Spy Line

13

It was the morning after Prince Joppi's party that I was walking along South Audley Street and bumped into Rolf Mauser. Rolf was about seventy years old, a wartime artillery captain who didn't let anyone forget that he'd won the coveted Knight's Cross. He was an unprincipled rogue but he had an engaging manner, and when he worked for my father, and later as the barman in Lisl's hotel, I saw a lot of him. It was Rolf Mauser who'd shown me how to pick a lock and how to hold a playing card out of sight while shuffling the rest of the pack. When I was a child I'd been devoted to him and even though I'd long since seen him for what he really was I'd never completely shaken off some of that awe. Although for me Rolf had become an elderly figure of fun, underlying the fun there was something ruthless and frightening.

I was surprised to see him here in London, for the last I'd heard of him he'd settled down to live permanently in East Berlin.

'You're looking well, Rolf. What are you doing in London?' He was a big fellow and wore one of those heavy brown leather overcoats with plenty of straps and buttons. Its tight fit made him look as if he was about to explode out of it. This impression of impending detonation was heightened by the rosiness of his cheeks and nose.

'Bernd! Hello! I'm visiting my relatives. I have a cousin who lives in Luton.'

'Where are you living nowadays?' I asked.

He bent his head and touched his green loden hat as if to ease the constriction of its band, but it would be possible to read into this physical gesture a hint of apology. 'I'm still in the East. When you get to my age, Bernd, you're looking for peace and quiet. And what's more it's cheap.'

'Still in the same apartment?' He'd put me up there once. His apartment was large, comfortable but somewhat neglected, rather like Rolf himself.

'Prenzlauer Berg, yes. Fifty-five marks a month! The rent of my apartment is the same now as it was twenty-five years ago. Can you say that about any apartment in the West?'

'No.'

He lowered his bushy eyebrows and defensively added, 'Sometimes there are shortages: but basic foodstuffs – bread, milk, meat and eggs – are cheap. So are restaurant meals, and fares and theatres and concerts. I'm comfortable in the East, Bernd. Very comfortable.' It sounded like a little speech he'd rehearsed.

'And a little money goes a long way over there,' I said.

His face stiffened. Mauser had worked for the Department and was probably in receipt of some small pension through the good offices of Schneider, von Schild and Weber, the bank which discreetly handled such delicate financial affairs in Berlin. Social security payments for the old – unlike almost all other types of benefit – are not high in the DDK. Only a dedicated cynic like Rolf could be extolling, even to me, the wonders of this regime under which he'd chosen to retire, while he was largely living on the proceeds of the pension he'd got from trying to overthrow it. That's what I was saying, isn't it?'

'It's good to see you, Rolf.'

'So I have to line up for groceries and meat sometimes: I don't mind lining up. I have time to spare. And when I walk home from the shops I don't have to worry about being burgled or mugged.'

'You're lucky. Where are you going?'

'Yes, I am lucky,' he asserted as if he wasn't quite sure of my sincerity. 'No matter how tough they are with the youngsters, old fellows like me can come and go as we like. I don't have to climb over the Wall, Bernd.' He grinned.

If I knew anything about Rolf Mauser – and I knew quite a lot – he would never see eye to eye with any socialist regime. He was a rebellious loner. The Communists, like the Nazis and indeed the Church, had always welcomed converts to their cause but it was difficult to imagine Mauser acquiring sozialistisches Staatsbewusstsein, that unquestioning enthusiasm for the regime that the DDR expects of its citizens. Mauser was a pragmatist and a self-centred one at that. Long, long ago I'd heard my father describe Rolf Mauser as the sort of arrogant, bellicose German who earned for his race the civilized world's contempt. Calmly my mother had asked him why he went on employing him; because he'll do things no one else will even attempt, replied my father.

'Come and have coffee?' I suggested. I guessed that he would be very short of hard currency, and casual cups of coffee are one of the first things such indigents sacrifice.

'I'd like that, Bernd. That's the one thing I can't get at a reasonable price. Luckily my son sends me a packet every month. I can't live without a cup of good coffee in the morning.'

There was a smart little coffee house nearby and we walked there quickly with Rolf complaining at great length about the weather. 'It gets right into my bones,' he said as we sat down. It was the dampness, of course. Rolf, like most Berliners, found the marginally warmer English climate poor compensation for the penetrating chilly moisture that most natives don't even notice.

