Len Deighton - Spy Sinker

The train came in and the guard, in a smart uniform, watched the drunk stumble safely aboard before giving the go-ahead.

As the train rattled along, elevated above the city on its elaborate iron support, Fiona thought again about the guests. Felix, Hubert's eloquent brother: she wondered which side he'd fought for in the civil war in Spain. If for the communists how did he survive the Nazi years, and if for Franco how did he endure the ones following? And yet it was the presence of Miranda that puzzled Fiona most. She wondered why Hubert Renn had never mentioned that the mother of his 'Godchild' was a Londoner born and bred, and why he'd not told Fiona that another Englishwoman was to be with them tonight. Had it been the birthday party of some other person, none of these things might have merited comment, but Fiona knew Renn by now and she knew this birthday dinner was not the sort of function he enjoyed.

Fiona's curiosity would have been satisfied by the scene in the same Gisela Mauemayer room at ten-thirty the next morning. Miranda was there together with two Russians and a black girl. She had described the previous evening in great detail.

Fiona's bellicose colleague Pavel Moskvin was also there. He was about fifty years old and weighed over 200 pounds. He had the build of an American football player. His hair was closely cropped and his eyes set a little too close to the squashed nose that made his large head look as if it had been bowled along the ground until its protuberances broke off, and then stuck upon his shoulders without a neck.

Sitting calmly in a corner, occasionally reading from a book, there was Erich Stinnes, a wiry man with a pointed face and hair thinning enough to show his scalp. His metal-rim spectacles, of the most utilitarian design, brown corduroy suit and heavy boots made up an ensemble that well-paid communists sometimes found irresistible.

Opposite Stinnes sat a tall lively Jamaican woman in her late twenties. Her fake leopard-skin coat was thrown across a chair and she was dressed in a tight white sweater and red pants. She sat toying with a red apple, rolling it across the table from hand to hand. Miranda looked at the black girl: quite apart from her clothes and make-up, there was something about her manner that had immediately identified her as being from the West.

Staring at Miranda, Moskvin, restless with the contained anger which boiled continually within him, said, 'Tell me about her.' His voice was hoarse, like that of a man who shouts too much.

'I've told you,' said Miranda softly. She stood at the other end of the table. She refused to sit down and was determined not to be intimidated by him. She'd seen his type of Russian before; many of them.

'Tell me again, damn you.' He went and studied the painting of the discus thrower with unseeing eyes.

Miranda spoke to his back. 'Frau Samson is an inch or so taller than I am. She has longer legs.'

Without turning round he said, That doesn't matter.'

'You know nothing,' said Miranda, contemptuous now that she was on the firm ground of her own expertise. 'If I am to imitate her walk, it will make a difference.'

The black girl took a noisy bite out of the apple. Moskvin glared at her: she smiled. They all disliked him, Moskvin knew that. He'd grown up amongst such hostility; it was not something that had ever troubled him.

'We'll arrange it so that you won't have to imitate the walk,' said Moskvin, still looking at the black girl. Then he turned and fixed those eyes on Miranda. 'Can you do her voice?'

'Her voice is easy,' said Miranda.

The black girl took another bite of the apple. 'Keep quiet,' said Moskvin.

'I gotta eat, buddy,' said the black girl.

Moskvin went to the table and switched on the tape recorder. Fiona's voice came from it, saying, 'It's a lovely name.' (pause) 'Were you an actress in England?' (pause) 'And he brought you to Berlin?' (pause) 'Oh, I'm sorry.' (pause) 'What did your husband do?'

Moskvin switched off the machine. 'Now you,' he said.

Miranda hesitated only a moment, and then stiff and formal, and holding her hands together as if about to sing Lieder, she recited the same words: 'It's a lovely name.' She took a breath. 'Were you an actress in England?' She wet her lips and, completely relaxed now, she delivered the last three without pausing. 'And he brought you to Berlin? Oh, I'm sorry. What did your husband do?' Then she smiled. It was an impressive performance and she knew it. She'd always had this ability to mimic voices. Sometimes she found herself copying the voices of people she was speaking with, and it could cause annoyance.

'Good,' said Moskvin.

'Remarkable,' said Stinnes. The black girl clapped her hands very softly. Miranda still couldn't decide whether the girl was hostile to all of them or only to Moskvin.

'But will you be able to do it without the recording to prompt you?' said Moskvin.

'I'd need to see her again.'

'That will be arranged, and we'll have lots and lots of recordings for you.'

'The recordings are a help but I must see her speak too. I have to watch her mouth. So much depends upon the tongue if I am to make conversation. And I need to hear more of her vocabulary.'

'You will be told exactly what to say. There is no need for you to be sidetracked into any conversation other than the words we want spoken. It's simply a matter of making the voice sound natural, and imitating it accurately.'

'Good,' said Miranda.

'The element of surprise will be on your side,' said Moskvin. 'You will have spoken to the husband and to the sister before they recover from their amazement.'

'The phone is easy but… '

'I have solved the other problem,' said Moskvin. 'Her husband will be in a car, the driver's seat, and he'll be prevented from turning around. That will be Harmony's job and she's an expert, aren't you, Harmony?'

'You bet your ass I am, boss,' said Harmony, in a tone of self-mockery that Moskvin seemed not to register.

Still looking at Miranda, Moskvin said, 'You'll get into the back seat. You'll be close but he won't see you.'

'Good. I'll use the Arpège perfume she likes. He'll recognize the scent of it.'

'He'll smell you but he won't see you,' said Moskvin.

'I could never make myself look like her,' said Miranda. 'Just one glimpse of me and he'd…'

'I have thought of that too,' said Moskvin. 'No need to make you look anything like her. On the contrary we'll give you a black wig, dark glasses and heavy make-up. They will not be surprised that she would disguise herself to visit England. For them it will make better sense that way.'

'That's a load off my mind. I could never pass myself off as her. She's very beautiful.' She looked at the two Russians. 'In fact I like her.'

'We all do,' said Stinnes. 'We are doing this to help her.'

'I didn't know that,' said Miranda doubtfully.

'But she mustn't know,' added Stinnes.

'Under no circumstance must she guess,' said Moskvin, and he slammed his hand down on the table. 'Or you'll wish you'd never been born.'

'Okay,' said Miranda more calmly than she felt. She hated to admit it but Moskvin did frighten her, and she was not a person easy to frighten.

'She gets the message,' said Harmony. 'Can I eat my apple now, boss man?'

Bosham, Sussex, England. October 1983.

Few actions within the law can provide more joy than the dispassionate evaluation of a colleague's failure. And so it happened that the field operation that Pavel Moskvin planned against London Central became celebrated in speech and writing, and perhaps in song too, for long after Moskvin was dead and buried.

Some blamed the failure entirely upon Moskvin. He was a desk man, without the practical experience that service in the field provides (it was field agents in particular who inclined to this view). Moskvin was, undeniably, a bully; he was always in a hurry and he failed to understand the English. But then, many of his peers were bullies, very few of them were not in a hurry and even in England it was difficult to find anyone who claimed to understand the English.