London Match

27

Lisl sat where she could see the flowers. It was a vast display of different blooms – more than I could put names to – and arranged in a basket tied with coloured ribbon. The flowers had obviously come from some expensive florist. They were the ones Werner had brought for her. Now the petals were beginning to fall. Werner was not demonstrative, but he was always giving Lisl flowers. Sometimes, according to his mood, he would spend ages choosing them for her. Even his beloved Zena was not treated with such care in the matter of flowers. Lisl loved flowers, especially when they came from Werner.

Sometimes, when she smiled, I could see in Lisl Hennig the beautiful woman I'd met when I first came to Berlin. I was a child then, and Lisl must have already been almost fifty years old. But she was a woman of such beauty that any man would be at her call.

Now she was old, and the commanding manner that had once been a part of her fatal attraction was the petulance of an irritable old woman. But I remembered her as the goddess she'd once been, and so did Lothar Koch, the shrunken little retired bureaucrat who'd regularly played bridge with her.

We were sitting in Lisl's 'study', a small room that had become a museum of her life. Every shelf and cupboard was crammed with mementoes – china ornaments, snuffboxes, and an abundance of souvenir ashtrays. The radio was playing Tchaikovsky from some distant station that faded every now and again. There were only three of us playing bridge. It was more fun this way, Lisl said, whenever we were bidding and deciding which hand would be the dummy. But Lisl liked company, and there were only three of us because Lisl had failed to find a fourth despite all the cajoling of which she was capable.

The counters for which we played were stacked up high. Lisl liked to play for money no matter how tiny the stakes. When she was a young girl she'd been sent to a finishing school in Dresden – a favoured place for wealthy families to send their grown-up daughters – and she liked to affect the manners of that place and time. But now she was content to be the berlinerisch old woman she truly was, and there was nothing more berlinerisch than playing cards for money.

'It's big business nowadays,' said Herr Koch, 'Since 1963 those East Germans have made almost three billion Deutschemark in ransoms.'

'I bid one spade,' said Lisl, staring at her cards. 'Three billion?'

'No bid,' said Koch. 'Yes, three billion Deutschemark.'

'One heart,' I said.

'You can't do that,' said Lisl.

'Sorry,' I said. 'No bid.' Why had they suddenly started talking about political prisoners held in the Democratic Republic? They couldn't have heard about Werner. Lisl finally bid two spades.

'About fourteen hundred people a year are ransomed by the Bonn government. None of them are criminals. Mostly they are people who have applied for exit permits and then been heard to complain about not getting them.'

'They must be mad to apply for an exit permit,' said Lisl.

'They are desperate,' said Koch. 'Desperate people snatch at any chance however slim.'

Lisl put a queen of hearts on Herr Koch's king. From now on she'd be trumping hearts unless I missed my guess. I knew she didn't have the ace; I had it. I played low; it was Koch's trick. Perhaps they wouldn't exchange Werner for Stinnes. Perhaps we'd have to pay to get Werner back. Would they sell him or would they prefer a big show trial with lots of publicity? Perhaps I'd handled it badly. Perhaps I should have let the KGB think that Stinnes had fooled us completely; then they wouldn't risk spoiling it by publicizing Werner. Could they put Werner on trial without revealing the Miller woman's role in framing Bret Rensselaer?

Koch led with an ace of clubs. I knew Lisl would trump it and she did, using a three. That was the way with cards and with life; the smallest of cards could beat an ace if you chose the right moment.

Lisl picked up the trick and led a four of spades. She must have had a handful of trumps.

'You should have bid a grand slam,' said Herr Koch sarcastically. He was smarting at having his ace trumped.

'The people are priced according to their worth,' said Lisl, continuing with the conversation as if to appease Koch.

'A university don can cost us up to two hundred thousand Deutschemark,' said Koch. 'A skilled worker about thirty thousand.'

'How do you know all this?' I asked him.

'It was in the Hamburger Abendblatt,' said Lisl. 'I lent it to him.'

'The government of the Democratic Republic have a bank account in Frankfurt,' said Koch, without acknowledging the loan of Lisl's Hamburg newspaper. 'Prisoners are delivered two weeks after payment is received. It is a slave trade.' Then Lisl led a heart from the dummy hand so she could trump it. My hearts were useless now that Lisl had none. You can only fight in the currency that your opponent shares. I played my jack of hearts.

'Play your ace, Bernard,' she urged. She knew my ace was useless too. Lisl laughed. She loved to win at cards.

Lisl led a small trump and lost the trick to Herr Koch.

'You lost that one,' I said. I couldn't resist it.

Herr Koch said, 'She doesn't care. The dummy has no trumps.'

'You'll never teach him bridge,' said Lisl. 'I've been trying to explain it to him since he was ten years old.'

But Koch persisted. 'She brought out a trump from you and a trump from me.'

'But she lost the trick,' I said. 'You won it with your jack.'

'She removed the potential dangers.' Koch turned over the cards of the trick and showed me the ten and the jack which we'd played. 'Now she knows that you have no trumps and she'll slaughter you whatever you play.'

