The Doll’s House (6 page)

She was a beautiful woman; Oakham had seen photographs of her. But not recently. The terror groups had dispersed. The leaders had been caught, imprisoned, and were now forgotten. Monika had eased out in time. She had worked for the criminal element in Paris – some said for the French Secret Service itself, and done discreet jobs for the CIA. For the last few years she had lived off the highest level of prostitution, protected by the organizations who had used her. The whisper was that the protection was coming to an end.

A rich diversity of talents, nationalities, ages, loyalties – all very different. But they all had one thing in common with Harry Oakham and each other. Which was why they were coming to Geneva to meet him.

Jan had brought Rilke up to the conference room early. Harry came to shake hands with him. He'd never met the man, but he'd seen photographs. And he'd debriefed some of his handiwork. What was left of them. Rilke was short and wiry, with dark, angry eyes set deep in his head. His forehead bulged outward. He had a sallow skin, pockmarked with old acne scars, and a thin moustache above narrow lips. He had what Harry described as a wet-fish handshake, which surprised him.

He said, in excellent English, almost without accent, ‘Good morning. I've followed your career with admiration, Mr Oakham. It's nice to meet you face to face.'

‘It's nice to meet you too,' Harry answered. ‘I've been following your career too; trying to catch up, but not very successfully. You were too good for us.'

He was a vain little skunk; Jan was right. He smirked at the compliment.

‘From a professional of your standing, that's high praise.'

‘Take a seat,' Harry suggested.

He must have learned his English at the Potsdam special language school.

He didn't waste time on small talk. Rilke had only been given fifteen minutes before the others were expected.

‘Jan has briefed you on the general idea. I'd like your comments.'

Rilke poured a glass of water. He did it deliberately. The message was clear. I'm not committed to anything. I'm not going to ask any questions till you've given me more information.

‘Ploekewski discussed a general principle,' he said. ‘But it was very loose. No specifics. Just enough to interest me. But I want to know much more before I stay for any meeting.'

Oakham had expected him to make conditions. But he wasn't going to have the time.

‘I have my own position to consider.'

Harry changed tactics.

‘And what position is that?' he asked pleasantly. ‘I understand that you have been honourably retired. Or dishonourably, I should say. After all your years of brilliant service, you've been kicked out. And nobody's been anxious to employ you. You've taken quite a drop in living standards.'

That stung. Rilke's cheeks reddened.

‘I chose retirement,' he snapped back. ‘I couldn't work under the new system.'

He stubbed out his cigarette. Jan flashed a warning look and Harry laid a hand on Rilke's arm as he began to push his chair back.

‘Don't walk out till you see what's on offer. I can promise you, you won't regret it.'

Rilke looked at him. ‘I'm not committed. Or compromised in any way?'

‘No more than any of us,' was the answer. ‘Damn,' he protested, as the telephone rang. ‘We've wasted time.'

Jan answered the call.

‘They're here,' he said to Oakham.

There was a man ahead of Georg Werner at the reception desk in the Hotel d'Angleterre. He heard him ask for the same contact name, the D.H. Company, and Werner drew back.

He was younger than Werner. Very spare in his ill-cut suit, tall and dark with broad cheeks and black eyes that hinted at Eastern blood. Armenian probably. He'd spoken with a Russian accent.

Werner followed him across the lobby and stood waiting for the lift. He felt nervous; he kept pulling at his jacket as if it didn't fit properly. The lift came level with them and the doors slid open. The tall Russian got in, Werner on his heels. Just before the doors closed a woman came hurrying up, followed by a small swarthy man who caught Werner's eye because he wore a bilious tie in greens and yellows. The lift was closed and Werner pressed number three. He glanced round him at the others. He smelled the woman's expensive scent.

The Russian said, ‘I'm going to the third floor.'

The small man with the garish tie grunted, ‘Me too.' The woman nodded; she had a lovely face, expertly made-up.

When the lift stopped all three got out. Georg Werner stood hesitating, looking up and down the corridor.

It was the Russian who took the initiative. He had that kind of authority.

