Gavin Lyall - The Crocus List

"What were you thinking of doing next, Major?" Gower asked as they walked back towards his car.

"I thought I might cross over and look at some parked vehicles in"… he glanced at the travelling sky… "East Berlin, with this wind."

Gower may have sucked in his breath sharply, but it was lost in the wind that indeed seemed to be holding steady from Siberia, hustling at their backs and flickering dead leaves past them. His voice and face certainly became more mournful. "If you get caught over there, Major-"

"Ifthey get caught over there, too… We're in a bind."

"You wouldn't want to go over in uniform. But I could do you an orange card…" In uniform (not that he had one with him) Maxim could go into East Berlin by simply flashing his ID, just as a Russian officer could cross to the West, although the Russian might have more explaining to do to his seniors if he ever went back. An 'orange card' would identify Maxim, under any name he chose, as a civilian British official. However, he didn't want to be anything official at all.

"I think I might stroll across as just a tourist. I've got a Canadian passport that seems to work…"

"Have you now?" Gower's professional interest lit up. "I wonder how you found that-it had better be good. Very popular passport, the Canadian one, these days. Marks you down as a big spender but not committed to an American viewpoint, if you follow me."

"Real Canadians also travel."

"I don't blame them," Gower relapsed into gloom. "But you could get searched. It wouldn't look so good if you had anythinguseful on you."

They walked for a time in silence. Gower's training had made him leave his car, which was probably known as belonging to an Int Corps man, some distance from the hotel. The same instinct for invisibility made him stop at a street crossing and wait for the green light, although there was no risk in walking. Berlinersare disciplined pedestrians and were being rewarded by gangs of workmen stretching the already wide pavement to make strolling that much easier. Prosperity is the clang of a shovel, Maxim realised, and the shovels had started clanging almost as soon as the guns had stopped in 1945. Prosperity was now all about them: they moved in a canyon of concrete and plate glass that channelled herds of polished cars intent on being the first to catch a jaywalker. It might not be beauty, but it was solid worth.

"I could probably find you something useful," Gower said at last. "And leave it over there for you."

"I've got a little nine-mil something already, though it could use a few more rounds. Now, if I could find that on the other side…"

The meeting went on simply because nobody wanted to be the one to suggest it had ended already. The tabletop was littered with signals and coffee cups and the room quite warm, even fuggy, although nobody was smoking. We smell like old men, George concluded gloomily.

"Could we not," the Deputy D-G from Security suggested diffidently, "appeal to Charlie's Indians, as we seem to call them now, for help? They have a more activist reputation and presumably more assets in East Germany than we can afford. It would not be the first time, after all… "

Everybody drew back fractionally, as if he had loosed a cockroach in the middle of the table. Then all leant forward again, because they could take such things.

Sir Nicholas pursed his lips. "If they weren't involved already, they'd be delighted to step in and show us how it should be done. But as theyare involved, they're trying to distance themselves as much as possible. They know whom our masters will blame if it becomes a debacle."

"Not without justification," Norman Sprague said. "One cannot lose sight of the fact that this, ah, Crocus List was conceived and financed entirely by-"

"We're talking about a bunchof Britons," Sir Nicholas said firmly. "Apparently intelligent men who went into this with their eyes open, acting in what they think is the best British interest. If Five wasn't allowed to catch them in this country when all they were doing was smearing Ettington and popping off guns in the Abbey, we can't expect Charlie to save our face when they go international."

Sprague looked mildly hurt. "Well, then I suppose our hopes rest entirely on Major Maxim. Although hopes for what, I can't say."

"And then," George said, "at least you'll be able to blame the Army as well. "

West Berlin's prosperity stops well before the Wall itself, at roughly the point where the U-Bahn subway fills with Turkish immigrant workers and becomes known as the Orient Express. Beyond there, the buildings are old andshabby, the few modern ones standing aloof and uncomfortable, like guests at a wedding wondering what on earth sort of family their nephew is marrying into.

Maxim sat in a rather scruffy bar just out of sight of Checkpoint Charlie, stretching a Pils and feeling time pass with the east wind outside. But the wind was steady; he, and they, should be in the right place.

Sergeant Gower came in, wearing a uniform anorak and cypress-green beret. He ignored Maxim, went straight to a cigarette machine and bought a packet of Marlboros. The barman gave him a sour look as he went out again, turning right. Maxim waited two minutes, then followed.

In the car, Gower said: "It's in place," and told him the address. "And if you want transport over there, there's a green Ladataxi that'll be hanging round the Friedrichstrassestation. You call the driver Erich-shall I give you the number?"

Maxim repeated it carefully. "Thanks. I'll push on across, then. It's asking a bit, but if you could stick around here and be ready to grab the Volkswagen if it comes back-I'll try and be with it myself, but… I don't know if you've powers of arrest…"

"In Berlin, we can always work out something."

"Fine. And if I don't get back, could you signal George Harbinger at Mo D?"

"You'll be back, Major." But it was the instinctive reassurance demanded on the eve of battle. Gower was torn-as Maxim could sense-between the common sense of letting him get on with his job and the feeling that nobody joined the Army to go into things alone. The Sergeant frowned through the windscreen and tapped his fingers quickly on the wheel. "I suppose I'm just the intellectual type, really… But there's something worries me. A Blowpipe's a good bit of kit, it did all right in the Falklands, I heard-but they shot off a lot more than they knocked down planes."

"Taking off, any aeroplane's a sitting duck. And they've been practising as much as they could."

"Civilians." The slow shake of Gower's head dismissed any civilian practice. "They've only got the one missile… it could have water on its brain or oil up its – Idon't know about missiles-but one on one isn't a sure way. Then what? What's their back-up plan?"

"I don't know."

"Me neither, Major… but killing the Archbishop, I mean it's quite a big idea. If they were going to do it at all, they might want to get it right."

"They could be thinking of an assassination in London-only they don't stand a chance, now we're on to them."

"Yes. I just thought, if he's not going to fly over that Blowpipe anyway, if you'd gone along to guard him instead…"

"He's only half of it. If the Blowpipe brigade gets picked up-"

"They must have thought up some sort of getaway. I mean, it would bugger their plan if they got caught…"

"I don't want them to get away. I want to bring them back alive and talking."

The Wall that cuts Berlin in half, and makes West Berlin a landlocked island, brings a variety of emotions. It is nasty, but that is something you knew already. It is strange, a wall cutting across streets, at one place running down the centre of a street, pedantically following the boundaries of the prewar electoral districts-but just how strange only a Berliner could say, and increasingly only an older Berliner-although West Berlin is an old people's city. But perhaps strangest of all, it is old-fashioned: a Cold War attitude frozen in concrete, immortalising midnight deals in cigarettes, currency, people. It brings an exasperated demand: For God's sake, haven't things changed just a bit? The Wall is the answer, and the answer is No.