'Let him play his way,' said Lisl ruthlessly. 'He's not subtle enough for bridge.'

'Don't be fooled by him,' said Herr Koch, talking to Lisl as if I wasn't present. 'The English are all subtle, and this one is subtle in the most dangerous way.'

'And which is that?' said Lisl. She could have simply laid her hand full of trumps on the table and we would have conceded all the remaining tricks to her, but she wouldn't deprive herself of the pleasure of winning the game one trick at a time.

'He doesn't mind us thinking he is a fool. That is Bernard's greatest strength; it always has been.'

'I will never understand the English,' said Lisl. She trumped, picked up the trick, smiled, and led again. Having said she didn't understand the English, she proceeded to explain the English to us. That was berlinerisch too; the people of Berlin are reluctant to admit to ignorance of any kind. 'If an Englishman says there's no hurry, that means it must be done immediately. If he says he doesn't mind, it means he minds very much. If he leaves any decision to you by saying "If you like" or "When you like", be on your guard – he means that he's made his requirements clear, and he expects them to be precisely met.'

'Are you going to let this slander go unchallenged, Bernard?' said Koch. He liked a tittle controversy, providing he could be the referee.

I smiled. I'd heard it all before.

'Then what of us Germans?' persisted Koch. 'Are we so easygoing? Tell me, Bernard, I want your opinion.'

'A German has no greys,' I said, and immediately regretted embarking on such a discussion.

'No greys? What does this mean?' said Koch.

'In Germany two cars collide; one driver is guilty and therefore the other is innocent. Everything is black or white for a German. The weather is good or the weather is bad, a man is sick or he is well, a restaurant is good or it is terrible. At the concert they cheer or they boo.'

'And Werner,' said Koch. 'Is he a man without greys?'

The question was directed at me, but Lisl had to answer. 'Werner is an Englishman,' she said.

It was not true, of course; it was an example of Lisl's impetuous delight in shocking and provoking. Werner was about as un-English as any German could be, and no one knew that better than Lisl.

'You brought him up,' I said. 'How could Werner be English?'

'In spirit,' said Lisl.

'He adored your father,' said Herr Koch, more in order to reconcile the difference of opinion than because it was true.

'He admired him,' I said. 'It's not quite the same thing.'

'It was your mother who first took a liking to Werner,' said Lisl. 'I remember your father complaining that Werner was always upstairs playing with you and making a noise. But your mother encouraged him.'

'She knew you had the hotel to run,' I said. 'You had enough to do without looking after Werner.'

'One day I'll go to England and see her again. She always sends a card at Christmas. Perhaps next year I'll go and see her.'

'She has a spare room,' I said. But I knew in fact that neither Lisl nor my mother would endure the rigours of the aeroplane journey. Only the very fit could cope with the airlines. Lisl had not yet forgotten her uncomfortable trip to Munich five years ago.

'Your father was so formal with little Werner. He always spoke to him as to a grown man.'

'My father spoke to everyone in exactly the same way,' I said. 'It was one of the things I most liked about him.'

'Werner couldn't get over it. "The Herr Oberst shook hands with me, Tante Lisl!" It would have been unthinkable for a Wehrmacht colonel to shake hands and talk so solemnly with a small child. You're not listening, Bernard.'

No, I wasn't listening any longer. I'd expected both of them to say I was German, but such an idea had never entered their heads. I was devastated by the rejection so implied. This was where I'd grown up. If I wasn't German in spirit, then what was I? Why didn't they both acknowledge the truth? Berlin was my town. London was a place my English friends lived and where my children were born, but this was where I belonged. I was happy sitting here in Lisl's shabby back room with old Herr Koch. This was the only place I could really call home.

The phone rang. I was sure it was Posh Harry. Lisl was shuffling the cards and Herr Koch was calculating the scores for the hundredth time. The phone rang unanswered several times, then stopped. 'Are you expecting a phone call, Bernard?' enquired Lisl, looking at me closely.

'Possibly,' I said.

'Klara answers if I don't pick it up. It's probably a wrong number. We get a lot of wrong numbers lately.'

What if Posh Harry's approach was rejected? I would be in a very difficult position. Even if Bret Rensselaer was innocent, that didn't prove that the rest of my theory was correct. Stinnes might be genuine. It was then that I began to worry that Stinnes might not be informed about the whole structure of Moscow 's plot to discredit Bret Rensselaer. Suppose Stinnes was a kamikaze sent to blow London Central into fragments but had never been told the details of what he was doing? Stinnes was the sort of man who would sacrifice himself for something in which he truly believed. But what did he truly believe? That was the question that had to be answered.

And what would I do in Fiona's position? She was holding all the cards; all she had to do was sacrifice Stinnes. Would she believe that I'd tumbled to their game? Yes, probably. But would she believe that I could convince London Central of the real truth? No, probably not. Bret Rensselaer was the element that would decide the way Fiona jumped. I hoped Posh Harry got that bit of the story right. Maybe Fiona wouldn't believe that I could persuade the fumbling bureaucrats that Stinnes was making a fool of them; but Bret and I together – she'd possibly believe that the two of us combined could do it. Bret and I combined could do anything, in Fiona's opinion. I suppose the kind of man she really wanted was some incongruous and impossible combination of the two of us.