The coffee house was a chintzy place that I knew well. I used to have coffee here with Fiona when we worked in a nearby office. That was before we were married. I ordered a big pot of coffee before we found a table. It was the best way to get things moving.

'How is Axel? I haven't seen him for a long time.' I was at school with Mauser's son. At one time we'd been close friends.

'They live in a nice house in Hermsdorf but his marriage is not too smooth. Ever since that wife of his got that wonderful job and started earning big money she's become a monster.' He shrugged and reached for a Danish pastry.

'I'm sorry.'

'Work work work that's all she thinks about. She's a career woman,' he said contemptuously. 'But Axel won't hear a word against her. I don't see the attraction she has for him. He needs a real woman.' I'd heard Rolf railing against his daughter-in-law for many long years. The way he spoke of her you wouldn't think the marriage had lasted a couple of decades and that they had a teenage son.

'Axel was one of the brightest boys in the school,' I said. Rolf hadalways been smug about the way Axel was consistently top of the class. He especially liked to tell my father that Axel had done better than I had.

He tore the wrapping from a sugar cube. There was a ferocity – if not to say malignity – to everything he did. Helios, goodbyes, even thank-yous were a part of this belligerent spirit. I wondered if it was a pose he'd cultivated to maintain his authority as a young army officer, a pose that eventually devoured his true nature. 'And now he's working as a clerk in the Polizeiprasidium. I know, it's a waste of a good brain, but he won't listen to me.' He tossed the sugar into his coffee.

'I suppose he's worried about his son.'

'His son? What is there to worry about?'

'I didn't mean that,' I said. 'I meant that Axel probably works hard to keep his marriage going so that his son has a mother and father and a settled home life.'

'Nonsense!' said Rolf Mauser. He chewed his pastry, his mouth moving as if in anger.

'Axel loves the boy,' I said. 'I remember how he assembled a racing bicycle for him. He put it together with such loving care.'

'I know, I know. The kid had an accident: some fool in a Porsche: broke his leg; kept driving, didn't stop. He'd had a few drinks, I suppose. Axel blamed himself. That's stupid isn't it?'

'I don't know,' I said. In fact, of course, most fathers would have felt equally guilty. It was only roughnecks like old Rolf who saw things in such a simplistic light. I suppose it was the war. I remember Rolf telling stories about the last days of the Berlin fighting. Hauptmann Rolf had been sent off on patrol with a 'flying court martial' and they summarily executed anyone on the street who couldn't give a proper account of himself. They shot him there and then and hanged the body in full view with a sign saying 'I deserted my post'. Axel had said he couldn't imagine his father doing such things but I saw Rolf in a different light. I knew that Rolf could be a cold-blooded killer if he thought it necessary.

Perhaps my thinking was communicated to him, but if so it arrived in a distorted form, for he said, 'If Axel had served in the army he might have kept a better sense of proportion.'

'Is that what the army gave you, Rolf?'

He furrowed his brow, his eyebrows bristling so that he looked ferocious. I remembered being frightened of such grimaces when I was a child. 'Ever dream, Bernd?'

'Of being rich, or a film star?' I knew what he meant of course but I couldn't resist jollying him along. The fact was that I didn't want to hear his dreams; I didn't want to hear anyone's dreams. I had enough of my own.

'I don't sleep so well nowadays. I went to the doctor; he said it was my age. Stupid little schlemiel.' He leaned forward. 'I always dream about my time in the army, Bernd. I remember things I haven't thought of for years. And such detail! I got command of a self-propelled artillery battery when the battalion was out of the line. My battery commander went down with some kind of fever, I didn't know you could get fever in the middle of a Russian whiter but I learned a lot in Russia. It was Christmas and we were refitting in Krasnograd. Ever heard of Krasnograd?'

'I don't believe I have,' I said.

'A God-forsaken dump in the middle of nowhere. But there were trees; a lot of trees considering that the region had been fought through. The men liked the trees, it reminded them of home. Heavy snow and wooded countryside: with an effort of imagination it could almost have been the homeland. The peasants remained there of course, they always did. Russian peasants would sooner die than leave then village, they were all like that. I couldn't understand it. Then, in the middle of my daily bowl of pea soup – that powdered muck, but the cook had found some ancient potatoes to go into it – the signals lieutenant came back from headquarters and told me that the battery was mine. Wow! Did that soup suddenly taste good!'

