London Match

14

The relaxed evening in the curry restaurant with Stinnes brought quick results. By the following Saturday morning I was drinking Bret Rensselaer's gin and tonics and listening to Bret's congratulations. The fact that Bret's congratulations were delivered in a way that could have an inattentive onlooker thinking he was singing his own praises did not distress me. First, because I was accustomed to Bret's habits and manners, and, secondly, because there were no onlookers.

'It sure paid off,' said Bret. 'Everything I said okay to paid off.' He was dressed in casual wear: dark open-neck sports shirt and white linen pants. I'd seldom seen Bret wearing anything other than his Savile Row suits, but then I'd seldom been honoured with an invitation to go to his Thames-side mansion in off-duty hours. Bret had his own circle of friends – minor aristocracy, international jet-setters, merchant bankers, and business tycoons. No one from the Department got regular invitations here except perhaps the D-G and the Deputy, and maybe the Cruyers if Bret needed a favour from the German desk. Other than that, the guest list was confined to a few particularly sexy girls from the office who got invited for the weekend to look at Bret's art collection.

I'd driven from London in dry weather with the sun shining through a gap of blue sky, but now the sky was clouding over and the colour drained from the landscape. From where I sat there was a view across a long lawn, brown after the harsh winter frosts, and then, at the bottom of his garden, the Thames. Here in Berkshire it was just a weedy stream a few yards across. Despite the river's huge loops, it was difficult to believe that we were in the Thames Valley, a short distance from London 's dockland where oceangoing ships could navigate on these same waters.

Bret walked round the back of the sofa where I was sitting and poured more gin into my glass. It was a large room. Three soft, grey-leather sofas of modern Italian design were arranged round the glass-topped coffee table. There was an unpainted wooden fireplace where a log fire nickered and occasionally filled the room with a puff of wood smoke that made my eyes water. The walls were plain white to provide a background against which Bret's paintings could be seen at their best. One on each wall: a Bratby portrait, a Peter Blake pop-art bearded lady, a Hockney swimming pool and a wood abstract by Tilson over the fireplace. The best of British painters were there. It would have to be British for him; Bret was the sort of Anglophile who took it all seriously. Other than the sofas, the furniture was English, antique and expensive. There was a Regency chest of dark mahogany with a glass-domed skeleton clock on it, and a secretaire-bookcase behind whose glass doors some pieces of Minton porcelain were displayed. No books; all the books were in the library, a room Bret liked to preserve for his own exclusive use.

'The interrogator is pleased, of course. The D-G is pleased. Dicky Cruyer is pleased. Everyone is pleased, except perhaps the staff at London Debriefing Centre, but the D-G is smoothing things over with them. Some sort of letter congratulating them on their skilful preparation is the sort of thing I thought appropriate.'

Would this be a time when I could start cross-questioning Bret about his apparent involvement with the KGB? I decided not and drank some more gin and tonic. 'Good,' I said.

'In just two days Stirmes has given us enough to break a network that's operating out of the Ministry of Defence research laboratory at Cambridge. Apparently they've known there's been a leak for months and months, and this will provide a chance to clear that one up.'

' England?' I said. ' Cambridge, England? Hold the phone, Bret – we can't go into a KGB network operating in Britain. That's Home Office territory. That's MI5's job. They'll go ape.'

He went to the fire and squatted at it to prod the burning log with his fingertips. It made sparks. Then he wiped his fingers on a paper tissue before sinking into the soft leather opposite me. He smiled his wide, charming, Hollywood smile. It was a calculated gesture to make his explanation more dramatic. Everything he did was calculated, and he liked drama to the point of losing his temper with anyone in sight if the mood took him. 'We're legitimately holding Erich Stinnes. The Home Office have responded to the D-G's notification and agreed that we do some preliminary interrogations so that we can make sure that our own people are in the clear.'

'You mean hold him while I'm being investigated,' I said.

'Of course,' said Bret. 'You know perfectly well we're using you as the excuse. It's wonderful. Don't suddenly go temperamental on me, Bernard. It's just a formality. Hell, do you think they'd let you anywhere near Stinnes if you were really suspect?'

'I don't know, Bret. There are some damned funny people in the Department.'

'You're in the clear, so forget it.'

