Len Deighton - Berlin Game

'It was just a signal intercept from Karlshorst…'

He nodded. 'News of which got back to Karlshorst within three days, and they changed codes and wavelengths. Yes, I know all about it. That American fellow… Joe something – "Just call me Joe," he kept saying – '

'Joe Brody.'

'Joe Brody. He explained the whole thing.'

'Let's make it off the record,' I said.

'Off the record, on the record – it makes no difference. I didn't go up there that night.'

'Fiona told me you did,'

'Then Fiona is not telling you the truth.'

'Why should she lie about it?' I said.

'That's something you'll have to ask Fiona.'

'Did you get the information by some other means? I'm determined to press this point, Giles. You may as well come clean.'

'Because your pal Werner Volkmann did it? And you'd like to clear him?'

'How did Werner get into Operations that night? He's never worked in Operations. He's always been a street man.'

'Werner Volkmann wasn't up there. He was Signals Security One. He brought it from Signals to Ciphers that night.'

'That's all? But Werner would have to be some wizard to decipher a message while he's travelling five blocks in the back of a car.'

Trent smoked reflectively. 'The theory was that Werner Volkmann was hanging around the cipher room that night. He could have seen the deciphered message. Anyway, he didn't have to decipher it in order to tell the Russians that their traffic was being intercepted. He only had to recognize the heading or the footing codes and the time and the Karlshorst Army transmitter identification. The Russians would know exactly what had been intercepted without Werner ever knowing what the message was.'

'Do you believe it was Werner?'

'Brody is a very careful investigator. He gave everyone a chance to speak their piece. Even Fiona was interrogated. She handled the message. I never saw the report, of course, but it concluded that Volkmann was the most likely person of those who could have done it.'

'I said, did you believe Volkmann did it.'

'No,' said Trent. 'Werner's too lazy to be a double agent – too lazy to be a single agent, from what I saw of him.'

'So who could have done it?'

'Frank hates Werner, you know. He'd been looking for a chance to get rid of him for ages.'

'But someone still has to have done it. Unless you think Frank leaked his own intercept just as a way of putting the blame on Werner.'

'It's possible.'

'You can't be serious.'

'Why not?'

I said, 'Because if Frank wants to get rid of Werner, he's only got to fire him. He doesn't have to go to all the trouble of leaking an intercept to the Russians.'

'It wasn't a vitally important piece of intelligence,' said Trent. 'We've seen more important things than that used as Spielzeug just to boost the reputation of a double agent.'

'If Frank wanted to fire him, he could have fired him,' I repeated.

'But what if Frank wanted him discredited?'

I stared at Trent and thought about it. 'I suppose you're right,' I said.

'Werner Volkmann spread stories about Frank.'

'Stories?'

'You've heard Werner when he's had a few beers. Werner is always able to see scandal where none exists. He had stories about Frank fiddling money from the non-accountable funds. And stories about Frank chasing the typists around the filing cabinets. I suppose Frank got fed up with it. You keep telling stories like that and finally people are going to start believing them. Right?'

'I suppose so,' I said.

'Someone leaked it,' said Trent. 'If it wasn't Volkmann or Frank, then Moscow had someone inside Operations that night. And it certainly wasn't me.'

'God knows,' I said, as if I'd lost interest in the mystery. But now I was sure that the Karlshorst intercept was vitally important, because it was the only real slip Moscow 's well-placed man had made.

'What do you think will happen?' said Trent. What was going to happen to him, he meant.

'You've had a long time in this business,' I reminded him. 'Longer than I have. You know how these things work. Do you know how many people just as guilty as you are have retired from the service with an unconditional pardon and a full pension?'

'How many?' said Trent. He knew I couldn't answer and that amused him.

'Plenty,' I said. 'People from Five, people from Six, a couple of Special Branch people, and those three from Cheltenham that you helped to interrogate last year.'

Trent said nothing. We watched four men as they came out of the house and went down the gravel path towards the gate lodge. One of them skipped half a pace in order to keep step with the others. They were security guards, of course. Only such men are that anxious to keep in step with their fellows. 'I hate prisons,' he said. He said it conversationally, as a man might remark upon his dislike of dinner parties or sailing.

'You've never been inside, have you?'

'No.'

'It's not like this, believe me. But let's hope it won't come to that – not for you, not for anyone.'

'That's called "leaving the door open",' said Trent. It was a subheading in his training report.

'Don't dismiss it on that account,' I said. But we both knew that Trent had written: 'Promise the interviewee anything. Promise him freedom. Promise him the moon. He'll be in no position to argue with you afterwards.'

People made jokes about 'the yellow submarine', but Fiona seemed to like going down to the Data Centre, three levels below Whitehall. So did I sometimes, for a brief spell. Down there, where the air was warmed, dehydrated, filtered and purified, and the sky was always light blue, you had the feeling that life had temporarily halted to give you a chance to catch your breath and think your own unhurried thoughts. That's why the staff down there are so bloody slow. And why, if I wanted anything urgently, I went down and got it myself.

The Data Centre can only be entered through the Foreign Office. Since this entrance was used by so many others, it was difficult for enemy agents to identify and target our computer staff. The Centre occupied three underground levels: one for the big computers, one for the software and its servicing staff, and the lowest and most secret level for data.

I went through the security room on the ground floor. I spent the usual three minutes while the uniformed guard got my picture, and a physical description, on his identity-check video screen. He knew me of course, the old man on the desk, but we went through the procedures just the same. The higher your rank, the longer it took to satisfy the security check, the men on the desk were more anxious to impress the senior staff. I'd noticed the way some of the junior employees seemed to get past with no more than a nod or a wink.

He punched a code to tell the computer I was entering the Centre, and smiled. 'Here we are, sir.' He said it as if he'd been more impatient than I had. 'Going to see your wife, sir?'

'It's our anniversary tonight,' I told him.

'Then it'll be champagne and roses, I suppose.'

'Two lagers and an Indian take-away,' I said.

He laughed. He preferred to believe I wore these old suits because I was a spy.

Fiona was on level 3 in Secret Data. It was a very big open room like a well-lit car park. Along one wall, the senior staff had been allotted spaces marked out by means of a tiny rug, a waist-high bookcase and a visitor's chair for visitors who never came. There was endless metal shelving for spools and, facing that, some disk-drive units. Underfoot was the special anti-static carpet, its silver-grey colour reflecting the relentless glare of the fluorescent lighting.

She didn't see me as I came along the glass-sided corridor that ran the length of the Centre. I pushed through the transparent door. I looked around: there was no one in sight except my wife. There was a hum of electricity and the constantly whirring disk drives. Then came the sudden whine of a machine going into high speed before modulating into a steady pattern of uneven heartbeats.