He sat back and gave a half smile, but not at me. He didn't even see me at that moment: Rolf Mauser was miles away, and decades back in time, fighting his war in Russia. He rubbed his face. 'Taking command of six huge 15cm heavy howitzers mounted on tank chassis was quite an event in the life of a young man. I took it very seriously. I went round and spoke to every officer and man under my command: two officers, twenty-nine NCOs and ninety-two enlisted men. Most of them were newly arrived replacements: green kids, not long out of school. The other night in my dream I recalled every name and face. I even remembered the equipment I signed for.' He looked at me and wanted me to see how important all this was to him. 'I could even taste that damned Erbsensuppe.'

'And when you woke up?'

'Still remembered everything. Twenty-eight lorries, two motorcycles, sixteen light machine guns, twenty machine pistols, forty-eight handguns and seventy-eight rifles. I even remembered the names and ranks. Every one of their stupid faces.'

For a moment I thought he was about to recite all their names and numbers and give me the specifications of the hardware and its state of readiness. Perhaps the consternation showed on my face, for he said, 'Take my word for it. I can see those men now. Every face, every accented word they spoke. We left most of them deep under the ice and snow. By summer, only half a dozen of those men were still serving with me.'

For the very first time I saw that Rolf Mauser had spent his life entertaining dreams of military glory. An absurd ambition perhaps, but no more absurd than the dreams of most men. And, if the statistics were to be believed, no more unlikely than ending up with a happy marriage and loving family. 'General Rolf Mauser' had an implausible ring to it but the award of a 'tin tie' must have provided new impetus to his hopes of promotion, and certainly he had the necessary ruthlessness.

'Everyone dreams, Rolf,' I said. 'It's nothing to do with getting old.'

'So what do I do?'

'Get another doctor.'

He gave a humourless smile before paying all his attention to the coffee and what remained of his pastry.

For a brief time neither of us spoke. Then, 'Der grosse Kleiner is dead,' said Mauser as he stuffed down the final mouthful of his Danish pastry.

'So I heard. What do you know about it?'

'Don't tell me it was suicide.'

'I don't know anything about it,' I protested.

'Kleindorf wasn't the type.' He used the tip of his tongue to remove a crumb from his teeth.

'So what was it then?'

'He was a dope dealer. He was behind the refining and he was the contact between East and West.'

'Who says?'

'Regular consignments of it were coming through Schonefeld, arriving in the West for re-packaging and then going back there again. There were DDR officials taking a cut. It's all being hushed up. Even the West Berlin authorities are keeping stumm.'

'Why?'

'The official word is that the relationship between the two Germanics must not be threatened by such crimes.'

'And the unofficial word?'

Rolf let a slow smile spread across his big round face. 'That officials on both sides are deeply implicated. Big shots, I mean.'

'Sounds a bit far-fetched,' I said doubtfully.

'Does it, Berad? We've known each other a long time, haven't we? Are you seriously telling me that you've never heard rumours or stories about such dealings?'

'Rumours, yes.' I wondered if he'd heard the sort of stories Larry Bower had got from Valeri the double agent. 'Even so…'

'Kleindorf had a massive dose of heroin; that's what he died of. You know that?'

'I thought it was sleeping tablets.'

'Yes. That's the story that's being put around.' He nodded. 'Do you happen to have a cigarette on you, Bernd?'

Having stopped smoking for a long period I'd lately been accepting offered cigarettes. This morning my nerve had cracked and I'd bought a packet of cheroots. But I suddenly resolved to try harder. I handed the unopened packet to him. I said, 'Isn't that more to your taste?'

'It's very kind of you, Bernd. Are you sure?'

'I've stopped smoking.'

He lit one immediately and continued. 'But the real story is that Kleindorf died while in bed with one of his young dancing girls, a woman with a strong Silesian accent who disappeared long before the police arrived and has never been traced.'

'What are you getting at?'

'She'd worked for him for only a few days. The name and address she gave to his secretary at the Babylon were false.' He blew smoke.