'And you're going to infiltrate some poor sod into the Cambridge network and try to blow it? You don't stand a chance. Can't we investigate it on a formal basis – questioning and so on?'

'It would take too long. We've got to move fast. If we go for a formal investigation, MI5 will take it over when Stinnes is transferred and they'll make the arrests and get the glory. No, this is urgent. We'll do it ourselves.'

'And you'll get the glory,' I said.

Bret didn't take offence. He smiled. 'Take it easy, Bernard,' he said mildly. 'You know me better than that.' He spoke to the ceiling for he was sitting deep down in the soft cushions of the sofa, his head resting back, and his suede moccasins plonked on the glass-topped table so that he was stretched as straight as a ruler. Outside the sky was getting darker and even the white walls couldn't stop the room becoming gloomy.

I didn't pursue that particular line. I didn't know him better than that. I didn't know him at all. 'You'll have to tell Five,' I said.

'I told them last night,' he said.

'The night-duty officer on a Friday night? That's too obvious, Bret. They'll be hopping mad. When are you putting your man in?'

'Tonight,' he said.

'Tonight!' I almost snorted my drink down my nose. 'Who's running him? Are Operations in on this? Who gave the okay?'

'Don't be so jittery, Bernard. It will be all right. The D-G gave me the go-ahead. No, Operations are not a party to the plan; it's better that they don't know about it. Secrecy is of paramount importance.'

'Secrecy is of paramount importance? And you've left a message with the night-duty officer at Five? You realize that probationers – kids just down from college – are likely to get weekend duties like that. Whoever he is, he'll want to cover himself, so now he's phoning everyone in his contact book and trying to think of more names.'

'You're becoming paranoid, Bernard,' Bret said. He smiled to show me how calm he was remaining. 'Even if he is an inexperienced kid from college – and I know kids from college are not high on your all-time Hit Parade – the messages he'll leave with maids, au pair girls and receptionists at country hotels won't explicitly describe our operation.'

He was a sarcastic bastard. 'For God's sake, grow up, Bret,' I said. 'Can't you see that a flurry of activity like that – messages being left in all sorts of non-departmental places for the urgent attention of senior MI5 staff – is enough to compromise your operation?'

'I don't agree,' he said, but he stopped smiling.

'Some smart newspaper man is likely to get the smell of that one. If that happens, it could blow up in your face.'

'In my face?'

'Well, what are those messages going to be saying? They are going to be saying that we're just about to go blundering into matters that don't concern us. They're going to say we're stealing Five's jobs from them. And they'll be right.'

'This isn't a hot tip on a horse; they'll be sensible,' said Bret.

'It's going to be all over town,' I said. 'You're putting your man into danger, real danger. Forget it.'

'Ml5 are not going to let newsmen get hold of secrets like this.'

'You hope they're not. But this isn't their secret, it's ours. What will they care if your Boy Scout comes a cropper? They'll be delighted. It would teach us a lesson. And why would they be so fussy about newspaper men getting the story? If it made headlines that said we were treading on their territory, it would suit their book.'

'I'm not sure I want to listen to this any more,' said Bret huffily. This was Bret getting ready for his knighthood – loyal servant of Her Majesty and all that. 'I trust MI5 to be just as careful with secret information as we are.'

'So do I, if it's their information. But this is not their information. This is a message – a message from you; not a message about one of their operations but about one of ours. What's more, it was given out on a Friday evening in what is a transparent trick to hamper any efforts they might make to stop us. How can you believe they'll play it your way and help you score?'

'It's too late now,' said Bret. He took two ice cubes from a container that was painted to look like a side drum from the band of the Grenadier Guards, complete with battle honours, and dropped them into his drink. Bret could make one drink last a long time. It was a trick I'd never mastered. He offered ice to me but I shook my head. 'It's all approved and signed for. There's not going to be any pussyfooting about trying to infiltrate them. There's an office in Cambridge which contains files on the whole network. It's coded, Stinnes says, coded to read like normal office files. But that shouldn't be a big problem. We're putting a man in there this evening. He's coming here to meet you.'

'Beautiful, Bret,' I said sarcastically. 'That's all I need – for your tame gorilla to get a good look at me before he gets rolled in a carpet and shipped to Moscow.'

