Berlin Game

20

As usual, Rolf Mauser arrived at a bad time. I was watching a very good BBC documentary on model railways, the children were upstairs playing some kind of jumping game, and Fiona was in the kitchen arguing with the nanny about her wages.

I bought Rolf Mauser into the living room and offered to take his leather overcoat from him but he waved me away testily. 'Are you all right, Rolf?' I said.

'Give me a whisky.'

He looked pale. I gave him a big scotch and he sat down and stared at the trains on TV with unseeing eyes. Light spilling from the table lamp beside him showed a fresh cut on his ear. Even as I noticed that, his hand went up to touch his head. He winced with pain as he found some tender places.

'You all right, Rolf?' All his self-confidence seemed to have gone; even those demonic eyebrows were sagging a little.

'I'm sixty-six years old, Bernd, and I'm still alive.'

'You're a tough old bastard, Rolf.' His shoes were scuffed and his leather coat had dirty marks on the front. He took paper tissues from a box on the table and cleaned himself up a bit.

The little trains on TV were making a lot of noise. I used the remote control to switch the sound off. Rolf Mauser looked round furtively and then pulled a brown paper bag from his pocket. He passed it to me. 'You said you'd get rid of it.'

I took a bundle from the bag. Unwinding a heavy woollen scarf, I found my revolver inside. I broke it and sniffed at the breech. There was no smell except that of fresh thin oil. It had been scrubbed clean. Rolf must have been a good soldier.

'You said you'd get rid of it,' he repeated. I shook the bag. Inside there were three bullets and three used brass cases.

'What have you been doing, Rolf?'

'Get rid of it, I say.'

I put the gun and the scarf into the brown paper bag again. And I locked it into the desk where I kept unpaid bills, Fiona's jewellery and letters from the bank about my overdraft.

Rolf turned to watch what I was doing. He said, 'I'm going back tonight. Could you lend me a car to get to Harwich?'

'I'd better know what it's all about,' I said.

'Yes or no?' he said.

'There's a blue Mini outside. What time do you have to be there?'

'Give me a strong envelope and I'll put the keys in the post to you, and tell you where it's parked.'

'You're too late for the Hamburg boat,' I said. He looked up at me without replying. I doubt if he had any intention of leaving via the cross-Channel ferry from Harwich. Rolf's way of keeping secrets was to confide endless untruths to anyone who'd listen. 'I'll get the keys,' I said. 'It's the nanny's car, so be careful with it.'

'Can you find a hat for me, Bernd? I've lost mine.'

I came back with a selection of headgear. He took a cloth cap and tried it on. It fitted him well enough to hide his cuts and shadow his face. 'You stole the car,' I said as I pulled the hat down lower on his head. 'You came to see me, found the keys in the car, and drove away without coming to the door.'

'Sure, Bernd, sure.'

'No one will believe you, but stick to that story and I'll do the same.'

'I said yes,' he said irritably.

'What's happening to the Brahms net?'

'Nothing.'

'Max Binder swam the Elbe.'

'Max lost his nerve,' he said.

'Who else lost their nerve?'

'Not me,' he said, looking me in the eyes. Confidence or no confidence, he was still as ferocious as ever. 'I deal with problems as they come up. I don't go swimming across the Elbe and leaving my wife and kids to face the music.'

'The rest of Brahms all in place? London are worried.'

'A slight hiccup,' he said. 'Brahms had that slight hiccup that the economists talk about when their miscalculations have thrown half a million people out of work.' It was the sort of bitter joke for which he permitted himself a twisted smile.

'Let's hope the hiccup doesn't become whooping cough.'

It was 'gasping cough' in German. Rolf Mauser nodded. 'We took precautions,' he said. 'We've long ago learned that London cannot protect us.'

I let the criticism go. The Brahms net was old and tired. It should have been dismantled years before. Just as the information from Brahms Four was all that made them worthwhile to London, so this damned import-export racket was their sole reason to continue going through the motions. It was a marriage of convenience and, like all such marriages, it depended upon the self-interest of both parties.

Rolf helped himself to another drink – a large one. Then he got to his feet, buttoned up his coat and announced his departure.

'Don't stop and ask a cop which way to go,' I advised. 'Breathe that booze over him and you'll end up in a police cell.'

