Berlin Game

18

Rolf Mauser always turned up where and when he was least expected. 'Where the hell have you sprung from?' I said, unhappy to be dragged out of bed by a phone call in the early hours of the morning. Unhappy too to be standing ankle-deep in litter, drinking foul-tasting coffee from a machine in London 's long-distance bus station at Victoria.

'I couldn't wait until morning, and I knew you lived nearby.' I'd known Rolf Mauser since I was a schoolboy and he was an unemployed onetime Wehrmacht captain who scratched a living from the Berlin black market and ran errands for my father. Now he was sixty-six years old but he'd not changed much since the last time we'd met, when he was working as a barman in Lisl Hennig's hotel.

'Your son Axel said you were in East Berlin.'

'In a manner of speaking, I still am,' said Rolf. 'They let us old people out nowadays, you know.'

'Yes, I know. Have you seen Axel? He worries about you, Rolf.'

'Rolf now, is it? I remember a time when I was called Herr Mauser.'

'I can remember a time when you were called Hauptmann Mauser,' I reminded him. It was my father who, noting that Mauser's promotion to captain had come only three weeks before the end of the war, had addressed him as Hauptmann Mauser. Rolf had glowed with pride.

'Hauptmann Mauser.' He smiled dutifully, the sort of smile that family groups provide for the amateur photographer. 'Yes, your father knew how to play on a young man's vanity.'

'Did he, Rolf?'

He heard the resentment in my voice and didn't reply. He looked round the bus station as if seeing it for the first time. He wore a brown leather overcoat of the sort that they sold on East Berlin 's Unter den Linden in the shops where only rich Western tourists could afford to buy. Like so many Germans, he liked his clothes tightly fitted. The belted overcoat on this big round-shouldered man, and the pointed nose that twitched each time he spoke, made him look like an affluent armadillo standing on its hind legs. His face was round and he had pale skin and tired eyes, the legacy of years of dark bars, late hours, tobacco smoke and alcohol. There was little sign now of that tough young artillery officer who won the oak leaves to his Knight's Cross at Vinnitsa on the River Bug in the Red Army's spring offensive of 1944.

'Going far, Rolf?'

'Did you bring everything?'

'You've got your goddamned nerve, Rolf.'

'You owe me a favour, Bernd.'

A bus arrived, the sound of its diesel engine amplified by the low entrance arch. It backed carefully into its designated position under the signs and half a dozen weary travellers scrambled down to get their luggage, yawning and scratching as if not yet fully awake. 'You'll be conspicuous in your loden hat and leather coat once you get into the British hinterland,' I told Mauser. He didn't react to this advice. The driver of the bus got out and wound the roller to change the destination plate to Cardiff.

'Give me the packet, Bernd. Save the lectures for young Werner.' He twitched his nose. 'Getting nervous about this sort of thing? I don't remember you getting nervous in the old days.'

'What the hell do you want with a gun, Rolf?' I felt like saying that I was only nervous because I didn't trust Rolf to know what he was doing with a gun. In the 'old days' Rolf had run messages and told stories of his exploits both in the war and after. God only knows what dark deeds he might once have committed. But for many years he'd done little more than hide letters and packets under his bar counter and give them to strangers who knew the right password.

'Did I ask you what you wanted with the motorcycle that day in Pankow?' he said.

It seemed a silly comparison but Rolf obviously thought it appropriate. Funny that he'd not mentioned some of the other favours he'd done for me. He hadn't risked his life but he'd risked his job for me more than once, and laying down a job for a friend comes high on my friendship scale.

He said, 'Do I get the briefcase or are you going to unpack it all here in the middle of the bus station?' As a child, I'd been intimidated by Rolf Mauser's appearance and by the big bushy eyebrows that turned up at the outer ends to give him a fierce demonic appearance. When I'd realized that he brushed his straggly eyebrows upwards to keep them out of his eyes, my fears of Rolf Mauser had vanished and I saw in him a lonely old man who liked to wallow in memories of his youth.

'Suppose I told you I had no money?' I said.

Behind us a thin Negro wielded a gigantic broom, sweeping fried chicken bones, ice-cream wrappers and brightly coloured litter before him. Rolf turned and tossed his empty paper cup into the heap as the man brushed it slowly past us. 'All British senior staff have five hundred pounds in used notes available at home at all times. That's been the regulations for years now, Bernd. We both know that.'

'The briefcase is for you.' I passed it to him.

'You were always considerate, Bernd.'

'I don't like it, Rolf.'

'Why?'

'What do you want with a gun, Rolf?'

'Who taught you to crack a safe?'

That wasn't a safe, Rolf. That strongbox where they kept the school reports could have been opened with a knife and fork.'

'My son Axel said you were a good friend, Bernd.'

'Did you need Axel to confirm it, Rolf?'

'We both know you are a good friend.'

'Or did you decide I was the only one fool enough to give you money and a gun and ask no questions?'

'Good friend. I appreciate it. We all do.'

'Who are "we all"?'

Rolf Mauser smiled. 'We all do, Bernd; me, Axel, Werner and the others. And now we owe you something.'

'Maybe,' I said cautiously. Rolf was the sort of man whose favours could get you into a lot of trouble.

He put the briefcase down on the ground and held it upright between his ankles while he undid his magnificent leather coat. When he rebuttoned it, he belted it more tightly as if he hoped that would make him warmer.

'Who is Brahms Four, Bernd? What's his name?'

'I can't tell you, Rolf.'

'Is he still in Berlin?'

'No one knows,' I said. It wasn't true of course, but it was the nearest I could go.

'Rumours say Brahms Four is not working for you any longer. We want to know if he's left Berlin.'

'What does it matter to you?' I asked.

'Because when Brahms Four is kaputt you'll pay off the Brahms network and close us down. We need to know in advance. We need to get ready.'

I looked at him for a moment without replying. Rolf Mauser's participation in Brahms was – as far as my information went – recent and minimal. Then the penny dropped: 'Because of your rackets, you mean? Because London is supplying you with things you need to keep Werner's import-export racket functioning?'

'You haven't reported that, have you, Bernd?'

'I have enough of my own problems without trying to find more,' I said. 'But London Central aren't here to help you run rackets in East Germany, or anywhere else.'

'You didn't always talk that way, Bernd. I remember a time when everyone agreed that Brahms was the best source in Berlin System. The best by far.'

'Times change, Rolf.'

'And now you'd throw us to the wolves?'

'What are you saying?'

'You think we don't know that you have a KGB spy here in London Central. Brahms net is going to be blown any minute.'

'Who says so? Did Werner say it? Werner is not a member of the network. He's not employed by the Department at all. Do you know that?'

'It doesn't matter who said it,' replied Rolf.

'So it was Werner. And we both know who told him, don't we, Rolf?'

'I don't know,' said Rolf staunchly, although his eyes said different.

'That bloody wife of his. That bloody Zena,' I said. I cursed Frank Harrington and his womanizing. I knew Frank too well to suspect him of revealing to her anything really important. But I'd seen enough of Zena Volkmann to know that she'd trade on her relationship with Frank. She'd make herself sound important. She'd feed Werner any wild guesses, rumours and half-truths. And Werner would believe anything he heard from her.

'Zena worries about Werner,' said Rolf defensively.

'You must be very stupid, Rolf, if you really believe that Zena worries about anything but herself.'

'Perhaps that's because no one else worries about her enough,' said Rolf.

'You'll break my bloody heart, Rolf,' I said.

I'm afraid we parted on a note of acrimony. When I looked back, he'd still not boarded the bus. I suspected that he had no intention of boarding any bus. Rolf Mauser could be a devious devil.