Bret permitted himself a ghost of a smile. 'It's not that kind of operation, Bernard. This is the other side of the job. We'll be in England. If there's any interference, we'll be putting the handcuffs on those bastards, not the other way around.'

I weakened. I should have remained cynical about it, but I weakened because I began to feel that it might prove as simple as Bret Rensselaer said it would be. 'Okay. What do you want me to do?'

'Run him up to Cambridge and play nurse.' So that was it. I should have guessed that you don't get invited to Bret's for nothing. My heart sank into my guts. I felt the way some of those girls must have felt when they realized there were more works of art that lined the stairs all the way to Bret's bedroom. He saw it in my face. 'Did you think I was going to try to do it myself?'

'No, I didn't.'

'If you really think I can do it, Bernard, I'll try.' He was restless. He got up again and poured more gin for me. It was only then that I realized that I'd gulped the rest of my drink without even noticing that I'd done so. 'But I think our man deserves the best help we can find for him. And you're the best.'

He went back and sat down. I didn't reply. For a moment we both sat there in that beautiful room thinking our own thoughts. I don't know what Bret was thinking of, but I was back to trying to decide what his relationship with my wife had been.

At one time I'd felt sure that Fiona and Bret had been lovers. I looked at him. She was right for him, that very beautiful woman from a rich family. She was sophisticated in a way that only wealthy people can be. She had the confidence, stability, and intellect that nature provides for the first-born child.

The suspicion and jealousy of that time, not so long ago, had never gone away, and my feelings coloured everything I had to do with Bret. There was little chance I would ever discover the truth of it, and I was not really and truly sure that I wanted to know. And yet I couldn't stop thinking about them. Had they been together in this room?

'I'll never understand you, Bernard,' he said suddenly 'You're full of anger.'

I felt like saying that that was better than being full of shit, but in fact I didn't think that of Bret Rensselaer. I'd thought about him a lot over the past few months. First because I thought he was jumping into bed with Fiona, and now because the finger of treason was pointed at him. It all made sense. Put it all together and it made sense. If Bret and Fiona were lovers, then why not co-conspirators too?

I had never faced an official enquiry, but Bret had tried to make me admit that I'd been in league with my wife to betray the Department's secrets. Some traces of the mud he'd thrown had stuck to me. That would be a damned smart way to cover his own tracks. No one had ever accused Bret of being a co-conspirator with Fiona. No one had even suspected that they were having a love affair. No one, that is, except me. I had always been able to see how attractive he'd be for her. He was the sort of man I'd had as rivals when I'd first met her; mature, successful men, not Oxbridge graduates trying to hack a career in a merchant bank, but men much older than Fiona, men with servants and big shiny cars who paid for everything by just signing their name on the bill.

It was very dark in the room now and there was a growl of thunder. Then more thunder. I could see the clock's brass pendulum catching the light as it swung backwards and forwards. Bret's voice came out of the gloom. 'Or is it sadness? Anger or sadness – what's bugging you, Samson?'

I didn't want to play his silly undergraduate games, or sophisticated jet-set games, or whatever they were. 'What time is this poor bastard arriving?' I said.

'No fixed time. He'll be here for tea.'

That's great,' I said. Tea! Earl Grey no doubt, and I suppose Bret's housekeeper would be serving it in a silver teapot with muffins and those very thin cucumber sandwiches without crusts.

'You talked to Lange,' he said. 'And he bad-mouthed me the way he always does? Is that it? What did he say this tune?'

'He was talking about the time you went to Berlin and made him dismantle his networks.'

'He's such a crook. He's still resenting that after all these years?'

'He thinks you dealt a blow to a good system.'

The "Berlin System", the famous "Berlin System" that Lange always regarded as his personal creation. It was Lange who ruined it by bringing it into such discredit that London Central sent me there to salvage what I could from it.'

'Why you?' I said. 'You were very young.'

'The world was very young,' said Bret. ' Britain and the US had won the war. We were going to be arm in arm together while we won the peace too.'

'Because you were American?'

