Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

I turned back to address the monk. “But as it is, I fell for her even though I always suspected she was ideologically unsound. Perhaps because she was ideologically unsound. I don’t know. And not that it really matters now. We’re all for the high jump, I expect. Even you, Anne. I can’t imagine what kind of deal you think you’ve cut with them, but you’re quite deluded if you think you’re just going to walk away scot-free from this room. That there aren’t going to be any consequences for you back in London.”

“Never mind that now,” said the monk. “Tell us about Harold Hennig.”

I was enjoying myself now and plowed on. I was sure that if my story had sounded completely implausible to anyone except Anne, by now they’d have silenced me the way they’d already silenced Harold Hennig.

“Harold Hennig I’ve known since before the war, when I was working as a policeman at the Police Praesidium on Alexanderplatz and he was working for the Gestapo in Berlin. He was attached to the Queer Squad. He had a very profitable sideline in blackmail even then. The master blackmailer, we used to call him on the police force. I mean, what better cover for a blackmailer than being a policeman? It was Hennig who was behind the scheme to blackmail General von Fritsch into resigning from the Wehrmacht in nineteen thirty-eight. That was on Hitler’s orders. And no one understood blackmail better than Adolf Hitler. I was the one who brought Hennig into the Stasi in the first place. That was one of my major functions in the beginning; to track down men from the RSHA and cajole or pressure them into working for the Stasi. Anne is quite right, again: Half of the Stasi has some sort of background in the old Reich Main Security Office. Most of us cut our teeth in the RSHA. That’s what younger ideologues like her can never understand. That the dictatorship of the proletariat requires the working class to be even more ruthless in the administration of that dictatorship than the Fascists. No one is forbidden to join the organs of the state merely by virtue of their former political allegiance. Men were Nazis. Men are reeducated in socialism. I was. Anne was wrong that I told her that I thought this was funny. My English always lets me down when I try to make a joke. Just ask my employers at the hotel.”

Anne was still shaking her head. If she’d had a gun she’d probably have shot me.

“You’d thought it all out, hadn’t you?” said the monk. “This scheme to sell us the idea that Hollis was a mole.”

“No,” I said loudly. “Wolf hated that word. Moles make molehills, he said. There is no subtlety in that. What Englishman doesn’t notice molehills on his beautiful lawn? Wolf preferred to think of this as his cryptic egg scheme, which is something that kuckucks do. I’m sorry, cuckoos. A cuckoo is a brood parasite. It lays an egg that’s just like all the rest in the host bird’s nest, to persuade it to bring up the cuckoo chick as its own. Wolf’s idea was that you could equally be persuaded that you had been bringing up a cuckoo chick all along.” I shrugged. “Well, now you know the truth. Hollis was your egg, not ours.”

“If what you say is true,” said the monk, “then perhaps you know of other cryptic eggs in our service.”

I lit my second cigarette with the butt of the first, which I stubbed out in a glass ashtray the monk had shoved in my direction. On purpose I didn’t put it out very well and, to his irritation, the cigarette butt continued to smoke for several more minutes.

“The HVA is a new service,” I said evasively. “It takes time to lay an egg like Hollis. So far, only the GRU and the KGB have had the opportunity to do this. I daresay Wolf is recruiting people in your service as we speak. But they won’t hatch for a while.”

“How about Russian eggs,” said the monk. “Perhaps you heard a mention of someone’s name when you were last at Karlshorst.”

I thought quickly, recalling the names of the two men I’d overheard Sinclair and Reilly mention while I’d been eavesdropping on their conversation on top of Maugham’s roof, and wondering if the old man had told them about that. Perhaps not if he really had suffered a minor stroke. This was the moment I’d been hoping might come along-when the British, already paranoid about Soviet agents in their service, would ask me for names. But I had to play things carefully now. If I was too reluctant to give them any names, they might decide I knew nothing; but if I was too eager, they’d assume I was making it up.

“Perhaps,” I said carefully.

“Maybe you’d care to share a name with us now.”

“In return for what?”

“We could make a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?”

“The kind of immunity deal that gives you back your liberty, perhaps.”

“How do I know I can trust you to keep your word about something like that?”

“You don’t. But we’re holding all the cards here. Quite frankly, Gunther, I think your only chance is to come clean with us and hope for the best.” He paused. “The way I see it, you’ve got nothing to lose. You’re burned. Finished. Useless to the Stasi now. We might easily let you go on the basis that you probably won’t last five minutes when they find out you’ve told us everything. Of course, you might survive. Stranger things have happened.”

“Yes, that might work, I suppose.” I nodded thoughtfully. “There is a name I can give you. Two names, actually. For a while they were the two most important Soviet agents in MI6. The question is, which of us is prepared to share them with you now? To some extent I’ll only be confirming what you know since one of them is already in the public domain. But the other should prove I’m telling the truth, all right. Although once I’ve given you these names, I’ll have effectively told you what this operation was really about. That this whole operation was set up by the HVA not only to blacken the name of Roger Hollis but more importantly, to salvage the reputation of someone else. Someone even more important, perhaps. Someone who might yet still make a comeback as the KGB’s top man in MI6. Someone who was always a better spy than Roger Hollis.”

“I’ve already explained what this is about,” insisted Anne. “What are you talking about, Gunther? This is complete fantasy.”

“Herr Gunther, we both know you don’t really have a choice here,” insisted the monk. “I’m sure you know the difficulty you are in. The difficulty we are both in. There is no legal process available to you, or for that matter to us. Then again, we can hardly let you go, can we? Unless and until we’re convinced that you’ve told us everything, I’m afraid I can’t answer for the consequences. Some of my more muscular colleagues favor taking you out to sea and dropping you over the side with a weight around your ankles. Ever since the defections of Messrs. Burgess and Maclean, morale has been low in our service. I’m afraid that killing you and Herr Hennig would help to restore a sense that the balance has been redressed. I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that. For your own sake I urge you to cooperate fully.”

“All right,” I said. “But I have to say there’s something I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?” asked the monk.

“Why hasn’t she told you this? I don’t understand you, Anne. Why are you trying to protect him? It’s all over for me and you and Hennig. The best we can hope for is to try and cut some deal before they throw us all in jail.”

“This is fantasy,” Anne told the monk again. “Look, I’ve told you everything there is to know. The whole bloody operation. I’m not holding anything back. But for me, the deputy director of MI5 would probably be suspended pending an investigation. Wouldn’t he? It’s only because of me that you know anything at all. But for me, you’d be in the dark about all this.”