‘The D.H. Company is room twenty-one,' he said. ‘I think it is down on the right.'

He didn't look round to see if they were following. He knew they were.

‘I can tell you who's joining us,' Oakham said. ‘Vassily Zarubin.' He saw the German's eyes narrow at the name.

‘A German diplomat who's been one of your sleepers since he left university – Georg Werner – Deputy Under Secretary of the West German Foreign Ministry that was, and someone outside your theatre – an Israeli, name of Ishbav, ex-Mossad, ex-Syrian spy. Ex-everything by the sound of him. And a lady. I didn't want to be sexist about this.'

He laughed. The door opened and Jan appeared. They were all on time. Punctuality was part of the code. They glanced at him, and then at Rilke and each other. He saw Georg Werner stiffen and turn pale. But Jan had closed the door. There was no going back for Werner, just because he'd come face to face with Rilke. The woman came in last. She was tall, with a cashmere throw emphasizing her height, expensive clothes and a pervasive scent that wafted towards them as she moved. Jan introduced her to Oakham first.

‘This is Monika,' he said.

‘Hello,' he shook a hand in a soft glove.

Unlike Rilke she gripped hard. She had a lovely face, but so had many women who could afford the presentation. What made her different was that every man in the room, except Rilke, felt like sex as soon as she came near them. She had a pleasant, rather throaty voice with a slight accent.

‘Hello, Mr Oakham. Gentlemen.'

She smiled at them and sat down where the Pole indicated.

Harry took his place at the head of the table.

‘Before we begin our meeting, would anyone like coffee? Or a drink?'

No-one wanted anything. The atmosphere was tense. Rilke lit another cigarette. Vassily Zarubin smoked a Russian cigarette that made Jan cough. They waited, and Werner picked up one of the pencils laid out with a notepad in front of him and tapped it nervously on the table top.

Harry Oakham stood up. He didn't smile.

He said, ‘I'd like to welcome you. I'm glad to see you here, and I won't waste your time talking a lot of balls. You know who I am and I know who you are. We're all in the same business. We've been on different sides, but we're on the same side now. I'll put my position first.'

He looked round at them. Rilke; the cold-eyed Russian; the suave diplomat fiddling with the pencil; the dark Israeli in the gaudy tie, who hadn't taken his eyes off Monika.

‘I was recruited from the Army,' Oakham said. ‘I joined our Security Services when I was twenty-four. I went through the training and it was tough. But so was I. I did a lot of personal jobs, and I headed several teams. We had assignments in East Berlin, in Bonn, in Poland – Jan was with me over there, and I operated in the United States once or twice. Without the co-operation of our American allies, I might add. I didn't rate their discretion too highly. I was given a job and I did it. Nobody forced me; nobody forced any of
you
. We all chose our professions. We knew the risks. Some of us thought what we were doing justified the things we did. I put my life on the line for the best part of twenty years. I lost friends. I made a lot of enemies too.'

For a moment he mocked them, his old opponents sitting listening to him.

‘For the last eight years I've been desk-bound. I didn't take the personal risks any more, but I had to send out other people who did. In a way, I found that harder. But – it was my job, so I did it. This must sound familiar to all of you. Not all of us were action men. But Daniel was, for instance.'

He turned to the Israeli.

‘You organized the snatches for Mossad. Everyone knows what the PLO did to an Israeli agent if they caught them. The Jehalil Sons of Allah dismembered you piecemeal while you were still alive. And Monika—' She smiled at him when he looked at her across the table. ‘Monika was an idealist. It wasn't a very pretty ideal and it inspired people to do some very ugly things. But you believed in it. You killed for it, but you risked a life sentence in one of those West German women's prisons where most of the high-risk political prisoners end up committing suicide.

‘And you, Herr Werner?' Oakham paused.

The others were staring at the Dutchwoman. He regained their attention.