'I'll take my chances,' he said. 'I like being on my own, Bernd. I never did like doing things the way it's written in the book. Your father knew that.'

'Have you got English money?'

'Go back to your TV,' he said. 'And tell your wife I'm sorry I couldn't stay.'

'Shell understand,' I said.

He smiled his twisted little smile again. Even from before I married her, he'd never been able to get along with Fiona.

Rolf had been gone three hours or more by the time the phone rang with the call from Dicky. 'Where are you?' he said.

'Where am I? Where the hell do you think I am? I'm at home. I'm sitting in front of the TV trying to decide whether to switch the heating back on and watch the late-night movie.'

'The way they patch these calls, you can't be sure where anyone is these days,' grumbled Dicky vaguely.

'What is it?' I said. The film had already started and I didn't want a long chat with him about my Berlin expenses or the new car.

'Has anyone been in touch with you?' he asked. On the TV screen the titles gave place to a small steamer chugging across a bright blue lake.

'No one.'

'You called someone from Security to take Giles Trent back to his home today.'

At the bow of the steamer were three men in white suits leaning over the rail peering into the water. ' Trent had been drinking,' I said. 'He was being abusive and accusing us of arresting Chlestakov, his Embassy contact.'

'Who answered the phone?'

'In the security office? That kid with the moustache – Peter. I don't know his last name.'

'Did he have any trouble with Trent?'

'Look, Dicky,' I said. 'I decide when someone with an orange file needs to be picked up and taken home. Trent can complain to the D-G if he wants, but if I get any more flak from that bastard I'll lock him up again. And there's nothing anyone can do about that except take me off it. And that's a development I wouldn't mind at all. I don't enjoy it, you know.'

'I know all that,' said Dicky.

'And if they move me it will be egg on your face, Dicky.'

'Don't get hot under the collar,' said Dicky placatingly. 'No one is blaming you. You did everything that could be done, everyone is agreed on that.'

'What are you talking about, Dicky?'

'This fiasco with Trent. The bloody newspapers will start implying that we did it. You know that. And the only way we can argue with them is by telling them more than we want Moscow to know.'

'Would you start again, please?' I said.

'Didn't anyone phone to tell you that Trent 's been killed?'

'When? How?'

'Late this afternoon or early evening. Someone climbed over the garden wall at the back and shinned up the drainpipe to get into an upstairs window that had been left unlocked. Special Branch let us have someone to write up a preliminary docket.'

' Trent is dead?'

'Shot. He was in the shower. The curtain was drawn across to save any chance of blood splashing on the killer, or at least that's what the Special Branch detective says. None of the neighbours heard the shot. With the television showing nothing but cops and robbers, you could use a machine gun nowadays without anyone noticing the noise.'

'Any idea who did it?'

Dicky gave a tiny derisive hoot. 'Are you joking? The report says the bullets hit the bathroom wall with abnormally low velocity. The ballistics boys say the bullets had been specially prepared by experts – they'd had a proportion of their powder removed. Well, that sounds like a laboratory job, eh? That's our KGB friends, I think. Why do they do that, Bernie?'

'So they don't go through the next two or three houses and spoil the neighbours' television. Who found him?'

'His sister. She let herself in with her own key. She'd come to see if he was okay after that business with the sleeping pills. If it hadn't been for that, we wouldn't have discovered the body until tomorrow morning. I'd always suspected that Trent was queer, didn't you? I mean, him never being married. But giving the sister a key to the house makes that unlikely, wouldn't you say?'

'Anything else, Dicky?'

'What? No. But I thought I should ask you if he was acting normally when he left you this morning.'

'I can't help you, Dicky,' I said.

'Well, I know you've got an early start in the morning. Frank says wrap up well. It's cold in Berlin.'

After I rang off, I returned to my desk. When I unwrapped the pistol, I found a series of holes in the woollen scarf. Rolf Mauser had wrapped the gun in it before shooting Trent. A revolver can't be silenced any other way. I had to use a magnifying glass for a clear sight of the marks left on the bullet cases by the process of hand-loading. There was no doubt that the bullets had been specially prepared by someone with gunsmith's tools and powder measure.

I sat down and looked at the TV before switching off. The steamer was sinking; the men were drowning. I suppose it was some kind of comedy.