I decided it was time to get to the point.
‘Why are you telling me this? Are you after my opinion of him?’ I knew it was more than that – Battle had asked if I could spare him a few days.
‘Actually, I was hoping you might pop over and see if you could ferret him out.’
‘Pop over? To East Berlin?’ Battle was making it sound like a weekend’s holiday.
‘You spent a little time over there in ’73.’
‘A week in West Berlin. I barely glanced at the Wall, let alone crossed it.’
‘You’ll be fine, I’m sure.’
‘That doesn’t reassure me one jot.’
‘You know Robie better than anyone.’
This was probably true but Battle didn’t actually know that.
‘I’ve barely seen him in six years, Let’s not dance around the truth of it, you want me to go because I’m seen as disposable.’
‘I’m sure that’s not the case.’ Which was a rubbish denial and he knew it. I couldn’t get too angry at him, a decision like this didn’t come from Battle. He’d filed his report and one of our paymasters had put my name forward. They didn’t want this old soldier blundering around, he’d probably start a war, but the network wasn’t vital enough to risk anyone important. Send Shining, someone had decided. If he turns anything up then we’re happy, if he doesn’t come back then we’ve made a sizeable saving on our annual expenditure. I could just imagine the celebratory round of drinks that had been raised at the brilliance of the suggestion.
‘When do I go?’ There seemed little point in tilting at windmills.
‘This afternoon. I’ve booked you on the military flight.’
‘Then I suppose I’d better pack a bag,’ I said, putting aside my full mug of awful tea and getting to my feet.
Battle opened his battered briefcase. It was like watching an ancient, brown cow yawn. He pulled out a thin dossier. ‘Here’s everything I could bundle together for you. The secure stuff, anyway. I’ve prepped a local boy to give you a hand once you get there.’
‘What local boy? Why isn’t he looking for Robie?’
‘Bit above his pay grade. He’s a decent lad, though, Engel, got his head screwed on.’
‘Which puts him one up on me.’
I made the flight, but only by the skin of my teeth. I sat amongst a cheery bunch of squaddies. Having run to catch my plane, my body was cooking inside my suit and shirt. I loosened my collar, trying to let out some heat, a hot updraft cooking my chin. The suit clung to me like an unhelpful shower curtain. What I really wanted to do was strip off and get cool, but I doubted that would go down well.
The soldiers were discussing Berlin in the boisterous terms of students on a rag week outing. You might almost think their time back home had been a hardship.
Disembarking at RAF Gatow, I was met by Engel, Battle’s ‘decent lad’. Dressed in narrow-legged faded jeans and a voluminous sweater, he looked like a dandelion seed with acne. He seemed so youthful I wondered if he possessed a valid driver’s licence. If he didn’t, he saw it as no obstruction, throwing my bag onto the back seat of a fragile Volkswagen and inviting me to occupy the passenger seat.
When flying to Germany, you gain an hour yet seem to lose five years. Berlin has always had a well-deserved reputation as a vibrant and culturally explosive place, but the overall impression is of an austere, cold city dressed in yesterday’s clothes. Brutal, concrete punches to the eye leavened by modern extravagance.
It had snowed, much of it turning to dirty grey slush, which didn’t help the aesthetics.
‘You speak German?’ Engel asked.
‘Yes, but you’ll have to forgive the accent.’
‘It’s fine, my English isn’t very good and I worried. Mr Battle only speaks English and conversations are hard.’
I found it difficult to believe that in all his years of running the network, Battle had never bothered to pick up the lingo. Perhaps he considered it a bulwark against German supremacy. No doubt he tutted at passing Mercedes. You never could share the mindset of old soldiers unless you were one.
‘German is fine,’ I assured Engel.
‘Brilliant. I just have to make a quick stop on the way, hope that’s OK?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m in your hands.’
I alternated between taking in the busy streets and my driver. If I really was in the young man’s hands, I wanted to know a bit more about him. I had never developed much professional paranoia. Working in the distant backwater of Section 37, I could afford to be more casual than most. Here, I was paddling in more dangerous waters and I wanted the reassurance that Engel was someone I could rely on.