'Right. An American could look at what was going on in Berlin and be impartial about it. I was to be the one who went there and unified the Limeys and the Yanks and made them into a team again. That was the theory; the fact was that the only unification came from the way they all hated and despised me. The Berlin intelligence community got together just to baffle and bamboozle me. They led me a merry dance, Bernard; they made sure that I couldn't get to the people I wanted, get the documents I wanted, or get competent office help. I didn't even have a proper office, did you know that? Did Lange tell you how he made sure that no German would work for me?'

'The way I heard it, they gave you a big apartment and two servants.'

'Is that the way Lange tells it? By now he probably even believes it. And what about the Russian princess?'

'He mentioned her.'

'The real story is that those bastards made sure the only office space I had was shared with a clerk who went through my files every day and told them what I was doing. When I tried to get other accommodation they blocked every move I made. Finally I contacted a friend of my mother's. She wasn't young, she wasn't a princess, and she had never been in Russia, although her mother was distantly related to White Russian aristocracy. She had a big apartment in Heerstrasse, and by offering half of it to me she was able to prevent it being commandeered for use by some other Allied military outfit. I used that place as an office and I got her neighbour to do my typing.'

'Lange said she was a Nazi, your friend.'

'She'd lived in Berlin right through the war and her folks had been murdered by the Bolsheviks, so I guess she didn't go around waving any red flags. But she had close friends among the July twentieth conspirators. When Hitler was blown up in 1944 she was taken in for questioning by the SD. She spent three nights in the cells at Prinz-Albrecht Strasse. It was touch and go whether they sent her to a camp, but there were so many suspected persons to be detained that they grew short of cells to hold them, so they let her go.'

'There was a row about Lange's brother-in-law,' I said.

'Damn right there was. If Lange had learned how to keep his head down and his mouth shut, maybe it wouldn't have blown up like that. But Lange has to be the big man on campus. And he particularly resented me because I was a fellow American. He wanted the exclusive title of tame Yank, and he'd got a lot of leeway playing that role. The office let him get away with all kinds of tricks because they thought it was just another example of good old Yankee know-how and the unconventional American way of tackling things.'

'So he resigned?'

'It was tough for him, but he'd been told enough times about that woman he married. There was no way I could ignore an SS man living in Lange's parlour while I was lowering the boom on guys who'd done nothing more than joining the party to save their school-teaching jobs.'

I didn't answer. I tried to reconcile Bret's version of these events with Lange's burning hatred. 'They were not good times,' I said.

'Did you ever hear of CROWCASS?' said Bret.

'Vaguely. What is it?'

'Right after the fighting ended, SHAEF started building a file of suspected war criminals. CROWCASS was the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects. Maybe it was a muddle, the way everyone said it was afterwards, but at the time CROWCASS was gospel, and Lange's brother-in-law had his name on that registry.'

'Did Lange know that?'

'Sure he did.'

'When did he find out?'

'I don't know when he found out, but he knew about the brother-in-law having served in the Waffen-SS before he got married. I know that because I found in the file a copy of the letter he'd been sent warning him not to go ahead. And all ex-members of the SS and Waffen-SS were automatically arrested unless they'd already faced an enquiry and been cleared. But Lange didn't care about any of that. He was playing the American card again. He let the British think he'd got special dispensation from the Americans and vice versa. He's a slippery one; I guess you know that.'

'Didn't you know it?' I said.

'I know that, and I knew it then. But everyone was telling me what a wonderful network he was running. They wouldn't let me see anything he was producing, of course – security wouldn't permit. So I just had to take their word for it.'

'He brought us some good people. He'd been in Berlin before the war. He knew everybody. He still does.'

'So what was I to do?' said Bret defensively. 'His goddamned brother-in-law was running around with a Kennkarte that identified him as a payroll clerk with a building company. It had a denazification stamp. He 'liked to tell everyone he'd been a Navy medic. He was picked up brawling in a bar in Wedding. He was stinking drunk and still fighting when they took him downtown and threw him into the drunk tank. They put these drunks under the cold showers to cool them off, and a cop who'd got hit on the nose began wondering how this Navy medic came to have an SS blood-group tattoo under his arm.'

Outside, the river and the fields beyond were obliterated by grey mist and rain was beating against the window. Bret was lost in the shadows and his voice was impersonal, like a recording machine delivering some computer judgement.

