Len Deighton - Spy Sinker

'I share that view.' The D-G took out his cigar case and for a moment was going to light a cigar. Then he decided against it. The doctor had told him to stop smoking altogether, but he always carried a couple of cigars with him so that he didn't become too desperate. Perhaps it was a silly idea to do that: sometimes it was torture. 'You said that some of the staff were of the opinion that Bret had been made a fool of. What do the rest think?'

'Most of the staff know that Bret is reliable and resourceful.'

'You know what I mean, Frank.'

'Yes, I know what you mean. Well, there are some hotheads who think perhaps Bret was working with Fiona Samson.'

'Working with her? They think Bret Rensselaer and Fiona Samson have both been under Moscow's orders for that long?'

'It's an extreme view, Sir Henry, but they spent a lot of time together. There are stories of them having a love affair – a couple of sightings in the wrong hotels, you know the sort of thing. Even young Samson is not entirely certain that it's not true.'

'I didn't realize that such absurd stories were going around.'

'People wonder what motivated Bret, after a lifetime behind a desk, to grab a gun, rush into that launderette and try his hand at the sharp end. We have people trained to do that sort of thing.'

'It wasn't quite like that,' said the D-G.

'The gunfight at the OK Corral was how one of the newspapers described it. I'm afraid that description has provided the basis for a lot of doubtful jokes.'

The D-G sniffed audibly and then again. 'Berlin smells of beer, have you ever noticed that, Frank? Of course it's not the only German town with that odour but I notice it in Berlin more than anywhere else. Hops or malt or something…'he added vaguely, as if wanting to declare his unfamiliarity with that plebeian beverage.

'You'll have to support him. Sir Henry. Visibly and unequivocally.'

'I won't be able to do that, Frank. He must take his chances.'

'What do you mean, sir?'

'There are good reasons why I can give him no support; no support whatsoever.'

Frank was stunned. Despite the unwavering good manners for which he was famed, Frank was on the point of asking what the hell the Director-General was there to do, if it wasn't to support his staff when they were in trouble. 'Are those reasons operational or political?'

It was as near as Frank had ever gone to open rebellion, but the D-G accepted the reproach. On the other hand, the decision not to confide the truth about Fiona Samson to Frank was a sound one. Stinnes had to go back to Moscow firmly believing that Fiona Samson was a traitor. To say there were operational reasons for not supporting Bret Rensselaer was only a step away from revealing the whole story of Fiona Samson's mission. 'I can't go into that, Frank,' said the D-G in a voice that drew the line across Frank's toes. If Bret Rensselaer was suspected of being Fiona's co-conspirator, so be it.

'One supplementary, Director,' said Frank, his voice and form of address making it an official question. 'Is Rensselaer to be left to die of exposure? Is he to wither on the vine? Is that the purpose of the inquiry? I have to know in order to formulate my own responses.'

'My God, no! The last thing I want to see is Bret Rensselaer thrown to the sharks, especially the sharks of Whitehall. I want Rensselaer to come out of this on top. But I can't go in and rescue him.'

'I'm glad you made that clear, Sir Henry.'

The exchange of views had produced a stalemate, and the D-G recognized it as such. 'I still have a great deal of work for Rensselaer to do, and he's the only one equipped to do it.'

Frank nodded and thought it was some sort of reference to Bret's Washington contacts, which had always been important to the Department.

The story of that shooting in the Hampstead launderette that had worried the D-G and which the newspapers, and Frank Harrington, were pleased to call 'The Gunfight at the OK Corral' starts a week or so before the D-G's visit to Berlin.

Had Bret Rensselaer displayed his usual common sense he would have kept well out of it. It was a job for the Department's field agents. But Bret was not himself.

Bret Rensselaer missed Fiona Samson, he missed her terribly. Over the time when they had been working together they had met regularly and furtively, like lovers, and this had added to the zest. Bret could not, of course, tell anyone of this feeling he had, and his passion was not assuaged by seeing Bernard Samson, deprived of that perfect woman, going about his business in his usual carefree way. No matter what some people said about Samson's anguish Bret could only see the Bernard it suited him to see. He was especially outraged to discover that Bernard was now living with a gorgeous young girl from the office. Heaven knows how the children were reacting. Bret was appalled by this but took great care to disguise his feelings in the matter. He could see no way to influence what happened to the Samson children. He hoped that Fiona wasn't going to accuse him of bad faith at some future time.

Bret's participation in the shooting in the launderette changed a lot of things. For him it was nothing less than traumatic. Traumatic in the literal sense that the violent events of that night inflicted upon Bret a mental wound from which he never completely recovered.

For Bret everything suggested that the contact with the KGB team in the launderette would be mere routine. There had been no warning that things would go as they did. One minute he was sitting next to Bernard in an all-night launderette in Hampstead, and the next minute he was in the middle of one of the most horrifying nightmares of his entire life.

They were watching Samson's shirts revolving in the suds. Samson insisted that both of them brought laundry and had even produced a plastic bag of detergent; he said he didn't like the stuff they had in the shop. Bret wondered whether it was a mark of Samson's meticulous attention to detail or some sort of joke. Now Samson was intermittently reading a newspaper that was on his knee. He'd given Bret no indication at all that he had a damn great gun – with silencer attached – wrapped inside the Daily Telegraph . Samson had been chatting away about his father as if he had not a care in the world.

Bernard Samson could be an amusing companion if he was in a good mood. His caustic comments on his superiors, the government and indeed the world around him were partly his defence against a system that had never given him a proper chance in life, but they sometimes contained more than a grain of truth. Bernard's reputation was of being lucky, but his luck came from a professional attitude and a lot of hard work. Bernard was a tough guy and there can be no doubt that Bret's willingness to involve himself in this caper was largely due to the fact that he felt safe with Bernard.

Bret was wearing an old coat and hat he'd bought at the Oxfam shop specially for this evening's excursion. In the bag, under Bret's soiled laundry, there was a heavy manila envelope containing forty one-hundred-dollar bills. It was funding. The money was to be given to a KGB courier when he used the code word 'Bingo'. Positioned in the street outside the launderette there were enough men to warn Bret of their approach and – should Bret decide that they must be arrested – enough men to hold them. To Bret it seemed very straightforward, but it didn't turn out like that.

Things began with no warning from the men in the street. One of the KGB men had been hiding upstairs, in a room above the launderette, and when he came in unexpectedly he was brandishing a sawn-off shotgun. Then a second man entered; he too had a shotgun. One of the men said 'Bingo', the code word. Bret remained completely calm, or that was how he remembered it afterwards, and reached for the money to show them.