‘How long have you been working for Battle?’ I asked, trying to remain casual even though the car was shaking us up and down as if we were on a fairground ride. Battle must have been extra stingy on his budgets to let Engel drive around in that clapped-out old thing.
Engel smiled. ‘Only six months. He needed a driver and I needed money. My father knew him during the war.’
‘They were on good terms, I hope?’
Engel laughed. He was always laughing, I liked that. People who laughed easily were usually good souls.
‘They hid in all the same tunnels together. Father was part of the resistance.’
We cut down a side street and Engel parked the car skew-whiff on the kerb. It was a relief to be still for a minute. He reached past me to grab a brown parcel off the back seat.
‘I won’t be long,’ he said, jumping out of the car and jogging down the street towards a bar at the far end. I wondered what sort of agent was so confident in himself that he indulged in smuggling during the initial meeting with a superior. A terribly young one, I supposed. I wondered what the package had contained. Drugs? Money? Cigarettes? He returned a couple of minutes later and climbed back into the driver’s seat. I decided to face the question head on.
‘What was in the package?’
‘American chocolate.’
‘Chocolate?’
‘The owner of the bar has a brother on the Eastern side who occasionally feeds us information. Nothing important really, but Lucas always felt it was worth keeping him. One day he might have come up with something useful.’
‘Chocolate?’
‘The brother really likes chocolate. Hershey bars if possible. Personally I think they taste like plastic but each to his own.’
They were running a network based on confectionery.
‘Do we have any other payments to make? Perhaps a kilo of jelly babies to a ticket collector at the Ostbahnhof?’
Engel laughed again. ‘No, that’s it for today. I was going straight to your hotel. That OK?’
‘Fine by me.’
The hotel was a guesthouse by British standards, a concrete rectangle struggling to protect its naked modesty behind the leafless branches of a handful of trees.
I was introduced to the landlady, a fading ruin of ancient splendour, dyed-black hair, make-up thick enough for Kabuki. She wore black satin and cigarette smoke. The ghosts of decadent nights in cabaret bars clung to her drooping shoulders and she navigated the corridors as if slowly dancing to a lovesick piano. When we reached my room, she croaked something indecipherable and sprawled against the door jamb, offering an inch or so of wilting, fish-netted thigh. She was utterly adorable.
‘Thank you, Frau Schwarz,’ I said, taking in the box-like cubicle of ancient fabrics and damp. It was the sort of room a Trappist monk might stay in if he wanted to punish himself. ‘It’s delightful.’
‘It’s awful,’ she said, her thin voice crackling like a Geiger counter, ‘but we make do.’
I always enjoyed people who wallowed in misery, so I smiled and began to unpack my bag.
I hadn’t brought a great deal, perhaps subconsciously hoping that the less underwear I carried the briefer my visit would turn out to be. This is the peculiar attitude of Englishmen everywhere, refusing to carry an umbrella in the absurd belief it might encourage rain.
For a couple of moments, Frau Schwarz observed from the doorway and then, deciding my belongings were of no interest, she wandered away to refresh her cigarette holder.
‘She’s reliable,’ said Engel, as if I might have doubted it.
‘I’m sure she is.’
I finished putting my things away and pocketed the room key. ‘Office next?’
‘Sure thing.’
I still hadn’t mentioned the disappearance of Lucas Robie. Perhaps I was hoping Engel would bring it up. Perhaps, like the lack of underwear in my bag, I just hoped that the more I ignored the situation the less real it could be. Enough, however, was enough.
‘Tell me about Robie,’ I said, trying to keep the subject as open as possible. I wanted Engel’s genuine thoughts both on the man and what might have happened to him.
‘Lucas was a good friend,’ Engel replied. ‘I will tell you now, I don’t believe what Battle is saying about him. It’s easy to accuse someone from behind a desk in another country but I worked with Lucas every day, I knew him. He would not defect.’
Which was nice to hear but didn’t really get me anywhere. Of course he liked Lucas, who didn’t?
‘So what’s happened to him, then?’
Engel shrugged, trying to look casual and failing. He was worried, that much was clear, and when he spoke his words carried none of the conviction he was aiming for.
‘He’s probably chasing something down,’ he said, ‘following some lead or opportunity. Lucas had a great nose for that sort of thing.’