'Drinkies?' said Lisl in what she imagined was English. Without waiting for a reply she poured sherry for all of us. I didn't like sherry, especially the dark sweet variety that Lisl preferred, but I'd been pretending to like it for so long that I didn't have the courage to ask for something else.

It was nine-thirty when the call came through. I was a hundred and fifty points behind Lisl and trying to make two hearts with a hand that wasn't really worth a bid. Lisl answered the phone. She must have realized that I was waiting for my call. She passed it to me. It was Posh Harry.

'Bernard?' They would be monitoring the call, but there was no point in disguising who I was; they would know that already.

'Yes?'

'I've been talking.'

'And?'

'They'll come back to me in one hour.'

'What do you think?'

'She asked me if Bret will be at the meeting.'

'It could be arranged.'

'They might make it a condition.' I looked at Lisl and then at Herr Koch. They were both giving very close attention to their cards in that way people study things when they're trying to look as if they're not eavesdropping.

'Bret's in charge; make that clear,' I said.

'I'll tell them. They will come equipped, you realize that.' That meant armed. There was no way we could prevent that; we had no right to search Russian cars or personnel crossing into West Berlin.

'Okay,' I said.

'Guaranteed safe passage and return for the woman?' That was Fiona, frightened that we might arrest her. But by now they'd no doubt provided her with all the paperwork that made her a Soviet citizen, a colonel in the KGB, and probably a Party member too. It would be a legal nightmare getting her arrested in West Berlin where the USSR was still a Protecting Power with legal rights that compared with the British, French and American ones. In the UK it would be a different matter.

'Guaranteed for the whole party. Do they want it in writing?' I said.

'They don't want it for the whole party – just for the woman,' said Posh Harry. It seemed a strange thing to say, but I gave it no special thought at the time. It was only afterwards that it had any significance.

'Whatever they want, Harry.'

'I'll phone you back,' he said.

'I'll be here,' I said.

I rang off and returned to the bridge game. Lisl and Herr Koch made no reference to my phone call. There was a tacit understanding that I was employed by some international pharmaceutical company.

We played another rubber of bridge before Posh Harry phoned back to tell me that everything was agreed on for the meeting in the Steigenberger Hotel. Even by the end of his negotiations Posh Harry didn't know that they were holding Werner in custody. It was typical of the KGB; nothing was told to anyone except what he needed to know.

I phoned Frank Harrington and told him they'd agreed but would need some kind of written guarantee that the woman would be allowed to return unhindered.

Frank grunted his agreement. He knew the implications, but made no comment about Fiona or the Department's interest in arresting her. 'They are here in saturation levels,' said Frank. 'KGB watchers have been coming through the crossing points for the last two hours. I knew it was going to be an affirmative.'

'KGB? Coming through to the West?'

'Yes, they've been sniffing around ever since you got here. They probably saw our friend arriving.' He meant Bret.

'And their friend too?' I said. I meant Stinnes; he'd arrived that afternoon.

'I hope not,' said Frank.

'But both are secure?'

'Very secure,' said Frank. ‘I not letting them out.' Frank had both men accommodated at his official mansion in Grunewald. There was half a million pounds' worth of security devices built into that place. Even the KGB would have trouble getting at them there. After a pause Frank said, 'Are you equipped, Bernard?'

I had a Smith & Wesson that I left in Lisl's safe, together with some other personal things. 'Yes,' I said. 'Why?'

'A KGB hit team went through about thirty minutes ago. It was a reliable identification. They don't send a hit team unless they mean business. I can't help worrying that you might be targeted.'

'Thanks, Frank. I'll take the usual precautions.'

'Stay where you are tonight. I'll send a car for you in the morning. Be very careful, Bernard. I don't like the look of it. Eight o'clock okay?'

'Eight o'clock will be very convenient,' I said. 'Good night, Frank. See you in the morning.' I'd turned the radio down while talking on the phone; now I made it louder. It was a Swedish station playing a Bruckner symphony; the opening chords filled the room.

'You people in the pill business work late,' said Lisl sarcastically when I rang off.

Herr Koch had held his ministerial job throughout the Nazi period by not giving way to curiosity or being tempted to such impetuous remarks. He smiled and said, 'I hope everything is in order, Bernard.'

'Everything is just fine,' I told him.

He got up and went to the radio to switch it off.

'Thank you, darling,' said Lisl.

'Bruckner,' explained Herr Koch. 'When they announced the disaster at Stalingrad, the radio played nothing but Beethoven and Bruckner for three whole days.'

'So many fine young boys…' said Lisl sadly. 'Put on a record, darling. Something happy – "Bye, bye, Blackbird".'

But when Herr Koch put a record on, it was one of his favourites, 'Das war in Schoneberg im Monat Mai...'.

'Marlene Dietrich,' said Lisl, leaning back and closing her eyes. 'Schön!'