Len Deighton - Spy Sinker

Sometimes she felt like salvaging what little she had left. She felt like grabbing a chance of happiness with Harry, of severing her contact with London and just settling down in East Berlin as a Hausfrau. But that would be no more than a temporary salve. The real loss was Bernard and the children: she wanted them to love her and need her.

'A penny for them?' said Harry.

'I was thinking about my hair,' she said. 'About having it cut shorter.' Men were always ready to believe that women were thinking about their hair.

He smiled and nodded. She was looking much older lately: they both were. A vacation in the Danube Delta would be good for both of them.

That evening she had a meeting with Werner Volkmann. She waited there alone in her old-fashioned apartment looking out over the Frankfurter Alice, the wide main road that led eventually to Moscow and, perhaps for that reason, was once called Stalin Alice. It was a part of the procedure that agents running back and forth did not come up to the office. They met privately. She looked at her watch: Werner was late.

She tried to read but was too jittery to concentrate. She found herself trying not to look at Pariser Platz , which was hanging over her bed. It was in a neat black ebony frame. One evening she had taken it down and opened the frame in order to replace Kirchner's kitsch gaiety with an abstract print more to her taste. Behind the street scene she had been horrified to come across a coloured print of Lochner's The Last Judgment . As such medieval paintings go, it was a mild example of the violent horrors waiting for sinners in the next world, but Fiona, alone and tired and troubled, had been thunderstruck by the demented and distorted figures and terrifying demons. It was as if she was meant to find it lurking under the cosiness of the Berlin street scene. With trembling hands she'd replaced The Last Judgment back under the Kirchner and fixed it into its frame, but from that time onwards she was never unaware of the presence of that tormented world that lurked under the frolicsome Pariser Platz .

Werner apologized for being late. He was rainswept and weary. He said it was the strain of winding down his banking business and trying to run Lisl Hennig's hotel at the same time, but Fiona wondered if it was the stress of being a double agent. Werner was a West German national. If the security services became convinced that he was betraying them he would simply disappear without trace or, worse still, become a patient in the Pankow clinic.

They chatted for ten minutes, the sort of unimportant talk they might have had if Werner was what he purported to be. Only then did Fiona disconnect the voice-actuated microphone which she had discovered on the first day she got here. Senior staff had their conversations recorded only by random checks, but it was better to be safe.

'Did you see the children?' Before answering he went and sat in the only comfortable chair with his overcoat still on. He wasn't feeling cold: Werner often kept his overcoat on. It was as if he wanted to be ready to leave at short notice. He'd even kept hold of his hat, and now he was fidgeting with it, holding it in both hands like the steering wheel of a heavy truck that he was negotiating along a busy road.

'I will see them next week,' said Werner. He saw the disappointment in her face. 'It's not easy to arrange it without Bernard asking awkward questions. But they are fit and well, I can assure you of that. Bernard is a good father.'

'Yes, I know,' said Fiona, and Werner realized that she had taken it as a reproach. He found it difficult to have a conversation with Fiona these days. She could be damned touchy. She was worn out. He'd told the D-G that over and over again. She said, 'It might be easier if I were in Moscow or China, but it is impossible to forget that everything I love is so near at hand.'

'Soon you'll be home. Here everything is changing,' said Werner. 'I even see diehard communists beginning to discover that man does not live by bread alone.'

'Nothing will ever change,' said Fiona. 'You can't build a capitalist paradise upon a Leninist boneyard.'

'Why so glum, Fiona?' She seldom revealed her personal views.

'Even if you waved a magic wand and declared Eastern Europe totally free, it would not stir. Bret's sanguine ideas about the economy don't take into account the human factor or the immense difficulties of change evident to anyone who comes and looks for themselves. He talks about "the market" but all Eastern Bloc economies are going to remain dominated by the public sector for many many years to come. How will they fix market prices? Who is likely to buy decrepit steel works, ancient textile plants or loss-making factories? Bret says the East will revive its private sector. How? Eastern Europeans have spent their whole working lives slacking off in over-manned jobs. No one here takes risks. Even in the KGB/Stasi office I find people are reluctant to take on new responsibility or make a decision. Forty years of socialism has produced a population incapable of decision-making. People here don't want to think for themselves. Capitalism will not appear just because there is no longer any law against it.' She stopped. It was an unusual outburst. 'I'm sorry, Werner. Sometimes I think I've been here too long.'

'London think so too. The D-G is going to pull you out,' said Werner.

She closed her eyes. 'How soon?'

'Very soon. You should start to tidy things up.' He waited for a stronger reaction and then said, 'You'll be with Bernard and the children again.'

She nodded and smiled bleakly.

'Are you frightened?' he asked, without really believing it was true.

'No.'

'There is nothing to be frightened of, Fiona. They love you, they want you back.'

For a moment she gave no sign of having heard him, then she said, 'Suppose I forget?'

'Forget what?'

She became flustered. 'Things about them. I do forget things, Werner. What will they think of me?' She gave him no chance to answer, and moved on to other things. 'How will it be done, Werner?'

'It might be changed, but at present the plan is to leave a car parked in the street outside. The keys will be under the seat. With the keys there will be an identity card. Use it only as far as the Autobahn then throw it into a ditch somewhere where it won't be found. You'll drive down the Autobahn, dump the car at the roadside and get into one with British plates. The driver will have a UK diplomatic passport for you.'

'You make it sound simple, Werner.' London always made things sound simple. They believed it gave agents confidence.

He smiled and twirled the hat on the finger of one hand. 'London want you to list your contacts here, Fiona.' For years she'd thought of Werner as some soft woolly creature, hen-pecked by his awful wife. Since using him as her contact with London Central she'd discovered that the real Werner was as hard as nails and far more ruthless than Bernard.

'I have none,' she said.

'Contacts: good and bad. I'd give the bad ones careful consideration, Fiona. Office staff? Janitor? Has anyone said anything to you, even in jest?' He pinched his nose between finger and thumb, looking up at her mournfully while he did it.

'What sort of anything?'

'Jokes about you working for the British… Jokes about you being a spy.'

'Nothing to be taken seriously.'

'This is not something to gamble with, Fiona. You'd better tell me.' He placed his hat on the floor so that he could wrap the skirt of his overcoat over his knees.

'Harry Kennedy… He's a doctor who visits Berlin sometimes.'

'I know.'

'You know?'

'London has had him under surveillance since the day you first came here.'

'My God, Werner! Why did you never tell me?'

'I had nothing to tell.'