Which may well have been true. I knew little of Lucas’s career.
‘Might he be in trouble?’ I asked, forcing my way into that little crack of insecurity he’d shown.
‘Lucas can look after himself.’ He seemed even less believable this time.
‘But if he were in trouble,’ I pressed, determined to get something useful out of him, ‘who would have their finger on the trigger? One of the men in the car following us?’
I’d first noticed the car shortly after leaving Frau Schwarz’s charming guesthouse. It was a black Audi that positively reeked of government expenses. I could guess which government.
‘They’re not important,’ Engel replied. ‘You shouldn’t have come in on the military plane; someone was bound to follow us.’
He didn’t look in the rear-view mirror, and I believed his show of having known the car was there all along. If I’d been a better spy perhaps I would have remained undecided as to whether this showed skill on his part or a possibility of collusion. I’ve always been someone who takes people too much on face value – perhaps that’s why nobody ever tried to push me towards a promotion.
‘They’re only bound to follow us if your security’s as flimsy as the suspension on this damned car of yours.’
‘Sometimes it’s no hardship to have your enemy follow you,’ he said. ‘Lucas always said that. You let them see what you want them to see, and get your real business done while they’re looking the other way.’
‘And you want them to see me?’
‘Does it matter? As long as they don’t know why you’re here.’
‘That rather depends on what’s happened to Robie, doesn’t it? If they’ve enrolled him then it’s not rocket science to guess.’
‘I told you, there’s no way Lucas has gone over to the Russians.’
‘I’m glad you’re so convinced. We may be gambling my life on the fact.’
I kept an eye on the car, paying particular attention to the driver and his passenger, two men I wanted to be able to recognise – for all the good it might do me – if I suddenly met them in a dark Berlin alleyway. If I survived such an encounter, it would make writing the report so much easier.
The driver was in his mid-forties, with the sort of pale, deathlike skin that could only come from a life led under strip lighting. He wore narrow glasses over a nose far too big for them, the overall effect being of a man whose face was swallowing its own spectacles. The passenger was a little older. He wore a large corduroy cap pulled low over a pugilist’s face, the sort of vegetable features that looked as if they’d been pounded into place by a god who used his knuckles. The filing clerk and the bruiser, they wore their specialist skills clearly.
‘What do we know about these two?’ I asked Engel. ‘As we’re obviously such good friends with them.’
Engel glanced at the mirror, confirming the officers in question. ‘The driver’s new but the man with the cauliflower for a head is Ernst Spiegel. Believe it or not, he’s one of their sharper men. Dislikes a life behind a desk, otherwise he would probably have a better career. Mother’s Russian, father’s long dead, he seems an earnest party member, enjoys his work…’
‘Even when it’s just clinging on to our bumper?’
Engel shrugged. ‘You know what it’s like. They follow us, we follow them, sometimes we make a show of it, more often we don’t. It’s like cats squaring up to one another, all big fur and bared teeth. If you want me to lose them then I will.’
‘If you do that then it’ll only make me seem more important. I’m in the open, perhaps it’s best to leave it that way.’
I didn’t like it, but I disliked putting a target on myself by panicking even more.
We pulled up outside a grey office block and I did my level best not to stare as the pursuing Audi drove slowly past us.
‘Another delivery?’ I asked, looking up at the building.
‘I said I was taking you to the office, didn’t I?’
‘The Berlin office is in the Olympic Stadium, even I know that. As, I’m sure does Herr Spiegel.’
‘Battle’s network is run separately from the station office, I thought you knew that?’
‘I didn’t realise it had its own office.’ I chose not to labour the point but considering how little Battle’s superior’s thought of his network I was baffled – and, yes, perhaps a little jealous. It may have been independently run but it was still part of Berlin operations. I had to spend a week arguing the toss over a filing cabinet.
Engel led me up the concrete steps to a revolving door. He walked past the reception desk, smiling at the guard stationed there, a bored-looking man working his way through a crossword. He used a pen, you can always spot a show-off. We walked straight past a pair of lifts and on towards the stairwell. Engel headed down. It was obvious from the smug smile on his face that he was enjoying this piece of theatricality, so I chose not to question him, just followed as he led us into the basement.