'I couldn't ignore it,' he said. 'It was a police report. It was delivered to the office, but no one there wanted a hot potato like that on their desk. They sent it right along to me. It was probably the only piece of paperwork that they forwarded to me in the proper way.' I said nothing. Bret realized that his explanation was convincing and he pursued it. 'Lange thought himself indispensable,' said Bret. 'It's tempting to think that at any time, but it was especially tempting for someone heading up several networks – good networks, by all accounts. But no one is indispensable. The Berlin System managed without Lange. Your dad put the pieces together.'

'Lange thinks my father would have helped him. He thinks my father was deliberately moved out of Berlin so that you could go in there and get rid of him.'

'That's crap and Lange knows it. Your dad had done very well in Berlin. Silas Gaunt was his boss and when Silas got a promotion in London he brought your father back to London with him. Nothing was ever written on paper, but it was understood that your dad would go up the ladder with Silas. He had a fine career waiting for him in London Central.'

'So what happened?' I said.

'When Lange got sore, he tried to sell all his networks to the US Army. They wouldn't touch him, of course.'

'He had good networks,' I said.

'Very good, but even if they'd been twice as good, I doubt if he could have sold the Counter Intelligence Corps on the idea of taking them over.'

'Why?'

'The CIC weren't concerned with what was happening in the Russian Zone. Their task was security. They were looking for Nazis, neo-Nazi groups, and Communist subversives operating in the West.'

'So why not pass Lange on to some other department?'

'In those days the US had no organization spying on the Russians. Congress wanted America to play Mr Nice Guy. There were a few retreads from the old OSS and they were working for something that called itself the War Department Detachment, which in turn was a part of something called the Central Intelligence Group. But this was amateur stuff; the Russians were laughing at it. Lange tried everywhere, but no one wanted his networks.'

'It sounds like a meat market.'

'And that's the way the field agents saw it when the news filtered through to them. They were demoralized, and Lange wasn't very popular.'

'So my father came back to Berlin to sort it out?'

'Yes, your dad volunteered to come back and sort it out even though he knew he'd lose his seniority in London. Meanwhile Lange was sent to Hamburg to cool off.'

'But he didn't cool off?'

'He got madder and madder. And when your dad wouldn't take him back unless he completely separated himself from his Waffen-SS brother-in-law, Lange resigned.'

'Are you saying my dad sacked Lange?'

'Look in the records. It's not top secret.'

'Lange blames you,' I said.

'To you he blames me,' said Bret.

'He blames my father?'

'In the course of the years Lange has blamed everyone from the records clerk to President Truman. The only one Lange never blames is himself.'

'It was a tough decision,' I said. 'SS man or no SS man, I admire the way Lange stood by him. Maybe he did the right thing. Turning his brother-in-law out onto the street would have wrecked his marriage, and that marriage still works.'

'The reason Lange wouldn't turn his brother-in-law out was because that brother-in-law was making anything up to a thousand dollars a week in the black market.'

'Are you kidding?'

'That fateful night the cops picked him up in Wedding, he had nearly a thousand US dollars in his pocket and another thousand bucks in military scrip. That's what got the cops so excited. That's why I had to do something about it. It's in the police report; take a look at it.'

'You know I can't take a look at it. They never put those old files onto the computer, and no one can find anything that old down in Registry.'

'Well, ask anyone who was there. Sure, Lange was on the take from his brother-in-law. Some people said Lange was setting up some of his deals for him.'

'How?' I said, but the answer was obvious.

'I don't know. But I can guess. Lange hears about a black-market deal through one of his agents. Instead of busting them, he cuts his brother-in-law into the deal.'

'He'd never survive if he pulled tricks like that.'

'Don't play the innocent, Samson, it doesn't suit you. You know what the city was like during those days. You know how it worked. Lange would just say that he wanted the black-market deal to continue because one of the dealers was an important Soviet agent. His brother-in-law would play the role of Lange's stoolie. They'd all make money with no chance of arrest. It's a foolproof system. No one could touch him.'

There was a ring at the front door. I heard the housekeeper going down the hall.

'This will be our man for the break-in tonight,' said Bret. 'It will be like old times for you, Bernard.'

And then through the door walked Ted Riley.