrogations were not gentle. They would be bound to suspect that he was in league with her. She hated the thought of what she was doing to him. It made her feel like a Judas, but that of course is exactly what she was. Bret had warned her that these conflicting loyalties were stressful but that didn't make them any easier to bear.

When she got home, to one of the coveted apartments in the wedding cake blocks that line Frankfurter Alice, she sat down and thought about the conversation for a long time. Finally she began to understand something of Renn's motivation. Just as the Russians could not fathom the way in which some Europeans could be staunch capitalists but rabidly anti-American, Fiona had not understood the deeply felt anti-Russian feelings that were a part of Hubert Renn's psyche. Renn, she was later to discover, had seen his mother raped by Russian soldiers and his father beaten unconscious during those memorable days of 1945 when the commander's Order of the Day told the Red Army 'Berlin is Yours'. And later she was to hear Hubert Renn refer to his Russian 'friends' by the archaic and less friendly word 'Panje'.

She washed a lettuce and cut thin slices from a Bockwurst. It was the fresh fruit she missed so much: she still couldn't understand why such things were so scarce. She had found a privately owned baker near the office and the bread was good. She'd have to be careful not to put on weight – everything plentiful was fattening.