at either side of the superb mahogany dining table. Its surface was protected by a sheet of glass. Around it there were eight reproduction Hepplewhite dining chairs, six of them empty, except that one was draped with a shapeless blue jacket. A cheap cut-glass chandelier was suspended over one end of the table, revealing that the table had been moved away from the window, for even here in Charlottenburg windows could prove dangerous. One of the men was smoking. He was in shirt-sleeves and loosened tie. The window was open a couple of inches so that a draught made the curtain sway gently but didn’t disperse the blue haze of cigarette smoke. The distinctive pungent reek of coarse East German tobacco took me by the throat. Smoking was one of the few pleasures still freely available in the East and there was neither official disapproval nor social hostility towards it over there.
The man called Valeri was quite elderly for an active agent. His high cheekbones and narrow eyes gave him that almost oriental appearance that is not unusual in Eastern Europe. His complexion was like polished red jasper, flecked with darker marks and shiny like a wet pebble found on a beach. His thick brown hair – darkened and glossy with dressing – was long. He’d combed it straight back, so it covered the tops of his ears to make a shiny helmet. His eyes flickered to see me as I came through the door but his head didn’t move, and his high-pitched voice continued without faltering.
Sitting across the table from him, legs crossed in a languid posture, there was a fresh-faced young man named Larry Bower, a Cambridge graduate. His hair was fair and wavy, and he wore it long in a style that I’d heard described as Byronic, although the only picture of Byron that I could call to mind showed him with short back and sides. In contrast to the coarse ill-fitting clothes of Valeri, Bower was wearing a well-tailored fawn Saxony check suit, soft yellow cotton shirt, Wykehamist tie and yellow pullover. They were speaking German, in which Larry was fluent, as might be expected of a man with a German wife and a Rhineland beer baron grandfather named Bauer. In an armchair in the corner a grey-haired clerk bent over her notebook.
Bower raised his eyes to me as I came in. His face hardly changed but I knew him well enough to recognize a fleeting look that expressed his weariness and exasperation. I sat down in one of the soft armchairs from which I could see both men. ‘Now once again,’ said Bower, ‘this new Moscow liaison man.’ As if reflecting on their conversation he swung round in his chair to look out of the window.
‘Not new,’ said Valeri. ‘He’s been there years.’
‘Oh, how many years?’ said Bower in a bored voice, still looking out of the window.
‘I told you,’ said Valeri. ‘Four years.’
Bower leaned forward to touch the radiator as if checking to see if it was warm. ‘Four years.’
‘About four years,’ he replied defensively.
It was all part of the game: Bower’s studied apathy and his getting facts wrong to see if the interviewee changed or misremembered his story. Valeri knew that, and he did not enjoy the mistrust that such routines implied. None of us did. ‘Would you show me again?’ Bower asked, pushing a battered cardboard box across the table.
Valeri opened the box and searched through a lot of dog-eared postcard-sized photographs. He took his time in doing it and I knew he was relaxing for a moment. Even for a man like this – one of our own people as far as we knew – the prolonged ordeal of questioning could tighten the strings of the mind until they snapped.
He got to the end of the first batch of photos and started on the second pile. ‘Take your time,’ said Bower as if he didn’t know what a welcome respite it was.
Until four years before, such identity photos had been pasted into large leather-bound ledgers. But then the KGB spread alarm and confusion in our ranks by instructing three of their doubles to select the same picture, in the same position on the same page, to identify a man named Peter Underlet as a spy, a KGB colonel. In fact Underlet’s photo was one of a number that had been included only as a control. Poor Underlet. His photo should never have been used for such purposes. He was a CIA case officer, and since case officers have always been the most desirable targets for both sides, Underlet was turned inside out. Even after the KGB’s trick was confirmed, Underlet never got his senior position back: he was posted to some lousy job in Jakarta. That had all happened at the time my wife Fiona went to work for the other side. If it was a way of deflecting the CIA’s fury and contempt, it worked. I suppose that diversion suited us as much as it did the KGB. At the time I’d wondered if it was Fiona’s idea: we both knew Peter Underlet and his wife. Fiona seemed to like them.
‘This one,’ said Valeri, selecting a photo and placing it carefully on the table apart from the others. I stood up so that I could see it better.
‘So that’s him,’ said Bower, feigning interest, as if they’d not been through it all before. He picked up the photo and studied it. Then he passed it to me. ‘Handsome brute, eh? Know him by any chance?’
I looked at it. I knew the man well. He called himself Erich Stinnes. He was a senior KGB man in East Berlin. It was said that he was the liaison man between the Moscow and the East German security service. It must have been a recent photo, for he’d grown fatter since the last time I’d seen him. But he still hadn’t lost the last of his thinning hair and the hard eyes behind the small lenses of his glasses were just as fierce as ever. ‘It’s no one I’ve ever seen before,’ I said, handing the picture back to Bower. ‘Is he someone we’ve had contact with?’
‘Not as far as I know,’ said Bower. To Valeri he said, ‘Describe the deliveries again.’
‘The second Thursday of every month … The KGB courier.’
‘And you saw him open it?’ persisted Bower.
‘Only the once but everyone knows …’
‘Everyone?’
‘In his office. In fact, it’s the talk of Karlshorst.’
Bower gave a sardonic smile. ‘That the KGB liaison is sniffing his way to dreamland on the second Thursday of every month? And Moscow does nothing?’
‘Things are different now,’ said Valeri adamantly, his face unchanging.
‘Sounds like it,’ said Bower, not concealing his disbelief.
‘Take it or leave it,’ said Valeri. ‘But I saw him shake the white powder into his hand.’
‘And sniff it?’
‘I was going out of the room. I told you. I shut the door quickly, I wasn’t looking for trouble.’
‘And yet you could see it was white powder?’
‘I wish I’d never mentioned the damned stuff.’ I had him sized up now. He was a typical old-time Communist, one of the exiles who’d spent the war years in Moscow. Many such men had been trained for high posts in the Germany that Stalin conquered. What was the story behind this one? Why had he come to work for us? Blackmail? Had he committed some crime – political or secular – or was he not of the hard stuff of which leaders are made? Or was he simply one of those awkward individuals who thought for themselves?
‘No comment,’ said Bower in a tired voice and looked at his watch.
Valeri said, ‘Next week I’ll watch more carefully.’
I noticed Bower stiffen. It was a damned careless remark for an active agent to make. I was not supposed to discover