'Do you think the woman murdered him?'

'She arrived in town with an American. They flew out together: two first class tickets to Rome. There were no needle marks on Kleindorf. Except for the marks of the needle that killed him.' He waited for me to absorb that fact and then said, 'He'd never take hard drugs: he was a health freak. Jogged every morning without fail.'

'What did the autopsy say?'

'No autopsy. The certificate said death was due to an overdose of sleeping tablets. An accident. Hurried burial; a demand for an inquest summarily refused.'

'I heard he'd drunk a whole bottle of vintage brandy.'

'There was an empty bottle in the bedroom. Who can say how much he'd drunk unless they open the stomach? Probably he'd had a drink with the girl. Did you ever see Kleindorf drunk?'

'No,' I said.

'Exactly. It's a cover-up. It sounds perfectly credible unless you know what Kleindorf was really like.'

'Okay,' I said. 'The stuff comes from Asia. They bring it into East Berlin. The Schonefeld airport customs let it go through because it's official policy to help the decadent West mainline its way to oblivion. Okay. What I don't get is why it does a turn-around and makes a journey back East again.'

'The consignments they are tapping into are brown, raw stuff. You have to be pretty desperate to float that shit into your bloodstream. None of the people at that end of the dealing has the know-how, the resources or the equipment to refine it, or the guts to risk it. That was Kleindorf's contribution to their game.'

'Have another coffee, Rolf.' I signalled to the waitress.

'This is a good place for coffee,' said Mauser appreciatively. 'I'm glad I met you, Bernd.'

'What sort of people in the East would be buying this stuff?' I said. 'And where would the money come from?'

Rolf Mauser knew he was being pushed, but that was better than admitting to not knowing. 'You know how these things work, Bernd. The transaction was drugs for paper-work.'

He paused as if he'd said something self-evidently significant.

Perhaps he had but I wasn't going to let him stop there. 'Would you enlarge on that notion?'

'Permissions. Imports. Contracts. A signature and a rubber stamp on a desk over there can mean a lot of money over here. You know that, Bernd. So does your friend Werner Volkmann.' He puffed smoke. It was a subdued gesture of aggression. He looked at me and waited for a reply.

'You're not saying Werner was implicated?' Before taking over the running of Lisl's hotel Werner had made a lot of money from avalizing: putting together import and export deals so that the DDR didn't have to part with hard currency. In that respect Werner's livelihood had depended upon East Berlin signatures and rubber stamps.

'I don't know.' He waved a hand. 'But if he was, he got out of that business at exactly the right time. He doesn't go over there any more.'

'He's busy with Lisl's,' I said. I watched Rolf tap ash from the cheroot. All my desire to smoke had gone: the smoke, the smell, the ash, the very idea disgusted me.

'Of course he is,' said Mauser. 'And if I were you, Bernd, I'd find myself something to be busy with.' A meaningful look. 'Because there are a lot of people on both sides of the Wall who are looking for someone to lay the blame on. You would fit the role nicely.'

'As a drug courier?'

'With evidence from both sides? It would be overwhelming. Who would believe anyone protesting his innocence if East and West put together a story?'

'How do you know all this, Rolf?'

'I know a lot of people and I keep my ears open.'

I chatted with him for almost another half an hour, but Rolf had decided to say no more, or perhaps knew no more, and the conversation turned to chatter about his family and other people we both knew. His aforementioned relative in London was not amongst the people he talked of. I wondered whether his cousin was not just a cover to hide the real reason for his visit. There were several chair-bound Departmental officials not so far away from here who would be pleased to have someone like Rolf Mauser to amplify their long, tedious and tendentious reports about the DDR: writing which bore little resemblance to the reality. It would be rash of him to continue to work for us, but given, on the one hand, the pressure the Department was always ready to apply to anyone who could be useful, and on the other hand Rolf Mauser's appetite for both risk and extra spending money, I guessed that he might be doing exactly that. An added dimension was provided by the possibility that he was playing a double game reporting everything back to the other side. I hoped any Departmental person dealing with him had considered that and kept it in mind constantly. When I left Mauser I found myself disturbed by the conversation we'd had. There was something about his words that unsettled me. I'd known that same feeling since I was a child. Mauser enjoyed alarming people.