‘You've been a Soviet sleeper since you joined the West German Foreign Ministry. You had a good career, a promising future. But you'd given your allegiance and you went on living an indefinite lie, waiting for the summons to serve, didn't you? You weren't an action man, Werner, but it takes a special kind of courage to lie low for years, waiting to be caught out … We knew all about you, of course. We got a tip from an East German source and we passed it on to Bonn. They didn't do anything about you. They'd have picked you up the moment you were activated. Didn't you ever feel the eyes on the back of your neck?'

The German shook his head. He was pale instead of flushed.

‘So that's what we have in common round this table. We're professionals. Experts in our different fields. Jan was my co-ordinator. They call it logistics now. Rilke – you made an art out of interrogation. You reached refinements of technique that nobody had ever thought of. Zarubin – you've never had a public face, but you didn't need one. You play the Intelligence game like you play chess. Like your father did before you.

‘We've given long and faithful service according to our skills. If there was a dirty job, a political foul-up which wasn't of our making, a mind-blowing Intelligence problem to be solved, our masters dropped it in our laps. And we did what was wanted.'

Oakham poured some water into a glass and drank it. They were watching him; the tension had risen. But he sensed a growing empathy. He was touching sore spots with a sympathetic hand. He had got the audience on his side by making them feel he was on theirs.

He leaned towards them, palms flat on the table. His voice was soft. ‘But times have changed, haven't they? We're all going to be one big happy European family. It's Love Thy Neighbour now. The Americans are opening hamburger chains in Moscow. Information's being dished out like crates of tinned peaches. The Germans are one nation, cuddling up after the last fifty years as if there'd never been a Berlin Wall. The Cold War's over, the Eastern Bloc is just a lot of countries dissolving into the chaos, people shooting each other in the name of democracy. Most of them couldn't even spell it. But we're told there's a rosy future for the world.

‘It's a nice picture. But where does all this leave us?' He raised his voice. ‘I'll tell you. We're not part of that picture, my friends. We belong to the bad old days. We've got dirty hands, when everyone else is showing up clean. So my department is closed down. I got a farewell lunch, a visit from the Deputy Chief and a pension. That's me. After twenty-eight years. How about you, Rilke? Early retirement? They kicked you out. They don't want to be reminded of people like you. Werner, you're blown, your career's finished. You'll be thrown on the rubbish heap. If they want to be nasty they'll make it very difficult for you to get any kind of decent job. And they will be nasty, believe me.

‘Colonel Zarubin, you're a marked man. Too hard line, too close to the enemies of glasnost. No promotion for you. Demotion, instead. Already happened, hasn't it?' he asked the Russian. ‘Lost your top post at the Institute to a new man. Ten years older, but he's got liberal leanings. He wants the KGB to be accountable. You'll be joining your father soon, sitting on a park bench like Khrushchev, mercifully allowed to live … Daniel, your life isn't worth twenty-four hours' insurance. Your pals in Mossad will be given you as a present before long. And Monika—' He shook his head a little. ‘Time's run out for you too. You bought a lot of it by working for some funny people and they've been bleeding you ever since. And you know too much about them.'

Her blue eyes glittered at him; she drew the cashmere round her shoulders.

‘I can look out for myself,' she said.

He shrugged.

‘If you say so. But the fact is that every one of us is finished. Some have a pretty low-grade future, others don't have a future at all. We have a saying at home – it's typical of English humbug – out to grass. You haven't heard of it? It's what we do with our old horses when we haven't any use for them. We turn them out into a field and leave them there to die of boredom. And we don't have to feed them either.'

‘We send ours to the slaughterhouse and sell them for meat,' Monika remarked.

‘I think it's kinder,' Harry Oakham said. ‘Well, I'm not ready for retirement! Nobody's putting me out to grass. I want my share for a change. Our masters,' he used the term with contempt, ‘may not have any use for us, but there are others who have. We've got plenty to offer and I've got people who want it. I'm going into business and I'm inviting you to join me.'

It was the Russian who spoke then. ‘Supposing it's true – what you've just said about us – what kind of business?'

‘The terror business,' Oakham said lightly. ‘That's what we've been trained for and that's all we know. Only this time we operate for money. Lots of money. We can name our price, Colonel. I've already named mine and it's been agreed. Now it's your turn.'